In an update distributed by the California Education Technology Professionals Association (CETPA) regarding the votes in the budget conference committee, the group from both legislative bodies that is charged with reconciling the various versions of the budget, there was a very, very troubling item:
On partisan votes (Democrats supporting and Republicans opposing) approved the
following:
1. Graduation Requirements for the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE).
Eliminates statute that ties CAHSEE passage to graduation requirements. Would
continue to use CAHSEE to satisfy NCLB requirements, but limit CAHSEE to one test
administration. Read the rest of this post!
I thought that Chester E. Finn Jr.'s Declaring Educational Bankruptcy post in the National Review Online was an interesting perspective. He compares the inability of government to reform schools with efforts to reform GM, AIG and Chrysler through government sponsored bankruptcy.
Turning around bad schools is harder than turning around Chrysler, GM, or AIG — but our fearless new federal administration seems bent on doing this, too. Just listen to Education Secretary Arne Duncan on the topic of closing and “reconstituting” failed schools.
To be sure, schools are smaller than giant corporations, but they’re at least as burdened by employee contracts, long-term obligations, community roots, political entanglements, all manner of vendors and suppliers, and “shareholders” in the form of children and parents that depend on them. And because they are public agencies rather than private firms, there is nothing quite like “Chapter 11” through which they can be stripped of their debts and obligations, reorganized, and given a fresh start.
Duncan is bent on changing this. He has no power to do so directly but insists that he will persuade state and local school systems to close thousands of dreadful schools, sometimes termed “dropout factories,” starting with at least 250 in 2010 and rising to 1000 a year. (The U.S. has about 88,000 public schools, of which some 6000 have already been designated by the federal No Child Left Behind [NCLB] act as long-term failures in urgent need of “reconstitution.” Thousands more will soon join them.),
Chester goes on to point out that government has done a terrible job in actually reforming schools to date.
Yet our education system has proven as inept at intervening in failed schools as it is skilled at spotting them. Districts responsible under federal law for “reconstituting” them nearly always opt for the least intrusive option — changing the curriculum or perhaps replacing the principal rather than shutting them down and starting afresh. As CEO of the Chicago system for nine years, Duncan was an exception: He closed (and reopened) more than a dozen of his city’s most troubled schools. But even that rare achievement must be kept in perspective: Chicago has more than 600 schools of which the overwhelming majority have been found lacking under NCLB.
I've seen the same thing in my experience. School districts almost always select the "any other major restructuring" option for their Program Improvement Year 5 schools. Someone once asked me why there are no consequences beyond year 5. My guess is that is because the authors of NCLB actually expected that school districts would have made some changes to turn the school around by then. I don't think it occurred to them that schools would languish in program improvement without radical reforms forever.
Chester suggests that Secretary Duncan has three "levers" to get states and school districts to jump through his hoops: billions of stimulus dollars, the reauthorization of NCLB, and the bully pulpit to embarrass officials who don't play ball. He then goes on to suggest that while those are formidable levers, state and local officials have had direct authority to close schools and for the most part, haven't done so.
Finally, he identifies "five core problems" that explain why it is so hard to reform schools.
First, most teachers enjoy lifetime tenure under state law and seniority under local employment contracts. If Ms. Witherspoon loses her job at the Jefferson School due to its reconstitution, the district must find her another one, and if she doesn’t like it she has innumerable ways — and union help — to fuss. (In many cities, principals also have tenure.)
Second, parents and kids ordinarily love their schools — and their teachers — no matter what the test scores show, and will fight hard to preserve them pretty much unchanged.
Third, those kids do need to be educated somewhere. If a school is actually closed, even temporarily, they must be accommodated in another one, which brings to bear all manner of rules, court orders, transportation challenges, crowding issues, etc.
Fourth, turning around an individual school is a bit like curing athlete’s foot on a single toe. If the surrounding system isn’t also fixed — perverse incentives, dysfunctional culture, ill-chosen curriculum, bad personnel practices, etc. — the familiar fungus and itch will soon reappear on the healed digit.
