Education News from Washington Post

I recently published a fourth grade "science quiz" given to students at a creationist South Carolina religious school, which featured questions in which the "correct" answers were essentially a denial of science. For example: Students were told to say True or False to this: "The earth is billions of years old" and the correct answer was "False." This reflects the beliefs of Young Earth creationist theory, which holds that the universe and everything in it was created by God some 6,000 years ago.

History is fascinating but too often kids find it boring in history class. Here Larry Cuban explains why and what to do about it. Cuban was a school social studies teacher for 14 years, a district superintendent (seven years in Arlington, Va.), and professor emeritus of education at Stanford University, where he has taught for more than 20 years. His new book is "Inside the Black Box of the Classroom: Change without Reform in American
Education." This appeared on his School Reform and Classroom Practice blog.

Teachers in Seattle protesting a mandated standardized test that they think is useless have scored a victory: The test will, starting next year, no longer be required for high school graduation.

Jose Banda, superintendent of schools in Seattle, just told principals of the district's high schools that it will be up to their school's leadership team whether or not to give the Measures of Academy Progress, and scores will no longer be a graduation requirement. The tests have been given this year, so the new policy starts in 2014, the Seattle Times reported.

Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson can move forward with plans to close 15 D.C. schools, a federal judge ruled Wednesday, rejecting activists’ claims that the closures violate the civil rights of city children.

The family of a second-grader suspended from his school in Anne Arundel County for chewing his Pop-Tart-like pastry into the shape of a gun has lost a bid to have the episode expunged from the child’s record, according to the family’s attorney.

Fairfax County parents and teachers rallied at a Tuesday night budget hearing to advocate for more money for instructional coaches— who collaborate with teachers in the classroom— and to expand the district’s world languages program.

A week-long shutdown of public schools in Buena Vista, Mich., appears to be ending after state officials agreed Wednesday to send state dollars to the bankrupt school system so children can return to class and finish the school year.

Any regular reader of this blog knows that I am not in love with school rankings that claim to have real authority. In the following piece, Matthew Di Carlo does a good job explaining the problems with even some of the better listing. Di Carlo is a senior fellow at the non-profit Albert Shanker Institute in Washington, D.C. This originally appeared on the Shanker Blog.

Should students still learning how to be teachers be considered "highly qualified teachers"? Should new college graduates with only five weeks of teacher training (that's what Teach For America gives its recruits before sending them into high-poverty schools) be considered highly qualified? Well, Congress, which was lobbied by Teach For America and other organizations, said "yes" a few years ago. Now a coalition of education organizations is writing to President Obama and other administration officials about the issue. Here's the text of the letter. (Footnotes have been removed from the body of the letter and put at the end to make it easier to read.)

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave
Washington, DC 20500

Re: SECTION 145 OF THE SEPTEMBER 2012 CONTINUING RESOLUTION—Public Law 112-175

Dear President Obama:

Ensuring the educational success of all students requires the equitable distribution of well-prepared and effective teachers in all schools. Yet in too many states and districts across the country, students with disabilities, English Learners, students of color, rural students and low-income children are being taught by teachers with little or no training. Last year, Congress included a provision in H.J. Res 117, which you signed into law, requiring the Secretary of Education to submit a report to Congress by December 31, 2013.

Congress mandated this report to provide a state-by-state picture on the number of students in certain subgroups being taught by teachers-in-training through alternative routes to certification. These teachers-in-training are currently and we believe inappropriately identified as "highly qualified teachers" under federal law and, with that label, permitted to be concentrated in low-income, high-minority schools.

The Secretary's report is required by law by a provision inserted in the December, 2010 Continuing Resolution (H.R. 3082) in Section 163 making it lawful for teachers who are still in training to be labeled as "highly qualified" under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The Secretary's report is required by law by a provision inserted in the December 2010 Continuing Resolution (H.R. 3082) in Section 163 making it lawful for teachers who are still in training to be labeled as "highly qualified" under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). This report is required to address a harmful provision, added in and extended through appropriations rather than with thorough consideration in authorizing legislation, that allows teachers who have not yet completed their training to be labeled "highly qualified teachers" through June 30, 2014.

While data from some states, including California, indicate that high-need students are disproportionately taught by alternative route teachers-in-training, data that illuminate these problems are not typically reported at the state and federal levels. The Secretary's report will for the first time provide a national picture of teacher distribution disparities in terms of how many teachers-in training who are called "highly qualified" are working with high need students.

Though the deadline for the Department of Education to report this important data is the end of 2013, there is no indication that the Department has notified states of the Secretary's report data requirements. The Department has offered to collect a non-representative "sample" from only a handful of states. This is unacceptable and contrary to what the law requires. The statute's clear direction to report "by state" requires that the data should be broken out by state and aggregated to state-level totals. It does not authorize sampling a subset of states. The call for data to be reported for "each [LEA]" only further confirms that data from each state must be included in the Secretary's report.

The data needed for this report is data that districts are already required to collect under Section 1111 (h)(6)(A) of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. Since 2002, schools and districts have been required by NCLB to have this data available for any parents who request it.

