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Desegregation, but not by race
In an effort to integrate schools without relying on a racial
metric, a growing number of districts are integrating on the basis
of income, reports USA TODAY. More than 60 school systems now use
socioeconomic status as a factor in school assignments, according to
Richard Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation. Districts in
Champaign, Ill.; Kalamazoo, Mich.; and Louisville, Ky. returned this
year to income-based assignments. "To the extent we can eliminate
the highest concentrations of poverty or spread more thinly those
concentrations of poverty, I think we make the environment a little
less challenging for students and staff to be successful," says
Kalamazoo Public Schools Superintendent Michael Rice. The strategy
is not unprotested, however, since many parents prefer neighborhood
schools where their kids have shorter (or no) bus rides and it's
easier for them to stay involved. Still, studies show low-income
students do better in middle-class schools, which Kahlenberg says is
evidenced in at least one district where parents are protesting
economic integration. In Wake County, N.C., both poor and
middle-class students have mostly outperformed their peers in other
urban North Carolina districts, though scores have slipped lately.
Related:
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/education/story/168903.html
Turnarounds: A losing proposition?
Overall, school turnarounds have consistently fallen far short of
hopes and expectations, writes Andy Smarick, a fellow at the Thomas
B. Fordham Institute and at the American Enterprise Institute, in an
article on the Education Next website. In his view, turnarounds are
not a scalable strategy for fixing America's urban school systems;
the solution lies in closing schools and starting fresh. Smarick
points to national data on schools undergoing NCLB-mandated
restructuring that bear this out: For instance, of the schools
required to restructure in 2004-05, only 19 percent were able to
exit improvement status two years later. Reform efforts are plagued
by what he calls the Law of Ongoing Ignorance -- despite
considerable time, money, and energy, it is still unknown what
policies convert a school from struggling to excellent. Studies
often conclude that the differences between schools that turnaround
and schools that continue downhill are undetectable. Smarick instead
recommends a clear process for closing schools, most easily executed
via the charter model. "Done right, not only will this strategy help
the students assigned to these failing schools, it will also have a
cascading effect on other policies and practices, ultimately helping
to bring about healthy systems of urban public schools," he says.
Texas may get tough with teacher prep
Under a proposed new rating system, Texas will toughen standards for
state colleges of education and other teacher-training programs,
reports The Houston Chronicle. If implemented, programs will be
accountable for their graduates' effectiveness on the job, and
programs that repeatedly fall short will lose state accreditation.
The state is still working on a formula and long-range data system
to determine which programs produce graduates whose students make
the biggest or smallest gains. Until now, the state has based
accreditation on the state's written certification exam, but the new
rating system will raise the percentage of an institution's
teacher-candidates who must pass the exam, and programs will be
graded on how often and well they follow up with teachers during
their first year on the job. In addition, school principals will
weigh in on programs through evaluations of new teacher hires. As
before, programs will be judged on the passing rates of all students
and of various gender and ethnicity groups. The State Board for
Educator Certification gave initial approval to the rules last month
and is expected to finalize them in February.
The elusive relationship between standards and achievement
In response to surprise over a Brown Center Letter on Education that
posited weak association between the quality of state content
standards (among other popular reforms) and student academic
achievement, the Brookings Institution's Up Front blog lays out in
plain terms how the authors found no relationship between state
scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and
quality ratings of state standards. The authors do not state there
is no correlation between high-quality standards and student
achievement; only that facets of standards and accountability play
out through a set of conditional relationships and interactions,
which can't be neatly pinned down. "Thus, high-quality common
standards may affect student achievement only in a system in which
there are also aligned assessments, and aligned curriculum, and
accountability for educators, and accountability for students, and
aligned professional development, and managerial autonomy for school
leaders, and teachers who drawn from the best and brightest, and so
on." Despite this, the Secretary of Education has characterized
common standards as "absolutely a national challenge, which we must
meet together or will compromise our future." Analysis suggests
otherwise.
See the original Letter on Education:
http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2009/1014_curriculum_whitehurst.aspx
Stimulus lets states dig budgetary holes
The American Association of School Administrators (AASA) has
released a new survey on the impact of the recession on school
districts, finding that because of federal stimulus funding, states
have sharply curtailed their own education spending, creating an
austere budget structure from which it will be hard to retreat,
Thompson.com reports. Of 875 school administrators, 66 percent
report having eliminated personnel positions for 2009-10, and 83
percent say more will go in 2010-11: about 15 staff per respondent
this year and about 11 per respondent next year. Just 13 percent
said American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) dollars increased
state and local funding, which AASA says illustrates the "shell
game" that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has warned against,
with states cutting education budgets as soon as it was known that
ARRA included money for education. One quarter of respondents say
ARRA helped save all core-subject teaching positions, while 35
percent say they were unable to save any core teaching positions set
for elimination. In special education, 36 percent of respondents
receiving ARRA funds were unable to save jobs. The AASA survey came
in advance of the Obama administration's release of ARRA
job-creation and retention data, which are being criticized by
watchdog groups and others for inconsistencies.
'Proficient,' or proficient?
