Eponymous Educator

Spellings Tantrum (Precious); Reading Zeroed; Democrats Snicker; Dems Should Hold the Line on Something Worthwhile for a Change

2008-07-03T10:01:00.009-04:00

Check out this delicious little diddy from none other than our Secretary of Education madam ambition in USAToday:

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings reacted angrily Tuesday to the "outrageous" cuts and called them "political theater."

Under President Clinton, she notes, Congress put more than $300 million a year into reading.
"Now we're going to turn back the clock, not only to pre-Bush but pre-Clinton (levels)," she says. "I bet it's been a long damned time since the federal government spent no money - zero - on reading."

Note the language. From a teacher, no less. Teacher-in-Chief. Ouch! Seriously though. I have to say that I am not pleased with Congress giving the bird to the White House at the expense of reading programs. Reading First is actually very popular. And based on an IES interim study with major caveats, the biggest of which is that Reading First schools look a lot like non Reading First schools in the districts where RF is implemented, you have to wonder if the Hill is just ignoring the waving flags of the research community. Word on the street (see Ed Daily) is that the finished study, with evidence to the contrary of the interim report, is just lying around in IES someplace.

Honestly, I got to give it to the Dems for eliciting a precious response from Spellings. RF is a pretty important policy to draw the line on, however. How about bring some troops home instead. What about FISA? Misguided = Everyone.

Spellings' ECS Speech: More Broken Analogies for NCLB

2008-07-01T11:46:00.010-04:00

Tuesday morning in Austin, TX at the annual ECS meeting, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings revealed the states that had been approved for a differentiated accountability pilot. Her speech is notable for a variety of arguments and symbolism. Many are designed to further education as a civil right to keep the few remaining supporters of a botched law close. The text from her speech follows.

For this post I am going to harp on one failed analogy from Spelling's speech in this excerpt:

Which brings me to my next point, using data to support innovation for greater student gains.

Customization has already improved every other aspect of our lives. We have computers built to order...eyeglasses in an hour...and most web sites know what I want before I do. Yet while other fields rocket ahead, our education system is trapped in the industrial age. If Rip Van Winkle woke up today, classrooms would be the only thing he'd recognize. The term "24/7" has no relevance in education because we're still clinging to an outdated notion of 6 hours a day, 180 days a year.

Spellings thinks that the fields that produce Lens Crafters, Dell, and whatever web site she visits that "knows" what she wants before she does (I've never been to any site like that) "have rocketed ahead" of education. That's pretty incredible given how commoditized and old those technologies are. More so incredible, given that her analogies are purely consumeristic. The consumerism that she admires is in most ways antithetical to the hard work, concentration, deep learning, and subject mastery those original inventions/innovations required. Well then, you might say, her analogies are proper; she's talking about the hard work it takes to innovate. Right?

Wrong... she's not talking about the hard work it takes to innovate. She's talking about making education more customizable, and she makes this argument by suggesting kids should have access to education that more closely resembles a one-hour wait for glasses/a ten minute wait for a new Dell/ a 10 millisecond wait for a new pair of Nike Air Force Ones. And who is to say that education isn't already highly customized? Last time I checked school standards and curricula were jammed packed with choices. Many would argue that's part of the problem.

This speech is definitely not "99.9 percent pure or something."

St. Louis Gets State's First Unionized Charter, Gets Branded Self Interested

2008-05-08T09:19:00.005-04:00

The Construction Careers Center in St. Louis will become Missouri’s first unionized charter school says the St. Louis American. The school will be unionized by AFT. The 32 charter school employees who will be represented by AFT St. Louis are the teachers, teacher assistants and secretarial-clerical staff.

This is great news, becasue it's an opportunity to work together to keep learning conditions strong and focus on instructional leadership right? Maybe...

Mike Meehan, a social studies teacher in the school gets the first quote in the article. It starts off right, but digresses into the usual grievances that no one outside of school staff wants to hear about, becasue most people aren't represented by unions and don't get the same benefits.

First the good part from Mike: "We’re thrilled that we are now represented by a union. This will be good for teachers and other staff, and good for students.”

Now the bad part from Mike, paraphrased by the reporter who clearly is looking to reduce the usefulness of a union into a list of self-interested bullet points: "[Mike] said the employees are concerned about such issues as the need for a salary schedule that includes extra pay for extra work, job security, an enforced discipline policy, and smaller class sizes."

Detractors love this kind of stuff.

The Price is Wrong Keillor

2008-02-04T09:30:00.000-05:00

Here's an evangelical rant if I ever saw one. http://www.salon.com/opinion/keillor/2008/01/30/education/

Keillor presumes that NCLB is mostly about the children, and by lambasting NCLB's detractors as aged and unsympathetic meddlers he fails to recognize that the impetus behind the law was also a variety of aged meddling.

WAPO reports 7500 students on the bubble to get weekend test prep

2008-01-18T15:24:00.000-05:00

Cream-skimming at its most unadulterated. Rothstein should be pretty incensed by this.

Can Statistical Error Explain the World?

2008-01-16T16:27:00.000-05:00

An email I sent to a colleague the other day, relevant to Andy's article in PDK, at least peripherally in using statistical error to explain away the differences in how certain folks operate in the world. Also, nice shout out to Kinder and Iyengar. Those guys bring me back to UVA Politics.

"OK, let me try this again. I'm trying to understand how confidence intervals (CI) can be explained in regards to AYP, particularly in light of something like growth models and ED's decision to not allow states to use CI when reporting growth under the Growth Model pilot.
The way I understand it.

When states don't use confidence intervals they increase the chance of making a Type II error. In the case of NCLB this gets operationalized as identifying subgroups as having met proficiency when they actually have not met proficiency. A Type I error in the context of NCLB would be the inverse: identifying a subgroup as proficient when they actually are not proficient. In statistics we are usually more concerned about making a Type II error because erring on the side of caution is good for a lot of things--like keeping people alive in medical trials.

But with regards to schools and calculating AYP, ED seems more concerned (based upon their general indifference to confidence intervals) about making a Type I error, or identifying a subgroup as having met proficiency when the subgroup in fact has not met proficiency.
Maybe it's not possible to talk about confidence intervals in this way--the unit of analysis being subgroups."

Slowly going the way...

2007-12-18T11:20:00.000-05:00

Stick around long enough and the worst reforms get sidelined. As with the gradual passing of un-Intelligent Design, so goes abstinence only sex education. My home state of Virginia is the most recent "drop-out" of the federal abstinence-only monies offered to states who take up the ideological cause that has largely been rebuffed by research and wholly rebuffed by common sense. Read about it here in Sunday's WAPO.

Science Monday: It Sounds Like Another World

2007-11-12T18:00:00.000-05:00

The Cassini-Huygens Saturn probe delivered some truly spectacular images of the Saturn heavens. But this is on a whole other level. This is what a traveler on board Huygens would have heard during while falling towards the largest moon in Saturn's orbit.

Creative writing prompt: Write in stream of consciousness as if you were actually falling alongside Huygens on descent to Titan.

Swan Song for 2007 ESEA in the House?

2007-11-08T14:14:00.000-05:00

So long as we have a President named Bush we can scapegoat the h-e- double hockey sticks out of him. He deserves it for hundreds of poor policy decisions alone, not to mention the very serious lack of bi-partisan effort (if you've got a National Journal account you can read this, if you don't, don't sweat it, in a nutshell Bush has one of the worst records of Bi-partisan accord of any president ever).

This is all introduction for short notice on a day-old press release from House Education and Labor Committee Chair George Miller. Miller, in what would appear to be the House's official swan song for reauthorization of ESEA in 2007, has publicly blamed the President. Is this entirely fair? Probably not. Am I suprising myself by writing that? Probably.

There are a lot of education groups, partisans, think tanks, membership organizations, and members of congress, not to mention TEACHERS who think that the reauthorization bill that landed late August from Miller and McKeon just isn't good enough--that it's too much in the vernacular of the publicly unpopular No Child version of the 1965 legislation, originally a funding vehicle designed to ameliorate conditions in schools for poor and minority students. The Senate gave up on it's 2007 reuathorization last week.

Point is Miller took it on the right, the left, up the gut, and on the chin this Fall. He's lucky, and maybe we're all a little lucky, for once, to have someone worth blaming to blame it all on. We must reauthorize the most important federal piece of legislation for schools, students, teachers, and for the future of this great country on the back of fair and flexible methods for schools and the resources and quality education for all students. We have our work cut out for sure.

Finally Grades Everyone Understands: NYC Schools Edition

2007-11-08T09:26:00.000-05:00

Do unto your parents as you do unto your teachers. Parents in New York ponder the at once perspicuous and obscure grades their children's schools received. Under a new grading system each New York public school received a letter grade A-F. Grades are sent home for the public's viewing pleasure. The NYTimes describes the gamut of reactions from parents, everything from rallies in support of failing or underachieving schools--a chicken-soup approach--to feelings of doom from receiving an A--is there really no place left to go but down? Wanna bumble with the bee, huh.... "The Day After School Grades Come In, Parents Are Buzzing." Buzzzzz

Catch All the Lesson Plans: Pokemon and Science

2007-11-07T10:30:00.001-05:00

Can Pokemon get kids excited about learning science? You better believe it can. Sets of lesson plans from the NIA (National Institute of Aerospace) integrate Nintendo's wildly popular characters (over 165 million games sold) with relevant lessons for students in grades 3-8. Tite!

Klein, Weingarten, and the Door Shut on Individual Merit Pay. Huzuh??

2007-10-24T15:04:00.001-04:00

If you've been following the incentive pay goings-on in New York City you'll know that the AFT's Randi Weingarten and NYC's Joel Klein and M. Bloomberg have reached an historic agreement regarding incentive pay for teachers. But depending on who you read or who you talk to the two groups are trumpeting different triumphs.

Klein for his part is touting the proposal's benefit for individual students, not to mention channeling the late Albert Shanker and hometown hero on 555 NJ Ave. Weingarten is clear about her position on merit pay. In a UFT press release she states, "School-wide bonuses properly refocus the misguided debate over individual merit pay."

But the terms of the agreement--largely a compromise to recoup significant back pay for retirees--are still somewhat about individual merit pay. Not all teachers are guaranteed merit pay, even under the whole school model as it is currently designed. UFT's press release states "Options include giving all staff the same amount or varying amounts based on their role in the school's improvement, but every UFT staff member is presumed to receive some bonus." I don't know about you but presumed doesn't instill a lot of confidence in me. And when the first teacher that gets a $1 bonus udner the incentive play plan writes a letter to the NYTimes we'll see if the spirit of togetherness rings true.

Weingarten is even quoted in the NYTimes, “This shuts the door on the individual merit pay plans that I abhor.”

It's AFT policy that they support collectively bargained incentive pay agreements--the organization gets misquoted a lot on this and often lumped in with the NEA who do not share the same view on incentive pay. AFT prefers using the method folks in NY are about to establish--whole school improvement equals bonus pay. Afterall it doesn't take the world's best argument to understand that learning, and thusly measurements of learning are not stochastic. Any number of teachers and factors over several years contributes to the development of child.

To Ms. Weingarten. I'm not so sure this does shut the door. I guess we'll see it play out in the details.

Progressive Pay in a Time Where We Must Be Bold

2007-10-03T10:43:00.000-04:00

Eduwonk posts that Charlie Barone has turned in a history/stakes piece on No Child Left Behind that we should check out (pdf). I admit I liked it. It was nothing new, but Barone's clear prose makes the history of our moment at once more provocative and delicate. Where I didn't like it is at the end when he likened the famously, (and improperly) lumped teachers unions to a hypertensive, ready-to-burst apologist for the status quo--apoplectic is his word. AFT is clear when it comes to local unions who want to implement alternate pay structures--it supports them and helps them.

More on Comps. from Kate Walsh

2007-09-13T16:57:00.001-04:00

Kate Walsh of the NCTQ has a well written analysis on comparability out right now in this week's Gadfly. Kate waxes sympathetic to the teacher quality issue (it's in the name, dur) but recognizes that comparability isn't the fix. Making school districts reallocate teachers as a condition of receiving Title I money has its absurdities. The Title II stuff about Premium Pay is a better option for hard-to-staff schools. Now if Miller and McKeon could only let the districts and teachers decide for themselves, rather than applying the steam iron of the federal govt. we'd have something. Premium pay will go over well with a lot of teachers--put some trust in that Committee.

Comparable? EdWeek Wants to Give It a Go

2007-09-13T15:40:00.000-04:00

Reading Bess Keller's article in EdWeek, "Proposed NCLB Rule on 'Salary Comparability' Draws Scrutiny," I can't help notice that she seems to think that the monies for Title II comparability could be used for a myriad of activities other than teacher salaries. The draft is pretty clear that state and local monies will have to be used to get Title I and non Title I schools to within 2 percentage points of parity regarding average salaries. There is no evidence to back her claims up as far as I can tell. The section in question follows:

"The draft provision is explicit that involuntary transfers of teachers would not be required to even out what is spent per school. In fact, the money would get added at a low-spending school would not have to be spent on salaries at all.

Possible uses of such a windfall for a school might be beefing up professional development or lowering class sizes with an eye to making the school a better place to work, supporters of the idea said. Or the money might provide bonuses to teachers who came or stayed."

I thought for a hot second that Premium Pay in Title II draft might resolve her argument, but that money is federal money that supplements not supplants local and state monies. I’m not sure what her argument is actually. Equity in teacher pay is a condition of receiving Title I monies—sure that money doesn’t have to be spent on teacher salaries because the salaries would already be comparable.

With this new type of comparability, the type that ED Trust has thrown their back and butt into, we seem to be moving away from the issue of highly qualified teachers and into the realm of more senior teachers—these are not the same thing.

TFA - What's it all About (the look my friend is famous edition)

2007-09-12T21:43:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Michael Salmonowicz, an intensely passionate, hyper bright, and all around genuine guy, for getting me back on blogger for a post. He has a new article on EdWeek that deserves props. His insight on TFA is pointed and should help keep a lively debate about social justice and education alive and well. Go check him out here.

