Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

Race to the Top is marketed as a "solution" for states and districts in search of reform.  The catch - as with all federal money - is the cash comes with strings that will continue the emphasis on high-stakes testing and the top-down management theories that were the basis of No Child Left Behind. The U.S. Education Department wants teacher evaluations tied to student test scores regardless of how it is done, and they want it done quickly.  Asked about the lack of research during a presentation to school administrators from Georgia, Education Department Assistant Superintendent Teresa MacCartney replied, "We are hoping the research will catch up with us in a few years."  I admire her optimism, but deplore the fact that $400 million will be spent on the development and integration of a teacher evaluation method with no evidence whatsoever to support a positive effect on student achievement.  That's not a string; it's a rope.

The main source of funding for public education is property taxes, which explains to a large extent the inequities between and within states. State governments also spend differing amounts on their school systems, and the federal government offers differing amounts of money depending on a range of criteria. This isn't, incidentally, the way other nations with successful public education systems fund their schools. It is very nice that there are people like DeGeneres and Bieber who are willing to write out big checks to needy public schools. Good for them. Yet there is something sad and scary when a check from an entertainer or private company is seen, in history's wealthiest country, as a godsend to a school principal who herself has spent her own money trying to help her students, or to a school where teachers agreed to work for free for free because of budget cuts, bad management, and other factors.

I have a theory: in recent times, parents are too time-crunched to advocate vigorously on behalf of public schooling. They are too consumed with working for a paycheck and/or volunteering at the school, plus doing the actual childrearing and chauffeuring of nondriving children. The recession has only worsened the situation and pushed women to the breaking point. Into the vacuum created by their absence in the public sphere rushes all sorts of nonsense, from greedy Big Ed (as with Big Pharma or Big Ag, corporations that are happy to soak up federal dollars) to the latest research trend. On top of that, let's name what's really going on: it's mostly women (moms) who volunteer at the school in the PTA, on fundraising committees, or as boosters for sports and other activities. And it's mostly women (many of them also moms!) who are teachers and have recently been blamed for poor student test scores, however inadvertently, through the film "Waiting For 'Superman'". Add in the time-poverty and I say there are gender politics that subtly and powerfully undercut true education reform in several major ways

The superintendent of the state's largest school district requested a state investigation Monday into his allegations that charter schools are turning away homeless and disabled students in violation of state and federal laws.

Last week, the Education Week Teacher online site reported on a new study that used federal wage, benefit, and job-security data, along with measures of cognitive ability, to argue that teachers are overpaid compared to what they would earn in the private sector. The study, authored by Andrew G. Biggs, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and Jason Richwine, a policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, challenged the refrain that teachers are, in the words of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, "desperately underpaid." I suppose it's because Biggs is a colleague of mine at AEI, but many have wondered about my thoughts on the study.

Last month, Randi Weingarten held a book party for Steven Brill, the veteran journalist and entrepreneur who had just published "Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America's Schools," his vivid account of the rise of the school reform movement. When Brill told me this recently, I nearly fell out of my chair. Weingarten, you see, is the president of the American Federation of Teachers, and for much of his book, Brill treats Weingarten the way reformers always treat her and her union: as the enemy.

This was written by George Wood, superintendent and secondary school principal at the Federal Hocking Local School District in Stewart, Ohio.  He is also the executive director of the Forum for Education and Democracy and chair of the board for the Coalition of Essential Schools.

As I travel the country, I am frequently asked to identify an urban district where public education is working. My first impulse is to say that public schools everywhere have been hemmed in and harmed by the mandates of No Child Left Behind; one has to look far and wide for an urban district that has managed to sustain a vision of good education, untainted by the federal law's pressure to produce higher test scores every year.

Federal social programs are keeping nearly 2 million American children out of poverty, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's first new poverty calculation measure in more than four decades.

A total of 1325 elementary, middle and high schools and 123 districts statewide have been identified for improvement under the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), also known as the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act.  Of the identified schools, 1173 will receive Title I funds in 2011-12 and are required to offer extra help to eligible low-income students; 416 of these Title I schools must also offer public school choice (as appropriate) to all enrolled students. 

A shareholder in Virginia-based K12 Inc. has filed a lawsuit against the virtual-schools operator in federal court, alleging that the firm violated securities law by making false statements to investors about students' poor performance on standardized tests. The class-action complaint, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, also accuses K12 of boosting its enrollment and revenues through "deceptive recruiting" practices.

