I just hope Joe Klein never gets ticked off at me.
“When school children start paying union dues, that ‘s when I’ll
start representing the interests of school children.” – Al Shanker
Popularity: 17% [?]
Author Archive
The wrath of Klein
Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010Union, celeb fight mayoral control in NYC
Monday, April 27th, 2009Kind of takes the fun out of Sex and the City.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Mind the gap!
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009A new McKinsey report makes it clear that spending $8K per kid per year on schools that are closing achievement gaps is a ripping bargain. And schools not closing gaps are costing us our shirts. Together, schools that perpetuate achievement gaps are costing us roughly $500 billion in opportunity costs, a convenient number given that we spend about that on education each year.
“The price of the status quo in educational outcomes is remarkably high….
“If the gap between black and Latino student performance and white student performance had been similarly narrowed, GDP in 2008 would have been between $310 billion and $525 billion higher, or 2 to 4 percent of GDP. The magnitude of this impact will rise in the years ahead as demographic shifts result in blacks and Latinos becoming a larger proportion of the population and workforce.
“If the gap between low-income students and the rest had been similarly narrowed, GDP in 2008 would have been $400 billion to $670 billion higher, or 3 to 5 percent of GDP
“If the gap between America’s low-performing states and the rest had been similarly narrowed, GDP in 2008 would have been $425 billion to $700 billion higher, or 3 to 5 percent of GDP.”
And for those who still believe that taken as a whole, we are doing just fine:
“If the United States had in recent years closed the gap between its educational achievement levels and those of better-performing nations such as Finland and Korea, GDP in 2008 could have been $1.3 trillion to $2.3 trillion higher. This represents 9 to 16 percent of GDP.”
Just think of how many cool roads we could build with that money.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Duncan to send a message in Denver?
Friday, April 3rd, 2009Rumor has it that when Arne Duncan comes to Denver next week, he will visit two schools that have given the proverbial finger to union work rules and district red tape, taking charge of personnel administration and budgeting. It would send a pretty strong signal about what he is looking for from districts, schools and unions.
DPS leadership has been supportive of cutting the tape, though neither the unions nor all of the board members have so eagerly given up on micro-management. As one opposed board member put it, “I feel as if I’m signing a blank check.”
That check would, of course, be a lot smaller than the one Duncan might write to the state if more professional organizations let loose the reins, allowing for things like honest evaluation of teachers and autonomy for school leaders.
Popularity: 2% [?]
Stabilization guidance for ed. $ released
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009The feds are handing out $48.6 billion to stabilize state education budgets. State guidelines came out today. Page 21 of the guidelines will cause some teeth grinding and grinning, depending on your point of view. Given legislation on the table in Colorado, surely lawmakers are taking note.
III-D-8. In addition to restoring activities or services that were eliminated as a result of budget reductions, how might an LEA use its Education Stabilization funds to advance reforms?
The Department encourages LEAs to use available Education Stabilization resources in ways most likely to assist the State in making progress in areas related to the four education reform assurances in the State’s Stabilization application and to lead to improved results for students, long-term gains in school system capacity, and increased efficiency and effectiveness.
Examples of activities that an LEA might support with its funds in order to advance reform include:
1. Improving teacher effectiveness and the equitable distribution of highly qualified teachers by:
- Establishing fair and reliable evaluation systems that provide feedback, help educators improve, and ensure that poor performers are dismissed;
- Establishing a system for identifying and training highly effective teachers to serve as instructional leaders and modifying the school schedule to allow for collaboration among the instructional staff; and
- Implementing innovative strategies for identification of, advancement of, and compensation for highly effective teachers and leaders.
2. Establishing data systems and using data for improvement, including:
- Strengthening the use of longitudinal data systems to drive effective decision-making and continuous improvement efforts; and
- Developing and providing intensive professional development on use of data to improve instruction.
