Education Links

The NewSchools Venture Fund (NSVF) is a nonprofit organization with ten years of experience in K-12 education. NSVF is an interesting organization for the following reasons: * NSVF invested in a number of management organizations before management organizations were well-known * NSVF is an excellent example of venture philanthropy, or the application of venture capitalism to philanthropic giving * NSVF is an influential organization The purpose of this post is to provide some descriptive information about NSVF grants and changes in spending over time. I am using data pulled from NSVF's IRS 990s between the years 2002 and 2010. I then compiled that information to create a dataset of all NSVF grants

Yesterday the College Board, the organization that administers the Advanced Placement program and the SAT, announced David Coleman will become its new president in October, and will focus on deepening the curricula on which College Board exams are based. Coleman is controversial, especially among English teachers. A classicist cum McKinsey consultant cum education reformer, he is (in)famous in education circles as the frantically energetic, hyper-intellectual architect of the new Common Core curriculum standards in language arts, which 45 states have agreed-at least theoretically-to adopt in 2014. Currently, about 80 percent of the reading American students are assigned in school is fiction or memoir, and 20 percent is non-fiction. If Coleman gets his way, that balance will soon tilt closer to 60-40. American children will spend a lot less time reading and writing what Coleman calls, somewhat derisively, "stories," and much more time reading and writing about the ideas in "informational" texts by the likes of Richard Hofstadter, Atul Gawande, and H.L. Mencken in high school; John Adams, Frederick Douglas, and Winston Churchill in middle school.

It's always good to see issues of school segregation and integration back on the table as part of the education reform discussion; most recently, the discussion of this important reform goal was triggered in New York by Eva Moskowitz's latest demand of the state that her chain of schools should be exempted from following the state charter law which requires that all charters serve high-needs students in proportions comparable to those of local schools. However, Moskowitz's claim that her purpose in seeking this right to play by different rules than other charters is simply to expand school integration is deeply disingenuous.

I have been hanging around charter school operators for the past few days, and the experience has left me with some complicated - and perhaps contradictory - thoughts about a movement that I have been following since 1988. I love the energy, intelligence and dedication of the people I spent time with, but I left the annual meeting of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools in Minneapolis with some concerns. I think they need to do a better job of choosing their friends and of refining their message, among other issues. For what it's worth, here's my thinking.

"What they're focusing on is high-stakes testing, which is a political way of saying that "We just don't like testing. Let's be real clear." - Florida Education Commissioner Robinson I agree. Let's be real clear.This is not an anti-testing resolution. To state that the resolution opposes testing and accountability is disingenuous and silly. If the Commissioner, his staff, or their chief consultants at Florida's Foundation for Excellence in Education actually read the 'Resolution Opposing Over-Reliance on High Stakes Tests,' they'd understand that, as its title states, it opposes the over-reliance of this one test taken on this one day. It is not testing we oppose. Rather, it is what this one test has morphed into that we oppose. It is not accountability we oppose. Rather, it is the irrational and costly accountability built into this one test we oppose.

As much as some may wish otherwise, there is no starting from scratch when rebuilding a city, or a school system. A judge confirmed that here on Wednesday, ruling that the Orleans Parish School Board and the Louisiana Department of Education, in laying the groundwork for a school reform movement that has become nationally recognized, illegally fired 7,500 school employees.

New York State United Teachers President Richard C. Iannuzzi said today that the privacy bill passed by both houses of the state Legislature accomplishes two important goals: It stops the shameless media exploitation and distortion of evaluation information, and it appropriately keeps teacher personnel records confidential. The governor's bill also permits parents - and parents only - to request limited composite information concerning their child's current teacher(s).

The GAO report's authors are very careful to note that their findings merely describe what you might call the "service gap" - i.e., the proportion of special education students served by charters versus regular public schools - but that they do not indicate the reasons for this disparity. This is an important point, but I would take the warning a step further:  The national- and state-level gaps themselves should be interpreted with the most extreme caution. Although there are plenty of interesting data contained in the report, and its authors do point out many of the limitations of their analyses, the GAO's approach (and virtually all the press coverage) seems to gloss over the fact that charter schools are disproportionately located in urban, lower-income areas, where special education rates of all schools tend to be higher. To understand why this matters, consider an analogous example: On average, U.S. charter schools serve a considerably larger proportion of minority students than regular public schools. Does this mean that minority students are underrepresented in regular public schools?

The two teachers systematically dissect the video, noting a variety of missteps. There are a few unquestionable errors of mathematics: Khan uses incorrect terminology at a couple of points. Khan is also inconsistent in his language about positive and negative numbers (using plus when he means positive, or minus when he means negative), which is perhaps a lesser sin, but poor practice and misleading for students. He's also inconsistent in his use of symbols, sometimes writing "+4", sometimes writing "4", never explaining why he does or doesn't. He making the kind of mistakes that would reduce his score on the Mathematical Quality of Instruction observational instrument, used in the Gates-funded Measures of Effective Teaching Project.

