[Ohiogift] PEN Weekly NewsBlast for Nov. 16, 2012

[Art Snyder]

Public Education Network Weekly NewsBlast
"Public Involvement. Public Education. Public Benefit."
Nov. 16, 2012
NewsBlast will not publish on November 23, but will return November 30. Enjoy the holiday!
 
Whither term two?
Barack Obama was reelected with huge support from teachers' union members, though many clashed with his administration's policies, writes Joy Resmovits in The Huffington Post. Toward the end of the campaign, the president tempered his stance somewhat, sparring with Mitt Romney over the federal role in hiring teachers -- the Obama administration spent billions on teacher hiring as part of the stimulus bill -- and the importance of class sizes. But the president also oversaw the creation of the Race to the Top, which angered unions by requiring participating states to evaluate teachers based on student test scores. To a certain extent, the president has had it both ways, says education blogger Alexander Russo: "They've figured out how to give resources to education, and on a separate track, push for reform, and doing those things separately but simultaneously wins them the reluctant allegiance of teachers and career educators who want schools to be better funded and reformers who want schools to have better outcomes." Randi Weingarten of the AFT says this term, her union will push to "end the fixation on testing and displace it with a fixation on teaching." Dennis Van Roekel of the NEA said he expects the administration to focus on early and higher education, less polarizing to the teacher base.
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/08/obama-education-second-term_n_2095216.html?utm_hp_ref=education

Telling absence
A new report from the Center for American Progress uses recent data from the Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education to examine issues of teacher absence. This is the first dataset to include school-level information on teacher absence, measuring those absent more than 10 times annually, since a documented relationship exists between teacher absence rates and student achievement. On average, 36 percent of teachers nationally were absent more than 10 days during 2009-10, based on 56,837 schools in the dataset. The percentages having 10 absences out of total teachers ranged from 0 to 100 percent, with 62 percent of variation between districts, and a third occurring within districts. The latter figure is significant because all schools within a given district operate under the same leave policies, and absence levels well above a district average may signal a dysfunctional professional culture at the building level. The report also notes that teacher absence is yet another way that charters differ from traditional public schools: Teachers are absent more than 10 times annually from traditional schools at a rate 15.2 percentage points higher than from charters. Additionally, students in schools serving high proportions of African American or Latino students are disproportionately exposed to teacher absence.
See the report: http://tinyurl.com/ctgeosz

Keeping the keepers
The New Teacher Project has released a case study that examines how new retention strategies are playing out in the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS). The authors find that DCPS's policy changes are positively impacting its teacher retention patterns, with some caveats. DCPS keeps many more of its best teachers than its worst, because it retains fewer than half of its low-performing teachers. In 2010-11, it kept 88 percent of its top teachers but just 45 percent of its low performers (as evaluated by IMPACT). However, the authors find DCPS is missing opportunities to keep even more high performers. While policy changes have compelled principals to recognize differences in teacher performance, the study finds many have not fully embraced smart retention as a priority or substantially changed the way they treat their best teachers. As elsewhere, in DCPS highly rated teachers are much less likely to teach in schools with high concentrations of poverty, a disparity especially pronounced in D.C. Some DCPS principals struggle to create cultures and working conditions where the best teachers want to work. DCPS must address these school-level challenges, which are most apparent in schools with the lowest achievement levels, and in those serving the poorest students.
See the report: http://tntp.org/ideas-and-innovations/view/keeping-irreplaceables-in-dc-public-schools
Related: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/05/dc-public-schools-alerts-_n_2077528.html?utm_hp_ref=education

The facts about union strength
A new report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute measures teacher union strength by state. The authors synthesized data for 37 variables across five areas: internal union resources (members and revenue), plus K–12 education spending in the state; union share of financial contributions to state candidates and political parties, and representation at national party conventions; bargaining status (mandatory, permitted, or prohibited), scope of bargaining, and legality of teacher strikes; alignment of union interests with state policies; and perception of influence by stakeholders. Many states whose teacher unions rank strongest -- for instance, California, New Jersey, and Washington -- are widely recognized for this. And in many of the weakest states, unions have suffered major defeats -- e.g., Louisiana and Arizona -- or have little presence. Predictably, most of the 20 strongest states require collective bargaining, although three -- Ohio, West Virginia, and Alabama -- permit but do not require bargaining, while Florida, ranked next-to-last, does. The report concludes that mandatory bargaining appears to tilt the playing field toward stronger unions; that resources make a difference, with dollars and members both important; that the scope of bargaining matters, as does the right (or not) to strike; and finally, whether a state has mandatory, permissive, or broad bargaining laws -- or its unions enjoy abundant resources -- does not mean that state policies are union-favorable and vice-versa.
See the report: http://www.edexcellence.net/publications/how-strong-are-us-teacher-unions.html

