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Three necessary ingredients for thriving reform
Forty percent of students at Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles
are still learning English, and 20 percent live in foster homes, but
under the stewardship of MLA Partners Schools, a renewal is underway
-- "a glimmer of hope" in the struggling Los Angeles Unified School
District (LAUSD), writes The Los Angeles Times. MLA founder Mike
McGalliard has raised an extra $400 per student from private sources
to fund both grants for teachers and a 12-hour school day. The
100-year-old building now has a drop-in center where 9th-graders can
talk to counselors about personal or school problems, hallway murals
created by "would-be graffiti-artists," and a community garden where
there once was a dumping ground for trash. MLA Partners isn't "doing
some secret formula," McGalliard said. "My staff takes things that
other schools think about but can't do" because of bureaucracy. A
third of Manual Arts' teaching staff are alumni and grew up in the
neighborhood, and its faculty is a mix of veterans and rookies with
an openness to collaboration. "It's too soon to tell whether
McGalliard's group has it right," says The Times. "But they
understand that three things are necessary for reform to thrive:
investment, accountability, and support."
Charters and personnel churn
Given the level of policy discussion about charter schools and their
varied outcomes, increased attention is coming to bear on how
charters differ from traditional public schools in operations and
structure. A new report from the National Center for the Study of
Privatization in Education looks at higher teacher turnover in
charters, a key distinction from traditional public schools. The
researchers found that the odds of a charter teacher leaving the
profession versus staying in the same school were 132 percent
greater than those of a traditional public school teacher, and the
odds of a charter teacher moving schools were 76 percent greater.
The authors conclude that the explanation for this "turnover gap"
lies in differences between the types of teachers that charter
schools and traditional public schools hire. The data "lend minimal
support to the claim that turnover is higher in charter schools
because they are leveraging their flexibility in personnel policies
to get rid of underperforming teachers." Instead, the authors found
that most turnover in charter schools is "voluntary and
dysfunctional as compared to that of traditional public schools." In
addition to causing instability within schools, teacher turnover
across all schools imposes fiscal costs of approximately $7.1
billion dollars annually on education budgets.
Union contracts: where rubber meets the road
Where does Secretary of Education Arne Duncan stand on education
reform and teacher union contracts? Andy Smarick of the Thomas B.
Fordham Institute concludes that while Duncan is willing to engage
unions on a policy level, he shies from challenging them over
contracts. While Smarick applauds the general tenor of the Race to
the Top initiative (though he calls the final version a retreat from
the "much stronger" original), he points out that "a search for
'collective bargaining agreement' or 'union contract' in official
Race to the Top documents yields zero matches. It's as though they
are completely unrelated to reform." Nor has Duncan publicly
criticized union obstruction of various provisions. It is time, says
Smarick, for Duncan to address the fact that uniform pay scales,
policies that protect low-performing teachers, and policies that
lead to so-called "rubber rooms" are all in union contracts. With
the approaching Race to the Top deadline, Smarick wants Duncan to
give a speech signaling that mere "willingness to discuss" and
"commitments to negotiate" hold little meaning. The administration
will gauge the gap between the proposals in a state's application
and the extent to which a state's collective bargaining agreement
will allow these proposals to move forward, allotting funds
accordingly.
See the report:
http://www.publicschoolinsights.org/new-directions-new-haven-union-leader-david-cicarella-district-s-pathbreaking-new-teacher-contract
Don't just listen to his words, watch his actions
In an interview in U.S. News & World Report, Secretary of Education
Arne Duncan explains that in education, "great ideas always come
locally, from great teachers and great principals." The Race to the
Top initiative is an opportunity to take these great ideas to scale.
He also states that as a nation, we have drastically underinvested
in development of principals, who should be thought of as CEOs and
must be instructional leaders, budget managers, community liaisons,
team leaders, and savvy media operators. With regard to merit pay,
Duncan says that absolute test scores are a poor metric of teacher
effectiveness, but he is a "bigger believer in looking at growth and
gain and how much a student is improving each year." High schools
must raise the academic bar, but also become places where every
student can have a meaningful relationship with an adult. When asked
whether he would "stick to his guns," and only give out Race to the
Top funds to the deserving few, Duncan replied: "Don't just listen
to my words, watch my actions. I'm here for only one reason, and
that is to help the country get dramatically better, and that is
what we are going to do."
