Just When You Thought It Couldn’t Get Crazier…

This from Diane Ravitch's blog:

I opened the following email and at first I thought it was a prank or, as another reader put it, an article taken from The Onion. See what you think:

—–Original Message—–
From: Leonie Haimson
To: nyceducationnews ; paa news
Sent: Fri, Jun 8, 2012 10:08 am
Subject: [nyceducationnews] Gates Foundation: one more step into the dystopian future with electronic bracelets for students & teachers

Gates Foundation experimenting w/Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) bracelets in teacher eval project
 See Susan Ohanian, excerpt below:  http://goo.gl/KBXtO
 
Look up “effective teaching” on Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grants. Here’s one of the awards.

To: Clemson University
Purpose: to work with members of the Measuring Effective Teachers (MET) team to measure engagement physiologically with Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) bracelets which will determine the feasibility and utility of using such devices regularly in schools with students and teachers [emphasis added]
Amount: $498,055
Think about that!!
NOTE: The emerging field of neuromarketing relies on biometric technologies to determine a participant’s emotional and cognitive response to certain stimuli. In the case of neuromarketing, this stimulus is anything from a television commercial to an internet advertisement. There are six primary biometrics used to gather data on physiological responses to marketing…

So Gates wants to apply it to effective teaching.

The Affectiva Q Sensor is a wearable, wireless biosensor that measures emotional arousal via skin conductance, a form of electrodermal activity that grows higher during states such as excitement, attention or anxiety and lower during states such as boredom or relaxation.

Here’s a paper on the topic: MobiCon: Mobile Context Monitoring Platform for Sensor-Rich Dynamic Environments

Smart mobile devices will be the central gateway for
personal services in the emerging pervasive environment
(Figure 1). They will enable a lot of personal context-aware
applications, forming a personal sensor network with a
number of diverse sensor devices, placed over human body
or in surrounding spaces. Diverse sensors act as the useful
tool for the applications to acquire users’ contexts1 , i.e.,
current status of an individual or surrounding situation that
she/he faces into, without their intervention [42].
 
Wikipedia says neuromarketing is a new field of marketing research that studies consumers’ sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective response to marketing stimuli. So the Gates Foundation joins Google, CB S, and Frito-Lay in looking for ways to measure consumer reactions to products.
Put a Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) bracelet on every kid in the class and you can measure teacher effectiveness in keeping their attention.

Maybe the next step is for the bracelet to zap them with electric current when their attention wanders.
And then the next generation will be the Galvanic Skin Response bracelet on every teacher–to zap her when she veers from the Common Core curriculum. Then. . . bring on the drones to eliminate such teachers.
 
 Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
124 Waverly Pl.

I needed A reality check, so I googled “galvanic skin response” and added “Clemson.” up popped the following link:

Home/Clemson University
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Clemson University
Date: November 2011
Purpose: to work with members of the Measuring Effective Teachers (MET) team to measure engagement physiologically with Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) bracelets which will determine the feasibility and utility of using such devices regularly in schools with students and teachers
Amount: $498,055
Term: 1 year and 2 months
Topic: College-Ready Education
Region Served: Global, North America
Program: United States
Grantee Location: Clemson, South Carolina
Grantee Web site: http://www.clemson.edu

What can I say? Shades of Brave New World.

Which district will be first to put the bracelets on their students and teachers? Will charter school students have to wear them, or only children in public schools? Who will pay for them? Will schools raise money by selling the data to Amazon and Google and other data-mining corporations? Have we lost all common sense?

Dept. of Education Updates College-Cost List

This from College Bound:

Students looking closely at the cost of college will find updated information today on schools with the lowest and highest tuition—and where is it going up fastest—at the U.S. Department of Education's College Affordability and Transparency Center.

"Unfortunately, we are seeing some alarming trends," said Secretary of Ed. Arne Duncan on a press call this afternoon.

Between 2008 and 2010, the published price of tuition at public, four-year universities went up an average of 15 percent and the net cost rose 4.6 percent. The bright spot was at two-year, public institutions, where costs went up 16.6 percent but the bottom-line price paid by students increased just 1 percent in the same time.

Historically, community colleges have been more affordable and have developed partnerships with industry that keep costs down, said Education Undersecretary Martha Kanter on the call. Without the research mission of a flagship university (and costs that come with that), community colleges have been able to focus on teaching and learning, she added.

The national average for in-state tuition and fees in 2010 for four-year, public universities was $6,669. Topping the most expensive schools in that list was Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus ($15,250), University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus ($14,936), University of Vermont ($14,066), University of New Hampshire-Main Campus ($13,672) and St Mary's College of Maryland ($13,630). States hit particularly hard with budget cuts, and therefore, had big spikes in tuition, included California, Arizona, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

Private, not-for-profit college tuition and fees averaged $21,949 with the following schools priced highest: Connecticut College in New London, Conn. ($43,990), Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y.($43,564), Columbia University ($43,304), Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. ($43,190) and George Washington University in D.C. ($42,905). The average net cost of private, not-for profit institutions rose 9.7 percent from 2008 to 2010, according to the department.

The cost of attending a for-profit institution continues to outpace other higher education sectors, with tuition and fees at West Coast University-Orange County in California leading the category at $36,075 a year.

With household incomes remaining stagnant and college costs rising, higher education is becoming out of reach for many families. This website is an effort to help families become savvy consumers and get the most for their tuition dollar, said education officials.

The department first published the College Affordability and Transparency lists last year, fulfilling the requirement of the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008. While some lists contain tuition and fees, others look at the net price so families get a snapshot of the true cost of attending for full-time, first-time students once grants and scholarships are deducted.

The department plans to release a report online of those colleges and universities (1,878) where prices are rising the fastest, why costs have gone up, and how the institution will address rising prices, according to a department press release. There are a total of 4,165 institutions included on the combined lists.

Exquisitely Timed GAO Report Slams Charters

This from This Week In Education: 

A new GAO report requested by Democratic House member George Miller was unveiled to several media outlets (presumably under embargo) and reported all over the place today (Charter schools enroll fewer disabled children than public schools, GAO report says) which just happens to be halfway through the national charter school conference in Minneapolis.

What makes the report noteworthy isn't so much its main finding (that charters serve 8 percent SPED kids compared to 11 percent in the general population) but its timing.  GAO reports usually come out at random times.  The occasional exception is when a new report is released around a Committee hearing.   In this case, Miller's office handled the press and seems to have orchestrated the timing.