Thanks to J. Stroup for the heads-up on this good work.

Look for a future post on ESEA reauthorization. I've been digging in the trenches with ed labor folks... making stories to tell grandkids about--well maybe not that great, but it's a start.

Big Ups to My Main Man Ben Stein

2007-08-22T14:26:00.001-04:00

Ben Stein comes through in the clutch with some great advice for college students--undergrads and grads alike imo. Having started a new job, yesterday in fact, I can tell you that habits of work demand practice.

College, says Stein, is about practice for the real thing. But it's about a lot else too. Friends, fraternity, professors, and loves all come to mind. Stein errs a bit when he suggests enlightened people such as some of your professors will be judgemental when it comes to your dress. This is not a universal truth--but Stein is wealthy and dresses the part so he suggests we should too. Anyhow, to young people off to college show Stein some respect.

Work that Vo2 Max Out for a Better Brain

2007-08-20T09:54:00.000-04:00

A fit person's hippocampus, researchers say, can swell with nearly twice as much blood than a non-fit person. Continuing the anemic once-a-week, or sadly, once-every-two-weeks posting schedule focused on topics ancillary to education, I bring you the NYT writeup of a Columbia University study about regenerating our brains.

Check it out. It's encouraging stuff and has tons of application for kids and education. *Think evidence shows that fit kids integrate new neurons better than non-fit kids. Aging people show affects too in memory and in cognition.

Eponymous Return: Leg. Edition

2007-08-02T16:10:00.000-04:00

I’ve been looking a lot at graduation rates recently. I still think the holy grail of graduation documents is the NGA’s Graduation Counts. All 50 guvna’s signed the compact, some have since backed out and many have not moved to implement the compact yet. I’ve also been poking around in Bobby Scott’s Every Student Counts Act H.R.2955. There is some good stuff in there, but I have some issues as well. Some thoughts on this graduation bill:

· HR.2955 buries students who graduate with alternative degrees in an optional “additional indicator” metric. It’s good for rigor of course. And states should have as their main goal high school graduation, not GEDs. Something makes me a little unsettled about it though.
· Only 1 percent of students can qualify for IEP defined diploma—that’s too few.
· High schools would be required to use grad rates as their additional indicator under NCLB. What about other indicators that would be potentially supplanted? Or is Graduation as "good" of an indicator as there is? My guess is that grad rates are as good of an indicator for NCLB purposes as we’ve got.
· Arbitrary growth for graduation rates improvement (2-3 percent). This is going to be a problem. We’ll be right back in the business of arguing over baselines, and cut scores, and benchmarks. And we’ll be arguing arbitrarily. Can’t wait for that.

On Wealth and Taxes and Giving Back

2007-07-15T16:03:00.000-04:00

From the New York Times, an intriguing story on wealth in America--wealth whose parallel is a century old. Not since the Gilded Age has American wealth concentrated like it has in the top 1 percent of income earners. Robert L. Crandall, former president, CEO, and chairman of American Airlines speaks about the unique possibilities for wealth in the United States. He cogently aggresses a U.S. tax code blind to the protections the U.S. affords large businesses--and subsequently the American uber-rich. Louis Uchitelle writes for NYT:

"The nation’s corporate chiefs would be living far less affluent lives, Mr. Crandall said, if fate had put them in, say, Uzbekistan instead of the United States, 'where they are the beneficiaries of a market system that rewards a few people in extraordinary ways and leaves others behind.'
'The way our society equalizes incomes,' he argued, 'is through much higher taxes than we have today. There is no other way.'"

We write too many passes in this country largely because we think: "It could be me. It could be me that is rich and wants to avoid paying heavy taxes." Crandall nicely points out an overlooked logic. We have a lot of work to do, it begins by recognizing the cagey in the time-tested American epigram "equal opportunity."

Correspondent Inference Theory: A Little Clarity

2007-07-12T23:30:00.001-04:00

Providing a little clarity, something I think I had more of closer to 9-11 and the run-up to the Iraq disaster, is an article by Bruce Schneier in Wired. He comments expertly on Max Abrams paper, Why Terrorism Does Not Work. We could all stand to relearn that while some actions can only be understood as nonsensical, all actions are precipitated by demands. Learn about correspondent inference theory.

I Know you are but what am I? China and the US Ban on Their Seafood

2007-07-01T14:31:00.000-04:00

Here's an observation regarding a quote pulled from a CNN Money article "China Slams US Over Seafood Ban." China's nanny nanny poo poo in response for the US blocking imports of seafood because of evidence of tainted goods:

"In one apparent response in Beijing, Chinese officials announced the seizure of substandard food shipments at its ports.
In the past week, China seized two fruit shipments from the United States and warned it would apply greater scrutiny to U.S. cargoes, even as it tightens monitoring of manufacturers at home."

What does this have to do with education? Not much, but it does remind me of the type of school-yard antics and jejune tit-for-tat I'd expect from children, not countries. What if we started teaching our kids that the more they learn about the world, the more they will realize that not that much changes from school.

Segregation Marches On: Supreme Court Decides in Favor of Status Quo

2007-06-28T11:57:00.001-04:00

PARENTS INVOLVED IN COMMUNITY SCHOOLS v. SEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 ET AL. has been decided. I'll need to get to the bottom of it all but the Supreme Court has made a landmark decision. AP suggests Justice Kennedy's dissent may leave the door cracked for more elaborate methodologies for achieving diversity. Otherwise, it looks like a setback for Civil Rights. Strict scrutiny may have been applied (we'll here lots of those arguments), but there are real world consequences that legal scrutiny could give a rats ass about. Judicial hardlining isn't always humane or in our best interests. It is our Court and we need them to make tough decisions, but we also need them to make conscionable decisions and not act like robots. Look for fewer creative challenges to promoting diversity as school systems will want to avoid press, time, money, and being labeled obstructionist.

My response to a strict scrutiny friend who believes the Court did right: "The only question that matters for much is what the real world fallout will be. Will schools actually trouble themselves with creative ways to engineer diversity, or will they go with the flow and embrace schools as mirror reflections of segregated communites?"

I like Hillary Clinton's response to the Court's ruling; it shows concern for actual effects of law: "These decisions take away the right of local communities to ensure that all students benefit from racially diverse classrooms. Recent evidence shows that integrated schools promote minority academic achievement and can help close the achievement gap."

Nasty Race Cards in DC Suggested in Nasty USA Today Editorial

2007-06-27T12:48:00.000-04:00

“But if she fails, Rhee almost certainly will be viewed through the prism of the fractured relations between blacks and Koreans.”

Above is the ultimate line in a USA Today piece by DeWayne Wickham. Wickham’s op-ed title “A chance to mend fences for new D.C. schools chief” suggests it’s D.C.’s fences in disrepair, but the closer, the SHOCKING closer, suggests newly appointed DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s successes or failures are indeed an indication of America’s Black on Korean and Korean on Black hatred. That’s quite a burden! Maybe the most unfair burden I’ve read in an opinion or otherwise in a long time. To suggest that Michelle Rhee is somehow responsible for or a product of race relations is unconscionably unfair. Wickham’s very public race card play here is a sign of far we have to go to be better to one another. I’m ashamed.

Bloodlust for changes to NCLB; But a Major Break, I don't Think So

2007-06-26T22:04:00.000-04:00

When an article title reads “Ex-Aides Break With Bush on 'No Child': Conservatives Giving Vent to Doubts; Support for Opt-Out Proposals Grows” I expect a story about once-smitten twice-bitten loyalists sounding an alarm on the federal role in education. Instead we get treated to a few salty lines from two, count em, two ex-aides willing to go on record. These aides don’t scream defiance. They’d rather tweak or consider something else than the current law prescribes. The Bush admin itself wants changes. Changes like superseding union contracts in low performing schools and converting schools designated failing under NCLB into charters. We all want changes. I’ve been to several events this summer primed with reauthorization bloodlust.

The Post presents a creative angle but doesn’t deliver. And the tidbit about 9-11, the president’s sweeping mandate to do whatever and whenever, and NCLB passage is an interesting bit, but smacks of historical revisionism. Who knows, might make a worthy chapter in a book one day, but right now, knowing what I know about the education players at the time, I'm not buying it.

I didn’t know that Spellings was pushing for private school vouchers to be included in the renewal of No Child Left Behind. The Post reports that Katherine McLane, a department spokeswoman, said so.

Challenging the Index in the Blogosphere

2007-06-26T21:58:00.000-04:00

I make a quick reply to Jay Matthews (re)defense of his challenge index (cough, cash cow) under the name umbriell here. The back and forth banter between EdSector and Matthews is getting slightly livelier. These guys have too much respect for each other to throw smelly mud, even in the blogosphere. Much respect.

EdTrust "Going On" FEA

2007-06-19T21:57:00.000-04:00

The Education Trust has released a statement in reaction to last Thursday’s Forum on Educational Accountability (FEA) NCLB guidelines release saying that the guidelines “represent a giant step backward in the effort to both raise achievement and close longstanding gaps.” Furthermore EdTrust claims that by issuing these guidelines FEA has offended any American who is interested in equity and mocked the idea of high standards for all.

For the record FEA published some lofty and admirable goals in their Assessment and Accountability for Improving Schools and Learning. The panel presentation I attended was solid. Long overdue for implementation, but long in the tooth as ideas, the panel advocated for things like more formative assessments, appropriate tests for ELL students, locally constructed assessments for accountability, and further disaggregation of data by socio-economic as well as racial subgroups.

This response from EdTrust doesn't surprise me one bit. Of course one might say EdTrust are reacting to hypothetical tests since the tests FEA are arguing for don't yet exist. It would be prudent of EdTrust to see what these tests would look like, how teachers respond, how students perform, before they cast "dumbing-down" aspersions. Contrary to popular belief, rigor isn't something we can measure with a measuring cup. We espouse and advocate and legislate individual education plans (it's a civil right for heaven's sake), but the world must stop if we decide to extend that same right to evaluation.

EdTrust takes a hard line and they have kid's interests at heart which is good. I just always picture the kids they try to help. These kids, if they were exposed to any of these behind-the-scenes policy shenanigans would think they are getting hurt not helped by EdTrust’s decisions.

Safety by Practicing School Shootings?

2007-06-12T18:20:00.000-04:00

News 4 in Washington, DC ran a segment yesterday about a school simulation designed to mimic a violent shooter on campus. The simulation took place at Alice Deal Jr. High School and featured a scenario where an enraged parent comes to campus to inflict as much horror as possible. The video speaks for itself, but this is some scary stuff. Two questions?

How effective is a drill like this?;
Do students become desensitized to violence when we make it as inevitable as a fire or a storm?;
Did anyone in the drill run at or throw objects like desks or anything heavy and blunt at the police officer who was acting as the shooter, because that’s what you are actually supposed to do in a situation like this?

DCist community comments here.

An Old Flame

2007-06-12T18:17:00.000-04:00

I came across this little diddy recently and it rekindled an old flame with adolescent literature--a term that gets a bad rap. I've read several of the best sellers in this category (Holes, Speak, Life of Pi, Bridge to Terabithia, and others) and they are well written, provocative works of fiction. Anyhow check out EdWeek'$ story.

Houston, Dallas... Charters? We have a problem.

2007-06-07T20:38:00.000-04:00

High Schoolers cheat. They cheat their faces off in fact. I know this because I’ve given tests and I’ve substitute taught enough as the “cool-enough” young guy to get candid answers to ethical improprieties. Guess what, not only do high schoolers cheat, but school systems collude and cheat for them, at least that’s what a recent series of reports coming out of the Dallas Morning News shows. 50,000 high school cheaters on TAKS, or Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills. Third world news outlet or not, that’s a lot of cheating.

According to the study Houston, Dallas, and charters have the highest incidence of cheating. I can hear some of the union faithful now. Charters! I knew it was them! Even when it was the bears, I knew it was them.

-- Moe Szyslak, Adapted from "Much Apu About Nothing"

Green is the New Black but May Push School Systems Into the Red

2007-05-30T17:39:00.000-04:00

An AP story about greening schools--Schools going green to save on electric bills, teach students—marks continued interest in sustainable development. Green, the new black, is apparently spreading to school buildings as 300 schools wait to get certified by the U.S. Green Building Council's school certification program. The AP story cites a study by school officials in Washington State who found green schools have better student performance and fewer absences. And while we might not need a scientific study to tell us that clean buildings with lots of natural light promote the greater good, it doesn’t take much digging to uncover the budgetary strife associated with just keeping some buildings from falling down, let alone construct a building with living roofs, ice-cooled air conditioning, and solar paneled exteriors.

I know. I know. We keep getting the quote that “greening” a building costs 2 percent more. But that could be the toughest 2 percent an urban superintendent ever fought for. Don’t get me wrong I’m not against green enhancements and architecture in schools or otherwise. Like many other halfway idealistic 20-somethings, I love the idea. I just haven’t seen anyone write up the angle that schools are expensive and green schools are even more expensive.

Also, I’m all for reintroducing native species when invasive species have choked out cleared areas due to construction, but the anecdote about teacher Rod Shroufe at Clackamas High School in Clackamas, Oregon who helped to eradicate an acre of blackberries (delicious blackberries) saddens the mud-stomping, stick-swinging, rock-skipping, sticky-fingered berry-eating inner child in me.

In Keeping With the Administration's Swagger: Undermining Teacher Education

2007-05-30T17:31:00.000-04:00

File this one under Bush Admin conspiracy theories. Alongside other more prominent and insidious theories of dismantling public education, the surreptitious undermining of teacher education seems to be on the agenda. Check out the Education Department’s “Becoming a Teacher” page.

Notice the first recommended link, an Editor’s Pick no less, is a link for information about alternative certification. No less than four of seven! Of the "Editor’s Picks" on this page direct the user to information about alternative certification. Surprising? Not really. Brazen as hell? Totally! And in line with the Bush Admin’s general swagger.

Ring and Index Fingers Predict SAT Scores

2007-05-26T22:59:00.000-04:00

Index finger lengths compared to ring finger lengths may predict SAT scores. Who knew!? Yahoo news picked this story up set for publication in the British Journal of Psychology. Crazy stuff. I keep wondering what happens when you have nearly identically sized ring finger and index finger.