Fifth, the agent-of-change is ordinarily the very same school system that let the school fail in the first place. Rarely does it possess the capacity to rectify its own mistakes.
Those are difficult issues to overcome. For the most part, where we've seen school reform in California it has been on a school-wide basis. A talented, motivated leader comes to a school and overcomes the odds, bureaucracy and inertia to make a difference for his/her students. Unfortunately, we've also frequently seen those exceptional leaders leave their schools in a few years either to take a larger role in their district to try to export their success or to get out of the situation because you can only beat your head against the wall so many times before it starts to hurt.
I hope Secretary Duncan will find the right combination of carrot and stick to get California's education bureaucracy to take accountability and reform seriously. Otherwise, we'll just have to continue to put our hopes on those passionate school leaders who change one school at a time. Read the rest of this post!
A Friend of Dave forwarded this Washington Post story this morning about an effort to create national education standards.
Forty-six states and the District of Columbia today will announce an effort to craft a single vision for what children should learn each year from kindergarten through high school graduation, an unprecedented step toward a uniform definition of success in American schools.
The push for common reading and math standards marks a turning point in a movement to judge U.S. children using one yardstick that reflects expectations set for students in countries around the world at a time of global competition. Today, each state decides what to teach in third-grade reading, fifth-grade math and every other class. Critics think some set a bar so that students can pass tests but, ultimately, are ill-prepared.
Led by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, the states, including Maryland and Virginia, are aiming to define a framework of content and skills that meet an overarching goal. When students get their high school diplomas, the coalition says, they should be ready to tackle college or a job. The benchmarks would be "internationally competitive."
Once the organizers of the effort agree to a proposal, each state would decide individually whether to adopt it.
I see three big issues with this actually working. That last line is first of the critical issues. It is one thing to agree to come up with a set of national standards. It is quite another thing to abandon the standards your state's education bureaucracy has created in order to adopt national standards. Look at California's reluctance to abandon its faux accountability system to rely on NCLB's AYP as the measure of school success. Instead, they've simply run both systems simultaneously, much to the confusion of everyone. And I do mean everyone. Given this experience, we have little reason to believe that states would actually abandon their own standards to adopt these unless President Obama is willing to print up a little more money to throw the state's way.
The second critical issues will be matching assessments. The new standards will be worthless unless we have matching assessments to show how well or poorly a state is doing at getting its students to meet these new "internationally competitive" standards.
The final critical issue is whether educators will modify practice to match the new standards. Unfortunately, even if the first two pieces fall into place, it could all be for nothing if it doesn't impact what happens in the classroom. California already has very high education standards but it hasn't seen a matching increase in academic performance. There are still lots of other issues that prevent effective, standards-based instruction from happening in too many of California's classrooms.
In my mind, unless all three of those things happen, this effort will just be an interesting intellectual exercise and won't have the slightest impact on our public education system's ability to prepare students for college or the world of work. Read the rest of this post!
... a Pravda.RU story titled "American capitalism gone with a whimper?" It should probably be "gone without a whimper" but that's another story. Yes, this is that Pravda.
It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.
True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.
Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.
First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics...
Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another...
The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world...
Unless you're living under a rock, you know that California is in deep, deep, deep, deep fiscal trouble. After the $42B shortfall earlier in the year, we're now facing another $21B and if you think that's the end of it, I have some swamp land that you might be interested in. As part of the supposed process of resolving this problem, the Governor has identified about 5,000 state workers who should be laid off. After a bit of threatening, the Sacramento Bee finally received a list of the positions involved.
As you've probably read in other reports, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (think prison guards), will be taking the biggest hit with 3,665 positions. With over 2,500 positions, the California Department of Education will not be giving up a single position. Given that public schools are finally going to see an actual budget cut, wouldn't it seem logical that since school districts get less money, the agency that oversees their reduced activities would need fewer staff members?
