Quick Hits

Will magnet schools make a comeback?:  Magnet schools -- focused on a particular academic theme or instructional strategy -- were first created in the 1960s as a way to voluntarily integrate schools without imposing mandatory busing, says Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation. Despite successful outcomes, the growth of magnets has stalled as the popularity of charter schools has increased. However, Kahlenberg predicts a renewed interest in magnets as a way to ensure more diversity in the nation's schools. (The Hechinger Report)

Teachers - Test prep consumes majority of classroom time:  A recent survey of 600 teachers in North Carolina found that among those polled, more than half say they devote more than half of their classroom time to preparing students to take standardized tests. The survey -- by the North Carolina NAACP, Advocates for Children's Services and the Advancement Project -- also found that 90% cite testing as a reason for low teacher morale. The report follows a separate survey showing teachers' job satisfaction is at a 20-year low. (State EdWatch)

How should teachers of untested subjects be evaluated?:  States and school districts in the U.S. are working to develop and implement new teacher-evaluation systems that incorporate student test scores, but are facing challenges evaluating educators who teach subjects not typically tested by the state. For teachers of these subjects -- from science and social studies to drama, art and music -- some states and districts now are developing end-of-course exams. However, some critics say this approach leads to more student testing that takes time away from learning. (The Wall Street Journal)

What are the qualities of an effective administrator?:  Award-winning teacher Megan Allen in this blog post lists the qualities she is looking for in an effective administrator. She writes that administrators should interact with students and staff, put people first, create a comfortable school environment, show appreciation and develop community partnerships. They also should be willing to try innovative ideas, trust teachers, love their job, and give teachers time to collaborate and learn from each other. (Schools of Thought)

2 AP courses aim to develop students' research, critical-thinking skills:  Two new Advanced Placement courses being introduced next year will focus on developing research and critical-thinking skills that some say many high-school graduates lack. Over the next three years, high-school juniors will be offered the AP/Cambridge Interdisciplinary Investigations and Critical Reasoning Seminar, which will have teams of students researching and writing on topics of global importance. Another course -- the AP/Cambridge Capstone Research Project -- is for 12th-graders and focuses on writing a comprehensive research paper. (College Bound blog)

School uses iPods to help boost students' reading skills:  Educators at a California elementary school are using iPods as part of a reading program to help boost students' reading performance. The strategy, which has students using iPods to listen to audiobooks as they read along with the print versions, originally was used with English-language learners and struggling readers but is now being used with other students as well. The school has 400 audiobooks and 50 devices for use by students. (T.H.E. Journal)

Mo. judge hears arguments on St. Louis school transfer policy:  A circuit court judge in St. Louis County, Mo., heard arguments this week on a policy that allows students to transfer out of the unaccredited St. Louis, Mo., public schools to nearby suburban districts at the district's expense. Critics of the policy, including St. Louis Public Schools superintendent Kelvin Adams, who testified Wednesday, say it will lead to the demise of the city's schools, while overburdening the suburban districts. (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

Regulation of teacher preparation is debated:  Representatives from the public and private sectors negotiated last week over the direction of new federal rules on teacher preparation. As negotiators seek to rewrite the federal standard, they appear divided over the role of schools of education in ensuring their graduates are effective teachers. If negotiators fail to put forth draft regulations, the Department of Education can establish its own standards. (Education Week)

Nevada study to consider equity of school-funding formula:  A legislative panel in Nevada voted Monday to commission a study of the state's formula for funding schools. The study is meant to determine whether the state's formula is adequately serving an increasingly diverse student population. The study is being paid for with private donations, a move that may be the first for a state-commissioned study. (Las Vegas Review-Journal)

More states are revising policies over "seat time" in schools:  A growing number of states have relaxed their requirements on "seat time," allowing schools or districts to award credits to students who demonstrate proficiency in a particular subject. The revised policies are meant to assist struggling students working to catch up, students who are gifted working to get ahead, and others who face geographical and scheduling challenges. They also are seen by some as a way to boost graduation rates through online or alternative courses. (Education Week)

How are charter schools using blended-learning models?:  The number of charter schools utilizing a hybrid instructional model, combining online and face-to-face learning, has increased over the past five years. While some research suggests blended instruction may be effective for some students, new research being funded by private groups is specifically studying the use of various hybrid models in charter-school settings. (Education Week)

Retention disparities are seen in new civil rights data from schools:  Black and Hispanic students are more likely than white students to be held back a grade in school, according to data released today by the Education Department. The disparities were seen particularly in elementary and middle schools, and were most significant for black students, who accounted for 56% of all fourth-graders retained at the end of the 2009-10 school year. According to an Education Department analysis also released today, black and Hispanic students were disciplined or expelled at a higher rate than their white counterparts. (Education Week)

Researchers look at quality, innovation of charter schools:  Studies show that charter schools across the country vary widely in performance for numerous reasons, and researchers are working to determine whether the schools have become the innovative models of education they were intended to be. Charters now serve more than 2 million students across 41 states and Washington, D.C., and researchers are looking at the practices in place at the most successful schools to discover what can be replicated elsewhere. (Education Week)

Chicago to offer signing bonuses for top principals:  Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced a plan Friday to offer $25,000 signing bonuses to 50 top principals from across the country who agree to work in struggling city schools. The mayor's announcement came as officials also announced a partnership with universities to train and support new principals, and is in addition to a plan put in place last year to offer merit pay for the city's school principals. (Chicago Tribune)

Tenn. is expected to release teacher ratings this year:  Tennessee plans to release teacher ratings to the public for the first time this year. The ratings, based in part on students' scores on standardized tests, will rank teachers on a scale of one to five. The move to release teachers' rankings, as well as their names, follows similar moves in Los Angeles and New York City. Critics, however, say the scores do not provide a full picture of teachers' effectiveness, and one state lawmaker is seeking to prevent value-added scores from being attached to teachers' names in the future. (The Tennessean)      