Democratic Candidates Speak with the AFT

2007-05-25T17:52:00.000-04:00

Last week I attended the AFT Executive Council meeting. It was interesting to watch local union presidents jockey to submit amendments to various rules and adopt positions. Not to mention interest generated by some fairly shallow banter on charter schools (yes there are plenty of union folks who abhor charters, but to be fair there are plenty that have come around), and a rather contentious but short-lived "yea" vote to add an influential NED member to the AFT council. The highlights of the day came with several visits from Democratic Presidential Contenders (R’s were invited, but shockingly didn’t attend).

I caught former Senator John Edwards, Governor Bill Richardson, and Senator Barack Obama’s speeches and Q&A with the crowd. I missed Senator Clinton’s speech. The candidates’ talks were substantial in length—around 45 minutes or longer including questions from the crowd. Each came with a different approach and salved the crowd in their own way. All claimed to support labor without condition. All claimed to support NCLB, with numerous caveats.

John Edwards appeared to strike a chord with the crowd. He hammered home his commitment to labor. It may have been the most pro-labor statement a serious presidential candidate has made in years. He was funny and appeared committed to expanding the reaches of organized labor through federal law.

Governor Richardson highlighted his strong commitment to education, standards, and the successes he’s governed over in New Mexico. He relied heavily on the competition argument that’s been so popular since Friedman discovered the world is flat. He appeared strongest on education of the three with the most nuanced understanding of the landscape, but weakest on organized labor.

Senator Obama hopped into that third little bed and found it just right (Goldilocks and the Three Bears reference). The senator found a nice balance between supporting labor and improving the life chances of children long ignored by our educational system. He advanced his credibility with the group with his stories of his first job walking the streets of Chicago as an organizer. When pressed by a union president on charter schools, the Senator did not retreat, citing the need for more oversight and accountability, but also the need for alternatives where the traditional school systems have failed.

Landrieu Intervenes. Bobb Doesn't Want to Upset the Apple Cart. Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch, Fenty Fumes.

2007-05-21T22:27:00.000-04:00

The pot thickens in DC. Board of Education President Robert C. Bobb has gone behind Mayor Adrian Fenty's back and set events in motion with Sen. Mary Landrieu. According to the Washington Post, Landrieu, who anonymously put a hold on Fenty's DC Public Schools takeover bid last week, has identified herself as the person responsible for wanting more time to examine Fenty's all-but-sealed-deal bid.

In an interview with the Post Bobb remained cagey about any back door shenanigans, saying he was not about to upset "the apple cart in anyway."

This is classic local politics with a Senatorial Twist. Good stuff people.

Winkelman is for Victory?

2007-05-21T12:54:00.000-04:00

Today the Supreme Court decided Winkelman v. Parma City School District which on paper removes the burden of parents having to hire a lawyer in order to sue schools over IDEA related incidents. The Associated Press suggests that untold numbers of parents don’t take legal action when it comes to their children’s free appropriate public education. Of course the Supreme Court did not rule that parents are entitled to free legal representation, the Court only decided that not having a lawyer would not bar parents from taking legal action. It appears that this is only a minor victory for parents of children with disabilities.

On a Liberal Education

2007-05-11T21:56:00.000-04:00

"I attach great importance to general literature for the enlargement of the mind and for giving business capacity. I think I have noticed that technically educated boys do not make the most successful businessmen. The imagination needs to be cultivated and developed to assure success in life. A man will never construct anything he cannot conceive."

--Leland Stanford

Shopping Bags They Weigh Down My Arms

2007-05-11T17:48:00.000-04:00

I'm shopping for a job. A teaching job to be precise. An instructor position to take me further away from the policy world so that I may return one day enlightened and brimming with anecdotal evidence of classroom successes and failures, of student hardship and triumph. The usual prattle.

Story: A chief of staff for a member of the house of representatives happened to be talking me up to an influential leader of an educational policy organization. He also said I had been considering teaching, which is true, but I've been keen on finding a policy job for months. She said something to the effect of don't let him go teach--it'll ruin him. Chief of staff said well are you going to give him a job?

Of course not. So you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. Really, I just want to help.

It's been an adventurous job shopping experience so far. There are a lot of choices out there.

AFT Recs on Teacher Prep: Nice Square Pegs, Not So Nice Round Holes?

2007-05-04T15:04:00.000-04:00

The AFT has just released (or rereleased) "An Urgent Call for Preparation Changes: Recommendations Made in 2000 Remain Valid but Generally Untouched." The recs follow:

Raise entrance grade-point average (GPA) for teacher education programs. 2.75 GPA at the end of the sophomore year and phase it up to a 3.0 GPA.
Institute a national entry test. It should be developed by the teaching profession and administered by the end of the sophomore year to select teacher education candidates. Proficiency in math, science, English language arts and history/geography/social studies should be tested.
Require an academic major.
Develop a core curriculum in pedagogy.
Strengthen induction programs for new teachers.
Strengthen the clinical experience. It should build on successful models, including using exemplary teachers to mentor student teachers. Also, preservice teachers should be placed in diverse teaching and learning settings and should assume non-instructional duties to understand the full range of teacher responsibilities.
Institute rigorous exit/licensure tests on subject matter and pedagogy. They should be taken by all prospective teachers prior to licensure. Currently, the rigor of tests is inconsistent.
Take a five-year view. Teacher preparation should be organized, at a minimum, as a five-year process.
Require high standards for alternative programs. Students in these programs should be required to take pedagogical coursework and to pass state teacher-testing exams.

Makes pretty solid sense. Of course the trouble we run into, the same trouble I mentioned in my last post is getting enough educators to go through this process. The specter of a 5-year program and numerous hoops and obstacles to race through to the end prize, a career where teacher pay stumbles along with core inflation just doesn't sound so sweet. Especially when alternative entry points into teaching careers exist. Recs like these in a vacuum mean nothing. In other words, as long as there are myriad alternative views on teaching, learning, and public education, solid recommendations based on reasonable data will remain filled with caveats.

No Gold Stars for You Kristof! ... Well Maybe One

2007-05-02T23:22:00.000-04:00

For inspiration, presidential candidates might look at this bold three-part plan for improving American schools:

End requirements for teacher certification.
Make tenure more difficult to get so weak teachers can be weeded out after two or three years on the job.
Award $15,000 annual bonuses to good teachers for as long as they teach at schools in low-income areas.

Comprehensive education reform package. Straight from AEI? Or Heritage? Nope. Try the Hamilton Project with Robert Gordon of the Center for American Progress, Thomas Kane of Harvard and Douglas Staiger of Dartmouth. Nicholas D. Kristof writes in his education column, and teachers react with the usual banal and childish argument that you can’t have an opinion about education without having taught.

Would I be as good or bad a teacher without certification? It’s tough to say, but four years out from my teacher education experience I can’t say I remember a whole lot of it. Admittedly I have a penchant for rose color reminiscences.

Would I be excited about entering a profession where tenure is hard to acquire? It depends how hard. If I had to publish or perish as I would if I were pursing a PhD to be a professor, then no. If I had to meet reasonable benchmarks that didn’t solely rely on my students’ performances on one high stakes test, then yes that is fine with me.

Would I work in a high needs district for an extra 15 large a year so long as the benchmarks I was to meet were reasonable? Sign me up!

There’s one significant problem to Kristof's thinking and a lot of little problems that I won't mention here tonight. There are too many teaching jobs that must be filled to teach the nation’s 60 million plus students. Efficient hiring of that many professionals ("efficient" because we never want to pony up for education the way we probably should) requires some kind of standardization. Ending requirements for teacher certification altogether would require a lot more resources re: hiring and firing. And at the end of the day what will we be left with left with? Think burnout, content geeks who don’t know what they've signed up for (after all if you made it through college and were successful enough to achieve highly, as I am assuming you would need to have done to be recruited to join the ranks of a non-certified teaching field, you probably have a somewhat slanted view of what education is like for most people) oh, and don't forget a bunch of tough-nosed, go-getter, type A elementary school teachers. I know sarcasm, impatience, and no nonsense are the dream team personality of every child’s favorite elementary school teacher.

Before you quip, I already know I'm not cut out for the challenges of primary school. Hats off to them though. Hats off.

Preaching Abstinence Education and the New York Times Editorial Page

2007-04-28T00:39:00.000-04:00

From the editorial page of the New York Times comes a lucid opinion about a neo-conservative agenda losing its momentum.

"At least nine states, by one count, have decided to give up the federal matching funds rather than submit to dictates that undermine sensible sex education. Now there is growing evidence that the programs have no effect on children’s sexual behavior."

Backed by a Congressionally mandated study by Mathematica Policy Research, the Time's Opinion is entirely reasonable. Abstinence education alone, masquerading as sex education is a severely wrong headed approach to teaching. Teaching people about something by only demonstrating and advocating the opposite is called preaching, not teaching.

Words of Preparedness from the University of Virginia

2007-04-20T13:48:00.000-04:00

I've been compelled to write a lot today. Things are about to change a little and I don't know how it'll impact my writing. But I wanted to share an email from the Office of the Vice President and Chief Student Affairs Officer Patricia Lampkin at the University of Virginia in response to this week's terrible events at Virginia Tech. This email reached the entire UVA student community.

The complete text follows and represents exactly some of the steps schools everywhere should be taking, some of what I wrote about earlier in the week.

"We are nearing the end of a long, difficult week. From the words of Virginia Tech student leader Elizabeth Hart in an open letter to our community, it is clear that your outpouring of support has been a source of comfort during a time of great loss and suffering. For so many of us, fully absorbing what has happened at our sister campus and coming to terms with it will understandably take time.

"One subject now on many minds is our own safety procedures at U.Va. Yesterday, I sent parents an e-mail summarizing steps that the University takes to address and communicate critical incidents. You can read this message at:
http://www.virginia.edu/vatechsupport/safety.html

"Reviewing and strengthening our safety procedures is an ongoing priority. This fall we will be adopting a new emergency communications system that will combine LCD broadcast screens in key buildings with text messaging to cell phones, which will deliver information and instructions based on the circumstances. You will hear more about this in the near future and will have an opportunity to register your cell phone number with the University, solely for emergency communications. We will continue to use other forms of communication to ensure that multiple systems are used as effectively as possible.

"Safety is both an institutional issue and a personal one. While experts tell us our schools and cities are statistically safer than ever, we must accept the realities of random, inexplicable violence. Being prepared for the unexpected has to become part of taking care of ourselves.

"What can we do personally? Being prepared does not mean living in fear. It does mean taking safety seriously and not blithely dismissing the simple things ~V locking your doors, walking friends home when it is dark and late, and reporting situations that bother you.

"If you are in immediate danger, call 911. If you are on Grounds near a blue-light phone, you can pick it up and immediately be connected with University Police.

"Basic safety reminders cannot constitute a set recipe that will apply in every conceivable situation. Your own judgment is an important factor. Remembering the basics is a good place to start. Please read these reminders with fresh eyes and a commitment to your personal well-being:

"Personal Safety
* Be aware of your surroundings. Be careful not to use a cell phone or iPod that may distract you while you walk alone in the dark.
* Avoid isolated areas.
* Avoid walking alone at night. Use SafeRide, walk with friends, or take a late-night weekend bus. The number for SafeRide is 434/242-1122.
* Use the lighted pathway system.
* Tell a friend where you are going and when you will return.
* Trust your instincts about a person or situation. If you feel uncomfortable, remove yourself from the situation and immediately report your concerns to police by calling 911.

"Using Cell Phones
*When an emergency occurs, it is important to keep cell and phone lines open so that communication systems are not jeopardized. Work with your parents and family to develop a communication plan in a time of crisis.

"Residence Hall Safety
* Never allow strangers to follow you into the building.
* Call 911 if you see someone in the building who seems suspicious.
* Never prop open card-reader doors or leave room doors open.
* Secure doors and windows prior to leaving.
*Contact your Resident Advisor should you have concerns about the safety or well-being of someone living in your dorm.

"Home/Apartment Safety
* Keep doors and windows locked.
* Use outdoor lighting.
* Work with your landlord to ensure that overgrown shrubs and trees are trimmed in order to reduce the possibility of prowlers hiding in dense, darkened areas.
* If you see any of the following, immediately call the police at 911: a prowler, someone peeping into a residence, an individual watching, photographing or filming an area, or any other suspicious behavior. You can remain anonymous in your report.
* Work with your neighbors and fellow community members to ensure a safe environment.

"If a Crime is Witnessed
Call 911 or anonymously provide information by going to the Crime Tips Web site: http://www.virginia.edu/uvapolice//report_crime.htm

"Bias Incidents
If you or someone you know witnesses a bias incident, help is available. The following Web site provides complete details on how to report the incident, what constitutes bias, and what you can expect in response from the University: www.virginia.edu/justreportit

"In closing, I encourage you to continue to seek support from your friends, parents, fellow students, faith communities, and all of us who care about you. Focus on your studies and your interests, and find strength from the people around you."

-Vice President and Chief Student Affairs Officer Patricia Lampkin

Nintendo New-School

2007-04-20T12:46:00.000-04:00

That looks like a fun place to go to school. Look out for Nintendo to keep up a torrid software sales pace on its software based on academic skills.

Here He Comes to Save the Day

2007-04-20T11:31:00.000-04:00

Under the banner of here comes the inevitable D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty has won approval from the DC council to take over D.C. Public Schools. Story here. Current obstacles include a lawsuit claiming DC deserves a referendum vote and a Home Rule Charter status change by Congress. He's got his work cut out for him.

"Making Writing Instruction a Priority in America’s Middle and High Schools": A Recipe for Writing Improvement

2007-04-20T10:39:00.000-04:00

A recent report from the Alliance for Excellent Education targets secondary writing skills. Long champions for reading and literacy, the Alliance brings a very cogent set of writing recommendations to bear on the policy community.

