August 2010

Teachers union agrees to reopen talks on evaluations

• 08-23-2010
• 

By Phil Willon and Jason Song/Los Angeles Times

The head of the Los Angeles teachers union said Saturday that he has accepted city school district officials' proposal to reopen negotiations over teacher evaluations but stopped short of saying whether a method tying teacher reviews to their students' test scores would be on the table. Los Angeles Unified School District leaders on Friday requested that the union consider making the method, known as value-added analysis, count for part of teachers' evaluations — a move that would transform how instructors are assessed in the nation's second-largest school district. (more...)

L.A.'s leaders in learning

• 08-23-2010
• 

By Jason Song, Jason Felch and Doug Smith/Los Angeles Times

Five families from across the San Fernando Valley set up camp for three nights by the front door of Wilbur Avenue Elementary School in 2009, intent on getting a spot for their children in one of the best-regarded schools in Los Angeles. Others hired someone to hold their place in line. This spring, the school in affluent Tarzana began using a lottery for applicants from outside the neighborhood. Within hours, more than a dozen children were on the list.
What these determined families could not have known is that Wilbur's record was among the worst in Los Angeles for boosting student performance in math and English. (more...)

Turning children into data: A skeptic's guide to assessment programs

• 08-23-2010
• 

By Alfie Kohn/Education Week

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
—Albert Einstein
Programs with generic-sounding names that offer techniques for measuring (and raising) student achievement have been sprouting like fungi in a rainforest: “Learning-Focused Schools,” “Curriculum-Based Measurements,” “Professional Learning Communities,” and many others whose names include “data,” “progress,” or “RTI.” Perhaps you’ve seen their ads in periodicals like this one. Perhaps you’ve pondered the fact that they can afford these ads, presumably because of how much money they’ve already collected from struggling school districts. (more…)

Also: Complete article available at alfiekohn.org

L.A. Times testing series raises more questions

• 08-23-2010
• 

Blog by Jay Mathews/Washington Post

Few education stories have excited me as much as the series on teacher assessment being done by reporters Jason Song, Jason Felch and Doug Smith of the Los Angeles Times. They have dug up a goldmine of data on the student test score gains of 6,000 individual elementary school teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District, information that the district has refused to show to parents despite pleas from its staff to do so. The latest story in the series, "L.A.'s leaders in learning," does many things that I think are crucial to improving American education, and fit what I have been trying to do calculating the level of challenge in high schools, nationally and in the Washington area, the last 12 years. (more...)

State policymakers talk standards, Race to the Top, ESEA

• 08-23-2010
• 

Blog by Alyson Klein/Education Week

Memo to Congress and the U.S. Department of Education: Stay out of the Common Core State Standards Initiative. At least that was the message at an Education Commission of the States forum session Friday from three state policymakers whose states have either won the Race to the Top competition (Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat from Tennessee) or are finalists (Dwight Jones, the state schools chief in Colorado, and Mitchell Chester, the state schools chief in Massachusetts.) If the feds decide to take ownership of Common Core, they could inject an unwelcome note of partisanship, Bredesen said. (more…)

States, districts mull how to use $10 billion in jobs aid

• 08-23-2010
• 

By Dakarai I. Aarons and Alyson Klein/Education Week

As governors gear up to apply for federal money from the $10 million Education Jobs Fund, states and school districts are wrestling with how they plan to spend the aid the Obama administration said was desperately needed to save what the administration said would be some 160,000 educators’ jobs that otherwise would be lost. Some districts will use the money to roll back furloughs and restore jobs slated to be cut for the 2010-11 school year. Others already had factored the money in while making budget decisions that allowed them to forgo layoffs. (more…)

School year starts with bigger classes, reduced resources

• 08-23-2010
• 

By Diana Lambert and Melody Gutierrez/Sacramento Bee

School is back in session in most local districts, and students and staff are noticing big changes. Last year, public school districts started the year with fewer teachers, bigger classes and reduced resources. This year, it's worse. Classes of 30-plus students are now commonplace in Sacramento-area schools, as districts have laid off teachers to balance deflated budgets. Many students are starting the year with little or no access to a library or school bus. There are fewer nurses, counselors and administrators. And sports, music, art, shop and other programs have become luxuries some districts simply can't afford. Most students will attend school for fewer days and could be on an entirely different calendar. (more…)

California loses bid for federal Race to the Top education grant

• 08-24-2010
• 

Blog by Howard Blume/Los Angeles Times

California has fallen short in its bid to win a controversial federal Race to the Top school-reform grant. The winners, just confirmed by federal officials, are Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia. Had they prevailed, participating California school systems stood to receive as much as $700 million. The Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation's second-largest school system, was in line for about $120 million; Long Beach Unified would have received at least $18 million. The Obama administration created the competitive grant program to spur its vision of reform nationwide. A total of $3.4 billion was available. In California, school districts had pledged to pursue reforms that included linking teacher evaluations to the standardized test scores of their students. The grant application committed them to using this test-score analysis for at least 30% of a teacher's evaluation. (more…)

Also: Education Week, Washington Post

State defers schools, welfare program payments

• 08-24-2010
• 

Wyatt Buchanan/San Francisco Chronicle

State leaders on Monday used a recently passed law to delay payment of nearly $3 billion in funds to K-12 public education and a welfare program, a decision that officials acknowledged will exacerbate difficulties for school districts and counties that already have had to lay off workers. The move transfers part of the state's money shortage crisis to counties, school districts and local officials, who will be left to decide how to bridge the gap to continue providing services to the public. "Essentially, this is ... the state pushing its cash management to local districts," said Jack O'Connell, the state superintendent of public instruction, adding that in the past few years, "schools have not only taken a hit, they've taken a massive hit." (more…)

Also: Los Angeles Times

Value added is no magic: Assessing teacher effectiveness

• 08-24-2010
• 

Blog by John Rogers/Huffington Post

That old sorcerer has vanished/And for once has gone away!/Spirits called by him, now banished,/My commands shall soon obey.
In Goethe's classic, the apprentice uses a sorcerer's spell to ease his daily chores. Chanting the master's words, he brings a broomstick to life and tells it to fetch water to clean the workshop. The broomstick obeys, only too well. It races between the well and back until the workshop begins to flood. Although the apprentice had enough knowledge to set magic in motion, he could not think ahead to what he did not know. I worry about a similar flood of unintended consequences if the Los Angeles Times moves forward with its plans to publish a database that places 6,000 Los Angeles third- to fifth-grade teachers on a spectrum from "least effective" to "most effective." (more...)

