Still Putting It All Together

The Philadelphia School District revealed Wednesday that its system for rating schools is faulty.

The District has suspended use of its “School Performance Index,” or SPI.

District leaders are now seeking outside help to fix the complicated formula that converts more than a dozen factors into a single score given to every public school in the city, including charters. For the last two years, SPI scores have been used to help guide a wide range of major decisions, including which schools should be closed down or converted into charters. It has also been used to evaluate charters’ bids for renewal or expansion.

Leaders of several of the city’s charter schools have long taken issue with the index. “We are, at this point, confident that there were some mistakes made,” said new District Deputy Superintendent Paul Kihn. “We honestly don’t know how extensive the problem is.”

That’s a pretty big problem if the formula was used to close schools and turn them into charters.

So let’s start chatting now. What does school reform look like to you? Does it incorporate principles like inquiry-based learning and 21st century citizenship, as suggested by the conference themes? How central a role does technology play in reform, and how do we avoid it from being a distraction to our ultimate goals? What barriers need to be broken down or even demolished outright? And how realistic is it that we’ll reach any of these goals?

I’m interested in #education’s answers to these questions.  I think education reform needs to focus on a number of things: Equality in the facilities and resources that schools can provide for students, less focus on the test and more focus on the child, boosting teacher preparation and respect (and pay), and providing an education for students that helps our country stay competitive in the world economy.

File under:  Things that the Ed. Gov Blog talks about that were more of a forefront issue among actual education policies and reform.

If we focused more on getting families engaged, and wanting to engage, and not being intimidated …. it would make an impact on so many young lives.

It would distribute money to states yearly, and they would distribute it to districts that have competed for grants to turn around schools that rank in the lowest 5 percent statewide. They would be required to implement one of these four strategies:

• The “restart” model would convert a school into a charter school or one run by an autonomous organization.

• The “transformation” model puts a new principal in place who has a track record of improving schools. It also introduces a comprehensive set of other changes so that teaching and curriculum are improved with research-based approaches.

• The “turnaround” model takes a similar approach to transformation, but it also replaces at least 50 percent of the staff.

• The “closure” model shuts down the school and disperses students to other schools in the district.

These “changes” seem to lay all the blame on failing schools on the principal and teachers at the school.   They do not consider at all the percentage of kids that aren’t getting fed, the kids who stay up late taking care of their siblings while a parent is working or doing less productive activities. Is the staff being provided with the proper professional development opportunities to learn how to help students that are struggling or that come from difficult home lives? Is there a school nurse on staff, a full time social worker, a full time psychologist?  They don’t consider the materials available to school, or even the money wasted on testing that could go elsewhere.  It doesn’t consider the value the community of that school places on the school, or the support it receives.  This is not a viable solution.  If we are going to make changes, we need to consider all of the factors.  Not everything can be blamed on the teachers.  

(Source: )

educationalrap:

Advise the Advisor is a new program to help senior staff at the White House stay connected to the American people.

Providing our nation’s students with a world-class education is a shared responsibility. It’s going to take all of us – teachers, parents, students, philanthropists, state and local governments, and the federal government – working together to prepare today’s students for the future.

This week, Melody Barnes, Director of the Domestic Policy Council and one of President Obama’s senior advisors on education policy, is asking for feedback from parents, teachers and students about what’s working in their communities and what needs to change when it comes to education.

You can add your voice to the conversation by answering one or all of the following questions:

• Parents: Responsibility for our children’s education and future begins in our homes and communities. What are some of the most effective ways you’re taking responsibility at a personal and local level for your child’s education?
• Teachers: President Obama has set a goal of having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020. How are you preparing your students for college and career? What’s working and what challenges do you face?
• Students: In order to compete for the jobs of the 21st century, America’s students must be prepared with a strong background in reading, math and science along with the critical thinking, problem solving, and creativity needed to succeed in tomorrow’s workforce. How has your education prepared you for a career in the 21st century? What has worked and what challenges do you face?

This definitely something for me to look at this weekend.

Interesting question.  What are your thoughts on celebrities or wealthy putting their mark on education, when they are not in the education profession?

