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Public Education used to inform us, but now not at all.
DO YOU SEE THE DIFFERENCE WHEN DEMOCRATS WERE IN CHARGE?
THE REPORT CARD FOR RETHUGLICANS IS AN “F” IN COMPARISON
2025 The Secretary of Education says California should copy Alabama’s education system.
Alabama: #44 in education
California: #24
When your job is education, but your skill is ignorance.
2011
NAEP READING AND MATH 12/09/11
The average reading scores of fourth- and eighth-grade students on the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in 21 urban school districts followed the national trend by remaining mostly flat, with no significant change from 2009. However, average math scores rose in several districts from 2009, including some districts where scores were higher than those of large cities and the nation. Among the results:
Reading
– Although the average score for fourth-grade students in large city schools remained unchanged from 2009, it was higher than in 2002.
· The average score for eighth-graders in large city schools was higher in 2011 than both 2002 and 2009.
– None of the participating districts made gains at grade 4 since 2009; only one district (Charlotte-Mecklenburg) made gains at grade 8 compared to 2009 scores.
– Five districts recorded higher scores at both grades 4 and 8 than the average for large city schools nationally: Austin, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Hillsborough County (FL), Jefferson County (KY), and Miami-Dade.
Math
– Only one of the participating districts (Atlanta) recorded higher scores at both grades 4 and 8 than in any previous math assessment.
– Three districts made gains since 2009 at grade 4 only (Austin, Baltimore City, and Philadelphia) and five other districts made gains since 2009 at grade 8 only (Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Chicago, Detroit, the District of Columbia, and Jefferson County).
– Six districts recorded higher scores at both grades 4 and 8 than the average for large city schools nationally: Austin, Boston, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Hillsborough County, Houston, and San Diego.
– At grade 4 only, two other districts recorded higher scores than the average for large city schools nationally: Jefferson County and Miami-Dade.
The Department administered the 2011 NAEP Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) in reading and math to representative samples of students in grades 4 and 8 in each district. Of the 21 participating districts that volunteered to have their NAEP results reported separately, three participated for the first time in 2011: Albuquerque, Dallas, and Hillsborough County. Among the other 18 districts, six have participated since 2002 (reading and writing assessments), 10 since 2003 (reading and math), 11 since 2005 (reading, math, and science) and 2007 (reading, math, and writing), and all since 2009 (reading, math, and science) http://www.nationsreportcard.gov
NEW STUDIES: TITLE I COMPARABILITY AND ANTI-BULLYING LAWS
http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/title-i/school-level-expenditures/school-level-expenditures.pdf
The Administration’s Blueprint for Reform of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) would amend the Title I comparability provision to ensure that state and local funding is more equitably distributed between Title I and non-Title I schools.
http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/title-i/comparability-requirement/comparability-policy-brief.pdf
PPSS also released a report summarizing current approaches in the 46 states with anti-bullying laws and the 41 states that have created anti-bullying policies as models for schools. From 1999 to 2010, more than 120 bills were enacted by state legislatures to either introduce or amend statutes that address bullying and related behaviors in schools. Twenty-one bills were enacted in 2010, and another eight bills were signed into law through April 30, 2011. Of the 46 anti-bullying laws in place, 36 have provisions that prohibit cyber-bullying, while 13 have provisions that grant schools the authority to address off-campus behavior that creates a hostile school environment.
http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/bullying/state-bullying-laws/state-bullying-laws.pdf
On the heels of several efforts undertaken by the Administration to ensure that private student data is protected, the Department announced new regulations to safeguard student privacy while giving states the flexibility to share school-level data that can be helpful in judging the effectiveness of government investments in education. The regulations will strengthen the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) by protecting the safety of student information, increasing the agency’s ability to hold those who abuse or misuse student data accountable, and ensuring taxpayer funds are invested wisely and effectively.
http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco
A Well-Rounded Curriculum in the Age of Accountability, at the National Council for Social Studies’ (NCSS) annual conference.
http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/well-rounded-curriculum-age-accountability
Distance Education Courses for Public Elementary and Secondary School Students: 2009-10
Department’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), features national data about student enrollment in distance education courses, how educators monitor these courses, the motivations for providing distance education, and the technologies used for delivering distance education.
http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2012008
According to the latest annual report released by the Data Quality Campaign, while states have made strong progress increasing their capacity to build and use data systems, they are not yet helping teachers, parents, and other education stakeholders use the data to inform decisions to improve student achievement.
