| Author |
Message |
    
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 29230
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - 7:11 pm: | 
|
Jindal's Education Moon Shot
Louisiana's Governor pushes vouchers and tenure reform.
A WALL STREET JOURNAL Editorial with over 60 comments
Jan 31, 2012
 Note to Bobby: None of these reforms will dramatically improve education. They are just as bad as smaller class sizes, better evaluations and higher salaries. What we need is someone willing to do the hard work of reinventing education for The 21st Century Student. The subject-based classroom instruction model must be destroyed to the greatest extent feasible.
* * *
Mr. Jindal wants to create America's largest school voucher program, broadest parental choice system, and toughest teacher accountability regime—all in one legislative session. Any one of those would be a big win, but all three could make the state the first to effectively dismantle a public education monopoly.
* * * *
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 29195
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, January 26, 2012 - 11:17 pm: |
|
Walker unveils education reform legislation
Wisconsin State Journal via the La Crosse (WI) Tribune
January 19, 2012
* * *
Walker's office issued a press release with the following highlights:
• Rate all schools, including charters and private schools that accept students with state-funded vouchers, based on multiple measures of student growth and proficiency.
• Require school districts to display their report card prominently on their website's home page.
• Create a framework for a teacher and principal evaluation system, half of which would be based on multiple measures of student outcomes and the other half would be based on educator practice. Educators would not be held responsible for raw test scores but for "value-added" measurements that track improvement on state and local exams over time.
• The bill would ensure specifics of teacher evaluations "are not published in newspapers" while "ensuring parents have a right to know if their child receives a low-performing teacher."
• Require all students to take a reading screener in kindergarten by 2012-13.
• Create a Read to Lead Development Council with statutory authority to raise money to support reading initiatives statewide.
• Require the Department of Public Instruction to improve the licensure exam for new elementary school reading teachers and coaches by 2013-14.
• Require DPI to publish report cards for schools of education and alternative licensure programs.
* * * *
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 29159
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 24, 2012 - 11:10 pm: |
|
Governor proposes consequence-free 'achievement compacts' to focus schools and community colleges on results
By Betsy Hammond / The Oregonian
January 23, 2012
Gov. John Kitzhaber and his education team are seeking the most specific step so far to change education in Oregon: They want the Legislature to require every school district and community college to sign a yearly "achievement compact" spelling out key results it will try to deliver.
The governor has said that the compacts, by focusing attention on dropout rates and other vital outcomes as school and college budgets are written each spring, will accelerate student learning, shift money to proven techniques and boost high school graduation and college-attendance rates.
* * * *
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 29134
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 23, 2012 - 11:04 pm: |
|
For America’s children, education outlook grows only dimmer
By Juan Williams - The Hill
01/23/12
Thirty percent of America’s high school students drop out and never graduate. Fewer than half of the nation’s black and Hispanic students graduate on time from high school.
* * *
Real education reform that would actually benefit students always seems to be another year and another election away. But America’s children don’t have years. They are dropping out, unemployed, and filling up jails right now. They cannot wait on cowardly politicians and corrupt teachers’ unions to get their act together.
School children don’t vote. They don’t donate to campaigns. So the politicians continue to fiddle while the nation’s children get left behind.
Juan Williams is an author and political analyst for Fox News Channel.
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 29126
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 23, 2012 - 9:35 pm: |
|
In Race to the Top, the Dirty Work Is Left to Those on the Bottom
By MICHAEL WINERIP / NEW YORK TIMES
Jan 23, 2012
* * *
The Education Department will spend about $5 billion on the program, and even if you’re thinking, hey, I could use $5 billion, consider this: New York won the largest federal grant, $700 million over the next four years. In that time, roughly $230 billion will be spent on public education in the state. By adding just one-third of one percent to state coffers, the feds get to implement their version of education reform.
* * * *
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 29105
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, January 20, 2012 - 9:43 pm: |
|
Competitive grants plan draws fire
Cuomo wants $250M for education pool
By Meghan E. Murphy / Middletown (NY) Times Herald-Record
01/20/12
School advocates digesting Gov. Andrew Cuomo's budget proposal Wednesday questioned the wisdom of diverting money to a competitive grant program in a time when schools are struggling to pay for basic services.
* * *
"We are deeply concerned about the governor's plan to direct nearly one-third of the $805 in new funds to a competitive grants program. This is an unproven strategy," Rick Timbs, director of the Statewide School Finance Consortium, said. "Until data that supports this type of initiative bears fruit, why hold back more money when districts need it to maintain services?"
I want you to notice what educators have done with the charge of using "unproven strategies." When initially raised in the context of pedagogy, the complaint was that educators were continuing to use old methods despite research suggesting that other methods produced better results. Educators weren't using research-based instruction. They were using unproven strategies. They needed to shift from old methods to new ones.
Educators turned that meaning on its head. They use it to maintain the status quo and reject new approaches because they are unproven. Since nothing can be used until it's proven, nothing new can be tried. Do you see how manipulative educators can be. This isn't the first example I've seen of the abuse of "unproven strategies" but it is the clearest.
* * * *
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 29063
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 16, 2012 - 10:32 am: |
|
N.Y. has to initiate real education reform
By JOSEPH GIANNETTO / Albany (NY) Times Union Commentary
January 15, 2012
Since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society we have grappled with it: How to fix education?
Presidents and policies come and go, and we watch helplessly as American education withers in the face of international competition.
