Having checked this site, this site, this site and our comments section, I think it's safe to say the rumor I wrote about earlier this week was wrong: Today is NOT the day that the US Department of Education is going to release its long-delayed study comparing NAEP scores of students in various types of schools -- public, private, charter.  The study, which takes student backgrounds into account so an apples-to-apples comparison can be made, almost certainly will have findings that are troubling to school voucher supporters and those who believe charter schools are a panacea.  If it's ever released.

If you believe the comment left on this post, some of the data will be released in a few weeks.  I'm tempted to check out the calendar and pick a Friday in July.  But, hey, fool me once...uh, you can't get fooled again.

Posted by John at 04:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Richelle

Signing bonuses, salary differentials (combat pay), housing discounts, student loan reimbursements….the list of recommended incentives to entice teachers to some our more challenging teaching environments continues to grow. And while the list grows, the doors of our urban schools continue to revolve due to teacher turnover. Some ask why this continues to happen. The answer is simple:  Teachers are entering these environments feeling under-prepared to meet their students needs. We need to think about how and who we are preparing as pre-service candidates to teach in our urban centers.

I recommend tapping into the network of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) and Tribal Colleges. Several of these institutions were founded with the goal of preparing the next generation of minority educators. Teacher education must be seen as a priority for these institutions. It’s great that minorities have access to professions that extend beyond teaching and nursing. But we still need outstanding teachers and nurses in our urban centers. Without exemplary teachers in our schools, there won’t be anymore Ben Carsons, Phylicia Rashads, and Sonia Nietos.

It’s time to ignite these untapped resources and revive urban teacher preparation. Stakeholders should develop partnerships with these institutions, provide professional development for faculty members on best practice, and work in the schools with pre-service teachers to strengthen their practice and increase student achievement.  If we want urban schools to succeed, we have to provide them the “human” resources they need to be successful -- this includes teachers who have been trained and have experience working in challenging school settings. 

Posted by Guest at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Patt Ghezzi at Get Schooled has a good thread going about a touchy subject to teachers--the "summers off" myth.  If I had a nickel for every time someone said the best thing about being a teachers was June, July and August . . .

Posted by Michele at 02:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

According to the Washington Post, high-performing elementary schools in the DC suburbs are easily bringing their students to proficiency, so these schools are aiming to get more students to reach the advanced level on state assessments. Makes sense.  But it seems to me that low-performing schools should also set their sights on getting more students to the advanced level.  Every school has high-performers who also need to be nurtured.  And, Title I dollars aren't just for bringing up the bottom--they can also help more students reach the top.

Posted by Michele at 02:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by AFT Intern Steven

Lou Dobbs’ CNN.com column yesterday focused on what is becoming a very common theme – schools can’t relax for summer vacation because they are in terrible shape and we are all to blame for it.  Ok, maybe it wasn’t that critical, but pretty close.  While there is a lot to focus on in this article, I was particularly interested in his elitist attitude toward education reform that became apparent in his final two suggestions for school improvement.

Dobbs suggests scholarship help for economically disadvantaged students if they “demonstrate exceptional intellect and talent" and federally funded national scholarships for high school seniors who graduate in the top 10% of their class.  These suggestions are not bad by any stretch.  Providing scholarships for students at a financial disadvantage would be very helpful.  However, what does this plan mean for students who demonstrate only “exceptional potential” or are only in the top 20% of their class?  What does it mean for students with learning disabilities?  What does it do for students who are at risk of dropping out?  Should the eventual success of 10 students come at the price of ignoring 90 other students?

Educational Testing Service recently released its sixth annual survey on the general public’s concerns about education.  When asked what should be the most important and productive focus for improving high school education, only 11% suggested challenging top students so those who go to college can compete in the global economy.  More than half (53%) of the respondents chose to focus on raising standards so students are not passing through the system without obtaining the necessary skills.  This disconnect between Dobbs and the public does not prove either focus to be the wrong choice, but it does raise the point that this is a complicated issue with more than one solution.  

While Dobbs does present some helpful suggestions, there are many other issues that would need to be addressed first.  These proposals could prove to be successful, but only once a number of research-based reforms (and let's make sure high-quality professional development is on the list) are already put into effect.

Posted by Guest at 01:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Beth

Everyone is talking about the launch of a new school finance proposal, dubbed the 100% solution. The best thing about the proposal is that it may be the final nail in the coffin of the so-called “65% solution.”

A big concern is that it jumps on the bandwagon of blaming seniority provisions for today’s school finance inequities. As AFT researcher Howard Nelson says, “this assumption is, literally, an urban legend,” and he’s compiled the data to prove it. He found that in urban school districts with a collective bargaining agreement, low-poverty schools (6.1 percent) are about as likely as high-poverty schools (5.7 percent) to replace transferring teachers with first-year teachers, and that without a collective bargaining agreement, high-poverty schools hire first-year teachers at three times the rate of low-poverty schools (10.1 percent vs. 3.3 percent).

Another concern is that this is a move to get public dollars to private schools. An endnote says as much:

"Some signers of this proposal would extend the solutions and principles discussed here beyond public schools. They favor a system in which public dollars follow children on a weighted basis to all schools, including those operated under private auspices, so long as schools receiving such funds agree to be held publicly accountable for their academic results."

Why is this a concern?  Vouchers don't work.  A vast body of independent research shows that students who use public funds to attend private schools perform no better than students who remain in public schools.

Posted by Guest at 11:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The edublogophere just got a little lonelier--Ms. Frizzle is signing off after three years of blogging on science and a sundry instructional issues with reflections from her students; Her blog is smart and widely-read--we will miss her!  And, anyone who likes Wilco, Dar Williams and Shivaree is OK in my book.

Posted by Michele at 08:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Ed at AFT

Edwize today posts about a highly regarded charter school teacher who was fired for advocating for better pay for her colleagues.  According to the New York Times, the teacher, Nichole Byrne Lau “received an evaluation saying that her students at the Williamsburg Charter High School were ‘lucky to have you as their teacher.’”  The United Federation of Teachers has taken up Ms. Lau’s cause and is using it to explain why changes are needed in the state’s collective bargaining laws for charter schools.  Some of the coverage of this story included this quote from Peter Murphy of the New York State Charter School Association (NYCSA), which represents the interests of the management of New York state’s charter schools, about UFT President Randi Weingarten: "She's exploiting this issue to try and organize the easy way, by having it mandated."

I once testified to the Maryland Legislature that carving charter schools out of collective bargaining was tantamount to empowering managers to prevent unions. Saying that the teachers could choose to organize a separate union was the same as saying that at-will employees in any high turnover worksite are free to organize a union.  In other words, not really free (see here for the op-ed version). A legislator's conscience might be assuaged by the thought that employees in these situations can choose a union, but the real message is that workers are on their own.  If they want to have a union, they have to be prepared to fight and risk employer retaliation.

Some years ago staff at Riser Military Academy in Ohio tried to unionize. The headmaster, Col. Riser, demoted them all to Second Lieutenant. It's memorable because it's funny, but it's not a joke.  Riser then tried to fire a teacher for suggesting that he needed help managing the school. Employer retaliation is a fact of life in American union organizing today. This is the hard way. This is what Peter Murphy is talking about, pure and simple.  That NYCSA worked to give charter school managers training in how to fight efforts to form a union is a fact.  Here is a quote from the Atlantic Legal Foundation's 2004 Annual report about their New York work:

“The Foundation helped one charter school resist a union’s organization petition. It also sponsored workshops to explain how charter leaders can counter union organizing efforts in New York (for the New York Charter Schools Association) and in New Jersey (for the New Jersey Charter School Resource Center at Rutgers)."

For more on Atlantic Legal see an earlier Edwize post here (and yes I’m the Ed Muir referred to in it).

NYCSA is advocating for the continued power to deter and intimidate teachers who want to exercise their rights to join unions. It has been arming charter school administrators to do just that.  For those of you who don’t understand a lot about unions, this is what we mean when we talk about union busting.  And the case of Nichole Lau is not just an act of retaliation against someone who did the right thing. It’s a message to others to keep in line. It’s the hard way. Words cannot express my contempt.

UPDATE:  Blogging about yesterday's reporting on injustice in a New York charter school, the Quick and the Ed's Sarah Mead writes: "And the fact that some schools are or may be acting badly here is not a case for requiring all charter schools in the state to unionize, as Ed and Leo [Casey of Edwize] seem to think."

But this isn't the case I was making, and I doubt Leo was making it either.  I was writing about a New York Charter School Association official's criticism of my union's support for card check recognition for charter school teachers. Card check is an expedited process for workers to choose a union. According to the AFL-CIO more than half of private sector organizing is now done using this process.  Several states already use card check for their public employee collective bargaining laws. It is a key component of the Employee Free Choice Act, the labor movement's bill to reform private sector organizing in America. And it’s a feature of Canadian labor law as well.  This was "the easy way" that NYCSA was referring to. Conflating this with "requiring all charter schools in the state to unionize" seriously muddies the waters.  NYCSA is defending a set of rules that give its members maximum freedom to intimidate and make use of the counsel of union busting consultants. In short, freedom to make more cases like Nichole Byrne Lau's. Arguing for a set of rules that short  circuits these tactics is not the same as requiring unionization.  

Posted by Guest at 02:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

It's up at The Lilting House.  Please check out all the entries.  And I'm going to take this opportunity to point to our submission to this week's carnival, Ed at AFT's write-up of his time in Frank McCourt's class at Stuyvesant High.

Posted by John at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just came across a fascinating old book called Mistakes in Teaching, written by James L. Hughes and published E. L. Kellogg & Co. in 1887.  It includes sections on Mistakes in Aim (e.g., "To make knowedge the chief aim even in intellectual education"), Mistakes in School Management ("To sit much while teaching"), Mistakes in Method ("To use long words"), and Mistakes in Moral Training ("To tempt pupils by the self-reporting system").