From Miller this morning: "This report rightly calls on Congress and the Department of Education to focus our efforts on providing students with disabilities the full opportunity to achieve a complete mainstream education whether in a traditional public school or a charter school.”  (see full press release below)

Even before the report came out, CER's Jeanne Allen was raising warning flags about media coverage this week, describing a Minnesota Public Radio story as "a taste of what is to come" this week.  "we will see many more stories citing “studies” that show “mixed results” on charter school performance," said Allen in an email Tuesday. NAPCS and NACSA are working on statements, I'm told.

GAO Report Finds Students with Disabilities Underrepresented in our Nation’s Charter Schools  

WASHINGTON – As charter schools continue to grow steadily and have become an important part of our education system, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that nationally, charter schools are not serving students with disabilities at the same rates as traditional public schools.  In addition, while charter schools have the potential to provide students with increased educational options, additional measures are needed to ensure access for students with disabilities.

 The charter school movement began in the early 1990s and, as of the 2009-2010 school year, more than 1.6 million students – approximately four percent of all public school students –attend nearly 5,000 charter schools in 40 states and the District of Columbia. GAO found that in the 2009–2010 school year, charter schools enrolled 8.2 percent of students with disabilities compared to 11.2 percent of students with disabilities in public schools.

 “The charter school movement across the country is breaking down old stereotypes about which students can and can’t learn – whether poor, minority or a student with a disability,” said Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.). “As we move forward with education reform, we need to ensure that students with disabilities are a part of the educational revolution that is taking place within charter schools. This report rightly calls on Congress and the Department of Education to focus our efforts on providing students with disabilities the full opportunity to achieve a complete mainstream education whether in a traditional public school or a charter school.”

 “This report scratches the surface of the equal access issues we know still exist in our nation’s schools. We need to make sure students have proper facilities and support no matter where they choose to go to school,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.).“Whether they’re disabled, are still learning fluent English, or have any other special educational needs, our students should be sure our nation’s schools accommodate them and provide a quality education. We can’t be satisfied with anything less. I look forward to GAO’s findings on English language learner access, and I sincerely hope these findings spur the public attention and Congressional action our education system deserves.”

 Like traditional public schools, charter schools have an obligation, which comes with the receipt of public funding, to serve all public school students, including students with disabilities. However, GAOfound that in most states, charter schools enrolled a lower percentage of students with disabilities when compared to traditional public schools.   GAO found that several factors – from parental preference to school capacity – may account for the differences in enrollment levels of students with disabilities.

 Additionally, GAO found that:

• ·         Students with disabilities represented 8-12 percent of all students at 23 percent of charter schools compared to 34 percent of traditional public schools.

• ·         About half of charter schools reported having insufficient resources, including limited space, as a challenge to serving students with disabilities.

• ·         Some charter schools may be discouraging students with disabilities from enrolling and denying admission to students with more severe disabilities because of the cost of services.

Last year, as part of reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the House passed a bipartisan bill – the “Empowering Parents through Quality Charter Schools Act” – that took several steps to increase access for students with disabilities and address the challenges highlighted by today’s GAO report.  Under this reauthorization of the charter school program, students with disabilities would have increased opportunities to attend and succeed at high-quality charter schools. The bill requires charter schools to have recruitment and enrollment practices that promote inclusion, retention, and engage students with limited opportunities to attend charter schools.

In response to GAO’s report, the Department of Education is considering issuing additional or updated guidance for charter schools and local agencies related to the recruitment, admissions, and accessibility of students with disabilities.

For charter schools, mixed results at 20-year mark

This from Minnesota Public Radio News:

In Kitty Taylor's third-grade classroom at Hiawatha Leadership Academy, the pace is quick.

When Taylor hands students a math quiz, they have two minutes to finish before a timer goes off and they have to turn in their papers. Then they must snap to attention and move to the next task. "One, two, three, eyes on me," Taylor calls. "One, two, eyes on you," her students respond.

That's a tiny fraction of a very long day for the south Minneapolis charter school's nearly 400 students in kindergarten through fourth grade. Similar scenes are repeated across the nation in the some 5,000 charter schools that serve 2 million students.

[Last] week, charter school officials [gathered] in Minneapolis to share notes and discuss the progress of the national charter school movement, which marks its 20th anniversary this year. The first charter school in the country, City Academy in St. Paul, opened in 1992 and is still in operation today...

Despite their growth, the schools' effectiveness is still being debated.

A University of Minnesota study found that students at charter schools in the Twin Cities, for example, scored 7.5 percentage points lower on math testing and almost 4.5 points lower on reading tests than their counterparts at traditional schools. National studies have found similar results across the country.

In Minnesota, 40,000 students attend charter schools, or less than 5 percent of the state's total K-12 enrollment. Though relatively small, enrollment at charters has tripled in the last decade.

Charter schools are public schools, but they are freed from some of the regulations that guide traditional schools. They operate independently, and develop their own curriculum and focus.

Advocates for charter schools say they offer families a choice over failing district schools and are particularly helpful for minority and low-income families.

Most of the students at Hiawatha Leadership Academy are Latino and from low-income families. Students there are in school from 7:50 a.m. until almost 4:30 p.m. Combined with a longer school year, the children spend 40 percent more time in class than the students in district schools.

Eli Kramer, executive director of Hiawatha Academy, said that's key to the school's mission of preparing students for college.

"Rigorous academics and a very heavy on focus on developing character and the social and emotional skills that we believe students need to thrive in a higher education setting," he said.

According to state testing data, since the school opened in 2007, its students have essentially closed the gap between their reading and math scores and those of white students.

Kramer said Hiawatha Leadership Academy is living up to what was promised of charters when they began in Minnesota 20 years ago, but he acknowledges his school's success isn't characteristic of the entire charter movement.

"There's a huge range of quality of charter schools," he said. "There are some terrible charter schools. We have to be honest with ourselves about that."

Two decades of data show that Minnesota charter schools often underperform compared with traditional district schools, said Myron Orfield, a law professor and director of the University of Minnesota's Institute on Race and Poverty. He authored the study on Twin Cities charter schools.
"Charters have promised something better to kids that are desperate and their families that are desperate and they've given them something worse," he said. "They've tricked them. And they've tricked us. And it's a tragedy."

Orfield's research has also found that more than 40 charters have closed in the Twin Cities since the mid-1990s because of financial mismanagement.

He thinks charters that routinely underperform traditional schools should be closed. Some charter school advocates concede that the charter system needs to change...

Jimmy Kimmel's Best/Meanest Sketch Ever?

This from MEDIAite.com:

Does Jimmy Kimmel not like kids?

After his previous (and hilarious, always) pranks on kids at Christmas and on Halloween, he’s now turned to torturing small womb hobbits via lie detector.

In the sketch, Officer Jimmy Kimmel, professional Lie Detective, joins the glamorous and beautiful Truth Fairy to get to the bottom of whether Blake is a tiny, adorable little LIAR.

