[Ohiogift] Public Education NewsBlast — Dec. 17, 2013

[Art Snyder]

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                                        December 17, 2013 - In This Issue:
                Wither teacher unions?
      School leadership at the heart of reform
      Community schools: It's time
      Rocketship in the spotlight
      All-important and overlooked: classroom management
      Common sense vs. statistical significance
      Data misuse in the offing
      iPads: Don't try this at home
      BRIEFLY NOTED CALIFORNIA
      BRIEFLY NOTED
      GRANTS AND FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES
                                                                                                                     Wither teacher unions?
  
     Long  among the wealthiest and most powerful interest groups in American  politics, teacher unions are grappling with financial, legal, and  public-relations challenges and fighting for the support of an  increasingly skeptical public, writes Stephanie Simon on Politico.com.  The National Education Association (NEA) has lost 230,000 members, or 7  percent, since 2009, and is projecting further declines from layoffs,  non-unionized charter schools, and laws in states such as Wisconsin and  Michigan that free teachers to opt out of unions. The American  Federation of Teachers (AFT) now represents 1.5 million workers, but  because many new members are retirees or part-timers who pay lower dues,  union revenue fell last year by $6 million. Both still control huge  resources, but the NEA has cut spending by 12 percent, and after several  years of surpluses, the AFT runs a deficit. Former U.S. Solicitor  General Theodore Olson will go to trial in California next month to  overturn teacher job protections such as tenure, and his courtroom work  will be paired with a PR campaign that paints teacher unions as  obstructionist, protecting members at all cost. Unions are also  experiencing internal dissent: A recent poll found 31 percent of  teachers held negative views of their unions, up from 17 percent in  2011, especially younger members. Young teachers reportedly see little  reason to join unions -- or, if required to join, see no reason to be  active within them.?More.?Related
  
  
        School leadership at the heart of reform
  
     A  new paper from Bain & Company argues that transformational  leadership is vital to solving the nation's public-education crisis, but  most school systems lack an effective end-to-end model for identifying,  encouraging, and developing school leaders over time. It also considers  current school-leadership development models by districts and charter  management organizations. Researchers conducted a quantitative survey of  4,200 teachers, assistant principals, and principals, and performed  in-depth interviews with school-level, district, and charter leadership.  The report identifies five persistent roadblocks to school-leader  development and a set of concrete actions for putting in place a robust  leadership-development model. It finds systems encourage too few  high-quality educators to pursue leadership roles; stepping-stone roles  fail to develop necessary leadership skills; aspiring leaders receive  inadequate coaching and training on key skills; leadership roles are not  managed systematically as a pipeline; and the hiring process is  disconnected from performance management. As a remedy, it recommends  setting a high bar for leadership via standards; building a  talent-development organization; and promoting, monitoring, and  supporting the talent pipeline. These changes require an  often-contentious system-wide focus on restructuring roles, raising  standards, and creating consensus around top-to-bottom changes in how  schools are managed and run. The payoff will be an organic, home-grown  solution to the leadership deficit at the heart of our struggle to  educate children.?More
  
  
        Community schools: It's time
    Efforts  to create full-service community schools that serve the whole child  with an array of services are gaining traction under California's new  education funding formula, writes Jane Meredith Adams for Ed Source. The  convergence of more money for low-income students and a new mandate to  work with families under the Local Control Funding Formula has created  an environment in which community schools can thrive. One in four  California children lives in poverty. Community schools partner with  community organizations to offer a range of enrichment, health, social,  and other services for children and families, and leverage partnerships  to remove barriers to learning posed by hunger, sickness, and  disadvantage. State Sen. Carol Liu is a champion of the concept, and is  exploring legislative actions to help districts adopt it. Oakland  Unified announced in 2009 it would convert all schools to the  full-service community model, and now has 27 of 87 schools operating as  such. Vallejo City Unified has introduced the full-service model at 15  elementary, middle, and high schools, and plans to convert all schools  by 2014-15. Dozens of individual school sites from Sacramento to Fresno  to the San Fernando Valley have embraced the model, and the United Way  is working to triple their number in the Bay Area in the next six  years.?More
  
