Teacher World

Recently, the teachers in our district were asked to give suggestions regarding ways that our district could cut costs since our most recent school levy went down in flames again and money is increasingly tight. Since we have made drastic staff cuts already and are about as bare-boned there as we can get, administrators and our school board are looking for creative alternatives to cutting costs, and who better to ask than teachers.

One suggestion that most of us sent in was to reduce the work week to four days which saves one day’s worth of operating costs for a district. So imagine my interest when I read that a recent Washington Post survey showed that a growing number of school districts are doing exactly what we have recommended.

While the numbers of schools that are trying this approach to cut expenses is not huge, it has more than doubled from an estimated 120 districts in 2009 to 292 currently. (This is out of an estimated 15,000 public school districts.)

This approach to reducing costs allows districts to save money on transportation and administrative costs, which include janitorial work, electricity, heat, busing, school lunches, etc. In order to shorten the week, the four days that school is in session would have to be extended.

One of the concerns to this method is that it can be a logistical problem for working parents who would have to find child care for their younger students on the day that school is not in session. A survey conducted in September among Florida business owners found that 65 percent of entrepreneurs in the state were against a 4-day week. On top of their concerns over the nightmare parents might experience in seeking day care for their students, they worried about the potential risk of leaving older students home alone unsupervised. They also expressed trepidation that the move to a 4-day week might severely impact the lowest-paid employees of school districts: food service personnel and bus drivers.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has expressed his displeasure with the growing trend saying that it would eliminate after school programs and would “hurt children” academically.

In a report in 2009, researchers at the University of Southern Maine found that there was “either no impact or a positive impact on academic performance” when schools moved to a 4-day week. However, according to Kathy Christie, chief of staff of the non-profit Education Commission of the States, which provides information to policymakers to help them make decisions regarding education, more research is needed in order to determine whether this trend is worthwhile or not. Last year, Christie told CNN, “There really is no strong research on how it affects student achievements.”

In lieu of thorough research, proponents of a 4-day week claim that student attendance would be higher if parents had one day a week to schedule doctor’s appointments and other errands that can only be accomplished during the week. This makes a lot of sense; students leave school all of the time for doctor, dental, and orthodontist appointments. And quite often, parents take their child out in the morning for an appointment and never bring them back all day.

Yet, while some districts are talking about reducing the school week, some districts who are struggling academically are considering adding a day to their week. Baltimore schools are considering adding Saturday school, and the superintendent of Memphis City Schools actually submitted a proposal earlier this year which would require students in elementary school up to fifth grade to attend school six days a week.

Our district has had to be creative in the past in order to be fiscally responsible. During the energy crisis in 1976-1977, I am told that the schools in our district went on split sessions, with elementary students attending school in the morning and older students attending in the afternoon in the same building. This allowed them to shut down one building for the winter, thus reducing fuel costs. By all accounts, students seemed to do just fine.

If a 4-day week can get school districts through this lean time, so be it. Teachers will rise to the occasion and make it work until our economy picks up again, and we can go back to normal. Drastic times call for creative measures. And this is an alternative that could work in these drastic times.

Changes in Teaching, Funding Education, low-performing schools, Teacher-World's Blog 4-day school, budget cuts, Washington Post survey

I recently blogged regarding the announcement that half of the nation’s public schools failed to meet No Child Left Behind progress goals, which has added incentive for U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and others to give waivers to states allowing them to change the standards for “adequate yearly progress” in schools. One such state which plans to apply for a waiver happens to be my own home state of Ohio.

Ohio public schools did better than the nation, with 60 percent meeting federal goals during the last school year, but half of its districts failed to meet these goals.

Under current NCLB policy, all public school students are to be proficient in math and reading by 2014. To guarantee that this occurs, the federal government required states to set “adequate yearly progress” goals. Each year or every few years, these goals must be raised. Due to this practice, most states now require approximately 90 percent or more of their students to pass the state tests.

Since Ohio and Kentucky recently adopted demanding math and reading curricula and are also developing new, college-preparatory tests for students, Duncan has argued that this high bar penalizes states like these.

How bad is the problem in Ohio? Well, in the Cincinnati area, 45 percent of its public schools failed federal annual academic progress goals. The largest district, Cincinnati Public, had 67 percent of its schools fail, and the second largest, Lakota, had 9 out of 20 of its schools fail. Winton Woods had all six schools fail.

So what is the common problem within these schools? Steve Denny, the executive director of accountability for Winton Woods, says it is the schools’ diversity; he says that the more diverse the school is, the harder it is to meet federal requirements. Which makes a lot of sense.

Here’s how it works: for a school to meet federal standards, each demographic student group, or subgroup, must pass the tests. Subgroups are based on several factors including ethnicity, poverty, disability, and limited-English-speaking level of students. Schools that don’t have many of these students have few federal progress goals to meet. But, according to Denny, it only takes a few students in a subgroup to fail for the school and district to fail as well.

Janet Walsh, the district spokesperson for Cincinnati Public, explained that in the 39 schools in the district which failed to meet federal goals, learning disabilities were a factor. She went on to explain that about 5 percent of the students in the district are unable to take the regular state tests due to severe disabilities. Yet, Ohio only allows these schools to give alternative tests to one percent of its students. This means that the other four percent fail the tests.

