Mobile Learning Institute (A 21st Century Education / Film Series)
http://www.mobilelearninginstitute.org/21stcenturyeducation/
Monday, October 5, 2009
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Saturday, September 26, 2009
A Race WORTH Running (AND ONE WE MUST NOT LOSE!)
For Release:
1:00 pm
September 24, 2008Contact:
Gary G. Naeyaert
517-281-2690
2,500 ADVOCATES HOLD EDUCATION REFORM RALLY AT STATE CAPITOL
Change agents urge legislature to pass bills to close the achievement gap and secure “Race to the Top” funds
Lansing, MI – More than 2,500 students, parents, teachers and education activists held a rally on the lawn of State Capitol Building this morning.
Education reform priorities pushed during the rally included the need to fix failing schools, provide alternative routes to teacher certification, and expand quality public school options, especially in underperforming areas.
“It is a moral imperative that we close the academic achievement gap in Michigan,” said Michael Tenbusch, Vice President for Education Preparedness at the United Way of Southeastern Michigan.
“These reforms are not only the right approach for our students – they could bring millions in federal education funds to the state,” he continued.
Most observers believe passing these types of bills are necessary before Michigan will be competitive in $4.35 billion “Race to the Top” federal incentive program.
“Each and every American citizen is entitled to have equal access to a high quality education,” said Kevin Chavous, one of the nation’s leading education reform activists, during his stirring keynote address at the rally.
Students released over 1,000 “Kids Need Great Schools” balloons after Chavous’ remarks, and each balloon represented hundreds of minority and at-risk students behind grade level and stuck in failing schools.
“Every child can learn, and all kids deserve great schools. The status quo isn’t getting it done, so we need to work together and find new ways to help kids achieve,” said Rachele Downs, Vice President, CB Richard Ellis Detroit and member of the Leadership Detroit Education Support Committee.
“We agree with President Obama that students must take responsibility for their own education, and empowering parents as true partners in public education should be a much higher priority,” said Sharlonda Buckman, Executive Director of the Detroit Parent Network.
1:00 pm
September 24, 2008Contact:
Gary G. Naeyaert
517-281-2690
2,500 ADVOCATES HOLD EDUCATION REFORM RALLY AT STATE CAPITOL
Change agents urge legislature to pass bills to close the achievement gap and secure “Race to the Top” funds
Lansing, MI – More than 2,500 students, parents, teachers and education activists held a rally on the lawn of State Capitol Building this morning.
Education reform priorities pushed during the rally included the need to fix failing schools, provide alternative routes to teacher certification, and expand quality public school options, especially in underperforming areas.
“It is a moral imperative that we close the academic achievement gap in Michigan,” said Michael Tenbusch, Vice President for Education Preparedness at the United Way of Southeastern Michigan.
“These reforms are not only the right approach for our students – they could bring millions in federal education funds to the state,” he continued.
Most observers believe passing these types of bills are necessary before Michigan will be competitive in $4.35 billion “Race to the Top” federal incentive program.
“Each and every American citizen is entitled to have equal access to a high quality education,” said Kevin Chavous, one of the nation’s leading education reform activists, during his stirring keynote address at the rally.
Students released over 1,000 “Kids Need Great Schools” balloons after Chavous’ remarks, and each balloon represented hundreds of minority and at-risk students behind grade level and stuck in failing schools.
“Every child can learn, and all kids deserve great schools. The status quo isn’t getting it done, so we need to work together and find new ways to help kids achieve,” said Rachele Downs, Vice President, CB Richard Ellis Detroit and member of the Leadership Detroit Education Support Committee.
“We agree with President Obama that students must take responsibility for their own education, and empowering parents as true partners in public education should be a much higher priority,” said Sharlonda Buckman, Executive Director of the Detroit Parent Network.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
RING! Consequences of the PERFECT STORM!
September 8, 2009
Schools Aided by Stimulus Money Still Facing Cuts
By SAM DILLON
FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — Children are returning to classrooms across the nation during one of the most tumultuous periods in American education, in which many thousands of teachers and other school workers — no one yet knows how many — were laid off in dozens of states because of plummeting state and local revenue. Many were hired back, thanks in part to $100 billion in federal stimulus money.
How much the federal money has succeeded in stabilizing schools depends on the state. In those where budget deficits have been manageable, stimulus money largely replaced plunging taxpayer revenues for schools. But in Arizona, California, Georgia and a dozen other states with overwhelming deficits, the federal money has failed to prevent the most extensive school layoffs in several decades, experts said.
When Lori Smallwood welcomed her third-grade students back to school here, it was a new beginning after a searing summer in which she lost her job, agonized over bills, got rehired and, along with all school employees here, saw her salary cut.
“I’m just glad to be teaching,” Ms. Smallwood said. “After the misery of losing your job, a pay cut is a piece of cake.”