County superintendent of education steps down

• 08-24-2010
• 

By Carla Rivera/Los Angeles Times

The superintendent of the Los Angeles County Office of Education is stepping down after eight years amid controversy over her decision to cut education programs and allegations that she failed to enforce standards at schools for juvenile offenders. Darline P. Robles told agency staffers late Friday about her decision to retire. "I leave with the satisfaction that through collaborative efforts with school leaders, classroom teachers and educational partners, we have achieved positive outcomes for students and made important strides toward closing the achievement gap," Robles said. "I feel the time is right to make this change and seek new challenges." Her departure is effective Aug. 30. Robles was unavailable for comment, said agency spokesman Richard de la Torre. No announcement was made about a successor. (more…)

Civil rights groups criticize Race to the Top competition for schools

• 08-24-2010
• 

Louis Freedberg/California Watch

As California educators wait anxiously to hear whether the state will be awarded funds from the $4.3 billion Race to the Top competition today, the nation's leading civil rights organizations have attacked the race for funds as undermining the civil rights of the nation's poor and disadvantaged children. So far, California has lost out in two contests for education stimulus funds, as I have noted in previous blog posts. In a highly critical broadside [PDF] issued last month against many aspects of the Obama administration's education agenda, seven civil rights groups, including the NAACP, the National Urban League, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, singled out the Race to the Top competition for its fiercest criticism: (more…)

Drive to overhaul low-performing schools delayed

• 08-24-2010
• 

By Sam Dillon/New York Times

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan set an ambitious goal last year of overhauling 1,000 schools a year, using billions of dollars in federal stimulus money. But that effort is off to an uneven start. Schools from Maine to California are starting the fall term with their overhaul plans postponed or in doubt because negotiations among federal regulators, state officials and local educators have led to delays and confusion. (more…)

Proposed kindergarten cutoff date would mean some California kids start school later

• 08-24-2010
• 

By Susan Ferriss and Melody Gutierrez/Sacramento Bee

For decades, millions of Californians with children who have fall birthdays have struggled over whether to pack their 4-year-olds off to kindergarten – or hold them back because they might be too young to start school. This week, California state legislators may the closest they've ever come to making that decision for parents, with room for some exceptions. A bill by Sen. Joe Simitian, a Palo Alto Democrat, would roll back the date that entering kindergartners must turn 5 from the current Dec. 2 to Sept. 1. (more…)

California appeals court hears case on student drug tests

• 08-24-2010
• 

By Denny Walsh/Sacramento Bee

In the first case of its kind in California, three appeals court justices in Sacramento did not appear receptive Monday to mandatory random drug testing of non-athlete high school students who participate in competitive extracurricular activities. A Superior Court judge last year ordered a halt to enforcement of the expanded drug-testing policy at Shasta Union High School District's three main campuses. Judge Monica Marlow found that a legal challenge to the policy is likely to succeed on the merits and issued a preliminary injunction shutting down the searches of students – except athletes – pending a final resolution of the matter. (more…)

Dangerous blind spots in the Common-Core standards

• 08-24-2010
• 

By William G. Wraga

The final version of the common-core standards for math and English/language arts, released in June by the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association, contain two educational blind spots that, if ignored, can undermine not only the quality of public education, but also the strength of our democracy. The standards devote insufficient attention to the need for an interdisciplinary curriculum, and represent a contracted view of the “common core” that disregards the role of schools in preparing students for citizenship. Both blind spots stem from the disciplinary myopia that characterizes the standards. They were developed with a technical emphasis on disciplinary research and practice—at the neglect of a broad view of the entire curriculum and of the function of education in a democracy. In implementing these standards, state departments of education and local school systems must act to avoid the potential pitfalls of these blind spots, and groups involved in the Common Core State Standards Initiative should revise the standards to eliminate them. (more…)

San Diego and San Jose rated reform-resistant

• 08-24-2010
• 

Blog by John Fensterwald/Educated Guess

San Diego and San Jose are unrivaled as hubs of innovation in high tech, green tech and biotech. But in terms of fostering a climate for education innovation, San Jose is no Silicon Valley, and San Diego is in the Rust Belt with Detroit and Gary, Indiana. At least that’s view of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which ranked those two metropolises near the bottom of 26 major cities in the study “America’s Best (and Worst) Cities for School Reform: Attracting Entrepreneurs and Change Agents,” which was released today. Los Angeles didn’t fare much better, ranking 18th, but San Francisco, San Jose’s neighbor,  grabbed the #10 rank on the strength of its talent pool of social entrepreneurs and non-profit sector. Fordham is unabashedly pro-charter and pro-choice, and its metrics reflect its view that outside forces — groups like Teach for America, New Leaders for New Schools, reform-oriented foundations and activist mayors – are needed to bust through the status quo to create the climate for energetic and strong-willed superintendents to thrive. (more…)

Richmond plans daytime curfew to fight truancy

• 08-24-2010
• 

By Karl Fischer and Shelly Meron/Contra Costa Times

Kids caught cutting school in Richmond will earn a trip to a community center for counseling, then to juvenile court with their parents under a new city law that takes effect this fall. City leaders say the municipal code change adds teeth to long-languishing efforts to curb truancy in Richmond, where more than 100 enrolled students self-educate on the streets every day, some committing crimes or falling victim to them. "It's a noncriminal process," police Chief Chris Magnus said. "It's about getting kids help with the issues that lead them to the street." The antidote comes with a ticket, as with speeding. But unlike traffic infractions, the court will likely reserve fines for chronic offenders. Most of those caught can instead expect court-mandated social services for themselves and their families, from mental health and drug counseling to help with conflict resolution and parenting classes. (more…)

Literary classics shelved

• 08-24-2010
• 

By Maureen Magee/San Diego Union Tribune

“The Old Man and the Sea,” “The House on Mango Street,” and “The Great Gatsby” are so last century when it comes to high school English classes in Chula Vista and National City. Once literature-based, English classes throughout the Sweetwater Union High School District — and elsewhere in California — have been revamped in an attempt to better prepare students for college and the real world. That means reading lists once dominated by the classics now consist of newspaper editorials, historic documents, advertisements and some nonfiction. Assignments no longer dwell on the symbolism in a poem or focus on an entire novel. Instead, they emphasize expository, analytical and argumentative writing. (more…)

Race to Top Winners Rejoice, Losers Parse Scores

• 08-25-2010
• 

By Sean Cavanagh, Stephen Sawchuk and Sarah D. Sparks/Education Week

Nine states and the District of Columbia were chosen Tuesday to receive a combined $3.4 billion in the second round of the federal Race to the Top grant competition, a cash infusion that is intended to support bold new plans to turn around struggling schools, revamp teacher evaluation, and implement common academic standards, among other efforts. The second-round winners, selected from a group of 19 finalists, were Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and Rhode Island, in addition to the nation’s capital. They will receive from $75 million to $700 million through the competition. Notably absent from the list were Colorado and Louisiana, which had high hopes of winning grants after aggressively changing elements of state education policy, and California, which had looked to the prospect of up to $700 million in new federal aid amid a continued fiscal crisis. (more…)

U.S. schools chief to push disclosure of education data

• 08-25-2010
• 

By Jason Song/Los Angeles Times

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan will call for all states and school districts to make public whether their instructors are doing enough to raise students' test scores and to share other school-level information with parents, according to a text of a speech he is scheduled to make Wednesday. "The truth is always hard to swallow, but it can only make us better, stronger and smarter," according to remarks he plans to deliver in Little Rock, Ark. "That's what accountability is all about — facing the truth and taking responsibility." The lack of public accountability in California's schools compared with those in some other states could have been a factor Tuesday in the state's failure to win any money in the federal government's competitive Race to the Top education grant program. (more…)