Jeanine Molock, director of accountability at the Ohio Department of Education said, “Ohio is in a better position than most states. Our story wasn’t as dramatic as most states were reporting.” She explained that part of the reason for this is the fact that Ohio allows its schools to meet federal standards four different ways, which exceeds the chances which other states have.

First, there is the traditional way: if the required numbers of students pass their state tests, as in other states, Ohio schools can meet federal goals. However, if an Ohio school fails that, it can still pass if one of the following goals is met:

• its two-year average for passing grades meets the federal standard,
• or enough students are on a trajectory to pass tests within two years,
• or the percent of students failing declines by 10 percent from the prior year.

But, Molock said that, in spite of this flexibility, Ohio will seek a waiver from federal progress restrictions by February. Those of us who are Ohio teachers will be watching to see if our state gets a waiver, and if so, what exactly that waiver means for our schools.

low-performing schools, No Child Left Behind, state achievement tests, Teacher-World's Blog Arne Duncan, No Child Left Behind, Ohio, state achievement tests, state waivers

         Students from Holmes Elementary School in Miami

Okay, let’s talk turkey about Teach for America and its impact on improving the lowest performing schools.

First, with a crippled economy and college graduates facing huge obstacles in landing jobs after school, Teach for America is receiving some renewed attention. And why wouldn’t it? Corps members earn teacher salaries, and at the same time, some of their federal student loans are forgiven. Quite a draw for graduates in this tight job market! In fact, applications to join the corps members are sky high.

On top of that, some school districts like one north of downtown Miami are actively working to fill their staffs with Teach for America corps members.

Julian Davenport, an assistant principal at Holmes Elementary in Miami, said, “These are the lowest performing schools, so we need the strongest performing teachers.” Three-fifths of this school’s staff come from Teach for America.

And it is estimated that by 2015, due to a $50 million federal grant, recruits from Teach for America could make up one-quarter of all new teachers in 60 of the nation’s highest need school districts. Here in Ohio, Governor Kasich signed a bill in April which opened the door for Teach for America teachers to begin working in Ohio schools by the 2012-2013 school year. And the program is also expanding internationally.

So, what is the problem, you might ask? Well first, Teach for America has had mixed results in terms of teacher efficacy and career longevity. According to statistics, these teachers perform about as effectively as other inexperienced teachers. But that isn’t saying much, since novice teachers tend to be less successful in the classroom than more experienced teachers. Additionally, most of these corps members leave the teaching profession within five years.

Using its own review of external research regarding their members, Teach for America concludes that its members achieve student gains that are “at least as great as that of other new teachers,” with some studies showing they did better, and others showing they did worse. Teach for America does not release data to the public regarding information they gather on how their teachers are performing.  “We just don’t feel it’s responsible to show,” the program’s developer, Wendy Kopp said. “There are so many flaws in our system.”

But one finding that is consistent is the program’s high turnover rate. The organization reports that 33 percent of its graduates are still teaching, but in many districts, turnover rates are much higher. North Carolina, for example, reported that after 5 years, only 7 percent of Teach for America corps members were still teaching in the state.

Kopp and those at Teach for America argue that turnover rates are high in general across low-income schools, which is true, but among other teacher preparation programs, theirs has one of the highest turnover rates.

The other huge concern with Teach for America is the limited training and experience they have received before being thrust into a classroom. This inexperience and lack of training, critics say, perpetuates the same inequalities that Teach for America is supposed to eradicate.

Kati Haycock, president of The Education Trust, which advocates on behalf of low-income and minority children, and a longtime supporter of TFA, said, “There’s no question that they’ve brought a huge number of really talented people in to the education profession.” But, she added, “Nobody should teach in a high poverty school without having already demonstrated that they are a fabulous teacher. For poor kids, education has to work every single year.”

For me, that is one of the major issues I have with Teach for America. I don’t care how intelligent these graduates are; without proper training and intensive classroom experience with students to learn how to communicate that knowledge to kids in a way that they will understand, you should not be in a classroom. Period! And there is no way that can be accomplished in one field experience, which is apparently all corps members get.

Let’s get real! These “teachers” aren’t being placed in schools where conditions are advantageous for instruction. They are being placed in some of the toughest schools which have a record of extremely low performance. I question how effective experienced teachers can be in these schools, let alone these novice young people.

I am sure that there are some naturally good teachers in Teach for America who are able to eventually overcome their lack of preparation and become excellent teachers. Please don’t think I am denigrating these young people, or their desire to make a difference in the schools where they are placed. I applaud their efforts, but I don’t feel they are being given the opportunity to become awesome teachers before they are zapped into a classroom with no real preparation or tools of the trade.

Let’s face it, if Teach for America was as effective as it claims, why aren’t more schools turning around when these teachers are placed there? And why do so many of these young people quickly gravitate to other careers, abandoning the students who need good teachers?

Expand Teach for America? Work out the problems that keep the program from being truly effective before expanding something that seems to be rather mediocre at best. Could it be a successful program? Absolutely! Is it currently successful? You be the judge.

