Articles in the Urban Schools category

The week in blogs

Have you heard the news? Well, it’s all over the Internet, so it must be true.

Here’s the headline:

Budget Mix-Up Provides Nation’s Schools With Enough Money to Properly Educate Students

The story “quotes” prominent Washington politicians, falling over one another to apologize for the error.

“Obviously, we did not intend for this to happen, and we are doing everything in our power to right the situation and discipline whoever is responsible,” said a House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, (R-Wis.) – but not really. His “quote” and the headline – along with statements from chagrinned Democrats as well – appear in The Onion, the satirical daily that seems to get all its facts wrong but still manages to come up with the truth.

Would that a little budget “slip up” could fix everything regarding school funding, but in the real world of public education it was not the case, as battles raged on over just how to define equity in education and in society.

In the Fordham Institute’s “Flypaper” blog, Peter Meyer charged that protesting New York teachers and their sympathizes, who marched this week on Wall Street to protest Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to cut more than 6,000 teaching positions, were fomenting “a class war.”  (Yes, we’re horrified too.)

“Even if one sympathized with  these folks’ sentiments about the financial ‘inequality crisis’ or believed for a second or two that it was the big banks that ‘crashed our economy,’” the question is where the big unions – and their contrail of sympathizers — have been during the inequality crisis in education the last thirty years,” Meyer writes. “Their silence in the face of crushing inner city educational failures has been deafening.”
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Lawrence Hardy|May 13th, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Budgeting, Curriculum, Governance, Policy Formation, Teachers, Urban Schools|

Socio-economic challenges to Brazil’s schools echo those in the U.S.

rio-de-janeiro_w725_h544Shiny new computers can be found in this city school system. But “many are still in boxes, awaiting installation that never comes. Others are not used because teacher training is lacking, or the internet is not connected.”

Sound familiar? Sound like any of a dozen stories you’ve read over the years about mismanaged urban school systems?

There is, though, one twist to this story: I’m not talking about an American urban district.

The story is about the Maceio public school system, which serves a “poverty-stricken, crack-infested” city in Brazil.

So why share this story? Several thoughts came to mind after I stumbled across this two-part series that appeared in the GlobalPost last year. And I thought you might have a few impressions of your own.

One thought arose as I read how Brazil’s “notorious rich-poor gap shrinks and the middle class grows,” yet almost all wealthy and upper-middle class families send their children to private schools, “as do those middle class families that can afford it.”

That shouldn’t come as a surprise. Students in Brazilian private schools are, on average, three years ahead academically over those attending public schools. Who wouldn’t send their kids to these elite schools if they could afford it?

Yet, I’m not sure what to make of this. Although I’ve always recognized the many poor children in America receive a less-than-equitable education, it’s still unsettling to see the parallel with Brazil and its rich-poor divide.
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Naomi Dillon|May 12th, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Educational Research, Policy Formation, Urban Schools|Tags: |

The week in blogs

If you can’t read, you can’t learn. That statement might seem obvious.

Yet in the United States, according to Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash), there are more than 8 million students in grades four though 12 who are reading below grade level. At this time in their schooling – that is, beyond third grade – they should have moved from a “learning-to-read” mode to one sometimes called “reading to learn.” And the fact that they have not reached this point, or have only partially reached it, means they will have trouble keeping up with their peers, graduating from high school, and succeeding in life.

“The students of today will be the workers of tomorrow,” Murray told a group of literacy coaches recently. “Trying to find jobs, struggling to make their way in a world in which literacy is no longer a luxury. It’s a necessity.”

Murray, who received NSBA’s Special Recognition Award last month, is introducing the Literacy Education for All Results for the Nation or the LEARN Act, which would authorize $2.35 billion in federal support for literacy programs spanning birth through age 12.
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Lawrence Hardy|May 6th, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Budgeting, Curriculum, Diversity, Dropout Prevention, Educational Research, Governance, Policy Formation, Student Achievement, Urban Schools, Week in Blogs|

“It takes a school system” — and then some

Call it “Disneyland Brain,” but when I returned from a two-and-a-half-week trip that included NSBA’s Annual Conference in San Francisco, three days of reporting on the Long Beach schools, and a family vacation to the famous Anaheim theme park, among other places, I was at a loss to identify the Conference Daily story I wrote that our analysis said was getting a lot of hits.

The story was slugged: “Rivers.”

“Rivers?” I thought, trying to place it. Like other ASBJ editors, I covered three or four sessions a day, on everything from dual-emersion elementary schools to the most significant education-related court cases of the past year.

“Rivers,” it turns out, didn’t have anything to do — at least, directly — with the business of running a school system. It was a lunchtime speech by actor Victor Rivas Rivers, who has made highlighting the problem of domestic violence a personal goal. It is a quest born of personal experience.