We learn that Blake actually doesn’t like school, but does like math, wears hair gel and…. has peed in the pool. “I think we all have,” said Kimmel, probably because Blake seemed like he wanted to die. “It’s fun.”

“It’s a lot of fun,” the Truth Fairy agreed. But only when it’s someone else’s pool. Also, Blake hates puppies. He’s a pool-peeing puppy hater.

Check it out, via ABC:

Richest School Districts in America

Three of the Nation's Poorest Districts in Kentucky

Pineville, Monticello and Barbourville at the bottom

This from 24/7 Wall St:

The average income of Americans differs by state, county, city and ZIP code, obviously. At each level, the amount residents earn every year impacts available government services, health and overall quality of life. This is especially true when education is examined by school district.

Read: America’s Richest School Districts

Read: America’s Poorest School Districts

24/7 Wall St. analyzed Census data from 2006 through 2010 for each of the more than 10,000 unified school districts in the United States. Wealth appears to have an outsized effect on education at the local level. Residents that live in wealthy school districts have among the best schools in the nation based on graduation rates, test scores and independent ratings of academic success. Children who attend these schools are more likely to earn a college degree than the national average. To illustrate the influence wealth and poverty have on educational attainment, 24/7 Wall St. examined the wealthiest and poorest school districts in the country.

Nearly all of the wealthiest school districts are within a short distance of one of the richest cities in the country. Other than one suburb of Portland, Ore., all of the wealthiest school districts are commuter towns of New York City, located in either Fairfield County, Conn., or Westchester County, N.Y. The poorest districts are rural communities scattered all over the country, from Ohio and Kentucky to Texas and Mississippi.

Compared to the national median income, the families in the most well-off districts are incredibly wealthy. In the 10 richest school districts, median incomes ranged from $175,766 to $238,000. By comparison, the national median household income from 2006 to 2010 was $51,914. Among the 10 wealthiest districts, between 48% and 64% earned $200,000. Nationally, only 5.4% of households earned more than that.

Median income in the poorest school districts was just as extreme. Annual median incomes in those districts ranged from $16,607 to $18,980, well below $22,314, the national poverty line for a household of four. In San Perlita Independent School District in Texas, one of the poorest districts in the country, 30% of residents earned less than $10,000 each year.

According to the National Center of Education Statistics, all of the wealthiest school districts spend far more per pupil than the national average. The Darien, Conn., public school district spends $15,433 per student per year, more than 50% above the U.S. average of $10,591. The Edgemont, N.Y., public school spends more than $25,000 per student annually. Barbourville, Ky., the poorest school district, spends less than one-third that amount.

Not surprisingly, the richest schools are considered better than the poorest schools, based on measures used by the media to rank academic success. All of the richest school districts were included in the 2012 U.S. News & World Report Best High Schools list, except for Bronxville, which was ranked fourth in Newsweek’s Top 20 High Schools in the Northeast. U.S. News based its rankings on state test scores and college readiness, while Newsweek’s methodology included graduation rates, college acceptance and AP exams. The poorest school districts did not fare as well. Only two were included in the U.S. News rankings.

On a national level, nearly half of all property tax revenue goes to public school funding. As a result, most districts rely heavily on local funding. In the richest school districts, up to 90% of the school district budget is from residents’ taxes. Homeowners in these regions pay an average of $18,000 in Weston, Conn. to $43,000 in Bronxville, N.Y. Bronxville’s average property tax bill alone is more than twice the median household income of any of the poorest school districts on this list. By comparison, as little as 6% of school revenue is generated by local taxes in the poorest school districts, with state and federal funding making up the difference.

24/7 Wall St. used the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey from 2006 to 2010 to measure the economic conditions of more than 10,000 unified school districts across the United States. After eliminating the districts with fewer than 10 school-aged children, those that are not unified and those that do not provide a K-12 curriculum, we identified the 10 districts with the highest median income among residents and the 10 with the lowest median income. We also considered income distribution, the percentage of children living in poverty, median home values and the percentages of adults holding high school and bachelor degrees in these school districts. From housing information site Trulia, we obtained academic test scores in all of the districts. Information on academic performance for each district also was based on the 2012 U.S. News Best High Schools, the 2012 Newsweek Top High Schools and individual district websites. 24/7 Wall St. contacted assessor’s offices to obtain average property taxes paid in these areas and relied on the National Center of Education Statistics for information on school funding.

The Poorest School Districts in America

10) Centennial School District R-1, Colo.

9) Pineville Independent School District, Ky.
>Median household income: $18,933
>Pct. households earning $200,000+: 1.3%
>Pct. households earning less than $10,000: 16.3%
>Expenditure per student: $9,829
>Pct. local funding: 12%
With a median household income of just $18,933, Pineville households earn more than $30,000 less than the national median. Similarly, the median home value is only $58,600 compared to the national median of $188,400. These low home values have affected the community’s abilities to provide for its own students through property taxes. The Pineville Independent School District spends $9,829 per student, and only 12% of that is provided by local residents. Less than 50% of high school students received proficient scores in writing or social studies on the Kentucky Core Content Tests.

8) San Perlita Independent School District, Tex.

7) New Boston Local School District, Ohio

6) Hayti R-II School District, Mo.

5) Santa Maria Independent School District, Tex.

4) West Bolivar School District, Miss.

3) North Bolivar School District, Miss.

 

2) Monticello Independent School District, Ky.
>Median household income: $16,778
>Pct. households earning $200,000+: 0%
>Pct. households earning less than $10,000: 18%
>Expenditure per student: $9,964
>Pct. local funding: 8%
With 18% of households earning less than $10,000 annually, and not a single household earning above $200,000 per year, the Monticello Independent School District is one of the poorest school districts in the U.S. Nearly 40% of Monticello household incomes are below the poverty line, and 43.4% receive food stamps or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits. In addition, median home value in Monticello is a meager $61,600, which is less than a third of the nation’s median home value. As a result, residents contribute just 8% to funding the district’s schools, or $892 per student. Only 60% of adults in the district have a high school diploma and 6.3% have a bachelor’s degree. On the Kentucky Core Content Tests, Monticello students were well below state proficiency levels on math and social studies.

1) Barbourville Independent School District, Ky.
>Median household income: $16,607
>Pct. households earning $200,000+: 0%
>Pct. households earning less than $10,000: 6.8%
>Expenditure per student: $8,178
>Pct. local funding: 16%
About one-third of households in the Barbourville Independent School District live well below the poverty line, earning less than $15,000 annually. The median home value in Barbourville is just $80,700, compared to the national average of $188,400. Poverty affects children in the district a great deal; an estimated 282 of the 680 children between 5 and 17 live in households with incomes below the poverty line. Surprisingly, U.S. News gave Barbourville’s high school a ranking on the 2012 Best High Schools list, explaining that Barbourville students received scores on their Kentucky Core Content Tests that were higher than state averages, despite the fact that 62% of the student body is “economically disadvantaged.”   