Building a new culture for instructional oversight
"All too often," writes Stephen Fink in The School Administrator
magazine, "school leaders responsible for observing teachers on the
job don't know what quality teaching looks like." Fink, who is
executive director of the Center for Educational Leadership at
University of Washington in Seattle, says that both studies and his
own extensive experience have shown that too few school leaders who
oversee instructional improvement have the expertise to identify
what makes teaching effective -- and this may explain the wide
variation in opinions when observing a particular teaching
performance. To improve teaching, education leaders must model their
own learning in public ways. This means building a school culture
where teaching practice is given the same kind of scrutiny found in
a medical or law school. Leaders must know their teachers as
individual learners, and apply instructional focus to developing
teachers in the same way that teachers are expected to do so with
students. And district leaders must know principals as individual
learners, so that they, too, can be intentional in developing
leadership expertise. "This is not easy work," Fink concedes, "but
the benchmark is exceedingly clear. At the end of the day, every
structure, program, process or training activity must be measured by
asking: Has teaching practice improved? How do you know?"
A juggling act few can maintain
In the first in a series of reports about young Americans' views on
college and higher education, Public Agenda has released a paper
based on a survey of over 600 young adults aged 22 to 30 that looks
at four "myths" about why students fail to finish college, and
outlines four corresponding "realities." Rather than leaving because
they were bored or unwilling to work hard, students cited the need
to work full-time and family commitments as overriding factors for
more than half of those surveyed. Over one third of non-completing
students who wanted to return also said they couldn't, even if
tuition and books were fully covered. For students who don't
graduate, the college selection process often seems limited and
uninformed, and many don't fully grasp the impact that dropping out
will have on their future. "Most are working and go[ing] to school
at the same time, and most are not getting financial help from their
families or the system itself," says Jean Johnson of Public Agenda.
"It's the stress of this juggling act that forces many of them to
abandon pursuit of a college degree."
Louisiana's teacher college accountability
Through an initiative that Education Secretary Arne Duncan calls a
model for the nation, Louisiana has become the first state to tie
student test scores into a chain of evaluation that reaches all the
way to teacher colleges, The Washington Post reports. Low-performers
under this new assessment could face overhaul or, in extreme cases,
closure. "A lot of people are talking about doing it," said Arthur
Levine, former president of Teachers College at Columbia University,
"but Louisiana got there first. It's the model. I think you're going
to see a lot more of it over the next several years." Nationwide,
about 150,000 new teachers enter the workforce each year, according
to the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, about
80 percent from college- or university-based programs. The rest
enter through alternate paths sponsored by organizations like Teach
for America, which bypass traditional education coursework to speed
instructors into the classroom. Now, many colleges and universities,
long criticized as detached from the troubles of public education,
are starting to expose students to real-world classrooms and
situations. At UL-Lafayette, with about 2,500 education students,
the main program culminates with an internship that pairs students
with mentor teachers, immersing them in a school for about 500 hours
in a full semester.
Tracking the debate on tracking
Two new studies are "reviving tough questions" about the student
tracking debate, according to The National Journal. A study from the
Brookings Institution is critical of the movement against tracking,
and in a comparison of tracked and detracked middle schools in
Massachusetts found that schools with more tracks in math classes
were associated with more high-performing students and fewer
failures, and vice versa. Detracking means reducing the number of
subject-area courses offered in a given grade in a given school, or
in other terms, moving toward a heterogeneous class. On the other
hand, a report out of the University of Colorado takes the opposite
stance. It gives recommendations on best practices for moving
towards heterogeneous classes drawn from three case studies. "The
research on tracking is as clear as anything in the field of
education," said Kevin Welner, the second study's author. "It is a
destructive practice that has the undeniable effect of lowering
expectations and opportunities for students who have already fallen
behind." On the surface, says The National Journal, whether to group
by ability is a debate about best practices in education. In
practice, however, the discussion inevitably revolves around race
and equality, since students in low-track classes are overwhelmingly
minority and low-income.
