Posts filed under 'Education'
Yeah, I know. That’s. Not. News. The only thing worth pointing out is the title of their press release related to the position taken by the AFL-CIO’s Executive Committee:
Supporting the Students, Teachers, Staff and Community of Central Falls High School in Rhode Island
So, they’re against the superintendent, but supporting everyone else. Yup. I am not close enough to the situation to know if firing is the end-result that is necessary. But I am plenty close enough through friends, relatives and having grown up next door to know that the only way to get the unions to sit down and think seriously about the city’s 50 percent dropout rate was to do something radical.
The super and the unions are, not surprisingly, kickstarting negotiations. Good on Obama for supporting the way they sent the signal. Bad on AFT/Randi W and the AFL-CIO for doing the old ostrich crane of the neck into the mud.
Can some young, energetic leader stand up and represent a younger generation of teachers? Please?
March 4th, 2010
Way back in February 2009, we criticized a report issued by the 21st century skills task force report produced by an ad hoc committee established by the chair of the board of education. The report pushed for a move away from the state’s focus on rigorous content-based academic standards and objective tests toward soft skills and portfolio assessments.
We criticized the report on many fronts, including its focus on skills rather than content, lack of familiarity with existing state standards, lack of facility with empirical evidence, and on and on. One of the key criticisms we had was that the report wanted to focus this effort on underperforming districts. Hold that thought.
The Board of Education has never voted to approve implementation of 21st-century skills, and notwithstanding that the Commissioner has put out an RFP to revise the MCAS to incorporate 21-c principles, and sadly even the legislature in its Act Relative to the Achievement Gap has included
student acquisition and mastery of twenty-first century skills
as one of 13 requirements for assessing turnaround proposals. Well, folks, take a read of today’s Washington Post where staff writer Michael Alison Chandler reports:
Virginia officials are moving to sharply limit an alternative testing program that many schools in the Washington suburbs use to measure the abilities of special education students who traditionally have fared poorly on the state’s Standards of Learning exams.
The effort by state lawmakers and education officials targets “portfolio” tests, which have helped increase passing rates at many schools by allowing students to avoid the multiple choice tests in favor of more flexible, individually tailored assessments. Critics have said that the alternative tests undermine Virginia’s widely praised accountability system and overstate the progress districts are making in closing achievement gaps between racial groups.
State leaders say they are worried that portfolios, intended to help a select group of special education students who are learning grade-level material but cannot demonstrate what they know on a multiple choice test, are being overused.
Lawmakers unanimously decided to phase out the portfolio approach “as soon as is feasible.”
The portfolio tests, called the Virginia Grade Level Alternative, like the multiple-choice test, assesses students’ understanding of the state’s academic standards. Teachers document learning throughout the year in a binder of class work, including worksheets, quizzes and writing samples. Eligible students could have a wide range of disabilities, including information processing disorders or emotional disabilities.
Why? Districts doubled the number of students taking portfolios assessments. Overall, 20% of grade 3-8 students with disabilities were given portfolio assessments, the percentage reaching >50% in some districts. With Chandler reporting that districts are concentrating minority students in special ed classes, higher numbers of minorities take these assessments. End result? VA has been inflating progress in closing the achievement gap.
If we are to implement this sort of soft skill/portfolio approach, we urge that it is done in districts where kids have achieved proficiency. Don’t use it to mask the achievement gap.
Read the piece – and let’s hope that we are not headed in this direction.
February 26th, 2010
Checker Finn has a great blog at the Flypaper, which notes the “heavier and heavier burdens” of the common standards project of the National Governors Association (NGA) and Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO).
I disagree with Checker when he notes that we haven’t seen drafts (we have seen several early drafts) and that we can’t see where this is going. The process is really opaque, and given the criticism CCSSI has received on this point without any action to fix it, any reasonable person would conclude that (1) the team is not up to the job or (2) it’s on purpose. Neither answer is satisfactory.
In addition, we don’t have a real sense as to how the common core team is making determinations on public comments. And, well, the standards are really poorly written and jumbled. By the 6th inning of a game, you need to know the rules and how to throw a good number of strikes.
Then there is that “small” matter of voluntary adoption by the states, the president and ed secretary Duncan yesterday turned on its head in a heavy-handed move that threatens to pull Title I money (existing funds) for states not adopting this mess.
Uh, no thank you.
Had enough? OK, today Catherine Gewertz notes that Stanford University professor Linda Darling-Hammond, now a member of the national standards “validation” and “assessment” committees is building
support for a new vision of educational assessment that is less a snapshot of students’ one-time performance and more like good instruction itself.
Yeah. Gulp. So we are supposed to give up our nation-best academic standards for fluff and then run the risk of adopting LDH’s idea of assessments?
Again, we are Massachusetts not West Virginia. And we are not looking forward to being led down the primrose path to the Mountain State’s status by Dane Linn and Co.
