"Many charter operators are rebelling against a provision in the initiative that requires them to give enrollment preference to students within each school's attendance boundaries." (Policy skirmishing puts LAUSD reform at risk LA Times)
You all know how embarrassingly over-enthusiastic I am about reformy "outside" types taking the leap (putting their money where their mouths are?) and getting some real-world experience in government work. So you can imagine how glad I am to hear that outspoken reformer Alex Johnston, CEO of ConnCAN, is joining the school board in New Haven, Connecticut (Reformer Moves Inside).
I still don't buy that there's any big wave of national alignment going on in New Haven, and it's way too early for any talk about a national model, but clearly some interesting things are happening there. Congrats to all. Via Whitney Tilson. For a taste of how Johnston thinks, check out his recent blog post about accountability and innovation here.
I'm as happy as anyone else that things seemed to have worked out amicably in New Haven, but I'm not buying the notion (being sold by Duncan and AFT to the national press) that the outcome reflects some brave new era of union-management cooperation:
Obama Wins a Battle as a Teachers' Union Shows Flexibility WSJ
In New Haven, all sides agreed on the new contract after
months of closed-door negotiations.
Teachers' unions uneasy with Obama Politico
Both the unions and Duncan are pointing to a contract vote in New
Haven, Conn., this week where a local teachers union agreed to stricter
job evaluations and new rules that lift protections for weaker teachers
as an example of the new flexibility on the part of unions.
Just look at what happened to Terry Grier in San Diego for a reminder of where things stand in most districts around the country.
"Rhee seems irked that policymakers see Washington as the laboratory
of the education-reform agenda. 'That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever
heard,' she said, at the same spring meeting at which she bemoaned the
lack of proper sockets. What matters is Washington’s kids, not a
national agenda, she insisted.In fact, both are at stake."
D.C.’s Braveheart EdNext (June Krumholz)
PS: You can also check out Rhee's short new bob here. We won't tell.
This is a great story even though, like many other charters, there are the nagging issues of self-selection of students and families, small size, replicability, cost.
"Ginn, who has never taken a college class, was a coach and full-time high school security guard in 2006 when he proposed to the Cleveland Metropolitan School District an academy based on his brand of mentoring."
I felt bad about turning off Ken Burns' National Park documentary and missing Mad Men, but I'd scored a copy of "Brick City" -- thanks, Sundance Channel! -- a new documentary about efforts to turn around Newark, New Jersey, site of some of the nation's worst riots 40 years ago.
What the documentary also shows is what makes Corey Booker, mayor of Newark, a little bit different. He goes where few dare to go -- not Obama, not Clinton (in his day). He talks about love. He talks about weeping. Wonky and awkward as the guy is, it's hard not to be moved by his resilience and optimism. There are also some great school scenes -- a principal and AP working hard to make their school safe, a former gangbanger starting a support group for teenage girls.
It took me a while to get into last week's PBS NOW documentary The Principal Story about two Illinois principals, partly because I'm a hard-hearted jerk and partly because the early scenes are slow and feel a little propagandistic. I knew that the project had involved AASA and other education groups like that, and for a while I felt like I was watching the principals' version of "Stand and Deliver" or "Freedom Writers." It didn't help that the show got so little by way of reaction or commentary from other education blogs that I read.
Well I still have some questions but over all the intensity of the situations and the eloquence and heart of the school leaders are tremendously powerful and I am glad I finally turned it on. What to do with the incompetent teacher in a real-life situation? How to rally your staff without pissing them off or making them cave under the weight of expectations? What to do about the tragedies that befall some of the students? It's not so easy as it may seem from outside.
The documentary is beautifully filmed and scored -- even the visually mundane scenes of the principals going to or from work are poignant. And it's not an obvious attack (or defense) of any particular policies or programs (though there is a great riff on "walkthroughs" near the end). That's why no one's blogging about it -- it doesn't support any simplistic agenda. If you haven't watched it, you can do so online now. If you have, I hope you liked it as much as I did and will share a favorite moment or two.