 

The Richest School Districts in America

1) Scarsdale Union Free School District, N.Y.
> Median household income: $238,000
> Pct. households earning $200,000+: 64.3%
> Pct. households earning less than $10,000: 0%
> Expenditure per student: $26,742
> Pct. local funding: 89%
With a median income of $238,000, the Scarsdale Union Free School District tops 24/7 Wall St.’s list of the wealthiest school districts in the country. In the district, just 35.7% of households earn less $200,000 a year. Because Scarsdale collects an average property tax of approximately $31,000, the district is able to spend a lot on education. Scarsdale provides 89% of funding for its own schools and spends $26,742 per student. The district’s schools are also among the best in the country. About 90% of eighth-grade students at Scarsdale Middle School meet or exceed NYSA’s standards, while in each subsection of the NYSA high school tests at least 90% of Scarsdale High School students had passing grades.

2) Weston School District, Conn.
3) Riverdale School District, Ore.
4) Chappaqua Central School District, N.Y.
5) Briarcliff Manor Union Free School District, N.Y.

6) Byram Hills Central School District, N.Y.
7) Edgemont Union Free School District, N.Y.
8) New Canaan School District, Conn.
9) Bronxville Union Free School District, N.Y.
10) Darien School District, Conn.

What is NCTQ? (and why you should know)

This from Diane Ravitch at The Answer Sheet: 

Several months ago, U.S. News & World Report announced that it planned to rank the nation’s schools of education and that it would do so with the assistance of the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ).

Since then, many institutions announced that they would not collaborate. Some felt that they had already been evaluated by other accrediting institutions like NCATE or TEAC; others objected to NCTQ’s methodology. As the debate rated, NCTQ told the dissenters that they would be rated whether they agreed or not, and if they didn’t cooperate, they would get a zero. The latest information that I have seen is that the ratings will appear this fall.

To its credit, NCTQ posted on its website the letters of the college presidents and deans who refused to be rated by NCTQ. They make for interesting reading, as it is always surprising (at least to me) to see the leaders of big institutions take a stand on issues. Two of the conservative Chiefs for Change are on NCTQ’s technical advisory panel.
U.S. News defended the project, saying that it had been endorsed by leading educators. The specific endorsement to which it referred came from Chiefs for Change, the conservative state superintendents associated with former Florida governor Jeb Bush. This article, by the way, has good links to NCTQ’s website, describing the project and its methods.

Just this week, NCTQ released a new report about how teachers’ colleges prepare students for assessment responsibilities. The theme of this report is that “data-driven instruction” is the key to success in education. The best districts are those that are “obsessive about using data to drive instruction.” The Broad Prize is taken as the acme of academic excellence in urban education because it focuses on data, data, data. The report acknowledges that the data it prizes in this report is “data derived from student assessments — ranging from classwork practice to state tests — to improve instruction.”

Data-driven decision making is now a national priority, it says, thanks to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who required states “to improve their data systems and create high-quality assessments” if they wanted a crack at his $5 billion Race to the Top.
Unfortunately despite a massive investment in data collection by states and the federal government, the report says, teachers don’t value data enough. Reference is made to the report sponsored by Gates and Scholastic, which found that most teachers do not value the state tests. I wrote about that report here. How in the world can our nation drive instruction with data if the teachers hold data in low regard?

The balance of the report reviews teacher training institutions by reviewing their course syllabi. The goal is to judge whether the institutions are preparing future teachers to be obsessed with data.

Now, to be candid, I am fed up with our nation’s obsession with data-driven instruction, so I don’t share the premises of the report. The authors of this report have more respect for standardized tests than I do. I fear that they are pushing data-worship and data-mania of a sort that will cause teaching to the test, narrowing of the curriculum, and other negative behaviors (like cheating). I don’t think any of this will lead to the improvement of education. It might promote higher test scores, but it will undermine genuine education. By genuine education, I refer to a love of learning, a readiness to immerse oneself in study of a subject, an engagement with ideas, a willingness to ask questions and to take risks. I don’t know how to assess the qualities I respect, but I feel certain that there is no standardized, data-driven instruction that will produce what I respect.
And then there is the question that is the title of this blog: What is NCTQ?

NCTQ was created by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation in 2000. I was on the board of TBF at the time. Conservatives, and I was one, did not like teacher training institutions. We thought they were too touchy-feely, too concerned about self-esteem and social justice and not concerned enough with basic skills and academics. In 1997, we had commissioned a Public Agenda study called “Different Drummers”; this study chided professors of education because they didn’t care much about discipline and safety and were more concerned with how children learn rather than what they learned. TBF established NCTQ as a new entity to promote alternative certification and to break the power of the hated ed schools.

For a time, it was not clear how this fledgling organization would make waves or if it would survive. But in late 2001, Secretary of Education Rod Paige gave NCTQ a grant of $5 million to start a national teacher certification program called the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (see p. 16 of the link). ABCTE has since become an online teacher preparation program, where someone can become a teacher for $1,995.

Today, NCTQ is the partner of U.S. News & World Report and will rank the nation’s schools of education. It received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to review teacher quality in Los Angeles. It is now often cited as the nation’s leading authority on teacher quality issues. Its report has a star-studded technical advisory committee of corporate reform leaders like Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee.

And I was there at the creation.

An hour after this blog was first published, a reader told me that NCTQ was cited as one of the organizations that received funding from the Bush administration to get positive media attention for NCLB. I checked his sources, which took me to a 2005 report of the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education (a link in this article leads to the Inspector General report), and he was right. This practice was suspended because the U.S. Department of Education is not allowed to expend funds for propaganda, and the grantees are required to make full disclosure of their funding. At the time, the media focused on payments to commentator Armstrong Williams.

According to the investigation, NCTQ and another organization received a grant of $677,318 to promote NCLB. The product of this grant was three op-eds written by Kate Walsh, the head of NCTQ; the funding of these articles by the Department of Education was not disclosed.

Partisanship Drives Down Supreme Court Approval

This from the Huffington Post:

The American public's faith in government continues to decline.

President Barack Obama's job approval rating currently stands at 47 percent, Gallup reported. However, nearly as many respondents said they disapproved of the president's actions.

The reputation of Congress is practically in the gutter, treading water at 17 percent in April. That was a slight improvement from February, when approval of the lawmakers in D.C. reached a record low of 10 percent.