Here's one, filed under Mistakes in Discipline, that ought to raise a few eyebrows among teachers and students:

It is a Mistake to Whip Pupils in a merely Formal Manner.--Some teachers hold that the discrace of receiving punishment constitutes its chief restraining power. This is a grievous error....Whip rarely but severely. Whip only for serious or repeated offences, but let the whipping be of such a character that it will not need to be repeated often.

Maybe it's just me, but that phrase, "of such a character that it will not need to be repeated often," seems to suggest a level of whipping that borders on sadism.

Posted by John at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The rumor mill is ruminating and rumbling, and the word is that the U.S. Department of Education (ED) may soon release its long-delayed report on NAEP math scores for students in public and private schools.

The results of the official report likely will mirror those of an earlier report, also funded by ED but not given the official imprimatur, using similar data sources and statistical methods.  The earlier report found that public school students outperformed students in charter schools and private schools* when background characteristics -- race/ethnicity and SES -- are taken into consideration. 

The report does not measure how much individual students gained over a period of time, meaning that it fails to meet one of the criteria on Jeanne Allen's full-page ad.  (But it does meet the ad's criteria of weighing family background information, accounting for the interaction of student background characteristics and undergoing professional review.)  This leaves an opening for special interests who wish private school students and charter school students had outperformed public school students.  They will criticize the study.  But many of them would be praising the study if the results had turned out in their favor.

The kicker to this story is that the release date may be June 30, the Friday before Independence Day. If that turns out to be true, we can divine the Bush administration's view of this report: bad news.  They release bad news on Fridays.  (ED's inspector general report on Armstrong Williams, for example, was released on a Friday.)  So, if the report comes on this pre-holiday Friday, we can surmise that in the topsy-turvy worldview of the Bush Administration, when students in public schools outperform students in charter schools and private schools, it's bad news to be buried at the bottom of the news cycle.  Ugh.

*It's possible that only the public-private comparison will be released, with the charter-noncharter comparison coming later.

Posted by John at 03:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Posted by Ed at AFT

I once read something out loud in my 11th grade creative writing class that led my teacher to suggest that I read Kurt Vonnegut. When I sat down with a copy of Sirens of Titan, a lot of things about writing clicked in ways they hadn't before. That kind of insight and ability to make connections for students is a hallmark of really good teaching.

I’ve sometimes wondered what Mr. McCourt has been doing since I left high school.  According to Edwize, it turns out that after bouncing from one thing to another he’s landed a post as Chairman of New Yorkers for Smaller Classes.  Good for him.

The cool talking point on class size reduction right now is that it will dilute teacher quality in urban districts. The California example is evidence of this. When a statewide program was put in place there, the wealthier districts hired qualified teachers out of Los Angeles. They also hired the bulk of the qualified new teachers. This did create a real problem in LA. This is a concern, but only when it is done so that the rich get richer.

If Mr. McCourt was chairing an effort to reduce classes across New York State, I’d be worried.  But instead he is working on New York City alone. This changes the equation dramatically.  Targeted class size reduction is a reform that can really help poor children, as shown by evaluations of Wisconsin’s SAGE program.

Just this week, Illinois provided a good example of how to do this right. Gov. Rod Blagojevich just signed a law creating a class size reduction pilot program. The legislative language indicates that those  funds will go to reduce classes in “those schools that are on the State Board of Education Early Academic Warning List or the academic watch list.”  The bill was in part the result of the advocacy of the Illinois Federation of Teachers. Click here for Mr.McCourt's thoughts on the subject. And also check out my colleague Michele’s thoughts as well (even if she doesn't have a Pulitzer).

Posted by Guest at 02:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by AFT Intern Danielle

Here’s a closer look at two high schools on Newsweek’s list of the 1000 Top U.S. High Schools and their relation to AYP.  Let’s take Fairfax High and West Potomac High, two schools in the Fairfax County public school district in Virginia. 

The two schools are comparable geographically, in the number of students enrolled, and by Newsweek’s ranking; Fairfax High was ranked #211 and West Potomac High was ranked #295.  And yet, Fairfax High made AYP and West Potomac High did not.  One difference between the schools is in their demographics. West Potomac High has twice the number of economically disadvantaged students and twice as many black and Hispanic students. 

AYP is supposed to be a measure of school quality, NOT a measure income.  This begs an important question: Just what is AYP measuring?  Is Fairfax High teaching its students more, or do the students of West Potomac High learn the same amount but come in at a disadvantage their freshman year because of their economic backgrounds and just never fully catch up?  These are just two schools from the list.  It’s possible that comparing other schools in similar circumstances would yield different results. Either way, it’s still not clear whether or not AYP is working.

Posted by Guest at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

That Sherman Dorn is talking smack in this recent post,

Suppose we could identify with 100% accuracy who the good math teachers are. (Incidentally, neither Bill Sanders nor I will ever claim this, regardless of our differences otherwise.) Do we then fire those who are weaker and pray that their replacements are better, on average? As far as I'm aware, there has never been a period of time when you had 100% perfect teachers, when a system didn't need to work with the teachers they had because, well, they were the teachers there at the moment. It makes no sense from a decency, fairness, civil rights, morale, or human resources standpoint to sit there and let an inexperienced, less-skilled, or overwhelmed teacher flounder just because the research on national certification or masters degrees isn't conclusively in favor of those as screening/pay increment policies.

To borrow from a certain Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young classic, if you can't have the ones you want, help the ones you have.

Actually, he's pretty much got it right, except that you really need a system like peer assistance and review to not only provide professional support, but also to ensure that folks who are not suited to teaching are counseled out of the profession.

I guess it's a lot sexier for policy makers to talk about providing financial incentives to get the best teachers to the toughest schools than it is to talk about mentoring and professional development.  The problem is that there isn't a lot of evidence that financial incentives alone are the solution.  A better strategy is to work with the good teachers you have and help them get better so, as CSN&Y might say, they can teach your children well.

Posted by Michele at 03:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Posted by Beth

Stateline.org did a good write-up of the impending deadline for states to submit their revised plans to get all teachers highly qualified by the end of next school year. Part of what states have to submit is an equity plan to “ensure that poor and minority children are not taught by inexperienced, unqualified, or out-of-field teachers at higher rates than other children” as required by NCLB.

As the article indicates, ED has decided that not a single state has an acceptable plan in place.  ED didn't highlight praiseworthy components of any state plan and, by failing them all, left states without a model. In fact, most states (28) received the following feedback from ED:

State X has various strategies for recruiting and retaining experienced and high quality teachers in hard-to-staff schools. However, the state lacks a cohesive written plan to ensure that poor and minority children are not taught by inexperienced, unqualified, or out-of-field teachers at higher rates than other children.

So, according to ED, most states have strategies but not plans. Some may wonder what the difference is. Does a set of strategies make a plan? What about a comprehensive strategy? By the way, the AFT has some ideas for attracting and retaining teachers in low-performing schools.

ED may have been right to shoot down the first round of state plans, but that's not enough.  The Department should have given states more guidance. ED's failure to provide appropriate direction means that states will be hard-pressed to produce effective equity plans by the July 7 deadline.

Posted by Guest at 01:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

See the upside of being a new teacher in this end-of-the-school-year post  from Bimsmile at Edwize.  Bimsmile is looking forward to  "being able to use my failures and success to help me more efficiently and thoroughly teach my students next year."

For the downside, see this post from a relatively new teacher.  She's quitting.  Read it and weep.

Posted by John at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ed at AFT 

Mike Petrilli was in the midst of an unusually cogent discussion of technology and instruction earlier this week, wherein he was looking at why more teachers don’t make use of Al Gore-like multimedia presentations in their instruction. (He could also have been talking about the opening scene of the Da Vinci code).  Then we find out that one reason is because of the teacher unions.  The logic is that this technology would make it easier to teach and thus undermine wages. No data, not even an anecdote. This is a particularly lame example of the “when did the union stop beating its wife?” school of education policy.

Had the NEA or AFT been in the process of working out a program to create standards-based off-the-shelf PowerPoint and video content, Petrilli’s lament would just as easily have been that we were either trying to increase the skill level of teachers and thus the salary premium, or somehow ease our burden of representation.  To put the shoe on the other foot, I could ask is Petrilli really this lazy, or is he just bought and paid for?

Posted by Guest at 08:43 AM | Permalink

The Washington Post follows up here on this editorial regarding the 1,100 uncertified teachers working in DC schools.  Superintendent Clifford Janey informed these teachers back in January that they had until June 30, 2006 to become fully certified or risk losing their jobs. Less than 300 teachers made the deadline, leaving 370 to be dismissed this coming Friday.  Another 450 teachers who are close to achieving certification will be considered for positions in the fall only if there are an insufficient number of certified applicants.  And, if they are deployed, they must become certified by June 2007.

Janey's action was, of course, precipitated by NCLB's "highly qualified" teacher requirements which demand that all teachers be certified by the end of the 2005-06 school year.  (Well, except charter school teachers, knew there was a double standard in there somewhere, didn't you?)*  Janney could have taken advantage of the new NCLB flexibility provided by the U.S. Department of Education and extended the deadline to 2007, but he chose to stick to the original date.  As Washington Teachers Union Vice-President Nathan Saunders told the WaPo, these teachers "did not comply with the instruction to get certified. There was nothing the union could do to assist them,  The union stands for high academic goals and standards."  The district and the union are standing together for teacher standards, which is good for the profession and good for kids.

*Of course, as John previously pointed out, the terminated teachers could always get jobs in one of DC's charter schools, where certification is not a requirement.

Posted by Michele at 01:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I guess this is a sign that education blogging has hit the big time.

