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Charter Schools Series
• Florida charter schools: big money, little oversight Later this week, stories will cover "how one South Miami firm became the largest, richest and most politically influential charter school company in the state," and how "some charter schools serve a smaller share of poor and black students than nearby traditional public schools." The main story yesterday covered abuses by a number of Florida charter schools who once in place resist any and all controls from the boards that put them in place. The horror stories documented by Herald writers Scott Hiaasen and Kathleen McGrory are many and should sound a warning for other states now rapidly moving into expanding charter schools. In their introduction, the authors wrote:
There obviously are some good and great charter schools out there. We're fortunate to have one just a mile or so down the road from us. But series such as the one in the Miami Herald, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, and others appear to be going unheeded by state legislators and education departments in setting up appropriate oversight of charters, especially for-profit charters. Maybe this series will generate a little traction in voters demanding transparency and responsiveness from for-profit charters. While most of the links in the table above involve the for-profit Imagine Schools, there are many other such organizations with questionable practices and results that should cause folks to pause before rushing to add more such charters. I'm watching to see what happens here in Indiana when the for-profit charters selected by Governor Mitch Daniels and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett for turnarounds begin operation next fall. The wider question of whether we really want to turn over our public schools to private contractors still deserves a better public debate. Walt Gardner wrote about that issue last July in For-Profit Charter Schools. And sadly, many not-for-profit charters get painted with the same brush as disreputable for-profit charters. I ran across a refreshingly open discussion of charters by parents on an Ask MetaFilter discussion, Should we take a chance on a charter school. Odds 'n' Ends If you're already worn out by all the holiday ads and canned Christmas music piped in nearly everywhere, Stephanie Salter's latest, Carols for the worn, weary and wigged out, may give you a grin.
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Poverty and Schools Stephen Krashen somewhat sensibly suggests on the Schools Matter blog that money used for testing might be far more wisely used in providing other services to children in poverty. He was reacting in To pay for improving conditions for children of poverty: Reduce testing to the recent article in The New York Times, Class Matters. Why Won’t We Admit It? The Unaddressed Link Between Poverty and Education by Helen F. Ladd and Edward B. Fiske. The article, based on a recent paper by Ladd, Education and Poverty: Confronting the Evidence (398K PDF document), has caused quite a stir in the education community of late. Diane Ravitch's Scrooge and School Reform on the Bridging Differences blog this week notes that Ladd concludes, "The most productive step for the federal government in the short run would be to eliminate No Child Left Behind." Ravitch adds:
I'm wondering if Diane was thinking of our President and Secretary of Education when she wrote "Scrooge." And while John Kuhn doesn't mention Ladd's paper in his recent guest posting on The Answer Sheet blog, A superintendent calls school reformers' bluff, he follows the same line of reasoning in making a bold challenge to school "reformers:"
YouTube for Schools Google and YouTube have found an answer to allow student and teacher access to YouTube educational content in schools, while filtering out a lot of possibly cool, but distracting other content on YouTube. KQED's Tina Barseghian reports in YouTube Offers All Schools Education-Only Link, Beefs Up K-12 Content that "after two months of piloting the YouTube For Schools program with more than 100 schools across the country, the program is now available to any school that wants to use it. Schools can sign up at youtube.com/schools." Schools that register for the free YouTube for Schools Program will have all clicks to YouTube redirected to youtube.com/education. Barseghian writes, "On this portion of the site, all comments are disabled and the only related videos are those that can be found in the Education portal of the site. The option has been created for parents, teachers, and administrators who fear children will be exposed to inappropriate materials on the site." George Wong reports in YouTube for Schools keeps YouTube educational on übergizmo that the education site has been beefed up to include "videos from over 600 of YouTube's education partners like the Smithsonian, TED, Steve Spangler Science and Numberphile. In addition to limiting access to specific videos, Google has also worked together with teachers to put together over 300 playlists broken out by subject and by grade level." PBS KIDS Video App
Odds 'n' Ends The Miami Herald continues its Cashing in on Kids series on charter schools today with Academica: Florida’s richest charter school management firm. NPR's John O'Connor and Sarah Gonzalez also talked about Florida charters on Morning Edition in Florida Charter Schools Failing Disabled Students. The Trekking the Planet December newsletter is out. If you're unfamiliar with the program, I described it last month.