Now New York has been told that the status quo is unacceptable. But bad federal and state policies hold New York's schools hostage to the almighty dollar.
On Jan. 3, state Education Commissioner John King suspended School Improvement Grant funds for 10 districts across the state. On the heels of that decision came another blow. Federal Education Secretary Arne Duncan scolded New York for hitting a "roadblock" when it came to Race to the Top, the Obama administration's attempt to spur change by tying federal funds to state educational reforms. Duncan even suggested that New York could lose much of the $700 million it received in Race to the Top funds.
At the root of both condemnations is the inability of 10 school districts to implement a teacher and principal evaluation. Disagreements over how much of the evaluation system should be based on standardized testing has resulted in a grinding process.
What King and Duncan don't realize is that forcing a haphazard evaluation plan will not fix anything. It instead will result in an ineffective evaluation process, thrown together in the interest of dollars, rather than students. A story all too familiar in America's schools.
New York's education system is an entrenched bureaucracy that requires a complete overhaul. Improving teacher quality is a piece of the puzzle, but not the silver bullet.
That is not to say that a discussion about teacher evaluations in is not warranted. According to an Associated Press-Stanford University poll, 78 percent of Americans believe it is too difficult to fire bad teachers. With public sentiment overwhelmingly one-sided, teachers' unions, including the New York State United Teachers, have made the right decision by agreeing to the creation of teacher evaluation systems. But, this is not the first time New York has taken aim at the quality issue.
Educators in New York are required to obtain a master's degree within five years of employment and complete 175 hours of professional development in five-year intervals. So, why do New York's schools, especially those in urban areas, fail to meet expectations?
Because we are so busy playing the blame game, we haven't begun to think about effective reform.
Decades of reform. Generations of retired teachers. Yet, the education system hasn't begun to think about effective reform. That's the truth. But it's not because of the blame game. It's because of money and self-interests. Rather than making the outrageously expensive effort to improve teacher quality, we need to minimize the importance of teacher effectiveness. You do that by ending one-size-fits-all, lock-step, subject-based, teacher-centered classroom instruction.
In his State of the State speech, Gov. Andrew Cuomo blamed teachers unions for educational failures and proclaimed himself the only "lobbyist" for our state's students. But he forgets that he slashed $1.3 billion from education in his first budget, with no mandate relief. He didn't mention that because of those cuts, the Council of Superintendents reported that 7,000 teachers were laid off in 2011 and another 4,000 were lost to attrition. Moreover, Cuomo didn't propose one reform.
If New York wants to fix education, it's going to take bold initiatives. It needs to stop moving students on to the next grade because of age, rather than academic comprehension. We need to invest in early education, and put elementary school students through rigorous literacy programs, so they transition from "learning to read" to "reading to learn."
All these reforms seem difficult, but they are proven. Florida ended social promotion in 2002, opened reading centers around the state and hired reading coaches.
The result: According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Florida's fourth- and eighth-graders went from scoring at the bottom nationally in reading in math in 1998, to scoring above the national average in 2009.
As an educator, I am not asking for the status quo or infinite funding. I am advocating for real reform.
Holding schools hostage through funding is not an answer. It's time our national and state leaders reflect on what will really save our schools. But they never will, unless we do first — all of us: teachers, students, and parents.
Joseph Giannetto is a Capital Region teacher.
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 29041
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 11, 2012 - 12:05 am: |
|
McDonnell proposes repealing ... teacher tenure in schools plan
By Emma Brown / Washington Post Virgina Schools Insider blog
Jan 9, 2012
If Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) gets his way in 2012, teacher tenure as we know it will be a thing of the past, local school boards will be able to set their own calendars and students will be required to take one online course to graduate.
The governor announced those proposals at a Monday afternoon news conference where he outlined his legislative priorities for K-12 education.
McDonnell’s push to reduce job protections for teachers and principals is likely to draw intense resistance from the Virginia Education Association, which is already at odds with the governor over cuts to public schools in his proposed 2013-14 budget.
Currently, teachers go through a three-year probationary period and then are awarded continuing contracts — or what is often called tenure.
Doing away with continuing contracts would give administrators an opportunity to review teacher performance every year — and presumably, to offload teachers more easily.
McDonnell shrugged off the suggestion that tenure is necessary to protect academic freedom, saying that it ends up protecting bad teachers. He said his proposed changes are meant to help retain and reward high-quality, effective teachers and principals.
“This is the way most of state government works,” McDonnell said. “You perform well, you keep your job. You don’t perform well for an extended period of time, you don’t get a guarantee.”
* * *
Other key proposals:
Charter schools. McDonnell proposed establishing a technical advisory committee to help charter-school applicants develop their plans. He also wants to “clarify” the per-pupil amount that charters should receive and said details about that would be forthcoming.
Virtual schools. The governor proposed establishing an alternative licensure route for virtual-school teachers and said he wants new regulations for accrediting full-time virtual schools.
Dual enrollment. The governor wants to tweak the law to allow high school students to work toward an associate’s degree.
Literacy. Under a McDonnell proposal, school districts would be required to use certain funds to give extra help to third- and fourth-graders who are struggling to read.
Tuition tax credits. Businesses could qualify for tax credits by donating to scholarship funds for low-income kids.
Youth development. The governor proposed a pilot program to offer ninth- and 10th-graders the kinds of lessons they often don’t have time for in school: character education, leadership skills and preventative health care.
The governor’s budget also includes a number of education provisions. Details are available on his Web site.