3. Turning around the lowest-performing schools by:
- Attracting teams of committed educators who are compensated for taking on new assignments and roles in a school in corrective action or restructuring;
- Extending time for learning, including activities provided before school, after school, during the summer, or over an extended school year;
- Providing intensive, year-long teacher training in reading that aggressively works on improving students’ oral language skills and vocabulary or, in some other way, builds teachers’ capacity to address academic achievement problems;
- Strengthening and expanding early childhood education;
- Providing intensive training to all teachers in new curriculum and the use of assessment data to improve instruction; and
- Using high-quality, on-line courses as supplemental learning materials to help secondary students meet core content requirements.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Beware the livid lunch ladies
Friday, January 30th, 2009Oh lordy! Why are we women so sensitive? It doesn’t matter what anyone says, we take it personally. Take it easy Boulder lunchladies! You didn’t invent tater tots; you’ve just been warming them up for 20 years. No one is blaming you for the greasy little beasts. At least now maybe you’ll get a chance to have a little fun in the kitchen.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Better holiday reading than your 401K statement
Wednesday, November 26th, 2008Watching my life savings disappear has lost its thrill. Trolling the papers and magazines for anything less depressing, I realized that Thanksgiving week has been a particularly juicy week for edgy natl. education articles, from Lou Gerstner insisting we consolidate the nation’s school districts, to a Newsweek reporter whispering of rumors that Weingarten could be the new Education Secretary. (Reading this tidbit was actually less thrilling than watching my 401K in Oct.)
Here are a few:
- Newsweek: What Kind of Education Secretary Will Obama Pick
- EdWeek blog by David Hoff:
- WSJ: Change our Public Schools Need:
- Newsweek: Show and Tell Time
- Wall Street Journal: Failing our Children
Popularity: 1% [?]
More troubling signs for ed reform?
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008
So this is what happens when you want to change a system? No wonder education has been a mess for so long. I’ve been a supporter of Obama and of Dems, and I’ll be unspeakably bitter if they don’t step up to the plate and remember that their constituents in education are kids, not teachers’ unions.
They won’t get opportunities like this more than a couple of times before reformers say the hell with it. I just hope the ‘union leaders’ quoted by the Washpost below are wrong that they have Obama and the Dems in their pocket.
“Privately, union leaders said they regarded the chances of the District securing a New Orleans-style state of emergency from the federal government as remote, given Obama’s victory and the heavy Democratic margins in congressional elections Nov. 4.”
Popularity: 1% [?]
Best evidence yet that charters work
Friday, November 14th, 2008
Starting a sentence with, “surprisingly, this didn’t get picked up by newspapers” is not as good as starting with, “You’re never going to guess who’s having an affair?” but it’s compelling anyway.
CU School of Public Affairs hosted Dr. John Witte at lunch yesterday. Dr. Witte did a spectacular job of summarizing 20 years of charter school research, and in an entertaining (Midwestern, but not Sarah Palin Midwestern) kind of way, made a very sober case for charters. Forty minutes into his lecture, he snuck in the most dramatic statistic on charters I’ve heard. This was the finding that the papers hadn’t really picked up:
RAND had done a study that looked at – among other things – whether charters increase students’ likelihood of graduating high school and the students’ probability of enrolling in college (compared to district-run Chicago Public Schools). The study found that students in charters had:
- an advantage of 7 percentage points in the probability of graduating from high school
- an advantage of 11 percentage points in the probability of enrolling in college.
As my granny would say, that’s no small potatoes. Even though we know achievement in the best charters is through the roof, achievement in charters is on the whole about the same as “traditional” schools.
What is apparently not the same are the opportunities charters afford students, which is a thousand times more important than test scores. On average, the probability in enrolling in college is 11% higher? 11%. It is astounding.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Real reform from Washington?
Tuesday, October 28th, 2008“Washington must take the lead in supporting educational entrepreneurship and innovation because none of the other current players on the educational landscape have the capacity to do so…”
How will they do this? Andy Rotherham and Sara Mead have an idea. Actually, it’s not an idea. It’s a really detailed and well thought-out plan.
Here’s my third grade version of it: Get the outsiders on the inside. Protect them from getting eaten by giving them a separate board. Give them money, authority and political cover to challenge the status quo, to experiment, and ultimately to change the way the insiders think about their work.
Popularity: 1% [?]