http://dataqualitycampaign.org/resources/details/1471
With funding provided by the U.S. Department of Energy, the Division of Nuclear Chemistry and Technology of the American Chemical Society is sponsoring two intensive, six-week summer schools in nuclear and radiochemistry for outstanding undergraduates. Selected students will receive an all-expenses-paid opportunity to complete coursework in either California or New York. They will also earn undergraduate credit through San Jose State University or the State University of New York at Stony Brook, respectively, as well as a $4,000 stipend.
http://chemistry.missouri.edu/nucsummer/
The Access Board just released for public comment a revised draft of the updated accessibility requirements for information and communication technology (ICT) covered by Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and Section 255 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The draft standards and guidelines are available at http://www.access-board.gov/508.htm. The comment period runs through March 7, 2012 and there will also be two public hearings on the draft.
Nextgov.com reported on a study about cost savings from cloud computing. This study indicates that it didn’t save substantial money in most cases. There were other benefits, however. “More than half of organizational users saved little or no money after transitioning to cloud computing, according to a new study, and only 14 percent actually downsized their information technology departments after moving to the cloud.”
Full article:
“If you think you’ll save money with cloud computing, think again” by Joseph Marks
http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20111206_7436.php
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Public Education Network Weekly NewsBlast
“Public Involvement. Public Education. Public Benefit.”
December 9, 2011
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To read a colorful online version of the NewsBlast with a larger typeface, visit:
http://www.publiceducation.org/newsblast_current.asp
2013 Graduation Invitation
Public Education Network (PEN) enthusiastically invites you to attend the high school graduation ceremonies for the class of 2013 in communities across the country. Moving Up Day ceremonies will also be held to recognize those students on track to graduate in the classes of 2014, 2015, and 2016.
To celebrate PEN’s 20th anniversary, on November 6, 2011, we launched a Network-wide College and Career Ready Compact to increase by 100,000 the number of high school students who graduate, or are on track to graduate, college and career ready by 2013. Your presence is requested to honor the accomplishments of these students, their teachers, their families, and your commitment.
http://transaction.publiceducation.org/donate
Heading in the right direction
Students in the country’s largest cities are making gains in math, in many cases faster than students in the nation as a whole, according to the latest results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress’s (NAEP’s) release of the Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA), The Christian Science Monitor reports. In some cities — including Atlanta, Boston, Los Angeles, and Houston — students have made particularly striking gains over the past eight years. A few cities fared particularly well in certain areas: In Austin and Charlotte, both fourth- and eighth-graders outperformed peers in math in both large cities and the nation. Reading scores in cities participating in TUDA have largely remained flat for the past two years, as has been the case nationally. “We’re now down to less than a 10 scale-point difference between [large cities] and the country in reading and math for both fourth and eighth grade,” says Michael Casserly of the Council of Great City Schools, noting that that gap has closed by 25 to 35 percent in the past eight years, depending on which subject and grade are examined. “It’s clear we’re improving the numbers of kids at a proficient level and decreasing the numbers at the below-basic level — maybe not as fast as we would like, but it’s a convincing set of trend lines that tells us we’re heading in the right direction.”
Read more: http://tinyurl.com/7dtw3sw
It matters after all
Four years after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Seattle’s school-assignment plan, the federal government has issued new guidelines affirming that districts can consider race to help integrate schools, The Seattle Times reports. Guidelines issued jointly by the departments of Justice and Education on December 2 asserted that students in racially isolated schools, which are on the rise nationally, often lag behind peers at more racially diverse schools. Civil-rights advocates welcome the guidelines as an important tool to help districts reverse decades of worsening segregation. “It’s the two great federal departments agreeing on explicit interpretations of the Supreme Court decisions, and telling education authorities around the country they have latitude to act within the law,” said Gary Orfield, director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA. “We are more segregated than we’ve been since before 1968 — we’ve lost all the progress we made since the ’60s, and we’re going bac
kward each year.” In practical terms, the new guidelines are unlikely to significantly impact Seattle schools. The district no longer uses the controversial “Open Choice” student-assignment plan, which used race as a factor. Most students are now assigned to neighborhood schools, and race is not considered in any aspect of district decision-making, according to a district spokesperson.