School News from Around Kentucky

Scores Too Low - Tests show many high school students not ready for college:  The good news is that Kentucky’s 8th- and 10th-graders showed improvement on tests measuring their readiness for college, albeit only slightly. The bad news is that unless they showed marked improvements in their test scores a high percentage of these eighth-graders and high school sophomores are going to have to take — and pass — non-credit remedial classes before they can enroll in college courses that will earn credit toward graduation. (Daily Independent)

Kenton County High School program takes new approach: Beginning next fall, Scott [High School]’s new Renaissance Academy will be home to more than 100 freshman and sophomore students selected to participate in the new student-centered, project-based program that encourages students to use 21st Century skills, think outside the box and question the “why” and “how” of what they’re learning in the classroom. (NKy.com)

Committee approves revised plan for UPike:  More Eastern Kentucky students would get financial help to finish college under a compromise bill that made it Tuesday through the first step of the legislative process.Instead of making the University of Pikeville a public school, officials and legislators agreed to put coal severance money into a new program for students from coal-producing counties.Under the new House Bill 260, Kentucky Appalachian College Completion Grants would be given to junior and senior college students who are from Eastern Kentucky and attend school there. Students with 60 credit hours could earn as much as $6,000 each academic year if they attend private schools that offer four-year degrees, and $2,000 a year if they go to public university extension campuses in the area. (H-L)

Senate Panel Approves "Religious Freedom Act":  Kentuckians may get to vote this November on a proposed change to the state Constitution that its backers call “the Religious Freedom Act.” The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the constitutional amendment Wednesday on a vote of 6-0, with Sen. Gerald Neal, D-Louisville, passing.The sponsor of Senate Bill 158, Sen. Jimmy Higdon, R-Lebanon...He said it would give courts “more ammunition in favor of religion” when considering cases such as...Christians in Bell County who want to hold public prayer at school athletic events...The bill would “prohibit any human authority from burdening actions that are based on religious beliefs, except in support of a compelling governmental interest using the least restrictive means to further that interest.” The government would have to prove it has a “compelling interest” before it could restrict someone’s religious freedom, Higdon said. (Bluegrass Politics)

Kentucky House approves $19.5 billion budget bill:  With little debate, the Kentucky House voted 78-17 to pass a $19.5 billion state budget bill that cuts many state programs by 8.4 percent and cuts funding for state universities by 6.4 percent.The House vote amounted to an acceptance of the budget proposed by Gov. Steve Beshear in January that included those cuts because projected tax revenue fell far short of funding programs at current levels. (C-J)

Bullying a problem in Kentucky schools?:  There are proposed bills going before legislation right now in Kentucky, but Akers is not convinced that new anti-bullying laws would impact the problem,"I don't think you can legislate bullying out. No more than we can legislate speeding out. People still are speeding up and down the interstate."Instead he says, children need to be educated about bullying right away,"I think where you can nip this problem or attempt to nip this problem in the bud is when the child is growing up at home, long before they hit the school doors. Parents need to be teaching them right from wrong." (WYMT)

Holliday Named to Teacher Preparation Commission

            Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday, Ph.D., has been named as a member of a high-profile national commission to raise standards for teacher preparation across the nation.

In order to help ensure that every classroom in the nation has an effective teacher, a national Commission on Standards and Performance Reporting will develop rigorous accreditation standards for educator preparation that will raise the bar for preparation providers, the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) announced today. CAEP is the new accrediting body being formed through the unification of two organizations charged with assuring quality in educator preparation — the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) and the Teacher Education Accreditation Council (TEAC).

The commission will ensure increased accountability through a focus on outcome data and key program characteristic data. CAEP has pledged to use multiple measures in its evaluation system, including new sources of data from state longitudinal databases. CAEP standards will also give increased attention to recruiting and admissions to help ensure a supply of candidates who are motivated to enter the teaching workforce and have characteristics associated with teaching success and who are prepared in areas in which they are needed.

“The work of this commission complements Kentucky’s proposed Professional Growth and Effectiveness System for teachers and administrators, which also looks at multiple measures of effectiveness,” said Holliday. “It is crucial that the teacher preparation programs in our state’s higher education institutions provide teacher candidates with the means to be successful, and this commission will ensure the quality of those programs.”

CAEP will expect accredited preparation providers to take bold steps to recruit, prepare and help develop effective teachers who can contribute their expertise to improving student performance in all schools.

Through the development of the new standards and accompanying processes, CAEP’s quality assurance system will be characterized by the accreditor’s dual mission of accountability and improvement. CAEP’s decision-making will be transparent and will clearly recognize the qualities that matter in programs.

            CAEP believes that all educator preparation providers should be subject to the same high standards of quality. To make this possible, one of the tasks of the commission is to ensure accreditation standards are appropriate for all preparation providers. In the past, accreditation standards have been geared specifically to higher education institutions.

The Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation, to become operational in 2013, will accredit over 900 teacher education institutions across the nation, producing approximately 175,000 graduates annually. For more information, see CAEP Updates at www.ncate.org or http://www.ncate.org/Public/Newsroom/CAEPUpdates/tabid/788/Default.aspx. You also can visit www.caepsite.org and http://www.teac.org/news-events/caep/. 

SOURCE: KDE Press release

Survey: Teacher Job Satisfaction Hits a Low Point

This from Education Week

Teacher job satisfaction is at the lowest it's been in more than two decades, likely as a consequence—at least in part—of the economic downturn and resulting cuts to education budgets, according to a national survey.

Souring Attitudes

The smallest proportion of teachers since 1989 say they are "very satisfied" with teaching as a career.
SOURCE: The 2011 Metlife Survey of the American Teacher

The 28th annual MetLife Survey of the American Teacher, released today, finds that 44 percent of teachers are "very satisfied" with their jobs, down from 59 percent in 2009. The last time job satisfaction dipped as low was in 1989.