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 29033
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 10, 2012 - 9:18 pm: |
|
U.S. Faults State’s Progress on Race to the Top Goals
By FERNANDA SANTOS / NEW YORK TIMES
January 10, 2012
New York is one of three states on the federal government’s watch list because it has not yet complied with the goals it set when applying for financial assistance through the federal Race to the Top program.
In a strongly worded statement on Monday, the education secretary, Arne Duncan, said that despite “significant progress,” New York had “hit a roadblock” in recent months, failing to put in place a planned database to track student records across school districts and failing to fulfill a promise to adopt a system to evaluate the work of teachers and principals.
* * * *
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 29016
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, January 08, 2012 - 10:13 pm: |
|
Big Study Links Good Teachers to Lasting Gain
By ANNIE LOWREY / NEW YORK TIMES
Jan 6, 2012
WASHINGTON — Elementary- and middle-school teachers who help raise their students’ standardized-test scores seem to have a wide-ranging, lasting positive effect on those students’ lives beyond academics, including lower teenage-pregnancy rates and greater college matriculation and adult earnings, according to a new study that tracked 2.5 million students over 20 years.
* * *
The average effect of one teacher on a single student is modest. All else equal, a student with one excellent teacher for one year between fourth and eighth grade would gain $4,600 in lifetime income, compared to a student of similar demographics who has an average teacher. The student with the excellent teacher would also be 0.5 percent more likely to attend college.
Don't you see? These are nothing like the kind of gains we need and the kind of gains that are possible by eliminating the classroom instruction model and creating schools designed for The 21st Century Student.
* * *
The new study found no evidence for one piece of conventional wisdom: that having a good teacher in an early grade has a bigger effect than having a good teacher in later grades.
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 29014
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, January 08, 2012 - 9:50 pm: |
|
Diane Ravitch Has Questions for the Cuomo Commission
By Diane Ravitch / NEW YORK TIMES SchoolBook
Jan. 6, 2012
We will NEVER give our children the education they need as long as the education elite takes this approach. We need schools designed for The 21st Century Student. 11% of the century has passed us and we are still using 18th century learning models.
Governor Cuomo’s commission on education has an opportunity to change the direction of school reform.
Right now, the state’s school system is in trouble. Federal tests show that achievement in reading and mathematics in fourth and eighth grades has been flat across the state for most of the past decade.
In the one tested area that looked promising — fourth-grade mathematics — New York was the only state in the nation in which scores declined in 2011.
The commission needs to ask some tough questions.
First, where is the money going? How much goes directly to the classroom and how much is spent on expensive outside consultants and unnecessary state and local bureaucracy? How much is squandered on costly technology contracts that are poorly supervised and of dubious value?
Second, how can New York raise standards for entry into teaching? The state should require every new teacher to have at least a bachelor’s degree and an additional year of study and practice-teaching under the supervision of a mentor teacher. No one should be allowed to teach without a thorough preparation.
Third, how can the state redirect funding to provide high-quality early childhood education for 3- and 4-year-olds and to reduce class size, especially in the early grades?
The research supporting these policies is very strong. Many children arrive in school ready to learn, but many others do not.
Only the state can devise a comprehensive plan to ensure that all children arrive in school with the vocabulary and social skills needed for school success. Students today have a broad range of developmental and social issues, and large classes make it impossible for them to get the individual attention they require to be academically successful.
Fourth, how can the state fairly evaluate teachers and principals? The New York State Education Department’s proposed educator evaluation program is deeply flawed. More than 1,100 principals have signed a statement protesting the state’s plan because it is untried and threatens to demoralize teachers and divide staffs.
Tests measure student performance, not teacher performance. As in any other profession, judgments about teacher quality should be rendered by experienced supervisors, not by dubious data like New York’s inconsistent test scores.
Fifth, how can the state recruit and promote the best possible school leaders? If the burden of teacher evaluation rests with the principal, as it should, then it stands to reason that principals should themselves be master teachers.
The commission should consider how to raise standards for principals, such as requiring that they have no less than seven years of teaching experience, plus at least three years of administrative experience as an assistant principal or department chair or in a similar position.
Sixth, how can New York strengthen its public education system? The proliferation of charter schools in poor neighborhoods — and increasingly, in middle-class neighborhoods — threatens to draw away the most capable students from the regular public schools.
If this trend continues, the public schools that enroll the overwhelming majority of students will inevitably be weakened.
Any new charter schools should be created specifically to enroll the state’s neediest students — students with disabilities, students who are English language learners, and dropouts — and to provide extra attention for them.
Seventh, how can state tests be used diagnostically, to help students and teachers, rather than to label, rank, punish and stigmatize them?
New York has devoted the past two decades to a regime of high-stakes testing. How many hundreds of millions or billions of dollars have been spent on testing during this era? The results are disappointing, to say the least. Why double down on a failed strategy?
It’s time to admit that the state’s heavy investment in testing and accountability has not succeeded. Students are not learning more, achievement gaps are not closing, and resources are squandered on assessment rather than instruction.
It’s time to acknowledge that New York State, like the nation, is leaving many children behind. It’s time for new thinking.
So, where's the new thinking? This is all just tinkering with a failed model of instruction. It can't work because you can never get all the parts of the classroom instruction model in sync every day. Something will always be amiss. Sick teachers, fire drills, sick students, classroom disruptions, interceding cultural events, assemblies, etc. The model has to be dumped. That's the new thinking we need.
Diane Ravitch is Research Professor of Education at New York University and a historian of American education.