To me, the fact that only a few agencies are listed here, indicates that the Governor isn't serious about our budget problems. If he were, he'd start cutting some of the fat from agencies like the California Department of Education. I'll be watching for those future cuts Governor. I have a few suggestions if you need some assistance. Read the rest of this post!
For the past couple weeks we've heard the statistics that "90% of the weapons used to commit crimes in Mexico come from the United States." That just didn't sound right to me. This FoxNews story suggests that I was right to be suspicious.
You've heard this shocking "fact" before -- on TV and radio, in newspapers, on the Internet and from the highest politicians in the land: 90 percent of the weapons used to commit crimes in Mexico come from the United States.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it to reporters on a flight to Mexico City.
CBS newsman Bob Schieffer referred to it while interviewing President Obama.
California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said at a Senate hearing: "It is unacceptable to have 90 percent of the guns that are picked up in Mexico and used to shoot judges, police officers and mayors ... come from the United States."
William Hoover, assistant director for field operations at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, testified in the House of Representatives that "there is more than enough evidence to indicate that over 90 percent of the firearms that have either been recovered in, or interdicted in transport to Mexico, originated from various sources within the United States."
There's just one problem with the 90 percent "statistic" and it's a big one:
It's just not true.
In fact, it's not even close. By all accounts, it's probably around 17 percent.
What's true, an ATF spokeswoman told FOXNews.com, in a clarification of the statistic used by her own agency's assistant director, "is that over 90 percent of the traced firearms originate from the U.S."
But a large percentage of the guns recovered in Mexico do not get sent back to the U.S. for tracing, because it is obvious from their markings that they do not come from the U.S.
There are plenty of good reasons to secure our Southern border, but guns flowing from the US into Mexico wouldn't be at the top of my list. I'm much more concerned about the flow of illegal aliens, drugs, terrorists and explosives from Mexico into the United States. Let's close the border to those things and that additional security will help close the border to those weapons that are trying to go South. Read the rest of this post!
I think George Will is developing a serious man-crush on Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. Don't believe me? Just look at this Newsweek column for the proof.
Now comes Arne Duncan, 44, the new secretary of education, fresh from seven years leading Chicago's public schools. There he showed a flair for innovation, which he acquired at his mother's knee. Now 74, she was, her son says, "the crazy white lady" who in 1961 opened, in the "absolute chaos" of a rough neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, an after-school tutoring program for young African-Americans, for whom she still toils, 48 years later.
Her son is impressively impatient with what George W. Bush called "the soft bigotry of low expectations." But under Bush's NCLB, Duncan says, "we have been lying to children and their parents because states have dumbed down their standards" of proficiency. "Sometimes," he says, "you have to call the baby ugly."
For decades, state legislatures, encouraged by teachers' unions, have embraced the theory that schools' cognitive outputs were a function of financial inputs. The theory was: As with soybeans, so with education—if you want more, increase subsidies.
But in 1966, the Coleman Report concluded: "Schools are remarkably similar in the effect they have on the achievement of their pupils when the socioeconomic background of the students is taken into account." That was a delicate way of not quite saying that the quality of schools usually reflects the quality of the families from which the students come. One scholar estimated that about 90 percent of the differences among schools in average proficiency can be explained by five factors—number of days absent from school, amount of television watched in the home, number of pages read for homework, quantity and quality of reading matter in the home and, much the most important, the presence of two parents in the home. Government cannot do much to make those variables vary, but Duncan correctly thinks that we actually know how to make schools effective anyway. The keys are time and talent.
I have to admit that I think I might share a little of George's admiration. Some of the Secretary's comments show a clear understanding of some of public education's biggest problems. Unfortunately, as the old saying goes, "talk is cheap." The proof will be in how he uses the large funding that the Federal Stimulus package has handed him. The good news for George is that he isn't head over heels yet. George still recognizes the reality facing his new buddy Arne.
