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REL N

Accountability Lost : Education Next - 0 views

educationnext.org/accountability-lost

ADMS707 Niemeyer Boards accountability

shared by REL N on 17 Feb 11 - Cached
    • REL N
      REL N on 17 Feb 11
       
      Tried to identify confounding variables to increase the likelihood that any changes in voting behavior were due to school performance
  • incumbent school board members won a larger share of the total vote in a precinct when test scores in that precinct improved. We estimate that improvement from the 25th to the 75th percentile of test-score change—that is, moving from a loss of 4 percentile points to a gain of 3.8 percentile points between 1999 and 2000—produced on average an increase of 3 percentage points in an incumbent’s vote share. If precinct test scores dropped from the 75th to the 25th percentile of test-score change, the associated 3-percentage-point decrease in an incumbent’s vote share could substantially erode an incumbent’s margin of victory.
  • percentile scores had increased in the year preceding the election, incumbents won 81 percent of the time in competitive elections; in districts where scores had declined, incumbents won only 69 percent of the time.
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • significant relationship with precinct test scores and the absence of a relationship with district scores suggests that voters were more concerned with school performance within their immediate neighborhood than across the district.
  • all indications of a relationship between school performance and an incumbent school board member’s vote share vanished after the passage of NCLB in 2002.
  • None of these approaches yielded clear evidence of a link between school performance and voter behavior in school board elections.
  • the overwhelming weight of the evidence indicated that school board members were not being judged on improvement or weakening in school test scores.
  • School performance as measured by test scores may have helped determine which candidates sought reelection and which faced a challenger.
  • assess the relationship between test-score trends and incumbents’ decisions to run for reelection, and then to estimate the effect of test-score trends on the probability that an incumbent who runs faces an opponent.
  • incumbents may bow out in anticipation of being held accountable for poor test-score performance by schools in their district.
  • drop from the 75th to the 25th percentile of test-score change, our results lead us to expect that incumbents will be 13 percentage points less likely to run for reelection. In fact, 76 percent of incumbents sought reelection in districts with improving test scores; in districts with falling scores, only 66 percent did.
  • we failed to find any indication that incumbents in 2002 and 2004 based their decisions about running for reelection on student learning trends.
  • In these years, only 30 and 34 percent of articles, respectively, touched on test scores. The decline in media attention leads us to suspect that concerns about student learning trends probably did not stand at the forefront of voters’ or candidates’ thinking in the 2002 and 2004 elections.
  • “The PACT needs to be seen for what it is: a vehicle for politicians to say that they are tough on education (and educators). This may make for good politics, but it makes for bad educational policy.”
  • Reacting to the rising criticisms directed toward PACT, voters may have grown disenchanted with the state’s accountability system and removed test-score performance from among the criteria on which they evaluated school board candidates.
  • if most schools appeared to be average or better, parents may not have been prompted to hold incumbents accountable for poor school performance. Incumbents and potential challengers may also have become less responsive to scores when the testing regimen began to give nearly every school a passing mark.
  • School board elections give the public the leverage to improve their schools. If voters do not cast out incumbents when local school performance is poor, they forfeit that opportunity. As debate continues over components of NCLB, policymakers should consider whether it is realistic to assume voters will in fact use the polls to drive school improvement.
  • Neither the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) nor the states impose direct sanctions on members of school boards that oversee large numbers of underperforming schools.
  • According to a 2002 national survey, student achievement ranks second only to financial concerns as school board members’ highest priority.
  • the basic purpose of all school board activities is to facilitate the day-to-day functioning of schools.
  • analyzed test-score data and election results from 499 races over three election cycles in South Carolina to study whether voters punish and reward incumbent school board members on the basis of changes in student learning, as measured by standardized tests, in district schools
  • impact of school performance on incumbents’ decisions to seek reelection and potential challengers’ decisions to join the race.
  • All but 4 of the state’s 46 counties hold nonpartisan school board elections. Approximately 80 percent of school board members receive some compensation, either a salary, per diem payments, or reimbursement for their expenses. Over 90 percent of South Carolina’s 85 school boards have between 5 and 9 members, while the largest board has 11. And, as is common practice in other states, nearly 9 out of 10 South Carolina school districts hold board elections during the general election in November.
  • the most important difference between South Carolina and most other states when it comes to local school politics is the role played by the state’s teachers unions, which are among the weakest in the country.
  • South Carolina school boards are unlikely to be beholden to the unions, which should make the boards more responsive to the broader public.
  • examine whether voters are more concerned with student performance districtwide or in their local neighborhood, we computed two measures of average school performance to include in our analysis.
  • separate the effect of school performance from the effects of other factors that could reasonably influence an incumbent school board member’s vote share
  • REL N on 17 Feb 11
     
