Articles in the Curriculum category

Analysis: NBC learned its lesson with this Education Nation

Glenn Cook, American School Board Journal’s editor-in-chief, attended NBC’s Education Nation summit in New York for the second straight year. Here are his observations.

You can’t blame traditional public school advocates if they were filled with dread when NBC announced that Education Nation would return this fall. Last year the network bought into the hype surrounding the documentary “Waiting for Superman,” inexplicably tying the event to a flawed film that exhorted charters as the pancea for public education’s ills.

Thankfully, NBC has learned its lesson. This year’s event took pains to correct past wrongs as it recognized the complexities school leaders face in managing a public system that is open to all.

Starting with a screening of “American Teacher,” a documentary that helped erase some of the “bad teachers” taste left by “Superman,” and ending with an appearance by former President Bill Clinton, Education Nation featured a strong balance of heavy hitters from education, philanthropy, and politics.

You also had a touch of celebrity — basketball player Lebron James, actress Jennifer Garner, and what amounted to a family reunion with former Gov. Jeb Bush and First Lady Laura Bush participating in sessions — but in this case, it fit the overall tone.

The key word here is balance. Last year’s programming was flawed because it exhorted simple antidotes to complex problems. This year, silver bullets were nowhere to be found, but calls for more effective teaching and improvements to early education were.

You can watch many of the sessions online at www.educationnation.com, but here is my list of highlights:

• Start with “Brain Power: Why Early Learning Matters,” a fascinating hour-long session featuring Nancy Snyderman, NBC’s chief medical editor, and three university professors. Held on Monday morning, it was the best, most concise presentation I’ve seen yet on why we need to reach children much, much earlier than we do.

• The dramatic rise in poverty rates was a focus throughout, especially in the session “What’s in a Zip Code?” moderated by Brian Williams. Poverty is reality for many people in today’s economy — Clinton was eloquent on this topic in the closing session — and communities must come together to do more.

• Education Secretary Arne Duncan was everywhere this year, participating in interviews with Tom Brokaw and responding to questions during various panels (a nice touch).

• We saw an entertaining back and forth between Geoffrey Canada, founder of the Harlem Children’s Zone and Diane Ravitch, author and professor of education at New York University. Their approaches are so different, but both made excellent points. Canada and Sal Khan, another Education Nation speaker, are scheduled to keynote NSBA’s 2012 Annual Conference.

• Teacher and student accountability, as you might expect, was a recurring theme. Michelle Shearer, the current National Teacher of the Year from Maryland’s Urbana High School, said teachers “want to be evaluated on things that really matter.”

“There are all sorts of different ways of looking at student growth,” she said. “Whatever evaluation looks like in the end, it has to be a system of multiple measures, because often what’s most important are those intangibles … that are tough to put on a check list.”

• At the same session, Khaatim El, a former member of the Atlanta school board, addressed the cheating scandal that has plagued the district he served for almost a decade. “We wanted to be the hype,” he said of the allegations, which are based on the state assessments. “We wanted to be the first to get it right so bad.”

But El noted the district also made huge gains in NAEP scores during that time, an achievement untouched but overshadowed by the scandal. “I would be remiss if I didn’t point to the hard work that many educators put in,” he said. “We focused on the basics. Literacy instruction in elementary school. Autonomy for principals. We invested in professional development. Those things were overshadowed by the cheating scandal. And they were good things for kids.”

The setting for Education Nation was not perfect — the big tent in Rockefeller Plaza is a good idea in theory, but the humidity and poor audio were ever-present distractions. And while this year’s session was far more substantive, future years should stop belaboring the problems and focus instead on how to solve them. Panels featuring districts that have been successful at “what works,” with ideas and content that are easily imitated and replicated, would be a valuable start.

Chances are good that will happen. The National School Boards Association (NSBA) had a strong presence in the planning and execution of the meeting. Anne L. Bryant, our executive director, met with NBC officials about the content and answered audience questions in a video Q&A format prior to the event. Mary Broderick, NSBA’s president, was featured in a panel session with the mayors of Albuquerque, Baltimore, and Newark.

