Posts filed under 'Education'
In response to the labor market, of course. Schools teach French because French teachers are easier to find than those who teach Mandarin or Arabic. Nevertheless, if one were to make a list of which foreign languages our children will need to make themselves as attractive as possible in a 21st century economy, Mandarin and Arabic would be close to, if not at the top of it and French much further down.
The Worcester Telegram & Gazette has a heartening feature today on the Mandarin classes now being offered in Shrewsbury’s public schools. But as Steve Ackley, spokesman for the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, points out:
There aren’t enough qualified Chinese teachers to serve the growing demand.
What’s a school district to do?
Virtualize.
I think today there is an inherent bias against virtual education - in many ways similar to the one against online dating that was once so common. Many people hear virtual education and think immediately of a correspondence course, which, of course, doesn’t have the same academic rigor as a classroom based one. Or so the prevailing wisdom would have us believe. But, just as today online dating is not nearly the social stigma it once was, there is a similar move in the direction of normalizing virtual education.
For instance, we at Pioneer just recognized the Florida Virtual School as the winner of our 2008 Better Government Competition and one of the recommendations (granted, just one of a myriad of recommendations) in the Governor’s Readiness Project report is the creation of a virtual school.
Virtual schools have the potential to upend the delivery mechanism for education, which currently, in its classroom form, is labor intensive. In a labor shortage, therefore, the service does not get delivered at a pace to meet demand - a la Mandarin and Arabic instruction. Harnessing technology for more efficient delivery would allow us to overcome just such a predicament.
July 24th, 2008
There is a terrific piece in the Globe today from the Reverend Ray Hammond of the Bethel AME Church in Jamaica Plain and Horace Small of the Union of Minority Neighborhoods. In it, they extol the virtue of pilot schools and explore the civil rights implications of restricting minority students’ access to these schools of reform. As they rightly argue:
What cannot be accepted is the notion that anyone should be able to block the road to good jobs, decent pay, and citizen participation for the next generation of public school children. Of course the rights of unions, the rights of teachers, and the right to fair contracts should be supported. What should not be supported is the idea that children should be sacrificed on the altar of adult power politics and game-playing.
To what they refer, of course, is the Boston Teachers Union’s efforts to block the creation of the seven new pilot schools they agreed to in a compromise with the city and offering as an alternative instead what they call discovery schools. As the Reverend Hammond and Mr. Small point out, why endorse untested discovery schools, but block pilot schools, which studies have demonstrated succeed. Why indeed?
I think the answer lies in an erroneous assumption the authors put forth in the very first paragraph of the op-ed (the lone quibble I have with the piece). There they refer to pilot schools as “a bold experiment in public education”. Bold might be overstating it just a tad. It’s worth remembering that pilot schools were only created in the wake of charter school legislation. They represented a compromise between reformers and the unions, who, quite frankly, were spooked by the then new charter schools. My colleague Jamie Gass likes to refer to the current Governor’s proposed readiness schools as charter school lite; that is also what pilot schools are. Basically, in a political atmosphere the unions then deemed dangerous, they were scared into bellying up to the reform table.
So why, more than a decade later, block them? Apparently, the BTU no longer deems the political atmosphere dangerous to its interests.
July 23rd, 2008
From Andrew Coulson at CATO comes a new study of the budgetary impacts of the Institute’s education tax credit model legislation on five states.
It is estimated that, in its first 10 years of operation, savings from the PETC program would range from $1.1 billion for South Carolina to $15.9 billion for Texas. Illinois, Wisconsin, and New York are estimated to enjoy 10-year savings within that range.
Public Education Tax Credits reduce the state and local taxes owed by anyone who pays for the private schooling of an eligible child. Parents can claim credits for their own children’s educational costs, and other taxpayers (including businesses) can claim credits when they pay for the education of someone else’s child, either directly or by donating to a nonprofit scholarship-granting organization.
With the paper, Coulson presents a “generalized spreadsheet tool (”the Fiscal Impact Calculator”) that can estimate the program’s effect on any other state for which the necessary input data are supplied.”
For the full study, go here.