A new study by the Department of Education that uses a statistical
comparison between the federal National Assessment of Educational
Progress and state tests finds that nearly a third of states lowered
their academic proficiency standards in the wake of the No Child
Left Behind Act (NCLB), The New York Times reports. Fifteen states
lowered proficiency standards in fourth- or eighth-grade reading or
math, with three -- Maine, Oklahoma, and Wyoming -- lowering
standards in both subjects at both grade levels. Some states raised
standards in one subject but lowered them in another. Only eight
states increased the rigor of their standards in one or both
subjects and grades: Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, New
York, North Carolina, and Virginia. Under NCLB, all schools must
bring 100 percent of students to the proficient level on states'
reading and math tests by 2014, and schools that fall short of
annual targets face sanctions. The question, says Louis Fabrizio of
the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, is whether you
want more kids at "proficiency," or "do you want to do the right
thing for kids, by setting [standards] higher so they're comparable
with our global competitors?"
See the report:
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/studies/statemapping/
Overhauling education's human capital system
A new report from the Strategic Management of Human Capital in
Education Project outlines six broad principles and 20 state and
local recommendations for attracting, developing, and maintaining an
effective teacher workforce. According to the authors, "The reform
spotlight should be turned where it is most important -- on the
people who teach and who serve as principals." The report's
recommendations include raising entry requirements for teacher
preparation; instituting a tiered licensure system that requires
teachers to complete an induction program and demonstrate teaching
effectiveness before receiving tenure; and overhauling professional
development and evaluations so they are standards-based and indicate
areas for teacher improvement. The report concedes these
recommendations pose "real political challenges" that will require
multiple-year periods of adoption and implementation. The policies
themselves are straightforward, but will require a major
developmental effort to design residency programs, fund professional
development resources, and develop and operate performance-based
evaluation systems. Perhaps most controversially, the report states
some districts now face significant human capital challenges because
they gave tenure to inadequate teachers, who despite good faith
efforts show no improvement in job performance. According to the
report, if these teachers "are not able to become effective
instructors who can bring about measurable gains in student
learning, they should be removed."
Related:
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/teacherbeat/2009/11/aft.html
Some sophomores (conveniently) left behind
Illinois districts across the state have been using a loophole that
allows them to define what constitutes a high school junior, leaving
struggling students out of the rigorous testing pool and thereby
significantly boosting school-wide scores on the Prairie State
Achievement Exam, The Chicago Tribune reports. By raising credit
hour requirements, schools are disqualifying thousands of third-year
high school students from taking the 11th-grade exam. Many then take
the test as seniors, but their scores are not used for state and
federal No Child Left Behind accountability purposes, nor does the
state track how seniors perform on the test. Officials justify the
practice by saying it gives weaker students more time to prepare,
but the result has been that 20 percent of Illinois sophomores did
not take the test last year, leading to huge leaps in accountability
scores for schools and districts. "This is not an appropriate way to
engage in the accountability system," said Joyce Zurkowski, who
oversees student assessment for the Illinois State Board of
Education. "This is an accountability test, and it's the gauge of
how ready students are. By keeping out the kids who are most at
risk, you are not being held accountable." Educators defending the
move say they are doing what's best for students.
Of airplanes and teacher evaluations
In the ongoing struggle to reliably quantify what makes a teacher
successful, many American educators "are trying to be teacher
assessments' answer to Wilbur and Orville Wright," says Jay Mathews
of The Washington Post. Take, for instance, the efforts of D.C.
Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and the newly introduced IMPACT
plan, which many have said will crash and burn since it "takes the
art of teaching and turns it into bean counting," in the words of
George Parker, president of the Washington Teachers' Union. Perhaps
not, counters Mathews, who has sent the assessment to experts across
the country, receiving back analyses that were more optimistic than
he frankly expected. Under the plan, 50 percent of each teacher's
rating will be based on how much their students improve over the
preceding year on the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System test when
compared with the average gain of a similar mix of students
district-wide. Forty percent will be based on five 30-minute
classroom observations by administrators and district evaluators
chosen for their teaching experience, each followed by a discussion
with the teacher about what looked good and what didn't. Assessment
of a teacher's support for colleagues and the school, and the
school's overall tests gains, round the rating. Though complicated,
the system sets out clear guidelines for both teachers and
evaluators, and if executed properly -- a big "if" -- could lead the
way for teacher assessments elsewhere.
The teaching view from Gen Y
A new report from Learning Point Associates in partnership with
Public Agenda is the second based on their mixed-method research on
retaining teacher talent. "Supporting Teacher Effectiveness: The
View from Generation Y" gives a nationwide vantage on attitudes in
this latest generation of teachers. Seventy-one percent of Gen Y
teachers are open to incentive pay, whereas only 10 percent of Gen Y
teachers think that student performance on standardized tests is an
"excellent" measure of teacher success. For Gen Y teachers, paying
for performance is the least important policy option for improving
teacher effectiveness and retention; meaningful learning
opportunities, reducing class size, increasing parental involvement,
and raising salaries across the board still rank higher. Gen Y
teachers desire sustained, constructive, individualized feedback
from principals to help them become more effective in the classroom.
The report also found that among all teachers, concerns that unions
protect seriously underperforming teachers have risen in recent
years, with 66 percent agreeing that unions sometimes fight to
protect teachers who should not be in the classroom, compared with
48 percent agreeing in 2003.
BRIEFLY NOTED
Probably not what drafters of RttT intended
Under a bill moving through the Wisconsin legislature, schools could
use student test scores to evaluate teachers, but not to discipline
or fire them.
Forging a bridge between 'kids like herself and possibilities for
greatness'
First Lady Michelle Obama has launched a leadership and mentoring program in which 20 high school girls from D.C. will pair up with top administration officials to learn life skills.
NYC teacher quality study enlists 100 schools
The joint project of the New York City Department of Education and
the United Federation of Teachers, funded by the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation, will look at ways of measuring teacher quality
beyond using test scores.
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