“What we’ve heard from the last two days of this conference is that we need to come together around a sense of urgency,” Broderick said during her session, noting that it takes a shared vision between the school board, the mayor’s office, and the community. “The vision needs to be of excellence. If that cohesive message can be carried through our schools … there’s nothing off the table.”

Glenn Cook|September 28th, 2011|Categories: Arts Education, Assessment, Board governance, Budgeting, Charter Schools, Comparative Education, Conferences and Events, Curriculum, Dropout Prevention, Educational Finance, Educational Research, Educational Technology, Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Governance, High Schools, Leadership, Mayoral Control, Middle Schools, National Standards, Race to the Top (RTTT), School Boards, School Reform, Special Education, STEM Education, Student Achievement, Student Engagement, Teachers, Uncategorized, Urban Schools|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |

Denver pre-K program yields impressive results

BoardBuzz recently learned that the first children to participate in the Denver Pre-K Program (DPP) are now in third grade, and data from the Colorado Department of Education indicate that they are doing noticeably better than their predecessors.  How much better? Fifty-six percent of 3rd graders are reading at grade level – a 5 percent increase from last year, and the biggest single year gain in the history of Denver Public Schools (DPS).

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) was superintendent of DPS when the DPP was approved in 2006.  “The voters made a smart investment by passing a ground-breaking public policy initiative designed to increase Denver children’s access to and enrollment in high-quality preschool programs,” the Senator stated at a recent hearing on quality early education and care.

The DPP is open and voluntary for all Denver children in the last year of preschool before kindergarten.  Nearly 6,000 children benefit from the tuition credit program, and most (60 percent) receive pre-k services from Denver Public Schools. The rest receive services from center-based and home care.

“In just the few short years of its existence, DPP has made good on its mandate, growing quickly to become one of the highest enrolled preschool programs in the country.” Bennet said. “I hope we can find additional ways to replicate this kind of successful effort.”

BoardBuzz knows that public schools are important in the delivery system for pre-K instruction.  Local school boards are uniquely positioned to lead, plan, and support early learning collaborations throughout the community to eliminate achievement gaps and improve school readiness and transitions to K–12 education settings.

Learn more about federal policy for investing in early childhood education on the NSBA website.  In addition, the Center for Public Education has videos, a Toolkit for School Boards and many other resources for school boards interested in pre-K collaboration.

Lucy Gettman|July 22nd, 2011|Categories: Center for Public Education, Curriculum, Dropout Prevention, Educational Legislation, Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Leadership, NSBA Opinions and Analysis, Preschool Education, School Boards|Tags: , , , , |

The week in blogs

How quickly does childhood pass? It seems like yesterday that I was reading my elder daughter Good Night Moon, a few hours since we completed the surprisingly dark Tale of Despereaux. Now, we’ve almost finished the truly harrowing fantasy, A Wrinkle in Time, and who knows what we’ll tackle next?

I’m overprotective. (What parent isn’t, to some degree, these days?) And as the books get progressively darker and more disturbing — because life, unfortunately gets darker and more disturbing (you learn, for example, to read the newspaper) — a voice in my head keeps repeating, “Is she really ready for this?” Considering that eight years from now she’ll be in college, the answer’s got to be “yes.”  Yes, I know, but part of me still resists.

I thought about this after reading Joanne Jacobs’ Friday blog, Violence, sex and ‘dark’ lit. It’s really a compendium of other pieces written in response to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s comment – in writing for a court majority that struck down a California law barring violent video sales to minors, on First Amendment grounds — that young adult lit is already replete with violent material. An opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, saying that “YA” fiction is two dark seems to have gotten the discussion rolling. But the best commentary on the subject, I feel, is by Linda Holms of NPR, who takes a different view.
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Lawrence Hardy|July 1st, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Curriculum, Diversity, Dropout Prevention, Governance, Policy Formation, Student Achievement, Week in Blogs|

Classic literature falling by wayside, as students are encouraged just to read

296-1253388461oizyAre you an old-fashioned fuddy-duddy who believes that reading the literary classics is an essential foundation for a good education?