July 20th, 2008
Have said it before and will say it again: If Obama comes out for school choice, he has my vote. If he does not have the courage to do that, he is not a new kind of leader. Full stop. Given a bit too much pandering criticism of basic elements of NCLB’s accountability provisions, one wonders if there is any hope of even a half-substantive approach on education. One hopes… which is what we are supposed to do with the Obama campaign.
Other leaders, like Joel Klein of NYC and Michelle Rhee of DC are more constructive on NCLB. For example, in testimony before the House Committee on Education and Labor, Rhee, who runs probably the most difficult urban district in the nation, called for bolder action to tie accountability standards in NCLB to merit pay. The US News summarized her testimony as
offer[ing]ed another idea to improve NCLB that has also been highly contentious: tying teacher pay to student outcomes. As the head of the only school district in the nation that has fallen into “high-risk” status with the federal government for its dismal performance, Rhee is trying to narrow the achievement gap by getting rid of ineffective teachers and using bonuses to encourage the best ones to work in challenging schools. Ultimately, she wants to evaluate teachers based on test scores and other measures of student performance.
Jonathan Alter in the latest Newsweek asks why Obama isn’t stronger on the question of “higher pay for teachers in exchange for much more accountability for performance in the classroom.”
Teachers unions bristle at the business comparison. But they should listen to Andy Stern, head of the nation’s largest union, the SEIU: “Education is like any business. You need a return on investment. Outcomes do matter. Paying people according to outcomes does matter. I don’t care if a teacher has a high-school degree, college or a Ph.D. if he or she can produce results.” Stern is worried that if his brethren in the teachers unions don’t embrace accountability now, “parents will vote with their choices” and the unions will begin dying, as they already are in reform-minded cities like Washington, D.C., and New Orleans.
If Stern can say that, why not Obama?
Yeah.
July 18th, 2008
In June Mike Rebell, an experienced litigator with expertise in taking on states in funding “adequacy” lawsuits, held an advocacy conference in D.C. It was called the 7th Annual Quality Education Conference, and one of the speakers on the program was Justice John Greaney of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Justice Greaney gave what to many will seem a shocking presentation.
The document gives remarkable insight into what the good Judge would have done in taking over the state’s education business, had his side prevailed in the Hancock v. Driscoll (2005) case.
Greaney’s June presentation is striking for, as a friend as put it,
Its breathtaking arrogance and the Judge’s elevated view of the court’s “special skills,” independence from special interests — all of whom he says he would then invite to participate in the remedy! — and ability at “truth finding.”
At the same time, he dismisses the majority opinion in Hancock as “utterly unpersuasive” (evidently they don’t have the same ability at “truth finding” that he possesses), and attributes the decision to “what can happen when membership on the court changes.” So perhaps he’s saying that the court membership is not so independent after all?
He seems pretty upset by the fact that his colleagues on the court had the wisdom to see the quagmire they faced. As Scot Lehigh of the Boston Globe, in a piece published the day after the Hancock decision in February 2005 noted:
[T]he high court dealt a stunning loss to those who had hoped to sidestep the political process to achieve court-ordered remedies. That includes the Massachusetts Teachers Association and the Massachusetts Federation of Teachers, two unions that had provided most of the funding for the so-called Hancock lawsuit alleging serious underfunding.
Lehigh was spot on in noting that “the high court actually ended its long-running role in monitoring the state’s educational efforts.”
He was also right to note that “[i]n arriving at its decision, the SJC ignored the recommendations of [then] Superior Court Judge Margot Botsford, whom it had appointed to make a finding of fact on the case.”
The problem is that Judge Botsford now sits on the state’s Supreme Judicial Court, appointed by Governor Deval Patrick. With the membership of the court changed, and with Botsford now sitting on the bench beside Greaney, the MTA knows that it is one seat away from clear sailing…
The implication of this presentation is crystal clear: As court membership changes, Judge Greaney and the MTA are all for court control of the schools.
