Schools for Tomorrow Blog

Three articles over the break caught my eye.  They highlight what can be done at the state and district level to challenge some status quo thinking.

New Hampshire is looking at allowing students to get their high school degrees within two years and then test into 2 and 4 year colleges.  Adams 50 is going to move away from seat time and focus on what kids know to move them forward.

Both of these innovative ideas are challenging some old-school thinking about education.  The move from rank and sort to standards based education provides us with opportunities to fundamentally change the way we “house” students.

The other article concerns a basic change in the way we “grade” students.  Grand Rapids high school students will be given multiple chances to pass classes, even if this means turning in work that is weeks late.  Students will also be given opportunities to retake assessments.  Interestingly enough, the teacher’s…

I am reading a new book, “Learning by Leading,” by Stephen Priskill and Stephen D Brookfield.  In it the authors show how social activist leaders “enjoy a capacity to be taught, to work collaboratively with followers, to listen and learn from people around them, and in many cases, to lead by being led.”

Alexander Oom’s recent post about challenging the dualistic approach to education linked quite well with the book’s use of Jurgen Habermas’s ideas around authentic communication.  Habermas argues that leaders, and others involved in any fight for social justice, and I think we’d all agree that education is key in this battle, need to follow four validity claims for communication to be “authentic.”

“Habermas believes that to communicate authentically speakers need to strive to use language that stands the best chance of being understood by hearers; this is the claim of comprehensibility [Education community please take note!].  Authentic speakers also…

It’s shocking!  It’s a wake-up call!  We’re living on a planet where students in other countries are increasingly outscoring our kids on standardized tests!  We here in the U.S.A. know it, we talk about it, and we feel increasing urgency as we try and figure out what on earth needs to be done.

Effective teachers.  They are an essential piece of the answer.  How in the world do we increase the number of effective teachers in our schools?  This is the question that Gladwell zooms in on in his latest New Yorker article .

To exemplify just how important an effective teacher is, he writes about two teachers at the same school, each with students who, at the beginning of the year, are scoring in the 50th percentile on standardized tests.  End of the year: students in one class are scoring in the 40th percentile, in the other class they’re in the 70th…

The Rocky Mountain News has just posted a newsflash that Denver Public Schools Supt. Michael Bennet will be named to the U.S. Senate tomorrow to finish out Ken Salazar’s term.

This is great news for Bennet, but what does it mean for DPS? There’s currently no clear number two person in the district who can step in and take the reins. It’s even a mystery who a temporary fill-in might be. With new schools and facilities-sharing initiatives just underway, and pension merger negotiations in a fragile state, this is a less than ideal time for a sudden leadership change.

Just a couple of weeks ago, it appeared that Bennet might be headed to D.C. to lead the U.S. Department of Education. So we’ve been wondering for a while now what his sudden departure might mean for the district. Here is what I wrote in my “Letter from the editor” in my weekly enewsletter recently:

There…

The mind tends towards division and opposition: heads v. tails, black v. white, defense v. offense, progressive v. conservative, Capulet v. Montague.   This simplicity has its advantages, but considered and thoughtful debate is not one of them.

In education generally — and on this blog — this dualism is found in various forms: charter schools v. district schools; pro-union v. anti-union; teachers v. nonteachers.  Nationally, the debate has also been shaped by defining opposing factors: reformers v. establishment,  disrupters v. incrementalists,  Broader, Bolder v. the Education Equality Project.  My own writing has been subjected to this constricting binary paradigm, as an Op-Ed that I submitted under the title of Schools, Competition and Choice (”and” because the latter two are differences of degree, not of kind) was instead published with the oppositional title Competition vs. Choice.

The implication in all of this is clear: pick sides.

To choose opposing sides is to agree to a zero-sum game…

OK, one last post. Here is the “Letter from the editor” that went out in my weekly newsletter yesterday. I thought posting it on the blog might prompt some discussion, even over the holidays:

We’ll be on holiday hiatus next week, so now is the time to look toward the new year and ponder how we’d like to see the education landscape change in 2009.  