Education blogs, including this one, are cited in documents obtained from the Department of Labor (DOL) by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request .  The concern that led to the FOIA request, as explained by the AFL-CIO's blog, involved communications between DOL "and a front group that purports to provide facts on unions but whose goal is to completely discredit and undermine them." 

Other education bloggers mentioned include Edwize, The Chalkboard, NYC Educator, and This Week in Education.  UPDATE:  The Education Wonks are mentioned, too.  FURTHER UPDATE:  Leo Casey provides some context and notes that "reading through the documents leaves the stark impression that [DOL] now functions as a clearinghouse and clipping service for anti-union organizations."

Posted by John at 12:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Here's Jeanne Allen, in the current issue of the Center for Education Reform's weekly newsletter,  vouching for the validity of a report on NY charter schools.  According to Ms. Allen, the report shows "New York's charter schools are performing better than conventional public schools."

And here's the full-page New York Times ad Ms. Allen took out after the AFT uncovered NAEP data showing students in charter schools do worse than students in noncharter public schools. The ad criticizes three characteristics of the NAEP data: its reliance on just one year of test scores, its limited family background information, and the failure to account for the interaction of student background characteristics.  Guess what?  The new study that Allen praises to high heaven relies on just one year of test scores and does not disaggregate test scores by any family background characteristics.

Finally, here's the definition of hypocrisy.  UPDATE:  Rick Hess agrees, writing in Sunday's New York Daily News that CER's approach to charter school research is "intellectually dishonest."

Posted by John at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Ed at AFT

In a recent post over at the voucher blog Edspresso, Anna Varghese Marcucio of All Children Matter wrote of efforts to use the primary process to defeat Republican legislators who oppose vouchers in South Carolina. She talks about the need to “broaden” support for vouchers and how until the message changes, voucher supporters will “continue to see some of our own allies, vulnerable Republicans, leave us for the decadence of union support.”  (That is until All Children Matters spends enough money to beat them in the primary).

It's worth taking a quick look at why Marcucio is concerned about the breadth of SC voucher support. This article by Aaron Gould Sheinin in The State points to the role of Americans for Limited Government’s Howard Rich, a New York Libertarian, in funding pro-voucher candidates in SC. Read it and then consider that Sheinin misses that the South Carolina Club for Growth is an affiliate of Club for Growth State Action, which is based at the same address as Americans for Limited Government. So much voucher sock puppetry leads back to Rich that even the most intrepid reporter is daunted.

Then check out this article in The State by Bill Robinson that talks about the support of a Virginia group, the Council for Responsible Government (CRG), for pro-voucher State Superintendent candidate Karen Floyd.  The registered agent for CRG is William Wilson, who – and you knew this was coming - is also on the board of Americans for Limited Government.  So when Marcucio says “broaden” does she mean more libertarian moneybags or does she mean something else?

And Anna? Union support is scrumptious, not decadent.

Posted by Guest at 09:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday, I wrote about Public Agenda's findings on how (hypothetical) candidates' education positions would influence voters, but the survey is worth revisiting for several other findings, including a surprising difference between the way parents and teachers view testing. 

Here's the question that, to me, was the biggest surprise.  Just 17% of parents (up from 12% in 2002) say their child takes "too many" standardized tests. but a whopping 71% of teachers say students take "too many" standardized tests. 

This is a huge gulf, but other responses make it clear that, as the report puts it, "few teachers reject standardized tests outright."  The vast majority of teachers (86%) support either a basic test (62%) or a more advanced test (24%) before students are allowed to graduate from high school.*  And while many more teachers chose to describe standardized tests as a "necessary evil" than did parents, just small percentages of the two groups (19% of teachers, 12% of parents) said that standardized tests do "much more harm than good."

The findings should guide AFT's "Smart Testing" campaign to improve the quality of student tests, make sure they're used to improve instruction and reduce unnecessary tests.  We plan to release a 50-state survey at our biennial convention this summer in Boston.  By focusing on the quality of student assessments in reading, math and, in some cases, science, the AFT survey should serve as a nice complement to the Public Agenda questions that examined the quantity of testing.

*Public Agenda didn't ask parents this question, but students' responses (52% for a basic test, 27% for a more advanced test) were in line with teachers'.

Posted by John at 12:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mark Shriver of Save the Children has a passionate op-ed in The Hill about the vital role of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in disaster relief.  In watching the awful scenes at the Superdome last year, the mother in me thought, what are the kids doing all day?  Shriver describes what NGOs like Save the Children can do in a crisis:

We have provided children with safe play spaces in emergency shelters and refugee camps. We have ensured that temporary quarters have special areas where parents can take care of their newborn babies safely. We have offered appropriate in-school programs to help children cope with their fears and anxieties, and we have rebuilt damaged schools and community centers.

NGOs continue to play a role after the immediate crisis passes. Shriver lists some of what Save the Children has done in the Gulf Region since the hurricanes:

We trained 800 teachers, counselors and child care professionals to help children cope with anxiety and regain trust.

We provided material and financial support to local children and youth service organizations to resume or expand after-school programs and, currently, to operate summer camps.

And we are working with Mississippi State University to restore 33 licensed child care centers and create a resource and referral system to improve child care services.

Like NGOs, unions continue to provide support to the affected areas.  The AFT Disaster Relief Fund has awarded $500 cash grants to more than 10,000 AFT members who were affected by hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma.  And, just this week, the AFL-CIO announced a $1 billion Gulf Coast Revitalization Program through which investments will "produce housing for low- and moderate-income working families and provide mortgage loans, good jobs and revitalization of the hospitality industry as well as health care facilities in New Orleans and other Gulf Coast communities."

The efforts of the NGOs and the unions stand in stark contrast to folks like John Stossel who have defended price-gouging in the Gulf Coast region (hat tip to David Sirota at The Huffington Post).

Posted by Michele at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Public Agenda released the results today of a survey titled, "Is Support for Standards and Testing Fading?"  There's more here than I can get to in one post, but I'm intrigued by the responses to Public Agenda's question about hypothetical candidates, which informed AFT's statement on the survey and Public Agenda's press release. Here's the question:

Suppose you were voting in a local school board election. Which of the following candidates would you be most likely to support?

A candidate who believes if the public schools finally got more money and smaller classes, they could do a better job (45%)

A candidate who believes school vouchers give parents the power to choose the best school for their children (19%)

A candidate who believes that charter schools revitalize public education and we need more of them (9%)

A candidate who believes more testing and higher standards will ensure kids will master the skills they need (22%)

Don't know (5%)

The implication, that the public wants more money for schools, likely will provoke the "money doesn't matter" crowd.  To be fair, there's a legitimate concern about whether we could get a better grasp of voters' beliefs about education from votes for real-world candidates and real-world school bond referenda rather than from survey responses to hypothetical candidates. But responses to the Public Agenda question are a lot easier to quantify than real-world votes that influenced by issues other than education. And I'm guessing the loudest complaints about the survey's methodological flaws will come from those who simply wish the results had been different.

Posted by John at 05:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by John at 03:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Md. Test Scores Rise but Near Plateau: More Modest Gains in Reading and Math Could Spell Difficulty in Meeting No Child Standards."  This Washington Post headline, atop coverage of yesterday's release of Maryland's state test results, tells a tale that is going to be told in other states if NCLB's goal of reaching 100% proficiency by 2014 remains in place. Right now, the smart strategy for schools concerned about making AYP is to pick the low-hanging fruit--students within reach of proficiency but not quite there.  As state proficiency targets inch closer and closer to 100%, schools are going to try to bring more students up to proficiency, including those who are missing by a mile.

I see it as similar to the issues Ed described below--100% proficiency can create a rhetorical trap.

Option #1:  You support the 100% proficiency target.  Response:  It's going to lead to lower standards or you live in fantasyland or you want every school labeled a failure.

Option #2:  You oppose the 100% proficiency target.  Response:  What do you want -- 90%?  Which 10% of children do you want to ignore, you low-expectations bigot?

Option #3:  You know 100% is unrealistic but support it because it will prod schools to improve.  Sherman Dorn knocks this option down here.

Option #4:  Tiptoe around the issue since it's 8 years away.  (See our NCLB recommendations, directed toward 2007 rather than 2014.)  Response: What's your position?  What's your position?

That's the awkward rhetorical situation, but what matters more is how the target will affect students and schools.  I see several possibilities for 2014, regardless of which of the above positions various groups take now: The 100% target will remain and large numbers of schools will fail to reach it OR The target will remain and ED will allow states to game the system redefine proficiency so that some schools fail (with political pressures taking mediocre suburban schools off the hook but still nailing fairly decent urban schools), OR the proficiency target will be replaced by a growth target or some other measure that leads to interventions for a significant but politically palatable number of schools.

Oh, yeah.  Almost forgot this one:  The 100% proficiency target remains and nearly every school makes it.  Well, I can hope.

Posted by John at 02:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Baltimore Sun reports that Baltimore City schools are showing some improvement, with math scores up in every grade in the city.  The news was a little more diappointing for reading--scores remained mostly flat or rose slightly. 

As required by NCLB, test score data is broken out by various subgroups--I will leave it to others to parse the data and look at how the district fared in closing achievement gaps.  Two-thirds of Baltimore students receive free and reduced lunch and almost 90 percent are African-American.

Also worth noting: the test scores at the three district schools run by the for-profit Edison Schools, Inc. "declined in nearly every grade" and scored "below the city schools' average and far below the state average."  Seems consistent with the recent CSRQ report which found that Edison Schools are not extremely effective.

Posted by Michele at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Ed at AFT 

Sherman Dorn analyzes the Ed Week/Chris Swanson piece on graduation rates so that I don't have to.  This is good, because if I had said that EdWeek’s measure for Detroit was “useless” and that this was a separate issue from whether more needed to be done to improve education there, someone would have denounced the AFT's commitment to education reform.