Now the people have weighed in on the justices of the high court, and the report isn't stellar. According to a new poll conducted by The New York Times and CBS News, just 44 percent of Americans approve of the job the Supreme Court is doing.
 
Three-quarters said the nine justices sometimes decided cases based on their personal or political views, rather than along constitutional lines. Only 1 in 8 Americans said the justices decided cases based solely on legal analysis, The New York Times reported.

Sixty percent of Americans also agreed with the statement that "appointing Supreme Court justices for life is a bad thing because it gives them too much power." Only one-third said that life tenure for justices was "a good thing because it helps keep them independent from political pressures."

Back in 1994, the court's approval rating hit an all-time high of 80 percent, The Associated Press reported. Such a drastic change in less than two decades could be attributed to the changing makeup of the court, particularly after the ideologically divided 5-to-4 decisions in Bush v. Gore, which determined the 2000 presidential election, and Citizens United, the 2010 decision that gave unlimited campaign spending rights to corporations and unions.

Whether the upcoming decision on the Obama administration's health care overhaul has an impact on the public's view of the court remains to be seen.

Are Teachers Too Easily Caught in Crossfire Over Student Achievement?

This from PBS:

In the recent debates on fixing American schools, a lot of emphasis has been placed on teachers, how to train them, how to pay them, even when and how to fire them. Is putting teachers at the center of reform at least a step in the right direction?

DIANE RAVITCH, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education: Well, certainly, teachers are crucial to schools.

They're crucial to everything that happens in schools. But there's been way too negative a discussion. There has been so much demonizing of teachers, as though they're a great problem. And the overwhelmingly majority of teachers in this country are very hardworking, very dedicated and, for the most part, underpaid.

RAY SUAREZ: Is there a place where an evaluation system that figures out what teachers do well, identifies areas where they need improvement, and then goes on to pay top performers accordingly?

DIANE RAVITCH: Well, there's two parts to your question.

Watch Are Teachers Too Accountable Over Student Achievement? on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

First of all, should teachers be evaluated? Yes. Should they be evaluated by the test scores of their students, as Race to the Top, the Obama program, requires? Absolutely not. That is an unproven and actually a very harmful way to evaluate teachers.

Should teachers be paid more if the test scores go up? No, they should not be, because that puts too much emphasis on very poor tests. It causes teachers to teach to the test, which everybody agrees is a terrible thing to do. It also leads to narrowing of the curriculum, so that schools will drop the arts. They will drop history. They will drop civics, foreign languages. And they will focus only on what's tested.

So, it actually is very educationally harmful to pay teachers to get higher test scores in reading and math or in any subject, because it's just not a good method. And, by the way, I might add that this whole idea of merit pay has been tried again and again since the 1920s. It has never, ever produced results.

RAY SUAREZ: But how do you achieve some form of accountability? If you can't look at a classroom of 23, 28, 30 kids and say, these kids know how to read when they couldn't, know how to compute when they couldn't, we can actually see whether this teacher is doing an effective job?

DIANE RAVITCH: Well, that's absolutely crucial. That's the job, first of all, of the principal of the school, the department chair.

And also in systems that are doing this, it's a job of peer review. The way you measure teacher performance is to observe teachers performing. And then you also look at the work that their students do. You look at where they were when they came in, whether they're learning or not.

And you don't make that judgment just based on test scores, because these standardized tests are way too narrow and really not a very useful instrument for that.

RAY SUAREZ: You made the point they're being asked to take the lion's share of the blame. But there, in fact, ineffective teachers, and are they -- can they be fired in places where collective bargaining agreements have historically made it difficult to do it?

DIANE RAVITCH: Well, are there ineffective teachers? I'm sure there must be. I've heard stories of ineffective teachers. And I certainly don't think there should be even one ineffective teacher in any school.

And it's the job of the administration, the job of the principal primarily, to make sure that no ineffective teacher ever gets tenure. Once they get tenure, all that means is -- it doesn't mean they have a lifetime job. It doesn't mean they get paid for breathing. It means that they have a right to due process. If, after getting tenure, the principal says, I want to fire you, they have to have evidence. They have to have a hearing before an impartial administrator.

That really is not such a burdensome thing. But it's very clear that this is not the key problem in American education, because the lowest performance is not in union districts. The highest performance in America is Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey. These are three states that are all union states.

They have very strong collective bargaining agreements and the highest-performing states. The weakest performance is in the states that have no collective bargaining and where there's a lot of poverty. I think it's really important in your discussions about education that you recognize that the most -- the biggest single correlate and, very likely, I would say the cause of low performance is not teachers or union contracts. It's poverty and racial isolation.

In every district where there is very low academic achievement, there is poverty and racial isolation. And yet we are now trapped in this national conversation where there's almost an agreement we will not talk about poverty. We will not talk about racial isolation. We will just talk about teachers. We are talking about the wrong problem.

RAY SUAREZ: You got a lot of attention when you wrote an article reassessing some of the educational policies you had supported before, like No Child Left Behind's emphasis on testing, using competition, using charters. What changed your mind?

DIANE RAVITCH: Well, it wasn't just an article. It was a book.

I wrote a book called "The Death and Life of the Great American School System," explaining why I turned against testing, accountability, competition, choice, the accumulation of evidence saying that these are not only just ineffective policies; they're actually harmful to education. They undermine education.
The accumulation of evidence was such that I found I could no longer support No Child Left Behind or any of these programs that say that teachers should compete with one another, because they don't. Teachers want to work together. They know that they're on the same team. They want to collaborate. The essence of every good school is collaboration and teamwork, not competition.

RAY SUAREZ: Another big change in the years you have been talking about has seen foundations become big players in proposing and advocating new educational policies, including privatization, parental control, increased use of charter schools.

Have the foundations been a worthwhile addition to the debate over the future of education?
DIANE RAVITCH: Well, I have a chapter in my book about -- I call them the billionaire boys club. The billionaires boys club is led by the three biggest foundations in America, the Gates Foundation, the Walton Foundation, the Broad Foundation.

These are the three billionaire foundations that give a lot of money to American education. And it has been given to push the privatization movement forward, as well as to put a very heavy emphasis on testing and test scores as part of teacher evaluation. I think that -- you know, I'm a historian. So, I look back and I say, there has never been a time in our national life where foundations, which are accountable to no one, make decisions about what our education policy should be.

Sometimes, they make the wrong bet. And the Gates Foundation is a very good example of this. They put $2 billion into breaking up large high schools into small high schools. And after doing that for almost a decade, they said, whoops, that didn't work. We're not going to do that anymore. Now we're going to put the focus on teacher evaluation.