The report, "Making Writing Instruction a Priority in America’s Middle and High Schools," suggests that "People often assume that writing is merely the “flip side” of reading, and that if adolescents are proficient readers, they must be proficient writers too. But in fact, while reading and writing are indeed complementary skills, they do not necessarily go hand in hand." The report highlights national lackluster performance trends in writing proficiency and dovetails nicely with what many English and Social Studies teachers will share late at night over a drink, or even early in the morning if you get enough caffeine in them--"So many of my students cannot write!"

The report cites recent research that shows: students need a lot more practice writing; a variety of strategies can be employed such as "writing to learn"; rigid universals like the 5-paragraph essay can be more harmful than good; and choice in style and content reduces the chore of writing and encourages thoughtful decision making. Following this research, the Alliance makes several policy recommendations. Check it out.

An '08 Edu Plan

2007-04-20T09:53:00.000-04:00

Andy Rotherham and Richard Whitmire outline 9 broad strategies for improving education across the board in hopes that an '08 contender will bite on a few. Whom I kidding, they want the whole thing swallowed. And good for their ambition--despite a few rough spots. New-York-Cititize the entire nation?? Also, I'm not so sure the National Standards debate is turning into a tactic to delay real accountability. How long would it take to get a set of national standards, a year, maybe two? States have been easing their way into their homebrew standards for years.

Aside from those points there is real wisdom in this platform that should appear obvious to people in education who look at education broadly--people who are not so partisan to get hung up in nuance and historical hyperbole. Perfect for '08 Democratic candidates. Democratic, yes. I don't think you'd find a republican edu-reformer who could resist the party mandate to layer privatization mud, or market mud, between the cracks of Andy and Richard's project. Sorry, that's my bias. That's what I see.
_____
Highlights from this list entitled "Steal This Education Agenda" include: focus on adolescent literacy; provide more urban schooling choices; give real positive incentives to teachers (career ladders that don't require moving from the classroom to management to get paid a professional wage), and flexible schedules for students and schools that need it (be careful here though Sens. Clinton and Obama, and Mr. Edwards, it's not in every child's best interest to stay in school longer when he or she is not being challenged).

Preparing for the Worst: Living in a Post Virginia Tech Massacre World

2007-04-16T20:02:00.000-04:00

As the news and accounts continue to trickle out of Blacksburg, VA tonight and my back knots with disgust and sorrow I'm compelled to put to paper some reactions, reactions I've already spoke, but worth getting down more succinctly anyhow.

Complete prevention of these types of incidents seems close to impossible. All talk of what could have been done to keep something like this from happening must be tempered by the truth that all humans have agency and some are capable of atrocity.

Gun control must be open for discussion, but beyond gun control more discussion about security and planning in schools, towns, and cities must be discussed first on a national scale and then locally to implement plans. We need a national discussion about local preparedness. We shouldn't have to wait for terrible days like this for our leaders to act.

In a post 9-11, post U. Texas, post Columbine, post Nickel Mines, Pa, post Virgina Tech world, more care, effort, and resources must be devoted to improving our response to emergency and catastrophe. Say what you will about the response Virginia Tech Administrators made this morning, say what you will about how any University would have responded. What we must focus on moving forward is preparedness.

All higher education institutions and all schools must have proper plans;
Every student must have a sense of what they are supposed to do to keep them as far from harm as possible in an emergency situation;
Every university should have an emergency response program to get useful up to the minute information out to all students and staff; and
All schools must have a security director in charge of making sure the above mandates are met.

We've got a lot of work to do. Preparedness is our biggest challenge.

A Reminder

2007-04-16T14:56:00.000-04:00

Second two deadliest shootings: One in 1966 at the University of Texas. The shooter Charles Whitman climbed to the top of a clock tower and killed 16 people before he was gunned down by police. In more recent memory, the Columbine High massacre near Littleton, Colo., in 1999, saw 12 students killed and one teacher. The Kent State, May 4 1970 massacre involved the shooting of four students by members of the Ohio National Guard. The students were protesting the Nixon Administration's invasion of Cambodia.

A Prayer

2007-04-16T14:37:00.000-04:00

A prayer for those whose lives were cut short and whose families and friends must now carry on. Something awful.

In the second link "awful," a recording from Washington Post radio, Virginia Tech Professor Robert Denton comments on the morning's happenings in Blacksburg, VA. Irksomely towards the end of the clip he suggests student anger is on the rise, and intimates a gender???? problem. That's quite a guess.

Unfortunately easy prediction. In the coming months we will hear more than we ever have about security in our schools and institutions of higher education.

Character Education Special Sauce

2007-04-14T23:11:00.000-04:00

Education Next recently published a profile of character education programs at several different types of educational institutions. "From Aristotle to Angelou" by Paul J. Dovre highlights how these schools integrate principles of character education into their curricula and inculcate values into their students.

While different in many ways, as the profiles attest, the programs do have a lot in common. Each of the character education programs are "comprehensive, encompassing all school activities, engaging all members of the faculty and staff, and includ[e] all grade levels. At each site, there is clarity and transparency about goals and values." Faculty engagement, curriculum development, and parent participation are all critical components of the character education programs Dovre features.

It seems like a tough thing to measure or prove outright--that character education works in any demonstrable way, but one school in Minnesota, Community of Peace, has had some success measuring and documenting quantitative and qualitative gains in students and environment. For my money we could spend more time trying to figure out exactly what we want to gain out of character and citizenship programs in schools, and devote more resources to trying to prove we're meeting our objectives. I don't doubt that most of our best teachers in our own school experiences cared about more than just our academic progress. They cared about the whole person. Some of these special teachers provided tools to navigate the world more humanely. The function of character education seems to be an exercise in capturing that "special teacher sauce" and spreading it around the whole school.

Bob Lutz Breathes and We All Suffer the Mindless Hyperbole

2007-04-05T00:03:00.000-04:00

Under the banner of "Can you believe dat?!" General Motors' Vice Chairman Robert A. Lutz, product of American schools, U.C. Berkeley for Pete's sake (had to keep it relevant), had this to say about the recent Supreme Court Decision regarding greenhouse gases and EPA regulation thereof. Brilliant retort follows:

“All of us standing here right now — anybody who exhales is polluting like mad ... If we have CO2 limits, I think we should all contribute, and we’re all going to have to train ourselves to breathe fewer times per minute.”

UNBELIEVABLE. And sad on so many levels. One more cause for alarm to keep it relevant: Lutz serves as chairman of The New Common School Foundation whose mission as a "nonprofit corporation is to create sustainable, replicable models of excellence in urban education." One obnoxious turn deserves another Mr. Lutz.

The Beginning of an Era for DC Public Schools?

2007-04-04T09:35:00.000-04:00

In an era where hope and possibility often trump politics and tradition, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty has secured the first and maybe most significant step along the way to becoming school chief. Notables like Mayor Bloomberg in New York City have ushered in wide spread sweeping change like an end to social promotion, small school creation, and major reorganization. Another standout mayor, Mayor Patterson of Indianapolis won the right to establish charter schools. As the list of cities grows--Providence, Trenton, New Haven, Philadelphia, and Baltimore have been added to the "old guard" list of Chicago, New York, Cleveland, Boston and Harrisburg--it arguably becomes easier for a Mayor like Fenty to assume leadership of the schools.

And it's not like anyone is surprised. Mayor Fenty made his intentions well known in advance of his mayorship. With promises like fixing broken windows and dilapidated bathrooms within two months, it is no wonder that the language of hope and action goes far in an urban system notorious for delay and bureaucratic strangle. As for the role of the Superintendent Clifford Janey, his job is still up in the air. School board President Robert C. Bobb has said he will continue to serve in a reduced capacity. The school board members, present and future, will accept diminished control as well, but the Mayor's office seems intent on including them and "beef"ing up their role, at least according to the Washington Post.

Assuming this change happens, and it looks like it will it's easy to make a prediction or two: Fenty will have some success, just like others have had. People will be patient with this 36-year-old mayor. He has a lot of capital. His clout and the successes of those who came before him will carry. Just don't expect the moon, folks. We won't get it.

Placeholder for Dissertation

2007-03-26T21:21:00.000-04:00

This blog post by Whitney Tilson and noted by Eduwonk is in the direction or general vicinity of where I intend to go for my dissertation. I want to know what a lottery looks like. A circus lottery sounds like it could make for some solid descriptive inquiry. Bring it.

Mad in March (about going to college and not graduating)

2007-03-26T20:19:00.000-04:00

With great basketball comes great criticism of basketball? I find it hard enough to follow all the Madness each spring, but the folks for the Nation (Tom Engelhardt) and the Washington Post (Lindsey Luebchow, Kevin Carey) make March more maddening. How? By zooming in on such things like graduation rates, attendance, attrition, and academics. Topped off with a dollop of racism and don't forget the side of exploitation, and you got a recipe for crazy high add revenue and viewership.

It's easy to get caught up in it all. I love sports. But I'd be remiss to ignore the pressures and dangers an industry hell bent on the bottom line burdens our talented young people with. If nothing else, WAPO's bracket makes a mockery out of graduation rates in some of these programs. Of course the mockery doesn't end with athlete graduation rates.

Bong Hits, Jesus, and Right and Left Getting Along: Morse v. Frederick

2007-03-18T17:46:00.000-04:00

The New York Times on Sunday published a story about bong hits and Jesus. What do these have to do with education? A lot actually. To be fair the story isn't about bong hits, but a great deal of the NYT story is about Jesus, specifically organized religion.

Before the Supreme Court this Monday is arguably the first explicit case regarding student dissent in the face of official authority since Tinker v. Des Moines School District's 1969 ruling that upheld the rights of students to protest the Vietnam War by wearing black armbands to school. Tinker established that school officials may restrict a student's private speech only if the speech materially and substantially interferes with school operations. Students cannot be censured merely because the student advocates a position contrary to official government policy.

Morse v. Frederick (for a lot of background see this blog), this new case involving Joseph Frederick’s 2002 dispute with his principal, Deborah Morse, at the Juneau-Douglas High School in Juneau, Alaska, has become a legal battle where sides have been drawn along incongruous lines. On one side are the Bush Administration along with NSBA, several anti-drug organizations and Counsel Kenneth Starr, yes the same Starr who exasperated the Clinton Administration for years. On the other side are the ACLU; the National Coalition Against Censorship; and a host of largely right wing religious groups including: the American Center for Law and Justice, founded by the Rev. Pat Robertson; the Christian Legal Society; the Alliance Defense Fund, an organization based in Arizona that describes its mission as “defending the right to hear and speak the Truth”; the Rutherford Institute; and Liberty Legal Institute.

NYT quotes Prof. Douglas Laycock of the University of Michigan Law School in explanation of the strange bedfellows. “The status of being a dissident unites dissidents on either side." Simply put, free speech impacts across a spectrum human endeavors including smoking pot and worshiping God in an organized fashion. This really shouldn't surprise, but perhaps in light of the current Republican Administration's penchant for harnessing the Religious Right's zeal for political purposes, perhaps the odd bedfellows do surprise. Anyhow, the whole thing makes for interesting drama and fantastic case law history for those interested in the legacies of cases like Tinker, Bethel School Dist. No. 403 v. Fraser, Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, and Saxe v. State College Area School District.

Money Laundering: The Establishment Clause Escape Act

2007-03-12T12:57:00.000-04:00

Stanley Fish in his NYTimes Select column explains the largely rhetorical rhythm of the Establishment Clause. Like a silt island in a river turned to solid ground by fora and fauna, the Establishment Clause can be all but ignored by the current of taxpayer supported religion. Fish cogently argues the Establishment Clause's futility, and indeed I agree with him having studied some of the cases he cites like Everson v. Board of Education, Rosenberger v. Rector, and Mitchell v. Helms. Last week's ruling in California in favor of allowing tax-free bonds to be issued to support capital expenditures at religious schools is the latest in what Fish calls the Money Laundering Establishment Clause circumvention.

Laundering can take many forms, argues Fish, but after reading his blog I admit laundering is easy spot. Writing for the majority, Justice Joyce Kennard argued that no-tax bonds are “simply a mechanism by which the government extends available tax to private individuals." Kennard argued it's the private individual's choice as to whether he or she wants to buy the bond and support the school.

Of course taking the argument a step further complicates Kennard's reasoning. Remember that nothing is free, and tax-exempt bonds fall far short of amounting to nothing. Cheap ideologues bent on promoting religion cheaply with public funds can make the argument that to disentangle incidental versus direct benefits when it comes to funding religion is impossible. (i.e. where's the Money Lebowski!?) As long as the Establishment Clause can be confounded by diverting attention away from the true two-way Jeffersonian and Madisonian notion of protecting the state from religion and protecting religion from the state we'll all continue to pay for the advancement of religion whether we want to or not.

Thanks Dr. Fish for that hortatory entry.

School Safety in Urban Charter and Traditional Public Schools: An Hypothesis

2007-03-09T15:03:00.000-05:00

A new white paper published by the National Charter School Research Project (NCSRP) for the Center for Reinventing Public Education explores the issue of public school safety, specifically differences between traditional publics and charters. Key findings include: Key findings:

direct comparisons between charter and traditional schools are complicated;
threats to person or property and troubling behavioral problems exist in both types of schools;
teachers and principals in traditional public schools consistently report more frequent safety problems in their schools than do teachers and principals in charter schools; and
it is not clear what accounts for these differences.

Ugg. Not very helpful. I propose one hypothesis for variance between safety reported at charter schools and traditional public schools and it is based circuitously on a major finding in the NCSRP white paper: that principals report far fewer safety concerns or incidents than teachers report. This failure to report by principals (assuming it is really a failure to report instead of a failure on the teachers part to overreport) makes sense when you consider that school safety is a larger priority based on a principal's job priorities than a typical classroom teacher's priorities. Principals share a larger stake in school safety responsibility, therefore one could expect that a principal would want to paint a rosier picture.

The same reasoning can be applied to charter schools. Since most charter schools operate under a contractual agreement premised on negotiable renewal, charter schools spread the responsibility for success or failure across more folks. In other words, due to the negative impact of school closure, and the positive impact of increased autonomy, charter schools spread the responsibility around. One could argue that there are more stakeholders in a charter school than in a traditional public school. It is to the stakeholder's advantage to report roses.