    Details about research on the impact school performance has on how people vote for school board members. The authors conclude "If voters do not cast out incumbents when local school performance is poor, they forfeit that opportunity. As debate continues over components of NCLB, policymakers should consider whether it is realistic to assume voters will in fact use the polls to drive school improvement."
REL N

Charles Kolb: Educational Success: America's New Industrial Policy - 1 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...al-success-ameri_b_810464.html

ADMS707 Federal Resource-allocation

shared by REL N on 04 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • And we need to approach our education investment as we approach infrastructure or industrial policy.
    • REL N
      REL N on 04 Feb 11
       
      NOOOO! We need to better define the type of success we can achieve given that individuals are in different places at different times in their lives. We need to support people where they are and help them move forward in areas and at a pace that is right for them. If a 16-year old is able to perform well in a college program then that is where s/he should be. If a student is gifted in math and abhors and does poorly in history, then we should nurture her/his strengths and stop holding them to their social grade level in math and wasting their time and their passion drilling them in history. Ultimately, they will be happier, more productive, and more willing to contribute to society in a math-related endeavor.
  • "define success up." Our new industrial and competitiveness policy as a nation should be focused relentlessly on those talented young children and adolescents who show educational promise. We should double, perhaps triple, federal, state, and private sector resources that support gifted-and-talented programs in our schools. We should nurture this talent the same way some institutions nurture athletic talent. This approach is not elitism; it is smart commonsense.
    • REL N
      REL N on 04 Feb 11
       
      Yeah... I think we all saw what happened when we had a leader who was proud of getting "C's" in college. And, then we are not really sure if a "C" actually meant a "D-" but was given to ensure social promotion. I would not go to a surgeon who either did not want to go to medical school or was not able to succeed in her/his training. That is not elitism. It is more than simply common sense. It is effective data-driven/evidence-based decision-making. A person might be terrific and funny and caring (and perhaps rich and attractive too) but they should not be given a role beyond their knowledge and capabilities.
  • If such an exam cannot be developed within six months, then perhaps we really have wasted a lot of time over the last 30 years. Algebra in New Hampshire is not different from algebra in California. Reading skills and reading-level assessments should be the same in each state. Grammar doesn't vary across state borders, and gravity tends to work the same way everywhere. The governors are well-positioned to lead a national discussion about what our high school graduates should know and be able to do -- and then devise a test that measures the success of our young people in mastering what they need to know to be successful. The National Governors Association is already doing excellent work in this area -- but it has to move faster.
    • REL N
      REL N on 04 Feb 11
       
      f we stopped the gaming in elementary and middle school testing and relied on the teachers and administrators to implement effective local testing and take appropriate actions to ensure learning, we would have more resources (time, money, people) to develop appropriate and resonable assessments at the high school level. These must be based on higher order thinking and include essays, video-taped dialogues/presentations, and some simple answer tests. The evaluation should be done by humans outside the local area and care must be taken to ensure inter-rater reliability. This is done in other countries as well as in the states with the IB diploma programme. It is do-able and the graduates will be well prepared and confident that they can move forward. Our initial pass rates may not be as high as we would like, and we need to be prepared to accept that some students may take more than 12 years or choose to take a less rigorous set of exams; however, we will have a higher level of success overall and our students will be much better prepared as citizens and workers.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • We need to change our approach from preventing failure to promoting success.
  • In late December 2010, the Education Trust reported that nearly 25 percent of high school graduates taking the U.S. Army entrance exam cannot answer basic questions in math, science, and reading. Some of the questions were pretty basic: "If 2 plus x equals 4, what is the value of x?"
  • all children can learn, not all children are ready to learn at the same time. If some of our classrooms have disruptive students, these students should attend other classes until they become serious about learning.
  • And finally, we should learn from the French, who for decades have had a baccalaureate exam that is a prerequisite for advancing to post-secondary education. In France, the "bac" exam is typically taken by 17- and 18-year-olds, but if a student fails the exam, he or she can take it again -- even later in life. The "bac" serves two purposes: it sets a standard for what French high school graduates know and can do, and it serves as a moment of consequence for French young people: they cannot move forward until they have proved their proficiency.
  • In several states, where testing has been adopted, we find large discrepancies between how the states report their children's performance on "No Child Left Behind" tests and the often much lower performance found by the objective National Assessment of Educational Progress.
  • resources we've squandered. We need a more tough-minded and focused approach that identifies, nurtures, and rewards success
  • REL N on 04 Feb 11
     