And so the immense amount of money, the hundreds of millions of dollars that the Gates Foundation and now these other big foundations are pouring in, they are directing the national conversation. And I think that's not -- it strikes me that that's in some ways not democratic.

Our conversations about what to do about our schools should be held at the local level and at the state level. The federal government is there to level the playing field. They're not there to steer the boat.

RAY SUAREZ: Diane Ravitch, great to talk with you. Thanks for joining us.

DIANE RAVITCH: Thank you so much, Ray.

Melinda Gates on the Importance of Evaluations in Shaping Effective Teachers

This from PBS:

Since 1994, the philanthropic [Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation] has spent $6 billion on U.S. That has placed the foundation at the center of many debates in education, including smaller schools, testing and teacher evaluation.

Melinda Gates, thanks so much for joining us.

MELINDA GATES, co-founder, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: Thanks for having me.

HARI SREENIVASAN: So we just had the 10th national conversation American Graduate teacher town hall. Teachers have been speaking around the country in different forms. What are you hearing?

MELINDA GATES: I'm hearing that they are working under very difficult circumstances, that with the state budgets going down, they're seeing a lot of kids who are at risk in the school system. Their jobs are getting harder.

We know they're working on average about 10 hours and 40 minutes a day. And yet I'm also hearing from them, we want our kids to succeed, and so there have to be structural changes that allow us to do our jobs.

HARI SREENIVASAN: So, what's the foundation's central premise when you're trying to make or enable these structural changes to happen?

MELINDA GATES: Well, we know from good research that the fundamental thing that makes a difference in the classroom is an effective teacher. An effective teacher in front of a student, that student will make three times the gains in a school year that another student will make.

Watch Melinda Gates on the Importance of Evaluations in Teaching on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

And so what the foundation feels our job is to do is to make sure we create a system where we can have an effective teacher in every single classroom across the United States.

HARI SREENIVASAN: We've heard this idea that it takes a village to raise a child. What about the principals, what about the parents, what about all the other factors that contribute to whether a kid or a child does well or not?

MELINDA GATES: There are a huge number of factors of whether a child succeeds in that school building. But at the end of the day, it comes down to the teacher. And that doesn't mean just the teacher teaching the subject matter. As you heard from a lot of the teachers in the town hall, they build these strong relationship with the kids.

And it's that relationship they have. But we're hearing that what teachers don't have today are really three things. One is, they're saying we don't know what we have to teach by the end of the year. So the foundation has been involved in trying to create a core curriculum that 48 states have signed up to say, what are the core subjects and things kids need to learn at every grade level?

Number two, they need great curriculum support, so they can go and grab different modules, and they are flexible modules that help them teach to that core curriculum, though. And then the third thing they need is great professional development. We do not have an evaluation system today in the American school system that says, how do we know we have an effective teacher, and what professional development needs to be in place to support those teachers so they can become the most effective teacher when they're teaching?

HARI SREENIVASAN: One of the measurements in certain school districts around the country has been to tie teacher performance or teacher evaluations to student test performance.

And a lot of teachers push back and say, hey, there's a lot of other reasons that a student does well or doesn't do well. Why should it reflect solely on me?

MELINDA GATES: One of the things that the foundation is really trying to get the message out about is that it's not just the test. The test is just one measure of saying, is the child learning what they need to learn at grade level? That needs to be one component of an evaluation.

But there are other components. The most effective evaluation systems have pure observations, where peers come in who are trained to know what effective teaching is. They come in and evaluate the teacher. And then they coach and they give instruction on teaching.

Another key component is the principal observation, not just coming in with four little check boxes once a year and then never having the coaching conversation, but the principal coming in knowing what great teaching looks like , really being able to evaluate the teacher and then sitting down and having an honest conversation with the teacher: These are the areas where you're doing well. These are the areas you need to do better.

Another piece of the evaluation system can be also student feedback. It turns out students do know whether they have a good teacher in front of a classroom or not. And their feedback is also indicative of whether they're going to learn the material by the end of the year.

HARI SREENIVASAN: A lot of the teachers that are very frustrated say at this point, I'm teaching to the test.

Are we in an over-tested society?

MELINDA GATES: You have to kind of go state by state, because there are different tests in different states.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Sure.

MELINDA GATES: But I think one thing that has happened is there's maybe so much testing today without saying, are we testing against the core important things?

And so one of the things that we have learned, for instance, that is really important is that kids need to learn, for instance, how to read a nonfiction passage and really take that apart and be able to know what the critical pieces are. Most state tests don't even test against that.

So, one of the things we've done with this Common Core curriculum is to say, what is it kids really need to know? And then these 48 states signed up to this core curriculum. And now we can lots of service providers come in and create curriculum around things that actually matter, not some thing that is on the margin that you don't need to test against that doesn't really matter.

HARI SREENIVASAN: A few years ago, the foundation was very focused on smaller schools. And now you're very focused on -- it seems to be teacher evaluation. Why the switch?

MELINDA GATES: Well, it's not really a switch. It's -- honestly, it's an evolution.

So, where we started in small schools, which were these small learning environments, yes, those do make a difference. But what we learned from that was the fundamental thing that made the difference was the teacher, that relationship with the teacher at the end of the day and that teacher's teaching.

So, saying, okay, an effective teacher makes a difference, we then said how do you know when you have one? Where's the research that shows what an effective teacher is? We feel like we know intuitively if we had a great teacher. There was no great research around that. So, we actually went out and did the research, 3,000 teachers in six different school districts, to prove out, what does effective teaching look like?

And now the piece we're involved in saying, okay, how do you get a whole system that has an evaluation system that helps develop teachers into these super-effective teachers?

HARI SREENIVASAN: How do you view your responsibility? Just by the fact that the amount of money that you're contributing to this conversation, do you feel like you have a disproportionate voice?

MELINDA GATES: Sometimes, people look at something like a foundation or our foundation and say, my gosh, they have huge resources.

And the truth is, when you look at the scale of the problems we're going against, the state of California spends slightly under $30 billion a year educating their kids. So our entire foundation is $30 billion. So we could spend -- spend our money all in one year just in the state of California.

But we don't do that. What a foundation has to be is to be a catalytic wedge. It can take innovations and show where they work. It can measure them. It can show what doesn't work and take the problems apart. And it's ultimately for governments to scale up.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Finally, what is working and what can scale up?

MELINDA GATES: Well, I think two things are working.

If you look back a decade ago, when we started into this work, there wasn't even a conversation across the nation about the fact that our schools were broken, fundamentally broken. And I think that dialogue has changed. I think the American public has woken up to the fact now that schools are broken. We're not serving our kids well. They're not being educated for the -- for technology society.