This has quickly become an issue where the need to maintain steely resolve matters more than actual data (see here, and both the post and the comments of Dan Losen of the Civil Rights Project at Harvard and Joydeep Roy and Larry Mishel of EPI here).  The subgroup testing issue and the issue of the role of nonschool factors in creating and potentially eliminating the achievement gap are other recent examples wherein the atmospherics of an educational issue and how you posture about data seem to matter more than actually figuring out what’s going on. This troubles me greatly, because it seems to me that the purpose of data and an accountability system is to guide policy, in particular the provision of supports and corrective measures. To do that properly, we need to be clear headed about data.

Now that I’ve delivered another critique of the education reform community that is sure to win me friends, let me turn to the real issue in high school completion: What should we do?. Many years ago I taught at Aviation high school, which seems to be getting it right. My memory is that it often took extra time for kids to complete the shop requirements, but even so it seems one answer is to have every kid become an FAA certified airline mechanic.  

Well, maybe not, but there are other things to look at. James Rosenbaum thinks we need to do a better job of making kids understand that high school is important.  The Florida legislature seems to agree. This year they made a junior high school course on career planning a part of the curriculum and redesigned the high school curriculum so that students would pick “majors.”  This is in line with AFT’s effort to make the point that Hard Work Pays.

Another approach that I like is investing properly in schooling on a smaller scale.  Finally, Paul Barton has looked at this issue and reviews the research on the Talent Development Program, Maryland’s Tomorrow, Quantum Opportunities,  Communities in Schools and other reforms.  He also points to a lack of counselors as a problem. The graduation rate in urban schools is far too low, but, as you can see from these examples, some schools are finding innovative ways to improve high schools and retain more students.

If you have a thought on this larger question, I'd love to see it in comments.

Posted by Guest at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

That seems to be the goal of the federal Child Nutrition Act..  The act requires school districts to establish "wellness" policies and guidelines for distributing candy, according to Ed Week ($). 

Despite the silly title on this post, the Child Nutrition Act is an effort not only to reduce childhood obesity and other health problems, but ensure that students are attentive and healthy enough to be good learners.  Still, it’s hard to know what to make of a proposal by a Massachusetts state legislator to ban Fluffernutter in schools. 

What next? No more s’mores at Cub Scout camping trips?

(Hat Tip: Think Progress) 

Posted by John at 03:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday I wrote about this New York Times article which, in part, described the lack of research-based reading instruction taking place in DC classrooms.  The AFT has first-hand experience in working to improve the quality of beginning reading instruction in DC. From 1999-2003, the AFT/OERI National Reading Project provided union-developed professional development on research-based reading instruction for K-2 teachers in three schools in three districts--Cleveland, New Orleans and Washington, D.C.  What did we discover in doing this training?

• The majority of teachers had never received training on research-based beginning reading instruction, either through teacher preparation or professional development.
• Teachers also lacked exposure to effective classroom management techniques.
• On-site reading coaches made a tremendous difference in helping teachers implement the strategies learned through the professional development offered by AFT.
• In schools where teachers implemented the research-based strategies, student achievement improved.

To the first point, it is perhaps unsurprising but appalling nonetheless how little exposure teachers in these urban school districts had to effective reading instruction.  Again, Early Reading First and Reading First of NCLB will help to make inroads, but teacher preparation programs need a serious reworking for the necessary change to occur.

Posted by Michele at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

TeacherKen is a teacher and blogger who organized the education panel for Yearly Kos.  His write-up of the panel is here.

Posted by John at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Posted by Beth

Last week, Florida announced the 2006 results of its A+ Plan, the state's pre-NCLB school accountability system that gives each school an "A" through "F" grade. The press release says that schools are doing better than last year under the A+ system. It does not say whether schools are doing better under NCLB's AYP measures.  [Alexander Russo wrote about the Florida announcement last week.]

My thoughts:

1. While I appreciate that an A-F school grading system is easily understandable by parents and community members, I can not imagine the demoralizing effects on students who attend schools that have been labeled "F" schools.
2. Florida should be commended for getting these results out to schools and the community before the end of this school year. This allows schools an appropriate amount of time to plan instruction, interventions, and supports, not to mention plan for and implement NCLB's choice and supplemental services for next school year.
3. I bet the only thing more confusing than being in school that got an A or a B but did not make AYP is getting the word that your school made "provisional" AYP. (According to FL's press release, ED and the Florida DOE agreed to this designation. According to ED, FLDOE rejected ED's offer to pilot this program.)
4. I know that money is a great motivator (I was always jealous of those kids who got money for good grades on their elementary school report cards), but giving schools $100 per student for getting an "A" or an improved grade doesn't seem like the best use of the $134 million per year that the state shells out for this project. Seems to me that the schools that most need the money are the ones not making the grade. Imagine what $134 million spread across the 153 "D" and "F" schools could buy. Maybe the preschool program, longer school day or year, smaller class size, or quality professional development that would boost FL's overall GPA.

Posted by Guest at 03:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Well, we've brought you our own version of "Separated at Birth," why not copy another Spy magazine fave, "Logrolling in Our Time."

"a very smart blog... [if] you're trying to separate the demagogic attacks on NCLB from the serious criticism, this is the site to read"
-- The New Republic's Ryan Lizza

"Lizza, a terrifically gifted political writer, is must reading if you're interested in presidential politics" 
-- Eduwonk

Posted by Michele at 03:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is getting old.  For the umpteenth time, Eduwonk has deliberately misread something we've written.  (And he's so late this time that I'm obliged to do a new post rather than just an update as I've done after past Eduwonkery.) 

This time, Eduwonk's beef is that two of our blog posts, totaling about 500 words, didn't tell the whole story of Yearly Kos, a four-day conference in Las Vegas.  Well, as the kids say, duh.  To get the rest of the story, Eduwonk turns to Ryan Lizza, who wrote a much longer article on Yearly Kos for The New Republic ($).  The one sentence Eduwonk quotes from Lizza's article contains an apparent factual error, calling Jamie Vollmer a blogger.  If Vollmer's has a blog, I can't find it.

Eduwonk's sniping at my post is just another variation on Eduwonk's hackneyed theme:  How can they say that if they don't also say this and this?  Between that template and his "Here's what's wrong with Democrats" schtick, it's no wonder that Eduwonk has fessed up to being on autopilot, admitting that his blog "practically writes itself." 

In any case, there's not much thinking going on at Eduwonk, who continues to serve up watered-down and warmed-over Clintonisms even as he bemoans the fact that Democrats don't have any ideas.

Afterthought:  So, does this mean that the DLC, Eduwonk's former employer, is what gave the blog a little life for a few years?

Posted by John at 02:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

We kid because we love.  Indiana, my native state, does not fund full-day kindergarten at the state level.  Thus, full-day kindergarten has not been available to many children in the state, including many disadvantaged children who would benefit most from it.  By next year, that may change.

The state's path toward funding full-day kindergarten has been convoluted.  Here are a few of the twists and turns summarized in a recent Indianapolis Star article:

State law does not require parents to send their children to kindergarten. 

The state does pay districts based on the number of kindergartners enrolled, but the payment is just half the rate for students in other grades. 

Some districts offer half-day kindergarten or charge fees--as much as $1,800--for full-day kindergarten.

The state supreme court ruled in March of this year that Evansville schools can't charge a $20 fee to offset a school budget deficit because it violates the state's constitutional obligation to provide free public education.

The lawyer to state superintendent of public instruction Suellen Reed then warned that the supreme court ruling might lead to lawsuits against districts that charge a fee for full-day kindergarten.

Gov. Mitch Daniels has promised to work with the legislature during the next session to find a way to fund full-day kindergarten.

Back when I was in Ms. Hernesma's half-day kindergarten class (Riverview Elementary, 1967), I believed pretty much everything anyone told me.  But I have serious doubts that Gov. Daniels, whose administration has resembled a trainwreck, will be able to succeed at funding full-day kindergarten.  He sold off the Indiana toll road, weakened workplace protections for state employees, and has earned the wrath of teachers across the state. 

I hope Gov. Daniels fulfills his promise, but I won't be surprised if he argues that the state needs to sell off the Wabash River to raise money for the program.

Posted by John at 12:36 PM | Permalink

I predict that the edublogosphere will light up with posts about Brent Staples' New York Times article on the connection between special education costs and a "school system's failure to teach struggling readers effectively." While the article highlights the desperate need for effective reading instruction, I would quibble with Staples' assertion that the information on which instructional strategies work has been available for "50 years."  Um, have you heard of the "reading wars?" 

I would argue that it was not until the National Reading Panel laid out the components of effective reading instruction (phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency and reading comprehension) that some consensus emerged on reading instruction.  And, it wasn't until Reading First and Early Reading First of NCLB were established that this research actually got pushed into the classroom.

It will take more than these federally-funded reading programs to really change reading instruction in our classrooms.  As documented by NCTQ, teacher preparation institutions must radically restructure how they prepare teacher candidates to teach reading--and they will probably have to be forced to do so.  More on this later.

Posted by Michele at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This paper by Boyd, et.al., comparing the effectiveness of alternate routes and traditional routes to teacher certification in New York City, has gone through a few iterations, the latest of which is a good read--if you haven't seen it, worth perusing.  What I like about this paper is that it tries to open the "black box" of alternate routes, differentiating between Teaching Fellows, Teach for America and teachers with a temporary license.  Now, if the authors would only do the same with the traditional route, looking more deeply at what type of "college recommended" teachers are most effective, we might really learn something about the best way to prepare teaching candidates.

Posted by Michele at 09:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The piling on continues even now in New Orleans, as the school board refuses to honor teachers' right to collective bargaining.  Here's the response from Brenda Mitchell, president of United Teachers of New Orleans.