Changes in Teaching, Educational Reform, low-performing schools, Teacher Education, Teacher-World's Blog Teach for America, teacher efficacy, teacher training, Wendy Kopp

I apologize, but I feel compelled to postpone my Teach for America follow-up blog until tomorrow after hearing some late-breaking news today that I felt was so despicable that it needed to be addressed. It is the story of a former Philadelphia superintendent, Arlene C. Ackerman.

Ackerman is a Harvard graduate who, before being hired as Philadelphia’s school superintendent, had worked in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. schools. In her three year tenure in Philadelphia, Ackerman came under fire in spite of the fact that test scores in the district improved under her guidance and the graduation rate increased, improvements she was hired to bring about.

But this past summer, allegations surfaced suggesting that Ackerman both encouraged and took part in teacher-assisted cheating on the district’s standardized tests. If these allegations are true, she is guilty of knowingly and purposefully deceiving the community into thinking that progress was being made when that progress was really being fabricated and coerced.

Several unnamed teachers have admitted to cheating on these tests due to bullying and pressure from their administrators. (Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?) But the official investigation into Philadelphia’s 2009 testing procedures has not been conclusive. This scandal naturally reflected poorly on Ackerman.

Apparently, she also bumped heads with Mayor Michael Nutter when he reneged on a no-new-taxes pledge in order to raise funds for a jeopardized kindergarten program, after she went ahead and found the needed funds without reporting to him immediately. And she also was reported to have issues with other community members and the district’s teachers union.

On August 19, an embattled Ackerman told hundreds of principals from her district who were gathered for a professional-development meeting, “Sentence me. I dare you. Or set me free. But I admit to you today that I am guilty. Guilty of just being me. Once I understood that being guilty of standing up for children was a good thing, I stood just a little taller, held my head a little higher, and I felt liberated, liberated knowing that whatever happens to me, I have touched the future of thousands of young people in Philadelphia, and for the better.”

Sounds lovely, doesn’t it? But at the same time, rumors were circulating that high-ranking business leaders in the community were receiving calls asking them to donate money to a charitable education organization that would provide money to help buy out Ackerman’s contract. These donors backed out after critics criticized the deal’s lack of transparency.

On August 22, it was announced by Mayor Michael Nutter that Arlene Ackerman would be leaving the district. But she would be leaving it with a sizable severance check. Ackerman’s contract entitled her to more than $1.5 million, but in an effort to limit how much public money was spent to buy her out, she would walk away with $905,000, at the taxpayers’ expense!

Now, that is a ridiculous amount of money, I think we would all agree. So this woman, who was making a handsome $365,000 a year, walked away from a job which she apparently at the very least mismanaged, and at the very worst placed in the middle of a cheating scandal, with almost $1 million in lovely parting gifts? Does this not sound crazy to you?

Is it not ludicrous that the taxpayers of Philadelphia would still be helping to buy out her contract? To make matters worse, the district had to cut $629 million from its 2011-2012 budget, and has $35 million more to cut.

But wait! Just when you think it couldn’t get any worse, it was reported today that Ackerman has applied for unemployment!

No way, you say? Oh, yes! A spokesman from the district confirmed yesterday that she applied for jobless benefits and is eligible for $573 a week, the state maximum, based on her former salary.

Ackerman’s attorney claims that she qualifies for unemployment because she is now jobless and she wasn’t fired for cause. And apparently, as part of her separation agreement, the School Reform Commission agreed not to contest any future unemployment claims she might decide to file.

But many aren’t taking the news very well. One of these is Michael Lodise who is the head of the school police officer’s union. Lodise explained that he fought for months to get unemployment compensation for 120 school police officers who were laid off from their jobs in June. He eventually succeeded in getting them compensation.

Of Ackerman’s bid for unemployment, Lodise said, “These people were really hurting, really needed it. And here’s a woman with almost a million dollars, and she wants unemployment besides.  I just don’t understand it.”

I don’t understand it either. Here is a woman who claims to have been standing up for children, yet she has helped rob that district of much-needed money to provide adequate services for the children whose lives she claims to have touched. Oh, she touched them all right; while the district was entrenched in a cheating scandal and she robbed them blind! And now, she plans to pillage the unemployment agency.

It is up to the state employment compensation board to decide whether it will uphold Ackerman’s claim. Please, do the right thing and tell this woman that enough is enough!

low-performing schools, state achievement tests, Teacher-World's Blog Arlene C. Ackerman, cheating scandal, Philadelphia schools, unemployment claims

This will be the first in a two part series on Teach for America, a program developed by Wendy Kopp while she was studying public policy at Princeton. According to its website, the goal of the program is to “recruit a diverse group of leaders with a record of achievement who work to expand educational opportunity, starting by teaching for two years in a low-income community.” In these blogs, we will explore just how successful Teach for America has been.

Over the past 20 years, thousands of college graduates have joined Kopp’s movement whose mission is to ensure that students who are growing up in poverty have the opportunity to get an excellent education. In fact, since 2008, applications for the program have doubled and foundations have donated tens of millions to the program.

Studies indicate that family income is one of the most accurate ways to predict how students will perform in the classroom. For example, only 18 percent of low-income eighth-grade students received proficient or above scores on the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress.