This documentary about the effort to fix Newark, NJ is going to be as good or better than anything we've seen about urban education in a long time, based on this review in Salon. The quote that got me was this one:
"When you say a kid doesn't want to learn, that's like saying a moth doesn't want to be a butterfly," says Principal Baraka of the challenges of teaching kids with so much turmoil in their lives. "Kids learn every single day. We learn every single day. The question is, what do we learn?"
It starts tonight at 10pm Eastern: Sundance Channel.
Much has been said about the effects of turnarounds on students and communities, but less so on their effects on rookie teachers and relatively inexperienced administrators who are often brought in to do their best. In part one of his four-part series (Change comes to Webb/Wheatley), freelancer Dan Charles focuses in some of the folks who were brought in to turn around one NE DC elementary school called Webb/Wheatley, including a principal who comes to the school from another, much more advantaged situation. Check it out. I think you'll find it's worth the time.
In the second part (A tale of two teachers), Charles focuses on how hard it still is to find experienced teachers who are willing to come help with a struggling school. In the third, Charles explores the tensions between traditional discipline and a kinder, gentler kind of discipline (The great behavior challenge). The last section (Is it working?) discusses what's changed -- and what hasn't -- by the end of the year.
Well known to many others and already featured in at least one major magazine, the blog called Sweet Juniper reads and looks like an episode of The Wire, full of modern ruins and tales of poverty, corruption, and inattention.
As with Jesse Katz and Kate Boo and just a very few others, it's an example of how I want my narrative writing to read: curious, observant, humble.
Click the picture to get the full effect. Thanks so much to Siobhan M. for showing it to me.
Out-of-school suspensions in Chicago outpaced those in the 10 biggest school districts in the nation, according to a new report from Catalyst Chicago (here).
But that's not all.
Nearly one in four black male students in Chicago Public Schools was suspended at least once last year, a rate that is twice as high as the district average.
Disclosure: Catalyst is one of the sponsors of my Chicago education blog, District 299.
Wow. What a fun but pointless distraction this may all have turned out to be. Two years ago, New York City launched its controversial cash for grades program under Roland Fryer, exposing many adults' deeply-felt ambivalence about the challenges of learning and the role extrinsic rewards. Last year, Chicago and the District of Columbia followed suit. But now the New York City experiment is apparently over and Chicago is pulling the plug for next year for lack of private cash, according to a long news report (CPS cash-for-good-grades project likely done ABC7). The segment also notes that DC says it's planning to go ahead with the second year. It doesn't feel to me like the issue is at all settled, but that won't stop the torrent of "I told you so." [Click below for previous posts about Fryer and incentives.]
Continue reading "REFORM: The Rise And Fall Of Cash For Grades" »
God forbid that all you cubicle jockeys and ivory tower types should ever hear about what's going on inside a real school district:
NLRB Declares Civitas Teachers Private Employees
The most under-reported story of the week, IMHO.
CORE "Twitters" Delegates' Meeting
Splinter group uses hipster technology to reveal inner workings of union hall meeting.
SAT 10 Summer Scare Scenario
Chicago decides to use this year or last year's test scores -- whichever is better -- to decide who goes on to the next grade.
Carnage At Catalyst Charter School
Things are getting wacky at another Chicago charter.
I was surprised to read at Progress Illinois that the Chicago Public Schools are staying
so far out of the debate over recognizing charter school teachers at three
CICS charter schools (An Update On The Charter School Union Drive).
Lawmakers who sent a letter to CPS chief ROn Huberman also noted the Board's
strange silence on the issue. (WBEZ's Linda Lutton has the letter here.)
I would have thought that districts like Chicago and New York would have actively and openly opposed charter unionization, since they've been trying to create more charters and contract schools under Ren10 and haven't generally been pro-union. Especially in Chicago, where the teachers union is so weak. Maybe they're fighting the unionization efforts behind the scenes, maybe they just haven't been asked about their position on the issue, or maybe there's some angle I haven't thought of yet. Ideas?
The recent announcement that scads of Chicago schools were going year-round sounded like a really good thing (Tribune: More Chicago schools adopt year-round schedule). Then it turned out that the schedule change (called Track E) doesn't actually create more instructional hours or days for kids, it just spread them out more evently during the year. Chicago's anemic 170-day schedule remains. And the vast majority of schools making the change -- voluntarily, Chicago says -- just happen to be located in Chicago's impoverished South and West sides.