Last night's 4-3 vote by the Orleans Parish School Board against a temporary extension of its contract with teachers and school employees is another in a series of hasty rather than wise and considered decisions politicians have made about schools in the last eight months, and, like the others, its shortsightedness will become apparent unless the Board quickly engages in extremely good faith discussions that signify they trust the employees that parents entrust their children to.

It is also an insult to every teacher who has worked in the district under a collective bargaining contract, especially to the several hundred teachers who returned this year to resume classes under the most overwhelming conditions imaginable, and I don't believe they will take this sitting down.

For more than 30 years, New Orleans teachers, through their union, have used the collective bargaining process - a process of mutual discussion and agreement in which the School Board is an equal partner - to establish their right to have reasonable class sizes; textbooks for all students; materials, supplies, and building conditions to facilitate instruction; teach without interruption from announcements and other distractions; professional development opportunities; and the implementation of advanced, research-proven instructional programs.

Those opposed to a union-negotiated contract for teachers never mention these parts of the contract, but instead resort to red herrings such as the belief that a contract exists to protect poor teachers or that agreeing to a contract gives the union a stranglehold on the school system. It is the perpetuation of these lies that hardworking, professional teachers find so insulting.

As president of UTNO, I also find it insulting that the Board ignores the contributions and efforts the union has made to help this school district. No one forced us to use our own resources to bring the district reading programs, math programs, education seminars, and professional development programs for teachers, to provide assistance to paraprofessionals seeking to upgrade their skills to meet the requirements of No Child Left Behind or to sponsor workshops for parents of kindergarten students.

If the Board's vote indicates its permanent position, its tunnel vision will be a detriment to the children and teachers of a district that can use all the support it can get, especially from an organization with the resources, expertise, and the personal commitment of its members that UTNO has to offer.

It is our sincere hope that the Board will quickly follow up on the motion it did approve for Ms. Anderson, Ms. Daniels, and Rev. Sanders to meet with us to discuss the future of our partnership.

Posted by John at 02:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Ed at AFT 

A recent post on DC charter schools by Eduwonk pinch-hitter Dianne Piche talks about the current system of schooling in New Orleans as if it were created by God or forces of nature, rather than people. It’s an aside, and perhaps not one she really thought about much. But it is still wrong. Unless she thinks, Pat Robertson like, that the hurricane was somehow sent as punishment for the sins of the New Orleans school system.

The current system was created when the state legislature voted to fundamentally change the nature of school accountability and governance in one of the special sessions after the hurricane. They did so by creating new accountability standards that will – for the time being – apply to New Orleans alone. They did so in part, I'm told, because of the opportunity to get federal charter school funds. Eighty-eight of the schools that were taken away from school board control had met AYP. Forty-four of those schools had also met the state’s pre-existing and stricter accountability standards. Double secret probation is not my idea of an act of God.

From the perspective of the people I work for in New Orleans, in too many ways, from "no one anticipated" that the levees would be breached, to "Heck of a Job Brownie," to the politicization of the rebuilding process generally, to the passage of Senate Bill 49, and the loss of any sort of employer-provided safety net for school workers during a time of trouble, the hand of man is all too apparent. And against this broader backdrop, it is difficult for me to see the "reforms" of the New Orleans school district as anything other than an attempt to advance a political agenda under cover of the floods. Oddly, what might seem to would-be reformers as a success right now may end up creating a backlash. It has certainly hardened my heart.

Posted by Guest at 01:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You might think there'd be quite a bit of agreement between Newsweek's list of the best high schools in the country and Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), NCLB's measure of school quality.  You'd be wrong.

AFT interns Danielle Boveland and Steven Keppler compared Newsweek's top high schools list, which is based on the number of AP or IB tests taken by students, to the list of schools that made AYP, which is based on the percentage of students who reach the "proficient" level on reading and math tests.

Here's what they found:

High schools on Newsweek's list are less likely to make AYP than a typical school in the U.S.  The percentage of the nation's schools* that did not make AYP during the 2004-05 year was 26%.  The percentage of Newsweek's top-rated high schools that didn't make AYP was 31%.

Newsweek schools that serve disadvantaged kids missed AYP at an astounding rate.  Of the 100 high schools on the Newsweek list that have the most students receiving subsidized lunches, 65% failed to make AYP.  (Remember, this high failure rate occurs among a group of schools that Jay Mathews, who created the index, claims are an elite group, among the top 5% of the nation's high schools by his measure.)

In 14 states, more than half of the high schools that made Newsweek's list did not meet AYP.

Both measures have been criticized.  AFT's critiques of AYP are here.  Ed Sector's critique of Newsweek's list is here. 

One could try to make the case, though I'd disagree, that AYP is a good measure of school quality.  And Jay Mathews, creator of the Newsweek list, believes his index is valid.  But, given the numbers above, it's impossible to say with a straight face that both AYP and the Newsweek index are valid measures of anything that matters.

*A better comparison, since Mathews looks only at high schools, would be the percentage of high schools that fail to make AYP.  I'll update with that stat if I can find it.

Posted by John at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The AFT has updated and provided more detail on its recommendations for how to improve NCLB that reflect the collective wisdom of AFT leaders and members.  You can find the recommendations on the main page of letsgetitright.org, in the upper right hand corner, in the section titled, Areas that Need Work.  The recommendations are also available here as a Word document on the aft.org Web site.

Posted by Michele at 06:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Ed at AFT

After reading Dianne Piche’s Eduwonk post on Maryland’s use of 5 as the minimum subgroup size for NCLB accountability and my colleague Beth's post below, I think it might be helpful to introduce a little Statistics 101 into the discussion. You can't get far talking about N size in isolation. The reality is that N size and confidence intervals work together.

Test results are estimates of student knowledge, and they are imperfect estimates. And size matters this way: The smaller number of students tested the less precise our understanding of whether the test results are accurately reflecting reality.

In order to adjust for this, states are allowed to introduce statistical confidence intervals in their AYP calculations. I'm not a psychometrician, but I understand that this is akin to calculating the margin of error for a poll. Doing this allows you to fairly include very small subgroups in your accountability system.

Kevin Carey at Ed Sector clearly has reservations about an accountability system that is so careful to prevent mislabeling of successful schools that it lets too many unsuccessful schools off the accountability hook. But even so, he describes this adjustment as having "merit" when done so that it creates 95 percent confidence that the school is actually performing within a given margin of error.

But as the number of students tested dwindles, the size of the margin of error expands. For very small subgroups, the margin of error can be quite large. So large, in fact, that the question of whether a state has a minimum subgroup N of 5 may, statistically speaking, may be a distinction without a difference.

Although the point of NCLB is school level accountability, given that schools vary so widely in population characteristics and sheer size, the basis for determining AYP is somewhat arbitrary and inefficient. It might make sense – for AYP purposes – to cluster small schools into larger units. This will give more valid information about the progress of students in subgroups in these schools.

Any fights that might erupt over how Small School A dragged down the cluster are not going to be that different than fights within larger schools about how Teacher A’s class dragged down the school. And, similarly, it might be logical to somehow divide big schools into smaller chunks with statistically valid populations to better focus those results.

Yes, this is arbitrary, but frankly it's not any more arbitrary than what is already happening. Ultimately, the underlying solution to the questions raised in the Eduwonk post might be to redistribute students so that school level governance is configured to optimize accountability. Or to accept that disaggregation of data, as important and generally beneficial as it has been, has limits under our current system.

Posted by Guest at 03:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Not anymore (sigh).

One of my colleagues got a call yesterday from a reporter seeking the AFT's response to a cell phone ringtone that students, but not teachers, can hear.  For the record, the AFT doesn't have a position on this.

Anyway, it seems that as we get older, we lose the ability to hear certain frequencies.  Mr. Lawrence over at "Get Lost, Mr. Chips," explains why this is not going to have any effect on classrooms.  Still, it's pretty cool technology that makes me feel very old. 

Two interns in our office could hear it, but I couldn't.  Try it yourself. (Thanks go to Mr. Lawrence for this link as well.)

*UPDATE:  In the comments section, Alexander Russo says I'm not only old but also way behind the news and possibly a plagiarist.  This Week in Education was all over this ringtone three days ago.  My piece had the same title.

Posted by John at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I think I am getting a little more clarity on what Response to Intervention (RtI) means and the impact it will have on the general education classroom.  As I previously explained, RtI comes out of the most recent reauthorization of IDEA, which makes clear that "lack of appropriate instruction" cannot result in a learning disabled (LD) diagnosis. Districts must first determine if the child responds to a research-based intervention, hence the term "response to intervention."

I was fortunate to participate in a pilot RtI training this week that is being developed by the AFT in collaboration with the NEA and the National Association of School Psychologists.  As a policy wonk, I found it most helpful to think of RtI as a multi-tiered model, as described in this NASDE document.  Tier 1 consists of interventions that take place in the classroom by the general education teacher.  Tier 2 tends to be small group instruction and could involve the assistance of a specialist.  Tier 3 tends to be more one-on-one and may be when special education is provided.

RtI will require more of general education teachers--if states and districts don't do a good job of providing the professional development and resources that these teachers will need to successfully implement this model, it may result in some push-back from these teachers.  And, if implementation is not handled well, teachers are liable to view RtI as delaying student evaluations for special education services.  But the premise of RtI -- that a special ed evaluation and an LD diagnosis should come only after effective instructional strategies have been shown to fail with the student -- is sound.

Posted by Michele at 09:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, I finally know who wrote the phrase "soft bigotry of low expectations." Today's WaPo reveals it was Bush speechwriter Michael J. Gerson, who is departing the Administration (but, according to the article, was not asked to leave).

Posted by Michele at 09:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Beth at AFT 

So, the AP writes a story that gets a lot of attention, Congress holds a hearing, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) writes a letter, and the important changes that result from these important actions are…a Department-sponsored conference and "sounding board." No promises to get rid of differentiated N sizes, nor to set a standard for states' N sizes.