Other ideas for the differences between safety reported between charters and traditional public schools hinted at in the white paper include what they call a "chicken or egg" problem (I call it selection bias); school size (charters are smaller on average); and dress codes and uniforms (charter schools have much higher participation rates regarding strict dress).

Some correlational data could be derived if environmental factors were introduced into this study. For my money I think NCRSP would account for most of the safety variance between the types of schools by selection bias and my hypothesis based on stakeholder failure to report.

"Teaching Policy to Improve Student Learning": A Solution Desperate for a Problem

2007-03-07T13:19:00.000-05:00

A recent publication, Teaching Policy to Improve Student Learning: Lessons from Abroad, sponsored by the Aspen Institute, reflects on the global state of human capital in the education workforce. An excerpt follows:

"Traditionally, teaching in the United States has reflected a factory model. Novices have been expected to fill the same roles as 20-year veterans; teachers have been viewed as largely interchangeable; and salary has been based on years of education and experience rather than on differentiated roles and responsibilities or superior performance."

From this statement, the report's (advertisement's) author (reflector), Lynn Olson, makes a sweeping and egregiously unsubstantiated conclusion about how teachers careers must change. Fallacy follows:

"That model no longer fits a rapidly changing, knowledge-based society. When all students must be prepared to think for a living, teachers also must become lifelong learners."

I think what Olson would have preferred to have said would have been more complex, uglier, and taken up too much copy. Besides we all know what Olson means right? Right? No. We don't. Olson's statement, a better statement, might have gone something like this:

"Teachers are responsible for much of the learning in which young people participate. Since young people will continuously rely more on how they think than on a learned body of knowledge for their livelihoods we must change the way young people are taught. In order to change the way young people are taught we must focus on the young people's teachers. Changes in how young people are taught will come when teachers begin to model lifelong learning behavior to the point of embodiment. That is, the teaching career must be a mirror of the world of work teachers send our young people, their students, out into. Teachers must be lifelong learners."

In order to reach the conclusion I believe Olson meant to say--that in order to make lifelong thinkers we need lifelong learners--I had to propose a major leap of faith. Since when did the preparation of a lifelong thinker require a lifelong learner? Show me a study. Any study. It's kind of ridiculous that smart people everyday make wild assumptions based upon little evidence beyond a gut feeling. Yet here it is.

Make a claim that lifelong learning increases engagement and helps retain teachers and maintains the efficacy of their teaching. Make a claim that we should design more robust curricula designed to enhance and promote thinking above rote knowledge. But don't imply that we live in a knowledge-based global economy so the education workforce must be out of touch.

I actually like most of the recommendations outlined in Teaching Policy to Improve Student Learning: Lessons from Abroad. Ideas like strengthening induction, salary differentials and incentives, career advancement beyond traditional salary steps, Lesson Study in Japan, pay-for-productivity, and a careful balance between cooperation and competition all deserve consideration. Most of the publication highlights ideas that often get overlooked. Too bad I had to struggle past a policy solution in need of an ill-conceived policy problem to get there.

Bush, NCLB Reauth: Sweeping Up Ed Thousands of Students at a Time

2007-03-06T14:46:00.000-05:00

Bush, the Boston Globe reports, wants something decent to sticky to his legacy. EE says rots of ruck. The commander in chief wants reauthorization for NCLB this year. So much for the bets against reauth (pdf). Of course, this doesn't mean Bush'll get what he wants.

Bush challenged the Congress to not change the act too much--"don't change the core." Whatever that means. "Watering down No Child Left Behind would be doing thousands of students a disservice," he said. Apparently Bush is a little fuzzy on how much of an impact NCLB is having. NCLB only affects thousands!?!? I can picture him now. Bush up late at night with Laura. Scratching at his hair. "Laura, I just don't git it. Why all the fuss over a few thousand kids? I mean, seriously. The states and unions just need to let the thing alone. No Child is doing a lot of good for thousands of kids."

The U.S. enrolls 48.8 million public school students.

The rest of the article is a fluff piece about the school in New Albany that Bush visited (Silver Street Elementary School) and the Dems wanting more money for those thousands of kids whose education could be watered down if Congress acts wrongly.

"Laura how much money do these God damn Democrats want for a few thousand kids? Bleeding my government dry! Amateurs."

Could Lesson Study Make Me Sweat All Interview Long?

2007-03-01T22:59:00.000-05:00

In a rare nod to the personal I went on an interview the other day, and I plan to reflect a little. The interview was my first with a school system in several years and the interview was nothing like any number of recent interviews I've had in the private sector. To be fair I'm dealing in a credentialed field where most of the screening has purportedly already happened. I also stand out some on a resume with a variety of education related activities. I've got high test scores, I've student taught, I have a valid state license, a master's degree, and God help me, a Ph.D. in the offing. I still can't help but be reminded that large school systems need warm bodies. If a school system can nab a warm body who is also able, then great, but a pulse is wonderful thing indeed.

Is this an unfair and primitive take on teacher recruitment? Sure it is. Still, I'm left pondering the usual, only this time within the framework of personal anecdote. If teachers were paid the way private sector professionals were paid would my interview have been casual? The interview might have been different if the teacher career were different. If the teaching field paid lower wages upon entry with differentiated pay scales based on need and skill, but also offered opportunities to gain significant performance based promotions I'd have sweat some serious bullets.

I stand on the shoulders of a lot of smart edufolk when I say that solid starting wages are only part of a policy solution to attract and keep talented professionals. The possibility for significant advancement in a field can make the difference between a career and a job. This is one of the reasons why I think teacher led reforms like Lesson Study paired with actionable promotion possibilities show so much promise. There can and should be career advancement in teaching beyond a jump to administration and NBPTS.

Standards: Runaway Truck or Revised Traditionalism? Nichols, Berliner, and Hayes Have a Go

2007-02-23T13:20:00.000-05:00

A couple of recent publications impugn the seemingly runaway truck momentum of standards and back to basics education in the U.S.. Collateral Damage: How High-Stakes Testing Corrupts America's Schools and The Progressive Education Movement: Is It Still a Factor in Today's Schools?. The former's authors, Sharon L. Nichols and David C. Berliner, go so far as to suggest the state of ill in America's public schools warrants "epidemic" status. On high stakes tests in general, Collateral Damage's Chapter 1 suggests, "The tests are seen by some as the perfect policy mechanism because they are both effectors and detectors—they are intended to effect or cause change in the system and then detect whether changes in the system actually occur."

While Nichols and Berliner argue that high stakes testing, specifically NCLB are flawed, contributing to dropout crises, and incapable of closing achievement gaps, William Hayes takes a more circuitous look at high stakes testing by appreciating the alternatives. In his introduction, Hayes likens the rarity of an odd politician who pronounces herself "liberal" to the odd educator practicing progressive ideals.

It's nice to see that progressive ideals in education are not dead and that standards are not so sacrosanct to be above discussion. If we are to keep moving in the largely positivist direction on roads paved with No Child's ambition we ought to be damn sure we're revisiting what it is we are doing and how we got here.

"Raise Ambitions" by Nipping Negative Culture in the Bud

2007-02-20T17:37:00.000-05:00

A fine article appears in today's Washington Post. "Black Parents Seek to Raise Ambitions" describes families in Loudon County who have grouped together to combat the achievement gap head on. Their first step, recognizing there is a problem.

By engaging their children in twice-weekly study groups, father son sessions, and monthly house meetings, these mostly affluent parents are addressing cultural currents and biases in academic performance and participation all too common among African American youth. Count the similarities between the work these proactive parents are doing and John Ogbu's fantastic account in Black American Students in An Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement.

Education Department and Big Background Checks

2007-02-11T00:32:00.000-05:00

Looks like I won't be getting a job with ED any time soon. Even if I wanted one (at this point I do) and they wanted me it might be awhile to get my background checked. NYT and JONATHAN D. GLATER have the story here.

Harvard to get First Female Prez in 371 Long Years

2007-02-09T16:19:00.000-05:00

NYT has coverage of the woman purported to assume the presidency at Harvard University. Drew Gilpin Faust would be Harvard's first woman president in its 371 year storied history. Dr. Faust has a positive reputation for helping to improve Harvard's image following some poorly chosen words delivered by former President Lawrence Summers concerning the innate abilities of the sexes.

The Times takes the tact that her administration experience at Harvard may not impress outright--Dr. Faust is dean of the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study, by far the smallest of Harvard’s schools accounting for 0.5 percent of Harvard’s $3 billion annual budget--but her penchant for women's issues and former role in the wake of Summers' missteps make her an image godsend.

A few comments and quotes about "toughness" coupled with a rather blithe looking photograph do little to suggest anything but suspicion on the Times' part. Sounds like it's a pretty good balance to me: woman prez/masculine first name; friendly face/tough demeanor; head of an institute charged with emphasizing the study of women, gender and society/tough history loving Virginian.

"A Bid for Better Loans" and Real Risk

2007-02-06T13:32:00.000-05:00

Michael Dannenberg and Phillip Longman over at the New America Foundation published a piece in yesterday's Washington Post about college loans and the veritable black hole these loans make that public funds can't escape. The pubic assumption of private risk is an ongoing issue in the financial aid literature, so I'm glad to see the issue gaining more popular press.

Dannenberg and Longman's piece, "A Bid for Better Loans," offers a succinct roundup of the funding crisis (yes I think this is a BIG deal). I first became acquainted with the debate through Art Hauptman's work. If you have a Chronicle subscription check out Hauptman's 2005 piece "College: Still Not for the Needy?" "A Bid for Better Loans"argues that since there is no functioning market for private loans to compete in (the federal government guarantees all student loans borrowed under its numerous loan programs) there is no way to know how low banks might go in reducing rates for their clients, student and parent borrowers. Beyond the obvious savings that come with interest rate reductions for borrowers, the federal government would no longer incur all the risk for the private lenders.

Back when many federal loan programs were cutting their teeth powerful bank and lending lobbies pushed hard for guarantees that their generosity toward high risk borrowers would ensure rewards. The federal government complied and currently bankrolls default loans and provides a minimum guarantee to lenders on returns. Sallie Mae, owner of nearly half of America's student loans, according to Dannenberg and Longman, "makes a 43 percent return on its cost of capital while incurring virtually no risk." Federal loan lenders live a charmed life indeed.

Dannenberg and Longman cogently argue against incremental change, i.e. the modest reduction in interest rates approved by the Democratic Congress, and argue for measurable changes that would allow for more competition for borrower dollars. There's enough of us and college is sufficiently pricey that many of us have no choice but to borrow. As a borrower and a tax payer I have twice assumed risk for my college education--last time I checked Citibank didn't assume any risk.

Why We've Always Needed Public Schools

2007-01-25T15:36:00.000-05:00

An excellent new report, "Why We Still Need Public Schools" (pdf) from the Center on Education Policy examines public education from a historical and philosophical perspective. The report provides an historical basis for the many ills our contemporary society expects schools to address, and if I may be bold, expects that schools should CURE. Of course at tension here is that not everyone expects schools to address all these ills or, more positively, needs. Many people see the schools as the nursery of industry and global competition, not an interest bearing account for good citizenship and morality.

"Why We Still Need Public Schools" suggests like so many have before it that exclusion is the likeliest outcome of privatization of education. Statistics like these speak volumes about how inclusive public education is: "Ninety-eight percent of students with disabilities are educated in public schools, while only 1% are educated in private schools" and "Forty-three percent of public school students are minority children, compared with 24% of private school students." I think the inclusiveness of public education is something most of us take for granted. It is the inclusiveness of public schools that provides its greatest strengths. The report suggests that inclusion is at peril in privatization.

Education in the State of the Union 2007 (incomplete like these sentences)

2007-01-23T21:24:00.000-05:00

Very little in the State of the Union Address on education. A quick mention of the "raised standards" NCLB brought to bear on the education system, and a stated expectation that Congress will work to reauthorize the law. Bush did not mention when; he did not explicitly push for 2007.

Bloomberg's Reforms for NYC 2.0

2007-01-18T09:47:00.000-05:00

Mayor Michael Bloomberg is at it again proposing further reforms for New York City schools. In the works this time are more autonomy for principals and more a equitable funding scheme. The other major proposal involves pension negotiations. Currently Albany sets pensions for NYC teachers. Bloomberg would make pension decisions a part of the regular NYC contract negotiations. The New York Times quotes Bloomberg, "It’s time for Albany to stop playing Santa Claus with the city’s money."

The first two reforms in Bloomberg's package could help some. Words of caution about the first measure to grant hiring and tenure authority to building level leaders: you can give these principals a lot more power, but you better make sure they are dynamic, dynamite, and conscientious leaders who can balance the sometimes incongruous demands of providing exceptional support for their teachers, making sure student needs are being met, and responding to parents and community concerns. In short, firing and hiring of principals must happen first before the firing and hiring of teachers.

Regarding the other reform, equitable distributions of funding by factoring experienced teachers salaries into the equation. This one has been too long overlooked. A fine report by the Education Trust, California’s Hidden Teacher Spending Gap: How State and District Budgeting Practices Shortchange Poor and Minority Students and Their Schools also suggests this approach to school funding is long overdue.

As for pension negotiations set by the city, that would take some work and approval by Albany. Not going to happen, EE odds 7/2.

Affirmative Action: A Seesaw for the Ages, by Stanley Fish

2007-01-17T08:46:00.000-05:00

Stanley Fish recently published a most interesting essay on on affirmative action--a topic he has written extensively on. In "Revisiting Affirmative Action with Help from Kant" (Times' Select required for full view) Professor Fish predicts one of the finest rationalist philosopher's, Emanuel Kant's, take on a policy like Affirmative Action (AA) in light of recent events in Michigan and elsewhere. Fish reasons that the debate surrounding AA is analogous to any discourse on constitutionality--a battle for a living, breathing document, or a set of standards set in stone and applicable to any time under any circumstances.