    I'm not sure how I feel about this blog. Part of me says "Oh no!" while the other part says that we need to make education accessible but we would be better served to go with a more individualized approach. Right now it feels as though we often cater to the lowest common denominator which is not fair to anyone. Can we learn something from the operations concept of mass customization? Educators--feedback please!! I'd love to hear what your experience tells you r.e. these issues.
  • mirabilecp on 05 Feb 11
     
    I am intrigued if not in full agreement with this piece by Kolb. He makes good points about a national baccaulaureate exam...it's true, algebra is algebra, grammar is grammar, in all 50 states. Some of our colleagues would disagree that we need primarily focus on the best and the brightest and that those who are not ready to learn should be sequestered until they are (paraphrasing here). He says, "We really aren't serious as a nation when it comes to education," but I think that we are fast approaching a time when (I hope) it becomes a primary focus of our political debate (from Candy).
Roger Mancastroppa

SUPERINTENDENT RECRUITMENT: A STATEWIDE ASSESSMENT OF PRINCIPAL ATTRACTION TO THE JOB - 0 views

www.eric.ed.gov/EJ785719.pdf

adms707 education superintendent school states reform

shared by Roger Mancastroppa on 06 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Roger Mancastroppa on 06 Mar 11
     
    The study assessed a public school principals in terms of their attraction to the job of district superintendent. The reasearchers assumed "participant self-reported capability to become a superintendent impacts participant attraction to the job, and participant satisfaction with facets of their current jobs and their expected satisfaction with those same job facets in the job of superintendent give an indication of participant likelihood of pursuing the job of superintendent." Method: This was a field survey "designed and implemented according to procedures established by Dillman" (2000). The study was "a combination of the quasi-experimental and correlation designs, as explicated byCampbell and Stanley (1963), and involved three analytical procedures: Winter, Rinehart Keedy, Björk 38 Planning and Changingpaired-samples t-tests, two-group discriminant analysis, and hierarchical multiple regression analysis."   The study shows that the superintendents were on average 46.9 years-old and were fairly even gender, predominantly caucasian, and 85% were married. Most participants were not superintendentcertified (87.7%), and most of those who were not certified did not intend to become certified (79.0%), suggesting relatively low interest in pursuing the job of superintendent. Most of the participants who were superintendent-certified had held their certification for five years or more (65.3%), suggesting a modest degree of intent to transition from the job of principal to the job of superintendent. People tend to see the reality of the workload and time commitment.
REL N

A Board's Eye View : Education Next - 0 views

educationnext.org/aboardseyeview

ADMS707 Niemeyer Boards reform

shared by REL N on 17 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • “Code of Conduct for School Board Members.” This was intended, wrote the superintendent, in recommending the code, “to set standards for how the Board interacts with itself.” Sounded like sex to me. But the preoccupation with board member behavior was the result of the long-standing tension between the democracy represented by elected officials who oversaw the schools and the professionalism of those hired to run them. The superintendent was definitely attempting to tip the balance in favor of the pros. “We will not attempt to exercise individual authority over the district’s operations, staff, or personnel decisions,” read one of the rules he was proposing for us. Another: “We will not express individual judgments about the performance of the superintendent or staff. . . . We recognize the value of the chain of command. When approached by staff, constituents or the public, we will channel all inquiries to the administrator.” I e-mailed the superintendent, “Is this a joke?” He called and laughed lamely.
    • REL N
      REL N on 17 Feb 11
       