At the center of the debate over how to achieve educational reform is how do schools overcome the challenges that poverty creates? The solution clearly is to fill these schools with highly effective teachers, but statistically, these schools generally have twice as many teachers who have fewer than three years’ experience in schools.

Tim Knowles, director of the Urban Education Institute at the University of Chicago, who served as the founding director for Teach for America in New York City, said, “The reality, particularly in urban centers in America, is they [highly effective teachers] aren’t there.”

Teach for America believes that it can create a corps of highly effective teachers to fill these schools in a short period of time. However, research has supported the simple fact that experienced teachers tend to be more effective in the classroom, while beginning teachers tend to improve with experience.

One Harvard study which focused on students in Texas, for instance, concluded that a teacher’s level of education, experience, and scores on their licensing exams had more of an influence on student performance than any other factor they studied. Research done in North Carolina on various teacher training programs, which included Teach for America, revealed that when elementary students were taught math by a first-year teacher, they lost the equivalent of 21 days of schooling compared to students who had teachers who had four years of experience.

So how are Teach for America candidates recruited and trained to prepare them for the challenges they will face? First, most of those who apply only consider teaching as an option after speaking with a Teach for America recruiter or program graduate; most of them have no education background and have never even considered teaching as a career.

Ryan Winn, for example, was won over when his recruiter showed him a picture of his third-grade Phoenix class. When the recruiter told Winn that half the students in the photograph would probably drop out by the eighth grade, Winn said, “That struck me as incredibly unfair and I was upset about it.” He is currently a teacher in Memphis, Tennessee.

Once a graduate is accepted into Teach for America, they begin their training with thick packages of reading materials. Next, they spend five weeks co-teaching a summer class, usually in an urban school district, with students who are taking remedial coursework in order to move on to the next grade.

While co-teaching, they are overseen by another instructor, who might be a more experienced school teacher or a current or former Teach for America corps member.

Sarahi Constantine Padilla, a recent Stanford University graduate teaching at Holmes Elementary in Miami, said of the training program, “It was a real steep learning curve.”

After this short summer experience, these “trained” Teach for America teachers are sent to the districts they have been assigned to where many of them don’t even know what they are going to teach until just before the school year begins. The districts which hire these teachers pay up to $5,000 to Teach for America for each corps member who gets hired on, as well as paying the teacher’s salary.

Interviews with nearly two dozen Teach for America corps members were mixed. Many described classroom victories, but many also admitted to feeling uncertain about their abilities as first-year teachers.

Brett Barley, who taught in the San Francisco Bay area, said,  “I struggled personally with my ability to be effective, and I think the gains my kids achieved were largely in spite of me. I thought the key thing I was able to bring to them was communicating the urgency of the predicament they faced and having them buy in to the idea they could be successful.”

Barley had reasons to be dismayed; most of his fourth-grade class started the year at a second-grade level in reading and writing. Two of his students were classified as blind, and roughly 30 percent weren’t native English speakers.

“The biggest challenge was trying to learn on the job to meet all the kids at their different skill levels,” Barley said.

Kopp’s book, A Chance to Make History, tells the stories of several Teach for America corps members who achieved extraordinary success in their classrooms, but there are many teachers whose experiences were far from successful, like Megan Hopkins. A Spanish major in college, Hopkins was assigned as a bilingual teacher in Phoenix, but she received no training regarding how to teach English language learners.

“I had no idea how to teach a child to read,” Hopkins said. “I had no idea how to teach a second language learner to read in Spanish, much less in English. After five weeks of training, I really had no idea what I was doing. I felt that was a big disservice to my students.”

She was encouraged by Teach for America to set a goal to advance her students one and a half grade levels, but she had no idea how to attain the goal. She had to work with other teachers to develop a plan.

She said that she was praised “up and down” for increasing her students’ reading levels, but she questioned the validity of the results. She claimed that one of her students, who was a native Spanish speaker, was able to read fluently in English as a result of her efforts, “but if you asked him what he read, he had absolutely no idea.”

So how effective is Teach for America, and how effective are the teachers who the program “trains?” These are questions we will explore tomorrow in the second part of this blog.

Educational Reform, low-performing schools, Teacher-World's Blog effective teachers, low-performing schools, Teach for America, Wendy Kopp

Finally, the Senate education committee approved a bipartisan rewrite of the No Child Left Behind Act this Thursday, which will continue to face huge opposition as it moves forward. Some of that opposition will likely come from civil rights and business leaders who feel it is a step back on student accountability and from Republican lawmakers who are likely to say that it does not take away enough federal control of K-12 education.

U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee and lead engineer of this bill, is hopeful that it can be brought to the Senate floor for a vote before Christmas, which would derail President Obama and Arne Duncan’s plan to offer state waivers from integral parts of the current law.

This bill would continue the system of testing students as they are currently tested in grades 3 through 8 and in high school, as well as continuing to provide achievement data for a variety of student subgroups. Some of these subgroups include students with disabilities, racial minorities, and English-language learners.