Read more: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2016917726_schools03m.html
Related: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2011/12/civil_rights_officials_issue_m.html
No more gobbledy gook
We sorely need a smarter, more coherent vision of the federal role in K-12 education, yet both political parties are stuck, write Frederick Hess and Linda Darling-Hammond in The New York Times. Republicans endlessly debate whether, rather than how, the federal government should be involved in education, while Democrats are “squeezed between superintendents, school boards, and teachers’ unions that want money with no strings, and activists with little patience for concerns about federal overreach.” The authors disagree on many points of reform, but agree on what the federal government does well, four functions it alone can perform. It should continue to encourage transparency for school performance and spending, which, for all its flaws, NCLB introduced. It should also ensure basic constitutional protections, now possible through disaggregated assessment results. It should continue and strengthen its support for basic research. And it should continue voluntary, competitive grants that “support innovation while providing political cover for school boards, union leaders, and others to throw off anachronistic routines.” Beyond these, the federal government is poorly situated to make schools and teachers improve. “Dictates from Congress turn into gobbledygook as they travel from the Education Department to state education agencies and then to local school districts,” resulting in a counterproductive “morass of prescriptions and prohibitions.”
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/opinion/how-to-rescue-education-reform.html
Surprise!
A first-of-its kind study by the U.S. Department of Education finds more than 40 percent of Title I schools spent less per student on salaries than non-Title I schools within the same district, reports Kathryn Baron on the Thoughts on Public Education blog. Department of Education researchers examined teacher salaries and other spending for over 13,000 school districts across the country, data submitted in order to receive funds under the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Under the ESEA, schools eligible for Title I funding first receive state and local funding comparable to the amount given non-Title I schools, which should be easy to calculate. However, a loophole in Title I language allows reporting by district-wide salary averages rather than by individual schools, making it nearly impossible for the U.S. Department of Education to monitor whether districts are giving Title I schools at least an equal amount of state and local money. “In far too many places, Title I money is filling budget gaps rather than being used to close achievement gaps,” said Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in announcing the report. The proposed reauthorization of the ESEA authored by Senators Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Mike Enzi (R-Wyoming) would insert language to close the loophole.
Read more: http://toped.svefoundation.org/2011/12/01/low-income-schools-shortchanged-in-funding/
Related: http://tinyurl.com/brgglc9
See the report: http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/opepd/ppss/reports.html#comparability-state-local-expenditures
Semi-private education
In an editorial, The Los Angeles Times asks whether it’s fair that parents lavish donations on one school — underwriting art and music classes, instructional aides, and extra library hours — while a neighboring school in the same district goes wanting? The issue is surfacing more and more in a time of inadequate funding. It arose briefly in a federal civil rights investigation of the Los Angeles Unified School District, where schools attended mostly by black students lacked the amenities found at mostly white schools not because the district distributes public money unfairly, but because parental donations cause an imbalance. The question is relevant now in the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, where PTA donations are $2,100 per student at an elementary school in Malibu, but $96 at another in Santa Monica. One district plan would centralize fundraising: Donations for personnel would go to a district-wide nonprofit to distribute, with about half of parent donatio
ns going the community pot. Yet various Malibu families have threatened to stop contributing if their money is spread throughout the district. In the view of the editors, school officials must insist on equalizing at least the core educational functions at all schools. “Allowing parents to provide all the extras they want at one particular school is akin to a voucher system: The parents get their allowance from the state, then add to it to create a semi-private education.”
Read more: http://tinyurl.com/dx5u5sv
More questions than answers
In Washington, D.C., one of the first cities to use value-added ratings to fire teachers, Ward 8, one of its poorest, has only 5 percent of the teachers defined as effective under the new IMPACT evaluation system, but more than a quarter of the ineffective ones, writes Sarah Garland in The Hechinger Report. Ward 3, with some of the city’s more affluent neighborhoods, has nearly a quarter of the best teachers and only 8 percent of the worst. Garland says the discrepancy underscores an ongoing debate around value-added test scores: Are the best, most experienced teachers concentrated in the wealthiest schools? Or does the statistical model ignore the possibility that it’s more difficult to teach a room full of impoverished children? Some argue that value-added models needn’t control for demographic factors like poverty, race, English-learner or special-education status, as long as at least three years’ worth of data are included in the formula. Others assert that not only individual poverty, but the concentration of disadvantaged students in a classroom should be taken into account; only a handful of value-added models do this. In D.C.’s case, IMPACT uses a year of data and incorporates the poverty status of individual students in an effort to protect against biasing the ratings.