Your Administration has not hesitated to collect other critical education data and to highlight disparities in educational opportunity nationwide through, for example, the Civil Rights Data Collection and the ARRA's requirement that districts report on per pupil spending at each school. With the report deadline of December 31, 2013 just months away, the Department's six-month delay in taking any concrete steps to report on disparities in access to fully trained teachers is particularly troubling.

External reviews of the NCLB waiver proposals that the Department has approved for 34 states indicate that little attention has been given to equitable access to fully prepared and effective teachers1, despite assurances from the Department that it would continue to enforce the ESEA requirement (ESEA section 1111(b)(8)(C)) that poor and minority students not be disproportionately taught by unqualified, inexperienced or out-of-field teachers.

Data from the Secretary's report will provide essential information to parents, educators and policy makers so informed decisions can be made to strengthen education for our nation's most valuable asset, our children, by ensuring that every child is taught by a well-prepared and effective teacher in every class, every year. We look forward to the Department fulfilling its responsibilities as required by law by December 31, 2013. To that end, we respectfully request an immediate update as to status and immediate steps to begin a full and timely implementation with states and districts.

Sincerely,

The Coalition for Teaching Quality (members listed on next page)

CC: Hon. Arne Duncan, Secretary, United States Department of Education
Roberto Rodriguez, White House Domestic Policy Council
Steve Robinson, White House Domestic Policy Council
Alexis Barrett, White House Domestic Policy Council
Deb Delisle, Assistant Secretary, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education
Michael Yudin, Acting Assistant Secretary, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services
Denise Forte, Acting Assistant Secretary for Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development

Footnote:

1 See, e.g., Ayers, Jeremy and Isabel Owen. No Child Left Behind Waivers: Promising Ideas from Second Round Applications. Washington: Center for American Progress, 2012, at 38 ("Few states outlined plans for ensuring students have access to effective teachers, though the flexibility package requires them to uphold current law in this area. We are concerned that states are not focusing their data systems to inform and monitor local education agency distribution of educators in an equitable fashion or encouraging local education agencies to take actions to remediate imbalances"). Hall, Daria. A Step Forward or a Step Back?: State Accountability in the Waiver Era. Washington: Education Trust, 2013, at 6 ("Many other state plans, though, are vague at best when it comes to ensuring there are effective teachers and leaders in Priority schools. And no state has articulated a clear plan for addressing teacher assignments within Focus schools to ensure students who need the most support are placed with the strongest educators").

Coalition for Teaching Quality (93 Organizations)

National Organizations

Finland's Pasi Sahlberg is one of the world's leading experts on school reform and the author of the best-selling "Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn About Educational Change in Finland?" In this piece he writes about whether the emphasis that American school reformers put on "teacher effectiveness" is really the best approach to improving student achievement.

The president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, called late last month for a moratorium on the high stakes attached to new Common Core-aligned standardized tests. (You can read about that here.) Here's a piece in support of that call, written by Jeff Bryant, an Associate Fellow at the Campaign for America's Future and the owner of a marketing and communications consultancy. It serves numerous organizations including Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders, PBS, and International Planned Parenthood Foundation. He writes extensively about public education policy at ourfuture.org. Follow Jeff on Twitter: jeffbcdm

Montgomery County school board members voiced alarm Tuesday about steep failure rates on last semester’s final exams in high school math courses, saying such problems go back many years and raising questions about school policies that might affect student test performance.

Virginia Tech President Charles W. Steger has shepherded the public university for more than 13 years, overseeing enviable growth in scientific research, financial endowment, student enrollment and national prestige.

The College Board has decided not to invalidate more than 250 Advanced Placement exams from a Montgomery County high school after a student took a cellphone video in the testing center and posted it on Twitter.

Virginia Board of Education President David M. Foster is bringing his around-the-state listening tour to Northern Virginia on Thursday, with a stop in Fauquier County.

Foster’s goal is to visit all eight of Virginia’s educational administrative regions by the end of the year. He and board member Winsome Sears will host a forum on education issues Thursday at 6:30 p.m. at Kettle Run High School in Nokesville.

What is the most important problem facing American children today?

According to the Academic Pediatric Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, it is the effects of poverty on the health and well being of young people. But, they concede, there is no sustained focus on childhood poverty, or a unified pediatric voice speaking on the problem, or a comprehensive approach to solving it.

The Fairfax County School Board decided Monday to postpone a review of the district’s criteria for school renovations.

The board opted to delay the review of the so-called renovations queue until November, after the new superintendent, Karen Garza, begins her tenure.

Andrew Zuckerman will serve as Montgomery County Schools Superintendent Joshua P. Starr’s new chief of staff starting June 17.

Zuckerman is an associate superintendent in Prince George’s County public schools and will replace Brian Edwards. Edwards has been chief of staff since October 2007, but added duties overseeing the school system’s communications department when the chief communications person left in 2010.

Prince George’s County NAACP officials said Tuesday that they support County Executive Rushern L. Baker’s school takeover plan and will not work with opponents to block the measure from taking effect next month.

Catholic University announced Tuesday that a charitable foundation has pledged $4 million to the university’s school of nursing to fund scholarships for students in financial need.

The donation comes from the Bedford Falls Foundation Charitable Trust, a foundation established by William E. Conway Jr., co-chief executive officer and managing director of the Carlyle Group, and his wife, Joanne.