The report is based on telephone interviews of 1,001 U.S. public school teachers conducted last fall by Harris Interactive on behalf of MetLife Inc. (The MetLife Foundation provides funding to Education Week Teacher to support its capacity to engage teachers interactively in professional community.)

In another indication of declining morale, according to the report, 29 percent of teachers say they are likely to leave the teaching profession within the next five years—up from 17 percent in 2009.

Regis Shields, director of Education Resource Strategies in Watertown, Mass., called that finding one of the most intriguing in the report. "What we need more information on is who the 29 percent of teachers likely to leave the teaching profession are," she said. "If these aren’t effective teachers and this increases the effectiveness of the teaching force, that's great. If they're high-quality teachers, then we have some concerns."

The survey also suggests that teachers are increasingly anxious about holding onto their jobs. In 2006, just 8 percent of teachers said they did not feel their job was secure. That figure has more than quadrupled, according to the report—with 34 percent now saying they feel a lack of job security...

Only 35 percent of the teachers surveyed say their salary is fair for the work they do—a figure that has remained relatively stable over the years, according to Dana Markow, vice president of Youth & Education Research for Harris Interactive.

 

Planning for Departure

This chart shows the percentage of teachers, in selected years, 

who said they were very or fairly likely to leave the profession within the next five years.

SOURCE: The Metlife Survey of the American Teacher

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said that both budget cuts and the "demonization" of teachers—or so-called "teacher bashing"—by politicians and media figures have been major contributors to growing teacher dissatisfaction. "Some elected officials don’t know what to do, so they demonize teachers as a rational for why they're cutting budgets," she said...

Breathitt superintendent arrested on federal vote-buying charges

This from the Herald-Leader:

The top school official in Breathitt County conspired to buy votes in 2010 and lied to an FBI agent about it, a federal grand jury has charged.

Superintendent Arch Turner also tried to persuade a witness to withhold information from authorities about the alleged vote-buying, and even provided the person with a false script of what to say if contacted by authorities, according to the indictment...

Turner, 65, is charged with conspiracy, obstruction of justice and lying to a federal agent. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted...

The indictment charges that in October and November 2010, Turner conspired to buy votes and took cash out of his bank account to bribe voters.

On Oct. 27, 2010, Turner allegedly lied to Clay Mason — then an FBI agent and now Lexington's public-safety commissioner — about his activities. Turner said he had not given anyone money for election purposes in May 2010, when in fact he had given a candidate money to buy votes, according to the indictment. The third charge against him is that from May 2010 to February 2012, he tried to get someone not to talk to authorities about the alleged illegal activities. Turner told the person, who was not identified in the indictment, that the FBI had no evidence and that the only way they could get in trouble was if they told on themselves, the indictment said.

The charges against Turner are related to two other cases in which a total of nine people were charged last year with conspiracy and with buying votes...

There were reports...about long lines of people waiting to vote at the courthouse during the early-voting period before the May primary..."It just spiked a big red flag," Mason said. There also were reports of alleged attempts to pay voters on Election Day, Mason said...

Charter Schools: The Good, the Bad, the...In-Between?

This from Inside School Research:

Charters were meant to be a hotbed for innovation, so it's no surprise that they're one of the most-studied types of school (and school reform). I summarized some of the most recent research on charter schools for our business and innovation special report out this week.

It turns out that when it comes down to it, some charters perform exceptionally well, some perform exceptionally poorly, and some—many—don't actually look that different than traditional public schools or neighborhood Catholic schools. You can take a look at the article or at my colleague Christina Samuels' piece on Roland Fryers' work in Houston for some more detail on the types of reform that seem to be working.

Some other trends I unearthed, but didn't have room to discuss:

• Though the lack of unions is one thing that often distinguishes charters from traditional public schools, about 12% of charter schools actually do have unions. Some were formed by dissatisfied staff, while some were initiated by school officials. The Center for Reinventing Public Education looked at charter unions here.


• Privately-owned, for-profit charter chains don't seem to perform as well as nonprofit chains, according to Gary Miron, a professor of education at Western Michigan University.


• Since charter schools have the freedom to enforce different codes of conduct than traditional public schools, expulsion rates are often higher (I allude to how this kind of issue affects the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) schools in my article). Some researchers are starting to look into how this tendency plays out in districts with large numbers of charter schools, like New Orleans.


• Several researchers talked about the importance of creating and retaining effective leaders and teachers for charter schools, which frequently have high turnover. Organizations like KIPP are putting some resources into developing leaders, but it's still a work in progress.

Some of the summary data referred to above includes:

• In 2009, CREDO released an overview of findings from its research on charters in 16 states. The center found that 17 percent of charters were performing better than local public schools, while 37 percent were performing worse. The CREDO researchers also found that students in poverty and English-language learners at charter schools had higher test scores compared with statistically matched students in local public schools.
•  State-level analysis like that in the CREDO study is important, said Robin Lake, the director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, or CRPE, at the University of Washington, Bothell, because "each state has taken [charter schools] on very differently."
•  CREDO's most recent report, released last spring, focused on Pennsylvania, and found that performance there varied widely, with urban schools showing better results. Cyber charter schools—whose students account for 30 percent of the state's charter enrollment—fared particularly poorly.
• Mathematica's January 2012 study of 130 charter management organizations, or CMOs, found that "achievement impacts for individual CMOs are more often positive than negative, but vary substantially in both directions," according to Mr. Gill, one of the authors. The CMO study found that charter schools in Florida and Chicago were improving their students' educational attainment, and that schools that showed positive effects in reading and math also tended to do well in science and social studies. Mr. Gill said examining those factors was an important step toward evaluating schools' performance beyond scores on reading and math tests, which are what most studies up to now had focused on.
• A meta-analysis of 40 studies on charter schools published last fall as part of the CRPE's National Charter School Research Project found that charters had a small positive impact on scores in elementary school math and reading and in middle school math, but none on high school or middle school reading scores. Urban charter schools saw greater gains than non urban charters.a 2010 report on Mathematica's multiyear study of the best-known "no excuses" school, the Knowledge Is Power Program, found that students who attended KIPP schools for three years showed growth equivalent to 1.2 years of extra instruction in math and .9 years in reading.
• A 2011 report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Massachusetts charter schools from Joshua D. Angrist, Parag A. Pathak, and Christopher R. Walters found that urban charters outperformed nonurban charters. Like the Mathematica researchers, the MIT scholars attributed some of the urban charters' success to a "no excuses" model—a "strict disciplinary environment, an emphasis on student behavior and comportment, extended time in school, and an intensive focus on traditional reading and math skills."
• A 2011 study of New York City charter schools by Harvard University researchers Roland G. Fryer and William Dobbie also connected elements of the no-excuses model to improved academic results. Some research suggests, though, that the success of a no-excuses exemplar like KIPP could also stem in part from those schools' attrition practices.
• A goal for researchers now is to determine what the most successful charter schools and networks might be doing right so that those practices can be disseminated more widely. The Mathematica study of CMOs, for instance, found that schools with teacher coaching and clear behavior policies had higher test scores.
  
  

Title I Formula Change To Benefit Rural Schools Voted Down

This from Rural Education:

The rejection last week of a proposal that would've helped rural schools by changing the Title I funding formula has left rural school advocates disheartened but not defeated.

The House Committee on Education and the Workforce debated the All Children Are Equal Act for a half-hour before deciding not to include it as an amendment to the Student Success Act.

The proposal would've lessened the use of number weighting, which ends up diverting money from small rural districts to larger urban districts regardless of poverty rates.

The Formula Fairness Campaign, a group of organizations (led by The Rural School and Community Trust) supporting the change, has an upbeat analysis of the detrimental vote. It says the vote was the only one taken that day that didn't fall solely along party lines; the final count was 22-16 with one abstention.

"This vote is a short-term defeat, and may or may not be the only time this Congress will address the number weighting issue this year. But clearly this issue has made the grade as a legitimate issue that both parties acknowledge must be addressed. In a less partisan atmosphere, it might have been this year," according to the Formula Fairness Campaign Web site.

Last week's vote attracted others' attention. Ed Money Watch, the blog of the New America Foundation, previewed the vote, saying it supports changing the formula "to more logically target disadvantaged students in states and school districts"...

OPERATION PREPARATION AND COLLEGE/CAREER READINESS

Next week, students across Kentucky will be getting advice on what they can do academically to prepare for college or career as part of Operation Preparation. Governor Steve Beshear has issued a proclamation declaring March 12-16 as Operation Preparation College and Career Advising Week.

During Operation Preparation, 8th- and 10th-grade students are scheduled to meet with trained community advisors to review their college and career plans as identified in their Individual Learning Plans (ILPs) and talk about:

·         career aspirations and required education/training

·         whether the student is on target to meet his or her goals

·         whether the student is taking the courses recommended to prepare him or her for the future

“We want to help students realize their potential, maximize their academic preparation and stay on track for success during and after high school,” said Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday.

College/career-readiness is one of the measures on which schools and districts will be judged as part of the state’s new Unbridled Learning: College/Career-Readiness for All assessment and accountability system.

“Our teachers, our counselors and our principals need this support from our communities to ensure students graduate ready to take that next step in life,” Holliday added.

With a statewide student-to-counselor ratio of about 450:1, many school counselors are overloaded with the number of students to whom they must provide services. Operation Preparation is designed to supplement a school’s overall advising program by engaging parents and the community in a partnership with the school in support of Kentucky’s college/career-readiness agenda.

Last year, all Kentucky school district superintendents and local board of education chairs signed the Commonwealth Commitment, pledging to increase the college/career-readiness rate of their high school students by 50 percent by 2015. Statewide, the college/career-readiness rate stands at 38 percent (non-bonus rate) -- up from 34 percent in the 2010-11 school year.

The majority of Kentucky school districts, along with the Kentucky School for the Blind, the Kentucky School for the Deaf and the Division of Juvenile Justice Youth Detention Centers, are participating in Operation Preparation. (See map.) How it is implemented is a local decision, although the overall goals remain the same: help students see the connection between education and financial security in adulthood and help districts increase college/career-readiness of students.

More than 80 Kentucky Department of Education employees have volunteered to be community advisors in various districts across the state. Education Commissioner Terry Holliday will advise students at Gallatin County High on Thursday, March 15 and participating in several school assemblies in support of Operation Preparation.

Volunteer community advisors for Operation Preparation are required to take an online training course developed by the Kentucky Department of Education and KET, sign a non-disclosure affidavit agreeing not to share confidential student information and abide by all district policies.

Operation Preparation is a joint effort of the Kentucky Department of Education and the Department for Workforce Development. More information can be found at www.operationpreparation.com.

SOURCE: KDE Press release

PROCLAMATION

by

Steven L. Beshear

of the

Commonwealth of Kentucky:

To All To Whom These Presents Shall Come:

Whereas, the Kentucky Department of Education and the Department of Workforce Development recognize the Commonwealth of Kentucky’s economic future is dependent on an educated and skilled workforce; and

Whereas, more than 50 percent of all future jobs in Kentucky will require employees to have a college degree and/or postsecondary job training; and

Whereas, effective advising using a student’s Individual Learning Plan(ILP), is a key strategy in preparing all Kentucky students to be college- and/or career-ready; and

Whereas Kentucky’s citizens – parents, business people, elected officials, community members and educators  -- are committed to a better Kentucky and have a collective interest in seeing our children succeed; and

Whereas, we, as individuals, can help students maximize their educational opportunities and reach their true potential through effective academic and career advising;

NOW, THEREFORE, I, STEVEN L. BESHEAR, Governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, do hereby proclaim March 12-16, 2012, as

OPERATION PREPARATION, COLLEGE AND CAREER ADVISING WEEK

IN KENTUCKY.