From his office at the foot of Capitol Hill, Duncan hopes to use federal money as a lever to move local school systems toward creative improvisations. But in Chicago he had a hammer—the support of His Honor, Mayor Richard Daley. Duncan may be about to receive an education in the difficulty of defeating local inertia from afar.
My sister made me read the education section of the President's book during the campaign. I agreed with much of what I read. My concern was that once he was elected, he would fall back on the usual Democratic platform of doing NEA's bidding. President Obama's education speech this week gave me some hope. He mentioned crumbling schools, long school days, merit pay, charter schools and the idea that there might be poor teachers and they should be fired. It wasn't a very NEA friendly speech. Here are some excerpts:
And yet, despite resources that are unmatched anywhere in the world, we've let our grades slip, our schools crumble, our teacher quality fall short, and other nations outpace us. Let me give you a few statistics. In 8th grade math, we've fallen to 9th place. Singapore's middle-schoolers outperform ours three to one. Just a third of our 13- and 14-year-olds can read as well as they should. And year after year, a stubborn gap persists between how well white students are doing compared to their African American and Latino classmates. The relative decline of American education is untenable for our economy, it's unsustainable for our democracy, it's unacceptable for our children -- and we can't afford to let it continue.
So that's the first pillar of our education reform agenda. The second, we will end what has become a race to the bottom in our schools and instead spur a race to the top by encouraging better standards and assessments. Now, this is an area where we are being outpaced by other nations. It's not that their kids are any smarter than ours -- it's that they are being smarter about how to educate their children. They're spending less time teaching things that don't matter, and more time teaching things that do. They're preparing their students not only for high school or college, but for a career. We are not. Our curriculum for 8th graders is two full years behind top performing countries. That's a prescription for economic decline. And I refuse to accept that America's children cannot rise to this challenge. They can, and they must, and they will meet higher standards in our time. (Applause.)
So let's challenge our states -- let's challenge our states to adopt world-class standards that will bring our curriculums to the 21st century. Today's system of 50 different sets of benchmarks for academic success means 4th grade readers in Mississippi are scoring nearly 70 points lower than students in Wyoming -- and they're getting the same grade. Eight of our states are setting their standards so low that their students may end up on par with roughly the bottom 40 percent of the world.
That's inexcusable. That's why I'm calling on states that are setting their standards far below where they ought to be to stop low-balling expectations for our kids. The solution to low test scores is not lowering standards -- it's tougher, clearer standards. (Applause.) Standards like those in Massachusetts, where 8th graders are -- (applause) -- we have a Massachusetts contingent here. (Laughter.) In Massachusetts, 8th graders are now tying for first -- first in the whole world in science. Other forward-thinking states are moving in the same direction by coming together as part of a consortium. And more states need to do the same. And I'm calling on our nation's governors and state education chiefs to develop standards and assessments that don't simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test, but whether they possess 21st century skills like problem-solving and critical thinking and entrepreneurship and creativity.
That is what we'll help them do later this year -- that what we're going to help them do later this year when we finally make No Child Left Behind live up to its name by ensuring not only that teachers and principals get the funding that they need, but that the money is tied to results. (Applause.) And Arne Duncan will also back up this commitment to higher standards with a fund to invest in innovation in our school districts.
Of course, raising standards alone will not make much of a difference unless we provide teachers and principals with the information they need to make sure students are prepared to meet those standards. And far too few states have data systems like the one in Florida that keep track of a student's education from childhood through college. And far too few districts are emulating the example of Houston and Long Beach, and using data to track how much progress a student is making and where that student is struggling. That's a resource that can help us improve student achievement, and tell us which students had which teachers so we can assess what's working and what's not. That's why we're making a major investment in this area that we will cultivate a new culture of accountability in America's schools.