Tutoring for Homeless Students Alex Campbell had an interesting article in yesterday's Indianapolis Star, School on Wheels program delivers help to kids. Campbell relates how volunteers of the nonprofit, School on Wheels program have provided free, after school tutoring for over 400 homeless children this year in Indy. School on Wheels was launched in 1993 by Agnes Stevens, a retired teacher, in Santa Monica, California. Sally Bindley brought the program to Indianapolis in 2001. There's also a chapter of the organization active in Massachusetts. Race to the Top Early Learning Grant "Winners" Announced Michele McNeil reports in 9 States Win Race to Top Early Learning Grants that California, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Washington will share $500 million in Race to the Top early learning grants. The grants will range from $50 million to $100 million, based on the state's student population. McNeil adds, "Six of the nine state early-learning grantees are repeat Race to the Top winners, so they're only adding to their bounty (and to the long list of obligations and promises they must live up to): Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Ohio, and Rhode Island." Note that's my emphasis added above. Missing the Point Sam Dillon's Failure Rate of Schools Overstated, Study Says on the New York Times roughs up both the President and Secretary of Education about their dire predictions that over 80% of America's schools might be classified as failing schools this year. Dillon does a good job of making his case that President Obama and Secretary Duncan were trying to force Congress into rewriting the No Child Left Behind law and regulations by overstating their case. But Dillon, along with the President and Secretary and much of the "education reform" community continue to miss or ignore the most significant factor in predicting success in school, economic status. It was obvious when No Child Left Behind was passed in 2002 that eventually all schools would become failing schools under the law's 100% proficiency standard. It was also obvious that the law's punitive nature would do little to improve America's schools because it did nothing to address poverty. So while Dillon may get an "A" for justifiably swacking the administration for its hyperbole, he still gets an "F" for not understanding what has to be addressed for school improvement to happen. Mila Koumpilova yesterday related some of the teacher unrest that required scripted teaching has caused in Teachers balk at St. Paul district's "managed instruction" in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. St. Paul's new elementary reading curriculum implemented last year "came with detailed instructions and scripts to follow." Koumpilova begins:
She adds that the district's pacing guides, intended to "ensure teachers stay in step through the school year," enforced uniformity such as, "On October 11, under the literacy guide, all third-graders in the district read the poem 'Fingerprint' and discussed rhyme, rhythm and alliteration." And while some "principals encouraged teachers to mine the daily scripts for helpful ideas but stay responsive to their students' needs," others "felt they had to crack down on teachers who veered from the scripts." Koumpilova does a good job of bringing in pertinent views from all sides of the discussion in St. Paul and about scripted teaching in general. One of the best came from Richard Ingersoll, a nationally recognized expert on teaching at the University of Pennsylvania. Koumpilova related that Ingersoll felt "adopting scripted curriculums and rigid lesson formulas can prop up novice and struggling teachers. But it also demoralizes and drives out a district's most creative educators." My first brush with scripted teaching came in the 70s when the AAS Science program was rewritten into SAPA II, providing scripts for elementary teachers teaching the discovery science curriculum. Many elementary teachers, often weak in science background, felt swamped by the content of the original program, but welcomed the guided instruction in the rewrite. And some of us who thrived on the original program saw the rewrite as watered down and constraining! But using the script and the pacing of the instruction were always our choice. I found peace with the program by combining the new scripted lessons with the original AAS Science, using the scripts where helpful, and going on my own where I could do a better job without the script. I guess I was fortunate way back then to have had one of those principals who "encouraged teachers to mine the daily scripts for helpful ideas but stay responsive to their students' needs." Having more recently substitute taught in schools with required pacing guides and scripted lessons, I found many wonderfully effective, veteran teachers counting the days until retirement. In one of my last regular education teaching assignments, I found myself doing four 90 minute "shows" daily of science and/or social studies in a sixth grade departmentalized approach. It certainly wasn't my dream assignment, but when you have lemons, you make lemonaide. The science/social studies period quickly became the favorite part of the day for many of our sixth graders. During those years, some of my buddies who taught in the high school frequently complained over a brew after school about the kids' lack of knowledge of the world and the world's countries. Since I was allowed a good bit of latitude in curriculum in those days, I began having map races at the beginning of each period devoted to social studies. We started within our curriculum with map races covering the countries of Latin America and the provinces and territories of Canada. The kids would line up in two rows, waiting for the cue, "On your mark. Get Set. Colombia." The first two in line would race just a few feet to our pull down map, trying to be first to touch the country and earn a reward of a single M&M (or peanut, or...). Every student got at least one or two chances to race each period. Some days when the boss wasn't around and I had a big bag of candy, the races would get quite noisy and extend well past the ten minute time limit I'd mentally set for the activity. Fluff? I don't think so. The map races turned out to be a smashing success. Our kids pored over maps in their free time, memorizing the locations first of the places we studied, but later expanding to other continents and eventually to a world map. We almost destroyed our pull-down map roll, and one guy scared me to death when he smashed into the chalkboard behind the map roll. He was okay, but we added a bit of caution to the drill thereafter and also cut down the distance from the line to the map. And the point here, other than my pleasant trip down memory lane of a learning activity that worked, is that the map races would never have happened in a teaching environment with strictly enforced pacing guides and scripted teaching. Odds 'n' Ends Kathleen McGrory and Scott Hiaasen wind up their Cashing in on Kids series on Florida's charter schools today with two more excellent articles. They explore the uneven playing field enjoyed by Florida's charters who take far less special needs and poor students that Florida's regular public schools do.
If your blood pressure can take it, you might want to look at the two pieces linked below. The first from the Atlantic shills for privatization of America's public schools. The second, rather ridiculous posting in a row by Jay Mathews actually produced some good discussion in its comments section.
Sadly, I think Jay Mathews has given into posting some really inaccurate views to incite comments to pump up sagging statistics on his blog. Heading into the weekend, here are a few more rational education related articles:
Have a great weekend!
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