Fewer Americans back Obama’s education programs

• 08-25-2010
• 

By Dakarai I. Aarons/Education Week

Support for President Barack Obama’s education agenda is slipping among Americans, according to a poll released today of the public’s attitude toward public schooling. The survey, conducted by Phi Delta Kappa International and the Gallup Organization, reports that just 34 percent of those polled would give the president an A or B when grading his performance on education during his first 17 months in office, compared with 45 percent in last year’s poll, which covered the president’s first six months in office. ("Obama School Ideas Getting Good Grades," Sept. 2, 2009.) The president’s grades fell not just among Republicans surveyed, but also among Democrats and Independents, who increasingly gave Mr. Obama grades of C or lower. Poll respondents, for example, took a decidedly different tack than the president and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan when it comes to turning around low-performing schools. When asked what was the best solution, 54 percent said the school should remain open with the existing teachers and principal and receive outside support. (more…)

Also: Associated Press

Which politicians want a hundred dollars from me?

• 08-25-2010
• 

Blog by Jim Horn/Schools Matter

I know, a hundred bucks is a drop in the big corporate bucket, but if the 35,000+ souls who signed the Educator Roundtable petition would make a similar commitment, then we could be talking some serious contribuing power. The new PDK/Gallup Poll is out, and it has some good information for any politician who cares about what the public thinks.  We know that the Oligarchs don't care--they would not be trying to privatize public education and the teaching profession if they cared what the public thinks. Here is the deal that I will make with the first ten politiicans aspiring to win or retain a U. S.  House or U. S. Senate seat who are willing to support the following positions.   An email from your office with your signature in support of these postions gets a $100 check from me.  Ready? (more…)

We lost again in Race to the Top. Now what?

• 08-25-2010
• 

Blog by Corey G. Johnson/California Watch

Well, as of yesterday, the final bell rung on California's foray into Race to the Top. And the results were sobering: After two stabs at hundreds of millions in federal dollars, there's no cash to show for it. The winners were Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia. California hoped to gain up to $700 million. Now larger questions loom. What does the twice-abysmal performance say about the current state of California education? Will the results spur California education leaders to do a major self-reflection or a systemwide reassessment? Or will the state chug along on the same course at the same pace, as if Race to the Top never happened? Official comments about what worked and what didn't in California's application will be accessible sometime today. (more…)

Good try but no Race to the Top award

• 08-25-2010
• 

Blog by John Fensterwald/Educated Guess

Sixteenth place California came up six spots and 17.3 points short of getting a big piece of the $3.4 billion second round of Race to the Top. But its big improvement from the first-round application prompted U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to tell reporters Tuesday that he was “sad and disappointed” there wasn’t enough money in the pot for California – and for several other states with promising school reforms that ranked just out of the money. Duncan, who also awarded $600 million in the first round to two states – Delaware and Tennessee – has asked Congress for an additional $1.35 billion for a third round next year. (more…)

Oakland, LAUSD to get SIG money after all

• 08-25-2010
• 

Blog by John Fensterwald/Educated Guess

With an hours-old waiver from the federal government in hand, the state Board of Education on Tuesday approved spending $416 million to turn around 92 of the state’s lowest performing schools. That will include $100 million from a reserve that the feds now said could be divided among two dozen schools in Oakland, Los Angeles, Santa Cruz and other districts that had argued they’d been unfairly excluded. The vote ends the suspense for districts that started the school year having made commitments to hire teacher coaches, add programs and extend the school day without knowing whether they’d get federal School Improvement Grant money. Some had put off  critical planning for their school transformations during the summer because of approval delays. The larger schools will receive as much as $6 million over three years as long as they adopt one of four improvement models prescribed by the Obama administration. Faced with time pressures, board members approved the grant recommendations of Department of Education staff with some sharply voiced misgivings. (more…)

High-school exit exam pass rates rising, especially among minorities

• 08-25-2010
• 

By Sharon Noguchi/San Jose Mercury News

A greater portion of California high school students are mastering minimum English and math skills, and the biggest gains are seen among poor, Latino and African-American students, according to results of the high-school exit exam released Tuesday by the state. In the Class of 2010, 94.5 percent had passed the exam by May, compared with 90.4 percent of the Class of 2006, the first group required to pass the exit exam in order to graduate high school. Encouragingly, an increasing proportion of students are passing the exam on their first try in 10th grade. Those who don't pass the test as sophomores can retake it if needed during their junior and senior years, and even afterward. Among the Class of 2006, about 64 percent passed English and math -- the two sections of the test -- as sophomores. Among the Class of 2010, that rate rose to about 69 percent. (more…)

Also: San Francisco Chronicle

Grading teachers on value-added measures falls short

• 08-25-2010
• 

Op-ed/UCLA Today Commentary by fifteen education scholars from UCLA, CSU Northridge, Stanford, Duke and the University of Wisconsin-Madison in response to the recent Los Angeles Times article, "Who's Teaching L.A.'s Kids?"

Research indicates that well-constructed VA estimates, especially those based on averages over at least three years, can provide valuable information about teachers’ contributions to student learning. Research also shows that teacher effectiveness varies considerably, even within schools. The public needs to know, however, that VA modeling is not an exact enough methodology to justify identifying individual teachers as “effective” or “ineffective” based solely on a particular VA score. The Times authors themselves cite a recent National Academy of Sciences report saying that value-added measures are promising but not ready for high stakes contexts. Providing a public database of teachers’ VA estimates constitutes a high stakes context both because it could affect teachers’ reputations in their school communities and because it could harm students’ educational outcomes if parents base decisions solely on this information. Thus, publishing such a database is scientifically premature. (more…)

California school funding delay could force districts into short-term borrowing

• 08-25-2010
• 

By Theresa Harrington and Katy Murphy/Contra Costa Times

The state's budget impasse is forcing some schools to seek loans to pay their bills as they start the school year. To help the state meet debt and pension obligations, state officials decided Monday to start delaying school payments of $2.5 billion a month in September instead of October, as originally planned. "It's not good news," said Bill Clark, associate superintendent for business in the Contra Costa County Office of Education. "With the deferral and extended delay of the state budget, there are heightened concerns with districts for cash flow." Business officials from county districts will discuss their financial needs Friday, he said. Some districts will likely seek short-term loans to pay their expenses and the county may establish its own loan pool for those with poor credit ratings, he said. The money would be repaid when districts get their state money. (more…)

Montebello Unified School District opens new programs at its high schools

• 08-25-2010
• 

By Sandra T. Molina/San Gabriel Valley Tribune

High school students in the Montebello Unified School District will find something different at their campuses this school year. Six new classes are being added to the Pathways to College and Career academies at Montebello, Schurr and Bell Gardens high schools, offering student hands-on experience in the real working world. The program offers specialized instruction in a variety of careers. The instruction is integrated into students' everyday academic curriculum, ensuring they graduate ready for either college or a career, officials said. In other words, students will get technical instruction combined with academics. "We work to ensure every student graduates career ready and college prepared," said Ayele Dodoo, acting director of Pathways. "This new program does just that as it offers students pathways that tap into their interests, helping to keep them engaged, while also providing a rigorous academic schedule." Students don't need to choose between academics and technical skills, she said, not like in the past when high school students would either study to go into a career or to college. (more…)

Which cities are most willing to tackle education reform?

