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Feds strengthen turnaround program under NCLB
The Obama administration will spend at least $3.5 billion to push
local education officials to close failing schools and reopen them
with new staff, the Associated Press reports. Education Secretary
Arne Duncan wants the 5,000 worst-performing schools, approximately
one percent of all U.S. schools, turned around in five years. "As a
country, we need to get into the turnaround business," Duncan said.
"Adults need to have the courage to make these tough decisions and
do right by our kids." Since the president doesn't have power to
close and reopen schools himself -- authority rests with local
districts and states -- the administration is using financial
incentives. To receive federal turnaround money, a district must:
fire a school's principal and at least half its staff and reopen
with new personnel; turn a school over to a charter school operator
or other management organization; close a school and send students
to higher-achieving schools in the district; or replace only the
principal and take other steps to change school governance. The
administration indicated that a special focus of the refashioned
program will be fixing middle schools and high schools, especially
"dropout factories" where two in five kids fail to graduate.
Less variability makes for success at scale
As part of his series on "public education visionaries" on his
Public School Insights blog, Claus von Zastrow interviews Dr. Jerry
Weast, superintendent of schools in Montgomery County, Md. Weast has
"presided over a decade of strong and steady gains" in student
achievement, "not by using any of the cure-all strategies that have
captivated the national media, says von Zastrow." To Weast's
thinking, "There is something structurally wrong with a system where
about a third of the children in America never make it out and about
half of employees can't survive more than five years." Using AP
tests as the correlative to college readiness, Montgomery County
reorganized its curriculum back to preschool so that students would
be prepared to perform well in AP math and English by the time they
reached that level. In so doing, the county had to streamline its
processes, and take a hard look at how it was thinking about equity
for and differentiation among students. A key insight Weast has had
is that to bring about large-scale, systemic change, you need to
decrease, rather than increase, variability: "People talk about, 'We
have a new and different kind of unique school, and it really does a
wonderful job with children.' There is nothing wrong with that. But
if you have 100,000 children to address, you cannot just point out
your heroes and sheroes. You have got volume that you have to
address."
If charters are the answer, what was the question?
As a contribution to the ongoing (never-ending?) charter debate, The
National Journal put the question "Do charter schools deserve the
spotlight?" to a range of panelists, most in some way affiliated
with the charter movement or vociferously opposed to it. The
breakdown of responses (20 at this writing) was somewhat more varied
than expected. Among these, David Kirp of U.C. Berkeley feels
"charters" can't be spoken of as an undifferentiated whole, and
questions our ability to bring their successes to scale. Andrew
Rotherham of Education Sector would have charters be part of any
conversation about transforming education, but agrees with Kirp that
"charter" as a generic term is almost meaningless. Chad Wick of
KnowledgeWorks points out that the present ideology of competition
has created a space too bitter for the sharing of new ideas,
stifling dialogue between charters and regular public schools. Greg
Richmond, president and CEO of the National Association of Charter
School Authorizers, urges strong national standards for charter
authorizing to eliminate some of the wild variation in charter
outcomes. Diane Ravitch of NYU argues that privatization is creating
a well-compensated private sector but doing nothing for the majority
of kids. For Nelson Smith, president and CEO of the National
Alliance for Public Charter Schools, the question is not "do charter
schools work?" but "how do the best charter schools work?"
For better ed coverage, lose the defensive crouch
The biggest barrier to excellent education journalism, writes Linda
Perlstein on her Educated Reporter blog, is not jaded reporting or
oversimplifications from the mainstream media: It "lies within the
schoolhouse doors. And the boardroom doors. And the superintendent's
office doors." The world of education is secretive, she says, with
educators operating in a culture of fear. Schools bar access to
reporters, and paranoia prevents anyone from speaking honestly about
what works and what doesn't in education. "If I were a principal and
politicians were visiting my school, I would show them the worst
things in the building, so they could see our challenges," she
states. "I would allow my teachers to speak to the press without
prepackaged messages to deliver. I would be starkly frank with my
own bosses." Access and honesty would bring greater understanding.