DONE AT THE CAPITOL, in the City of Frankfort this 27^th day of December, in the year of Our Lord Two Thousand Eleven and in the 220^th year of the Commonwealth.

  

Steven L. Beshear, Governor 

Elaine N. Walker, Secretary of State

Mike Allen's Bigoted Attack on Teachers

Was it just me, or was anyone else bothered by Catholic Diocese Director Mike Allen's choice to deflect the abuse of children by some Catholic priests by asserting that public school teachers are worse?

In his Herald-Leader Op-Ed, Allen was criticizing editorial cartoonist Joel Pett for what he called an "intellectually lazy, bigoted, straw-man caricature of Catholicism" as presented in a recent political cartoon. Then, for some reason, he launched an intellectually lazy, bigoted, straw-man attack on public school teachers - not similarly affected Catholic school teachers, mind you - just public school teachers.

This from Mike Allen in the Herald-Leader:   

Ky. Voices: Pett cartoon a bigoted attack on Catholicism

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2012/03/05/2095609/ky-voices-pett-cartoon-a-bigoted.html#storylink=cpy

As a Catholic, I'm quite used to my church being criticized. And because the church is comprised of sinful people like me, I'm sure some of it is deserved. But I can handle an honest critique, not the intellectually lazy, bigoted, straw-man caricature of Catholicism that Joel Pett chose to draw and the paper's editorial staff chose to publish Feb. 15. The cartoon depicted a Catholic bishop condemning a woman for her "evil desire" for birth control while simultaneously leering at her young son....

I suppose Pett was intending to illumine the bankruptcy of the Catholic Church's moral witness because of the sexual scandals of recent vintage. I will not minimize the ugliness of how some Catholics behaved, whether in perpetuating abuse or covering it up, but the connection between Catholic moral teaching regarding contraception and the clergy sex scandals is a colossal non-sequitur.

Truth is truth, whether we fail to live up to it or not. I doubt Pett would condemn the collective virtue of public school teachers because of the abuse that far outnumbers Catholic crimes, or devalue the work of journalists based on public cases of plagiarism, deceit or bias. And yet he uses human weakness as a reason to smugly and irrationally dismiss in toto the 2,000-year-old moral teaching of the Catholic Church.

Unfortunately, Allen's assertion that the abuse of children at the hands of some public school teachers "far outnumbers Catholic crimes" is hard to know, isn't it? The church effectively swept some amount of abuse under the rug by various means including transferring priests to keep them in service, while crimes perpetuated by public employees are rarely, if ever, defended by public school administrators and always seem to make it into the press - as all such abuses should. No wonder Allen believes public school teachers' crimes far outnumber those of Catholics. But is that truth?

The difference between the church's defense and protection of its sinners and the public schools' insistence that abusers of children receive the full punishment under the law is an important difference, and any fair assessment ought to consider that.

Disrespect Again

Reposted*

While Tom Shelton was pulling down strong approval numbers for an "atmosphere of mutual trust and respect" from the faculty and staff in Daviess County, Fayette County scores languished 10 points below the state average on the TELL Survey released last May.

Surely Shelton would like to see the Fayette County numbers move in a more positive direction, yet another instance of disrespect toward drivers surfaced this week when transportation department management took on the issue of sloppy parking on the lot.

Now I suppose everybody gets a little irritated when a driver carelessly parks over the line at the mall, at school, at church....or anywhere. Sloppy parking wastes space for everyone. And if you've ever had the side of your car dinged by an inconsiderate driver, it can make your blood boil.

But suppose you were in charge of a facility - like the transportation facilities at Liberty Road - and some of your folks were being careless. Since everybody needs a parking pass to park on the lot, as a supervisor, you know who owns any offending cars. Surely, you'd want to say something to correct the situation. How would you handle it?

Here's how the Transportation department handles issues. These photos were posted on the bulletin board by the time clock in an apparent effort to embarrass and humiliate the offenders.

I'm sure Shelton would like the same level of affirmation from Fayette County employees that he enjoyed in Daviess County. But the general tone of disrespect toward transportation department employees continues to be a concern. Somebody's not getting the message. As we have seen before, folks know when they are being respected and helped to improve, and they know when they are being punished and humiliated, and they resent the latter.

*Last night I accidentally deleted the original post and reconstructed it (as best I could) above.

Bobby Jindal vs. Public Education

This from Diane Ravitch at Bridging Differences:

I went to Lafayette, La., last week to speak to the Louisiana School Boards Association. These men and women, representing their local schools from across the state, are trying to preserve public education in the face of an unprecedented onslaught by Gov. Bobby Jindal and the state's Republican-dominated legislature. Jindal has the backing of the state's corporate leaders, the nation's biggest foundations, and some powerful out-of-state supporters of privatization for his sweeping attack on public education.

Gov. Jindal has submitted a legislative proposal that would offer vouchers to more than half the students in the state; vastly expand the number of privately managed charter schools by giving the state board of education the power to create up to 40 new charter authorizing agencies; introduce academic standards and letter grades for pre-schoolers; and end seniority and tenure for teachers.

Under his plan, the local superintendent could immediately fire any teacher—tenured or not—who was rated "ineffective" by the state evaluation program. If the teacher re-applied to teach, she would have to be rated "highly effective" for five years in a row to regain tenure. Tenure, needless to say, becomes a meaningless term, since due process no longer is required for termination.

The bill is as punitive as possible with respect to public education and teachers. It says nothing about helping to improve or support them. It's all about enabling students to leave public schools and creating the tools to intimidate and fire teachers. This "reform" is not conservative. I would say it is radical and reactionary. But it is in no way unique to Louisiana...