• 08-25-2010
• 

By Amanda Paulson/Christian Science Monitor

Education entrepreneurs – the sort of people who want to open a new charter school, or have an innovative way to get talented new teachers into schools – would do well to head to New Orleans. Or Washington or New York. Detroit or Philadelphia? Not so welcoming. At least that’s the judgment of "America's Best (and Worst) Cities for School Reform: Attracting Entrepreneurs and Change Agents," a study released Tuesday that’s attempting to rank cities in a new way. It doesn't look at how well their students perform, or even on the programs their districts have put in place, but on how welcoming they are to reforms and new ideas. The education version of the World Bank’s annual ranking of the best countries for business, if you will. (more…)

How 5 Race to Top judges scored California

• 08-26-2010
• 

Blog by John Fensterwald/Educated Guess

The five unidentified reviewers of California’s Race to the Top application generally praised the district-led approach that California took and expressed optimism that ceding control to districts committed to reform could succeed. But what stopped them, with one exception, from giving the state winning marks were three areas that participating superintendents and state officials figured would be problematic: lack of union support for the application; a troubled statewide data system that lags behind other states; and uncertainty whether the state could deliver commitments to create more effective teachers and principals. The U.S. Department of Education released the scores and evaluations of states in the second round of Race to the Top on Wednesday. It showed that especially in California, the numbers were all over the place. You’d have thought that two of the reviewers had read different applications. (more…)

Also: States’ Phase 2 applications, scores and evaluations available at Ed.gov

Poll: Obama's education approval ratings drop

• 08-26-2010
• 

Associated Press

A new Gallup Poll has found fewer Americans approve of the job President Barack Obama is doing in support of public education, but they continue to have a highly favorable opinion of their local schools. The drop in the president's education approval ratings — as found in the random telephone poll of about 1,000 Americans in June — mirrored the drop in his general approval rating in other recent polls, said Shane Lopez, senior scientist in residence for Gallup. The education poll released Wednesday was paid for by Phi Delta Kappa. It found 34 percent gave the president a grade of A or B for his work in support of public schools, compared with 45 percent at the same time in 2009. They gave even worse grades for the quality of the nation's schools, but said they approve of their local schools. (more…)

Also: Christian Science Monitor

Education chief calls on schools to share more data

• 08-26-2010
• 

By Nick Anderson/Washington Post

Education Secretary Arne Duncan, stoking a national debate over a Los Angeles Times series that examines how much individual teachers have raised test scores, urged public schools Wednesday to give educators more data on student achievement and parents a full report on teacher effectiveness. "In other fields, we talk about success constantly, with statistics and other measures to demonstrate it," Duncan said in the Arkansas capital. "Why, in education, are we scared to talk about what success looks like? What is there to hide?" Duncan added, "Every state and district should be collecting and sharing information about teacher effectiveness with teachers and - in the context of other important measures - with parents." (more…)

Also: Education Week

L.A. schools chief says district will adopt 'value added' approach

• 08-26-2010
• 

By Howard Blume/Los Angeles Times

Revamping teacher evaluations with the goal of helping instructors improve has become an urgent priority in the nation's second-largest school district, Ramon C. Cortines, superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, said in an address to administrators Wednesday. Cortines said the district will develop and adopt a "value added" method that determines teachers' and schools' effectiveness based on student test scores. And he told a packed Hollywood High School auditorium that he's committed to using these ratings for at least 30% of a teacher's evaluation. The plan would require the consent of the teachers union. (more…)

Senate report hints at a definition for what works

• 08-26-2010
• 

By Sarah D. Sparks/Education Week

Language buried in a report on a Senate appropriations bill may provide a glimpse of the bar Congress will set for judging the effectiveness of school improvement interventions in the next iteration of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Yet education watchers worry Congress won’t back up its call for rigor with the cash to pay for the research. In its report on the education budget for the 2011 fiscal year, the Senate Appropriations Committee calls on the U.S. Department of Education to “encourage and support” states and districts to use their Title I school improvement grants only for interventions that would meet the evidence required for the two most stringent evidence standards in the federal Investing in Innovation, or i3, research grants—the “validation” and “scale-up” categories. (more…)

Union, data system faulted for state's loss in federal education-grant contest

• 08-26-2010
• 

By Terence Chea/Associated Press

Weak support from teachers unions was a key factor in California's failure to win money in the Obama administration's school reform competition, according to documents released Wednesday by U.S. Department of Education. The state was not among the 10 winners announced Tuesday in the second round of the $4.35 billion grant contest, which rewards states for ambitious reforms to improve low-performing schools, boost graduation rates and close achievement gaps. California, which stood to win as much as $700 million, placed 16th of the 19th finalists in the second round, scoring 424 out of 500 possible points. The state scored 416 points in the first round, when only two states -- Tennessee and Delaware -- won grants. In the so-called score card released Wednesday, federal reviewers said they were concerned that the state's plan had the backing of only 300 of the state's roughly 1,800 local education agencies -- and only one-third of local teachers unions in those districts. (more…)

New law allows students to sound off about teachers, but doesn't require them to listen

• 08-26-2010
• 

By Rebecca Kimitch/San Gabriel Valley Tribune

High school students who want the opportunity to tell their teachers what they really think will have the opportunity under a new law signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger Wednesday. The legislation authorizes student governments at high schools to develop confidential surveys asking students their opinions about the effectiveness of their teachers and classes. But the legislation has few teeth. Surveys would be voluntary - teachers could decide whether to distribute them or not. And the results would be made known only to teachers. Still the bill's author, Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, championed the legislation as historic and trend setting, her spokeswoman Teala Schaff said. (more…)

Federal-intrusion talk on common standards: A win-win?