Eva Moskowitz, a charter founder in New York City, says in the article that the reason the numbers of special education students are low is because her schools are able to move students out of special education because of her schools'  superior methods. But this claim demonstrates that her schools take students with the mildest disabilities, and leaves those with high needs to the public schools, a complaint often lodged against charters.

For the second time, the Los Angeles Times published results of statistical testing examining the variation in teacher and school performance in the LA Unified School District. The resulting ranking system was found to be inaccurate due to the unreliable methodology.

Advocates, lobbyists and celebrities including Bill Cosby are rubbing shoulders in Minneapolis this week to celebrate 20 years of the charter school movement. But a report released late Tuesday confirms a flaw that charter critics have raised over the last two decades: charter schools don't enroll students with disabilities at the same rate as traditional public schools, despite federal laws that require all publicly funded schools to serve disabled students. The Government Accountability Office report, commissioned by Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), found that 11 percent of students enrolled in public schools during the 2009-2010 school year had disabilities, compared with 8 percent of students in charter schools. The report is the first to quantify this gap.

Charter schools across the country, and in most individual states, enroll a smaller percentage of students with disabilities than traditional public schools, though the factors behind those disparities remain unclear, a new report from a federal investigative agency concludes.

Legislation was introduced on June 15 proposing to repeal the Blaine Amendment in the New York State constitution. Enacted by many states in the nineteenth century, the Blaine amendment prohibits the allocation of public money to religious schools. The proposed legislation would clear the way for vouchers for religious schools.

In some cases, charter schools are managed by for-profit entities (referred to in this article as "management companies"). The management agreements documenting these relationships range from agreements to provide general administrative support to agreements to provide virtually every service to be offered by the charter school, including curriculum, payroll, compliance reporting, providing teachers and staff through employee leasing, and the purchase and leasing of facilities. Many charter schools are intended to be operated as 501(c)(3) public charities. Historically, the Internal Revenue Service ("IRS") has carefully reviewed other types of charitable organizations operated by management companies to determine whether they qualify as a tax-exempt charities because they are, in fact, operating for the private benefit of the for-profit management company. However, the IRS has not brought a similar focus on this issue to charter schools generally - until now. The IRS is poised to increase its scrutiny of charter school/management company relationships and is now subjecting charter schools to more stringent standards defining such relationships.

Michael Fabricant and Michelle Fine's (2012) book Charter Schools and the Corporate Makeover of Public Education: What's at Stake? analyzes the state of public education by examining the charter school movement and determining how its record compares with its promises. Fabricant and Fine, as contributors to the larger body of literature concerning public education and educational policy, are both well positioned to understand the complexity and importance of the current charter school movement and its effects on public education. The book is well written and succinctly organized; the authors discuss an important and relevant issue facing public education: They posit that the current trend toward privatizing education manifested in the charter school movement is shortsighted and is not supported by compelling evidence. Fabricant and Fine offer a thorough examination of the charter school movement, the competing interests of involved parties, and the effects on students, parents, and communities.

Put three rockstars of the education world in a room together and you get this fantastic panel from last week's Netroots Nation on the future of public education, the importance of community organizing and the path towards systemic education reform to provide every child with a fair and substantive opportunity to learn.  The panelists were education historian Diane Ravicth, John H. Jackson, President & CEO of the Schott Foundation for Public Education, and Ken Bernstein, a long-time teacher and education advocate. All three had harsh words for policymakers pedaling ineffective or untested policies as viable reform strategies. "We don't have an innovation challenge, we have an implementation challenge," Jackson said. We know what policies work. Countless studies have shown the importance of early childhood education, access to healthcare and guidance counselors, and support for teachers. But the practical, systemic solutions that come out of that body of research are ignored in favor of a political agenda that seeks to privatize and dismantle a public institution that is vital to our nation's economy and democratic well-being.

In short, there are different ways to measure the gender gap, and their "accuracy" is not about the statistics as much as how they're interpreted. The gap is 75-80 cents on the male dollar if you're making no claims that the difference is attributable solely to discrimination. When you account for the underlying factors - and you must do so to interpret the data in this manner - you get a somewhat different picture of the extent of the problem (problem though it still is). Now, think about how easily this all applies to test data in education. We are inundated every day with average scores and rates - for schools, districts, states, subgroups of students, etc. These data are frequently compared between groups and institutions in much the same way as wages are compared between men and women.

Part of the American Graduate project addressing the country's high school dropout crisis, Ray Suarez and former Deputy Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch discuss education reform and her approach to teacher accountability.

FairTest Honors Diane Ravitch with the Deborah W. Meier Hero in Education Award June 5, 2012 New York City. An engaging conversation between two giants.