September 16, 2016
Just News from Center X is a free weekly education news blast.
Please
subscribe and tweet or share.
September 16, 2016
Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice
The 20 schools that won 2016 Schools of Opportunity awards — and why they were selected
Valerie Strauss, Washington Post Answer Sheet; Kevin Welner, Carol Burris, and Michelle Renée Valladares, National Education Policy Center
What does it really look like to create opportunities for all students to learn? Today we are announcing 20 schools across the nation recognized as 2016 Schools of Opportunity — the first time the designation has been awarded nationwide. Led by researchers and school leaders at the University of Colorado Boulder’s National Education Policy Center (NEPC), this recognition provides a research-based answer to the mismatch between existing awards that recognize schools as “the best” because of their high-test scores and the schools that are actually engaging in research-proven practices. Closing the opportunity gap requires enormous thought and effort, reforming what schools do to address the unique needs of each community while always expecting and supporting engaging and challenging learning for every student.
Ideology not evidence: What we (don’t) know about independent teacher preparation programs
National Education Policy Center
Advocacy groups and self-proclaimed social entrepreneurs are working aggressively to deregulate the preparation of teachers and to expand independent, alternative routes into teaching. The policy push is so powerful that it raises a real possibility that the nation may dismantle its university system of teacher education and replace much of it with independent, private programs not connected to colleges or universities. These new routes sometimes emphasize technical skills over deep, professional understanding. Accordingly, some of the new programs are very different from most teacher education programs provided by U.S. colleges and universities, which are usually grounded in core research knowledge—about the subject matter being taught as well as child and adolescent development and learning theory, all taught in the context of practice and of the students’ environment. In a brief released today, Independent Teacher Education Programs: Apocryphal Claims, Illusory Evidence, Ken Zeichner of the University of Washington reviews what is known about the quality of five of the most prominent independent teacher education programs in the U.S., including their impact on teacher quality and student learning. Zeichner is the Boeing Professor of Teacher Education at UW and is a member of the prestigious National Academy of Education. The five independent programs examined in Zeichner’s brief are: The Relay Graduate School of Education (Relay), Match Teacher Residency (MTR), High Tech High’s Internship, iTeach, and TEACH-NOW. His analysis demonstrates that claims regarding the success of such programs are not substantiated by peer-reviewed research and program evaluations.
New York City to help fund internships at cultural organizations
Andrew R. Chow, New York Times
The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs is beginning an initiative to improve diversity at major New York cultural institutions by financing paid internships at those organizations. The $1 million initiative, half financed by the city and the other half by the Rockefeller Foundation, will place City University of New York students as interns at places like Carnegie Hall, MoMA PS1 and the Museum of Natural History. The program comes on the heels of a survey published this year that found the diversity in the cultural sector to be lacking. While the city’s residents are 33 percent white, according to the 2010 United States census, the cultural work force is 61.8 percent white.
Language, Culture, and Power
Nearly half a million U.S. citizens are enrolled in Mexican schools. Many of them are struggling
Kate Linthicum, Los Angeles Times
Two decades ago, a team of U.S. and Mexican researchers descended on Dalton, Ga., to study the growing number of Mexican immigrants who had come to work in the city’s carpet mills. Victor Zuñiga, a sociologist at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education, was interested in what the demographic shift meant for local schools, so he sat down with a teacher who told him something he couldn’t get out of his head. “The problem with Latino students,” she said, “is they disappear.” Zuñiga returned to Mexico intent on finding out what had happened to those kids, many of whom had left the U.S. after family members were deported.
When school feels like prison
Melinda D. Anderson, The Atlantic
In December 2012, a Senate subcommittee was convened to examine the school-to-prison pipeline, a national trend in which overly punitive school discipline policies push students out of school and into the criminal-justice system. Among the witnesses at the first-ever congressional hearing on this issue was Edward Ward, at the time an honor-roll student in his sophomore year at DePaul University and a recent graduate of Orr Academy on the West Side of Chicago. He offered an eye-opening first-hand account of his high-school experience. “From the moment we stepped through the doors in the morning, we were faced with metal detectors, X-ray machines, and uniformed security,” said Ward, describing a high-poverty, majority-black campus “where many young people … feel unwelcome and under siege.”