      "... the preoccupation with board member behavior was the result of the long-standing tension between the democracy represented by elected officials who oversaw the schools and the professionalism of those hired to run them."
  • “We should let people know we are looking for quality, of course, but not to the point of advertising outside official channels.”
  • the board never reviewed other major expenditures, such as the installation of a new computer system.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • I asked the superintendent how a new asphalt parking lot was installed at the Greenport School without board approval–or even a bid or a notice or a need. He informed me that a bid wasn’t necessary for a job worth less than $10,000.
  • no clarification of what any of this meant–or cost. Don’t ask. “Mandated” was the knowing word from veteran board members.
  • almost 16 percent of the children in the school district were disabled, almost double the national average.
  • more than 350, were either “emotionally disturbed,” “learning disabled,” or “speech impaired.” These were the kind of catchall categories that allowed a district to dispose of many problem children–in Hudson those children were mostly black–with expensive baby-sitting.
  • over the next several months as I learned that the district had been running a deficit for several years. In fact, the state comptroller’s office, which oversees the fiscal integrity of all state and local government agencies, had conducted its own audit and found the same thing: “overexpenditure of budgetary appropriations and the overestimation of revenues.” Money was being moved around, from one fund to another, which was also against the rules, the comptroller noted. And when auditors had asked for records, they couldn’t be found.
  • the school board was not where the biggest battles would be won or lost.
  • The teacher union president, normally a regular presence at school board meetings, stopped coming so that he wouldn’t have to answer my questions about what was being done to improve things that his teachers controlled. (He had already stopped responding to my phone calls and letters.)
  • the debate was as much cultural–and racial–as educational,
    • REL N
      REL N on 17 Feb 11
       
      The author was frustrated that the board refused to discuss the academic mediocrity in the schools and then he realized that "the debate was as much cultural-and racial-as educational,...."
  • “Mandates” and laws sprouted acres of explanatory weeds–most of them unnecessary. No one ever read the original “mandate.”
  • no one seemed to know why the “Parent/Family/Community Involvement Policy” was necessary, but it was assumed that it was required by some Oz-like authority, passed through the policy-writing machinery at some school board association office, and sent to us for our “approval.”
  • No one else on the board expressed any hint of having read it. And I was beginning to discern a pattern: the more written, the less understood.
  • REL N on 17 Feb 11
     
    A concerned parent joined the local school board in hopes of improving the academics. After 6 frustrating months he resigned from the board believing that "the school board was not where the biggest battles would be won or lost."
REL N

Jack Jennings: Get the Federal Government Out of Education? That Wasn't the Founding Fa... - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...rnment-education_b_819814.html

shared by REL N on 25 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • the answer isn't to eliminate federal involvement in education. That would be a wrong-headed move that ignores our country's history and would contribute to the decline of the United States. It's also a battle that has been fought and lost before because the stakes are simply too high.
  • Federal involvement began more than 225 years ago, even before George Washington was president, when Congress passed two laws -- the Land Ordinance of 1785 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 -- to create and maintain public schools in the expanding United States.
  • The specifics of federal land grants were outlined in each of the federal acts for admitting these states.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • the achievement gap narrowed between adolescent white and black students. And the percentage of children with disabilities who attended public school rose from only 20 percent in 1970 to 95 percent in 2007.
  • three-fourths of all college student aid comes from federal sources, whether through the tax code, direct grants or subsidized loans.
  • These indirect subsidies of education through the federal tax code total at least $21 billion for post-secondary education, and at least $17 billion for elementary and secondary education. These amounts are almost as significant as the direct grants made by the federal government to support education.
  • "Getting the federal government out of education" would endanger the progress made by -- among others -- children with disabilities, African-American children, and women and girls
  • The achievement gap between U.S. students and their international peers deprived the national economy of as much as $2.3 trillion in 2008, according to the McKinsey Quarterly.
  • How can the country raise academic achievement if 14,000 local school districts are each making their own decisions on most key aspects of education?
  • Over the course of American history, the national government has aimed to better educate the citizenry as a basis for democracy and economic prosperity. Today, our nation must act with greater, not less, unity to improve schools.
  • REL N on 25 Feb 11
     