Education News Colorado and the Schools for Tomorrow blog devote significant space to discussing and advocating for school choice: charters, new schools, anything to shake up existing systems and let in some fresh air and light. It’s inspiring to see schools opening across the country that are showing early signs of success educating significant numbers of low income students.

And more such schools will be opening around here in 2009. It will be exciting to see the first Envisions School in Colorado launch. Ditto for the second…

Well, thanks to The Onion, I found the perfect holiday video. Is this the future awaiting our kids if we don’t heed Tom Friedman’s advice?

New Portable Sewing Machine Lets Sweatshop Employees Work On The Go

This blog will be on at least semi-hiatus until the new year. But I thought I’d leave you with this sobering but spot-on assessment of our nation’s current condition, courtesy of the NYT’s Tom Friedman. Only a bit of it relates indirectly with education:

My fellow Americans, we can’t continue in this mode of “Dumb as we wanna be.” We’ve indulged ourselves for too long with tax cuts that we can’t afford, bailouts of auto companies that have become giant wealth-destruction machines, energy prices that do not encourage investment in 21st-century renewable power systems or efficient cars, public schools with no national standards to prevent illiterates from graduating and immigration policies that have our colleges educating the world’s best scientists and engineers and then, when these foreigners graduate, instead of stapling green cards to their diplomas, we order them to go home and start companies to compete against ours.

I’m sure the line…

Apparently not yet shamed by the series of reports (NYT, Daily News, NY Post) on New York City’s rubber rooms where, under union rules, roughly 700 teachers collect salaries for not teaching with an estimated annual cost of over $60M, Randi Weingarten wants to add some more bodies:

Randi Weingarten, both the head of the national AFT and the local president of the New York teachers’ union, the UFT, is the unexpected heroine for nearly 90 alternative certification teachers hired through the New York City Teaching Fellows program. Less than 24 hours before these teachers–all newly hired but still unplaced in any school–were to be terminated, Weingarten filed a lawsuit to prevent them from losing their salaries. Accordingly, a judge granted an injunction, keeping the teachers on the payroll until an arbitrator can rule on the merits of the case.

These new teachers were supplied under a contract between the district and The New Teacher Project (TNTP) with the stipulation…

It’s that time of year again. No, I’m not referring to the impending arrival of our secular Christmas celebrations with all their ramifications for batteries, wrapping paper, and calories. Nor the arrival of the college football postseason with its over-commercialized duds like the Papa John’s Bowl, Meineke Car Care Bowl, and Chick-fil-A Bowl. Nor the fact that it’s time for me to sign off until 2009. Though all these happen to be true.

I’m referring to the annual unveiling of the National Education Association’s Rankings and Estimates publication (PDF), which offers us all the latest school funding stats on a state-by-state basis.

So where does Colorado stand? As we look forward to important, well-informed debates for the year ahead, here are some selected excerpts for your no-batteries-necessary, environmentally-friendly, and calorie-free holiday delectation:

• Public school revenue per student in fall enrollment, 2006-07: 40th ($9,354) – Table F-1
• Current expenditures for public K-12 schools per student…

A somewhat mixed review on traditional schools and charters (or new schools) sharing buildings, in the Sunday NYT. Worth a read for people about to embark on a similar adventure in Denver.

Having just posted on the need to close bad charter schools, it’s good to end the week on a positive note.  In Washington D.C., long one of the cities with the worst public education system in the nation, charters are showing some considerable gains (full article):

Students in the district’s charter schools have opened a solid academic lead over those in its traditional public schools, adding momentum to a movement that is recasting public education in the city.

The gains show up on national standardized tests and the city’s own tests in reading and math, according to an analysis by The Washington Post. Charters have been particularly successful with low-income children, who make up two-thirds of D.C. public school students.

The article is instructive on both why many of these schools work, and some pitfalls to avoid (there has been accusations over conflicts of interest from the Charter board). It’s excellent reading.

…