Now, to complete our race to the top requires the third pillar of reform -- recruiting, preparing, and rewarding outstanding teachers. From the moment students enter a school, the most important factor in their success is not the color of their skin or the income of their parents, it's the person standing at the front of the classroom. That's why our Recovery Act will ensure that hundreds of thousands of teachers and school personnel are not laid off -- because those Americans are not only doing jobs they can't afford to lose, they're rendering a service our nation cannot afford to lose, either. (Applause.)
America's future depends on its teachers. And so today, I'm calling on a new generation of Americans to step forward and serve our country in our classrooms. If you want to make a difference in the life of our nation, if you want to make the most of your talents and dedication, if you want to make your mark with a legacy that will endure -- then join the teaching profession. America needs you. We need you in our suburbs. We need you in our small towns. We especially need you in our inner cities. We need you in classrooms all across our country.
And if you do your part, then we'll do ours. That's why we're taking steps to prepare teachers for their difficult responsibilities, and encourage them to stay in the profession. That's why we're creating new pathways to teaching and new incentives to bring teachers to schools where they're needed most. That's why we support offering extra pay to Americans who teach math and science to end a teacher shortage in those subjects. It's why we're building on the promising work being done in places like South Carolina's Teachers Advancement Program, and making an unprecedented commitment to ensure that anyone entrusted with educating our children is doing the job as well as it can be done.
Now, here's what that commitment means: It means treating teachers like the professionals they are while also holding them more accountable -– in up to 150 more school districts. New teachers will be mentored by experienced ones. Good teachers will be rewarded with more money for improved student achievement, and asked to accept more responsibilities for lifting up their schools. Teachers throughout a school will benefit from guidance and support to help them improve.
And just as we've given our teachers all the support they need to be successful, we need to make sure our students have the teacher they need to be successful. And that means states and school districts taking steps to move bad teachers out of the classroom. But let me be clear -- (applause.) Let me be clear -- the overwhelming number of teachers are doing an outstanding job under difficult circumstances. My sister is a teacher, so I know how tough teaching can be. But let me be clear: If a teacher is given a chance or two chances or three chances but still does not improve, there's no excuse for that person to continue teaching. I reject a system that rewards failure and protects a person from its consequences. The stakes are too high. We can afford nothing but the best when it comes to our children's teachers and the schools where they teach. (Applause.)
Those are pretty interesting words. Those will be seen as fighting words by NEA/AFT. I hope that Secretary Duncan can put those words into some policy. If so, we might actually see some movement in education reform. If not, we'll be in the same place we were before and children will continue to pay the price for the decisions of adults. Read the rest of this post!
This Rasmussen Report shows just how poor a job the average person believes that Congress is doing at resolving our economic problems. A couple of the findings really stood out:
When it comes to the nation’s economic issues, 67% of U.S. voters have more confidence in their own judgment than they do in the average member of Congress.
To me, this just shows the disconnect between our political leaders and the people. Two thirds of people believe they can do a better job than their congressman/congresswoman.
I think this one was even better:
Forty-four percent (44%) voters also think a group of people selected at random from the phone book would do a better job addressing the nation’s problems than the current Congress, but 37% disagree. Twenty percent (20%) are undecided.
As read this, nearly two-thirds of voters think we could replace congress with people selected at random from the phone book and have better results. That actually kind of appeals to me. How about "America's Next Top Politician" or "American Congressmember" where we could create a reality show to select our political leaders? Each week, the contestants could answer policy questions and compete in real-world problem solving exercises. Anyone who starts with the usual Washington DC deal-making immediately gets booted. The public could vote on who to kick off the show next week.
Actually, I think "Survivor" is a pretty good model for our current politicians. The ones that get elected have "Outplayed, Outwitted and Outlasted" their opponents in order to get elected.
I think the reality show idea is a great one. I think I'll start working on the constitutional amendment right now. Apparently, the majority of the people don't think the random phone book draw would be any worse than our current system. We'd probably get to know them better in a 13 week TV show than through an expensive year long election cycle. Read the rest of this post!
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