    Those who can afford to pay for all private K-12 and college expenses for their children may not care if the Federal government is involved in our education system. All the rest of the country needs to take heed and acknowledge the need for continued and expanded federal involvement. Without sounding flippant... do you suppose that those who might be leading the charge to get the Federal government out of education and make draconian cuts in social programs under the guise that tax burdens are too high and individualism trumps social justice are the same millionaires and billionaires who fund the tea party et al.? Sadly, the "regular folk" who are falling for that rhetoric do not recognize that they are paving their own way to..... [let's just say poverty].
REL N

E Pluribus Unum? : Education Next - 0 views

educationnext.org/e-pluribus-unum-2

ADMS707 Federal CoreStandards

shared by REL N on 07 Feb 11 - Cached
  • And that content should be married to national standards of “proficiency” in these subjects at these grade levels, and joined to national exams by which we determine how well and by whom this is being accomplished.
    • REL N
      REL N on 07 Feb 11
       
      It is interesting that VA has chosen to stay out of the Core Standards frey--not because the state Board of Ed doesn't agree with the concept but because they feel that VA's SOLs are superior and more rigorous than a national core might be. Interestingly the VA performance in the chart below hovers closer to the poor end of the spectrum... not the superior end.
  • attempting to avoid bias by including everyone’s biases only generates more problems.
  • I’d probably install Core Knowledge in the primary and middle grades and the International Baccalaureate (IB) in high schools.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • having these things vary from state to state produces mediocrity, cacophony, waste, duplication, and confusion (see Figure 1). Survey after survey makes clear that (if the question is asked correctly) parents favor national standards and tests. Instead of letting “That’s the first step toward a national curriculum” serve as a conversation stopper, let’s deploy it as a conversation starter. Let’s acknowledge that “curriculum,” loosely defined, is supposed to be aligned with standards and appraised by assessments.
  • Let me note, finally, that I’m unimpressed by Meier’s “habits of mind” alternative to content (see below). It’s wonderfully seductive, but the serious psychologists with whose work I’m acquainted (see, for example, “Reframing the Mind,” check the facts, Summer 2004) don’t put much stock in this Howard Gardner–originated proposition that youngsters can learn skills devoid of content. It’s the absence of essential core content from her view of schooling that lies at the heart of our curricular disagreement.
  • We boiled it down to five “habits of mind” that we claimed (somewhat pompously) underlay all the academic disciplines as well as the mental and social disciplines needed for living in a complex modern society: (1) How do you know what you know? What’s the nature of your evidence? How credible is it? Compared to what? (2) Are there other perspectives? What affects our points of view? How otherwise might this be seen? (3) Are there patterns there? A sequence? A theory of cause and effect? (4) Could it be otherwise? What would happen if? Supposing that x had not happened? and (5) Who cares? Why does it matter? As you can see, they blend into each other and, in a way, just define a mind state of skepticism and informed empathy. It suggests having to take seriously the idea that one might be wrong, and so could others. We added “habits of work” like meeting deadlines and being on time and “habits of the heart” like caring about one’s impact on others.
stephlennon

Ohio Case: The 'Rosa Parks Moment' For Education? - 2 views

www.npr.org/...osa-parks-moment-for-education

adms707 federal democracy education Lennon

shared by stephlennon on 04 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • stephlennon on 04 Feb 11
     
    The punishment does not fit the crime, but if there is such a strong correlation between zip code and achievement, who can blame a Mom for trying?
  • REL N on 04 Feb 11
     
    I disagree with two of the comments in the article... The first was made by the City Council President: ""The young lady was wrong, she should not have tried to take her kids to another school system,..." I do not think she should have falsified the records; however, I do not think that it was wrong to try to find a way to get equal access to a quality education for her children. I also disagree with Don Domenech's interpretation of SES data. While research has found a correlation/relationship between SES and student achievement, I think his statement that "the correlation between student achievement and zip code is 100 percent," is misleading. The average student achievement may be higher in more affluent zip codes but that does not mean 100% of the students perform better. There are still students who struggle or drop out. I think the data speaks more to the family SES. It is true that better facilities and access to more materials and technology provide a higher likelihood of academic success, but I think that some of the student's personal/home factors have a bigger influence. If you send a child who is hungry, has to take care of siblings and/or work to help support the family to an affluent suburban school, that student will not automatically perform better. There are no absolutes and I feel his statement that "The quality of education you receive is entirely predictable based on where you live," is misleading. The "quality" of some of the "inputs and processes" may be better but because success in education is complex and dependent on more than simply the school, the outcomes are not guaranteed based on zip code.
REL N