In the hard-hit states, the shuffling of teachers out of their previous classrooms and into new ones, often in new districts or at unfamiliar grade levels — or onto unemployment — continues to disrupt instruction at thousands of schools. Experts said that seniority and dysfunctional teacher evaluation systems were forcing many districts to trim strong teachers rather than the least effective.
And in some places, teacher layoffs have pushed up class sizes. In Arizona, which is suffering one of the nation’s worst fiscal crises, some classrooms were jammed with nearly 50 students when schools reopened last month, and the norm for Los Angeles high schools this fall is 42.5 students per teacher.
“I’ve been in public education north of three decades, and these are the most sweeping cutbacks I’ve seen,” said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools. “But it would have been worse without the stimulus.”
Los Angeles Unified, the nation’s second-largest district, sent layoff notices to 8,850 teachers, counselors and administrators last spring. Bolstered by stimulus money, it recently rehired some 6,700 of them, leaving about 2,150 demoted to substitute teaching or out of work. Hundreds of districts across California laid off a total of more than 20,000 teachers, according to the California Teachers Association.
In Michigan, the Detroit schools’ emergency financial manager closed 29 schools and laid off 1,700 employees, including 1,000 teachers. Arizona school districts laid off 7,000 teachers in the spring, but stimulus money helped them rehire several thousand. Tucson Unified, for instance, laid off 560 teachers, but rehired 400.
Florida’s second-largest system, Broward County Schools, laid off 400 teachers, but aided by stimulus money, rehired more than 100. In Washington State, many districts let employees go; Seattle laid off about 50 teachers.
Lauren Stokes, who taught high school English last year in North Carolina’s Charlotte-Mecklenburg district, was laid off with about 650 of her colleagues. She sought other jobs, but stimulus money sent to the state helped her district hire her and many others back. One disappointment: her classroom this year is a portable trailer.
“But I’m rehired, thank goodness,” said Ms. Stokes, who is 23. “I’m looking forward to trying new things out on this year’s batch of students.”
Catherine Vidal, a language teacher laid off in May from a high school in Moorpark, Calif., is still out of work. Fifty-nine years old, Ms. Vidal has given up her apartment and is living, for now, on a friend’s boat. Teaching has become too iffy, and she will change professions, she said.
Not only school staff members are feeling the pain, of course.
“I struggled this year getting my three boys everything they needed,” said Mary Lou Johnson, an unemployed office worker who went back-to-school shopping last month at a Wal-Mart in Chamblee, Ga. “Buying their backpacks, sneakers, all the stuff for their classes — it nearly cleaned me out.”
In Ohio, students in the South-Western City district south of Columbus returned to schools with no sports, cheerleading or band, all cut after residents voted down a property tax increase. Stimulus money allowed the district to expand services for disabled students, but it could not save extracurricular programs, said Hugh Garside, the district’s treasurer.
Driving the layoffs was a precipitous decline in tax revenues that left states with a cumulative budget shortfall of $165 billion for this fiscal year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a research institute. About half of the 160 school superintendents from 37 states surveyed by the American Association of School Administrators said that despite receiving stimulus money, they were forced to cut teachers in core subjects. Eight out of 10 said they had cut librarians, nurses, cooks and bus drivers.
Districts unable to avoid layoffs should seek to do minimum damage by retaining outstanding teachers and culling ineffective ones, said Timothy Daly, president of the New Teacher Project, a nonprofit group. But most districts are simply dismissing teachers hired most recently, because union contracts or state laws protect tenured teachers in most states and because few districts have systems to accurately evaluate teacher performance, he said.
“Districts tend to make their problems worse by laying off good teachers and keeping bad ones,” Mr. Daly said.
The Hall County district northeast of Atlanta, which has 35 schools, dismissed 100 of its 2,000 teachers, said William Schofield, the superintendent. John Stape, who taught high school Spanish, and his wife, Janie, who taught third grade, were among them.
Ms. Stape, 50, is still out of work. Mr. Stape, who is 65 and has a Ph.D., found a job teaching this school year, for less pay, in a rural high school southeast of Atlanta. He said that no administrator had ever observed his teaching before the day he was laid off.
“They didn’t know whether I was a good teacher or not,” Mr. Stape said. Mr. Schofield said the district used student achievement data and professional judgment to identify mediocre teachers for dismissal, but he acknowledged that Hall County had to cut so many teachers that strong ones were let go, too.
“We downsized about 50 pretty good folks,” Mr. Schofield said. The district also trimmed salaries of all district employees by 2.4 percent. Mr. Schofield said he cut his own by 3.4 percent, bringing it to $183,000 this year, and relinquished $23,000 in bonuses.