TFA is a huge success story, but there is also something scary about seeing so much money and power assembled around its core belief that a brand-new college graduate with only five weeks of training is just right to educate our nation’s most vulnerable students. Recently some 60 civil rights organizations wrote a letter to President Obama, with a copy to Secretary Duncan, contesting the claim that teachers with so little training should be considered “highly qualified.” I attach links to and about their letter here and here. For more on this issue, Deborah, I urge you to read Barbara Torre Veltri’s Learning on Other People’s Kids: Becoming a Teach for America Teacher; Veltri has mentored many TFA teachers.

All the “right” people, all the powerful people have fallen in step behind TFA’s banner. It is as though they want to see the Peace Corps take the place of the diplomatic corps. In 2009, a surgeon proposed in The Wall Street Journal that medicine needed something similar to TFA, which he called “Heal for America.” After a brief training period, the members of his HFA would be qualified to advise patients about diet, hygiene, and exercise; they would know how to take patients’ pulse, temperature, and blood pressure; they would tell them the correct dosages of prescribed medicines. But, he warned, members of HFA should never be allowed to substitute for physicians, physicians’ assistants, or registered nurses. TFA, however, does not share the doctor’s understanding of the importance of deep training and experience.

Perhaps unintentionally, TFA’s success has stifled any national discussion about how to build a profession of well-educated, well-prepared, experienced educators who view teaching as a career rather than an experience. The alums of TFA are now taking their places in Congress, state legislatures, Wall Street, and the other corridors of power in public and private sectors. Will they recognize the need for a genuine national solution, modeled on the progress made in other nations, or will they simply continue to expand TFA’s belief in the virtue of a revolving door of bright young people? The future of the teaching profession hinges on the answer to that question. What do you think?

I think this article does a good job of showing how, yes TFA teachers are working in needed areas, but there is a greater issue at hand.   TFA, probably without meaning to, is preventing some real changes in our education system.

(Source: edweek.org)

But education was omitted entirely from the Republican platform “A Pledge to America,” and the party’s position has seemed in flux since President George W. Bush left office. Bush considered the law, passed with huge bipartisan majorities in Congress, one of his signature domestic accomplishments.

Meanwhile, Democrats are often divided over Obama priorities such as performance pay for teachers and expansion of public charter schools. Last year the party alsodebated the president’s policy of awarding some federal aid through contests such as the $4 billion Race to the Top - in which 39 states were non-participants or losers.

Under the 2002 law, states are required to test students in reading and math in grades three through eight and once in high school to hold schools accountable for making annual progress in closing student achievement gaps by 2014.

Schools that fall short year after year face various possible remedies, from student transfers to administrative shake-ups.

Obama favors better tests, more attention to student growth and broader measures of schools than snapshots of reading and math achievement. Last year he proposed giving most schools more flexibility to meet targets, while focusing intervention on the lowest performers.

To propose revisions to the education law would open a wide-ranging debate on school funding (most states face painful budget cuts), vouchers for private schools, performance pay, national standards, special education, bilingual education and school safety, among other matters.

Ummm… some things on the right path, others not so much.

adventuresinlearning:

In a piece I did this week for the Washington Spectator, I suggested a few points that have been key to honest education reform. These are points which we must hold on to now to take back the debate:

• Reform demands empowered communities — not passive recipients of charity from above, but communities that demand the resources and freedom to pursue their deep interests. We need more Freirian, transformative education, not top-down command mandates.
• Reform insists that children must be loved and, yes, cared for; they need to be supported through community construction, rites of passage, and the development of life goals.
• Reform means a curriculum of inquiry, questioning, critical thinking, curiosity, imagination. It emphasizes civic discussion, and social ethics. It places a high priority on music and the arts as well as new digital media. It demands assessments that reflect the complexity and reality of student performance in schools — not standardized tests but projects, portfolios, and actual work in the real world.
• Reform means science and math curricula that are meaningful, engaging, and rigorous instead of the dreary regime of memorized formulas and the unscientific notion that we are teaching settled, decontextualized truths.
• Reform recognizes how crucial it is that society reprioritize allocation of resources, funding education and recreation for youth. We are not in a time of scarce resources, not if we factor in the trillions wasted on war and prisons — the shame of our society which is strangling our educational budgets.
• Reform means real respect for the profession of teaching, supporting collegiality and initiative among teachers while at the same time inviting in a much broader array of community activists, local experts, and treasured elders to the classroom.

Emphasis mine.