Education Week: States Aim to Curb Collective Bargaining - 0 views

www.edweek.org/...20bargaining_ep.h30.html

ADMS707 Teachers Union

shared by REL N on 07 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • REL N on 07 Feb 11
     
    GOP leaders are proposing bills to limit collective bargaining to wages and benefits. They want to exclude teachers/unions from the table when they develop education policy.
  • REL N on 07 Feb 11
     
    GOP leaders are proposing bills to limit collective bargaining to wages and benefits. They want to exclude teachers/unions from the table when they develop education policy.
REL N

Few back Quinn's consolidation push | school, local, consolidation - Jacksonville Illin... - 0 views

www.myjournalcourier.com/...32478-local-consolidation.html

NIemeyer ADMS707 Governance School Board Restructuring

shared by REL N on 07 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • Ganson said each of the five local elementary districts have different costs, different debt loads and different needs. There would have to be sweeping agreements before consolidation could ever move forward
    • REL N
      REL N on 07 Apr 11
       
      Different needs, different debt loads... could this be "code" for something else?! This sounds a little like "separate but equal"--although it may not be predicated solely on race--or the apartheid that Kozol describes in Shame of the Nation.
  • Koch said the Illinois State Board of Education has always had the power to step in and take over failing schools. He said that power also includes the ability to dissolve a local school district. Koch said the state board will continue to "focus on incentives" to consolidation.
  • "If (school consolidation) makes sense in a community and a community is supportive of it, it needs to be a community decision. I don't think as a General Assembly we should be making and mandating school consolidation," Roth said.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • "There are a lot of local issues, nuances really, that would have to be worked out," Ganson said, "if the local districts were to come together."
  • Quinn first proposed the idea of required consolidation during his budget speech in February. Quinn said Illinois has too many school districts, and too many highly paid superintendents.
  • REL N on 07 Apr 11
     
    So the school boards and their constituents know that consolidation would reduce costs and the people don't want to pay higher taxes... yet there is reluctance to consolidate small districts (those with approx 500 students) because of unique needs (hmmm is this "code" for something?) and because the constituencies don't like the idea of a state mandate. So, let's see... whose interests are they protecting?
REL N

Broken Promises: What the Federal Government Can Do To Improve American Education - Bro... - 0 views

www.brookings.edu/...ing_k12education_loveless.aspx

ADMS707 Federal Conservative

shared by REL N on 07 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • REL N on 07 Feb 11
     
    Ratvitch/Loveless identify 4 principles: (1) fix existing federal programs, (2) bring mandates in line with the revenues required to meet them (3) send federal education money to schools and not to support bureaucracies (4) resist the temptation to regulate curriculum, instruction, teachers etc
Linda Clinton

Getting Teacher Assessment Right: What Policymakers Can Learn From Research | National ... - 1 views

nepc.colorado.edu/...tting-teacher-assessment-right

teacher evaluation adms707

shared by Linda Clinton on 25 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • Linda Clinton on 25 Jan 11
     
    "Given the experience to date with an overwhelming focus on student achievement scores as a basis for high-stakes decisions, policymakers would do well to pause and carefully examine the issues that make teacher assessment so complex before implementing an assessment plan. To facilitate such examination, this brief reviews credible research exploring: the feasibility of combining formative assessment (a basis for professional growth) and summative assessment (a basis for high-stakes decisions like dismissal); the various tools that might be used to gather evidence of teacher effectiveness; and the various stakeholders who might play a role in a teacher assessment system. It also offers a brief overview of successful exemplars."
  • Linda Clinton on 25 Jan 11
     
    Teacher evaluation is a big topic of our upcoming negotiations. What concerns me most is that some administrators don't complete the triennial evaluations now; how are they going to complete annual evaluations on all staff? So many questions...
REL N