Read more: http://hechingerreport.org/content/should-value-added-teacher-ratings-be-adjusted-for-poverty_6899/
A crucial transition, overlooked
A new study, part of the Program on Education Policy and Governance Working Papers Series at Harvard University, finds the transition to middle school from elementary school may be more crucial and problematic than the transition from middle to high school, Sarah Sparks reports in Education Week. The study of schools in Florida found that students moving from grade 5 into middle school show a “sharp drop” in math and language arts achievement in the transition year, a loss that can follow them as far as 10th grade, in some cases affecting ability to graduate and proceed to college. Students who transition in the 6th grade are absent more often and more likely to drop out of school by 10th grade than those who remain in one school through 8th grade. Researchers used Florida’s longitudinal database to track more than 450,000 students in the state’s public schools who proceeded from grades 3 to 10 between 2000-01 and 2008-09. Students who attended elementary schools ending at grade 5 had an early edge over those attending K-8 schools, but their performance in mathematics and language arts dropped dramatically when they switched to middle school in 6th grade. Students attending a middle school were also 18 percent more likely than students who attended a K-8 school to not enroll in grade 10 after attending grade 9 — an indicator of dropping out. The middle school drop was most pronounced in urban schools, but the same general pattern was repeated in suburban and rural schools.
Read more: http://tinyurl.com/cdnwfuj
Related: http://tinyurl.com/ctwmktw
School closings done wisely
In the face of multiple planned school closings in Philadelphia, the Pew Charitable Trusts studied six cities with large-scale public school closings in the past decades — Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City, Mo., Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C. The researchers drew a number of conclusions. In the short run, money saved from closings has been relatively small in the context of urban district budgets; the largest savings occurred when closings were combined with large-scale layoffs. Longer-term savings have been difficult to project. Selling or leasing surplus school buildings, many located in declining neighborhoods, is extremely difficult, and no district reaped a windfall from this. In terms of student performance, long-term effect appears minimal. Limited research shows that student achievement falls during the final months of a closing school’s existence, but the damage is short-lived. Political fallout, on the other hand, is significant. The report recommends districts hire outside experts to guide the process; establish clear, quantifiable criteria for deciding which schools to close; show a willingness to make adjustments, although not wholesale changes; and make the decision on closings with one vote, not separate votes for each school. This sends the message that no neighborhood has been singled out for special treatment and the closings are part of an overall plan for the district’s future.
See the report: http://www.pewtrusts.org/our_work_report_detail.aspx?id=85899365152
A vital role
In the Winter 2012 issue of Voices in Urban Education, Susan Berresford writes that the still-unfolding story of public education funds (PEFs) is significant because it holds several ideas for the nonprofit community, people concerned with educational reform, and philanthropists. The evolution of the PEFs and their work provides real-time examples of self-regulation in the sector, opportunities for those interested in educational improvement to make both financial and civic investments in their communities, and the role of “patient” philanthropic money, which is to say, funding without a set of steps expected to lead to a measureable outcome. At one level, PEF civic investment has meant investment in the financial sense, but PEFs have also contributed in a broader sense. They have enabled community leaders to take an active role in public education through a new mechanism that is independent of but deeply connected to the school system. Since school systems often suffer from
rapid turnover in leadership, PEFs have also fostered institutional stability, taking ideas and staying with them. Berresford writes that the need for civic investment is particularly acute now. Schools are under pressure to produce greater results than ever before, at a time when the population of students who have been historically underserved is growing. Only with the support and involvement of community members and innovators within the schools can schools reach this goal.
Read more: http://publiceducation.org/pubs_20111108_VUE.asp
Nowhere near enough
Four in five schools across the country will be deemed “failing” this coming year if nothing stops the “train wreck” that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has said NCLB will inflict upon the nation’s schools, writes Pedro Noguera in The Huffington Post. To avert this train wreck, the Department of Education is offering waivers to avoid widespread sanctions when a great number of districts fail to make NCLB’s “adequate yearly progress.” Yet these waivers are merely a temporary reprieve, Noguera says, and do not push needed change. Federal education policy should be focused on helping schools improve, not on punishing them, supporting a “whole student” vision of education based on standards that go far beyond test scores. Most importantly, we must acknowledge the need for schools and local government to address the impediments to learning posed by poverty. Poverty should not be an excuse for poor academic performance, but we must do more to support schools that serve the mos
t disadvantaged children so that they can focus on authentic evidence of learning and be held accountable for student outcomes. “The federal government must embrace a broader, bolder approach to education that includes high-quality early education to narrow large gaps in school readiness, health and nutrition supports to keep children in class and alert, and enriching afterschool and summer activities to build on school-year gains resulting from the work of great teachers,” Noguera writes.