Or are you one of those pessimists who is grateful if educators can get children to read anything at all in this age of cable television, YouTube, and video games?

Those questions currently are being asked across “the pond,” where famed British professor John Sutherland recently “lashed out at the current state of education in the UK” and complained that colleges prefer “modern, culturally relevant texts to the exclusion of the classics.”

The result, he says, is that students read whatever “takes their fancy” instead of what “nourishes the soul.”

Such remarks sound like something a gray-haired professor would say—the kind of fellow who went to a traditional British boarding school and was traditionally bullied until he became a “proper gentlemen.”

The old ways of doing things are best, after all. Harrumph, harrumph.

Now, actually I know nothing of Professor Sutherland’s background. And he might not have gray hair. But, as it happens, I sympathize with his viewpoint.
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Naomi Dillon|June 23rd, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Curriculum, Governance, Policy Formation, Student Achievement|Tags: , , |

The week in blogs

“Teachers in Finland are practically rock stars,” exclaims Robert Rothman in the Alliance for Excellent Education’s blog, High School Soup. And if that sounds like a slight exaggeration  – I can imagine a class of middle schooler holding their lighted Bics aloft after a particularly scintillating lecture – it still shows how far we in America need to go to advance the status of teacher

To be sure, Finland doesn’t pay them like rock stars, Rothman adds. “Teachers salaries are about average. Rather, the country has established its preparation programs and working conditions so that teaching is a highly respected profession.”

The blog is commenting on an article in American Educator that cities the singular importance of great teaching – and a school system that nurtures and supports great teaching – to school improvement.

Should there be more emphasis in high school on vocational training? That’s the question posed this week by the National Journal on its Education blog.  Proponents point to successful apprenticeship programs in Europe and the many good technical jobs that require more than a high school diploma but not a four-year degree. Skeptics include Thomas Toch of Education Sector, who worries that a new generation of vo-tech could lead to  “watered-down expectations for many students who are already getting short shrift in our educational system.”

Board members, are you sick of No Child Left Behind? Guess what, Arne Duncan is too. Read the Education Secretary’s thoughts on ESEA reauthorization in Politico.

Finally, the NAEP History scores are out and they’re not exactly historic – at least, not in a good way. See commentary and analysis by Joanne Jacobs and Jim Hull of NSBA’s Center for Public Education.

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor

Lawrence Hardy|June 17th, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Assessment, Curriculum, Governance, Policy Formation, Student Achievement, Teachers, Week in Blogs|

Education headlines: Schools plan to scale back on homework

School boards around the nation are rethinking homework policies amid concerns that “high-stakes testing and competition for college have fueled a nightly grind that is stressing out children and depriving them of play and rest, yet doing little to raise achievement, particularly in elementary grades,” the New York Times reports…

Building on several years of budget cuts, this year’s cuts will directly impact classrooms, according to Stateline.org. So far, governors have proposed an estimated $2.5 billion in cuts to K-12 budgets.

This week the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) released the 2010 results in U.S. History for 4th, 8th, and 12th graders. According to this analysis by NSBA’s Center for Public Education, results for 4th and 8th graders showed some positive signs, but results for U.S. 12th graders were disappointing compared to previous years…

And USA Today writes that the federal government’s first attempt to assess the dangers from air pollution around schools is nearing completion, and the findings underscore the need for more extensive air monitoring, especially in pollution hot spots.


Joetta Sack-Min|June 16th, 2011|Categories: Announcements, Curriculum|

District produced video brings awareness, opportunities on study of food

Naomi Dillon|June 13th, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Curriculum, Educational Technology|Tags: , , |

The week in blogs

It’s summer — time to break the routine. So, in that spirit, let me begin this column with a subject that is truly dear to my heart:

Interesting Facts About Your Week in Blogs Editor

Readers, did you know that:

A) I’m a champion swimmer*

* in the struggle-across-the-pool category

B) My wife says I have distinctive taste when it comes to home decorating*

* distinctively bad taste

I could go on, but, you get the point: Place a qualifying asterisk (*) after almost any assertion, and you can pretty much claim anything. It doesn’t make much difference when the subject is my swimming ability or home decorating prowess. But if I did the same with, say, a piece purporting to compare the relative advantages of charter school start ups to traditional public school turnarounds, the consequences might be  greater.