July 15th, 2008
From the weekend Wall Street Journal, an editorial worth noting. The Wrong Education Fix notes that there are Republicans who have gone soft on the accountability measures associated with the No Child Left Behind Act. On the other hand:
What’s heartening about this story is who has lined up to block this nonsense. The coalition includes the Citizens Commission on Civil Rights, the NAACP, the National Council of La Raza, the National Urban League, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund and more than a dozen other liberal outfits.
In a letter to House members, the coalition said it opposed the proposal because “it would allow states, districts, and schools to receive federal funding under the No Child Left Behind Act with no accountability for complying with key provisions of the law.”
Accountability matters to most everybody, no matter what their political persuasion. Thus the disappointment we feel at the Governor’s shuttering of the state’s independent accountability office. Really, shame on you, Governor. For all the talk about leadership on education, this single action risks putting us behind other states in terms of performance. The state’s accountability office cost $3 million a year, to provide transparency for the $9 billion (with a B) that we spend annually on education. Didn’t we learn anything from the Big Dig?
July 15th, 2008
“Do they deserve tickets out too?” That was the question posed to then candidate Deval Patrick by David Gergen during the October 19 gubernatorial debate. He was referring to school choice and public charter schools — chances that were made available to Mr. Patrick as a child, and choices that Governor Patrick has made for his own children.
The relevant portion of the debate:
Moderator: Mr. Patrick, you talked about the need for change. I’d like to ask you, sir, about the change in public education. This question: when you were young, you won a scholarship to go off to the Milton Academy. You essentially won a ticket out of poorly-performing public schools to go to a private school where you blossomed and you have a stirring life story. Why sir, then are you so opposed to giving tickets to children who are now in public schools in Massachusetts who might want to go to a charter school or they might want a voucher. Do they deserve tickets out too?
Patrick: Well, I’ll tell you, first of all, I’m not opposed to charter schools. I think they have a critical role to play in education reform. We’ve been on this journey, I think we ought to continue on this journey.
Moderator: Right, but what about the question - there’s a lid, as you know, on charter schools. You’re opposed to lifting the lid.
Patrick: I’m coming to that and I think we can lift the cap on the number of charter schools, David, when we fix the funding formula, and it’s broken right now. What it creates is an unnecessary and I think, unhelpful tension between the families of the kids in district schools- traditional public schools- and the families of kids in charter schools. And it disserves both. It seems to me that if the state is going to support this element of education reform - and I think that’s important - then the state has to step up and provide the kind of funding that makes both charter schools and district schools flourish. That’s one point. Second point I’d make is, I want the best innovations that come from the best charter schools- and they’re not all great, but the best of them- to be imported into the district schools- whatever that takes. And I will tell you, having talked with teachers and parents and kids, frankly, who are in the district schools, and many who are in the charter school movement- they want that collaboration, too. That’s a leadership issue.
Ross: Yeah, I think, Deval, it’s interesting when I hear you say things like that because I’ve been in many debates with you and that’s the first time I’ve heard you say that maybe someday we’ll lift the cap.
Yep, it’s a leadership issue. And a campaign promise. A year and a half into the administration’s tenure, we have had numerous education task forces and an unwieldy set of proposals, many of which are still in the trial balloon stage.
The key question on the table is the achievement gap. Charters have outperformed district schools and pilot schools in urban districts. We need some urgency — the same kind of urgency we all have for our children. More years, more talk, more task forces, will not do.
It seems Grace Ross was prescient on this one.
July 10th, 2008
Massachusetts is supposedly in a “new era of education reform,” according to many a press release from the Governor’s office. I like the merit/differential pay idea and a couple of other items, but the Readiness proposal is just a sketch at this point. Kind of odd for one year’s worth of work. Feel like we in Massachusetts have gotten complacent and are “adrift in the edu-sphere,” as the Globe editorial put a few months back.
On the other hand, there has been building momentum in Florida. Florida is pretty wise in terms of reform — as it experiments it seeks stronger accountability models, especially when compared to some other voucher and choice systems. Choice is no panacea. You need high academic standards and accountability; otherwise, there is no way to know if what you are buying is a good product.
Christin Coyne of the School Reform News reports on the opportunity to move the dial further in Florida. Florida’s Taxation and Budget Reform Commission meets once every 20 years. It can place popular referendum items on the election ballot — and this year it did so. As my dad used to say, and what a doozy (blog etymologists please weight in on the spelling of doozy…) it is!