The letter includes an appendix showing that 13 states (including PR) had different minimum N sizes for students with disabilities and/or English language learners than for other subgroups in 2004-05. I would have liked to see some data on the increase in N sizes from when accountability plans were first approved in 2003 to now. I counted 15 states that have made changes to their N size since the enactment of the law. And none of those accountability reports include data on how changes to the N size impact subgroup inclusion into AYP calculations.

Most interesting, both Spellings’ letter and Simon’s submitted testimony don’t mention that ED proposed regulations in December 2005 that would eliminate differentiated N sizes. (A line in the appendix to the letter in the tiniest of fonts does mention this.) Hmm…If I was asked to testify before Congress about an N size scandal, would I fail to mention the one concrete thing my agency has done to remedy this? No, I would lead with this information. Alas, the regulation has not been finalized. Should we conclude from this omission that the prohibition on differentiated N sizes will not be part of the finalized regulations? If so, all of the hoopla around this scandal may …signify nothing.

Posted by Guest at 03:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's no wonder that Oklahoma's advocates of intelligent design (ID), clinging to a discredited notion that lacks scientific merit and desperate to shove ID down the throats of teacher sand students, are trying every trick in the book.  In this case, the book is The Aeneid, and the trick is a Trojan Horse.

Our friends at Free Exchange write that the mistitled “Academic Freedom Act” serves as a Trojan Horse.  Rather than a gift to teachers seeking academic freedom, the bill promote ID and would allow students to cite ID as an excuse to opt out of legitimate science coursework.  Marketing the bill under the guise of "academic freedom" is particularly offensive since the bill seeks to control and stifle science instruction.

While the Trojan Horse ploy worked for the ancient Greeks, it failed in modern-day Oklahoma:  The bill died in the state Senate.

Posted by John at 02:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

No, it's not the Margaret Spellings Show.  It's a play titled "No Child..." that stars former NYC high school teacher Nilaja Sun.  The play reveals "the real-life ramifications" of NCLB, according to a review in The New Yorker (scroll down).  Theater critics probably don't know much about NCLB, but teachers do.  And the magazine's critic gave the play a positive review.

Posted by John at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Not sure what to make of Betty Sternberg's decision to quit her post as Connecticut's Commissioner of Education to become superintendent of Greenwich Public Schools. Perhaps she is tired of being the standard-bearer for all that is wrong with NCLB?  Although she reportedly wants to focus on closing the achievement gap in Greenwich schools, as the Hartford-Courant remarks, it seems to be an "unusual step for someone who has been an outspoken advocate for the state's troubled urban schools." Isn't Greenwich is one of the wealthiest communities in the country? It certainly epitomized the elite when I was growing up in Connecticut. Plus, it was hard to get onto their beaches if you weren't a resident.  Sternberg will get a hefty salary increase from the job change, going from making $148,000 to $210,000 a year.  Another perk?  She might run into Regis at Starbucks.

Posted by Michele at 09:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by John at 09:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As promised, I took the opportunity at Yearly Kos to ask Gov. Vilsack about the tuition tax credit bill he'd signed.  He gave me a candid answer and a quick lesson in Iowa politics.  I'll summarize his response: 

The legislature is about evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats.  The tuition tax credits were favored by many Republicans and some Democrats, particularly those who support Catholic schools, which are likely to be the biggest beneficiaries of the bill.  Signing the bill eased the way for passage of other education legislation (described in this AP article) that brought increased pay for teachers, more funding for preschool education, increased K-12 funding, more support for community colleges, a requirement that public schools have librarians, mentoring programs for school administrators, and higher graduation standards.

After my previous post, Eduwonk suggested Vilsack's signing of the tuition tax credit bill occurred because "Democrats need something to say on this issue of choice that isn't just 'no' and is not education tax credits (which are really lousy policy) and vouchers (which have their own set of problems)."  Vilsack did have something to say about public school choice, responding to someone else's question by noting that Iowa has interdistrict public school choice.  According to ECS, Iowa law "allows a parent or guardian residing in a school district to enroll his or her child in a public school in another school district." 

The tuition tax credit bill was a result of old-fashioned legislative horse-trading.  It seems unlikely that a shift in Democrats' rhetoric -- having "more to say" about choice -- or a shift in their policies -- providing even more public school choice in the state -- would have beaten back the tuition tax credits.

Posted by John at 02:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In reading this short piece in today's WaPo about the Chugach School District in Alaska, which allows students to move at their own pace in mastering academics, the first thought from my NCLB-addled brain was, how will the schools in this district ever make AYP? Well, maybe when you have 214 students in 4 schools spread out over 22,000 square miles, you don't worry too much about sanctions like public school choice (can't be done) and supplemental educational services (probably not many providers interested in serving Chugach).  Maybe the folks in south central Alaska are pretty pleased with winning a Baldrige Award for their "mastery learning" system and view NCLB as something concocted in the rarified atmosphere of Washington, D.C that doesn't pay much attention to the realities of rural communities.

Posted by Michele at 09:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sherman Dorn's recent posts on incrementalism and school reform motivated me to revisit Tyack and Cuban's Tinkering Toward Utopia. I just cracked it open on the seven-hour car ride from CT today--my son slept for ONE of those hours--but already found this gem in the prologue.   To me, it eloquently describes the role of teachers--and teacher unions--in school reform.

We favor attempts to bring about improvements by working from the inside out, especially by enlisting the support and skills of teachers as key actors in reform.  This might be seen as a positive kind of tinkering, adapting knowledgeably to local needs and circumstances, preserving what is valuable and correcting what is not.  But teachers cannot do the job alone.  They need resources of time and money, practical designs for change, and collegial support.  And they can succeed best if they do their work in partnership with parents. 

Posted by Michele at 09:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

An Ed Week article ($) discusses whether taking the Spanish GED, taken by about 27,000 students each year, is the best option for Latino students who arrive in the U.S. in their teens.

While the Spanish GED may make sense for some students--say a 17-year-old with limited formal schooling in his home country, no high school credits and little English--I would hope that schools and districts offer students all the options available and, where possible, create "newcomers'" schools so that immigrant students can get a regular diploma along with the English skills they will need to be successful in this country.

It's funny to find myself in agreement with Don Soifer from the Lexington Institute--which usually opposes bilingual education--who is quoted in the article as saying, "If the ability to offer and take the GED in Spanish provides an incentive for schools to put the limited-English-proficient kid on a GED track rather than a regular high school diploma track, that undermines the goal of inclusiveness."

I would also keep my eye on whether the lack of native language or modified language state assessments leads to more Latino students taking the Spanish GED, although I doubt this would happen, since under NCLB students who pass the GED are not counted as graduates for AYP purposes.

Posted by Michele at 02:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

UPDATE:  It seems we have to update every other post we do to set the record straight after Eduwonk deliberately misreads what we write.   Today's silliness: Eduwonk does the "here's what they really mean" line one more time.  I trust that readers can see what's below, recognize it for what it is -- a critique of the approach to education reform that blindly transfers business ideas to schools -- and decide for themselves whether the secret meaning of my post is that the AFT thinks schools have no responsibility for educating children. 

Former businessman Jamie Vollmer, who founded the Great Midwestern Ice Cream Company, and Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack were the featured speakers at Yearly Kos's education panel, which I attended last week.

Vollmer is one of many business leaders who have set out to improve public education, but what makes him exceptional is that he changed his assumptions after seeing how schools really work.  (I call this "exceptional"; some might say that makes Vollmer a "windsock.")   

He began to question his assumptions after hearing what he calls "the blueberry story," told to him by a teacher who questioned Vollmer's application of the business model to public education.  The story's main point is that when a business (an ice cream company) receives substandard supplies (flawed blueberries), it sends them back or switches suppliers.  But when students coming to a school don't have the skills or supports they should have, schools accept those students--they can't send them back.

Vollmer thinks (as I do) that certain beliefs and practices from the business world could be adapted to improve public education.  But the lesson he learned about how schools really work seems to be lost on many people who come to education from another field and cling to their old assumptions no matter what new evidence they find.

Posted by John at 09:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

The Friedman Foundation and the Alliance for School Choice say so.  They're all atwitter. 

According to the Friedman Foundation: "The program establishes a 65 percent tax credit for individuals who make contributions to approved school tuition organizations (STOs), which then distribute scholarships to families to be used at a school of their choice.  To qualify, families must have an income that is at 300 percent or below of the federal poverty level." 

Tuition tax credits have been called "stealth vouchers," so I'm surprised to hear that Gov. Vilsack has signed such a bill.  I'll withhold judgment until I learn more.  Gov. Vilsack is speaking here at Yearly Kos, so I hope to have a chance to ask him or at least one of his staffers about the bill.

Posted by John at 09:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Rebecca, an AFT member and National Board Certified Teacher from Texas, shares her reflections on educating immigrant children: 

Regarding Michele's post on immigrant children:

Yes, more than 5 million children live in unauthorized families in the United States, and two-thirds were born in this country and are therefore U.S. citizens and they are sitting in our classrooms. Most of the debate centers on problems and not solutions. AFT has some important resources that will help to provide solutions for teachers needing help with English Language Learners, such as the:

• AFT English Language Learners National Teacher Educator Cadre created a year ago to begin to address solutions that will help guide policy and practice for English Language Learners; and
• Colorín Colorado website: http://www.colorincolorado.org, sponsored by AFT, and a service of the Reading Rockets project from WETA. This website includes the Toolkit for Teachers with strategies and suggestons for addressing the instruction of English Language Learners and their families.

Many teachers lack the knowledge and skills that are needed to construct effective lessons for second language learners. Through these proactive solutions, teachers have the potential to make necessary modifications so that our immigrant students can succeed, even when the debate around them leaves them powerless…since they cannot vote and neither can their families.