“They appear like smiling liberals, but they are all a bunch of condescending bigots...It may be a different day, but the people in the doorway now are those we thought were our friends.”
Sharpton: ‘all a bunch of condescending bigots’
Washington Examiner
Here are some interesting thoughts from Margaret Paynich, a long-standing contributor to this blog, about Jay Mathews' KIPP book:
Once again, Chicago public schools are not even among the five finalists for the annual Broad Foundation prize for urban school districts. Same as it ever was. Why should you care? The guy who didn't race Chicago to the top of the Broad finals -- but who was hyped as a big education leader -- is now your (our?) Secretary of Education, influencing schools everywhere. Click below to see the press release and list of the five who did make the list.
Continue reading "URBAN: Chicago Schools Still Not On Broad List" »
Is it 27, 28, or 29?
There are so many kids being killed in Chicago this school year -- a record high despite lots of bloodshed in the past -- that they can't seem to keep track.
Ditto for the number of kids who've been shot. One estimate has it that over 500 kids during the past 18 months. Another says it's double that.
What no one disagrees about is that few of the incidents are happening in schools or during school hours.
Amidst the carnage, no one knows whether to address -- and report -- this through the schools or through law enforcement, or both.
In the past, I've argued that kids killed out of school are kids, not students. At this point, I'm not sure it matters.
Teen is 29th CPS student killed this school year Sun Times
CPS: Actually, 27 kids were killed this school year Sun Times
While everyone else in the reformy world seems to be tacking left in order to suck up to the traditional Democratic power structure (jobs for everyone!), here again Michelle Rhee shows that she's the real deal in terms of touting independent, sensible (and politically unwise) ideas:
“I don’t think vouchers are going to solve all the ills of public education, but parents who are zoned to schools that are failing kids should have options to do better by their kids.”
Look for reformy types to continue distancing themselves from her in the months ahead. As quoted in the NY Times: Democrats Limit Future Financing for Washington Voucher Program
Surprising almost no one, Paul Vallas has now announced his intention to leave NOLA at the end of the school year to return to Chicago and run for Cook County Board President (a very powerful post).
As I mentioned yesterday, there seem to be very few openly gay school superintendents in America. The only other example I can find besides Chicago's Ron Huberman is Portland's Carole Smith, whose sexual orientation was first covered publicly in 2007. Then as now, readers are divided about whether sexual orientation is newsworthy or should be kept private. Most readers on my Chicago blog seem opposed to any discussion of the topic. Some readers expressed the same feelings in Portland (here).
A profile in the Chicago Sun Times over the weekend (The mayor's man) notes that newly-appointed Chicago schools chief Ron Huberman, 37, is gay, making Chicago the only major city in the nation (that I know of) with an openly gay superintendent. Huberman came out to his parents during high school and has a live-in partner, according to the article. Earlier this year, educators proposed a LBGT-themed high school but withdrew the plan under pressure from social conservatives. No word yet on Huberman's intentions on that front.
The smalltown stink of Chicago politics never goes away, I guess. Having failed to get Mayor Daley's approval for his own pick for successor -- a long-serving African-American educator who served as his chief academic officer -- newly minted Obama EdSec Arne Duncan nonetheless showed up dutifully at the Tuesday press conference where Mayor Daley announced his pick for Chicago schools CEO, the 37 year-old son of Israeli immigrants who's been bouncing around city government for the last few years wherever Daley needs him.
At the event -- attended by no other officials or community leaders besides the three principals -- Duncan dutifully hailed the Mayor's choice (Ron Huberman) as a great pick who would do a great job. (See coverage here.)
It's not so objectionable to me that Huberman is the third white guy in a row to head a school system that is overwhelmingly black and Latino. It's not that a non-educator can't run a big city school system. It's not even that Duncan's pick -- Barbara Eason-Watkins -- would necessarily have done a better job. Rather, it's the absence of any kind of national search that might bring in a new energy and thinking for CPS, and -- perhaps most of all -- Duncan's decision to support a decision he clearly disagrees with. Come on, man. Stand up.
