[ECP] K12 Newsletters News and Headlines
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- Date: Wed, 19 May 2010 17:06:57 -0500
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[ECP] Educational CyberPlayGround K-12 Newsletter
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Greetings,
Happy Reading for today.
<Karen>
1) Pay for performance
In a randomized experiment, Harvard economist Roland Fryer paid students in
Dallas, Chicago, the District of Columbia, and New York City for various
positive behaviors, TIME magazine reports. Each city had its own model of
incentives, and results were widely divergent. In New York City, the $1.5
million paid to 8,320 kids for good test scores did not work in any way that is
easy to measure. Under Chicago's model, the kids who earned money for grades
attended class more often and got better grades, but fared no better on
year-end standardized tests. In Washington, kids improved on standardized
reading tests and showed modest gains from routine payment for small
accomplishments like attendance and behavior. But in Dallas, paying
second-graders to read books significantly boosted reading-comprehension scores
on standardized tests, and the gains persisted even after rewards had stopped.
"These are substantial effects, as large as many other interventions that
people have thought to be successful," says Brian Jacob, a professor of public
policy and economics at University of Michigan who has studied incentives. If
incentives are designed wisely, TIME writes, it appears that payments "can
indeed boost kids' performance as much as or more than many other reforms
you've heard about before -- and for a fraction of the cost."
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1978589,00.html#ixzz0l67QcNSK
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/09/AR2010040905180.html
2) The Digest of Education Statistics, 2009, is the 45th in a series of
publications initiated in 1962. Its primary purpose is to provide a compilation
of statistical information covering the broad field of American education --
from pre-kindergarten through graduate school -- drawn from government and
private sources, but especially from surveys and other activities led by
NCES.The digest contains data on the number of schools, students, and teachers,
as well as statistics on educational attainment, finances, libraries,
technology, and international comparisons.
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Teachers/
3) America's lost boys
A new study from the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry argues that the
conditions that contribute to a high representation of African American males
among incarcerated youth (60 percent) begin early in life, and are often
exacerbated by experiences in school. The report projects that by 2029, prisons
will house almost 30,000 of the 600,000 African American four-year-olds now
living in the country. According to study author Oscar Barbarin, African
American males come to school with fewer skills than their Caucasian or female
counterparts at this age, who generally have better developed language,
literacy, and self-regulation. Boys' limitations are often not properly
recognized or addressed as they progress though school, and this is can be
compounded by behavioral issues, as well as by racial segregation within
schools. Barbarin agrees that programs such as Head Start, Boys and Girls
Clubs, and state-funded early childhood programs have tried to address these
issues. However, Barbarin feels that the principle of the "three Xs" --
"Expose, Explain, Expand" -- can go a long way toward engaging children and
encouraging pride by way of a caring, responsible, and ethical philosophy.
Barbarin writes, "Once the juveniles enter the justice system, the repeat
offender rate is sixty percent. This research calls for optimism in spite of a
vicious downward cycle experienced by many young males, which marginalizes them
at school, at work, at home, and in their communities."
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Literacy/ see statistics
4) Leading Scholar's U-Turn on School Reform Shakes Up Debate
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/education/03ravitch.html
Diane Ravitch, the education historian who built her intellectual reputation
battling progressive educators and served in the first Bush administration's
Education Department, is in the final stages
of an astonishing, slow-motion about-face on almost every stand she once took
on American schooling.
Once outspoken about the power of standardized testing, charter schools and
free markets to improve schools, Dr. Ravitch is now caustically critical. She
underwent an intellectual crisis, she
says, discovering that these strategies, which she now calls faddish trends,
were undermining public education. She resigned last year from the boards of
two conservative research groups.
"School reform today is like a freight train, and I'm out on the tracks saying,
'You're going the wrong way!' " Dr. Ravitch said in an interview.
"Accountability, as written into federal law, was not raising standards but
dumbing down the schools," she writes. "The effort to upend American public
education and replace it with something that was market-based began to feel too
radical for me." But Dr. Ravitch is finding many supporters. She told school
superintendents at a convention in Phoenix last month that the United States'
educational policies were ill-conceived, compared with those in nations with
the best-performing schools.
"Nations like Finland and Japan seek out the best college graduates for
teaching positions, prepare them well, pay them well and treat them with
respect," she said. "They make sure that all their
students study the arts, history, literature, geography, civics, foreign
languages, the sciences and other subjects. They do this because this is the
way to ensure good education. We're on the wrong
track."
The superintendents gave Dr. Ravitch a standing ovation. "We totally agreed
with what she had to say," said Eugene G. White, superintendent of the
Indianapolis Public Schools. "We were amazed to see that she'd changed her
tune."
5) Idaho ditches state standardized assessments
Because of their cost, Idaho will not administer the Direct Writing Assessment
or the Direct Math Assessment in the 2010-11 school year, per Superintendent of
Public Instruction Tom Luna.