As an example, for years The Washington Post, where Perlstein was a
reporter, had so little access to D.C. schools that they only
covered the district as an inept bureaucracy. The reality was more
complex. But now school leaders have told Perlstein that because
they can control their message through electronic media, they don't
"need" journalists anymore. This has troubling implications for
education coverage, she writes.
An early look at ARRA implementation
A new report from the Center on Education Policy (CEP) examines
implementation by state education agencies and governors' offices of
ARRA provisions for elementary and secondary education. States seem
more confident about fulfilling program assurances to create
longitudinal data systems and adopt new academic standards than
about improving effectiveness and distribution of teachers and
turning around low-performing schools. This is perhaps because the
first set of goals can be accomplished by state actions, said Jack
Jennings, CEP's president and CEO, whereas the second set are "more
explicitly local responsibilities, and their implementation will
depend a great deal on local decisions." Thirty-three states are
considering adopting common standards for core subjects. Twenty-one
states said adoption of internationally benchmarked standards were
critical to meeting assurances for rigorous standards. Most states
are planning longitudinal data systems for tracking student
achievement. Professional development was most frequently mentioned
as a strategy for improving teaching, as well as for implementing
new standards and turning around low-performing schools. This
suggests states are choosing traditional strategies over those that
could be more expensive, controversial, or sweeping. Teacher
recruitment and placement, and redesigning school schedules and
calendars, were also popular strategies to reform low-performing
schools.
New guide for
parental engagement
A new publication from the National PTA provides key facts,
background, analysis, noteworthy statutes, and policy
recommendations for state PTAs and other family and child advocates
for crafting successful school-family engagement legislation at the
state level. The reference guide has two declared purposes. It
provides information on family engagement provisions within state
education laws, so that families can better advocate for their
children's education on the school and district levels. It also
guides policymaker and advocate development of legislative reform
initiatives, as well as efforts to monitor implementation of laws
already in place. Research shows compelling evidence that children
benefit from family engagement in their schools, and that family
engagement helps close educational gaps between children from
different racial groups and socioeconomic backgrounds. "These are
exciting times for the field of family and community engagement,
given the renewed emphasis on shared responsibility in uplifting our
nation's education system and standing in the global community,"
write the authors. "The time is now to advocate for bold policy
reforms that support the advancement of systemic family engagement
initiatives in all of our schools." In their view, implementation of
state policies at the local school level is a critical component of
achieving greater family engagement in education.
Knowing parents, boosting achievement
At a time when education reform often emphasizes parental
involvement, the community school model, which has gained a foothold
in many cities nationally, holds lessons for schools that have
struggled to connect with urban parents, writes The Milwaukee
Journal-Sentinel. The article profiles the once-failing Robert L.
Ford School in Lynn, Ma., where relationships thrived once the
school focused on serving parents as well as children. As a
community school, Ford opens early and closes late, has partnerships
with outside agencies to provide support and enrichment services,
and is a community center for the neighborhood. "We started by doing
a questionnaire to see what parents wanted," Principal Claire Crane
said. "The top three things they wanted were education, day care,
and a clean and safe neighborhood. Nobody had ever asked them that
before." She acknowledges that transitioning to a community school
was challenging, but says the process got easier with time. "After
you get one or two grants or partnerships going, others become
easier to get," she said. "Start slow, start small, and it will
build itself for you." Low-income schools that receive extra money
from the federal government may have to reshuffle their priorities,
but Crane says it is worth it. Knowing parents, their issues, and
how to help them goes a long way toward breaking down barriers to
student achievement.