The New Orleans' "miracle" is supposed to be evidence for the value of handing public education over to private managers and uncertified teachers. But the state's own website contradicts that "miracle" narrative. The state education department rated 79 percent of the charters in the Recovery School District as D or F.
The state also reported that the New Orleans Recovery School District was next to last in academic performance of all 72 districts in the state. It has made gains, but only in comparison to its own low base line in 2007.

All this data was compiled before the Jindal takeover of the state board of education. Currently, researchers are having trouble getting any data from the state education department.

Why are the elites of both parties so eager to hand children and public dollars over to private corporations? Why are both parties complicit in the dismantling of public education? Why do so many Democrats at the top advocate what used to be known as the right-wing agenda for education? ...

Civil Rights Data Show Retention Disparities

This from Education Week:

New nationwide data collected by the U.S. Department of Education's civil rights office reveal stark racial and ethnic disparities in student retentions, with black and Hispanic students far more likely than white students to repeat a grade, especially in elementary and middle school.

The contrast is especially strong for African-Americans. In the most extreme case, more than half of all 4th graders retained at the end of the 2009-10 academic year—56 percent—were black, according to the data, which account for about 85 percent of the nation's public school population. In 3rd grade, 49 percent of those held back were black.

Those findings come even though African-American students represented less than one-fifth of the entire universe of students in the K-12 data set collected from districts.

In all, nearly 1 million students, or 2.3 percent of those enrolled, were retained across K-12, the data show. Black students were nearly three times as likely as white students to be retained, when combining all grade levels. Hispanic students were twice as likely to be held back.

The new Civil Rights Data Collection, a portion of which was provided to Education Week last week, was scheduled for public release on March 6...

Repeating Grades

The number of students who had to repeat a grade in the 2010-11 school year spiked in 9th grade. In most grade levels, black and Hispanic students make up a large and disproportionate number of those retained, according to first-ever, nationwide data from the U.S. Department of Education’s office for civil rights.

SOURCES: U.S. Department of Education; Education Week

Colorado University Campus Gun Ban Overturned By State Supreme Court

This from the Huffington Post:

Students and employees of Colorado institutions of higher education can legally carry guns on campus, according to a state Supreme Court ruling Monday.

In a victory for guns-rights activists, the Colorado Supreme Court struck down the University of Colorado's campus gun ban that blocked students and employees from carrying licensed concealed weapons. The prohibition, the Court ruled, is illegal because it was not approved by the Legislature.

"We're very, very happy," James Manley of the Mountain State Legal Foundation, which fought CU's ban, told The Denver Post. "The position of the Supreme Court was that [CU Regents] were operating above the law." The university adopted its policy in 1994. Opponents of the ban said the CU rule was challenged as part of a nationwide effort to standardize campus gun policies. "We don't feel some campuses should allow it and others ban it," David Burnett, spokesman for Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, a nationwide student advocacy group, said in a statement Monday.

The ruling extends to about 30 public universities, colleges and community colleges across the state, instituting a blanket policy for Colorado campuses that previously had different rules.Colorado State University and a number of community colleges initially had banned guns on their campuses, but rescinded the prohibitions in 2010 following a lower court ruling, according to the Associated Press.

Colorado's Concealed Carry Act, which was enacted in 2003, prohibits local governments from limiting rights, stating that a person with a permit can carry a concealed weapon "in all areas of the state," with the exception of certain federal properties, K-12 schools, public buildings with security checkpoints and private properties where owners object to concealed weapons. College campuses are not explicitly excepted under the law...

Student says he was suspended for wearing heels

This from WNBC12:

A 17-year-old Charles City County student says he was kicked out of school for being gay and wearing high heels. The principal isn't talking but the superintendent is investigating.

The student was ordered to take off the high heels because he was disrupting the school. Asante Cotman challenged his principal and got suspended. NBC12 talked with him, on day one, of his 3-day suspension.

"I wore this jacket right here and my white shirt and my scarf and a pair of cargo pants and the heels. I didn't see how it was bothering anyone. I wasn't revealing nothing," Asante showed us. Beige stilettos ignited animosity between the high school junior and his principal.

Asante Cotman says he's the only openly gay male student at Charles City High. The spike heels were the crescendo, the boiling point for both... 

Hat tip to Justin @ EdJurist.

A Look at the Education Programs of the Gates Foundation

This from Ken Libby at the Shanker Blog:

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest philanthropic organization involved in public education. Their flexible capital allows the foundation to change course, experiment and take on tasks that would be problematic for other organizations.

Although the foundation’s education programs have been the subject of both praise and controversy, one area in which they deserve a great deal of credit is transparency. Unlike most other foundations, which provide a bare minimum, time-lagged account of their activities, Gates not only provides a description of each grant on its annually-filed IRS 990-PF forms, but it also maintains a continually updated list of grants posted on the foundation’s website. This nearly real-time outlet provides the public with information about grants months before the foundation is required to do so.

The purpose of this post is to provide descriptive information about programmatic support and changes between 2008 and 2010. These are the three years for which information is currently available.


I extracted a list of all Gates Foundation education grants listed on publicly available IRS 990-PF forms (available through guidestar.org or the Gates Foundation website) for the years ending in 2008-2010. The foundation gave out nearly 1,300 education-related grants during these three years.*

I created a coding scheme with 20 different categories and then placed each grant in one or more category. Since some grants fall into multiple categories, I also weighted the funding across categories. For example, a $250,000 grant supporting early learning advocacy would fit into both the advocacy and early learning categories, and both categories would receive $125,000. This is far from perfect, but it’s better than not weighting grants at all.

The first table below lists each category and the amount of resources allocated. The second lists each category and the number of grants.