In this essay Fish openly wrestles with himself, and former self, and uses Kant as the dartboard to catch arguments he flings at reason and morality. Scathing and supportive, intelligent and witty responses follow his remarks. My comment is that AA compels us to look in the wrong places on purpose. Rather than reach for the constitution, AA should impel us to treat it with temporal favor and reach down to redress opportunities for young people who as Kant said "must go through a long apprenticeship before he can enjoy anything for his own sustenance."Why fix a leaky roof when the floor is too splintered to walk on? Fish would do well to realize it's both the chicken and the egg, AA addresses only part of the problem. But who am I to suggest that Professor Fish should do anything? It's refreshing he would come down to our level and share his intellectual struggle.

American Schools Get Classy

2007-01-14T23:18:00.000-05:00

USA Today picked up a story this week, "Schools turning to wealth, not race, to integrate schools." The story focuses on class in America and using class instead of race as a means to promote diversity in schools. While not new, it's nice to see these kinds of stories gaining in the popular press. Hopefully we're at the beginning of a major push for more class consciousness in America. For good and bad, and business as usual, the classroom is the laboratory.

Petrilli's Zeitgeist: DEDSEEA (Salty)

2007-01-08T13:52:00.000-05:00

Michael J. Petrilli, Fordham Foundation Vice President, has publicly admitted defeat on NCLB, the reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Schools Act that celebrates its fifth birthday today. This is a major change in position for the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, but not out of step with Federalist-minded conservatives everywhere. Petrilli clumsily names his best two options in lieu of No Child Left Behind the "Do It Yourself or Don’t Do It At All Act."

I'd rename these two options, at least according to Petrilli's writing here in the National Review, the "Do Everything or Designate to the States Everything Education Act" or DEDSEEA, saltiness implied. As you may intuit, these two options for life after NCLB would have the Federal government taking on all the responsibility for education with national standards and a national test, or handing back all the responsibility to the states with a cracked window open for Federal involvement through grants processes.

There is a lot to digest in Petrilli's admission, but it's a solid read and interesting piece. It's tough for me not to advocate for national standards as they seem to be the holy grail of equitable education. But there is such a rich history of federalism in this country and states seem to want to hold on to their education mandate. For starters I think reauthorization should focused feverishly on educator needs re: NCLB and what doesn't work because of onerous details and what doesn't work because educators lack the tools/know how to get it done. Reauthorization activities should start in the classroom and then work hard to determine where and if states need help. For my money, today, an organic outgrowth of experience and research is necessary to determine the fate of NCLB. Congress should spend two years doing this tough work to determine if reauthorization is prudent.

No Child Needs Design

2007-01-07T19:38:00.000-05:00

Eduwonk gets the leaked redesign logo for NCLB and it's not pretty. Art teachers everywhere including the Eponymous Educator's mother will shriek at the sloppy blotches of red trailing downward heavy (did ED forget to take the lead out of the red paint). It's strange that a law billed to help children would suggest, however subliminally, that five years later kids need a ton of work, at least in the art department. I guess all that attention to Math, Reading, and Science has left the ED wanting in artistic skills too.

I know it's a petty post, but it's the weekend. Whimsy and play are allowed. Ugly sloppy logo indeed.

NCTQ's Bid for Transparency in Contracts and Power in Publicity

2007-01-05T15:28:00.000-05:00

Yesterday at the Charles Sumner School in Washington, DC, the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) launched to the press and public "Teacher Rules, Roles, and Rights" a database of collective bargaining agreements and employee handbooks from the top 50 largest school districts in the nation. Bill Robb wrote it up for the USA Today front page on Jan. 4, 2007 here. It's a sensationalist lede, but as featured speakers at yesterday's event cautioned Robb's lede doesn't really tell much of the story.

All the speakers promoted caution along with a side helping of kumbaya to salve the seethe that might otherwise burn between teachers unions and NCTQ. Of course tensions may boil anyway as journalists tinker and toy with the NCTQ data to construct canards like Robb's hypotheticals meant to distract the public from the real good work schools do most days and the good work schools are fully capable of doing every day, even on the worst days.

A brief script of the cautionary web spun follows:

William Taylor, President of the Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights expressed the challenges of turning legalese agreements between unions and districts into digestible, easily understood prose for the NCTQ site. Kate Walsh, NCTQ's president, reminded the crowd that contracts don't describe actual teacher practices, but portray a policy agreement reached by rule. John Mitchell, AFT spokesperson, suggested that the organization he represents doesn't even endorse the site, but expressed gratitude that NCTQ responded to complaints and concerns the AFT had with an earlier version of the website data. Mitchell further endorsed that the press should use these data as a starting point; they should make many calls before penning a story about a "type" of agreement. "There are fifty agreements," he said, "each is different." Julie Koppich, an education consultant, stressed the difficulty and import of understanding the context of collective bargaining agreements, and Richard Colvin, Director of the Hechinger Institute seconded Koppich's remarks adding that the NCTQ data should be used to improve reporting not repeat the same kinds of reporting that ignore coverage on student impact or teacher hiring and retention.

It is clear that NCTQ will use this database, created in the spirit of transparency (the kind of stuff Ann Florini, among others, advocates would make the world go round much smoother) as a tool to get them some serious notice among the press and education policy elites: think Jay Matthews' Challenge Index. I couldn't help but notice some wholly incredulous looks shared between a few folks sitting in front of me as the NCTQ site was being demoed (as a gotcha!) to show how some districts miscount or creatively count teacher contract days, or the ways the data could illuminate pay discrepancy, or "penalty" as an NCTQ staffer put it, between traditionally and non-traditionally certified teachers. As those eyes rolled and lips curled I couldn't help but wonder why these types of "transparency" projects that were becoming so pervasive and profitable in education weren't being promulgated in other public works sectors organized by labor or otherwise, like police, fire, and refuse.

The NCTQ site seems to hold promise. Sure there is room for abuse, and clearly not every reporter who will use the site got to sit through the lectures on how to use the site responsibly and effectively. It's not clear what the payoff of all this information will be. For some it will be more fuel for the hate game against collective bargaining and labor, for others a way to more easily compare salaries and benefits and policies, possibly even emboldening current and future professionals.

Chaotic Middle Schools: Style Over Substance in Shotgun Reform

2007-01-03T08:28:00.000-05:00

A story in today's New York Times underscores the harsh realities of middle school life. While not especially provocative from a policy standpoint, Trying to Find Solutions in Chaotic Middle Schools treats the middle years with deference. More a bumbling portrait sketch of manufactured "middle" adolescence, the article reveals subdued afflictions troubling early teens like looking forward to high school, dating older boys, and sexual innuendo run rampant.

For me the meat of the article is in this statement: "In New York City, almost every kind of experiment is under way." It's easy to indict this shotgun approach--too many experiments with not enough attention to research and results. Elissa Gootman, the article's author, gives the grade reconfiguration strategy the most play. At first blush grade reconfiguration seems like a good idea. Middle schools and junior highs have been experimenting with reconfiguration strategies for years, but there is something compelling about keeping students in grades 6-8 in the same schools they've attended since kindergarten. Maybe that's why so many of these grade reconfiguration topics appear perennially in our newspapers.

As appealing as grade reconfiguration approaches may sound, there is enough evidence that suggests that the grades that make up a middle school matter much less than the personnel and the leadership steering the middle school. Thomas O. Erb, editor of the Middle School Journal for the National Middle School Association suggests that effective leadership is critical to improving the lives of students in physical and emotional transition. In a recent article, "Middle School Models are Working in Many Grade Configurations to Boost Student Performance" Erb extols the virtues of leadership to aid any configuration of the middle grades.

"Effective school leadership understands that real change is not something that comes easily, not something that results from the imposition of bureaucratic or mechanistic practices, and not something that will happen without careful scrutiny of the current state of mediocrity." Further, Erb suggests that clear and consistent expectations along with "common decision-making vision that [lead] to creative, inviting, supportive and safe school environments."

Erb recommends some of the reforms large city school districts are implementing--smallness and fewer transitions--but he says without specific attention to effective middle school models these reforms amount to smoke clouds that obfuscate deeper problems.

Gootman portrays the middle school affective domain well (for the educators out there think Bloom's taxonomy): what so many of us find fascinating about middle grades. Some research on successes and failures of grade reconfiguration along with a broader criticism of patchwork reforms would have helped Gootman's angle.

"Quick" Says Rankings Promote Dysfunction

2006-12-21T15:46:00.000-05:00

Kevin Carey over at the Quick and the Ed takes a look at the Florida article I looked at yesterday from a slightly different yet probably no less bothered position. He takes the tact that schools should be ranked according to what they teach--more of a value-added approach. And while I agree with Carey that a system of college rankings based heavily on inputs rather than outputs is problematic and dysfunctional, it's an awful big task to usurp the venerable U.S. News rankings. I'm no higher education expert, but the handful of higher courses I've had suggested to me that rankings are here to stay. There is a lot of money and prestige in it for someone who comes up with a CNET style ranking system for higher education institutions and primary and secondary schools complete with video rankings, archives, and upgradable and editable user reviews. Anyone out there up for working on a project like that give me a holla'.

Diamonds in Florida Edition: Charters? Disadvantaged Kids? Elite Universities?

2006-12-20T16:02:00.000-05:00

In Florida news, wish I was there, a new study (pdf) from the Department of Education rings the "charter schools are not a panacea" bell. Read about it here at the Miami Herald. Traditional arguments abound in the Herald piece over similar student performance between two school types--charter and traditional. The interesting trend here is that Florida charter schools look more and more like traditional public schools. Take ethnicity. Ten year data show that percentages of minority students overall have fallen and more closely resemble the traditional public school population. There's not much bad news in this report in fact, unless of course you vehemently oppose charters because you believe they suck funding from traditional public schools. But there is always a counter argument looming that says that per pupil expenditures are markedly lower at charters than traditional publics in no small part due to lack of facilities funds.

In other Florida news, The NYTimes did a piece this morning on public higher education institutions working to up the excellence ante. The story by TAMAR LEWIN features both an Alma Matter and an institution I attended some years ago. An issue running rampant, and thankfully so, is the class divide at the nation's highest ranked (and some middle ranked) colleges and universities. One of the better if not longer reads out there on the subject is William Bowen's Equity And Excellence In American Higher Education. What we're up against, and what the Times implicitly suggests is a class divide at America's top universities. This class divide will continue to grow without efforts like North Carolina's, Virginia's, and now apparently Florida's. Incredulous "apparently" for effect.

Here's the thing. There are not that many diamond-in-the-rough kids out there. These schools need as many of the diamonds as they can get to meet the ideal student body they so desperately wish to have to address a host of concerns induced by social, economic, and political reasons not to mention U.S. News. Unless these schools lower their standards, admit kids from disadvantaged backgrounds that did well in school, but not as well as the folks who flood the academic halls of the so many top Universities, we're going to continue to see low participation in programs like Access UVA and the Carolina Covenant.

I'm all for admitting students who did well by their circumstances, but I wonder if these students belong at the most elite colleges straight from high school. The elite institutions must understand that if they do admit the students who are more like "cubic zirconium in the rough" than "diamonds," the elites will need to pour an increasing amount of resources into these kids to get them up to speed to excel at college level work. So far I'm not terribly impressed at what these schools are doing.

Some elite institutions have taken a step in the right direction, but racial diversity does not equal economic diversity, if for the simple fact that deck of cards staked against the most disadvantaged kids is real and affects how well they do in grades K-12.

It's interesting how the definition of an elite university is changing to reflect an almost charitable egalitarianism--facade may it be. University Systems like California are great at handling placement within a system. Virginia's higher education system for example arguably competes against itself in many ways. In other words in Virginia, unlike California, there is no true hierarchy of schools and a lot of overlap in institutional mission exists, no matter what SCHEV projects. I wonder if there is something to do with a state's higher ed systems' coherency that might predict if a school (flagship in the cases of Virginia, Florida, and North Carolina) feels compelled to extend this brand of charitable egalitarianism. I wonder.

Influence: Surveying the Ed Landscape

2006-12-19T09:38:00.000-05:00

The Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, with support from the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, published a survey of influence in the educational landscape. Influence: A Study of the Factors Shaping Education Policy (pdf), a report by Christopher B. Swanson and Janelle Barlage, ranks educational studies, organizations, people, and information sources.

The report is about as good a short course on Who's Who in educational policy as you will find. It's certainly not comprehensive, but love it or hate it, like coaches polls, the list approximates influence surprisingly well. "Influence" makes a great intro read for an education policy program or intro to educational policy course. I need to spend more time with the survey results myself.

What's Good for Maryland Males is Good for Others Too

2006-12-18T16:52:00.000-05:00

Last week the Baltimore Sun published an article on Baltimore youth--black and male. Liz Bowie writes that a task force of 45 educators, business leaders, and union officials that had met for two years discussed their proposal for Maryland's black male youth. Their proposal is worth reading about and included ideas and strategies (proposed policies) that should be considered for all students struggling academically, not just boys--a study and emphasis like this risks understating other at-risk groups like low income minority girls.

Pay particular attention to the panel's recommendations that suggest schools cannot shoulder the entire moral responsibility of raising a child--a popular urban chord, but often unheard by all types of education ideologues. Suggestions like single sex classrooms; more mainstreaming of special education students; and more rigor in the curriculum, college prep, and PSAT test taking have positive effects for many types of struggling students. The gist here is that more attention to high schools is needed: there are a lot of creative and committed people out there who know that a child's last chance needn't come when he is eight years old.

Giving Art Teachers a Bad Name

2006-12-15T11:17:00.000-05:00

A cheeky end to the week. Sometimes you wonder how this stuff surfaces in the major papers. WAPO portrays the painted posterior as newsworthy, suggesting it's yet another litmus for free speech and the limits of what teachers can and can't do. Of course this guy knew what he was doing. Check out the lame disguise. Also, the University Art department where he experimented with this technique thought it offensive. Surprise that a school division would also have problems with the paintings and the video. Hope the art thing goes well for him because after the video it's going to take a very understanding school board to reinstate him properly.

Where do we go from here?