Rivers said his father was a charming man — in public. In private he was an abuser who terrorized Rivers’ mother, beat him and his brothers, and even harassed the family pets.  Rivers eventually escaped his punisher through the help of a series of families who took him in, and a variety of people in the school district, including a teacher who secretly gave him a meal ticket when Rivers’ father was limiting him to one meal a day.
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Lawrence Hardy|April 26th, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Diversity, Dropout Prevention, Educational Research, Governance, Homeless People, Policy Formation, School Climate, Student Achievement, Urban Schools|

Payzant urges CUBE boards to have clear vision, focus

Urban school leaders actually can turn to a host of strategies to improve their schools and the academic performance of their students—as long as their efforts aren’t compromised by a host of increasingly diverse, vocal, and active special interest groups.

That was one of many observations voiced Friday by Thomas Payzant, former superintendent of the Boston Public Schools and a former assistant secretary of education under President Bill Clinton.

Speaking at an Early Bird session of NSBA’s Council of Urban Boards of Education (CUBE), Payzant, now a professor of practice at Harvard University, acknowledged what urban school leaders already know: Their decisions can be judged as much on political grounds as on educational arguments.

“You know, all too well, how many different stakeholders, how many different groups, how many points of view, how many special interests exist in your communities,” said Payzant, currently a professor of practice at Harvard University.

“When it comes to education, they are in line at the microphone, ready to tell you what they want. As elected officials . . . you have to pay attention to every special interest group that shows up . . . even if you cannot fully support what they have to offer. Special interest politics is really the key to the way we think of politics today.”

For school boards to stay on track, he added, they need a clear vision of where they’re going and how they expect to get there.

But Payzant warned board members that their vision might not align with their actions. Take a look at the school district budget, he said. Too often, there is a huge discrepancy between the priorities stated grandly in the school board’s strategic plan and the priorities quietly laid out in the district budget.

“Strategic plans are wonderful, but if strategic plans are just page after page of initiatives, without real clarity about four or five key initiatives that are significant and going to have priority, there’s going to be a little bit of something done for a lot of different initiatives, with an inability to go into depth in a few areas—those initiatives that will make a difference on teaching and learning.”

Too often, he said, some precious funds are going instead to the priorities of those special interest groups that are vocal. “They try to do everything people would like you to do.”

Payzant touched upon a wide range of topics during his remarks. Talking of some of the lessons he learned over his career, he said one of the most important is that local urban leaders cannot forget how much power they have to influence student learning. Ultimately, he said, school boards and superintendents have control of the quality of teachers in their schools and of the leadership capacity of the principals assigned to those schools.

Indeed, he said, “the most important issue that you and your colleagues will be facing in the next ten to 15 years is the human capacity of your schools.”

That not only means hiring good people, but it also means providing the coaching, mentoring, professional development, and new paths to advance in their profession.

“You need to find ways for them to progress … opportunities to give them some variation, to develop new skill sets,” Payzant said.

Urban school leaders also have power if they can stay the course. In Boston, he recalled launching a new math initiative to raise abysmal test scores—and lost of political capital when the program failed to boost student performance in the following years.

But success, he was convinced, depended on giving the program time to take root—and for teachers and students to become familiar with it. That kind of patience is hard to maintain in today’s impatient political environment.

As it turned out, student performance did start to move—and it’s been climbing every since, he said. But many were ready to call it a failure after its first year, let along after its third.

“It’s another problem we have” in education—the need for quick results, he said. “If it doesn’t work right away, pull the plug.”

Del Stover|April 8th, 2011|Categories: NSBA Annual Conference 2011, School Board News, School Boards, Urban Schools|

Reforms spur governance changes

School reforms going on in major urban districts could also be changing the landscape of governance, according to a Thursday session of the Council of School Attorneys’ (COSA) School Law Seminar.

Deborah Rigsby, NSBA’s director of federal legislation, advocacy, and issues management, gave an overview of the current federal reform efforts, including Race to the Top.

School Improvement grants (SIGs) were started in 2007 by the U.S. Department of Education. They were started “out of concerns that we needed a greater focus on the schools on the bottom percentile,” said Rigsby.

Of the four current reforms for SIGs, the two most popular are the transformational model – 71 percent are using this model – and turnaround – 21 percent are using this. Restarts are at 5 percent and school closures are at 3 percent.

With the federal budget being strongly debated in Congress right now, the money for continuing these reforms could be in question, she said. “If this hits Title 1 and IDEA, it could affect those programs.”