To his credit, Mike Petrilli does indeed qualify his assertion in a Fordham Institute blog entitled Charter start-ups are 4 times as likely to succeed as district turnarounds* (Note big asterisk). But that doesn’t stop him from making sweeping policy pronouncements based on data from just 19 schools. That’s the number of schools (in 10 states studied)  in which 1) the start up charter was near a traditional school with state reading and math proficiency in the bottom 10 percent, and 2) either school subsequently increased its performance to above the state average.

Those 19 schools further break down to 15 charters and just four traditional schools, meaning, Petrilli concludes, that serious questions must be raised, “about the wisdom of the federal government pumping $3 billion into school turnaround efforts instead of using some of the money to replicate and scale up successful charters.”
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Lawrence Hardy|June 10th, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Budgeting, Curriculum, Diversity, Educational Research, Governance, School Reform, Student Achievement, Teachers, Urban Schools, Week in Blogs|

The week in blogs

It’s the good elementary school teacher who tells her students: “It’s Okay to ask questions if you don’t understand.” It doesn’t mean you’re dumb; there could be many reasons why you’re lost.

Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., a strong advocate for public schools, seems to have taken that axiom to heart. In a sometimes darkly humorous video clip posted on This Week in Education, he shows that sometimes you can’t follow what someone is saying (in this case, someone testifying before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce) because, well, she isn’t making any sense.

“What are you telling me?” proclaims a somewhat exasperated Miller, after a witness attempts to explain that all those ill-defined private Education Management Organizations (EMOs) that are increasingly running public charter schools really are accountable to their public boards (even though they typically withhold the most basic information from them) because, well, they should be accountable — and, doggone it, it’s just the right thing to do. (Or something like that; I didn’t get it either.)

“I don’t understand what you’re telling me.” the congressman deadpans.

Watch it. Laugh. And maybe — weep.

Speaking of accountability, in a provocative Op-Ed in the New York Times, author and education historian Diane Ravitch says that a lot of the dramatic short-term gains of charters “reconstituted” schools, and other highly touted programs “are the result of statistical legerdemain.” That drew a sharp response by Bloomberg’s Jonathan Alter called Don’t Believe the Critics Education, Education Reform Works.

And what do the kids think about this whole accountability thing? We can’t speak for all of them, of course, but the blogger “Miss Malarkey” has provided a helpful Top Ten list of “comments made by my third graders” during their first ever New York State tests.

My favorite: “Wait, is this the real test?”

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor

Lawrence Hardy|June 3rd, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Assessment, Curriculum, Dropout Prevention, Governance, Policy Formation, School Reform, Student Achievement, Teachers, Week in Blogs|

How ambitious is too ambitious?

SampleIt sounds great in theory: Raise standards—and students will rise to the occasion.

But is that always the case?

That question currently is under debate in Fairfax County, Va., where some parents are challenging the plans of county school officials to phase out many honors courses.

School officials say the move makes sense. They want more students—particularly minority students—to test themselves to the fullest by enrolling in Advanced Placement (AP) classes.

“We’ve found that traditionally underrepresented minorities do not access the most-rigorous track when three tracks are offered,” Peter Noonan, Fairfax County’s assistant superintendent for instructional services, told the Washington Post. “But when two tracks are offered, they do.”

So, in schools where an AP class is offered in a subject, officials plan to discontinue any parallel honors courses.

Not all parents see the decision as that simple. Without that middle ground course offering, opponents say, some students will decide that AP courses are too challenging academically or will demand more work than they’re willing to take on.

For those students, the only alternative remaining will be standard track courses. And some will choose to “dumb down” their education with less-academically challenging classes.

Enough parents are raising concerns that the school board has agreed to review its decision, but it’s unclear whether supporters of honors courses can resist what the Post describes as “a national trend to reduce the number of ‘tracks’ for students.”

Del Stover, Senior Editor

Naomi Dillon|May 26th, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Curriculum, Governance, Student Achievement|Tags: , , |
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