Charteresque
Kentucky is one of nine states without charter schools, but its board of education has enacted policies that will give traditional public schools autonomy similar to charters, reports Jason Tomassini in Education Week. As part of a new comprehensive law passed during this year's state legislative session and now being readied for implementation, districts can become "Districts of Innovation" and be exempt from certain regulations and education policies. Entire districts can apply, or districts can apply on behalf of individual schools (according to the draft version of legislation). As the initiative stands, districts can ask for any state education policy to be waived except for a small group that includes civil rights regulations, "core academic standards," and most minimum graduation requirements. Schools can apply for the right to use competency-based learning, in which academic credit is awarded based on mastery, not seat time; extended day, school year, and learning outside the school building; and new pathways to graduation, including the creation of new schools around those pathways. Approvals will hold for five years, after which districts must reapply. Districts can also apply for alternative compensation plans for teachers. As drafted, the legislation requires 70 percent of a district's teachers to approve the application before it can be submitted.
Read more: http://tinyurl.com/bljdau5

Obstructing, rather than investing in, education
A new report from the Center on Reinventing Public Education looks at how the federal government stands in the way of technology-driven innovation, both actively and passively. The Investing in Innovation Fund (i3) has limits as a vehicle for innovation, the authors say, since it reserves the biggest grants for ideas with the largest evidence base, and it excludes profit-seeking firms from participating. Several barriers also revolve around Title I and IDEA funding. The federal government must close the Title I comparability loophole -- because of which, districts may not consider the costs of experience-based teacher salaries when determining equitable distribution of resources -- since the loophole obscures actual costs accruing to schools. Second, it should streamline the Title I supplement-not-supplant requirement, which now discourages novel use of funds. Third, the federal government must institute a "challenge waiver" system for IDEA Part B maintenance of effort, since it currently requires districts to spend 100 percent of prior-year spending from state and local sources for special education services, tying up precious resources and discouraging data-driven decision-making. Finally, the federal R&D investment in education is young and thinly funded, and the government's capacity to promote innovation in public schools quite modest relative to its capacity in other sectors.
See the report: http://www.crpe.org/publications/federal-barriers-innovation

Hard science for what was long suspected
New research from several sources confirms that the stress of a dysfunctional or unstable home life can poison a child's cognitive ability for a lifetime, reports Sarah Sparks in Education Week. Evidence from cognitive and neuroscientific studies show that stress forms the link between childhood adversity and poor academic achievement. "Toxic stress," which is severe, sustained, and not buffered by supportive relationships -- high mobility and homelessness; hunger and food instability; parents in jail or absent; domestic violence; drug abuse; and other problems -- weaken neural connections in areas like language development and self-control. A recent study in the peer-reviewed journal Child Development found that out of 26,000 students in the Minneapolis public schools, those who moved more than three times a year had significantly lower mathematics achievement and academic growth than students in more stable homes. A separate study from the University of Maryland College Park found that children with six or more adverse experiences before age three were overwhelmingly likely to be identified as needing special education for developmental delay. And the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study found that a boy with six indicators of abuse and home dysfunction was 4,600 percent more likely than a boy with no risk factors to become an intravenous-drug user. Such findings mean that teachers and doctors are left trying to fix late symptoms, like poor reading skills or boredom in school, Sparks says, rather than underlying issues that occur much earlier in life.
Read more: http://tinyurl.com/c2rbhfp
Related: http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/11/08/test-scores-suffer-when-kids-move.html

One city is Saying Yes
A comprehensive new report from Say Yes to Education chronicles the organization's work to date in Syracuse, New York. Say Yes aims to develop the full potential of low-income, urban youth while addressing economic development in the city through improving its public school system. At the heart of Say Yes's effort is a guarantee that qualifying graduates of the city's five public high schools are eligible for free tuition at 100 colleges and universities in a Higher Education Compact. Say Yes deploys social workers, health clinics, and legal assistance for entire families, and is implementing, with district cooperation, a more rigorous and relevant school day and school year and strengthened staff development for teachers. According to the report, the Syracuse business sector supports Say Yes as crucial to revitalizing the local economy. Many aspects of the program are research-driven, and the American Institutes for Research has reviewed individual schools, with its findings used for improvement. Thus far, data from the district show higher scores in both language arts and math in 2011-12, although proficiency was still in the 20 to 30 percent range and annual gains were small. The report notes these gains coincided with stronger implementation of many Say Yes components that had been delayed or only partially implemented in prior years.
See the report: http://www.sayyestoeducation.org/news/say-yes-announces-new-paper-creating-city-wide-change

BRIEFLY NOTED

Stemming the tide
Florida voters defeated a measure that would have allowed use of public funds for religious school tuition, effectively turning back an effort that was expected to lead to a statewide voucher program.
http://tinyurl.com/c65nato

The return of the ethnic
The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund has announced that Mexican-American studies courses will not only return to Tuscon, but could be expanded as part of the much broader plan to settle a decades-old desegregation lawsuit against Tucson Unified that is pending decision by a federal judge.
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/learning-the-language/2012/11/ethnic_studies_could_return_to.html