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 28996
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, January 05, 2012 - 10:46 pm: |
|
NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND 10TH ANNIVERSARY REPORT
NCLB’s Lost Decade for Educational Progress:
What Can We Learn from this Policy Failure?
By Lisa Guisbond with Monty Neill and Bob Schaeffer / Fair Test
January 2012
News Release on the report [pdf]
Executive Summary [pdf]
Full report [pdf]
This is not just "a" lost decade for education progress, it's another in a series of lost decades of education progress. The only progress that has been made over the past 30 years is to make teachers and administrators millionaires. See here and here.
The federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law failed badly in terms of its own goals, leading to a decade of educational stagnation, according to FairTest’s report marking NCLB’s tenth anniversary.
Among the report’s major findings:
* NCLB failed to significantly increase average academic performance or to significantly narrow achievement gaps, as measured by the NAEP. U.S. students made greater gains before NCLB became law than after it was implemented.
* NCLB damaged educational quality and equity by narrowing the curriculum in many schools and focusing attention on the limited skills standardized tests measure. These negative effects fell most severely on classrooms serving low-income and minority children.
NCLB didn't do that. The professionals pursuing NCLB goals chose to take that course.
* So-called "reforms" to NCLB, such as “Race to the Top,” Obama Administration waivers and the Senate’s Education Committee’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) reauthorization bill, fail to address many of the law’s fundamental flaws and in some cases intensify them.
The report also provides recommendations for improving federal education law and policy.
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 28992
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, January 05, 2012 - 8:33 pm: |
|
Cuomo Vows New Push to Improve Education
By WINNIE HU / NEW YORK TIMES
January 4, 2012
Decades of continuous education reform and education still needs reforming. Is there anyone out there with a clue? This isn't working. It can't work as long as one-size-fits-all, lock-step, subject-based, teacher-centered, classroom instruction is the primary method for passing on knowledge and skills. It's time to abandon this 18th century approach and create schools designed for The 21st Century Student.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo says he is taking on a second job: lobbyist for students.
In his State of the State address [pdf] on Wednesday, the governor pledged to wage a campaign to put students first because all of the other parties involved in public education — from superintendents to maintenance workers and bus drivers — have lobbyists promoting their interests. “It’s not about the business, it’s not about the lobbyists,” Mr. Cuomo said. “It’s about the students, and the achievement, and we have to switch that focus.”
Right. It's these people who support you, politically. They pay your election bills. You'll forgive me if I'm highly skeptical about you putting students ahead of them.
* * * *
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 28972
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 02, 2012 - 9:54 pm: |
|
Comic Books Used to Entice Students to Study STEM Subjects
GE once used the medium of the comic book to bring young engineering talent into STEM subjects — is it time to do it again?
B.A. Birch / Education News
Jan. 2, 2012
In an effort to attract more students into STEM subjects – science, technology, engineering and mathematics – the government has launched the Educate to Innovate campaign.
Through the campaign, the Administration looks to host a series of events, announcements and other activities that build upon the President’s “call to action” to bring more students in the fields and address the key components of national priority.
“A national crisis has been identified in the area of global technological competitiveness,” concluded a recent study by Purdue University [pdf].
“Will our science and high technology sectors have the talented STEM graduates prepared to compete and be leaders in tomorrow’s world?”
The White House also launched the National STEM Video Game Challenge, where kids learn STEM skills by designing games.
* * * *
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 28944
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, December 26, 2011 - 5:27 pm: |
|
Hawaii wins grant to prepare students for college
Pacific Business News
December 21, 2011
Hawaii is one of 10 states that has received grants of $200,000 per year for three years as part of an education program that seeks to prepare students for college readiness.
The program is called Core to College: Preparing Students for College Readiness and Success. The grants were awarded to the state by the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors to align Hawaii with what it calls “common core” state standards and assessment.
Core to College seeks to foster collaborations between state higher education and K-12 schools with the goal of increasing enrollment and graduation rates.
“The greatest investment we can make as a state is in the people of Hawaii, and that is especially true for our keiki,” Gov. Neil Abercrombie said of the program in a statement. “In Hawaii, we put our children first because they truly are the future. A priority of my New Day plan is to ensure that all students in Hawaii have greater opportunity to achieve career and college success.”
Hawaii will receive the grant money pending annual reviews of progress toward goals, which will likely include statewide assessments.
Hawaii P-20 Partnerships for Education, led by the Early Learning Council, the state Department of Education and the University of Hawaii system will administer the grant for the state.
Grant funds may be used to expand or create programs; all states are required to hire a director or coordinator who will be responsible for implementation of the state’s plans.
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 28917
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, December 19, 2011 - 10:14 pm: |
|
The blame for the schools goes ’round and ’round …
The Buffalo Public School District continues to decline. Can administrators, teachers and parents come together and fix the problem? Or will the students continue to be left behind?
By Kevin Walter / Buffalo News
Deputy Editorial page Editor with lots of comments
December 18, 2011
Pop-quiz time, class; multiple choice. Ready? The Buffalo School District’s terrible performance is the fault of:
A. Students
B. Parents
C. Teachers
D. Principals
E. District administrators
F. School Board members
G. The teachers union
H. The Board of Regents
I. The State Education Department
J. All of the above
K. No one; in Buffalo we’re persistent victims, pathetically unable to influence our direction
-----
The answer, of course, is “J,” all of the above, but even that may be misleading if it implies that culpability can be evenly distributed among the usual suspects. It can’t. Some are guiltier than others.