  
        Rocketship in the spotlight
  
     Rocketship Education is a  charter-school network in demand by urban districts across the nation,  writes Christina Quatrocchi for EdTech. The San Jose-based elementary  school network has been at the forefront of innovative school models.  Over the past eight years, network schools have consistently outscored  other low-income-population schools on district and state tests. But as  Rocketship expands nationally with plans to open 40 new schools in six  additional cities, it faces its toughest challenges ever: land battles,  anti-charter groups, diminished test scores, and questions about  technology use in its schools. Some criticize Rocketship for polarizing  communities as it works with parents to evangelize its program, and cite  concerns that Rocketship is using computers to replace teachers,  keeping student-teacher ratios high. In expansion, Rocketship hopes to  maintain national control over its core principles -- individualizing  learning plans and providing flexible and rotational models -- while  leaving details to individual sites. As it prepares for growth and the  traditional battles charters face in growth, response to the  tech-enabled model will be watched closely by both pro- and anti-charter  communities. It's a big moment as the blended-learning pioneer steps  outside the Silicon Valley and into the national spotlight.?More
  
  
        All-important and overlooked: classroom management
    A  new report from the National Council on Teacher Quality investigates  the extent to which America's traditional teacher-preparation programs  offer research-based strategies for candidates to better manage  classrooms from the outset. Most programs can correctly claim at least  some classroom-management instruction, but it's often scattered  throughout the curriculum. Most programs do not draw from research when  promoting classroom-management strategies, and instruction is divorced  from practice (and vice versa). There is also a pervasive notion that  teachers should be able to rise to a level of instructional virtuosity  that eliminates the need for defined strategies in classroom management.  Finally, the edPTA performance assessment has yet to specify explicitly  what teacher candidates ought to demonstrate as classroom managers. The  report identifies five strategies essential to classroom-management  success: establish and teach classroom rules to communicate expectations  for behavior; build structure and establish routines to help guide  students in a wide variety of situations; reinforce positive behavior,  using praise and other means; consistently impose consequences for  misbehavior; and foster and maintain student engagement by teaching  interesting lessons that include opportunities for active student  participation.?More
  
  
                       Common sense vs. statistical significance
  In an article  for the Brookings Institution, Thomas Kane questions the application of  classical hypothesis-testing, which requires that a difference have no  more than a 5 percent chance of being a fluke to be accepted as  statistically significant, to education data. Under this model, the  difference between a 20 percent likelihood and a 75 percent likelihood  is insufficiently strong, though in practical, common-sense terms,  significant. Improper use of the paradigm in education leads to costly  mistakes, in Kane's view. Take teacher tenure: with classical  hypothesis-testing, one starts from the premise that an incumbent  teacher is average, and only denies tenure when that presumption is  shown wrong beyond a reasonable doubt. A different approach would  recognize that tenure decisions implicitly involve a choice between two  teachers, the incumbent and an anonymous novice. This latter approach  compares two teachers' predicted effectiveness, and chooses the one with  the better-predicted outcome. Using data from three districts, Kane and  a colleague calculated tenure results using both models, and found that  under the first model, just one percent of teachers would be refused  tenure; under the second, 25 percent. Education has many examples of  decisions involving symmetric costs, Kane writes, and in such cases,  decision-makers should choose the option with the better odds of  success, whether or not it's "statistically significant."?More
  