But, at the same time, this bill would significantly scale back the accountability system which was an integral part of the old NCLB legislation and had won such huge bipartisan support in 2001. The panel’s bill would also (as reported by Education Week):

* Do away with Adequate Yearly Progress
* Halt federally-directed interventions except for the lowest-performing schools and those with continual achievement gaps between low-income
* Based in part on the administration’s regulations for the School Improvement Grant program, it would spell out a series of federal interventions for turning around these lowest-performing schools
* Require states to create college-and-career standards, and although almost every state has already joined the Common Core State Initiative, they would not be required to do so
* Restructure the Department of Education, consolidating it into 40 programs from its current 82

During the panel’s discussions, multiple amendments were filed which provide some insight as to the hot issues that will be debated when this goes to the Senate floor. One of these includes Sen. Michael Bennet’s amendment requiring states to set performance targets which would include setting goals to move all students to proficiency by 2020 and cutting the achievement gap in half within various student subgroups. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., disagreed, arguing that such an amendment would be a “back-door way” of maintaining the AYP yardstick which has been widely ridiculed as an assessment tool.

Strangely, some of the debate has brought some interesting agreements between some very unlikely groups. For example, Sen. Harkin’s draft version of the bill which was released on Oct. 11, called for states to devise teacher evaluations which would take student achievement into account. However, Republicans on the committee disagreed, saying this would be a federal mandate dictating what should be a state and local issue. This was an argument that the National Education Association was on board with, as they also felt this provision was a federal intrusion.

Another issue that the NEA and GOP agreed on was one that would allow states to tender their own plans for turning around the lowest-performing schools to the U.S. secretary of education.

On the other hand, this issue brought heated debate between Democrats and Republicans. Sen. Alexander argued that his amendment would give states the opportunity and flexibility to create a turnaround plan that would best work in their circumstances making it more effective than the one spelled out in the bill.

However, seven Democrats on the committee voted this amendment, which passed unanimously by Republican members, down. Clearly, this will be a hot topic on the Senate floor, which is not surprising as it relates to how much federal control there should be in state and local affairs.

Some of the amendments that were accepted include:

* An amendment allowing students in the lowest-performing 5% of schools in a state to transfer to better-performing schools
* An amendment that would require new principals coming into turnaround schools to have a background in school improvement
* An amendment giving states the choice of using computer-adaptive tests for accountability purposes under the law
* An amendment to provide competitive grants to recruit and train principals to lead turnaround schools

Some amendments which were rejected include:

* An amendment which would have permitted teachers to be considered “highly qualified” only if they complete a state-approved traditional or alternative teacher-preparation program, or pass a meticulous state-approved teacher-performance assessment, and earn certification in their particular subject matter
* An amendment to do away with the approval for the Promise Neighborhoods program, which aids communities in developing cradle-to-career services

Several amendments were offered, but later withdrawn dealing with highly qualified teacher provisions, continuous improvement of schools, and scrapping authorization for the Race to the Top program, providing an interesting  preview of what is to come when this committee’s bill hits the Senate floor.

Educational Reform, low-performing schools, state achievement tests, Teacher's Unions, Teacher-World's Blog AYP, ESEA, highly qualified teachers, lowest-performing schools, No Child Left Behind, Senate committee, U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin

The Los Angeles Unified School District has been under scrutiny for 19 months while they underwent a civil rights investigation. On October 11, the U.S. Department of Education announced that the investigation showed the district created wide academic disparities since it has failed to provide an equal education to English-learners and black students.

The district agreed to resolve these disparities through various methods, and Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who revealed the agreement at a news conference which was held at LAUSD headquarters, said that the plan would ensure that every student in this school district, the second largest in the nation, would receive the same academic opportunities “regardless of race or national origin.”

Duncan said that he was encouraged by the district’s willingness and sense of urgency in voluntarily agreeing to resolve the disparities rather than waiting to be ordered to do so, especially since these issues are “incredibly complex and politically charged.”

“Though we still have a long way to go before we see that English learner students and African-American students are consistently getting what they need to perform up to their fullest potential, I’m confident today’s agreement will help address the causes of concern that prompted our review,” he said.

While Duncan did not say that students’ civil rights were being violated and didn’t reveal detailed results of the investigation, a statement by the Education Department made it clear that it will monitor whether the district is complying with the agreement until educational codes are being met.

This agreement resulted from a “compliance review” by the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights, which was disturbed by wide achievement gaps between the district’s lowest performing student groups as compared to other students. For example, according to the district’s 2009-10 report card, only 5% of English language learners at the high school level ranked as proficient in either English or math. As for black students, 32% ranked as proficient in English and 9% in math. Yet, the overall district average was 37% in English and 17% in math.

John Deasy, the superintendent of LAUSD, acknowledged that disparities existed and worked with federal officials to reach a solution. The district will have to find ways to fund the measures as the plans for specific areas are developed.

A huge problem with this district’s English-language program is that it has allowed non-native speakers to stay in English-learning programs for years, sometimes through their whole school career, without ever meeting the criteria to move out into mainstream classrooms. As a result, many students have either fallen behind their grade level or dropped out of school in frustration. For example, in the 2009-2010 school year, only 14.4% of English learners were reclassified as fluent.

The district has now agreed to revamp this program by the next school year, placing special emphasis on high school students who haven’t been considered proficient in English, so that they will be able to take the courses they need to in order to graduate. This will be a challenge, as the district has the highest number of English-learning students in the United States.