We're being outcompeted by other nations. So I think that has gone well. But the other thing that I think is going really well is people are starting to say, we really do need an effective teacher. And we have districts across the country, Memphis, Denver, Pittsburgh, Tampa, L.A., where they are saying, okay, we're really going to go for teacher evaluation. We're really going to figure out how to make effective teaching happen. And we're going to invest in that. And we're going to keep doing it until we get it right. And we're going to develop our teachers.

And I think we are just on the verge of that happening. I think there will be some pain points along the way. I don't think this work is easy. But I think we're starting to see that bow wave change. And it's going to take a few more years to really see, okay, that's the path, and then lots of districts are on -- are doing it. But I think we're on the cusp of that.

HARI SREENIVASAN: All right, Melinda Gates, thanks so much for your time.

MELINDA GATES: Thanks, Hari.

Bunk

Bunkum Awards 2011 

This from the National Education Policy Center: 

Not all think tank reports are created equal…

Among the 20 think tank reviews NEPC published in 2011, several got a “thumbs up” from NEPC’s expert reviewers. In the carefully considered judgment of those reviewers, the authors did a good job of applying sound social science research principles. Such reports made a contribution to our overall knowledge about the topics they examined. Those reviews are fulfilling for us.

Other reviews described reports produced by think tanks that are worthless and mundane, wasting the reader’s time, obscuring what is already known, and contributing little if anything of value to the overall education policy discussion.

And then there were those special cases that shone through as prime exemplars of incompetent science. It is these marvels of multi-colored packaging garnished with impressive-looking footnotes, charts and appendices – these advocacy pieces cloaked in research panoply – that we illuminate with a particular type of recognition of merit: our annual Bunkum Awards.

2011 Bunkum Honorees:

The 'Cancer is Under-Rated' Award - 2011 Grand Prize Winner

To Progressive Policy Institute for Going Exponential: Growing the Charter School Sector’s Best

Read Review →

The Progressive Policy Institute deserves our top award for combining a weak analysis, agenda-driven recommendations, and the most bizarre analogy we have seen in a long time. This report spoke to us in ways matched by no other publication.

The report’s authors seemed to think it was a good idea – in a report advocating the exponential growth of their favorite charter schools – to compare those charters to delightful things such as viruses and cancer:

We also conducted research about when and how exponential growth occurs in the natural world, specifically examining mold, algae, cancer, crystals and viruses. We used these findings in addition to cross-sector lessons to fuel our thinking about fresh directions for the charter sector. The similarities between the natural world and organizational worlds are rather striking and useful for understanding the critical elements of exponential growth.

As our reviewer pointed out, the report never quite explains how the growth of cancer and viruses applies to the growth of charter schools. But even if the authors had somehow managed to do so, we can’t help but feel that the comparison is a bit tone deaf. Setting aside the example of crystals, which we think are rather interesting and attractive (NEPC is housed in Boulder, after all), what we take away from this comparison is that exponential growth in the natural world is not always desirable. It can, in fact, be quite deadly.

Beyond the analogy, the report suffers from an almost complete lack of acceptable scientific evidence or original research supporting the policy suggestions. It presents nine “lessons” or suggestions that are essentially common and vague aphorisms from the business world. Yet it fails to make the case that the suggestions or references are relevant to school improvement.

The 'Mirror Image (What You Read Is Reversed)' Award - 2011 First Runner-Up

To Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for Learning About Teaching

Read Review →

Money can’t buy you everything. Yes, the $45 million allocated by the Gates Foundation to its “Measures of Effective Teaching” (MET) project is going to fund much more than this first-year evaluation report. And the MET project as a whole seems quite worthwhile. But one would hope that the evaluation of such a major project would be a serious effort. Unfortunately, that is not the case here. Using data from six school districts, the report examined correlations between student survey responses and value-added scores computed both from state tests and from higher-order tests of conceptual understanding. The study found that the measures are related, but only modestly, and the report interprets this as support for the use of value-added as the basis for teacher evaluations. The Gates Foundation touted the report as “some of the strongest evidence to date of the validity of ‘value-added’ analysis,” showing that “teachers’ effectiveness can be reliably estimated by gauging their students’ progress on standardized tests.” This would indeed be impressive were it not for the results suggesting exactly the opposite.

As our review points out, the data indicate that a teachers’ value-added for the state test is not strongly related to her effectiveness in a broader sense. Most notably, value-added for state assessments is correlated 0.5 or less with that for the alternative assessments included in the study, meaning that many teachers with low value-added using one test are in fact quite effective when judged by the other. As there is every reason to think that the problems with value-added measures apparent in the MET data would be worse in a high-stakes environment, these initial MET results raise serious questions about the value of student achievement data as a significant component of teacher evaluations – even if that’s not what the authors of the Gates report would have readers believe.

The 'If Bernie Madoff Worked in School Finance' Award

To ConnCAN for Spend Smart: Fix Our Broken School Funding

Read Review →

This report from a Connecticut-based education advocacy group aims to Fix Our Broken School Funding System with a reverse Robin Hood take-from-the-poor approach nicely wrapped in a pious package of verbiage designed to hide its true effects. In truth, few areas of school policy are as ripe for legitimate critique as the way states allocate funds to schools. A disconcerting level of arbitrariness and inadequacy often marks these funding formulas. Yet this report doesn’t make use of well-established research conventions (adequacy or equity studies), or for that matter any sensible approach for determining if a formula is in fact broken. Instead, it promotes a “money follows the child” funding system that our reviewer points out would have the effect of making the system even more inequitable by shifting funding away from students learning English and those in poverty.

The report’s empty claims are perfectly combined with its evidentiary barrenness. Consider, for instance, the genealogy of the report’s claim that the current formula provides low-income children with only an additional 11.5% of funding. That claim is based on a previous ConnCAN report, which refers readers to information in a footnote, which then refers readers to that report’s appendix. But pity the intrepid reader who makes it that far; the appendix provides no justification or further reference to the phantom 11.5% figure. Our reviewer pointed to similar evidentiary black holes regarding the report’s claims about charter school funding and performance. And yet another instance of fantasy numbers comes from the report’s recommended removal of funding for English language learners based on the contention that these children have already been counted as low-income children. There is no compelling evidence to this effect in the literature – nor is there any in the report.

The 'If Political Propaganda Counted as Research' Award

To Center for American Progress for Charting New Territory: Tapping Charter Schools to Turn Around the Nation’s Dropout Factories

Read Review →

Competent social scientists base their findings and draw their conclusions from the evidence they have gathered using rigorous and appropriate research methods. This report reverses the process. Drawing on mysterious backwards-engineering techniques, the authors of this report were able to build a foundation for their findings and conclusions that (when looked at with just the right mood lighting) bears a glancing resemblance to real evidence. For this achievement, we felt they deserved our recognition.