New requirements on public meetings, notices and records
Tom Chorneau, Cabinet Report
Legislation signed late last week will require school districts to provide new notice to property owners about parcel taxes, and give new flexibility in posting public meeting information and responding to records requests. AB 2257 by Assemblyman Brian Maienschein, R-San Diego, will allow local government agencies–including school districts–to fulfill existing public meeting notification requirements using the Internet beginning in January, 2019. The author noted in a statement earlier this summer, that the Ralph M. Brown Act was originally adopted in 1953 and needs to be updated to account for the many changes in technology. AB 2257, among other things, will better ensure that public meeting notices will be posted in a consistent, visible location on an agency’s homepage.Access, Assessment, and Advancement
Denied: How Texas keeps tens of thousands of children out of special education
Brian M. Rosenthal, Houston Chronicle
The vice chairman of the State Board of Education, a Houston school board member, a key state senator and scores of parents and disability advocates all expressed strong opposition on Monday to a Texas Education Agency performance-based monitoring system that has kept thousands of disabled children out of special education since 2004.The Houston Chronicle reported Sunday that TEA officials had arbitrarily decided in implementing the system more than a decade ago to keep special education enrollments at 8.5 percent, a rate far below the national average of 13 percent. Since then, those officials have forced school districts to comply by strictly auditing them and requiring many to file "corrective action plans" for serving too many kids.
California's schools won't be judged only by their test scores, school board votes
Joy Resmovits, Los Angeles Times
California is officially done with telling parents that schools are only as good as their test scores. The state Board of Education voted unanimously Thursday to rate schools using an evaluation that includes many more factors — among them academics, graduation rates, college preparedness and the rates at which non-native speakers are learning English. The evaluations will incorporate scores on new science tests when those tests are ready. Attendance data also will factor in eventually. But unlike in the past, schools will not get an overall rating. Instead, they’ll receive results on how they’re doing across the new categories, for different groups of students. The results will focus not just on how they’re doing now but how they’ve progressed from year to year.
More states mandate high schools count computer science as math or science
Liana Heitin, Education Week
Twenty states now require that high school students be allowed to count a computer science course as a math or science credit toward graduation, according to a new report from the Education Commission of the States. That's up from 14 states with such requirements when the first "Computer Science in High School Graduation Requirements" report came out last year. The requirements vary from state to state.Inequality, Poverty, Segregation
UC regents hail incoming class as most diverse ever
Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times
University of California officials on Wednesday hailed the progress made in opening their campus doors this fall to its most diverse class of new students ever, including nearly 8,000 more Californians. The surge in California freshman and transfer students who signed an intent to register amounted to a 16% increase over last year, according to data posted Tuesday. About 38% were underrepresented minorities — Latinos, African Americans, Pacific Islanders and American Indians — representing a 24.3% increase over last year. “I’m excited about this class — it is the most diverse,” UC President Janet Napolitano said in an interview at UCLA, where the UC Board of Regents opened a two-day meeting. “But we have challenges: How do we make sure that we continue and enhance the quality of the education these students are getting?”
Public schools brace for likely reforms after Connecticut court decision
Cory Turner, NPR
A sweeping ruling from a superior court judge in Connecticut could mean historic changes for the state's schools, including how it funds its poorest districts. A superior court judge wrote yesterday that Connecticut has left rich school districts to flourish and poor school districts to flounder. Cory Turner of the NPR Ed team has more on the ruling.
The resegregation of America
Nissa Rhee, The Christian Science Monitor
The enduring forms of segregation – and in the case of many schools, resegregation – contribute to mistrust between the races and a lack of understanding and empathy, and can lead to violent encounters between law enforcement authorities and residents. Indeed, researchers and community organizers like Mgeni say that segregation is an often overlooked common denominator in many of the cities that have seen high-profile police shootings in recent years.
