Education Gadfly Weekly
Volume 11, Number 34
September 1, 2011
Opinion + Analysis
Opinion
When public education's two Ps disagree
The tension among parents, the public, and policy wonks
By
Michael J. Petrilli
News Analysis
NY Regents: Stop the madness
On teacher evals, get out of court, and get to work
News Analysis
Twenty-three's a crowd
Memphis Public Schools, supersized
News Analysis
SPED funding now a little less special
The feds open the door to special-ed budget cuts
News Analysis
The long arm of ed law
NJ's anti-bullying law: Get along, or else!
Reviews
Research
The Strategic Management of Charter Schools: Framework and Tools for Educational Entrepreneurs
Pedagogical leaders, meet the business model
By
Tyson Eberhardt
,
Daniela Fairchild
Research
Reaching the Goal: The Applicability and Importance of the Common Core State Standards to College and Career Readiness
College professors like the Common Core?as far as we can tell
By
Laura Johnson
Gadfly Studios
Podcast
Bully for you Margaret
Mike chats with John Bailey of Whiteboard Advisors about teacher evaluations in the Empire State, a new sheriff for the ?reform? district in the Wolverine State, and how boring bullying is to policy wonks, no matter the state. Amber finds a CCSS validation study lacking and Chris tells the government not to tread on his lemonade stand.
When public education's two Ps disagree
Michael J. Petrilli / September 1, 2011
It’s long been said that public education must achieve both public and private aims. The public, which foots the bill, has an interest in a well-educated populace. Parents—schools’ primary clients—want a strong foundation for their own children. Much of the time these two interests are in perfect alignment. But what happens when they’re not?
Recent surveys illustrate the tension. First, there was the perennial Phi Delta Kappan/Gallup poll, which showed an ever-wider gap between parents’ (very positive) perceptions of their own children’s schools and the public’s (very negative) perceptions of American schools writ large. Perhaps this can be chalked up to the “Congressman Syndrome”—we all hate Congress but think highly of our own member of Congress. Or maybe many parents have a rose-colored view of their kids’ schools. (After all, unless you’re poor and trapped, to acknowledge that the school you’ve chosen is a lemon is to admit to a form of parental malpractice.)
But layer those findings onto another recent survey and a fuller picture emerges. This one, from the Pew Research Center, finds that two-thirds of the American public think parents aren’t putting enough pressure on their kids to study hard. (This is a much higher proportion than in any other country surveyed; about the same ratio of the Chinese public thinks that parents put too much academic pressure on their children.)
 |
As long as we look at parents and think they are dummies for When public education's two Ps disagreeNY Regents: Stop the madnessSeptember 1, 2011
Court costs; implementation speaks It’s “back to school” for the New York State Board of Regents and the State Education Department that it oversees. But will it also be “back to court”? Primed by the Race to the Top pump, Empire State legislators passed a bill last year ordering districts to base 20 percent of their teacher evaluations on student growth measured by state tests. They also stipulated that another 20 percent of the evals be based on “other locally selected measures of student achievement.” But the Regents got a little greedy. In May, they voted to merge the “locally selected” with the state assessment, effectively making 40 percent of the teacher evaluation dependent on state test scores. New York’s teacher union was predictably miffed—and took the matter to court. Flash forward to last week, when a state judge in Albany ruled against the Regents: New York cannot mandate that state test scores be used for 40 percent of a teacher’s evaluation. Upon hearing the news, State Education Commissioner John King, Jr. sounded off that the state would appeal the decision. Hold on, there, King. We are in the infancy of teacher-evaluation reform. When it comes down to the details, we’ve got little more than educated guesses as to what will work best under which NY Regents: Stop the madnessTwenty-three's a crowdSeptember 1, 2011 Come the end of September, Memphis City Schools and the surrounding Shelby County School District will become one. To effect the merger, the two districts have cobbled together a twenty-three member school board—comprised of the MCS board, the Shelby Co. board, and another seven appointed members thrown in for good measure. (This bloated transition board is supposed to diet back down to the standard seven-member elected board by the districts' 2013 deadline for combination.) While the Memphis-Shelby merger won’t be the first such city-county union (Charlotte-Mecklenberg, NC and Jefferson Country, KY are other examples), the “how” behind this fusion is nothing if not unorthodox. Last year, Shelby Co. (which shares financial responsibility with Memphis for the River City's schools) postured that it would form a “special district,” thereby cutting financial ties to MCS (and damming up 26 percent of the Memphis Schools’s budget). In retaliation, the Memphis school board moved to dissolve its own district. (In a funky statutory twist, this decision by the board means that Memphis schools necessarily get subsumed into the Shelby Co. district—and are thus able to keep their funding stream open.) Two-thirds of city residents backed the move, in hopes that the higher-performing Shelby County schools would help boost achievement for Memphis’s 103,000 students. Of course, residents of the more affluent suburban district (47,000 students strong) were none too pleased. They sued, and lost, bringing us back to that 23-member school board. If done right, this merger could allow for dynamic and forward-thinking reform on both school governance and school finance. (Gadfly gets giddy thinking Twenty-three's a crowdSPED funding now a little less specialSeptember 1, 2011
A dollar for you, one hundred for me NCLB waivers, meet your new federal pal, easement of special education “maintenance of effort” requirements. Traditionally, IDEA has been interpreted to require school districts to maintain (or increase) their spending on special education from year to year or else face stiff penalties. Districts could apply for one-year waivers for particular reasons—for example, the graduation of an extremely expensive student, which might send costs lower. But they were expected to resume their higher spending the next year. A June letter from ED to the National Association of State Directors of Special Education trumpets a different tune. Now, the Department says districts may lower their special-education and then keep the same level in subsequent years as well. This small but significant change signals a willingness to rethink special-education spending’s status as untouchable—which is critical in this time of fiscal austerity. As Sasha Pudelski, a staffer for the American Association of School Administrators, told Education Week, “Fairness dictates that all programs and populations share in the burden of cuts, rather than holding a single program exempt.” Precisely.