        Data misuse in the offing
  
     Districts  around the country are adopting web-based services that collect and  analyze details about students without adequately safeguarding the  information, reports Natasha Singer in The New York Times. New research  from the Center on Law and Information Policy finds weaknesses in  contracts that districts sign when outsourcing web-based tasks to  service companies. Many contracts fail to list type of information  collected, while others don't prohibit selling of personal details --  e.g. names, contact information, or health status -- or using that  information for marketing purposes. Schools have adopted programs with  the idea that digital, data-driven education will yield better test  scores, grades, and graduation rates, and education technology software  is an $8 billion market. But privacy specialists, industry executives,  and district officials say federal education privacy rules and local  policies have not kept pace with advances like apps that record a  child's every keystroke or algorithms that classify academic  performance. Without explicit prohibitions on nonacademic use of  information, specialists warn that data could be shared with colleges or  employers, to a student's detriment. The study urges that contracts  specify services, list the types of information collected, and limit  disclosure of student details. It also recommends that officials notify  parents about the nature of information disclosed to third parties, and  post privacy protections on district websites.?
    More
  
  
        iPads: Don't try this at home
    The  iPad rollout in Los Angeles Unified School District is a case study of  how not to implement innovation, writes Larry Cuban in The Washington  Post. Teachers and principals were excluded from decision-making, Total  Cost of Operation for the initiative was fuzzy for the Board of  Education, and preliminary deployment of devices was so botched the  program was put on hold.?Eventual distribution to all LAUSD students  will be decided once errors are sorted out. Had the board and  superintendent paused to examine the history of technology in public  schools, they might have reconsidered, Cuban writes. There is no  evidence that iPads increase student math and reading scores on state  standardized tests, or that using iPads (or computers in general) nets  students decent-paying jobs after graduation. Associated and future  costs of the initiative, such as the hiring of school technical  assistants, wireless infrastructure, tablet loss, tablet repair,  insurance, training for teachers, and tablet replacement when warranties  expire were left out of the initial project price tag. Software  licenses must also be renewed at additional cost after a few years.  Cuban says the LAUSD prompted a "perfect storm" of mishaps when it  plunged into the program without much forethought or analysis of earlier  reform debacles in inaugurating a high-tech innovation.?More
  