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pedro-noguera/no-child-left-behind_b_1118282.html?ref=education
Innovation globally
The 2011 findings from Innovative Teaching and Learning Research, which is sponsored by Microsoft, report that across seven participating countries — Australia, England, Finland, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, and Senegal — innovative teaching supports students’ development of the skills that will help them thrive in future life and work, but student opportunities to develop these skills are typically scarce and uneven, both within and across the sample of schools in the study. While information and communications technology (ICT) use in teaching is becoming more common, ICT use by students in their learning is still an exception. Researchers observed examples of innovative teaching at the classroom level, but found coherent and integrated support for the adoption of innovative teaching lacking in most schools and all of the systems in this study. The authors recommend that ubiquitous ICT access for students continue to ensure all students have equal opportunities inside and o
utside school to develop the skills they will need for life and work. Teachers need professional development opportunities that leverage the most innovative teachers in each school to drive peer collaboration in designing, practicing, and researching the innovative teaching approaches that develop students’ future skills. And “critically,” school leaders must cultivate holistic visions of innovation that integrate advanced pedagogies with technology.
See the report: http://www.itlresearch.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&layout=blog&id=3&Itemid=5
Ruh-roh
Due to too many competing ideas and limited legal authority, Missouri Education Commissioner Chris Nicastro said she needed more time before she could make recommendations about the Kansas City Public Schools, which will lose their accreditation on January 1, 2012.
http://www.kansascity.com/2011/12/02/3297679/nicastro-asks-for-delay-in-state.html#ixzz1frejOs5Z
Here’s that competition you wanted
The Los Angeles Unified School District and its teachers union have agreed to a new pact granting local schools more autonomy over hiring, curriculum, and work conditions, and virtually ending a 2-year-old policy that allowed charter operators and others to take over low-performing and new campuses.
http://tinyurl.com/cqsmcdv
Get ’em early
This fall, New York City will open P-Tech, a six-year high school where students can earn a diploma and an associate’s degree in a computer-science-related field and then get first crack at a job with IBM. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903635604576476200369585750.html
Education czar?
Oregon plans to recruit and hire a new “chief education officer” who will have unprecedented power over education, including control of the chancellor of higher education, the next superintendent of Oregon’s public schools, and the state community college commissioner.
http://www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2011/12/oregon_to_seek_powerful_chief.html
Hard to get
One in five prospective teachers at Iowa’s public universities would have been denied admission last year to teaching programs under guidelines proposed in Gov. Terry Branstad’s education reform blueprint.
http://tinyurl.com/7hpxb6e
Not-so-golden State
Thousands of California public schools face the prospect of slashing up to a week of instruction, canceling bus services, or laying off nonteaching staff in the middle of this school year because state revenues are expected to fall below what the governor and lawmakers counted on when they approved an $86 billion general fund budget last June.
http://tinyurl.com/bpdk83w
GRANTS AND FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES
Recreational Boat & Fishing Foundation: Grants
The Recreational Boat & Fishing Foundation (RBFF) is offering grants to organizations with programs that that offer multiple on-the-water learning opportunities; encourage long-term involvement of participants; provide training for instructors; promote conservation; and support existing RBFF partnerships. The successful grant applicant will also demonstrate partnerships with local, community-based educational, youth, and social service agencies as well as the appropriate state fish and wildlife, game, or boating agency personnel. Maximum award: varies. Eligibility: Youth-focused boating, fishing, and conservation organizations. Deadline: December 30, 2011.
http://www.rbff.org/page.cfm?pageID=376
National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award
The National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award is the nation’s highest honor for out-of-school arts and humanities programs that celebrate the creativity of America’s young people, particularly those from underserved communities. This award recognizes and supports excellence in programs that open new pathways to learning, self-discovery, and achievement. Maximum award: $10,000. Eligibility: programs initiated by museums, libraries, performing arts organizations, universities, colleges, arts centers, community service organizations, schools, businesses, and eligible government entities. Deadline: January 31, 2012.
http://www.nahyp.org/
Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation: Christopher Columbus Awards
The Christopher Columbus Awards Program combines science and technology with community problem-solving. Students work in teams with the help of an adult coach to identify an issue they care about and, using science and technology, work with experts, conduct research, and put their ideas to the test to develop an innovative solution. Maximum award: $25,000 Foundation Community Grant and an all-expense-paid trip to Walt Disney World to attend the program’s National Championship Week, plus a U.S. Savings Bond of $2,000 for each student team member. Eligibility: middle-school-age (sixth, seventh, and eighth grade) children; teams do not need to be affiliated with a school to enter. Deadline: February 6, 2012.
http://www.christophercolumbusawards.com/
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“If I had the ability to just design the system and say ‘ex cathedra this is what we’re going to do,’ you would cut the number of teachers in half and weed out the bad ones.” — New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, at a recent speech at MIT.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/02/michael-bloomberg-in-mit-_n_1125737.html?ref=education
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