• 08-26-2010
• 

Blog by Catherine Gewertz/Education Week

If you've been following the common-standards initiative, you know that the "don't tread on me" spirit has proved to be one of the flashpoints in that work. And even now, with three-quarters of the states having already adopted the standards, we're still hearing states rattle their sabers at the feds over the common standards (headline version: "States to Feds: Stay the Hell Away From My Standards").
The federal-intrusion sentiment pre-existed Race to the Top, of course. That resentment was one of the ingredients in the implosion of earlier attempts at national standards. Keen awareness of that history shaped the name and rhetoric around this effort (think state, not national, standards). But Race to the Top incentives for common-standards adoption activated those Jungian federal-intrusion archetypes, creating, as Yogi Berra once said, that sense of deja vu all over again. (more…)

LAUSD drops policy of assigning teachers by race

• 08-26-2010
• 

By Susan Abram/Torrance Daily Breeze

A civil rights group has dropped its lawsuit challenging Los Angeles Unified's race-based policy of assigning teachers to specific schools after the district voted to halt the practice, attorneys said Wednesday. The lawsuit, filed in 2005 by the Pacific Legal Foundation, claimed the nation's second-largest district violated the state constitution by considering teachers' race when making school assignments. Attorneys for the foundation said LAUSD tried to achieve racial balance by choosing one applicant for a campus transfer over another, based on race, in order to mirror the district's demographic makeup. LAUSD voted in March to drop the so-called teacher integration transfer program after negotiating with United Teachers Los Angeles. A.J. Duffy, president of the teachers union, did not return phone calls Wednesday. District officials said the transfer policy was developed in response to a federal civil rights investigation more than 30 years ago, when LAUSD's teachers and student body were predominantly white. "As demographics changed significantly over time, the program outlived its usefulness," according to a statement from the LAUSD. (more…)

Why the National Writing Project should be saved

• 08-26-2010
• 

Guest blog by Mary Tedrow/Washington Post

Most of us know the old adage: Watch what they do, not what they say. Education Secretary Arne Duncan says he supports classroom teachers. Really? And he does this by dumping the National Writing Project, the best professional development program I’ve experienced in nearly 30 years of teaching?  I’ve had some time to calm down since the U.S. Department of Education’s slightly premature August 4th announcement of the Investing in Innovation (i3) grants. The list of the top four "winners" had my blood boiling – in part because the current winner/loser paradigm in DOE’s lingo grates on me. How can we actively promote any policy that implies that some will be losers in the education game? Or is it a race? The top two i3 grant winners in terms of dollars are KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) and Teach for America, each receiving $50 million in grant money to be spent over the next five years. Both programs rely on the concept that young go-getters will invest a short but intense period of their lives teaching the nation’s most challenged students -- and bumping up building-level test scores. Burnout is expected, after which they will get on with their high-powered lives. (more…)

NJ Gov fires education chief after missing out on federal funds - report

• 08-27-2010
• 

Wall Street Journal

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie fired his education commissioner, Bret Schundler, Friday after he refused to resign when the state missed out on nearly $400 million in funding from the Obama administration's Race to the Top competition, the New Jersey Star-Ledger reported. The Garden State application was denied points after it supplied data from the wrong year. Schundler was fired because he allegedly misled Christie during his explanation of what went wrong. Christie asked Schundler to explain the steps he took earlier this week before publicly rising to his defense. Christie said the education commissioner had told him he attempted to answer a botched question during the state's presentation to the U.S. Department of Education. However a video released from the agency contradicted Schundler's account, the Star-Ledger reported. (more…)

Long Beach teachers union says it was left out of federal grant effort

• 08-27-2010
• 

By Greg Mellen/Long Beach Press-Telegram

A day after documents released by the U.S. Department of Education showed weak support from teacher unions as a key factor in California's failure to win money in the Obama administration's school reform competition, Long Beach teachers say they were never asked to the table. And even if the Teachers Association of Long Beach had been asked to lend its support for the $4.35 billion grant contest, it is unclear whether a nod would have been forthcoming. California, which stood to win as much as $700 million, placed 16th among 19 finalists in the second round, scoring 424 out of 500 possible points. A group of 10 winners was announced Tuesday in the second round of the $4.35 billion grant contest, which rewards states for reforms designed to improve low-performing schools, boost graduation and close achievement gaps. Locally, there were mixed feelings among teachers about the benefits and the pitfalls of the grant, and there certainly was no rush to support the effort. But the Teachers Association of Long Beach said the bottom line was that it was not asked to take a position either for or against the grant. (more…)

Dear President Obama...Sincerely, Parents Across America

• 08-27-2010
• 

Blog/Washington Post Following is a letter about education policy being sent to President Obama from parents representing a number of organization across the country.

Dear President Obama:

Several weeks ago, we wrote to you about our concern that your proposed “Blueprint for Reform” did not acknowledge the critical role parents must play in any meaningful school improvement process. We also expressed our serious reservations about some of the Blueprint's strategies. Our goal is simple – to ensure that our children receive the best possible education. As parents, we are the first to see the positive effects of good programs, and the first line of defense when our children's well-being is threatened. Our input is unique and essential. Recently, Secretary Duncan announced that he would require districts that receive federal school improvement grants (SIG) to involve parents and the community in planning for schools identified for intervention. We appreciate this response as a first step; however, more needs to be done. (more…)

ESEA wording change will help rural schools

• 08-27-2010
• 

Blog by Mary Schulken/Education Week

The Education Department's point person for rural schools told teachers at a small, rural Arkansas high school Thursday that the administration will push to make federal education law more flexible for small, rural schools, particularly those where teachers have multiple roles. One example: The Education Department is seeking a change in key wording in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act from requiring "highly qualified" teachers to requiring "highly effective" teachers, John White, deputy secretary for rural outreach, told the Rural Education blog. "That way, when you've got a science teacher in a rural school who also teaches math and another subject as well, and does so effectively, and at a high level of mastery, he or she can continue doing those duties without the school being penalized," White said. (more…)

School finance primer: Courts and ballot initiatives helped create complex finance system

• 08-27-2010
• 

By Donna Jones/Santa Cruz Sentinel

If you had to describe California's system of funding public schools in one word, you might pick: complicated. The system is the product of nearly four decades of court battles, voter initiatives and political tinkering. The state is the principle financier of public schools, a role that's given it a major voice in what goes on in the classroom.
That wasn't always the case. A little history. (more…)

State of Our Schools: Bigger classes, fewer resources - Students return amid unsettling times for local districts

• 08-27-2010
• 

By Shanna McCord/ Santa Cruz Sentinel

Welcome back to school, where the troubled state of California's economy has cast a cloud over practically every public classroom across Santa Cruz County. Unsettling changes have taken place at county schools in the wake of the state's $19 billion shortfall that led Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to call for a $2.5 billion reduction in education spending this year. Class sizes have shot up, supply budgets have been slashed, the school year has been shortened and parents are pitching in more than ever to keep schools afloat. This is the new deal in public educa­tion as California grapples with back­-to- back years of financial challenges described by school officials as the worst anyone can remember. (more...)