2006-12-07T11:55:00.000-05:00

Funny how Matthew Yglesias, another eponymous online entity, is concerned that Andrew Rotherham over at Eduwonk hasn't blogged on Paul Tough's very well written and important post-Thanksgiving NYT Magazine piece "What it Takes to Make a Student" (Times Select now required bummer). Funny because I didn't feel compelled to post on it either, even though I felt like I should say something. I read Tough's article enthralled while I was in New York and kept waiting for help--for answers--but aren't we all? I took notes even. I took notes on some research Tough quotes like Martin Seligman's positive psychology and graduate student Angela Duckworth's work on selective self discipline.

After some prodding Eduwonk's response to Tough's article is crafted and deliberate and holds the article up as tops for the year. Eduwonk writes:

"I liked with the direction the story pointed at the end. Basically we have an enormous social problem here but whether or not we solve it is hardly out of our hands. However, it requires a pretty fundamental rethinking of how we do things in an industry that has changed little in a half-century despite enormous social, demographic, and labor market changes. That, of course, is why I come to work every day."

It's hard not to second Eduwonk enthusiastically. So I won't hold back. Tough's article was a strongly written popular piece. Though Tough's article lacks in precision, it tells us where we are and provides some possibilities. Anyhow, for my readers (I know there are a couple, thank you so much by the way), I just want to share a similar sentiment. When I read Tough's piece in the NYT Magazine I couldn't put it down. But I didn't have much to say afterward either. It's like pondering a road sign, the meaning in a name, the history of the place, the people who shape the land. We can sit and look at the sign, but without following where it goes it's tough to know much.

Parents v. Seattle and Meredith v. Jefferson

2006-12-04T23:59:00.000-05:00

The Supreme Court heard Parents v. Seattle and Meredith v. Jefferson on Monday, two cases that will largely determine the fate of many of the nation's racial integration programs for the foreseeable future. See Robert Barnes' WAPO story here and Linda Greenhouse's NYT story here. At question is the constitutionality of the voluntary efforts school districts make to encourage racial integration. Arguments in the particular centered on whether integration programs identify students by the color of their skin and use that color as a criterion to achieve a desirable student body.

Many expect based on Monday's testimony and exchanges that the final ruling the Court's conservative majority will take the position that using skin color to achieve balance or representativeness is unconstitutional. The Court's moderate-to-liberal minority will argue as Justice Breyer did today:

“Think, go back to Cooper v. Aaron. Go back to the case where this court with paratroopers had to use tremendous means to get those children into the school. That’s because the society was divided.”

Justice Breyer continued: “Here we have a society, black and white, who elect school board members who together have voted to have this form of integration. Why, given that change in society, which is a good one, how can the Constitution be interpreted in a way that would require us, the judges, to go in and make them take the black children out of the school?”

Something very important is at stake here; Justice Breyer gets close to it. Unfortunately so many of our schools are so heavily segregated--complacently segregated--that Monday's arguments are not germane enough for most people to care. Most, but not all.

Aloha, Brilliant

2006-12-01T22:16:00.000-05:00

Sara Mead over at the Quick and the Ed gets downright scholarly on the whole DC mayoral takeover and governance possibilities in response to Eduwonk's post of Mike Casserly's Sunday WAPO op-ed. The exchange is smart, but Mead's closer is brilliant (scroll to the end in her update). Aloha! Got room for another researcher on that trip?

Department of Guilty Until Proven Innocent, and by then it's Too Late?

2006-12-01T18:20:00.000-05:00

Something to noch on for the weekend. The Albequerque Tribune published a story on how New Mexico is acting to revoke licenses in advance of due process for teachers charged with forms of sexual misconduct. The article states that the NM education department's Ethics Bureau is investigating 104 cases of teacher misconduct. While I have a hard time picking a bone with revoking licenses to protect children from predators, and it's shocking that a man investigated in 1998 and charged in 2001 and 2002, and indicted on over 40 counts of sexual misconduct could still have his license, it still seems like there is room for abuse here.

Education Secretary Veronica Garcia makes some good points though and some reassurance that a teacher could get their license reinstated if found not guilty of the charges. Of course that could take awhile. I'm not sure how big of a problem teacher misconduct is nationally. Anecdotally and locally I am aware of schools that have had serious problems with a handful of teachers. It's troubling that a state has to step up its investigating power against teachers. Garcia waxes quizzically: "Either we've stepped up or people are misbehaving more."

Mayoral Takeover and $150 Laptops

2006-11-30T09:15:00.000-05:00

Two quick ones of note today.

The first: Adrian Fenty, Mayor Elect of Washington, DC, is heading down to Miami (lucky) to meet with Miami-Dade County school Superintendent Rudolph F. Crew. Fenty is very publicly doing his homework to help build a case that he is a studied student of mayoral takeover or whatever hybrid he and the school board decide upon. Not be outdone in a show of studiousness DC Schools Chairman Vincent C. Gray will also visit Miami Dade, albeit separately. Next week Fenty will meet with Joel Klein, Chancellor, in New York City. Leaders are getting their ducks are in a row for some changes in DC.

The second: The New York Times published a piece on $150 laptops for the students of developing nations. Apparently, and with good cause, this initiative has stirred debate. Even Bill Gates weighed in suggesting laptops might not square culturally or pragmatically with a developing nation's educational needs. The key here is access to the internet. Information is fast becoming a necessity the world over, not a luxury. These laptops would be equipped with connectivity. The problem the Times fails to play up is the associated costs with getting telecom, satellite, and wireless network infrastructures up and operating to scale with the millions of new users who would come online when the laptops are distributed. Still waiting on our own Wi-Fi clouds to bring information equity to our own citizens.

Inconvenience is 50,000 Must See Movies Sitting in a Warehouse: Or Big Energy and the Soapboxes they Buy

2006-11-28T21:09:00.000-05:00

"Informing teachers/students about uncertainties in climate science will begin to erect barriers against further efforts to impose Kyoto-like measures in the future," read a memo leaked to the media in 1998 from the American Petroleum Institute.

I earlier criticized AESA's grievance(s) with NCLB for needing any examples of how NCLB fails to live up to its promises. AESA's beef with market capitalism in the schools could use this story, "Science a la Joe Camel" published in the Washington Post as ammunition.

Laurie David, one of the producers of An Inconvenient Truth, responsibly reveals more inconvenient truths. This time the truths are about education and some of the corporate funding that influences education. 50,000 donated DVDs of David's and Al Gore's movie sit in LA because the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) insists that they will not benefit and wish to remain free from political association. The NSTA wishes to keep corporate interests and funding in tact and sees the film as disruptive to those goals. NSTA has accepted $6 million from Exxon Mobil since 1996. Laurie insists that energy sector profits are buying classroom soapboxes.

I don't doubt that she is right. Anyhow, it's a good read and could make a movie of its own.

A Petition Calling For the Dismantling of the No Child Left Behind Act

2006-11-28T09:35:00.001-05:00

I came across this guy today: sent to me by a good friend. The Education Roundtable and AESA excoriate NCLB (Ed Roundtable authored the petition, thanks "philip") and remind me that our worldviews are not all the same. Something as simple as trying to do well by our children becomes the fulcrum on which our vision of a nation tips. I agree and disagree with Education Roundtable's misgivings with NCLB. Some comments on a few of Ed Roundtable and AESA's grievances below.

Grievance number 12: [NCLB] Applies standards to discrete subjects rather than to larger goals such as insightful children, vibrant communities, and a healthy democracy. Yes it is true that standards involve subject matter. If insightful children and vibrant communities were standardized we'd have an awful mess--a mess Ed Roundtable would no doubt consider far more deleterious to democracy. The hope of NCLB's standards is that students will master subject matter at the arm's length of skilled professionals. In mastering basic skills students will have the minimum faculty to reach the competencies Ed Roundtable and the rest of like minded people want for them.

Grievance number 1: [NCLB] Misdiagnoses the causes of poor educational development, blaming teachers and students for problems over which they have no control.
Structural deficits and cultural incongruities are diagnoses. Tests are not. Tests reveal problems. Teachers and students should not be blamed, but they can be part of a solution. More can be done to diagnose our struggling schools and communities. At the very least, NCLB exposes serious gaps and gives benchmarks for some kinds of improvements.

Which brings me to Grievance number 2: [NCLB] Assumes that competition is the primary motivator of human behavior and that market forces can cure all educational ills.
Last time I checked NCLB was not a privatization scheme. Many view it as a short path down that long road, but as of today public education exists in tact. As for providing benchmarks for improvement, who among us can publish an essay, hand in an "A" paper, or disseminate a report without some meetable standards of quality and attainment? Where do we go if we don't have a goal? As for competition, there really isn't any competition within NCLB save for competition with a benchmark. Sure there are incentives and disincentives surrounding AYP, imperfect ones at that, but couldn't we just as easily call what Ed Roundtable has dubbed "competition," transparency? Last time I checked transparency was the bedrock of democratic ideals.

Listen, in no way do my playful arguments succeed in rebuffing Ed ROundtable's list of legitimate if undocumented grievances. Ed Roundtable needs to provide an alternative more substantive than "we believe in accountability, but...." Yes, Ed Roundtable makes some appealing points. For my money Ed Roundtable has not made a case to scrap a law that at least exposes some harsh truths about who we are and who we value. Congress should read this, and should be provided evidence of Ed Roundtable and AESA's grivances. I won't be signing the petition, but I welcome the discussion it hopefully foments.

Youth Makes Big Change in Chile

2006-11-25T10:22:00.000-05:00

Chilean students conclude a year of activism that tossed them into the fray of national educational policy. The Washington Post applies an MTV coming-of-age veneer to a national student movement that pushed for more equitable funding and a more centralized control. Organizing very large events (hundreds of thousands) and meeting with government officials, these high schoolers affected change for a country inured to funding education differently for the rich and the poor--a common ailment the world over. The high school students enjoyed a lot support. Chile's people rallied behind the students with support as high as 70 percent at times.

WAPO ponders their futures, these youths with adult experiences. Will they govern, continue activism locally or nationally, teach, or reminisce the halcyon days? Having known a grown activist who changed the politics of Mexico during their student revolution, I'd wager a bit of all of the above.

Local Licensure Worth Watching, or Half Baked?

2006-11-16T17:27:00.000-05:00

Moving is hard. Change is hard too. The Denver Post reports on Douglas County Schools in Colorado who are currently experimenting with licensure changes. The state has allowed the local school system to license for tough-to-fill positions like special education. Another component, the "Professionals in Residence" program, will train architects, military personnel, engineers and other skilled workers for part-time instructor positions.

So maybe the county will be more efficient in preparing teachers or, more likely, will get teachers into a classroom prepared or not. But I still haven't seen a compelling argument to localize certification and licensure, especially since the curriculum is largely a function of the state vis-a-vis the Colorado Student Assessment Program. But this is what pilots are for. It just seems like this is another experiment in education without a lay to a claim for improvement or even a strong argument for improvement. We'll see.

Election Aftermath: Not D's and R's, but School Board Presidents and Mayors

2006-11-09T09:32:00.000-05:00

We're in the aftermath of a sweeping election meant to represent change. In Washington, DC a newly elected mayor has an opponent against his plan for change. Robert C. Bobb, school board president elect of DC Public Schools wants to heighten the power of the school board presidency. Mainly, Bobb opposes Adrian Fenty's plan for a mayoral takeover of the DCPS, the likes of which we've seen in LA and NYC.

WAPO describes Bobb's ambitions. He doesn't want to fill the traditional role of approving policies, he wants to advance his own policies. Bobb claims that he has a plan and Fenty does not.
Some highlights from his plan include:

introduce a citywide early learning program aimed at preparing children from birth to age 5 for school;
declare a "reading emergency" to deal with the high illiteracy rate;
find a way for Superintendent Clifford B. Janey to reduce the 15-year timetable for repairing the schools to 7 to 10 years; and
restore confidence in the board by requiring that it conduct more of its business in public.

Fenty's ambitions are lofty. Bobb will have to work quickly if he wants a stake in DCPS decision making. A WAPO story is a good start, but the powers of the office for which Bobb was elected may soon collapse.

Feeling a little disconnected

2006-11-02T22:55:00.000-05:00

It's been a week since I last posted, but I've found a great topic to help get me back into form. Inside Higher Ed regales us with the details of a symposium held earlier in the week. 'Out of Step', Inside's write-up of events at The National Symposium on Postsecondary Student Success, sponsored by the National Postsecondary Education Cooperative, reports on reforming higher education. Reform should be systemic and institutional. 'Systemic' in that the changes can be applied to a variety of colleges and universities. Changes can be applied in scale. 'Institutional' in that the changes must be made university wide, not department by department or within certain programs only.

Five papers were commissioned for the symposium. Leading themes among the papers included:

High expectations; coherence of curriculum; integration of experiences, knowledge and skills; opportunities for active learning; assessment and frequent feedback; collaborative learning opportunities; time on task; respect for diversity; frequent contact with faculty; emphasis on the first-year student experience and the development of connections between classroom work and outside learning opportunities.
Coordination of policies across departments on an institutional level, and across the college and K-12 divide on a societal level, will help facilitate student success.
Classroom and teaching faculty play the most direct role in influencing student success.
Governmental institutions and colleges should engage in continuous information gathering, and policymakers and institutions should support research and theory development targeted at student success.

Student success in college often hinges on connectedness. Students who advance through college narrowly focused on conquering one class at a time miss out. Coherence and cohesion are key to a truly successful college experience.

If it's education, it's also an election year.

2006-10-26T10:31:00.000-04:00

The Washington Post seems to take every chance it can get to marry education and election year politics. Earlier in the week, Florida's FCAT graced WAPO's front page. Peter Whoriskey wrote that exam revolts were holding sway in campaigns in other parts of the country including the races for governor in Texas and Ohio.

Matrimonial profiteering continues today by the Post--in a year where education, sadly, figures low in voter priorities. Virginia's Senate race wrestles with the questions of NCLB and possible future iterations thereof. This is fine and well, but don't expect a substantive educational debate to happen in Virginia in the next 12 days.