In search of the 'black box' of ed reform
A "massive" new study from the Consortium for Policy Research in
Education (CPRE), undertaken over 13 years, aimed to determine why
some school improvement programs have worked and some haven't,
Education Week reports. The research involved 115 elementary
schools, 300 teachers, 800 school leaders, 7,500 students, and three
brand-name models of comprehensive school reform, tracking what
teachers did on a daily basis, determining how those practices
differed from those in a set of more typical schools, and figuring
out if the changes had impact on academic achievement. The capstone
study looked at three programs that gave the teachers varying
degrees of autonomy in devising and carrying out a curriculum. The
researchers found that over time, teachers in schools using the
model with the greatest freedom were most likely to feel a sense of
autonomy and trust in their schools, but their teaching practices
were not significantly different from those used in the control
group. In comparison, schools using the other two programs, where
teachers had more direction but also more collaboration and
coaching, developed their own distinctive looks over time. The
different instructional patterns, in turn, led to different and more
successful student-achievement patterns.
Read More:
http://www.cpre.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=287&Itemid=149
BRIEFLY NOTED
So everybody, just relax
A small fraction of teens have engaged in sexting, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, which spoke to 800 teens around the country.
County to union: not interested
Board of Pulaski County, Ark. school district votes to end
recognition of its teacher union.
Signs of growth in 'white matter'
A study in the scientific journal Neuron finds that a six-month
program for children with poor reading skills actually spurs changes
in the physical brain.
Related:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WSS-4XWM617-9&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=af80ce6ee42c94a1f8597136b16057ae
Tracking potential dropouts
In January, Delaware schools will begin targeting students at risk
for dropping out by analyzing attendance and math and reading
scores.
A lesson in finesse
Kansas City school teaches analytic skills through bridge.
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"Youth
Serve America: The Gladys Marinelli Coccia Awards"
The Gladys Marinelli Coccia Awards recognize young female social
entrepreneurs whose initiatives serve the common good. The awards
were created in memory of Gladys Coccia, who began her
entrepreneurial career when she was a young girl in West Virginia
and later became a successful businesswoman in Washington, D.C.
Maximum award: $2,000, plus travel, lodging, and registration
expenses to the National Service Learning Conference in San Jose,
March 24-27, 2010. Eligibility: young women between the ages of 14
and 17 on January 1, 2010 who reside in the United States, have
started their own social enterprise or organization, are supported
by contributions of at least $1,000 (cash and/or in-kind), and have
a business plan including an itemized budget. Deadline: January 15,
2010.
"Independent
Sector: The John W. Gardner Leadership Award"
The John W. Gardner Leadership Award honors visionaries who have
empowered constituencies, strengthened participation, and inspired
movements. Award recipients are builders -- people who, quite apart
from personal achievements, have raised the capacity of others to
advance the common good. Their leadership has either had national or
international impact or, if at the regional level, has attracted
wide recognition and imitation. Maximum award: $10,000. Eligibility:
Gardner Award recipients may be of any age and be the creators of
needed institutions or advocacy that changes public opinion and
whose work has transformed their chosen field and has served as a
role model to other fields. Deadline: January 29, 2010.
"National
Council of Teachers of English: Edwyna Wheadon Postgraduate Training
Scholarship"
The Edwyna Wheadon Postgraduate Training Scholarship provides
funding for professional development experiences for
English/Language Arts teachers in public educational institutions to
enhance teaching skills and/or career development in teaching.
Maximum award: $500. Eligibility: teachers of English/Language Arts
in a publicly funded institution. Deadline: January 31, 2010.
"Tides
Foundation: Pizzigati Prize for Software in the Public Interest"
The Antonio Pizzigati Prize for Software in the Public Interest
recognizes software developers whose work has made an outstanding
contribution to the nonprofit sector and to ongoing efforts for
positive social change. Maximum award: $10,000. Eligibility:
individuals who have developed an open-source software product that
has demonstrated impressive value to at least one nonprofit and has
the potential to offer value to multiple nonprofit organizations.
Deadline: February 1, 2010.
"American
Academy of Dermatology: Shade Structure Program"
The American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) Shade Structure Program
gives grants for the purchase of permanent shade structures designed
to provide shade and ultraviolet (UV) ray protection for outdoor
areas. AAD also provides a permanent sign to be displayed near the
shade structure that promotes the importance of sun safety. Maximum
award: $8,000. Eligibility: nonprofit organizations or public
schools that primarily serve children and teens 18 and younger;
demonstrate an ongoing commitment to sun safety and skin cancer
awareness by having a sun safety/skin cancer awareness program in
place for at least one year prior to application; and are sponsored
by an AAD member dermatologist. Deadline: April 12, 2010.
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