Posted by Guest at 08:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I think I disagree with Eduwonk's recent post on testing, although it's hard to tell--I had trouble following what he was saying.  The politics of court cases aside, I think this 2003 GAO report made clear that using a combination of multiple choice and open-ended questions is much more expensive than going with multiple choice questions only. And, as we heard from Stuart Kahl at one of the Aspen Institute NCLB Commission hearings,

Research in the early 1990s showed that sole reliance on multiple-choice items in a high stakes environment can have a negative impact on instructional programs, and therefore, many educators are concerned that the demands of NCLB have led states to implement assessment programs with negative instructional impact.

The GAO report also showed that NCLB does not provide states with enough funding to meet the costs of developing tests using both formats. And (wait, let me get on my soapbox here), these estimates don't even include the costs for developing alternate assessments for students with disabilities or English proficiency tests, let alone native language reading and math content tests.  Without the funds, is it really any surprise that Ed Week($) found that only 11 states had native language assessments available?

Posted by Michele at 05:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Update: Final thought on this back-and-forth with Eduwonk.  Did I find Nelson's data analysis as convincing as Eduwonk found the New Teacher Project report? Yes.  Satisfied? And, while I appreciate that Ed Sector wants to establish itself as a source of unbiased policy analysis and debate--I presume that is why they host forums on issues like the effect of teacher transfers--Eduwonk or Rotherham, not sure which, is a bit disingenuous in presenting himself as merely the arbiter of such debates. In reading his blog, it's clear to me that he thinks teacher unions and collective bargaining contracts are part of the problem with public education.

UPDATE: Eduwonk gives it another shot, but still manages to misread my post on the Ed Trust report.  I did not say that Nelson's work is the definitive study on teacher transfers--I said that he took a look at the data and what he came up with ran counter to the New Teacher Project's (NTP's) study. Does Eduwonk think that the NTP's study is definitive even though it is based on only five school districts?  Last time I checked, there are over 13,000 school districts in this country. He certainly crowed about the study when it was released.

UPDATE:  For whatever reason, Eduwonk decided to mischaracterize my post on the new Ed Trust report--didn't hate it, think that poor and minority kids need good teachers, just don't think teacher transfer provisions are the problem.  The AFT is just as interested in getting good teachers into hard-to-staff schools as Ed Sector and Ed Trust are--we think its more of a supply problem (not enough teaching candidates for urban schools).

I find Eduwonk's musings on "aversion to data" curious. The AFT's Howard Nelson  looked at the data rather than conventional wisdom.  And what the heck does more churn mean anyway? Eduwonk's position on this issue seems similar to his take on  graduation rates. If anything, he seems to be the one who is allergic to data he doesn't like.

Ed Trust has released another report on the dearth of qualified teachers in urban schools.  While the AFT certainly agrees that urban schools need high quality teachers, we differ with Ed Trust in how to make sure they get them.  In its list of Immediate Steps, Ed Trust leads with "Overhaul hiring practices for teachers," which includes "scal[ing] back prerogatives that allow senior teachers to pick their assignments."  I guess no one from Ed Trust attended the Ed Sector event where AFT researcher Howard Nelson convincingly deflated the argument that teacher transfer provisions are the reason urban schools have fewer qualified teachers.  Or, maybe they did attend and just refuse to believe the data because it goes against conventional wisdom.

As an immediate step, I would instead focus on the last item mentioned by Ed Trust, "Improve the supply of teachers in critical areas." It is well-documented within labor research that people tend to work close to where they grew up, and the education field is not different in this respect.  Urban districts simply do not have enough teaching candidates, so we should focus the limited federal resources on addressing this issue instead of fetishizing the teacher transfer provisions of collective bargaining agreements.  And, while we are at it, let's improve the professional working conditions at urban schools so that we can can continue to attract and retain qualified teachers.

Posted by Michele at 11:30 AM | Permalink

check out the last of the Aspen Institute's NCLB Commission hearings which will focus on Successful Interventions: Helping Schools Achieve Academic Sucess.  Details here. Witnesses include:

The Honorable Elizabeth Burmaster, Superintendent, Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction

The Honorable Gene Hickok, Senior Policy Director, the Dutko Group

Mr. John Ashley, Executive Director, Wisconsin Association of School Boards, Inc.

Ms. Yvonne Caamal Canul, Director, Office of School Improvement, Michigan Department of Education; and

Ms. Cheryl Clancy, Principal, Kosciuszko Middle School, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

My prediction: former Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, now Dutko Consultant, will say that supplemental educational services (SES) is a very promising intervention that has been stymied by local school districts. Bye, bye!

Posted by Michele at 08:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I heard USC business professor Edward Lawler and Teacher Advancement Program (TAP) president Lew Solmon speak yesterday at a Shanker Institute forum titled "Performance-Based Pay in Public Education."  The forum was informative, but I can't help wondering whether the current focus on performance-based compensation is setting up programs like TAP as panaceas for all that ails education.

Lawler, who studies performance-based compensation (often called "merit pay") in various types of public and private institutions seems to be a proponent of performance-based compensation for teachers.  But Lawler recognizes the limits of performance-based compensation, saying that if it is not accompanied by other changes, it generally does more harm than good.  This has clear implications for any state or district that sees performance-based compensation as a silver bullet. 

Solmon's TAP program, which intrigues Michele, is along the lines of what Lawler recommends.  It combines performance-based compensation (using value-added testing) with three other elements: multiple career paths; ongoing, applied professional growth and instructionally focused accountability.  If we're going to do performance-based compensation and use value-added testing to evaluate teachers, TAP may very well be a fairly good way to do it. 

The risk is that policymakers will embrace TAP and pretend -- or actually believe -- that TAP and the invisible hand will fix education, so they don't have to worry about curricula, testing, teacher preparation, reading instruction, or dozens of other factors that affect teaching and learning.  To be fair, that's true of any good education policy that addresses key factors that affect teaching and learning but doesn't address them all.

Posted by John at 01:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

No Mel Torme, no Natalie Merchant, no, not even Kathy Lee Gifford--just the Carnival of Education.

Posted by Michele at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I almost spit out my Cheerios this morning after reading a quote from a U.S. Department of Education (ED) official in this Dallas Norning News article (yes, I now eat the same food as my son).  The article describes how ED rebuffed Texas' effort to adjust its state accountability plan because it allegedly "eliminated 10 percent of the state's students from the No Child Left Behind accountability system."  Catherine Freeman from ED is quoted as saying, "What they submitted to us would result in the exclusion of more students.  We obviously don't look favorably on that." Right.  And I'm Halle Barry.  That quote, my friends, does not pass the laugh test. ED has, in fact, granted waivers and accepted state accountability plans that result in the exclusion of students.

I appreciate what Kevin Carey is trying to do with the Pangloss Index, expose how states are "gaming" their accountability systems.  And, I know that Ed Sector and Ed Trust see themselves as fighting the evil state departments of education, preserving world peace, leaping buildings in a single bound, etc. while we union hacks are just defending the status quo.  OK, fine, I'll be the bad guy.  But really, why shouldn't Texas or any other state get the same deal that another state got from ED? I mean, shouldn't there be ONE standard for setting the minimum subgroup size, using confidence intervals, etc.?

Posted by Michele at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Maybe.  But math teachers know things that are (1) useful for teaching math and (2) difficult for non-teaching mathematicians to grasp, according to Deborah Loewenberg Ball, a University of Michigan researcher who spoke recently to a gathering of AFT leaders and staff.

Here's an example of a task* at which math teachers outperform mathematicians.

Three students were asked to multiply 35 by 25. The answer is 875. Each came up with the wrong answer, but for different reasons.  (Click on the links to see if you can figure out the thinking behind the errors.)

Ball reports that math teachers were much better than mathematicians at identifying where students went wrong--an important fact to know to help put students back on track. 

In "Knowing Mathematics for Teaching: Who Knows Mathematics Well Enough To Teach Third Grade, and How Can We Decide?" a 2005 article in American Educator, Ball and co-authors Heather C. Hill and Hyman Bass conclude that there is a body of knowledge math teachers need to be effective.  They created test questions that captured this body of knowledge, tested teachers, and used the results to accurately predict which teachers' students would learn more.

Ball told AFT leaders that the finding that there is a body of knowledge teachers need to have to teach math can be extended to other subjects.  As the drumbeat for "content knowledge" becomes louder and louder, this research answers the questions "Which content?" "Which knowledge?"

*Ball notes that this type of thinking, error analysis, is not only a teacher thing but an important area of mathematics

Posted by John at 04:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

So, it only seems fair to do a "separated at birth" on John at AFT, considering you will be able to get a real live gander at him at Yearly Kos.  John will be moderating an AFL-CIO panel this Friday on how unions are using technology for field campaign communications.  And, he will do some blogging on the education panel featuring Governor Tom Vilsack and Kenneth Bernstein, better known as the blogger teacherken.  [Insert requisite what-happens-in-Vegas-stays-in-Vegas joke here.]

Posted by Michele at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So, here is my shot at a brief, totally unbiased look at the history of American Education:

New England Primer, Horace Mann, McGuffey Readers, Booker T. Washington, AFT, Jane Addams, John Dewey, Brown v. Board of Ed, Nation at Risk, Goals 2000, NCLB

Whew, that was kind of fun--wanna try? If you want the real deal, check out PBS' School: The Story of American Public Education.  And now I feel justified in linking to the Evolution of Dance--hilarious if you are between the ages of oh, say 30 and 45.

Posted by Michele at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I'm catching up on my blogreading and just saw a funny Jeff Foxworthy-esque conversation in the comments section of a post last week at Polski3's View from Here.  "You know you're a middle school teacher when...."