"Proving that fiery rhetoric about education reform might be more
popular with parents than actual change in their children's classrooms,
local schools leader Michelle Rhee -- the embodiment of this movement
-- was tepidly received," writes Dana Goldstein (TAPPED). "When Rhee said, "There are a lot of people who
benefit from our system being dysfunctional," a few voices raised in
the crowd, booing. "That's not true!" a woman shouted."
Kudos to Catalyst Chicago* education magazine for plugging away at claims made by the Duncan administration, including this week's update (Decoding the district's progress report) on several issues, including shady attendance reporting practices that give some schools attendance rates for the first day of school of over 100 percent.
It should be noted that Chicago isn't the only urban district whose attendance reporting practices are suspect. I recently learned that the software many districts and schools use is often set to assume 100 percent attendance unless the teacher or school reports children missing. Forget to take attendance that day? It looks like everyone was there. No data? 100 percent.
Meanwhile: Bush praises Obama Ed. nominee
*Disclosure: Catalyst sponsors District 299, my Chicago schools blog.
As predicted, Geoff Canada was on the Colbert Report earlier this week, talking about the Harlem Children's Zone:
Canada Does Colbert Paul Tough
Who's next? Randi Weingarten would be fun. Or Arne Duncan.
Business executives started the trend of forgoing some of their pay. Then university administrators joined in, according to this article (More School Presidents Forgo Some Pay). How soon until some of the highly-paid district superintendents start offering to return some of their pay and bonuses? No one's sure. One of the most obvious candidates -- LA's embattled David Brewer -- not only wants to keep his $300K salary but he wants the board to buy him out if they terminate his contract early.
SF Weekly blogger Benjamin Wachs live-blogged Mayor Gavin Newsom's "state of the city" marathon, including a segment on education. It sounds like it's quite a doozy:
"Today's State-of-the-Citysode is of generally higher quality than the last. It's about 10 minutes shorter, nobody accidentally walks into the shot, there are fewer attempts at changing camera angle (though the one is REALLY bad), Gavin's bizarre Southern accent doesn't emerge, and subjectively it feels like a much less brutal assault on your senses by a man who's determined to show you how much he knows about those laws he passed."
Click here for the full analysis as well as the video of the speech itself:
It's hard to say anything new about DC's Michelle Rhee, and folks are going to have a field day with the TIME cover picture of Rhee using (on?) a broom (Can She Save Our Schools?).
But there there are in fact some things worth noting in this profile, including several lively anecdotes, the increasing involvement of Randi Weingarten in the DC negotiations, and Rhee's questions about Obama. And there are some great flame-thrower quotes from Rhee, of course:
"The thing that kills me about education is that it's so touchy-feely. People say, 'Well, you know, test scores don't take into account creativity and the love of learning.' I'm like, 'You know what? I don't give a crap.' Don't get me wrong. Creativity is good and whatever. But if the children don't know how to read, I don't care how creative you are. You're not doing your job."
Given how many charter school programs resemble inner-city Catholic schools, Patrick McCloskey's new book The Street Stops Here makes for particularly timely reading.
From Publishers Weekly: "Students feud, teachers jockey for power, and administrative control must be maintained at all costs. Powerful, eloquent, candid, McCloskey's account should be required reading for those who seek to remedy the academic woes of our troubled urban schools."
I had a chance to talk on the phone to McCloskey the other day about his book, the all-boys Catholic school in New York that he wrote about, and the potentially confusing fact that there's a movie by the same name coming out also. McCloskey is a Columbia J-School graduate and has written for EdWeek and The New York Times.
“Asking teenagers whether they’re popular is like asking them if they’re having sex.”
Roland Fryer in How Barack Obama's Election Can Change the Myth of 'Acting White' New York Mag
“America doesn’t have a school problem. “It has a summer-vacation problem.”
Malcolm Gladwell in Why Malcolm Gladwell Believes We Have Little Control Over Our Own Success (New York Magazine). Elsewhere in the article, he talks about how birthday cutoffs affect youth sports and academic achievement.