LA Times reporters respond to my questions on school ratings

• 08-27-2010
• 

Blog by Jay Mathews/Washington Post

I have been avidly following the Los Angeles Times publication of value-added data from elementary schools in the L.A. district. After Sunday's latest installment, I posted an appreciation of what they were doing, but expressed frustration with some gaps in the story, and what I considered at least slight misrepresentation of some of their data. I thought they had failed in particular to address the possible statistical distortions that arise when analyzing how well already high-performing schools do in raising student achievement higher than what those students have done previously.
The reporters, Jason Felch, Jason Song and Doug Smith, responded Tuesday. Here is what they sent me: (more…)

New Orleans Schools seize Post-Katrina momentum

• 08-27-2010
• 

By Erik W. Robelen/Education Week

As public schools open all over the city this month, you don’t have to look far for signs of how the education landscape here has changed since Hurricane Katrina struck five years ago. There’s the towering billboard visible from Interstate 10 near the Superdome urging families to enroll at Sophie B. Wright Charter School, just one example of the dominant place charters now fill in New Orleans’ mix of schools. There are the arrays of portable classrooms that still serve as homes for some schools awaiting permanent facilities. And there are the many new faces of educators who have come from all over the country to a city where an unprecedented, state-led effort has been under way to reinvent public education after the devastating storm and the mass exodus of students it caused. (more…)

Disaster capitalism collects from FEMA: Why NOLA charterites have 1,800 million reasons to celebrate, part II

• 08-27-2010
• 

Blog by Jim Horn/Schools Matter

Paul Vallas and the New Orleans charterites have used the same exclusionary policies that have been used elsewhere by the "choice" charter movement to push up test scores and, thus, be viewed by a clueless and non-curious media as the solution to urban schooling.  The plan by the Oligarchs and ed industry to skim the healthiest, wealthiest, and highest-scoring students into charters, and then to dump the most challenging students into the public schools has worked like a charm, as evidenced by the mindless meme that charter schools have saved New Orleans children from the failed public schools. Here is a clip from a report from PBS last year on the NOLA charter movement, a clip that demonstrates a problem that even John Merrow, charter advocate, could not ignore: (more…)

Progress slows in closing achievement gaps in D.C. schools

• 08-27-2010
• 

By Bill Turque/Washington Post

After two years of progress, Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee's effort to narrow the vast achievement gap separating white and African American students in D.C. public schools has stalled, an analysis of 2010 test score data shows. The slowed pace of improvement comes as Mayor Adrian M. Fenty makes transformation of the city's long-struggling school system a signature issue in his tightly contested Democratic primary race with D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray. It is also a setback for Rhee, who established closure of the gap as an imperative when she accepted Fenty's appointment as chancellor in 2007. She called the disparity "unacceptable" and pledged to eliminate it as a matter of educational and social justice. (more…)

All-star roster of education researchers: Test scores unreliable, unfair and unhelpful in evaluating teachers

• 08-30-2010
• 

Blog by Maureen Downey/Atlantic Journal Constitution

In the midst of a controversial LA Times series linking teacher performance in that district to test scores, a new briefing paper was released today by the Economic Policy Institute cautioning against the use of test scores, the Value Added Model, to judge teacher performance. The 27-page paper  — by a blue ribbon collection of educaion researchers including Eva L. Baker, Paul E. Barton, Linda Darling-Hammond, Edward Haertel, Helen F. Ladd , Robe rt L. Linn, Diane Ravitch, Richard Rothstein, Richard J. Shavelson, and Lorrie A. Shepard -  lists many negative impacts from judging teachers largely on student test scores. They also point to studies that cite the unreliability of scores. (more…)

Also: Washington Post and pdf of the study: Problems with the Use of Student Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers.

Steinberg bill on teacher layoffs in jeopardy

• 08-30-2010
• 

Blog by John Fensterwald/Educated Guess

A bill that would end the disparity in teacher layoffs in low-income, low-performing schools and resolve a lawsuit against the state and Los Angeles Unified is stuck in an Assembly committee with two days left to act on legislation. SB 1285 is a priority of Senate pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, its sponsor. The stalemate puts him at odds with Assembly Speaker John Perez, who controls which bills exit the Rules Committee. The outcome will be a gauge of Perez’s loyalty to the California Teachers Association, which opposes the bill as an infringement of seniority-based layoffs. The bill would require that the percentage of teacher layoffs in schools in the lowest three deciles on API scores – about the worst third of schools – be no higher than the average for all schools in their districts. That’s not the way it has been in many urban schools, where the last-in, first-out layoff rules, as generally required under teachers contracts and state law, have created a churn of young, less experienced teachers in low-performing schools. (more…)

Teachers blast L.A. Times for releasing effectiveness rankings

• 08-30-2010
• 

By Jason Song/Los Angeles Times

National and local teachers unions sharply criticized The Times on Sunday when the newspaper published a database of about 6,000 third- through fifth-grade city school teachers ranked by their effectiveness in raising student test scores. "It is the height of journalistic irresponsibility to make public these deeply flawed judgments about a teacher's effectiveness," said a statement issued by United Teachers Los Angeles. (more…)

Also: KPCC

State group piloting teacher prelicensing exam

• 08-30-2010
• 

By Stephen Sawchuk/Education Week

Education programs across 19 states are piloting a performance-based assessment for teacher-candidates that potentially could serve as a common prelicensing measure for new teachers. Based on a test in use in about 30 education schools in California, the Teacher Performance Assessment includes a “teaching event” requiring teachers to extensively document and submit for review artifacts of their planning, instruction, and ability to assess and respond to student needs. (more…)

Let's unleash all data on teachers: U.S. secretary of education asks, What's there to hide?

• 08-30-2010
• 

Opinion by Arne Duncan/New York Daily News Arne Duncan is the current U.S. Secretary of Education

Everyone agrees that our teacher evaluation system is broken. In many districts, 99% of teachers are rated satisfactory and most evaluations ignore the most important measure of a teacher's success - which is how much their students have learned. That's a tragedy. Teachers want - and need - this information. Teachers also worry that their job security and salaries will be tied to the results of a bubble test that is largely disconnected from the material they are teaching. No one thinks test scores should be the only factor in teacher evaluations, and no one wants to evaluate teachers based on a single test on a single day. But looking at student progress over time, in combination with other factors like peer review and principal observation, can lead to a culture shift in our schools where we finally take good teaching as seriously as the profession deserves. This is a complicated and emotional issue for teachers, and it just got more emotional in the past 10 days with a series of articles on teacher quality published by the Los Angeles Times. (more…)

Education secretary says U.S. needs more minority teachers

• 08-30-2010
• 

CNN

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Saturday that he plans to recruit more African-American and Latino teachers in a bid to narrow achievement gaps among students. African-American males make up less than 2 percent of teachers nationwide, Duncan told CNN, while African-American and Latino males -- combined -- represent roughly 3.5 percent of all U.S. teachers. "That's not a number we can be proud of," Duncan said. "Because so many of our young men grow up in single parent families, they grow up without a strong male presence in their household. They need to be surrounded by mentors and role models who can help them envision a positive future for themselves," he added. (more…)

Top education officials spar over teacher reform, student success

• 08-30-2010
• 

By Mary Bruse/ABC News

With classrooms in crisis around the country, the Obama administration is attempting the most ambitious school reform in a generation. But the Obama agenda, backed by $100 billion in stimulus money, has sparked controversy with teachers' unions over accountability and merit-based pay. This morning in an exclusive "This Week" education debate, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, faced off on the controversy surrounding the use of student test scores to evaluate America's teachers. Arne Duncan, Randi Weingarten and Michelle Rhee discuss education reform. Today the Los Angeles Times released data on 6,000 individual teachers, ranking them according to their effectiveness in raising students' test scores. Duncan is encouraging schools to use this kind of data to evaluate teachers. (more…)