Under this new agreement, English-learners will receive grade-level courses, teachers will be trained to work with multiple English-proficiency levels, and special education teachers will also receive English-instructional materials.

And there is a component in the program which targets black students in an attempt to boost their “academic language proficiency” beginning in elementary grades.

Three other areas of concern with the investigation were the findings that black students are underrepresented in gifted and talented programs but overrepresented in suspensions and disciplinary actions. Additionally, the investigation revealed that schools with predominantly black populations lack appropriate technology and library resources.

The district said it will work to resolve these disparities with evaluations for gifted and talented programs which are fairer for black students and fairer decisions regarding disciplinary actions. (It is a mystery to me how they will achieve this without letting students into gifted and talented programs who don’t really belong, just to pad the numbers, and decreasing the severity of disciplinary action so that there are less suspensions.) They also agreed to provide more computers and increase library book collections in schools that have a high black population. (I wonder where they will find the funds for that expenditure.)

Although no details were revealed, the agreement called for a school-based community pilot program to be launched in an African-American neighborhood which would provide health and social services for the community.

The president of the teachers union, United Teachers Los Angeles, Warren Fletcher, praised the Education Department for shedding a light on the areas that need improvement, while at the same time pointing out that the district has laid off more than 1,200 teachers and has closed libraries in several of its schools.

Of the agreement, Fletcher commented, “It’s very general. We have to see how those services are going to be provided.”

As I read this article, I could not help but feel frustrated, as I’m sure those who teach in these schools are feeling, too. As usual, the fingers are pointing at the school district, but how does a district in the heart of Los Angeles cope with the problems of a big city, a huge non-English-speaking population, all of the challenges of city life with drugs, gangs, and violence, less government funding for sorely needed programs, a massively reduced teaching staff resulting in bigger class sizes, and now, more demands with no additional resources to meet those demands?

The school district is failing these students because the city is failing these students. Fix the problems in the surrounding neighborhoods, and the schools will be free to do what they are there to do; teach its students, not fix its students.

Funding Education, low-performing schools, state achievement tests, Teacher-World's Blog Arne Duncan, Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights, LA Unified School District, minority students, U.S. Department of Education

Recent reports out of Atlanta concerning the teachers and administrators found guilty in our nation’s biggest school cheating scandal ever hit the news yesterday. And while it was the news most of us were probably hoping to hear, it couldn’t have been worse news for those who were involved.

If you recall, it was The Atlanta Journal-Constitution which first drew attention to statistically improbable test scores by students who attend Atlanta Public Schools last year. Its claims led to the state releasing audits of test results after the newspaper published its own analysis. This launched an investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation which determined that at least 178 teachers and administrators were involved in this mammoth cheating scandal.

The GBI reported that under a cloud of “fear and intimidation” educators gave answers to students on their state achievement tests, changed the answers on tests, used nonverbal cues to get students to change wrong answers, and so on. Principals in these schools were usually the ones who encouraged and even orchestrated the cheating. Teachers who were not involved and tried to report the cheating faced retaliation and punishment. Some even lost their jobs.

Yesterday, a Georgia state commission voted to revoke the teaching licenses of eight of these teachers and three school administrators, implementing the first round of sanctions in what has been a horrific educational travesty.

The Georgia Professional Standards Commission voted on this, the first batch of cases that stem from the GBI probe which was released in July. This probe revealed that widespread cheating had occurred in almost half of the district’s 100 public schools dating back as far as 2001. By the end of the year, it is expected that the commission will rule on all 180 teachers and administrators who were involved in the cheating scandal.

The eight teachers who lost their licenses can reapply for licensure in two years, if they choose to do so, but the administrators’ revocations are permanent. The ruling can be appealed up through state administrative and the Fulton County Superior Courts in the Atlanta area, and some of these cases may take years to be finally resolved under the appeals process.

Kelly Henson, head of the licensing agency, said, “These are 11 cases we felt like had compelling evidence to give to the commission. Education is the most honorable profession, and part of our job is to protect not only the students, but the integrity of the institution.”

Names of the educators who were sanctioned were not released by the commission, as it was noted that they have 30 days to appeal the commission’s decision.

Educators who have been named by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation could also face criminal charges as investigations continue in Fulton and DeKalb counties in the greater Atlanta area.

The state probe led to an investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General and the Georgia Department of Education. They say that the district may owe thousands in federal money for low-income schools that have high test scores.

And investigators for the state also concluded that the superintendent at the time of the cheating scandal, Beverly Hall, who just happened to retire right before the results of the probe were released (does anyone think that was a coincidence?) either knew that cheating was going on or at least should have known what was happening in the district she was hired to serve. From the start, Hall has denied any allegations of involvement and apologized for not doing more to prevent what was happening.

Finally, as if all of this isn’t bad enough, the district is awaiting a decision regarding the possibility that it may lose its accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and School over issues with its school board. The national agency had placed the district on probation in January due to these problems and is expected to rule on whether to revoke their accreditation completely in the coming weeks.