Harvard's new education leadership degree
For columnist Bob Herbert of The New York Times, "the greatest
national security crisis in the United States is the crisis in
education." For this reason, he is heartened by a new doctoral
degree to be offered by the Harvard Graduate School of Education,
tuition-free and conducted in collaboration with faculty members
from the Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School of
Government. The purpose of the degree will be to "develop dynamic
new leaders" in education who will have the "creativity,
intellectual rigor, and professionalism" needed to transform public
schools in the U.S. The scarcity of this kind of leadership is what
has hampered education reform in this country, according to Kathleen
McCartney, the graduate school's dean. "If you look at people who
are running districts," she said, "some come from traditional
schools of education, and they understand the core business of
education but perhaps are a little weak on the management side. And
then you've got the M.B.A.-types who understand operations, let's
say, but not so much teaching and learning." Students will spend the
third year of the doctoral leadership program in a "field placement"
at some organization or agency -- for instance, a large urban school
district or educational advocacy group -- to gain practical
experience. Instead of a dissertation, the students will undertake
an education reform project.
Extended learning time, higher student performance?
As more and more schools experiment with an extended learning day,
it's become important to build a base of knowledge about how schools
are using extra time and what outcomes they're seeing. The National
Center on Time & Learning has compiled a nationwide database of
schools that have added learning time to their schedules, and its
accompanying analysis suggests that extra time might play a role in
boosting middle and high school achievement, reports Education Week.
The center found a "moderate association" between increased time and
how well students did on their states' standardized English and
mathematics tests compared with their peers in nearby schools on
regular schedules. Another analysis in the study found that schools
that added the most time had better student performance in grades 7
and 10 than those that added less time. No similar pattern was found
at other grade levels. The authors of the study emphasize that the
data are not complete or representative enough to support a definite
conclusion, but hope the results will prompt further research about
practices and outcomes of extended-time schools. An-Me Chung of the
Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, which has supported and studied
after-school programs and extended learning time in schools,
welcomes the study but said the focus was too narrow. "What is it
that is happening during that time that's different? I would like to
have seen more about that," Ms. Chung said. "Learning needs to be
the focus here, not just time."
See the report:
http://www.timeandlearning.org/databasefullreport2009.html
See the database:
http://www.timeandlearning.org/eltschools_db/search.html
Hot for charters
In New York City, hedge fund managers and analysts are at the
epicenter of the city's charter school movement, and they bring
their zeal for competition and fundraising ability to charters'
boards and support organizations, reports The New York Times. "If
you're at a hedge fund, this is definitely the hot cause," said Joe
Williams, the executive director of Democrats for Education Reform,
a nonprofit group that lobbies for charters and is financed by hedge
funders. "These are the kind of guys who a decade ago would have
been spending their time angling to get on the junior board of the
Met, the ballet." That multimillionaires have embraced the charter
movement may seem odd, says the Times, since their own children are
unlikely ever to see the inside of a neighborhood school, and there
are more traditional philanthropic routes to social prominence. But
to those who know the sociology of Wall Street, it makes sense.
Charter schools appeal to the maverick instincts of many who run
hedge funds. The schools are "exactly the kind of investment people
in our industry spend our days trying to stumble on," said Ravenel
Boykin Curry IV of Eagle Capital Management, "with incredible cash
flow, even if in this case we don't ourselves get any of it."
BRIEFLY NOTED
Latest NAEP results: most cities flat, except D.C.
Still, federal and schools officials said that many districts have shown large gains since 2003, and haven't lost ground despite budget constraints.
Well, not exactly 'eliminated'
Aaron Pallas of Gotham schools looks at the data behind the
contention on 60 Minutes that Harlem Children's Zone has eliminated
the achievement gap.
No bankruptcy for Detroit if teachers kick in
The $10,000 that each member of the Detroit Federation of Teachers
is being asked to defer until departure from the school district
would save Detroit Public Schools $25.4 million.
L.A. teachers can launch 'pilot schools'
LAUSD officials and the teachers union have reached a tentative deal
that would help groups of teachers bid for control of 30 campuses
under a recently adopted school-reform plan.
Steps to stave off costly remediation in Md.
Maryland students applying to state universities would have to take
a fourth math course and take math during their senior year of high
school under revised requirements up for consideration by the
university system's Board of Regents.
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