Education secretary takes reform show on the road

• 08-30-2010
• 

By Nick Anderson/Washington Post

The blue charter bus emblazoned with a federal logo, images of smiling teachers and slogans such as "Courage in the Classroom" pulls up to school after school. A tall man in a dress shirt and tie pops out into the Southern heat to deliver pep talks and autographed basketballs. He is not running for office or plugging a candidate. Education Secretary Arne Duncan is on a campaign to cheer on America's teachers at a time when a sizable number are skeptical of President Obama's education agenda. (more…)

No gold stars for successful L.A. teachers

• 08-30-2010
• 

By Jason Felch/Los Angeles Times

It's a Wednesday morning, and Zenaida Tan is warming her students up with a little exercise in "Monster Math." That's Tan's name for math problems with monstrously big numbers. While most third-graders are learning to multiply two digits by two digits, Tan makes her class practice with 10 digits by two — just to show them it's not so different. On this spring day, her students pick apart the problem on the board — 7,850,437,826 x 56 — with the enthusiasm of game show contestants, shouting out answers before Tan can ask a question. When she accidentally blocks their view, several stand up with their notebooks and walk across the room to get a better look. (more…)

States inch ahead on reporting graduation data

• 08-30-2010
• 

By Mary Ann Zehr/Education Week

More than eight years after the No Child Left Behind Act was signed into law, some states still aren’t complying with its requirement that they report graduation rates for subgroups of students, such as English-language learners or economically disadvantaged children.

But officials from some of those states now say they’ve gained the capacity to report those numbers and will be ready when the federal government requires graduation rates for subgroups of students to be used to judge adequate yearly progress under the law in the 2011-12 school year. (more…)

Back to school 2010: Shorter year, fewer teachers

• 08-30-2010
• 

By Fermin Leal and Scott Martindale/Orange County Register

For years, Orange County schools have been slicing and dicing to save money – decimating arts and sports, slashing teaching and counseling jobs, even closing some campuses for good. This year, they're deploying a new strategy to conserve on cash – shortening the school year itself. As nearly half a million K-12 students across Orange County return to their classrooms in the next two weeks, most will have their instructional year lopped off by up to a week, shrinking the traditional 36-week school year to 35. All but six of the county's 27 school districts are moving in this direction, although some are shaving as few as two school days. The shorter instructional year will come on top of continued cuts to basic programs and services. The popular class-size reduction program that guaranteed a 20-to-1 pupil-teacher ratio in primary grades has been wiped out or scaled back at every O.C. district, except for one, Laguna Beach Unified. (more…)

California border schools to ask students for papers

• 08-30-2010
• 

Claudia Núñez/ La Opinión (Translated by Jacob Simas and Elena Shore/New America Media)

California school districts will soon begin implementing a controversial measure meant to prevent nonresidents from attending school in the United States, by deploying district staff to the border to monitor the residency documents of students entering the country. The Unified School District of Calexico—just across the border from the city of Mexicali—hired two employees whose job will be to strengthen the implementation of the school district residency requirements for the current academic year. The Mountain Empire School District, just east of San Diego, will also be hiring staff exclusively for this purpose. The practice of checking student documents to verify where they live, however, has created divisions within the state educational system. Some school districts bordering Mexico have said they will not be allocating additional resources for this type of activity. "Our mission is to educate, not to become immigration agents," says Lillian Leopold, spokesperson for the Sweetwater Unified School District, the largest district in California, with more than 43,000 enrolled students. (more…)

LAUSD fees make neighborhood groups scramble for space

• 08-30-2010
• 

By Tony Castro/LA Daily News

Neighborhood groups and local nonprofits have been stunned to learn recently that because of Los Angeles Unified's budget woes, they will be charged hundreds of dollars to use school facilities that had previously been available for free. Although school district officials announced the fee hikes in February, many representatives of Neighborhood Watch groups, neighborhood councils and others using school facilities only became aware of the charges this summer. The fees will also apply to nonprofit youth sports groups using LAUSD's fields, gyms and stadiums. The rate hike was intended to help LAUSD close a $640 million budget deficit exacerbated by the state's mounting financial crisis – one which also led to teacher layoffs, summer school cancellations and a shorter school year. "Sadly we have no other choice," Superintendent Ramon C. Cortines said in a statement. "Unfortunately, the district can no longer afford to underwrite these expenses." Providing school facilities to adult and youth groups, officials said, costs the district $1.5 million per year, including administration, supervision, building and maintenance needs and supplies. (more…)

Merit pay or team accountability?

• 08-31-2010
• 

Commentary by Kim Marshall/Education Week (subscription required)

Kim Marshall, a former teacher and administrator, is the author of 'Rethinking Teacher Supervision and Evaluation.'

It’s time to admit that the idea of evaluating and paying individual teachers based on their students’ test scores is a loser. This logical-sounding strategy for improving teaching and learning sinks for multiple reasons: practical (standardized-test results arrive months after teachers are evaluated each spring); psychometric (these tests aren’t valid for one-shot assessments of individual teachers, and it takes at least three years of value-added data for reliable patterns to emerge); staff dynamics (when individuals are rewarded, collaboration suffers); curriculum quality (low-level test preparation festers in a high-stakes environment); moral (turning up the heat increases the amount of cheating); and simple fairness (how can schools divvy up credit among all the teachers who contribute to students’ success?). So why are folks still talking about individual merit pay when it’s clear that it won’t work? (more…)

Scholars: Don’t judge teachers on test scores

• 08-31-2010
• 

Blog by John Fensterwald/Educated Guess

The same day that the Los Angeles Times went public with an online database rating teachers’ effectiveness based on test scores, a Washington-based nonpartisan think tank released a paper strongly cautioning against such a use. “Recognizing the technical and practical limitations of what test scores can accurately reflect, we conclude that changes in test scores should be used only as a modest part of a broader set of evidence about teacher practice,” wrote a panel of 10 scholars in a brief published by the Economic Policy Institute. (more…)

National Review: Race To The Top limps to a finish

• 08-31-2010
• 

Opinion by Frederick M. Hess/NPR

Frederick M. Hess is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

That was another $4.35 billion poorly spent. Last week, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced the winners of the second and final round of the administration's heavily promoted and widely cheered Race to the Top school-reform program. Unfortunately, after all the headlines and hullabaloo, the results were so dismal they threatened to bring the entire exercise into disrepute. Heralded education-reform states Colorado and Louisiana were left out in the cold, while Duncan bizarrely found himself naming Ohio, Maryland, New York, and Hawaii among the ten round-two winners. (Tennessee and Delaware had been named round-one winners this spring.) Several of the winners clearly trail the pack on key reforms that Duncan had said RTT would reward. (more…)

