AM News: Waivers Loosen Teacher Quality Requirements

NCLB Waivers Less Specific on Teacher Quality EdWeek: For an agency that was so specific about what it wanted to see in the teacher-quality portions of the Race to the Top program, the U.S. Department of Education has put out guidance on how states can seek waivers from elements of the No Child Left Behind Act that's surprisingly general in the TQ arena. 

Ala. immigration law marked by Hispanic school absences USA Today: After a federal judge's decision last week left Alabama's strict immigration law largely intact, hundreds of Hispanic schoolkids absent.

Parent unions gaining popularity NBC: Advocates says parent unions help moms and dads demand more from their school systems. 

Ky. turnaround school reaps double-digit gains EdWeek: The Obama administration’s four school turnaround models under the federal School Improvement Grant program remain controversial, but first year results from at least one high school in Kentucky are promising.

Classes and scores soar with incentives for A.P. tests NYT: The initiative’s success is refueling a debate over whether cash bonuses can coax improved performance from teachers and students and whether paying students for schoolwork diminishes their ability to feel intrinsic pleasure in achievement for its own sake.

House Budget Plan Would Slash Funding for 31 Programs EdWeek: Key formula programs would get huge increases, but big Obama administration priorities—including Race to the Top and i3—would get no money under a new spending plan for fiscal year 2012 released Sept. 29 by the U.S. House of Representatives panel that oversees K-12 funding. 

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N.C. turns its best students into good teachers NYT: The idea is simple: the state pays top academic students to attend a public college, and in return they spend at least four years teaching in a public school.

WY seeks info on No Child Left Behind waivers Houston Chronicle: State education officials were in Washington, DC last week to get more information on the option announced in August. 

Prosecutors seek new charges against O.C. school district chief L.A. Times: Jeffrey Hubbard of Newport-Mesa Unified in Orange County faces two felony counts of misappropriation of funds in his previous role leading Beverly Hills schools and could face more.

Town rallies for school team after theft NPR: A Detroit high school boy's football team had its equipment stolen and its season jeopardized. But through the goodwill of the community and an NFL player, the season will go on. 

Prosecutors seek new charges against O.C. school district chief LAT:  Jeffrey Hubbard of Newport-Mesa Unified in Orange County faces two felony counts of misappropriation of funds in his previous role leading Beverly Hills schools and could face more. 

Comments

[CarolineSF]

Regarding the NBC feature on supposed parents' unions: It's a game of Whack-a-Mole with the clueless puff pieces about Parent Revolution. But for the record, I'll give the backstory here.

Parent Revolution is a billionaire-funded Astroturf (fake grassroots) organization that was founded here in California by and for charter school operators. Its purpose is to empower and enrich charter operators, not parents.

Parent Revolution created the Parent Trigger, a concept through which if 51% of parents at a school (or feeder schools) signed a petition, purportedly the parents could choose one of three models to supposedly "turn around" the school, or just shut the school down. There are many problems with that, but they're another story. Here's the current update.

Parent Revolution deployed a Parent Trigger against a disadvantaged Southern Calif. school, portraying it as parent empowerment. Actually, Parent Revolution pre-selected the turnaround model for the school -- charterizing, naturally -- and pre-selected the charter operator to take over the school -- all before a single parent at the school ever heard of the petition drive. Then it send paid operatives out into the community to collect signatures.

Clearly, this was not parent empowerment.

There was a brouhaha. The national press cheered Parent Revolution and attacked the school, its teachers, its administrators and even its PTA (which consists of parent volunteers). Brouhaha resolved by allowing the pre-selected charter operator to open in a church two blocks from the school rather than taking over the school.

The school year starts, and only a small number of the kids at the targeted public school enroll at the charter. (The NYTimes reports this, though the reporter fails to recognize that that's the real news and buries the lead way down in the story.)

Meanwhile, despite the fawning press, Parent Revolution recognizes that overall this is a PR fiasco.

Now Parent Revolution has switched tactics and announces that it's just vaguely running around the nation helping to organize "parent unions" at schools. It engages vigorously in what it does best, leading the gullible press by the nose, and gets tons of obliging coverage, thus presumably helping convince the funders it's doing something worth continuing to support.

[Bruce]

Caroline's comment raises the issue of what the proper role of parents in supporting a school might be; and taken with Melinda Gates's comments and the record of McKinley Elementary, that question gains focus as, "What should parents do when their school's academic achievement scores, and in particular in the case of a high school, their students' post-secondary success rates are very disappointing?" Should they just redouble their efforts at school support through the PTA or go lobby for more money, or should they, as Mrs. Gates suggests, have frank, less comfortable conversations with their local principal, or as Mr. Austin suggests, put political pressure on the schools by endangering their employees' job security and their local monopoly? Putting indirect pressure on the schools by voting with their feet via school choice is obviously another choice that more and more parents are demanding the right to exercise, and with good reason.

[CarolineSF]

Yes, in theory that sounds great, Bruce, but the big story here is that the parents are NOT voting with their feet. Very few are enrolling their kids in the charter that they were supposedly clamoring for, according to the New York Times.

In general (as I know that you're well aware as a veteran teacher of disadvantaged students), the students' low test scores reflect family poverty, low parental education, limitedEnglish and other challenges that arrive at the school with the student. If that exact same school and faculty were teaching the children of the Palos Verdes peninsula or Santa Monica, it would be a successful school.

Schools that cope with a critical mass of high-need, challenged students become overwhelmed and struggle. Fraudulent so-called "solutions" like the Parent Trigger don't change that and never will (and were not designed to, for that matter -- again, the real intent is to redirect that public money into private pockets).

[Jane]

In theory that sounds great