With all of the turmoil this district continues to face, I want to send out a heartfelt message to those who work in these shell-shocked schools to hang in there, and show a watching nation what truly dedicated teachers and administrators can do under extreme pressure.

low-performing schools, state achievement tests, Teacher-World's Blog accreditation, Atlanta Public Schools, cheating scandal, Georgia Bureau of Investigations, Georgia Professional Standards Commisssion, licenses revoked, state achievement tests

This is the second in a series regarding Colorado’s online schools and studies that are looking at their growth, their general ineffectiveness, and their funding, as reported on by Education Week. (I suggest that you read yesterday’s blog first before reading this one.)

First, because online schools cater to students who need flexible scheduling or struggle in more conventional classroom settings, these schools are thriving, not just in Colorado, but all across the United States.

Here’s a little background to help you understand how they work. Students usually take classes on computers which are provided to them by the online schools and get teacher support either through email or virtual chats. Some schools require a certain amount of live or virtual teacher contact, but others don’t.

In Colorado in 2007, the practice of online schools getting higher per-pupil funding changed; now online students are funded at a flat rate of $6,228, which is a little less than average per-pupil funding statewide.

This set amount of per-pupil funding is based each year on student counts taken at the beginning of October. Colorado anticipates that it will spend $100 million in state funds for around 18,000 to attend online schools, but in each of the past three years, half of the online students have left their school within a year.

In fact, looking at a comparison of the October student count data and districts’ end-of–year data, it shows that the number of mid-year transfers was at the minimum 1,000 students a year, and probably more. If you do the math, that translates to at least $6 million annually going to online schools for students who aren’t even there.

The fall of 2008, saw the largest attendance in online programs with 10,500 enrolled, but 5,600 had left those schools by the following fall. In the fall of 2009, 7,400 new recruits replaced those who had withdrawn, but more than a third of these students left by the end of that school year, according to the I-News Network and Education News Colorado analysis. And by October of 2010, only about a quarter of the students remained after two years.

State educators and lawmakers are rightfully concerned that profit and overzealous student recruitment has become more important than educating students.

Shaffer, the state senate president, said, “There isn’t much effort put into keeping those kids in that school. It’s all about boosting their numbers for the count date, then forget about the kids.”

Randy DeHoff, who spent 12 years on the State Board of Education before becoming GOAL Academy’s director of strategic planning last November, said, “One of the things the online schools need to do a better job of in that recruitment and enrollment phase is trying to give a student a real clear idea of what an online program’s about (and) what their responsibilities are.”

“I think it’s problematic for the student in terms of we know that mobility contributes to a lack of success for students,” Diana Sirko, deputy commissioner of education in Colorado said. “What we hear from some of the school districts who receive children halfway through the year who’ve started in online is there may have been a two or three-month gap as they left one and began the next.”

When I-News/EdNews studied test scores for online students previously attending traditional schools, they found that scores dropped once they entered online schools. As a matter of fact, they found that 59% had scored proficient or above in reading in a traditional school, but a year later in online school, only 51% achieved that score.

For example, the St. Vrain School District in Longmont lost 70 of its students last year to GOAL, after heavy on-line recruiting by the program. GOAL recruiters also drove around in recreational vehicles with their school’s logo on the sides making pitches to high school students during their school lunch hours. GOAL even has storefront operations in many malls along the Front Range.

According to DeHoff, their recruiting goal is to reach students not being served by traditional schools, because, he says, GOAL targets at-risk students. “We’re not trying to steal kids from districts, we’re there serving the kids that districts either can’t or don’t want to serve,” he said.

Yet, according to St. Vrain Superintendent Don Haddad, many of these recruited students returned to St. Vrain schools in the middle of the year, academically behind. He claimed their time at GOAL was “wasted.”

“These institutions, what they do is borderline unethical behavior in my mind,” said Haddad, who supports online learning as a tool. “It’s a money making proposition and they have no problem sending the kids back after the October count. The sales job they get up front, it’s a travesty.”

Haddad reported that the district lost more than $400,000 in state funding last year due to GOAL’s recruitment of St. Vrain students.

Further aggravating to some superintendents in Colorado schools is the fact that some online programs are actually sponsored by other school districts that typically receive a portion of their per-pupil funding. Hope Online is sponsored by the Douglas County School District, but very few of the district’s students use the Hope program. Regardless, Hope pays Douglas County about $2 million a year for support services such as professional development and special education.

Amy Anderson has been named to oversee innovation and choice, which includes online schools, for the Colorado Department of Education. She understands the usefulness of online programs for some students, but like so many others, she is concerned about the turnover.

 “There are other schools that are just churning kids and I don’t feel that is good for kids,” Anderson said. “So how can we prevent that? Those are the challenges that the authorizers of online charters are starting to talk about.”

But two of Colorado’s school districts who have been adversely affected by outside online schools have come up with a creative way to combat the recruitment of their students. Florence and St. Vrain are starting their own online programs.

Hey, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, right? At least they would have a bigger stake in their kids doing well no matter which type of education they chose, and the money stays in the district, where it belongs. Smart move!