February 23rd, 2010
Central Falls (RI) School Superintendent Frances Gallo is moving to fire all that city’s high school teachers as part of corrective action mandated by RI education commissioner Deborah Gist. The CF high school and five schools in Providence would be affected.
“We need to be able to move this school,” Gallo said Tuesday afternoon. “We are persistently in the low-performing category and therefore we have options we must look to.”
Gallo said that the 74 teachers can re-apply, but their job descriptions would be different. Under the termination-of-teachers reform model, no more than 50 percent can be re-hired.
I know CF really well having spent my youth next door, having relatives there, knowing folks who were police officers and teachers there. And while the prospect of wholesale firings can’t please anyone, I’d ask you to watch Steve Perry on CNN:
At some point we have to realize that the children are more important than the teachers who have degrees, certification, and 401Ks.
And compare his case to Randi Weingarten’s. Am I wrong in characterizing her view as blah-blah-blah? You decide.
February 23rd, 2010
We’ve had some long discussions with legislators and the media over the past few years about “disadvantaged students” and how they fare at charters. As we often note, the number of poor and minority students in charters are higher on statewide comparisons; and they are well within the range on “sending” district to charter comparisons. And their students by and large do far better those in district schools.
But the question raised during the recent legislative debate was, well, how about Limited English Proficient (LEP) and Special Needs (SPED) kids. A new study out by Angrist, Dynarski, Kane, Pathak and Walters takes a micro-look at this question by focusing on the KIPP Academy in Lynn, a school that is mostly Hispanic and has a high concentration of LEP and SPED students. What they found was:
overall gains of 0.35 standard deviations in math and 0.12 standard deviations in reading for each year spent at KIPP Lynn. LEP students, special education students, and those with low baseline scores benefit more from time spent at KIPP than do other students, with reading gains coming almost entirely from the LEP group.
Are they benefiting from some school switching? No.
KIPP Lynn lotter winners were much less likely to change schools than those who lost the lottery.
This analysis is for one school only – so no general takeaways can be drawn from it. That said, it would be helpful to do more of this sort of study, so as to understand the opportunity for improvement for these populations, and which charters (and charter models) are getting it done.
February 19th, 2010
I am pretty sure you have seen the number of online tools Pioneer has created for citizens interested in government transparency and civic engagement on issues like government performance, regionalization, the quality of our schools, etc. Here is a breath of fresh air blowing north from Rhode Island. I was going to say Rhode Island of all places, but then remembered that I am a former Rhodey guy…
MassOpenBooks
MassReportCards
MassCityStats
MassHousingRegulations
The Regionalization Clearinghouse
The GIC Cost Estimator (general, Revere, and there are other community estimators – just ask)
So, we were very interested to see that the RI Association of School Committees now puts all their collective bargaining agreements on-line for members — something that could help communities greatly as they negotiate with their local teachers unions. And it comes with model language!
P.s to Glenn Koocher – this sort of information would be super on the Massachusetts Association of School Committees site.
P.s.s. to MA Ed Commissioner Chester – You guys have collected these contracts. When will the public be able to see the contracts on the DESE website?
February 16th, 2010
Dan Willingham’s good piece in the Boston Globe on what makes for effective accountability in our schools chided the lack of detail behind the Obama administration’s Race to the Top criteria seeking to “hold teachers accountable for student scores.”
There are ways of making accountability work. The two key elements are evaluations that take place over long periods of time, to increase stability, and evaluations that are conducted by people who are knowledgeable and are known by teachers to be knowledgeable. Unfortunately, neither element is part of the Obama administration’s plans.
Data is super-important, but how we use it matters. So where does MA stand on the use of data, you might ask. The Data Quality Campaign (DQC) is a national group that promotes “the availability and use of high-quality education data to improve student achievement.” A recent DQC report underscores that Massachusetts does pretty well, thank you. We have many of the elements required for data-driven reform (we score 9 out of 10 on the DQC checklist). For map junkies, the site offers a very nice one showing how MA stacks up to other states.
It shows that MA is missing one element on the DQC list of desirables: the ability to link student achievement and teacher performance – again, as Willingham points out something that cannot simply be put out there but would have to be implemented very carefully to avoid what he calls the “RMV” effect.
It would be interesting to see how MA represented plans for closing this gap on its Race to the Top application. I do hope that Ed Secretary Reville, Commissioner Chester and Board Chair Banta are reaching out to Dr. Willingham.
February 16th, 2010
At the January 26 Board of Education meeting that dealt primarily with the Gloucester charter school mess, Secretary Reville does his best imitation of Gibson in Conspiracy Theory. He notes “a number of attempts to distract us from the focus that we ought to have,” people who “[cloak] themselves in talk about de-politicizing the process,” “the well-worn tools of political assassination, innuendos, and threats of various kinds.” There are those who seek to “diminish the courage” and perseverance he has to do what’s in the best interests of children and to maintain the “integrity of the board.”
It’s bizarre, then, to watch a Republican Senator (Bruce Tarr), a Democratic Representative (Anne-Marie Ferrante), and the Inspector General Gregory Sullivan, who comes without party affiliation, all highlighting egregious errors and politicization of the process by the Secretary and by the Commissioner.