  
                        BRIEFLY NOTED CALIFORNIA
    Rally to end 'teacher jails'
   Calling for an end to  what they say is harassment, hundreds of United Teachers Los Angeles  members rallied at district offices across the city to support educators  removed from classrooms and housed in so-called teacher jails while  allegations of misconduct are investigated.?More
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   Santa comes early
   Long-term employees of  San Jose Unified School District have received an unexpected bonus  payment to replace pay they lost to five furlough days in the 2010-2011  school year.?More
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   A new tack
   An education advocacy  group known for supporting charter schools is pushing a ballot  initiative that would streamline the process for firing abusive  teachers, after bills on the subject failed in back-to-back years.?More
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   No exception
   One of America's most  liberal bastions -- San Francisco -- has cut student suspensions by  nearly a third in three years, but continues to struggle with grossly  disproportionate suspensions of black students.?More
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   Welcome bounty
   California organizations  have landed a large slice of funding from the National Endowment  for?the Arts? -- more than $4 million -- with?$392,000 of it going  toward arts education.?More
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   Exhale
   A program taught in  Hermosa Beach and Redondo Beach called MindUP uses 15 lessons based in  neuroscience to explain how chemicals released in the brain can trigger  anxiety, fear, and other emotions that, with proper training, can be  regulated.?More?
                        BRIEFLY NOTED?
      Sanity prevails (we hope)
   Head Start has received a  reprieve under the new Congressional budget agreement that would  restore some of the funding cut from the program last spring.?More
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   After the fact
   Gov. Bobby Jindal's  hard-fought bid to link teacher job reviews to the growth of student  achievement -- a key plank in his push to improve Louisiana's public  schools -- has been sidelined until after he leaves office.?More
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   No surprise
   New Orleans led the  nation last year as the city with the greatest percentage of students  enrolled in public charter schools, followed by Detroit and the District  of Columbia.?More
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   Takin it to the streets
   A coalition of  education, labor, civic, and civil rights organizations, led by the  American Federation of Teachers, staged a "National Day of Action" on  December 9.?More
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   Voc ed
   New York City will give  120 public school teachers training in computer coding in a bid to  increase the availability of programming classes. More
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   Finer-grained
   New figures on student  turnover have been released as part of an effort that aims to give D.C.  parents and policymakers a new way to make side-by-side comparisons of  every city school, including charters and traditional schools.?More
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   Making strides
   Nearly 73 percent of  Minnesota children were prepared to start kindergarten in the fall of  2012, 13 percent more than in 2010, according to a new report from the  Minnesota Department of Education.?More
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   Get competent
   The nascent  Competency-Based Education Network (C-BEN) will include up to 20  institutions that offer competency-based degrees or are well on their  way to creating them.?More
   Inside Higher Ed
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   The thrifty option
   Kansas has withdrawn  from the Smarter Balanced Common Core consortium, choosing instead to  commission the tests from The University of Kansas.?More
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   Meaning what, exactly?
   West Virginia's state  superintendent announced that fewer 16-year-old students dropped out of  high school in 2011-12 after the compulsory attendance age was raised to  17, but hundreds still stopped going to class.?More
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   So much for Chinese walls
   The Pearson Foundation,  the charitable arm of one of the nation's largest educational  publishers, will pay $7.7 million to settle accusations that it  repeatedly broke New York State law by assisting in for-profit  ventures.?More
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   Minor oversight
   The U.S. Department of  Education is revising its recent analysis of the second year of the  School Improvement Grant program after it became clear that an outside  contractor, the American Institutes of Research, erroneously left out  too many schools that should have been included.?More
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   Beyond February
   Chicago Public Schools  has unveiled a new curriculum guide that will allow teachers to  incorporate African and African-American studies into core subjects  throughout the year.?More
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   Can't beat 'em? Join 'em
   After rolling out an  open-enrollment policy itself, Cincinnati Public Schools is no longer  bleeding money to other open-enrollment districts.?More
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   Serious numbers
   More than a third of  Ohio third-graders failed the state reading test this fall, putting them  at risk of being held back if they don't improve their scores.?More
  
                        
  GRANTS AND FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES
 
  USDA: Excellence in Teaching about Agriculture Award
  Each  year, the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture and the  National Agriculture in the Classroom Consortium presents five  exceptional teachers with the Excellence in Teaching Agriculture Award.  This competitive program recognizes teachers for their successful  efforts in teaching agricultural concepts in their curriculum. Maximum  award: $500; up to $1,500 for travel-related expenses to the National  Agriculture in the Classroom Conference. Eligibility: pre-K-12 teachers.  Deadline: February 3, 2014.
  ?
  Innovation Generation: Christopher Columbus Awards
  The Christopher Columbus Awards  program combines science and technology with community problem-solving.  Students work in teams with the help of an adult coach to identify an  issue they care about and, using science and technology, work with  experts, conduct research, and put their ideas to the test to develop an  innovative solution. Maximum award: $25,000 to bring the team's idea to  the community, and an all-expense-paid trip to Walt Disney World to  attend the program's National Championship Week. Eligibility:  middle-school-age (sixth, seventh, and eighth grade) children; teams do  not need to be affiliated with a school to enter. Deadline: February 3,  2014.
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  NASA: Exploration Design Challenge
  The  goal of the Exploration Design Challenge is for students to research  and design ways to protect astronauts from space radiation. NASA and  Lockheed Martin are developing the Orion spacecraft that will carry  astronauts beyond low Earth orbit and onto an asteroid or Mars. Maximum  award: All participants in this challenge, which include students from  around the world, will have their names flown on board the Orion as  honorary crew members. Eligibility: students K-12. Deadline: Deadline:  March 14, 2014.
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  QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
  "[The  Common Core's] been hijacked, and I don't support the hijackers or the  destination. But I don't blame the airplane for getting hijacked." --  former Gov. Mike Huckabee on Fox News.
 
 
   
 
    
  

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