Teachers, principals, administrators and School Board members shoulder a lot of the responsibility because they are the ones who are charged with — and except for board members, paid well for — doing the job. Yes, students and parents play significant roles in undermining the quality of education in Buffalo, but it’s a cop-out to say that their issues block all avenues of improvement. Other districts overcome those obstacles; why can’t Buffalo?
The Buffalo Teachers Federation bears a share of the responsibility. With its president, Philip Rumore, in office for 30 years, the union leadership has been the one constant during the district’s decades of decline. Superintendents have come and gone, as have School Board members, but the union under Rumore has been a fixture. Its fingerprints, too, are all over the tragedy of thousands of poorly educated students.
Here is just a sampling of the hurdles facing the school district:
• It has struggled to win federal funding for its persistently low-achieving schools. Six of 13 schools have won funding, but the district has failed to produce acceptable plans for seven others and one of them, Lafayette, has failed in three tries. For those schools, $42 million is on the line.
• Sixteen Buffalo schools last month were placed on the state’s list of schools needing to improve. Overall, nearly three out of four public schools in Buffalo are on the state’s watch list.
• Of the students who started ninth grade in 2006, only 47.4 percent graduated in 2010—and that was down from 53.1 percent the previous year. (In New York City, 61 percent of the 2006 cohort graduated. Statewide, 73.4 percent graduated.) Just 3.2 percent of Buffalo’s 2006 cohort graduated with a Re-gents diploma with Advanced Designation, compared with 16.4 percent in New York City and 30.9 percent statewide.
• Only 26.9 percent of students in grades three to eight met or exceeded the English proficiency standard in tests given in May, compared with 43.9 percent in New York City and 52.8 percent statewide. In math, 31 percent met or exceeded the standard, compared with 57.3 percent in New York City and 63.3 percent statewide.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Around the country, there are large, urban districts that are doing it right or at least making strides. Students are becoming invested in their own education. Parents are making their voices heard. Teachers, with the encouragement of their principals, are unleashing their creativity on students. Superintendents are putting capable administrators in key positions and then insisting on accountability.
Similarly, school boards are hiring excellent superintendents, requiring accountability and then getting out of the way. Even other teachers unions are cooperating in the urgent and morally imperative task of improving the education of American students.
Schools are exploring new strategies, it is true, but by and large, those strategies are being employed in the service of the fundamentals: attendance, behavior, instruction, accountability. After decades of public education, they remain the tracks on which this train runs. So the question is, can Buffalo climb aboard, or will the city be left, once again, at the station? The platform is jammed with children.
Leadership teams
In the end, it comes down to leadership. That is among the conclusions of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard University, whose mission is “to focus academic research, public education and innovative outreach activities toward eliminating achievement gaps.”
In a 2009 report that focused on the examples of 15 public high schools, leaders of the initiative concluded that “The main lesson . . . was that student achievement rose when leadership teams focused thoughtfully and relentlessly on improving the quality of instruction.”
Ronald F. Ferguson, co-chairman and director of the Achievement Gap Initiative, thinks it is happening. “I’m making the argument that we are in the early phases of a national movement,” he said. Around the country, Americans are expending a lot of energy to improve school performance, graduation rates and other measures of academic success, he said. That movement is being driven by multiple engines, including parents and business leaders, among others.
Those engines are beginning to hum in Buffalo. Advocacy groups are making noise, inserting themselves in the problem. They include Buffalo ReformED and the District Parent Coordinating Council, an organization whose public face — Sam Radford — is turning parents into a force that everyone, from the School Board to the union, is being forced to reckon with.
The problem, said Radford, isn’t a shortage of money. Like Ferguson, he believes the main obstacle is a lack of leadership — and at just about every level, from the board to the superintendent to principals to teachers and even to parents whose presence in the schools is lacking.
“Who is in charge?” Radford asked. “It’s an open secret. The truth of the matter is, there is no one in charge of the public school system.”
Who could argue? Just consider the district’s inability to put together acceptable turnaround plans for its seven persistently low-achieving schools and the subsequent failure to secure $42 million in federal aid. The district is preparing a new application and, with new leadership, it may get a different result; but to date, the failure has been abject.
Hannya Boulos, director of Buffalo ReformED, sees leadership failures in “botched lines of communication.”
“Lots of things come out of central office that don’t take hold in the classroom,” she said. “They don’t take the time to get buy-in.”
Such criticisms flow mainly from the autocratic six-year reign of former Superintendent James A. Williams, who was feared by many employees and who was finally pushed out of his job three months ago. Observers, including Radford and Boulos, are withholding judgment on Williams’ successor, Amber Dixon, who is functioning, at least for now, in an acting capacity.
The Columbus model
There are plenty of examples around the country of the importance of leadership. That is the quality that helped turn around failing schools in Columbus, Ohio, according to School Board President Carol Perkins, but that leadership flowed from multiple sources. It took the efforts of the board, the superintendent and, significantly, the Columbus Education Association — the teachers union — to do the job, she said.
“We had to develop working relationships between the board, the superintendent and the CEA,” she said. “We came together on goals, and everyone could see that we were not that far apart . . . Everyone saw the need to do it.”
Even then, the district didn’t do it on its own, Perkins said. Two outside organizations, the Panasonic Foundation and Teamworks, helped facilitate the discussions.