Increase in education administrators causes New York State's public school spending to ... - 0 views

www.nypost.com/...verhead_gnbt3xbRu6hnqPRqrCTZvO

NIemeyer ADMS707 Superintendents

shared by REL N on 07 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • The number of supervisory staff in public schools increased to 42,000 this year from 31,332 in 1997, even as student enrollment statewide fell and performance rankings sat stagnant, according to a Post analysis of state Education Department data. The state's student population dropped to 2.7 million from 2.8 million -- or 4.6 percent -- during that period.
  • According to the governor's research, 223 (33 percent) of school-district superintendents earn more than $175,000.
  • Heads of the smallest districts, which oversee up to 250 students, would get a $125,000 cap.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The largest, with more than 6,501 students, would see a $175,000 cap.
  • School officials say state and federal mandates have, since the mid-1990s, forced them to cut class sizes, beef up teacher evaluations, improve special education, increase the amount of Regents diplomas, and enhance internal financial accounting.
  • REL N on 07 Apr 11
     
    Some interesting numbers and ideas to consider, although it is important to consider the source... The NY Post.
mirabilecp

Danny Miller: Go See the Other Education Documentary: The Race to Nowhere - 4 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...e-iotheri-educat_b_722159.html

adms707

shared by mirabilecp on 01 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • mirabilecp on 01 Feb 11
     
    Wonder if VCU is hosting this new documentary?
  • REL N on 01 Feb 11
     
    As a parent of two children who participated in highly competitive programs, I am eager to see this movie. While I am impressed with the support and passion that some of their teachers provided, I (actually both my husband and I) at times wondered if the children were being pushed too much with an unintended consequence that there was less time to focus on the other parts of "growing up." We convinced our daughter to cut down to "only" 5 IB/AP classes in her senior year. She initially resisted but eventually found that the extra time was valuable. And, she was no worse off when getting to college. While she came into college with 36 IB/AP hours, only 12 were applied to her degree. I'm interested in feedback from educators too. It would seem that if they are tasked with moving the children through such aggressive programs they may find they lose sight of each child as an individual.
  • mirabilecp on 02 Feb 11
     
    Yes...I get it...I am an IB teacher myself. But, I have learned that no everyone wants to be an overachiever in that academic sort of way...and we should all be okay with that...thanks for your comment!
Roger Mancastroppa

ERIC - Education Resources Information Center - 0 views

www.eric.ed.gov/...simpleSearch.jsp

superintendent resources education adms707 school

shared by Roger Mancastroppa on 06 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Roger Mancastroppa on 06 Mar 11
     
    The school board and superintendent set up the groundwork for instructional reforms. They turned to the Council of the Great City Schools to look at how well the district's instructional program was meeting the academic needs of these English-language learners and newcomers. The study shows how a program considered excellent that performs very well, can still miss students with limited English speaking skills. The report shows how the school district missed the fact that many of these folks even existed, let alone began building programming to meet their needs. Most important are the strategies that offer the students a chance to join mainstream and improve their achievement. 
Roger Mancastroppa

Raising the Achievement of English Language Learners in the Buffalo Public Schools - 0 views

www.eric.ed.gov/ED511361.pdf

adms707 education reform school states boards superintendent

shared by Roger Mancastroppa on 06 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Roger Mancastroppa on 06 Mar 11
     
    The school board and superintendent set up the groundwork for instructional reforms. They turned to the Council of the Great City Schools to look at how well the district's instructional program was meeting the academic needs of these English-language learners and newcomers. The study shows how a program considered excellent that performs very well, can still miss students with limited English speaking skills. The report shows how the school district missed the fact that many of these folks even existed, let alone began building programming to meet their needs. Most important are the strategies that offer the students a chance to join mainstream and improve their achievement. 
REL N

D.C. schools to use data from teacher evaluation system in new ways - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...AR2011021302584.html

ADMS707 Evidence-based Decision-making VAModels Niemeyer

shared by REL N on 16 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • by matching teachers' ratings to the universities they attended, officials are deciding which pipelines deliver the best, or worst, talent.
  • "We'll just stop taking graduates from institutions that aren't producing effective teachers."
  • Teacher ratings from one cluster of schools might be compared with those from another cluster to assess how a particular instructional superintendent is faring. Principals will be judged in part by the number of "highly effective" teachers they are able to retain from year to year. Instructional coaches will be held accountable for the ratings of the teachers they coach.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Critics of value-added evaluation models, who have objected to using the data to fire teachers, say that expanding their use is unwise at this point. "The core problem with these data is the creation of incentives to narrow the curriculum," said Richard Rothstein, a research associate with the Economic Policy Institute and one of the authors of a recent report critical of value-added evaluations.
  • "It's never been piloted, never been tested," Saunders said. "And the conclusions made using IMPACT as a basis will be just as flawed as the instrument they rely upon."
  • REL N on 16 Feb 11
     
