Group items tagged

"There needs to be community input and participation. That doesn’t happen extremely quickly," said school board member John Lee Evans. He added, "It is a quandary in terms of, 'Here is some quick stimulus money to hold things together, and we want you to be innovative, and we want your ideas to be well thought out and based on research.' There are a lot of contradictions there."

Every principal there was excited about the possibility of doing something different," Allen said. "But they were concerned about getting the buy-in on the ideas."

Technology is also touted in plans from Lincoln, Crawford and San Diego High, several of which push for digital whiteboards and laptops for every student. Other ideas include adding more counselors, nurses and social workers to schools around Crawford, emphasizing writing at all the schools that lead into San Diego High, and creating a district-run middle school that leads into Lincoln, where many surrounding middle schools are charter schools that are independently run with public funding

Both the Lincoln and Crawford plans include extending the school year for four more weeks, which costs money because schools must pay teachers more for the extra time. Some reformers like the idea because it gives children more time in the classroom, which has been shown to benefit disadvantaged students who tend to backslide during breaks. But changing schedules is logistically tricky and sometimes unpopular with parents.

Parents charged with overseeing federal money complain that they were not included in the plans that were hastily drafted by schools last week. Teachers and their union say the superintendent has sidestepped them. The school district refused to share the draft plans with the media on Friday. And some of the brief plans hashed out by schools, obtained from other sources by voiceofsandiego.org, raise a barrage of new questions, from whether schools can mandate that teachers stay in one area to curb turnover to how lengthening the school year would work.

Providing intensive support and effective interventions for the lowest-performing schools.

First, every state should have a comprehensive data system that tracks student progress from one year to the next.

a class of test scores can tell whether a teacher is effective, and an entire state of test scores can tell whether a policy is working. When empirical data replace emotion as the basis for developing policy, America will be able to transform the quality of education into a world-class system of learning.

If a state needs educators to teach students who are gifted or disabled or learning to speak English, let's create the market that attracts their expertise.

A meaningful bump in pay -- $1,000 a month or more -- would provide an incentive for educators to teach tough subjects such as physics and trigonometry or to teach in schools with a high population of students living in poverty. Moreover, giving a bonus to teachers for every one of their students who pass an advanced placement test in science and math will create an incentive for success and generate American intellectual capital in critical fields. Third, low-performing schools must be fixed. It is morally wrong to consign students to schools that consistently fail to educate them. Let's help those schools be successful with whatever assistance it takes. Where schools don't improve, we believe parents should have the option of sending their children to public charter schools whose leadership has proved it can prepare students for the next grade and beyond.Finally, let's stop tinkering around the edges of reform and really revolutionize the way we deliver knowledge to students. Learning is no longer local, yet we still operate in a system ruled by traditional course work and antiquated textbooks. Our education system is an eight-track tape deck living in the high-speed digital age.

An online campus also would create an economic way to customize education for every child in America. Students wouldn't be limited by what was offered at their particular school. With the click of a mouse they could take Chinese at one virtual academy, geometry at another and 18th Century poetry at another. They could learn at their own pace, whether it is faster or slower than their peers.