The president of the teachers union agreed that the outside groups played a large role in helping the district to improve. Indeed, it was the Panasonic Foundation that first helped the district and union to break through their deep suspicions, said Rhonda Johnson, president of the Columbus Education Association. “Before the Panasonic Foundation, we were killing each other,” she said.
The Panasonic Foundation was established in 1984 with a $10 million endowment from Panasonic Corp. of North America. Its mission, according to its website, is to partner with public school districts and their communities “to break the links between race, poverty and educational outcomes by improving the academic and social success of all students.”
“The Panasonic Foundation played a huge role in making sure we had a good relationship,” Johnson said. Most critically, she said, the foundation brokered the establishment of an effective labor-management organization — one that never would have come into being had either the union or school administration proposed it on its own. With that, the two sides learned better how to approach one another and to deal with the issues that arose. That growth, in turn, helped both sides agree on approaches to improving the education of the students of Columbus.
And it did improve. Graduation rates soared from 59.9 percent in 2002-03 to 77.6 percent in 2009-10. (Buffalo’s rates remain mired around 50 percent.) Various strategies helped produce that improvement, said Keith Bell, deputy superintendent and chief academic officer. Establishing a system of feeder schools helps middle schools and high schools prepare for the students they will be receiving. A system of “vision cards” not only helps the district to set goals, but to measure, monitor and adjust as needed.
The district achieved this despite a poverty rate that has 77 percent of its students receiving lunch subsidies. Like Buffalo, it is burdened by too many children coming to school unprepared to learn. Those are real problems that hinder education, Bell said. “But they’re not an excuse for not being able to do it.”
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg model
Leadership also made the difference in North Carolina’s Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District. There, in nearly half of the schools, students were falling behind yearly. The reason cited by School Board President Eric Davis will register in Buffalo. Too many students were coming to school unprepared to learn, and for the same reasons it occurs in Western New York: poverty, uninvolved parents, children with special needs and more.
The district made changes. “What we have chosen as a strategy is to focus on results and outcomes, as opposed to our former strategy of equal distribution of resources, access and consistency.” The old strategy, while sounding democratic, penalized both students who needed help and those who were exceptional, Davis said. Its cookie- cutter approach failed to account for the differences among students.
“You’ve got to connect with students where they are,” he said.
The district’s new strategy is to insist that all students are consistently achieving a minimum of one year of academic growth every school year. The results have been impressive. While only 55 percent of schools met the state’s “expected growth” standards five years ago, the figure rose to 94 percent of schools in 2009-10 before falling to 88 percent in 2010-11, following years of recession- fueled budget cuts. Still, the district had nearly doubled school performance levels in just five years.
The district also improved its graduation rate to 74 percent in 2010-11 from 66 percent two years earlier and showed continued strength in fourth-and eighth-grade math and reading assessments. It also narrowed achievement gaps among students of different races and family income levels.
It did all of this through a boots-on-the-ground approach. The district invited its best principals and teachers to transfer as a team to the lowest-performing schools, and asked principals to place the most effective teachers with the most struggling students, said Ann Clark, the district’s chief academic officer.
Teachers were sent to a “differentiation academy” to train them how to individualize education for students with different needs or abilities. The district told principals “to speak truth to teachers,” she said, and as a non-union state, replaced poor teachers with better ones. And it made more careful decisions regarding tenure.
Just as important, here’s what the district did not do to produce these gains:
It didn’t put a dent in the district’s poverty rates.
It didn’t find the cure for parents who don’t care about their children’s education.
It didn’t reduce the number of special-needs students.
And in not doing any of these, Charlotte- Mecklenburg put the lie to claims that schools are fatally limited by factors outside their control. They’re not. Students can achieve, even when they’re hobbled from home.
Two months ago, Charlotte-Mecklenburg was named the country’s top urban school district, winning the Broad Prize. It didn’t come without stresses, but it came. More children are learning.
A question: What stresses is Buffalo willing to endure in order to give students the education they deserve?
Some changes under way
It’s not as though the city and school district aren’t already under stress. The district has failed to secure $42 million in federal turnaround aid. In September, after months of confrontation and dithering, it finally pushed Williams to retire. The conflict between the district and the head of the teachers union is unrelenting and destructive. And, of course, too many children are failing to learn.
Yet Buffalo is also witnessing change.
Most obviously, the district has a new interim superintendent, Amber Dixon, who is laying plans and changing directions as though she were already Williams’ permanent successor. She hasn’t decided if she even wants the permanent assignment, she said, but she also understands that Buffalo’s students can’t wait for her to make that decision.
“Even if I am interim, the children are not here on an interim basis,” she said. “I’m stubborn, and unwavering in my principles.”
And the changes she is making are notable. On Day One, Dixon cast aside the culture of intimidation that was the hallmark of Williams’ administration. Rather than insisting on strict adherence to an inflexible academic formula, for example, she encouraged teachers to take advantage of the “teachable moments” that naturally occur.
More aggressively, she decided that the school district needed to make difficult decisions to secure the $42 million in federal turnaround aid. Thus, she announced that teacher transfers would be considered, even though Rumore said they violate the union contract. On Wednesday, that plan became reality, with the district announcing plans to replace half of the teachers at Futures Academy and Drew Science Magnet. Rumore says he will sue, if necessary, to block the transfers. But the state has also made it clear that it will not accept turnaround plans that fail to include teacher transfers among the strategies.
Many teachers are understandably upset, but in the end, this is about the students, not the teachers. The teachers are getting paid while the students are getting shafted.