"Until crew’s dismissal this year, there were signs that the 15-year trend in abbreviated urban superintendent terms might be changing. After all, Beverly Hall has presided over Atlanta public schools for nine years. In Texas, Pascal Forgione, Jr., has announced he will retire in 2009 after 10 years as superintendent of Austin schools. Jerry Weast, superintendent of Montgomery County (MD) Public Schools, which has the third-highest graduation rate in the country, was first appointed in 1999." (Crew's Blues
Scholastic Administrator)
There was lots of political intrigue swirling around last night's Brooklyn Charter Night -- mayoral control, term limits, charter school caps, and all the rest -- but this step performance by the middle schoolers from Achievement First Crown Heights rocked the jam-packed auditorium at the Brooklyn Museum and might well have been the highlight. Check it out.
Despite all that's been written about Michelle Rhee in recent months, there's still much to like about this month's Atlantic magazine profile (The Lightning Rod).
For example, writer Clay Risen does an excellent job of describing Michelle Rhee's demeanor and technocratic outlook on school reform. His piece raises concerns about economic displacement that have sometimes been left out of the DC reform story. He does a good job placing Rhee squarely among those not focused on external factors like poverty and crime. And he notes that there are complicated politics still lying in the way of Rhee's success. All strong elements, executed with greater style and insight than anything I could have done.
However, there are a number of other things about the piece that are concerning -- whether you support Rhee's efforts or not. The piece leaves out how Rhee seems to have backed the teachers union into a corner from which it can only fight. It leaves out the reality that many, many nontraditional superintendents have been brought into urban districts on white horses, only to fall prey to complicated politics. It underplays just how much more confrontational Rhee's approach is than the previous half-generation of reformers with which Rhee is associated.
Right or wrong, my feeling is that Rhee has at times been unnecessarily confrontational in public, that her tenure has yet to distinguish itself from previous efforts in other big cities, and that the media has by and large swooned for the past year plus.
Previous posts: Hyping Michelle Rhee, Not Your Average Profile, A Contrast In Tactics.
The main thing that I got out of re-watching Season One of The Wire this weekend is the incredible sense of frustration that comes from working in a dysfunctional bureaucracy. Perhaps that's why the show resonates so much with education types. It could just as well be any big-city school system as the Baltimore Police Department.
The bureaucracy has warped and flattened most everyone it comes into contact with -- not that individuals are treated as particularly perfect, either. Even the most determined and altruistic characters on the show are marred by vanity and short-sightedness.
If you haven't seen it yet, give it a try.
Previous Posts (includes some spoilers): From Cop To Writer To Geography Teacher,Is It Just Poverty Porn?, A Real-Life Success Story From The Wire, What To Say About "The Wire"?, Fictional Baltimore Mayor Declares Victory On Education.
There's an interesting contrast between what's going on in NYC these days and what's going on in the District of Columbia:
After a long and difficult battle in the state legislature (which they lost), school officials have come up with a compromise plan to use teacher performance data for non-tenure, non-pay related purposes like instructional improvement (Evaluating Teachers In New York City NPR).
Meanwhile, in DC, having failed to persuade the teachers union to move on a proposed two-tier contract plan Chancellor Rhee is stepping things up with a plan to get rid of ineffective teachers that doesn't require a new contract (D.C. Set to Impose Teacher-Dismissal Plan EdWeek).
Sometimes accountability hawks are a little too hawkish, say a couple of observers whose opinions I respect, and fail to take into account the hearts and minds of teachers and the art of compromise.
Looking back at Kate Boo's January 2007 story about school reform in Denver, I see there's still much to admire and learn from. It's partly the story of whether Norberto and Julissa will survive the
closing of Manual, the failed Gates effort, and partly the education of new superintendent
Bennet.
What makes the story so readable are the great scenes that are sprinkled throughout the story: students confronting Bennet about closing the school, Bennet visiting Manual and geting pulled into a church service. Visits to kids' homes -- "repo men" -- to get them back into school. The complicated and fragile home and work lives of teens from poor families. The kids getting lost and scared when they leave their neighborhood. The kids getting locked out from the guidance counselor room, and pushed aside at their prom.
You can find a copy here: Covering Education.
"Rubber rooms" apparently aren't just for teachers. A controversial former NYC principal -- product of the DOE's much-touted Leadership Academy --has now been assigned to supervise the district's rubber room in Staten Island. Jolanta Rohloff, the notorious former principal of Lafayette High School, is apparently creating just as much havoc in her new assignment as in her old -- just not around kids. Read here to get a taste of her work. The DOE points out that Rohloff has not been accused of any impropriety and is there in a supervisory position.