Public Schools and Private $
Wall Street’s new way of making money from public education — and why it’s a problem
Valeria Strauss, Washington Post Answer Sheet
Within the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act, the K-12 education law that replaced No Child Left Behind, is a provision that provides for the use of federal funds by states and school districts for something known as “Pay for Success.” The Obama administration has actually been funding Pay for Success programs in education and other areas for years, and Congress likes the concept. It is going to become a big thing in public education over the next few years. So what is it exactly? According to the Corporation for National & Community Service: Pay for Success (PFS) has emerged as a new approach for government to partner with the private sector to fund proven community-based solutions. PFS is an innovative contracting and financing model that leverages philanthropic and private dollars to fund services up front, with the government, or other entity, paying after they generate results. This strategy has gained strong bi-partisan support in Congress, as a strategy for increasing return on taxpayer dollars while improving the quality of services provided in our communities. If it sounds as if it’s a way for the private sector to make money off investments in public education, that’s because it is. Supporters say it is a great way to get private entities to invest in schools that need resources. Critics say it is more likely to help the private entities earn a lot of money than do much for children.
Three California schools awarded $10 million each to 'reimagine high school'
Theresa Harrington, EdSource
Three California schools are among 10 nationwide that were awarded $10 million each on Wednesday to “reimagine high school,” as part of a year-long contest backed by an organization headed by Laurene Powell Jobs. All three schools focus heavily on tailoring instruction to individual students, yet each have different goals and serve students in different parts of the state. The Summit Public Schools system plans to open a new campus in Oakland to help students explore career options. Vista High in San Diego County is challenging students to co-create curriculum with their teachers based on United Nations Sustainable Development goals. And a proposal to create a new school called Rise High in Los Angeles won for the services it plans to provide to disenfranchised students, including homeless and foster youth. The proposals were chosen from about 700 entries in the XQ Super School Project contest.
The fight to bring transparency to California’s charter schools
Joel Warner, Capital and Main
Aimee Roylance was thrilled when her son was accepted into Livermore Valley Charter School in 2010. The traditional public schools in their part of the Bay Area were cash-strapped and struggling, and the K-8 charter school, with a waiting list 300 kids long, was known to be an excellent alternative. Sure enough, her son thrived at Livermore Valley, thanks to its diverse programming and strong leadership of its well-liked principal. Eventually, Roylance enrolled her younger two children at Livermore Valley, too.“ The experience overall was very positive,” she says. But she didn’t know what was going on behind the scenes. She first heard inklings of financial and management troubles at the school early this year. Curious, she used her real estate background to look up the tax status of the land parcels on which the school sat – and found the charter was months behind in payments. Soon, Roylance and other parents were packing board meetings of the Tri-Valley Learning Corporation, the nonprofit that operates the school, demanding answers that didn’t come. Board members, Roylance claims, refused to address their tax troubles, release budget information or explain how they were using public funds. The board limited public comment at its hearings, changed meeting locations and released only snippets of pertinent financial documents, says Roylance.
Other News of Note
Texas textbook called out as 'racist' against Mexican-Americans
Laura Isensee, NPR
When teachers and activists demanded schools in Texas, where more than half of the public school students are Hispanic, teach more Mexican-American studies, the State Board of Education responded by calling for more textbooks on the subject. So far, though, the only book submitted for approval has drawn fierce criticism. This week, activists voiced that criticism in front of the Texas Board of Education in a public hearing in Austin. Dozens attended, with some driving hours to the capital from Dallas, Houston and other parts of the state. Some scholars on the subject say that the textbook, "Mexican American Heritage,"is riddled with factual errors, is missing content and promotes racism and culturally offensive stereotypes, such as Mexicans being lazy, not valuing hard work and bringing crime and drugs into the United States.
Just News from Center X is produced weekly by Leah Bueso, Anthony Berryman, Beth Happel, and John Rogers. Generous support from the Stuart Foundation allows Center X to provide this service free to the general public.