Posted by John at 02:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

And D-Ed Reckoning, just added to our blogroll, says education research is the source of the stench.  In "Education Research Stinks," D-Ed Reck offers four "rules to live by":

1. If the results of an experiment are not statistically significant (p ≤ 0.05), then the results are not reliable.
2. If the effect size is less than 0.25 standard deviation, the results are generally not considered to be educationally significant.
3. Poorly designed experiments are neither science nor reliable. 
4. Results cannot be extrapolated beyond the parameters of the experiment.

D-Ed Reckoning's reckoning is similar to that of Richard M. Jaeger and Charlene G. Tucker in "Analyzing, Disaggregating, Reporting, and Interpreting Students’ Achievement Test Results: A Guide to Practice for Title I and Beyond," a paper available on the AFT's Web site.  Of effect size, Jaeger and Tucker write:

"[I]f the difference between sample averages is no more than two-tenths of a standard deviation, the difference should be regarded as small; a difference of half a standard deviation should be regarded as moderate; and a difference of eight-tenths of a standard deviation or larger should be regarded as a large difference."

Both D-Ed Reckoning's approach and Jaeger and Tucker's provide a blast of fresh air to clean up certain journals that publish foul-smelling education research.

Posted by John at 02:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Actually, it probably is.  Scott Elliott says the NEA will be firing up a blog sometime soon.

Posted by John at 01:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been trying to figure out whether education beat reporters who blog are really contributing much to the conversation.  Some posts read like leftovers from what they think of as their real work.  But others, like this piece from Patti Ghezzi, an Atlanta Journal Constitution reporter who blogs at Get Schooled, combine the seriousness of good reporting and with the edginess of good blogging.

Ghezzi focuses on a New Orleans* teacher, Andrea Spreter, who "does not believe in admissions criteria for public schools."  That's not so unusual except that Spreter took a job at Math and Science High School, a charter school that has admissions criteria for students.  With few schools open after Katrina, the only job Spreter could find was at the selective charter school, where she teaches three classes and runs the school's robotics program.  For her work, she receives no health insurance and has no employer-sponsored retirement plan.  With the school year over, Spreter is looking for a better job. 

Ghezzi writes, "Andrea wants to teach physics at a New Orleans high school that is open to all kids. She wants to get paid and she wants benefits. Shouldn't be too much to ask, should it?"

UPDATE:  Sara at The Quick and the Ed questions Ghezzi's reportial skills, saying Ghezzi got the name of the school wrong, mischaracterized the school as "selective" when it isn't selective in the usual sense, and generalized from an anecdote.  Good digging, Sara.  I was curious about the selectivity, too, but failed to find the school's Web site because Ghezzi got the name wrong.  Sara's writeup also raises the possibility that the charter school hired a part-time employee to avoid paying benefits to the teacher.  Very Wal-Martian. "We've scheduled you for 34 hours again this week, Jimmy."  Here's a thought.  Maybe charter schools and Wal-Mart should have collective bargaining.

*Ghezzi met the teacher at last week's Education Writers Association meeting, held last week in New Orleans.  Other EWA/New Orleans posts from Ghezzi here, here and here.

Posted by John at 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Ed at AFT 

Among its many changes, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) increased the qualifications for paraprofessionals, often called teacher aides, who work in instructional settings. These staff, formerly required to have a high school degree, would now have to get either an Associate’s Degree or pass equivalent certification or test. And thousands of paraprofessionals have striven to meet new requirements.

The average annual earnings of a worker with an associate’s degree were $33,000 in 1999, and median weekly earnings were $672 in 2003. Teachers Aides are among the lowest paid workers not only in schools, but in the nation, earning an average of $20,750 in 2004. In way too many places, the salaries of these workers do not meet a standard necessary to provide a basic family budget that includes childcare, transportation, food, housing and taxes (click the link to get to the Economic Policy Institute’s very cool family budget tool). Did raising standards lead to improved compensation?

Between 2000 and 2004, wages for all workers (unadjusted for CPI) rose 14.5 percent, and wages for teachers aides rose 15.5, so "no" is probably the answer. But in the last few months there are signs that better things are happening, perhaps due to better state fiscal conditions. In New Mexico, for instance, Gov. Bill Richardson signed a budget that includes a 9.5 percent increase for teachers assistants. The legislature in Alabama, over Governor Bob Riley’s veto, passed a 5 percent increase for all education classified workers. Workers making less than $20,000 will get a $1000 raise, meaning a worker making $15,000 will get 6.7 percent.

I wouldn’t have made it through my first year of teaching (in a special education high school program in NYC) without the help of aides whose bilingual skills, understanding of the IEP process, community connections, institutional memory and ability to work one on one with kids were phenomenal. So I see this kind of recognition as credit where credit is due. Now that we’ve raised standards and started to raise salaries, perhaps all that’s left is to raise a glass

Posted by Guest at 08:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Interesting piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education by David Perlmutter of LSU (GEAUX TIGERS!-sorry, hubbie went there) about the role of political blogs. Perlmutter muses over whether political blogs are the new Iowa caucus and if blog posts constitute campaign literature.  He also discusses the blogs of some of the probable Democratic candidates for President in 2008.  His take: Edwards is "prolific" because he has nothing to lose; Hillary plays it safe, Wesley Clark can be "terse."

In reading the article, I also picked up some new vocabulary--blogthrough.  In the rough-and-tumble of politics, Perlmutter is talking about, for example, the "bloggers' role in challenging the memo about President Bush's National Guard service revealed on CBS, which may have led to Dan Rather's resignation as anchor of the network's evening news."  In education, I guess we have to settle for a blogger outing NBPTS with the assistance of a trade publication.  Wow.

Posted by Michele at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Sherman Dorn does a bang up job of taking apart the politics of the Connecticut NCLB lawsuit. Dorn points out that while the NAACP is siding with the U.S. Department of of Education in the case, the NAACP also signed the joint statement (really the NEA statement) calling for changes in NCLB, which asks the feds to:

Decrease the testing burden on states, schools and districts by allowing states to assess students annually in selected grades in elementary, middle schools, and high schools.

This is, in part, exactly what the Connecticut lawsuit is about--the state is asking to only test once in certain grade spans, as required under the previous iteration of NCLB, the not-quite-as-catchy Improving Americas Schools Act.

It seems to me that the only way to reduce the testing burden on schools we have heard so much about lately is to revert to testing once in each grade span.  This is just my view--not AFT policy.  And, in case you were wondering, the AFT is not a signatory of the joint statement, nor did we choose to pursue a legal challenge to NCLB.

Posted by Michele at 03:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

380       Number of Google hits for Eduwonk Antonucci

6          Number of union leaders that Eduwonk and union critic Mike Antonucci claim were defeated because of their commitment to education reform

0          Number of times Eduwonk praised these six union leaders for their commitment to reform before they left office

1          Number of times Eduwonk has included the phrase "almost orgasmic" and "charter schools" in the same paragraph

0          Estimated number of times that pairing has occurred anywhere else in the known universe 

4          Minimum number of times Eduwonk has incorrectly used the word "tact" instead of "tack"

1:1        Ratio of the number of signers of AFT's petition (nearly 10,000) to the number of times Eduwonk posts have referred to previous Edwonk posts (nearly 10,000)

50         Percentage of yesterday's Eduwonk posts that referred to the AFT

3          Number of movies Eduwonk has referred to in its posts about the AFT (Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Austin Powers, and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure)

66 2/3   Percentage of these movies that are stoner movies

1,785    Number of three-word anagrams for "Eduwonk's Andy Rotherham" found on this Web site

1,782    Number that do not contain the word "hamster"

Posted by John at 01:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Get Schooled has an interesting thread going about the use of test scores to evaluate teachers.  Great comments section--22 comments, what I wouldn't do for 22 comments!  Some of those Georgia Bulldogs sound ferocious to me--beware the district that tries to implement a half-baked merit plan with these teachers.

Posted by Michele at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The Urban Institute has developed a fact sheet of stats on the children of immigrants who have received scant attention as the debate in Congress continues to rage.  More than 5 million children live in unauthorized families in the United States, and two-thirds were born in this country and are therefore U.S. citizens.  The Pew Hispanic Center also has put together some good resources on immigrant children and education, including a piece by Rick Frey, The Higher Drop-Out Rate of Foreign Born Teens. Fry attributes the higher drop-out rate to the poor schooling that these teenagers received in their native country.  The good news is that immigrant teenagers who received most of their schooling in the United States only have a drop-out rate of 5 percent. 

Posted by Michele at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today's Washington Post reports "...for many kids today, the recess bell comes too late, for too little time, or even not at all. Pressure to raise test scores and adhere to state-mandated academic requirements is squeezing recess out of the school day."

Funny, just last month Deb Viadero's Ed Week piece on recess ($) led with this:  "Despite widespread concerns that the daily recess period is going the way of the dinosaur, a federal survey issued last week suggests that the vast majority of elementary schools still offer unstructured playtime for students each day."

Is recess alive or dead?  Does it seem as if 10 years ago or so all the kiddies had plenty of time for recess?  Well, hold your collective and proverbial horses.  A quick trip to Lexis-Nexis-land reveals what CNN"s Miles O'Brien had to say about recess in the fall of 1996: "Recess was once an inseparable part of the school day for most children. In fact, it's my favorite subject -- or was my favorite subject in school. But now many school districts are eliminating recess in belief that it serves no valid academic purpose."

How long do think it will be before someone says this is an NCLB-created problem, even though the media reported the same phony story way back when?

Posted by John at 05:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

AFT vice president Toni Cortese delivered the NCLB: Let's Get it Right petition—signed by nearly 10,000 AFT members and supporters—to Capitol Hill last week. Cortese is pictured below with Hillary Clinton, a member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

The AFT will be delivering the petition to other key lawmakers who will be involved in reauthorizing NCLB. If you'd like to add your name to the thousands on the petition, please click here.

Posted by John at 12:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)