And counting
Enrollment in charters rose by more than 200,000 students in the 2011-2012 school year compared to the previous year, a new report has found.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/14/charter-schools-growth_n_2125286.html?utm_hp_ref=education

Before anyone changes his mind
The Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education swiftly voted to restore a full academic year -- and full pay for employees -- a week after California voters approved a revenue measure that protects schools and universities from further budget cuts this year.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/11/la-school-board-restores-full-school-year-full-pay.html

A hefty purse
Twenty winners are slated to share $150 million from the third round of the Investing in Innovation<http://www2.ed.gov/programs/innovation/index.html>; competition, the U.S. Department of Education has announced.
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2012/11/xx_winners_will_share_150.html

Unexcusable?
D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson said that the district's high truancy rates amount to an educational "crisis," as D.C. officials disclosed that more than 40 percent of the students at four high schools missed at least a month of school last year because of unexcused absences.
http://tinyurl.com/cau6sk3

A different front
Teach for America aims to bring top military professionals into the country's highest-need classrooms by partnering with branches of the military and veterans' organizations.
http://tinyurl.com/ccp5b48

PEN IN THE NEWS

The fruits of effort
Tom Vander Ark writes in Education Week that mayoral control enabled Superintendent Tom Payzant's decade-long push that made Boston the best urban district in America by his retirement in 2006. The rise was backed by the Boston Plan for Excellence, a local education fund focused on preparing and supporting diverse, highly effective teachers for Boston's schools; cultivating ambitious instruction in every classroom with a coherent, data-driven approach to school improvement; and creating break-the-mold new schools that ensure all students are prepared to succeed in college and career.
Read more: http://tinyurl.com/c72fukn

GRANTS AND FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES

AIA/NAR: Team America Rocketry Challenge
The Team America Rocketry Challenge is the world's largest rocket contest, sponsored by the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) and the National Association of Rocketry (NAR). Teams of three to ten students design, build, and fly a model rocket that reaches a specific altitude and duration determined by a set of rules developed each year. The contest is designed to encourage students to study math and science and pursue careers in aerospace. The top 100 teams go to Washington, D.C. for the national finals in May. Maximum award: $60,000 in cash and scholarships split between the top 10 finishers. NASA invites top teams to participate in its Student Launch Initiative, an advanced rocketry program. Eligibility: The application for a team must come from a single school or a single U.S. incorporated non-profit youth or educational organization (excluding the National Association of Rocketry, Tripoli Rocketry Association, or any other rocket club or organization). Team members must be students who are currently enrolled in grades 7 through 12 in a U.S. school or homeschool. Teams may have members from other schools or other organizations and may obtain financing from any source, not limited to their sponsoring organization. Teams must be supervised by an adult approved by the principal of the sponsoring school, or by an officially appointed adult leader of their sponsoring organization. Minimum team size is three students and maximum is ten students. Each student member must make a significant contribution to the designing, building, and/or launching of the team's entry. Deadline: November 30, 2012.
http://rocketcontest.org/tarc_background.cfm

NSTA/PASCO: STEM Educator Awards
The National Science Teachers Association PASCO STEM Educator awards recognize excellence and innovation in the field of STEM education at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. Maximum award: $1,500 to cover travel expenses to attend the NSTA national conference and be part of a STEM share-a-thon workshop; a $1,000 monetary gift; a $2,000 certificate for PASCO scientific products; and recognition during the Awards Banquet at the NSTA national conference. Eligibility: K–12 STEM educators with a minimum of three years teaching experience in the STEM fields, who implement innovative inquiry-based, technology-infused STEM programs. Deadline: November 30, 2012.
http://www.nsta.org/about/awards.aspx?lid=tnavhp#stem

NSTA: Ron Mardigian Memorial Biotechnology Explorer Award
The National Science Teachers Association Ron Mardigian Memorial Biotechnology Explorer Award recognizes an outstanding high school teacher who has made biotechnology learning accessible to the classroom. Maximum award: $1,000 towards expenses to attend the NSTA National Conference; $250 in cash for the teacher; $500 in Bio-Rad products; and recognition at the National Conference Awards Banquet. Eligibility: high school teachers. Deadline: November 30, 2012.
http://www.nsta.org/about/awards.aspx?lid=tnavhp#mardigian

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"I'm teetering on the poverty line myself, always running out of money by the third week of the month. ... I have no health coverage for my family, because it would cost over a quarter of my pay. ?My take-home pay is roughly equivalent to that of a full-time customer service manager at Walmart. I make less if you take into account the hours I work." -- Middle school teacher Kris L. Nielsen of Charlotte, N.C., quoted in an article on teachers working multiple jobs.
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/inside-school-research/2012/11/ed_data_shows_teachers_more_li.html

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