The report’s citations to “research” literature about school turnarounds, for instance, consisted of four references: a blog, a consultant’s template, a non-peer reviewed case study, and an article from the Hoover Institution journal Education Next. The report also focused on the ostensibly inspiring improvements of one school that, after concentrated, intensive and skillful charter management, catapulted English Language Arts proficiency rates to 14.9% and math proficiency rates all the way to 7%.

Sadly, the inspired imagination of the authors was lost on our expert reviewer, who wrote, “The report is designed and presented in a manner more consistent with political propaganda than as a research document.”

The 'Discovering the Obvious While Obscuring the Important' Award

To Third Way for Incomplete: How Middle Class Schools Aren't Making the Grade

Read Review →

This Third Way report is not shy about its intent: to “ignite the conversation about middle-class schools.” In particular, the report attempts to convince its readers that middle-class schools are doing a lot worse than we think. So what do we think? Years of research tell us that family wealth is an excellent predictor of test scores. One would therefore expect middle-class students to do substantially better than poor students but substantially worse than wealthy students. As our reviewer shows, that’s exactly how well these schools do. Middle-class schools score (…brace yourselves for this shocking finding…) in the middle.

What, then, is basis of the conversation Third Way is attempting to ignite? We’re not sure. That’s because in a normal conversation, one can understand what the other person is saying. Yet this report mixes and matches data sources and units of analysis to such an extent that it’s almost impossible for readers to figure out which analyses go with which data. Even more troubling, since the report defines “middle class” as having between 25% and 75% of students qualifying for free and reduced lunch, its analyses of district-level data include the urban schools districts in Detroit, Philadelphia, Houston and Memphis. The Third Way appears to have found a new way to address urban poverty: define it out of existence.

The 'Get a Life(time) Achievement' Award 

To Matthew Ladner, Senior Advisor of Policy and Research for Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education

NEPC has never bestowed an individual with a Bunkum Award. But we’ve never before had someone campaign for one, and we’ve never before found someone with an individual record of Bunkum-worthy accomplishments that cries out for recognition. This year, however, we are honoring Matthew Ladner, an advisor to former Florida Governor Jeb Bush’s advocacy organization, the “Foundation for Excellence in Education.”

Dr. Ladner’s body of Bunk-work is focused on his shameless hawking of what he and the Governor call the “Florida Formula” for educational success.  As our reviews have explained, they’d be less deceptive if they were selling prime Florida swampland. One cannot, however, deny Dr. Ladner’s salesmanship: gullible lawmakers throughout the nation have been pulling out their wallets and buying into his evidence-less pitch for flunking of low-scoring third graders and other policies likely to harm many more students than they help.  See here and here for more analysis of Dr. Ladner's body of bunk and its unfortunate reach.

Our judges were particularly impressed recently, when Ladner attributed Florida’s “hitting the wall” drop in NAEP scores to a collapse in the housing bubble and other “impossible to say” factors. Bunkums have been awarded for far less impressive an accomplishment than this sort of “heads I win, tails you lose” use of evidence. So Matt Ladner – this Bunkum’s for you.

Romney Ed Policy

This from Politics K-12:

•Jay Matthews says Gov. Romney and President Obama have more in common on education than you think.

•Andy Rotherham of the still-fabulous Eduwonk blog says Romney is using school choice to draw a bright line between himself and President Obama. He's also betting that Romney's higher education proposals could land him in hot political water, since the Obama administration could make the case. Bonus: Eduwonk also points to two other critiques of Romney's proposals, from James Ryan, a law professor, and radio host Matt Miller.

•Mike Petrilli, of Fordham and Flypaper Fame, examines the pluses and pitfalls of Romney's approach, which he says (jestingly? seriously?) is federal overreach on school choice. And Petrilli's boss, Checker Finn, thinks Romney's Title I proposals are worth considering.

•Ed Sector's Quick and the Ed blog corrects Checker's grammar—and offers some policy ideas, of course.

•John Wilson, the former executive director of the National Education Association, whom Edweek has recently "Unleashed" has this great take on Romney's policies from a teacher's perspective.

•Rick Hess of Rick Hess Straight-Up fame, says the plan is a good start, while his AEI colleague, Andrew Kelly, is on same page, and has some thoughts about the higher education pieces of the proposal.

Plus, the team of news reporters at Edweek did some kick-butt reporting on Romney. Check it out at Storify.

Schools prepare for financially bleak year ... again

This from the News-Enterprise:

OUR VIEW:  Educational and economic issue needs new solutions

Hardin County and Elizabethtown Independent school districts recently adopted draft budgets, showing drops in Support Education Excellence in Kentucky money, the main source of revenue for Kentucky’s school districts. These SEEK funds will drop this year from $3,903 to $3,833 per student.

With the state carrying most of a school’s funding, budgeting can be a tricky business, particularly in a less than robust economy.

During the school year that just ended, for example, Hardin County Schools received $1.3 million less than expected in state funding. Now, that district plans to lose another $1.4 million with SEEK cuts. EIS also is working to get through cut on top of SEEK cut.

The recently approved plans are the second step in a three-step school budgeting process. Tentative budgets are approved early in the calendar year and a working budget, the most definite of school budgets, will be approved in September.

Salaries, as is the case for most employers, are the greatest expense. And salaries, as is the case for most of the middle class, aren’t increasing like they once did.

In both districts, teachers will receive what’s called a step increase — meaning they move up on the pay scale because they’ve gained experience — but no other raises are budgeted at this time.

That means something inside and outside the classroom. Certainly, we should flitch at anything endangering education standards. But as one of the largest industries in the county, school districts and their budgets simply are a local economic issue, too.

Consider Hardin County Schools alone. That’s 2,655 people — 2,106 of them are full-time employees — who probably won’t be improving their buying power until at least the second half of 2013. That might mean delaying a home or car purchase or just keeping the firm grip on household budgets. It’s not good news for business throughout our community.

Schools are a key to long-range economic development and improving Kentuckians quality of life. Period. It’s not time to debate its worthiness.

Instead, it’s time to start creating new solutions to protect schools, even go so far as to make them recession proof.

When will enough be enough? When the workforce of the future is pitiful and the workers apologize for learning to read during an economic downturn?

We need big ideas at the legislative level. We need big ideas for educating our children less expensively — that’s different from simply doing more with less, by the way. We need big ideas for creating new or redirected tax revenues.

No more broad solutions puffed up with jargon and tied down with excuses. There’s too much at risk to do any less.