It should come as no surprise to see the small schools funds decreasing quite dramatically. The drop in funds allocated to charter schools, however, may come as more of a surprise to some. Alternative schools and private schools are no longer receiving the same level of resources they were just a few years ago. Investments in school/district reforms tapered off sharply between 2009 and 2010.

The foundation more than tripled the number of grants dedicated to development between 2008 and 2010. It’s important to note that I included the Gates Foundation’s Measures of Effective Teaching in both the development and human capital categories.

The development resources ($28,730,901) dedicated to the MET Project accounts for approximately thirty percent of the resources the foundation used for development during 2009 and 2010. However, the number of grants dedicated to development increased rather significantly during this time period even if you remove the MET Project grants.

In addition to funding more development projects, the foundation allocated $13 million to Common Core State Standards in 2010, up from just over $600,000 two years prior. Human capital projects, largely a side project in 2008, became a centerpiece of the foundations work in 2010.

Overall, then, there are two broad takeaways from these data. First, the foundation funds a wide diversity of programs, and there really is not a single dominant category. Second, the year-to-year changes reflect a great deal of flexibility in shifting resources between those priorities...

Are charter schools cherry-picking their students?

This from the Connecticut Mirror:

As students from the highly regarded Jumoke Academy Charter School filed into the gymnasium for a mid-afternoon assembly last week, onlooker Gov. Dannel P. Malloy pointed out that at first glance these students seem to mirror those attending the neighborhood public schools.

"Look around," he said, fielding questions about whether this school is teaching the same type of students who attend Hartford public schools.

But enrollment numbers tell a different story.

Just one of the 432 students who attended Jumoke last school year spoke limited English, while in other schools in Hartford, 18 percent spoke limited English.

Likewise, 4 percent of Jumoke students require special education compared with 15 percent in Hartford.
Jumoke's lack of diversity is not unique among the state's 17 charter schools. An analysis of their enrollment by The Connecticut Mirror shows that students who speak limited English or have special education needs have been largely left out of most of the state's charters.

Public schools serve twice the percentage of limited-English students in the districts where 12 of the 17 charter schools are located, the data show. No charter in the state has a higher percentage of ELL students than their local district, and only four enroll more special education students.

This reality has fueled fierce responses from public school principals, superintendents and teachers unions when asked why they aren't achieving the same success as their neighboring charters are...

Hard-Working Teachers, Sabotaged When Student Test Scores Slip

This from the New York Times:

Antoinette Byam at Public School 146.

For 15 years, Anna Allanbrook has been the principal of Public School 146 in Brooklyn, one of the highest-achieving elementary schools in the city. In that time, she has never had a more talented and hard-working bunch than the current team of fifth-grade teachers. The five have lunch together daily, using the time to plan. They stay until 7 p.m. on Fridays to prepare for the following week. On Thursday night, most of them helped at the science invention fair until it was past 8 p.m.

Their credentials would be impressive for college professors. Antoinette Byam, who received a grant to spend a month in Ghana in 2006, won a Fulbright scholarship in 2008 to do research in Mexico and Peru. She then wrote fifth-grade curriculums on the Mayans. 

Before becoming a teacher, Nancy Salomon had her own theater company and ran a drama program in the schools that won an arts award from the Guggenheim Museum. 

Cora Sangree has trained teachers at Bank Street College of Education and Teachers College at Columbia University. Laurie Matthews worked as an archaeologist in Brazil and France before she started teaching.

In 2009, 96 percent of their fifth graders were proficient in English, 89 percent in math. When the New York City Education Department released its numerical ratings recently, it seemed a sure bet that the P.S. 146 teachers would be at the very top. 

Actually, they were near the very bottom. 

Ms. Byam and Ms. Salomon each scored 7 out of 100 in math. Ms. Sangree got a 1 in math and an 11 in English. Ms. Matthews’s scores got mixed up with the results for another fifth-grade teacher, Penina Hirshman, so nobody could say for certain what her real numbers might be. 

A teacher’s rating depends on how much progress her students make on state tests in a year’s time, and is known as the value-added score. Ms. Allanbrook, the principal, has another name for what’s going on. She calls the scores the “invalid value-addeds.” 

If city officials were trying to demoralize and humiliate the workforce, they’ve done a terrific job...

Happy 60th Sweetie

Breathitt County Schools Superintendent Indicted

This from LEX18.com:

The Breathitt County Schools Superintendent was arrested Friday pursuant to a federal indictment charging him with obstruction of justice, conspiracy to buy votes and making false statements to a federal agent.

The three count Indictment, returned Thursday and unsealed Friday, alleges that 65-year-old Arch Turner of Booneville conspired with others to buy votes in the November 2010 general election in Breathitt County.

Additionally, when the FBI interviewed Turner in October 2010, he allegedly made false statements saying he had not given any candidate money for election purposes in the May 2010 primary election and that cash he withdrew from his bank account was for personal use and not for the purpose of buying votes.

Turner is also accused of trying to persuade a person, during an FBI investigation, not to report Turner's vote buying activity to law enforcement.

A date for Turner's appearance in United States District Court has not yet been set. If convicted, Turner faces a maximum prison sentence of 20 years.

Applying a Precise Label to a Rough Number

This from Michael Winerip in the New York Times:

I’m delighted that the New York City Education Department has released its teacher data reports.Finally, there are some solid numbers for judging teachers.

Using a complex mathematical formula, the department’s statisticians have calculated how much elementary and middle-school teachers’ students outpaced — or fell short of — expectations on annual standardized tests. They adjusted these calculations for 32 variables, including “whether a child was new to the city in pretest or post-test year” and “whether the child was retained in grade before pretest year.” This enabled them to assign each teacher a score of 1 to 100, representing how much value the teachers added to their students’ education.

Then news organizations did their part by publishing the names of the teachers and their numbers. Miss Smith might seem to be a good teacher, but parents will know she’s a 23.

Some have complained that the numbers are imprecise, which is true, but there is no reason to be too alarmed — unless you are a New York City teacher.