Tarr noted “deep flaws in the process,” a situation that “day by day becomes worse and worse and worse,” with “voluminous information that continues to come forward”. He bemoans the lack of integrity and the black mark this approval puts on what was “the best [charter approval process] in the nation.”
Ferrante notes (here and here) similarly “each time I appear before you… it gets worse and worse and worse,” that being blunt “the findings in the IG’s report are appalling,” “departure from procedure,” a commissioner who “mislead the oversight committee in Gloucester,” “shredding of documents.”
The IG notes (here and here) that the Board voted in support of the Gloucester application because they thought that the state’s Charter School Office (CSO) had recommended it, that the Board voted without knowledge that the CSO had found that the applicant group did not meet the criteria, and that the applicant had failed to meet two of the required criteria categories. He says the Commissioner should not only have disclosed the CSO’s view, but also that he has no authority to recommend a charter not meeting those criteria:
“The Commissioner will not recommend that the board awards charters to applicant groups whose applications do not meet the stated criteria for a charter in the application, as corroborated in the final interview of the applicant group by the charter school office.”
The Secretary did a great job in advancing the ed reform bill – probably the most important reform in education since 1997, when there was a lift in the charter cap and the creation of unionized Horace Mann charter schools. But on this one, they have made a real mess. And it is not partisan politics, as can be seen in the line-up of those providing testimony — an R, a D, and an IG.
If the Secretary is alluding to Pioneer, I’d simply say that we have been worried about the politicization of the Board of Education since day one. We are on record about this. We testified against the Art. 87 changes to create a Secretary position, just as he had in 2003 when then-Gov. Romney proposed something similar.
The messes he is dealing with in Gloucester and, now, in Brockton are his messes. We read about the midnight email the same day everyone else did in the Gloucester Times. The martyrdom thing is wearing thin.
February 3rd, 2010
Pioneer has always taken the view that the state should close failing schools (including charter schools). They should also take corrective action including perhaps closure when schools prove incapable of living up to fiduciary basics like handling money and reporting results honestly.
Some charter supporters have urged us to come out and support shutting Hughes down. Some are worried about the bad PR for charters. I am of a different view. If the facts demonstrate failure (academic or fiduciary), then, yes, by all means close it. But I know enough from all the work we do in Springfield and our other cities that you don’t jump to conclusions from Boston. The Hughes case is way beyond a “misunderstanding.” But will it require closure? Or is remediation (including punishments, firing and reconstitution of the board) possible?
It looks worse and worse for the school, but let’s wait a few more days for all the facts to come out. Jamie Vaznis and the Globe gives the department of ed’s line, and Jack Flynn of the Springfield Republican covers both sides of the story. More information needed.
Two points are worth making:
(1) There is no benefit to the kids in the school for this to happen. But having the story out there carries one benefit to those across the state who care about good schools. Charter schools are accountable, and this stuff comes out and there is action the state can take.
(2) Before the Guv shut the independent accountability office, dozens and dozens of district schools were cited each year for likely cheating to bump up MCAS scores. Did they merit a single news story? Did they get shut down? Were they subject to real corrective action?
You know the answer to that one. That’s worth a story. Perhaps Jamie Vaznis or Jack Flynn will write it some day…
January 25th, 2010
The Lowell Sun reported a week or so back that
Teachers Union President Paul Georges decried what he called “lies” from the Pioneer Institute, a conservative think tank, that linked charter-school funding to the state’s ability to qualify for Race to the Top funds.
“We do not need a bill to qualify for the money,” Georges said. “Massachusetts is in the top tier of two or three states.”
I am sure Mr. Georges is a nice man and is not a liar. That said, I would suggest better reading materials than MTA talking points. Fact is, with states across the country making hard reforms, Massachusetts cannot simply live in the past and expect its crown of laurels to remain in tact.
As we noted to legislators on Monday (here and here), from May onward, the president and the US Secretary of Education have been very clear and very consistent in calling for the lifting of charter caps, whether in June:
“We are fighting this on a state by state battle, that’s the battleground. Places like Rhode Island that are
thinking about under-funding charters are obviously going to put themselves at a huge competitive
disadvantage going forward. So we don’t think that’s a smart thing for them to do, and we’re going to
make that very, very clear.”
Or July:
“States that don’t have charter laws or put artificial caps on the growth of charter schools will jeopardize their applications under the Race to the Top fund,” Duncan told reporters last month. “Simply put, they put themselves at a competitive disadvantage for the largest pool of discretionary dollars states have ever had access to.”
Or December:
“I’ve been overwhelmed by the amount of progress and reform we’ve seen already, before submitting a dime… The amount of progress, the amount of change we’ve already seen — 48 states working on common standards, lots of charter school restrictions going away.
Yes, that’s December 2009. Mr. Georges and Massachusetts will need to wake from their slumber.
December 23rd, 2009
Previous Posts