The attorneys for the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and the Boston Public Schools (BPS) discussed the system-wide reforms going on in their districts. Diane Pappas, associate general counsel for LAUSD, said that her district’s reform efforts were spurred by the 2006 attempt by L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

After things quieted down,” said Pappas, “we worked out a partnership with the mayor.” The district established a network of partners, one of which was the city of L.A., which took control of schools in poverty-stricken neighborhoods. Schools run by the district’s network partners must still employee union member but can do their own hiring.

The district has charter schools; 170 of them are independent. Other charters are dependent, which means that the school board remains the governing entity, but they have latitude in other areas.

In 2009, she said, the district put up 38 low performing schools and allowed outside groups to bid on them to take them over.

“We have a lot of competition in L.A.,” she said. “It’s good for kids.

In the Boston schools, which have had a mayor-appointed school board since 1991, new state legislation is requiring the district to put into place three different reform models: turnaround, innovation, and in-district charter schools, said Alissa Ocasio, BPS’s legal advisor.

Turnaround schools develop plans that must be approved by the school committees. Any school can apply to be an innovation schools, which is like a pilot program. The in-district charter schools can be started by the superintendent and are subject to the district’s governance structure.

“The plans are designed to improve achievement; that’s the primary focus,” she said. “Any of these schools can be shut down if they are not meeting their goals.”

Kathleen Vail|April 8th, 2011|Categories: Educational Legislation, Federal Programs, NSBA Annual Conference 2011, School Board News, School Law, Urban Schools|

The week in blogs

First, a disclaimer: Our first item is not a blog, and it was not published this week. (Other than that, the headline above is perfectly accurate.)

But this article on high-flying high school students being flummoxed by an SAT essay prompt involving  …. Gasp! TV reality shows! .. was too good to pass up. Yes, it’s from the New York Times. And, yes, I tend to cite them a lot. And, yes that’s because I really like Times. And no, I’m not getting paid by them to say this.

Back to the story: It seems an SAT question on just how real the “reality” is on reality TV shows like American Idol and Real Housewives of New Jersey — which all high school kids know something about, right? — was too much for those high achievers who don’t have time for the tube.  

“I ended up talking about Jacob Riis and how any form of media cannot capture reality objectively,” one frustrated student wrote on the Web site College Confidential, referring to the 19th century reformer. “I kind of want to cry right now.”

The irony, unmentioned in the article, is how for years SAT opponents have criticized the tests for being culturally biased toward affluent white students and against minorities and the disadvantaged. A famous example from years ago was the analogy that required students to know the meaning of “regatta,” which could be tough for children who’ve never seen a sailboat or a racing shell.

I don’t begrudge the high-achieving, non-TV watching students their complaint, but it seems to me that, if anything, the tests favor students with their life experiences over kids from disadvantaged backgrounds.

While we’re on the subject of standardized tests, blogger Jennifer Fox writes in the Huffington Post about her campaign “to stop the testing trend.” One suggestion: “Ask teachers to have their classes of students fill out the cards [postcards  to First Lady Michelle Obama asking the president ‘to end the use of high stakes standardized tests!'] and bring in a quarter to mail them as a class.” Don’t think teachers – or administrators – would relish being be put in that position.

Finally, be sure to read Joanne Jacobs on how respondents to the MetLife Survey of the American Teacher say they need more help in differentiating instruction for diverse learners.

“Ninety-one percent of public school teachers say schools need to do more to prepare ‘diverse’ learners for success after high school,” Jacobs writes.

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor

Lawrence Hardy|March 25th, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Assessment, Curriculum, Diversity, Educational Research, Policy Formation, Student Achievement, Teachers, Urban Schools|

The week in blogs

This week, education researcher Richard Rothstein takes Bill Gates to task for claiming in a recent Washington Post column on teacher development that student achievement has remained “virtually flat” in recent decades while per-student costs have “more than doubled.”

 Looking at NAEP tests since 1980 and 1990, Rothstein concludes that “American students have improved substantially, in some cases phenomenally.” As far as a doubling of K12 funding is concerned, yes that’s true, he adds, but the statistic begs to be qualified.

“The biggest single recipient of new money has been special education for children with disabilities,” Rothstein writes. “Four decades ago, special education consumed less than 4 percent of all K12 spending. It now consumes 21 percent.”

What can high schools do to help community colleges and their astronomical drop-out rates? Blogger Dana Goldstein offers a thoughtful analysis.

 ”Why are people dropping out of community colleges en masse?” Goldstein asks. “In part, it’s the frustration of being academically under-prepared and thus being forced to pay tuition for credit-less remediation classes. But national surveys of community college drop-outs find that the most cited reasons for leaving school are work and family responsibilities.”

(Thanks to Joanne Jacobs for leading us to Goldstein’s commentary.)

Recent stories in the Washington Post have questioned zero tolerance policies in the Fairfax County (Va.) Public Schools. Read a sobering post by the Post’s Valerie Strauss on common myths about zero tolerance’s effectiveness.

 Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor

Lawrence Hardy|March 11th, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Assessment, Budgeting, Curriculum, Discipline, Dropout Prevention, Educational Research, Governance, Policy Formation, Special Education, Student Achievement, Teachers, Urban Schools, Week in Blogs|

Video from the White House Conference on Bullying Prevention

Yesterday, Earl C. Rickman III, President of the National School Boards Association (NSBA), joined President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House Conference on Bullying Prevention and called for a united effort to address bullying in our schools.

Approximately 150 students, parents, teachers, non-profit leaders, advocates, and policymakers attended the conference and discussed ways they can work together to make our schools and communities safe for all students.

“School board leaders and school officials are committed to safe educational environments for all students,” said Rickman. “With the right guidance and resources school leaders can meet the challenge of ensuring schools are a safe place for all students, free of bullying and harassment.”

Here’s the White House video from the conference:

As announced at yesterday’s conference, NSBA will launch a series of student conversations between school board members and students in middle and high school about the climate in their schools. The sessions will be guided by questions from the research-based school climate surveys developed by NSBA’s Council of Urban Boards of Education (CUBE) and by the Pearson Foundation’s Million Voices project.

“As school boards across the country develop policies and initiatives to combat bullying, it is important they hear from students about the current realities they face in their schools,” said Rickman.

Alexis Rice|March 11th, 2011|Categories: Federal Programs, Multimedia and Webinars, NSBA Opinions and Analysis, Student Achievement, Teachers, Urban Schools, Wellness|

Watch live the Conference on Labor-Management Collaboration

Leaders from the National School Boards Association (NSBA) and state school boards associations are participating in the Conference on Labor-Management Collaboration, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, taking place in Denver today and tomorrow. At this first-of-its-kind conference, national and local school leaders will hear from other superintendents, school boards, and teacher union leaders who are working together to redefine the labor-management relationship in their communities.

Earl C. Rickman III, President of NSBA, and Anne L. Bryant, Executive Director of NSBA, will represent NSBA at this conference. Rickman also represents Michigan’s Mount Clemens Community School District Board of Education, which he serves as board president. Mount Clemens is one of the 150 school districts from across the country participating in the conference.

Bryant will be part of the session tomorrow on “Leading a Movement to Advance Student Achievement Through Labor-Management Collaboration” which will be featured below live from 2:15 – 3:15 PM EST.

Several leaders from state school boards associations will be represented at the conference, including Ken Delay, Executive Director, Colorado Association of School Boards; Randy Black, Director of Member Relations, Colorado Association of School Boards; Kelly B. Moyher, Senior Staff Attorney, Connecticut Association of Boards of Education; C. Ed Massey, Board Member, Boone County Board of Education in Kentucky and Secretary-Treasurer, NSBA; Carl Smith, Executive Director, Maryland Association of Boards of Education; Andy Sever, Director of Personal Services, Montana School Boards Association; Patrick Duncan, Senior Consultant/Negotiator Labor Relations, New Jersey School Boards Association; Van Keating, Director of Management Services, Ohio School Boards Association; and Timothy Duffy, Executive Director, Rhode Island Association of School Committees.

NSBA joins the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, the American Association of School Administrators, the Council of the Great City Schools, and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service as partners in this conference.

View live video streaming of the main sessions.

Schedule of Sessions Being Live Streamed:

February 15 4 – 4:30 pm EST
Welcome, Framing, and Overview
Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education

February 15 4:30 – 5:30 pm EST
The Principles in Action: Structuring Labor-Management Collaboration for Student Success
The plenary will feature the CEO of Baltimore City Public Schools, the president of the Hillsborough (Florida) Classroom Teachers Association and the president of the Montgomery County (Maryland) Board of Education.

February 16 11:30 am – 12:30 pm EST
The Difference You Can Make: The Positive Impact of Reform From the Perspective of Students, Parents, Teachers and Principals
The plenary will feature participants from Denver and Douglas County (Colorado) Public Schools.

February 16 2:15 – 3:15 PM EST
Leading a Movement to Advance Student Achievement Through Labor-Management Collaboration
Participants:
Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education
Anne L. Bryant, Executive Director, National School Boards Association
Michael Casserly, Executive Director, Council of the Great City Schools
George H. Cohen, Director, Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service
Daniel A. Domenech, Executive Director, American Association of School Administrators
Dennis Van Roekel, President, National Education Association
Randi Weingarten, President, American Federation of Teachers

Note: Video will only appear during the time of the live sessions.

Free Videos by Ustream.TV

Alexis Rice|February 15th, 2011|Categories: Conferences and Events, Federal Programs, Multimedia and Webinars, NSBA Opinions and Analysis, Rural Schools, School Boards, Teachers, Urban Schools|
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