Of the unions representing public school teachers and principals in New York City, the principals' union had played a passive role in the charged and increasingly divisive dispute over an evaluation system to gauge the performance of teachers and principals in 33 struggling schools receiving federal grants to help improve their results. No longer. On Wednesday, the principals' union president, Ernest A. Logan, pre-emptively condemned the city's proposal to close and reopen most of those schools under a new improvement model, saying in a strongly worded letter to the state's education commissioner, John B. King Jr., that it is simply a ploy to shut out the unions.

Federal school "turnaround" strategies that call for firing teachers, replacing managers, or closing troubled public schools or converting them into charter schools often meet with understandable skepticism, resistance and even anger among the parents whose children attend those schools. How should policymakers react? According to a recent study from the think tank Public Agenda, the answer is to treat the harsh realities caused by turnarounds as a public relations problem. That's the conclusion of a review released today of What's Trust Got to Do With It? A Communications and Engagement Guide for School Leaders Tackling the Problem of Persistently Failing Schools.

When Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski spoke at the first ever "Digital Learning Day" this Wednesday and pushed schools to get digital textbooks in students' hands within five years, it marked a vital recognition that technology can help us re-imagine teaching and learning. But during Super Bowl week it's equally important to admit that, as nifty (and lightweight) as digital textbooks may sound, when it comes to realizing the potential of education technology to lift student achievement, we're still on our own 5 yard line. The digital textbook push is a positive step and a meaningful sign of change, but it risks being an incremental move in a field that urgently needs transformative improvement.

The Christie administration's argument for its powers to unilaterally order the overhaul of lower-performing schools comes about 30 pages into its 365-page application for a waiver from the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

A cooperative effort of the New York City Department of Education, the Chancellor's office, and the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) resulted in a specially designed educational program under which all elementary and middle schools in the Chancellor's District would operate. The program included five components: a research-based curriculum focused heavily on literacy and mathematics; a staffing model designed to ensure a qualified teacher in every classroom; a strong principal for every school; high quality professional development for teachers and administrators; and smaller classes with added dollars for materials and supplies.

The biggest new thing in American public education these days is a two-volume, 230-page, written-by-committee document called the Common Core State Standards. Forty-five states have pledged to the federal government that they will adopt the standards-which specify the math and English skills that students must attain in each grade from kindergarten to the end of high school-within the next several years. Some of these states genuinely believe that doing so will make more of their students ready for college and careers. Others are on board primarily because the Obama administration has enticed them with billions of dollars from its Race to the Top competition, part of the administration's economic-stimulus program. Within the school-reform community, the standards have set off a virtual civil war. It pits those who believe that America desperately needs national standards to catch up to its international competitors against those who think that the administration, by imposing the standards on the states, is guilty of an unwise, or even illegal, power grab.

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten is calling today for a new brand of unionism that focuses not only on helping members but also the communities in which they work and live. The union's annual convention starts today in Detroit, where more than than 3,000 delegates have gathered at a time when teachers and their unions have come under attack from school reformers. Though teachers have been unhappy with many of President Obama's education initiatives, Weingarten's speech urges members to support him in the November election because he shares many of the same values as union members. As for GOP candidate Mitt Romney, she says, "His idea of education reform is vouchers, which study after study has shown do not improve achievement." The two candidates, she said, "couldn't be more different." The convention will also be addressed by Vice President Biden, education historian Diane Ravitch and others. Here is Weingarten's convention speech as prepared for delivery:

K12 Inc. enrolls more public school students than any other private education management organization in the U.S. Much has been written about K12 Inc. (referred to in this report simply as "K12") by financial analysts and investigative journalists because it is a large, publicly traded company and is the dominant player in the operation and expansion of full-time virtual schools. This report provides a new perspective on the nation's largest virtual school provider through a systematic review and analysis of student characteristics, school finance, and school performance of K12-operated schools. Using federal and state data, this report provides a description of the students served by K12 and the public revenues received and spent by the company at the school level. Further, the report presents evidence from a range of school performance measures and strives to understand and explain the overall weak performance of these virtual schools.

The Beaver County-based Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, which was searched by federal agents Thursday, pays tens of millions of dollars a year to a network of nonprofit and for-profit companies run by former executives of the state's largest online public school. The relationships between the school and those businesses were a concern to former Gov. Ed Rendell's administration, which late in its tenure asked PA Cyber for better accounting of its payments to spin-off entities. Gov. Tom Corbett's Department of Education, though, opted early on to let the relationships continue without heightened accountability. The amount of public money that flows to PA Cyber, and then out through its spinoffs, has grown dramatically as the school's enrollment has surged to around 11,300 students statewide.