As far as proposing something new both candidates pull out strange guns. Allen, to his credit, wants to spend big bucks (shocking I know) on technology grants for HBCUs and other majority minority schools. Webb, lamely, proposes money for troops returning from Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere to go to college. A spokesperson for Webb, Denny Todd, said Webb envisions a plan modeled after the post-World War II G.I. Bill. Hmm, the G.I. Bill still exists! In fact today an Army service member can get up to $72,900 for college. Or build a gun library of their own with the money they'll save.

In closing two beefs: WAPO states that Allen was chief architect of the SOLs. Allen was not. He likes to take credit for the work of a hard working Charlottesville lawyer among others.

Also, in a speech to Patrick Henry College (appealing to the Evangelical Right much!) Allen said NCLB is "forcing Virginia schools to dumb down our curriculum." Right, which is why all Virginia students slam the SOLs based on the "dumbed-down curriculum" and score high NAEP marks year in and year out.

Mo Flow for Teach: Republicans Rescue Election with Merit Pay?

2006-10-23T14:10:00.000-04:00

The Boston Globe publishes an AP story "Money Flows into Teacher Bonus Program" that has the Bush administration set to dole out federal pay-for-performance funds to select states that qualified for grants. Sixteen grants totaling $42 million will impact local teachers whose schools secured federal monies by submitting a successful application back in May. Schools that serve high populations of economically at-risk children received priority in the grant process.

The article waxes suspicious on the timing of the grants, and suggests that the monies will inject some sorely needed good news into sinking Republican campaigns. (See this post's title for incredulous response) I'm not so sure that more money for teachers is something many Republicans put high on their wish list anyway. We'll see.

Secretary Spellings believes the grants will work to ameliorate teacher quality differences between affluent and poor districts. "These grants will work to fix this by encouraging and rewarding teachers for taking the tough jobs in the schools and classrooms where our children need them the most," Spellings said. The grants--valued at $1800 to $2000--will be dispersed to teachers and administrators who raise test scores. The off chance of receiving twenty Benjamins isn't much of a reason to swap jobs. Teachers who work with kids who on average are more motivated and achieve more don't gamble for a chance to work with kids whose life chances are severely bleaker.

I'd like to do a study of what happens in these schools after the federal pay-for-performance monies land. There could be some interesting aftereffects like teachers jostling for the kids that are more inclined to make gains in the upper tiers of at-risk tracked schools? I'll shut my trap. Between the Globe and me, that's enough cynicism for one afternoon.

Goin Down to Minco Gonna Have Myself a Time

2006-10-20T15:49:00.000-04:00

Wow! Thanks to Eduwonk and KOCO.com out of Oklahoma for making my weekend.

In the video--watch the whole thing--I keep waiting for Kenny to accidentally get killed and for the South Park boys to appear to deliver the classic lines. Maybe instead of body armor for troops in Iraq we should send Bill Crozier (frequent republican candidate featured in the nnuck nnuck nnuck video) over there with a bunch of used textbooks. This could be another brilliant and cheap policy solution for Republicans.

True Colors at Montgomery Blair High

2006-10-18T10:52:00.000-04:00

A policy at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, MD has caught the ire of parents and students and has made its way all the way to the Washington Post. In a "you-have-to-read-it-to-believe-it" story, Daniel deVise explains a policy that overtly labels kids. As if that doesn't happen enough. Students wear ID tags coded by one of ten colors that identify them in a variety of ways including by magnet program and in some cases by class year. One color, red, codes for two groups of people, a confounding decision that potentially reveals a lot about the decision makers. Red codes for freshman and ESOL students. So if you are learning English you are the spiritual equivalent of a freshman and vice-versa.

Montgomery Blair's parent association met last night to register an official opinion on the potential dangers and unintended consequences of the ID policy. A Blair website that features open discussion about the policy can be found here. I'm sorry, but the folks who came up with this draconian policy who claim they couldn't have imagined unintended consequences should be censured.

Fenty Studies Bloomberg Takeover Plan

2006-10-16T09:54:00.000-04:00

The Washington Post writes that Adrian Fenty (D), ostensible governor elect for DC mayor, believes he has a mandate to takeover D.C. Public School. Fenty is quoted as saying "In all eight wards [of his primary campaign], people said, 'Fenty, do something about the schools.'"

Coached by New York City Mayor Bloomberg and Joel Klein, Fenty is strongly considering plans to size control of the DCPS immediately upon election. Current Mayor, Anthony Williams tried a similar takeover in 2004, but failed. The Post attributed that failure to the loss of democratic parent and community voice in their children's schooling. In New York, part of the takeover philosophy has been about seizing control from disparate and dysfunctional groups.

"Parents know about their kids, but they're not professional educators," Bloomberg said. Of course, by that logic, neither are Bloomberg or Klein. "There is no reason to think they should be designing a school system or running a school system. Do you want parents to make medical decisions? I don't think so." Bloomberg's analogy to the health system is completely flawed. Citizens do make decisions about health care everyday. They make decisions on what doctor to see, or what procedure to have done, or what medicine they can afford. But unlike schools, citizens aren't as overtly barred from being admitted to quality health care as they are when it comes to quality education.

Much of the success Bloomberg and Klein claim from the takeover bid is from small schools--a $100 million, Gates Foundation vehicle that has created some real hope for New York City schools, but has not offered hope to scale. Many kids are turned away from these highly coveted spots in small schools in New York. New York City is not the educational envy Bloomberg might like to project.

For Fenty to imitate the Bloomberg takeover, a lot will have to happen. I think a lot of people will hold their breath on this one. Here's hoping Fenty can make it work better than New York. I for one think he'll have a hard time gaining control of the schools, D.C. school politics being what they are. But stranger things have happened. Look for more to come.

The Insiders: An Outsider's Perspective

2006-10-13T20:58:00.001-04:00

It's the end of the work week and I'm a little low on energy, but the good folks at Public Agenda are making this easy on me. I'm sure they've gotten other bites besides this blog, but here goes anyway. You're welcome.

The Insiders: How Principals and Superintendents See Education Today, a new report in the Education Insights series is worth a look. The report, among other things, takes the contemporary pulse of school leaders (at-risk and on-par contexts included) on several topics including math and science achievement, teacher professionalism, and meeting NCLB requirements. For me there were few surprises here. For most questions I could have put on a superintendent hat and then switched to a principal hat and my responses in both hats would have been with the majority responses every time. Some surprises curdle at the top. *Note: these are not verbatim findings, only casual observations that will misrepresent Public Agenda's research if you don't read their published findings here.

One: Superintendents believe kids are learning enough math and science and that academic standards are high enough. Public Agenda (PA, here onward) cites a disconnect between what business leaders perceive: in a flat world this would be more worrisome.

Two: Principals and superintendents put stock in their teachers knowing their subject matter, i.e. they are confident that NCLB teacher quality mandates are being met and will continue to improve.

Three: Although PA portrays this statistic positively I latch onto the negative. PA summarizes the finding thusly: Most superintendents and half of principals say the quality of new teachers is improving. What is more interesting to me is that 19 percent of principals surveyed believe new teacher quality is worse--8 percent of sups say the same! Is there too great an age gap for these folks to relate? Have standards in ed schools supplanted talent, enthusiasm, and creativity? Or is there a more deviant correlation--ed schools have trained a generation of teachers incredulous of standards. It's probably none of these--it's probably just lousy memory--but further inquiry would be valuable as to why some school leaders perceive less teacher quality in their corps.

The report's findings about leaders at "mainly-minority" schools are revealing, if not troubling. Go read them. I could say a lot about why these school leaders' responses don't surprise me, citing theory and sources, but I can sum it up easily with one word: politics. Project what you expect and it will almost be as if it is.

Bush's Summit on School Violence Fingers Schools as Solution

2006-10-10T13:20:00.000-04:00

School violence buzz continues. This time the administration is responding. In a summit today in Maryland suburbs, Bush, Spellings, and several cabinet members met with community leaders, experts, and concerned parents to at least demonstrate a federal interest in the recent school violence that claimed lives in Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The message for the morning was cooperation and coordination. Bush took a few cracks on the chin when reporters revealed that the Bush administration has recommended cutting $347 million in school-safety grants for states this year due to their "ineffective" nature.

Despite these violent acts including: yesterday's account of a 13-year-old student in Joplin, Mo., who carried an AK-47 into his middle school and fired a shot into a ceiling; and schools in Virginia, Nebraska, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Wisconsin that have been closed or locked down in the past week because of threats of violence or guns school violence as a trend is on a downturn.

But that doesn't mean that we should avoid policy solutions. Any policy solution should include discussion about gun control. The San Francisco Chronicle publishes an opininon here worth reading. Might be a good time to slide Bowling for Columbine into the Netflix queue. Bush is right that we must focus on school preparedness for crisis as well as creating a culture of identifying and confronting brewing violence among hostile and disaffected youth. Bush is wrong for avoiding any discussion about guns. For sh*t's sake, can we please keep AK-47s off the streets. And can we please, please do something about legislators like Republican Frank Lasee who want to tackle violence with clandestinely armed teachers in the schools.

*update: While we're at it, focusing all the potential policy fixes on schools, here's an angle by the New York Times suggesting things could have gone smoother for law enforcement in the Pennsylvania case.

Where's the Beef? Texas.

2006-10-05T22:53:00.000-04:00

An article on merit pay in the Dallas Morning News here caught the eye of the Gadfly here. A few beefs. One, the condescension in the story is spread thick. Modestly paid teachers opting out of gobs of cash??! They must be crazy or communist or both!

Choice is built into the Texas law designed to send "cash" to low performing schools to reward core subjects teachers who improve. Schools may either accept or reject funding. Dallas Morning News cites around 2 percent of 1,161 eligible schools have rejected the money so far.

Speaking of bias, Gadfly annoys with a fatuous analogy likening teachers to pro sports players. I repeat, teachers to pro sports players. Gadfly is baffled by merit pay's detractors who cite their allegiance to teamwork and collegiality over competitive bonuses.

"This "teamwork" argument is oft-cited within the walls of the education system. But somehow players on professional sports teams manage to live with themselves--and create a winning spirit--even when the quarterback gets a bonus or the pitcher makes ungodly sums of money."

Brilliant! A rookie's minimum contract salary in the NFL is $275,000 in 2006. Many rookie teachers make less than $35,000. Maybe $275,000 helps to live with oneself, or maybe the conference title bonuses that arrive for winning teams helps. For profit, hyper competitive professional sports leagues are exceedingly different than schools. Also, last time I checked many professional sports teams lack that certain 'winning spirit' Gadfly assumes they all have. '03-'05 San Francisco 49ers anyone?

Teachers would do well to avoid using family similes. Teachers work in teams. I like families as much as the next guy, but talk about families connotes a homely, unprofessional, and soft vibe. Schools are organizations of professionals who in Texas have the option not to "take the money and run." Instead schools have the option to behave critically, act on principle, and make a choice, becoming of their institution.

Last beef I promise. I'll close with Gov. Perry's equivocal sales pitch for the Texas merit program. "It's time to start treating teachers as individual professionals and not as just a monolithic profession. When you reward excellence the same as mediocrity, all too often mediocrity becomes the standard." Perry falsely asserts that teachers have been rewarded for excellence in the past. To suggest that pay schemes based on undifferentiated performance amount to reward is a linguistic leap. Salary and reward are just not the same.

Preparedness

2006-10-05T17:15:00.000-04:00

Following a spate of depraved school violence last week, Maine is examining its own crisis guidelines. Current law requires all 177 school boards to "approve a plan developed by the school unit administration working with local public safety, mental health and law enforcement officials to deal with crises and potential crisis situations involving violent acts by or against students in each school in the school administrative unit." The Maine Department of Education requires that school boards report a readiness plan, but does not examine the individual plans. Last year, 40 percent of districts did not report their readiness plan in case of a crisis.

In a crisis, particularly one involving crazed individuals, a few good decisions by school staff can help a lot and save lives. Lawmakers would be wise to make sure that every school has a series of disaster criteria, including what to do in a hostage situation and a school shooting. Legislation enacted in Minnesota recently reflects the need to be prepared.

MN is considering developing specific K-12 teacher and school administrator competencies related to emergency preparedness and providing emergency preparedness training to K-12 teachers and administrators.

Schools are largely safe areas for children, and notoriously unsafe schools have been made safer by police presence, bag and person screening, and ID cards. Safe schools would be even safer if they provided more training in disaster situations. Part of the blessing in surviving tragedy is the chance to keep trying.

Skinned Knee and Parental Involvement on Yom Kippur

2006-10-02T14:15:00.000-04:00

In recognition of the most holy day of the Jewish Calendar I offer a post on learning. The New York Times today published a fine piece by Slate Magazine's Emily Bazelon. The subject of the article is a book by Los Angeles psychologist Wedny Mogel titled The Blessing of a Skinned Knee: Using Jewish Teachings to Raise Self-Reliant Children.

Mogel having discovered Jewish faith after a primarily agnostic childhood discovered some of Judaism's tenets buried in the Talmud like fathers teaching their sons to swim. Mogel credits her faith's teachings for filling in gaps clinical applications of psychology cannot. Skinned Knee reads:

"Jewish wisdom holds that our children don't belong to us. They are both a loan and a gift from God, and the gift has strings attached. Our job is to raise our children to leave us. The children's job is to find their own path in life. If they stay carefully protected in the nest of the family, children will become weak and fearful or feel too comfortable to want to leave."

Mogel diagnoses many of her younger patients as lacking balance between their school lives and their home lives. These children are symptomatic of parents who push too hard when it comes to school and compensate as push-overs when it comes to chores, family obligations, and courtesies in the home life.

This dovetails with an area of research I've been recentlty exploring: parental involvement. Kathleen V. Hoover-Dempsey et. al (2005) review the literature in the field and conclude that parents' decisions about becoming involved in their children's education are influenced by role construction for involvement, sense of efficacy for helping the child succeed in school, perception of invitations to involvement, and life-context variables. To understand what these mean beyond simple deduction really requires a full read here, but examining why we participate in our children's lives, and how we participate in their lives can help us better prepare them to go do the one thing we cannot stop them from doing, nor should: our children will assume responsibility for our collective future.