6) NSTA: New Science Teacher Academy
The NSTA New Science Teacher Academy Foundation is a professional development
initiative created to promote quality science teaching, enhance teacher
confidence and classroom excellence, and improve teacher content knowledge.
Maximum award: program expenses. Eligibility: middle or high school science
teachers entering their second or third year of teaching, working a schedule
with 51 percent of their classes in science. Deadline: May 30, 2010.
http://www.nsta.org/academy/
7) MetLife Foundation: Partners in Arts Education Program
The MetLife Foundation Partners in Arts Education Program enhances arts
learning in K-12 public schools by supporting exemplary community school/public
school partnerships that serve large numbers of public school students during
the school day; exemplify best practices in creating and sustaining effective
partnerships; provide pedagogically sound arts education experiences;
prioritize student learning and achievement; and address national, state,
and/or local arts education standards. Maximum award: $20,000. Eligibility:
organizations that are full members in good standing of the National Guild of
Community Schools of the Arts. Non-member organizations should submit a
membership application and first-year dues payments at least one week prior to
submitting an application. Must be located in certain cities -- see application
guidelines. Deadline: May 26, 2010.
http://www.nationalguild.org/programs/partners.htm
8) Zinn on Zinn
On January 19, historian and activist Howard Zinn gave his final radio
interview, which Rethinking Schools has published in its entirety. In the
question-and-answer session, Zinn relates that his experiences as the child of
immigrants, combined with a great deal of reading, pushed him in an "activist
direction." He also developed a consciousness that the country is divided into
rich people and a lot of other people, the vast majority of whom struggle to
get by. Many are rendered invisible by poverty and immigrant status. Yet even
in our founding documents, Zinn said, we pretend these disparities don't exist:
"The preamble of the Constitution begins with the words 'We, the people of the
United States...,' as if all of the people established the Constitution. But
that wasn't true because we were a class-divided country before, during, and
after the revolution. The Constitution was not adopted by 'we, the people.' It
was adopted by 55 rich white men who met in Philadelphia in 1787." Zinn's
advice for prospective history teachers is to not be intimidated by "what they
say you must teach... You have to play a kind of guerilla warfare with the
establishment in which you try not to be fired."
http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/24_03/24_03_zinninterview.shtml
9) Evaluating the evaluators
Although the Race to the Top competition was presented as objective and
scientific, based on precise numerical scores, examination by the Economic
Policy Institute suggests that the selection of Delaware and Tennessee as
winners was subjective and arbitrary, more a matter of bias or chance than a
result of these states' superior compliance with reform policies. In the view
of institute analysts, the Department of Education (ED) should have made
allowances in its 500-point system for significant errors in judging, "but
publishing such margins of error would have made it plain that the winning
states won only by chance." Such judging errors were compounded by the
"needless complexity" of the design of the metrics themselves -- ED could have
accomplished an almost identical result with a much simpler system, for
example, one with only 70 points. Some states that lost in March are
reapplying, again investing time and expense to redo their applications.
Experts in these states are likely to spend hours studying the review process
to exploit the quirks of the rating system. "Such gaming is unlikely to reflect
an actual improvement in the education policies of applicant states," the
authors note.
http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/BP263/
10) Rubber room gets the axe
Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the New York City teachers' union have agreed to
scrap the notorious "rubber rooms" for teachers accused of wrongdoing or
incompetence, and to speed up hearings for them, The New York Times reports.
Under the agreement, teachers the city is trying to fire will no longer be sent
to reassignment centers where they show up every school day, sometimes for
years, doing no work and drawing full salaries. Instead, these teachers will be
assigned to administrative work or non-classroom duties in their schools while
their cases are pending. The centers have been a source of embarrassment for
both the Bloomberg administration and the United Federation of Teachers, as
articles in newspapers and magazines detailed teachers running businesses out
of them or dozing off for hours on end. The agreement would also shorten the
time it takes for cases to be resolved by allowing more arbitrators to be hired
-- 39, up from 23 -- and requiring them to decide cases more quickly. While the
agreement speeds hearings, it does little to change the lengthy process of
firing teachers, particularly ineffective ones. Administrators still must spend
months documenting poor performance before the department can begin hearings,
which will still last up to two months.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/16/nyregion/16rubber.html?scp=1&sq=Rubber%20Room&st=cse
11) High teacher pay no guarantee of anything, really
A Chicago Sun-Times analysis has found a wide disparity between teacher pay and
student achievement throughout Illinois.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/2172972,CST-NWS-teachers19.article
12) Samsung Techwin America: High School Essay Contest
Samsung Techwin America is asking students across America to write an essay on
the topic of technology as an investment in education. Samsung wants to hear
what high school students think about the ramifications of spending on
education technology, as well as alternative ways to invest a school district's
limited budget.
Maximum award: $1,000. Eligibility: high school students in the United States;
must have teacher to sponsor student. Deadline: May 28, 2010.
http://www.samsungscholarship.com/
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