Florida voters can do away with the state’s Blaine amendment to the constitution, which bans state aid to religious institutions.
In 2004 a Florida appellate court struck down Bush’s statewide school voucher program for students in failing public schools, the A+ Opportunity Scholarship Program, as unconstitutional, citing the Blaine amendment.
The ballot initiative is simple. It inserts:
a new sentence stating “individuals or entities may not be barred from participating in public programs because of their religion” would essentially replace the Blaine amendment wording, which states “no revenue of the state or any political subdivision or agency thereof shall ever be taken from the public treasury directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution.”
(Yes, Massachusetts is one of 36 other states with a Blaine amendment. Oddly, the amendment seems only to K-12 education… I wonder what Boston College would think if the same restriction on aid to religious institutions were applied to higher ed.) Good luck, Florida.
July 9th, 2008
In DC and pick up a paper and it is all DC Public School Chancellor Michelle Rhee, all the time. We hear a lot of talk about a new era in education reform in Massachusetts, but during the Romney administration the focus was not there and during the first two years of the Patrick administration there have been backward steps, moving of some boxes (Board of Ed, creation of a Secretary of Education, etc.), but no real action.
Compare that to the urgency of Mayor Adrian Fenty and Chancellor Rhee. In the WaPo today, there is an op-ed by Margaret Spellings calling for the continuation of the DC voucher program (also supported by Fenty and Rhee, who care less for party and more for the kids).
Signed into law by President Bush four years ago, the program is the first to provide federally funded education vouchers to students. It awards up to $7,500 per child for tuition, transportation and fees; in 2007-08 it enabled 1,900 students from the underperforming Washington public school system — the highest total yet — to attend the private or religious schools of their choice.
Results?
An independent study of the program released last year confirms this parental satisfaction… The IES study reported academic gains in reading by three student subgroups, totaling nearly 90 percent of all students. They gained the equivalent of two to four extra months of learning. An IES report last year found increased math scores among some of the same subgroups.
This is especially impressive when you consider that nearly all of the participating students are from families that are at or below the poverty line; the average income of participating families is $22,736, only $2,000 above the poverty level for a family of four. Ninety-nine percent of the children are African American or Hispanic. Many escaped poorly performing public schools, where they worked below grade level in a city that has struggled for years to educate its young.
Some in Congress (many of whom send their kids to private schools) are still opposing the program. Spellings notes:
If Congress were to discontinue funding for D.C. opportunity scholarships, 86 percent of the students would be reassigned to schools that did not meet “adequate yearly progress” goals in reading and math for 2006-07. We cannot allow that to happen. Fortunately, Mayor Adrian Fenty and Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee share my enthusiasm for reform. It’s an exciting time for education in Washington. The three-sector approach enjoys strong support among District residents. It has been a catalyst for innovation. It may also inspire other cities to develop their own scholarship programs.
If Congress (R & D) tends to be all talk, Fenty and Rhee show what local public leaders can do. And fast.
July 8th, 2008
If McCain wins? No, I don’t think so. He cannot win the debate given the numbers in Congress. Obama? No, I don’t think so. As this space has noted many times, he is the person best positioned to do the Nixon in China routine, but he has changed his position on the issue, well, effectively. Before the Wisconsin primary he was for vouchers. The day after his campaign “clarified” his position. A pity, but that is also political reality.
What I am referring to is that, as Joe Follick of School Reform News reports,
A commission agreed to give voters an opportunity to reverse a 2006 Florida Supreme Court decision that found then-Gov. Jeb Bush’s prized voucher program unconstitutional.
It is going to be really hard to defeat this referendum item. Why? After all, voucher initiatives were defeated in California and Utah. Well, try this on for size:
To help sweeten the measure for voters, the proposal was abruptly joined with an unrelated plan that requires school districts to spend at least 65 percent of their revenue on “classroom instruction rather than on administration.”
Expect no movement at the federal level. The action is all at the state level.
July 8th, 2008
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