    DC is expanding the use of the data from value-added evaluation models. "And the conclusions made using IMPACT as a basis will be just as flawed as the instrument they rely upon."
Jonathan Becker

Chris Lehmann: In Defense of Teachers Unions - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...-teachers-unions_b_839099.html

unions special interest groups SIG

shared by Jonathan Becker on 24 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Jonathan Becker on 24 Mar 11
     
    Because unions fundamentally fight for teachers' rights to have a say in what a democratic education in America looks like, I stand with teachers' unions.
  • stephlennon on 03 Apr 11
     
    I could not agree more with the sentiment of this piece. As someone who has chosen NOT to join the VEA, though- Lehmann is correct- I do not join because of HOW it is run, not because of what they are supposed to do. Parenting 101 would tell you that if parents are unable to provide for themselves, they cannot provide for a child- in airplanes you are supposed to put your own oxygen mask on first so you are able to take care of others around you- yet in education, we allow the "good of the children" to burn out or compromise teachers daily. I believe collective action is important, it is just not run the way I believe it could most effectively be run.
REL N

Americans Support Federal Involvement in Education - 1 views

www.gallup.com/...ral-involvement-education.aspx

ADMS707 Federal

shared by REL N on 06 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • Forty-three percent of U.S. adults want the federal government to be more involved in education than it is currently and 20% want it to keep the same level of involvement,
  • Parents of school-aged children are particularly supportive of expanding the government's role in education, with 56% favoring more involvement.
  • Americans are, at a minimum, content with the current level of federal involvement in education. Still, views on this are highly partisan. Sixty percent of Republicans favor less federal involvement in education while 63% of Democrats want to see more. By 44% to 33%, independents tend to favor more involvement over less.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • 54% of Americans dissatisfied with the quality of K-12 education in the United States today, the highest Gallup has recorded since August 2000.
    • REL N
      REL N on 06 Feb 11
       
      More than 50% of Americans feel that the public school system is failing yet 80% of American parents are completely or somewhat satisfied with the quality of education their children are receiving.
  • By contrast, American parents have remained largely satisfied with the quality of education their own children are receiving. The 80% currently saying they are either completely (35%) or somewhat (45%) satisfied is the most positive assessment Gallup has measured since the question was first asked in 1999.
  • REL N on 06 Feb 11
     
    "A combined 63% of Americans want the federal government's role in education either maintained at its current level or increased. The figure is 72% among parents of K-12 schoolchildren. The fact that a majority of Americans are dissatisfied with the status of education today may give added support to an expanded federal role."
  • REL N on 06 Feb 11
     
    Gallup poll results reported Sep-2010 r.e. role of the federal government in education.
  • Jonathan Becker on 07 Feb 11
     
    This surprised me. Interesting find...
Georggetta Howie

Obama seeks to make No Child Left Behind more flexible - 1 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...AR2011012606752.html

Reform education NCLB Performance

shared by Georggetta Howie on 27 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • Georggetta Howie on 27 Jan 11
     
    "Some Republicans are so skeptical of the federal role in education that they want to abolish the Education Department." Obama wants to replace the federal metric of adequate yearly progress, known as AYP, with more flexible measures that reward student growth. Yet it remains unclear how the government would force improvement of low-performing schools while getting out of the way of those that excel. Obama wants to replace the federal metric of adequate yearly progress, known as AYP, with more flexible measures that reward student growth. Yet it remains unclear how the government would force improvement of low-performing schools while getting out of the way of those that excel.
Phil Riddle

Temporary Segregation - 1 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

segregation by income

shared by Phil Riddle on 30 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • Phil Riddle on 30 Jan 11
     
    For me, the most interesting aspect of this article is the continuing segregation of students in our schools by income. It also have a brief summary of what has happened in the Wake County Schools
  • mirabilecp on 31 Jan 11
     
    Not entirely opposed, we might need to try it to see if it works...I recall reading how Justice Clarence Thomas chose to support public funding to private relgious schools (some might say unconstitutional) in order to create a way for African Americans to leave poorly performing urban public schools. Sometimes, you have to make a choice between a rock and a hard place.
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