Accountability is key
Also changing soon will be the concept of accountability, without which leadership is meaningless. It’s not just for teachers. Principals, administrators, superintendents and even School Board members must be held accountable for tasks with which they are charged. That’s a concept that has been lacking in Buffalo — as Boulos noted — and for that matter, around New York.
Of course, accountability also presumes some level of authority to get the job done, but in what has been Buffalo’s rigid, top-down system of management, teachers and principals have been discouraged from exercising their creativity. Dixon says she wants to change that, but she also recognizes that accountability is key — for everyone in the school system.
“We have a lot of control over these kids,” she said. “We have a responsibility to make an impact. That’s the reason we come to work every day.”
The state has developed a new system of teacher accountability based on a variety of factors, including student test scores and classroom observations. New York State United Teachers, which collaborated with the state to develop the system, challenged its implementation after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo made changes. The matter is now pending before the state’s highest court.
But teacher and principal accountability is only the start. Superintendents also need to be held to high standards. And, critically, so do School Board members, who hire superintendents and who frequently insert themselves into the day-to-day operations of a district. For them, there are virtually no standards.
The Buffalo Board of Education certainly has some capable members but, legally, this is what it takes to run for election to the board:A candidate must be at least 18 years old, a qualified voter in the school district and able to read and write. No special training is required, and you don’t need to know anything about education or leadership or finances. You don’t even have to be a high school graduate. It’s true that some districts thrive under poor leadership, but so do some businesses. That doesn’t make it wise, especially in a district that is large and floundering.
A watershed moment
This is a watershed moment in Buffalo education, and the opportunities for improvement are greater than they have been in years. Beyond the advantages of a new superintendent and energized community groups is the proposed partnership with Say Yes to Education, a foundation that could do for Buffalo what the Panasonic Foundation did for Columbus — if Buffalo is actually ready to accept that help.
The decisions that are made in the coming months can materially affect the lives of thousands of today’s children and theirs, as well: What authority will the School Board give the superintendent, and what will the superintendent expect of her principals and her principals of their teachers? Will Buffalo finally secure the $42 million in federal turnaround funds? What outside influences will help the district change course?
“It’s an urgent issue in the community,” said Dixon. “Education has not been working for kids for several generations.”
It’s a damning acknowledgment. It won’t change by doing the same old things.
And every reform on the table is a retread. If you want dramatic improvement in education outcomes, you must demolish the classroom instruction model to the greatest extent feasible.
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 28860
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, December 11, 2011 - 8:27 pm: |
|
Reading and Math is Stifling Curriculum, Say Teachers
B.A. Birch / Education News
Dec. 10, 2011
As federal and state policymakers prepare to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) as the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) era comes to a close, new research by Common Core shows that two-thirds of public school teachers believe that a concentration on English and mathematics within the curriculum has forced focus away from other core academic subjects, such as social studies, science, foreign languages, and the arts.
The research is based on a survey on teacher behavior and classroom practice of 1,001 third through 12thgrade public school teachers and was conducted by the Farkas Duffett Research (FDR) Group on behalf of Common Core, and will be released in 2012.
“During the past decade, our public schools have focused – almost exclusively – on reading and math instruction, hoping to fulfill the latest in federal mandates,” said Lynne Munson, President and Executive Director of Common Core.
“NCLB clearly identifies our ‘core curriculum’ as reading, math, science, social studies, and even the arts. But in our efforts to meet AYP, we have abandoned many of these core subjects in pursuit of higher reading and math scores. As a result, we are denying our students the complete education they deserve and the law demands.”
Some of the highlights of the Common Core/FDR Group survey:
* 66% of teachers surveyed believe subjects other than reading and math “get crowded out by extra attention being paid to math or language arts”
* 51% believe art and 48% believe music get less attention, with 40% saying the same for foreign language, 36% for social studies, and 27% for science
* 51% of elementary school teachers say struggling students get extra help in math or language arts by getting pulled out of other classes, with the most likely subjects for pull out being social studies 48% and science 40%
* 93% believe that the crowding out that is taking place in their schools is largely driven by state tests
* 65% of teachers surveyed say they have “had to skip important topics in [my] subject in order to cover the required curriculum”
The survey suggests that most teachers believe schools are narrowing the curriculum, shifting resources away from subjects such as art, music, foreign language, and social studies and towards math and reading.
Most teachers believe it is state tests that are driving the curriculum down this path, saying that the “testing regimen has penetrated school culture and caused vast changes in day-to-day teaching”, says the research.
“America’s teachers have spoken clearly in this survey,” Munson said.
“Our increased focus on only math and reading is coming at the expense of other academic subjects. Narrowing is happening throughout the grades but the problem is acute in the elementary grades, with 81 percent of teachers reporting narrowing. It is unbelievable to think that we’re denying even our youngest students the benefits, and excitement, of learning science, social studies, the arts, music, and foreign languages.”
The research was funded by the Ford Foundation and the American Federation of Teachers.
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 28775
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, November 27, 2011 - 12:16 pm: |
|
Idaho teachers union leader has tough task ahead
By JESSIE L. BONNER | AP via Yahoo! News
Nov 25, 2011
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The new president of the statewide teachers union has a tough task reorganizing the 13,000-member group after it took a beating during the 2011 Idaho Legislature, with measures passed to weaken their collective bargaining and phase out some job protections.
But Penni Cyr says she's up for the assignment.