For example, the margin of error is so wide that the average confidence interval around each rating for English spanned 53 percentiles. This means that if a teacher was rated a 40, she might actually be as dangerous as a 13.5 or as inspiring as a 66.5.

Think of it this way: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is seeking re-election and gives his pollsters $1 million to figure out how he’s doing. The pollsters come back and say, “Mr. Mayor, somewhere between 13.5 percent and 66.5 percent of the electorate prefer you.”

There are a few other teensy problems. The ratings date back to 2010. That was the year state education officials decided that their standardized test scores were so inflated and unreliable that they had to use their own complex mathematical formula to recalibrate. One minute 86 percent of state students were proficient in math, the next minute 61 percent were.

Albert Einstein once said, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted,” but it now appears that he was wrong.

Of course, no one would be foolish enough to think that people would judge a teacher based solely on a number like 37. As Shael Polakow-Suransky, the City Education Department’s No. 2 official, told reporters on Friday, “We would never invite anyone — parents, reporters, principals, teachers — to draw a conclusion based on this score alone.”

Within 24 hours The Daily News had published a front-page headline that read, “NYC’S Best and Worst Teachers.” And inside, on Page 4: “24 teachers stink, but 105 called great.”

The publication of the teacher data reports is a defining moment. A line has been drawn between those who say, “even bad data is better than no data,” and those who say, “Have you no shame?” ...

No Student Left Untested

This from Diane Ravitch in the New York Review of Books:

Last week, the New York State Education Department and the teachers’ unions reached an agreement to allow the state to use student test scores to evaluate teachers. The pact was brought to a conclusion after Governor Andrew Cuomo warned the parties that if they didn’t come to an agreement quickly, he would impose his own solution (though he did not explain what that would be). He further told school districts that they would lose future state aid if they didn’t promptly implement the agreement after it was released to the public. The reason for this urgency was to secure $700 million promised to the state by the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program, contingent on the state’s creating a plan to evaluate teachers in relation to their students’ test scores.

The new evaluation system pretends to be balanced, but it is not. Teachers will be ranked on a scale of 1-100. Teachers will be rated as “ineffective, developing, effective, or highly effective.” Forty percent of their grade will be based on the rise or fall of student test scores; the other sixty percent will be based on other measures, such as classroom observations by principals, independent evaluators, and peers, plus feedback from students and parents.

But one sentence in the agreement shows what matters most: “Teachers rated ineffective on student performance based on objective assessments must be rated ineffective overall.” What this means is that a teacher who does not raise test scores will be found ineffective overall, no matter how well he or she does with the remaining sixty percent. In other words, the 40 percent allocated to student performance actually counts for 100 percent. Two years of ineffective ratings and the teacher is fired.

The New York press treated the agreement as a major breakthrough that would lead to dramatic improvement in the schools. The media assumed that teachers and principals in New York State would now be measured accurately, that the bad ones would be identified and eventually ousted, and that the result would be big gains in test scores. Only days earlier, a New York court ruled that the media will be permitted to publish the names and rankings of teachers in New York City, even if the rankings are inaccurate. Thus, the scene has been set: Not only will teachers and principals be rated, but those ratings can now be released to the public online and in the press.

The consequences of these policies will not be pretty. If the way these ratings are calculated is flawed, as most testing experts acknowledge they are, then many good educators will be subject to public humiliation and will leave the profession. Once those scores are released to the media, we can expect that parents will object if their children are assigned to “bad” teachers, and principals will have a logistical nightmare trying to squeeze most children into the classes of the highest-ranked teachers. Will parents sue if their children do not get the “best” teachers?

New York’s education officials are obsessed with test scores. The state wants to find and fire the teachers who aren’t able to produce higher test scores year after year. But most testing experts believe that the methods for calculating teachers’ assumed “value-added” qualities—that is, their abilities to produce higher test scores year after year—are inaccurate, unstable, and unreliable. Teachers in affluent suburbs are likelier to get higher value-added scores than teachers of students with disabilities, students learning English, and students from extreme poverty. All too often, the rise or fall of test scores reflects the composition of the classroom and factors beyond the teachers’ control, not the quality of the teacher. A teacher who is rated effective one year may well be ineffective the next year, depending on which students are assigned to his or her class.

The state is making a bet that threatening to fire and publicly humiliate teachers it deems are underperforming will be sufficient to produce higher test scores. Since most teachers in New York do not teach tested subjects (reading and mathematics in grades 3-8), the state will require districts to create measures for everything that is taught (called, in state bureaucratese, “student learning objectives”) for all the others. So, in the new system, there will be assessments in every subject, including the arts and physical education. No one knows what those assessments will look like. Everything will be measured, not to help students, but to evaluate their teachers. If the district’s own assessments are found to be not sufficiently rigorous by State Commissioner of Education John King (who has only three years of teaching experience, two in charter schools), he has the unilateral power to reject them.

This agreement will certainly produce an intense focus on teaching to the tests. It will also profoundly demoralize teachers, as they realize that they have lost their professional autonomy and will be measured according to precise behaviors and actions that have nothing to do with their own definition of good teaching....

No high-performing nation in the world evaluates teachers by the test scores of their students; and no state or district in this nation has a successful program of this kind. The State of Tennessee and the city of Dallas have been using some type of test-score based teacher evaluation for twenty years but are not known as educational models. Across the nation, in response to the prompting of Race to the Top, states are struggling to evaluate their teachers by student test scores, but none has figured it out....

Of course, teachers should be evaluated. They should be evaluated by experienced principals and peers. No incompetent teacher should be allowed to remain in the classroom. Those who can’t teach and can’t improve should be fired. But the current frenzy of blaming teachers for low scores smacks of a witch-hunt, the search for a scapegoat, someone to blame for a faltering economy, for the growing levels of poverty, for widening income inequality....

Great Graffiti