Midnight deadline for fate of school funds bill

• 08-31-2010
• 

By Andrew Edwards/Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

The Legislature has until midnight to pass a bill that would allow local school districts to tap into roughly $1.2 billion intended for the rehiring of laid-off teachers. "If we had a budget, we wouldn't need it (the bill), but we need the authority to get the money out as soon as possible," California Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell said by telephone from LAX. O'Connell spoke between a Monday press conference in Glendale and another scheduled for this morning in Fresno to urge lawmakers to pass the bill before the Legislature's current session ends at midnight. The Legislature is more than two months late in meeting its constitutionally mandated deadline of June 15 to adopt a budget. (more…)

L.A. Unified moves to close charter school over alleged misuse of $2.7 million

• 08-31-2010
• 

By Howard Blume/Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines has moved to shut down a San Fernando Valley charter school over the alleged theft or misuse of as much as $2.7 million by the school's founding principal. The problems at NEW Academy Canoga Park turned up in an audit released Monday by the inspector general's office of the Los Angeles Unified School District. More than "$2 million of misappropriated and unaccounted public funds is egregious," Cortines wrote in a letter to the board of the school. "Students have been inexcusably deprived of funds that were designated solely to further their education." (more…)

San Diego schools set a new agenda after backlash

• 08-31-2010
• 

By Sarah D. Sparks/Education Week

Ten years after the San Diego school district gained national attention for its short-lived “Blueprint for Student Success,” a crowd of district officials last week rolled out a new improvement plan that is almost the opposite of its controversial predecessor. The city’s blueprint reforms—largely dismantled after a charismatic and aggressive superintendent, Alan D. Bersin, left in 2005—were among the most closely watched and hotly debated of the early years of the No Child Left Behind Act. And some experts say the story of the demise of the blueprint campaign and the rise of San Diego’s new improvement effort may hold lessons for advocates of similar wholesale interventions using federal Race to the Top and School Improvement Fund grants. (more…)

State budget cuts force larger class sizes throughout Ventura County

• 08-31-2010
• 

By Cheri Carlson, Jean Cowden Moore/Ventura County Star

An environmental science class had 39 students. They sat squeezed elbow-to-elbow in their chairs. Three didn’t have seats. Across campus, 44 kids were in a French class. Their desks filled the room, blocking the teacher from reaching several of his students. It was the first day of school at Ventura High School amid a new era of budget cuts that have forced districts to fit more and more students into classes. Similar scenes are being played out at elementary, middle and high schools throughout Ventura County as students head back to class this month and next, officials say. “When do we say, ‘Enough is enough?’ ” said Trudy Tuttle Arriaga, superintendent of the Ventura Unified School District. Over the past two years, districts have lost hundreds of teachers, raised class sizes, slashed programs and shortened the school year in response to deep state funding cuts. (more…)

Can California keep achievement high as funding drops? After public schools take $17 billion hit, the question looms large

• 08-31-2010
• 

By Donna Jones/ Santa Cruz Sentinel

During the next three years, Calabasas Elementary School will get $2 million in federal money to improve student achievement. The extra money will pay for three additional teachers to boost the literacy skills of struggling students and to organize and train parents to help out at school and with their children's assignments at home. Principal Terry Eastman also will pay classroom teachers to work longer so they can help colleagues in an after-school program reinforce lessons taught earlier in the day. There's also money to provide teachers with training and coaching. "I'm thrilled," Eastman said after the grant was announced Wednesday. "This is going to help us a lot." But Calabasas, which was eligible for the grant because in March it was designated among the state's lowest achievers, is among a small percentage of California schools that can count on extra funding this year. Most will be getting significantly less, due to cuts in state spending on the K-12 public school system. (more…)

School districts whose funding relies on property taxes faring well in 2010-11

• 08-31-2010
• 

By Kimberly White/Santa Cruz Sentinel

Classes started at Bonny Doon Elementary School on Thursday with one fewer teacher and classroom aide, reduced hours for after-school programs and no pickup for students in areas that buses cannot reach, a service once provided. But the situation would be much worse if the one-school district were not a Basic Aid district, which means it receives most of its funding from local property tax revenues rather than state education dollars. Even with a double whammy of falling property values and less funding from the state, Bonny Doon will fare relatively well during the 2010-11 school year, said Stephanie Siddens, superintendent and principal of the 120-student district. (more…)

Oakland schools' longer school day a good step

• 08-31-2010
• 

Column by Chip Johnson/San Francisco Chronicle

Oakland is a city where at-risk youth are all too often caught in the crosshairs of street violence, and any after-school program that keeps them engaged and away from potentially dangerous situations is a step in the right direction. The longer school day - now in place at Elmhurst Community Preparatory School and United for Success Academy - represents but one piece of a comprehensive plan by Oakland schools Superintendent Tony Smith. Ideally, Smith wants to transform key Oakland schools in low-income and disenfranchised communities into clearing houses for social ills. He envisions the school as a centerpiece of community life, a place where children are nourished in both body and mind, and parents can find resources from employment opportunities to health care to social services. The idea of an extended day is intended to be a first step in a long-term plan. (more..)

Five East Bay districts to receive nearly $45 million in federal grants to reform a dozen low-achieving schools

• 08-31-2010
• 

By Theresa Harrington/Contra Costa Times

Five East Bay school districts -- including Mt. Diablo and West Contra Costa expect to receive nearly $45 million in federal School Improvement Grants to reform a dozen of the lowest-achieving schools in the state. "I'm thrilled," said Pam VandeKamp, principal of Hillside Elementary in San Leandro, which will receive $1.6 million. "What an opportunity to be able to provide services for our students. Our school is a full service school and we're in a community that is hungry for resources." The San Lorenzo district will receive the money over three years to help transform Hillside by offering more after-school programs, three support teachers, $1,000 stipends to boost teacher retention and home visits for some students' families. The school strengthened its counseling program last year and hopes to improve that this year, she said. The Hayward and Oakland districts in Alameda County are also in line for grants to reform three Hayward schools, close one Oakland campus and transform two others. The state Board of Education on Tuesday agreed to disburse about $413 million in federal school improvement grants to 41 school districts, including two in Contra Costa County, to help reform schools that have consistently scored in the lowest 5 percent on standardized tests in English and math. (more…)

'No Child Left Behind' Means a Race to Nowhere

• 08-31-2010
• 

Blog by Kari Henley/Huffington Post

Starting school is an exciting time, but can be stressful for both parents and children. The carefree days of summer are over, and it's time to get back to work. Trouble is, the level of "work" at modern American schools has become rote, overwhelming, stressful and often ineffective in developing the critical thinking skills necessary to compete. For many kids, school feels more like a destination than a discovery, and a race instead of a journey. For many experts and parents, it has become a race -- to nowhere. Vicki Abeles is the director of the new documentary called, The Race to Nowhere an in-depth exploration of modern family life: including the mounting pressures on kids to perform, unending amounts of homework, little free time - and the drastic toll it is taking on the health and well being of our youth today. The film has enjoyed rave early reviews, and is currently being screened across the country in schools and communities, complete with discussion guides for conversation afterwards. Abeles is starting a movement -- and it is about time. (more…)