Is this back to school speech inspiring, or creepy, or -- none of the above?
A couple of folks have sent it to me.
Pretty brave of the folks at DISD to put a kid in front of everyone.
Note to self: Must ask Kent Fischer how the school year is going down there.
Of course, he's already on it.
I guess I'm the only one who thought it was a little JonBenet.
It used to be that outside education organizations like New Leaders, TFA and The New Teacher Project had to beg districts to let them in. Now it's the districts that are doing the begging.
This according to Amanda Millner-Fairbanks' new Administrator article about the "outsourced" district. The Outsourced Districtcame to seek outside help like that of its sister district, Memphis -- and how the "new" outsourcing differs from old-school kind (transpo, food, payroll).
Forget those randy Interior Department folks in Denver. There's a rumored sex scandal that was going on in Miami between the incoming superintendent (Crew's replacement) and a former Miami Herald education reporter who's now at the Boston Globe (Carvalho claims 'relationship' e-mails were doctored).
From the Miami Herald: "Just a day after he was selected to lead Miami-Dade public schools, Alberto Carvalho said he was the target of a ''smear campaign'' suggesting he had an improper relationship with a former Miami Herald education reporter and that he tried to undermine outgoing superintendent Rudy Crew."
Thanks to PBGT for the heads up.
Profiled in 2007, 14 year-old Bukhari Washington (pictured, left) was determined to break the cycle of poverty and bad luck that had held his family down, no matter what.
A spot at a new Cristo Rey school in Newark was supposed to be his ticket out (Newark Teenagers Embrace Lessons in Perseverance). A year later, he is dead. Shot accidentally with a neighbor's gun.
Read all about it here.
Reverend Meeks and the other lawmakers and activists who are sending Chicago students to register at suburban schools are having a field day in the press -- and pushing for a $120M pilot initiative for Chicago schools.
From the Huffington Post Chicago, here's my take from a couple of weeks ago about the protest that's going down in Chicago right now.
"Meeks has combined the simplicity of the Little Village Mother's Day hunger strike by parents who wanted -- and finally got -- the new high school that had been promised to them with the irreverent, pointed quality of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a made-up religion created to protest the teaching of creationism in public schools. Not coincidently, Meeks is also reminding us of the days before Brown. Vs. Board Of Education."
Geoffrey Canada and his administrative team did a lot of things right
in setting up a new cluster of schools called the Harlem Children's
Zone, according to Paul Tough's
new book, Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America. But the New York Times Magazine writer
also shows that the Harlem Children's Zone team made a lot of
mistakes.
The book chronicles the effort to grow and expand a set of education programs, focusing on a four-year period (2003-2007) of expansion. Focusing on one part of Harlem, Canada and his team of administrators set up a linked set of programs that started young with a program called Baby College and eventually went up through middle school. They focused on concrete measures of academic achievement, and expanded after school and weekend programs to make sure that this particularly disadvantaged student population was getting everything they needed. They avoided creaming only the best kids for into the programs, largely resisted the urge to focus only on the bubble kids, and opted against counseling out those who were being disruptive or unsuccessful.
In these regards, the Harlem Children's Zone was successful –
especially so considering that Canada, a non-educator, was new to opening schools and was doing so in a complicated charter school
environment. But there are a handful of key mistakes that
Canada and his team make, which ultimately lead [SPOILER ALERT] to the failure of the middle school
program. And there are at least two big things missing from Tough's tale.
Get ahead on this weekend's reading -- you're going to need extra time -- with the early release of Paul Tough's latest piece in the New York Times Magazine, called A Teachable Moment. As you'll see, there's more Pastorek and a little less Vallas than you might expect. There's some of the newfangled talk about portfolios. And the signature Tough ruminations on poverty, education, and society. I need to read it more carefully before I weigh in -- let me know what you think.
UPDATE: Slow news month plus start of school = lots of education stuff. There's also a new Harper's article on the test prep industry that's out -- subscription only: Tyranny of the test.
UPDATE 2: Jeff Chu has a profile of Michelle Rhee in the new Fast Company.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in This Week In Education are strictly those of the author and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Scholastic, Inc.