SPED funding now a little less specialThe long arm of ed lawSeptember 1, 2011 First came the healthy school-lunch campaign, the sex-ed campaign, the gay-history campaign, and the environmental-literacy campaign (to name just a few)—all noble pursuits for individual schools usurped by state and federal policymakers. Today marks a milestone in another such campaign, as New Jersey’s Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights—understood to be the most stringent in the land—goes into effect. The law requires schools to create safety teams, allocate professional-development time for anti-bullying trainings, and assign an “anti-bullying specialist.” (Each district must find itself an “anti-bullying coordinator” as well.) Though Gadfly’s past admonishments seem to have fallen on deaf ears on this front, he’ll clear his throat and aver louder: Schools—and the parents of the children educated therein—should toil to create a positive school culture, free from schoolyard intimidation and classroom harassment. Efforts of this nature should not be mandated by the state; legislative arms cannot protect students from that height—no matter how long they are.
The long arm of ed lawThe Strategic Management of Charter Schools: Framework and Tools for Educational EntrepreneursTyson Eberhardt , Daniela Fairchild / September 1, 2011
The Strategic Management of Charter Schools: Framework and Tools for Educational EntrepreneursReaching the Goal: The Applicability and Importance of the Common Core State Standards to College and Career ReadinessLaura Johnson / September 1, 2011
|
Along with the standard fare of curricula,
scheduling, student discipline, and teacher effectiveness, charter schools have
to navigate tight budgets and nonprofit-management and human-capital
strategies. Many charter leaders, however, are far more experienced with instruction
than with operations: They’re heavy on education-delivery skills and light on
mission-, operations-, and stakeholder-management skills. This new book offers
a toolkit for school leaders seeking a crash-course in B-school strategies.
Each chapter covers an issue ranging from mission management to performance
measurement and provides accessible explanations of how to implement proper
business strategies—and why these strategies are important for charters. What
might be most helpful for school leaders looking to flip from an ed-school to a
B-school mentality are the chapters’ case studies, which offer further
perspective on how each strategy can and should play out on the ground. The authors use MATCH charter schools, for
example, to highlight how development of logic models can help clarify a
charter’s mission. The case of D.C.’s Cesar Chavez School provides insight into
how strategic alignment can ensure longitudinal success. And that of the
Compass Montessori School (CO) illustrates the need for financial stability—and
what happens if it is not found. Following these strategies—and learning from
these case studies—should help charter schools of all stripes personalize and
strengthen their business models.
The Common Core State Standards have been widely
adopted, implementation efforts have commenced, and assessment frameworks have
begun to roll out. But how will the standards (if faithfully implemented) actually
serve a college-bound student population? In order to test this primary aim of
CCSS, David Conley and his team at the Educational Policy Improvement surveyed 1,815
two- and four-year college professors in twenty-five different subjects,
spanning the gamut from English and math to history, business, and computer
science, asking them how relevant and important various Common Core standards
are to their courses. The findings: English language arts standards were deemed
both relevant and important across disciplines, with particular importance
placed on the CCSS’s “speaking and listening” standards. (Eighty percent found
this slice of the CCSS standards to be of importance.) On the math front, several
strands (including mathematical practices, numbers and quantity, and algebra) were
generally found to be applicable for college coursework. The geometry
standards, however, were not: Only half the math professors found them to be
applicable. The most frequent criticisms from college profs relate to the
wording of the standards and to perceived deficiencies in problem-solving and
critical-thinking requirements. While the survey’s methodology has 