Funding Education, low-performing schools, Teacher-World's Blog Colorado's online schools, Education News Colorado, Education Week, GOAL Academy, Hope Online, I-News Network, school funding

I wrote a blog yesterday to introduce the Salwen family and their decision to sell their beautiful house, downsize to a house half the size, and donate half of the proceeds to the Hunger Project to help two villages in Ghana. Their amazing story, spurred by, at the time, 14-year old Hannah Salwen, was recorded in a book Kevin and Hannah wrote together called The Power of Half.

When they made these significant changes to their lifestyle in 2007, Hannah explained that it was a personal choice they made; they didn’t expect that their actions might influence others to follow in their footsteps. Yet, that is exactly what is happening in a school just outside Atlanta; a school made up of students who do not come from affluent homes.

How can this be, you may ask? Meet Bear Creek Middle School, a school just outside Atlanta, where over 80% of the student population is impoverished. Dr. Ed Morris, a social worker, works in this school which has had some huge academic challenges, and he teaches a new message to the students, one that you will not find in textbooks.

Morris told CNN, “The government is not going to solve your problems. The school system is not going to solve your problems. Our leaders are not going to solve our problems. So the solution for healing your communities, to heal your homes, and to heal your schools lies within yourself.”

Morris invited Kevin Salwen, philanthropist, father of Hannah, and co-writer of The Power of Half, to join him in a new way of teaching students in this school. In his novel approach Morris leads students through a two-step process. 

“If you’re going to achieve academic excellence in these schools,” he explains, “then you first have to focus on the problem.”

Therefore, the first step requires just that; talk about your problems. Kevin Salwen explained to CNN some of the huge issues that these students are talking about with other students in this first step, “Kids who are talking about being raped or molested, or, you know, kids who are growing up in poverty, or kids who are growing up with no dads, or with moms who are involved in crack.”

Then comes step two; teaching the students that it is in the power of giving back that they will be able to move forward. It was due to Salwen’s adventure with his own family to give half of what they had to people in need, and the family’s account of that adventure in their book, that caught Morris’ attention and inspired him to recruit Salwen to help in his educational endeavor.

Salwen told CNN, “Ed approached me and said, hey, Mr. Salwen, I know you wrote this book for white soccer moms, but let me tell you, you know, it’s the inner city kid, the poor inner city kid.”

Destiny Fulcher, a ninth grade student at Bear Creek Middle School, confessed to CNN that before the program she was extremely low. “I didn’t really care about my school work. I didn’t really care to come to school every day.”

But things began to change for her when she began talking about bullying at school and issues at home with her fellow students; it was the beginning of a new chapter in her life. She began volunteering in her neighborhood by cleaning up trash and doing community service.

“I was distant from people before,” Destiny explained. “And then I grasped how much people needed someone, and not just money or things.”

Destiny began to realize that you don’t have to have a lot of money to give back. Salwen said, “All of the sudden, kids who have always lived their lives recognizing the things they don’t have, start to recognize the things that they do have.”

Sounds great, but does it make a difference academically? Well, Salwen told CNN that changing these kids’ attitudes has also changed their academic performance. “Of the three hundred and thirty some odd kids, one hundred and fifty of them had two F’s or more. That one hundred and fifty went down to fifty-one by the end of the school year.”

Students from this school report that the unlikely pairing of Dr. Ed Morris and Kevin Salwen is a winning combination for their school. Destiny said, “Who wants to give that much money away? Or who wants to help people the way they do, like, it’s not, oh, I’m going to give this money to them. No…they give theirself.”

Salwen concludes that it is about giving and believing. “We believe that you can, that you have power to succeed. Do you believe it; cause we believe it.”

CNN also interviewed Hannah Salwen about the unlikely direction her family’s experience and book have taken in the lives of these impoverished students at Bear Creek. When the reporter told Hannah that the book and its message have “taken on a life of its own” which seems never ending, Hannah expressed their desire to move this program to the seventh grade at Bear Creek and to other schools in the Atlanta area.

“I mean, everyone has something to give, and that’s really…our motto: Everyone has the power to give…It doesn’t have to be money; it could be time, it could be talent. You know, if you spend twelve hours a week online, which a lot of us do, maybe you could cut that in half and only use six hours online, and maybe use the other six hours maybe volunteering at a cancer clinic, maybe reading stories to kids with cancer. I mean, there are hundreds of ideas out there. Just kind of finding what you have too much of and cutting that into half.”

What an awesome and inspirational approach to working with kids! Kids aren’t by nature very willing to give of themselves. They need to be taught. What if all schools adopted this policy?

First, students seem to develop a sense of pride in themselves and their talents which builds self-esteem. There is a sense that their contribution is important, therefore, I matter. And that seems to translate to academic pursuits; if I matter, what I do in school matters, too.

So, schools would be teaching three valuable lessons. First, we all have something of value to share with those around us. Second, by helping others, we help ourselves because we begin to feel that our lives matter. Third, if my life matters, I better make the most of it in school, as well as in my community.

Does it grab you? Does it make you stop and think? Can we all learn from this simple but radical approach to living?

What do you have a lot of or spend a lot of time doing that you could cut in half to help others? If eighth grade students can do it, can’t we?

Snip, snip, snip…

Educational Reform, low-performing schools, Teacher-World's Blog Bear Creek Middle School, Dr. Ed Morris, Georgia, Kevin Salwen, The Power of Half