* * *
The measures approved by Idaho lawmakers limit collective bargaining to salaries and benefits, dump seniority as a factor in layoffs and require union negotiations to be held in public. Idaho is also introducing teacher merit pay and shifting money from salaries to help pay for the changes, which will arm every high school teacher and student with a laptop and make online classes a requirement to graduate.
"(Students) are going to be excited because they get computers," Cyr said. "But I worry, are we experimenting on our kids? Where's the research that shows one-to-one computing devices, requiring online course, is going to help students achieve greater?"
Educators are constantly experimenting on our children -- and they are exempt from the laws that regulate human subject experiments! Educators are constantly manipulating our children psychologically and indoctrinating them, and many of the will remained scared for life. The classroom instruction model is an experiment that has abundant failures. Where's the research that shows it's the best that can be done? It doesn't exist.
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 28711
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, November 14, 2011 - 9:48 pm: |
|
Federal Dollars Pledged to Math and Science Programs
By Anna M. Phillips / School Book blog
Nov. 11, 2011
Three New York City groups are among 23 school districts and education organizations that have been singled out by the United States Education Department to receive millions in grants this year, provided they can match a percentage of the award with private money.
New Visions for Public Schools, a non-profit group that has helped start dozens of city schools in recent years, could receive $12.9 million over five years to bring a new algebra program to 30 city high schools. And New York City’s Education Department and the New York Hall of Science in Queens each stand to win $3 million for technology projects that are in the experimental phase, meaning the federal governments believes they hold promise, but they are untested.
* * *
The aim, Mr. Farrell said, is to change the way these high schools teach algebra and geometry by aligning their lessons with the new Common Core curriculum standards. As part of the program, teachers will incorporate tests into their lessons that do not have any bearing on students’ grades, but are used to see how well students understand the material.
Teachers will write comments and questions on the tests and hand them back to students, who will then re-take the assessments and hopefully reach the right answer to questions they got wrong before.
“It’s not only to improve the student outcomes, but also to really push teachers to think differently about the way they teach math class,” Mr. Farrell said.
* * * *
|
Jerry Moore (Admin)
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 28702
Registered: 01-2000
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, November 13, 2011 - 10:46 pm: |
|
Core school curriculums kill reading
By Ruth Ann Dandrea / Albany (NY) Times Union
November 12, 2011
In a meeting, an administrator notes that the state-mandated, nationally available core curriculum is beneficial because some high school graduates complain they were unprepared to read college texts.
I ask, don't we agree that if we teach them to read, they should be able to read anything?
I am told, not if what we are teaching is not aligned with the core curriculum and the new assessments. Which means absolutely nothing.
This is my gripe with almost any dictum issued by the state Education Department. The state's initiative to replace what it terms its "mile wide, inch deep" curriculum with the reverse comes couched in terms so abstract as to be functionally meaningless. For a lover of language like me, that is a crime tantamount to murder.
Like how we killed reading, for instance.
Years ago, I heard whole language proponent, Donald Graves, note, "Nowhere in our curriculum does it state that kids will read books."
He also expressed the obvious, but ignored, truism: "Testing isn't teaching."
The two ideas informed my role as an English teacher. My students would read books. I would not rely on tests to measure anything meaningful, and I would never forget the "arts" in language arts.
Enter my 11th grade classroom. This is what you will see: me, at a desk, reading. My students, filing in, gathering books, depositing themselves in chairs, opening those books, and -- reading. For 10 minutes out of every 40. Without complaint. Without an authority figure shushing or threatening them.
I agree with the general point of the author, but I have to ask, "How high do teacher salaries have to be if 25% of their instructional time is spent doing personal reading?" This is part of the reason why educators are way overpaid. If they're not doing personal reading, they're showing moves, watching and listening to students "debate," going on field trips, taking attendance and doing lots of other stuff that require neither a master's degree nor a wage above the state minimum.
I wasn't sure about this exercise with juniors. I had practiced it with eighth graders, but was uneasy offering it to older students. Yesterday, I asked their views.
A startling thing happened. In my 36 years in public education, I have never had an answer broadcast so clearly or loudly. They unanimously asked to be allowed to continue reading. Unanimously.
Their reasons ranged from "reading makes me awake and aware; it starts my morning on a good note," to "I always look forward to coming here and reading my book," to "I love being able to read ... I never would read if I didn't read in the morning," to "it also makes me pick up my book and read when I have free time," to "I have read more than I have in a long time."
I do not need any statistical research or data-driven study to convince me to allow my students to continue sinking into story.
How will adherence to the already adopted core curriculum stand in our way?
It demands that at least 70 percent of assigned reading be informational texts. Then kids will be better able to read those texts when they enter college.
I'm not technically opposed to this arbitrary percentage if we accept it as a schoolwide demand. But the push is to incorporate the percentage into English classes, promoting the belief that if we switch kids' reading to nonfiction rather than literature we will better their reading scores; that if we eliminate pleasure reading, we will somehow increase scholastic reading.
It won't happen. Students' reading habits have meandered from "I don't like to read" to "I don't read."
They mean it. If we take away the last thing, how can we ever expect them to learn anything?
Language matters. It matters in literature, and it matters in curriculum.
What is a "core," anyway?
It is what is left when everything that is tasty, nutritious or beautiful is gone.
When the linguist Noam Chomsky was asked to comment on the state of schools in America, he said, "Make no mistake about it, public education is under attack in this country."
I can't help believing that the war is being waged by an enemy on the inside.
|
|
Closed: New threads not accepted on this page