The Hall County schools received more than $18 million in stimulus money, and without it, “those 100 layoffs could easily have gone to 150,” he said.
Among the Hall County educators helped by the stimulus was Ms. Smallwood, who is 25. After she lost her job teaching kindergarten, she went to her mother’s home to cry, then regained her composure and circulated her résumé. A principal eventually hired her to teach third grade.
“I feel like I’m starting over again,” she said.
Schools Aided by Stimulus Money Still Facing Cuts
By SAM DILLON
FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — Children are returning to classrooms across the nation during one of the most tumultuous periods in American education, in which many thousands of teachers and other school workers — no one yet knows how many — were laid off in dozens of states because of plummeting state and local revenue. Many were hired back, thanks in part to $100 billion in federal stimulus money.
How much the federal money has succeeded in stabilizing schools depends on the state. In those where budget deficits have been manageable, stimulus money largely replaced plunging taxpayer revenues for schools. But in Arizona, California, Georgia and a dozen other states with overwhelming deficits, the federal money has failed to prevent the most extensive school layoffs in several decades, experts said.
When Lori Smallwood welcomed her third-grade students back to school here, it was a new beginning after a searing summer in which she lost her job, agonized over bills, got rehired and, along with all school employees here, saw her salary cut.
“I’m just glad to be teaching,” Ms. Smallwood said. “After the misery of losing your job, a pay cut is a piece of cake.”
In the hard-hit states, the shuffling of teachers out of their previous classrooms and into new ones, often in new districts or at unfamiliar grade levels — or onto unemployment — continues to disrupt instruction at thousands of schools. Experts said that seniority and dysfunctional teacher evaluation systems were forcing many districts to trim strong teachers rather than the least effective.
And in some places, teacher layoffs have pushed up class sizes. In Arizona, which is suffering one of the nation’s worst fiscal crises, some classrooms were jammed with nearly 50 students when schools reopened last month, and the norm for Los Angeles high schools this fall is 42.5 students per teacher.
“I’ve been in public education north of three decades, and these are the most sweeping cutbacks I’ve seen,” said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools. “But it would have been worse without the stimulus.”
Los Angeles Unified, the nation’s second-largest district, sent layoff notices to 8,850 teachers, counselors and administrators last spring. Bolstered by stimulus money, it recently rehired some 6,700 of them, leaving about 2,150 demoted to substitute teaching or out of work. Hundreds of districts across California laid off a total of more than 20,000 teachers, according to the California Teachers Association.
In Michigan, the Detroit schools’ emergency financial manager closed 29 schools and laid off 1,700 employees, including 1,000 teachers. Arizona school districts laid off 7,000 teachers in the spring, but stimulus money helped them rehire several thousand. Tucson Unified, for instance, laid off 560 teachers, but rehired 400.
Florida’s second-largest system, Broward County Schools, laid off 400 teachers, but aided by stimulus money, rehired more than 100. In Washington State, many districts let employees go; Seattle laid off about 50 teachers.
Lauren Stokes, who taught high school English last year in North Carolina’s Charlotte-Mecklenburg district, was laid off with about 650 of her colleagues. She sought other jobs, but stimulus money sent to the state helped her district hire her and many others back. One disappointment: her classroom this year is a portable trailer.
“But I’m rehired, thank goodness,” said Ms. Stokes, who is 23. “I’m looking forward to trying new things out on this year’s batch of students.”
Catherine Vidal, a language teacher laid off in May from a high school in Moorpark, Calif., is still out of work. Fifty-nine years old, Ms. Vidal has given up her apartment and is living, for now, on a friend’s boat. Teaching has become too iffy, and she will change professions, she said.
Not only school staff members are feeling the pain, of course.
“I struggled this year getting my three boys everything they needed,” said Mary Lou Johnson, an unemployed office worker who went back-to-school shopping last month at a Wal-Mart in Chamblee, Ga. “Buying their backpacks, sneakers, all the stuff for their classes — it nearly cleaned me out.”
In Ohio, students in the South-Western City district south of Columbus returned to schools with no sports, cheerleading or band, all cut after residents voted down a property tax increase. Stimulus money allowed the district to expand services for disabled students, but it could not save extracurricular programs, said Hugh Garside, the district’s treasurer.
Driving the layoffs was a precipitous decline in tax revenues that left states with a cumulative budget shortfall of $165 billion for this fiscal year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a research institute. About half of the 160 school superintendents from 37 states surveyed by the American Association of School Administrators said that despite receiving stimulus money, they were forced to cut teachers in core subjects. Eight out of 10 said they had cut librarians, nurses, cooks and bus drivers.
Districts unable to avoid layoffs should seek to do minimum damage by retaining outstanding teachers and culling ineffective ones, said Timothy Daly, president of the New Teacher Project, a nonprofit group. But most districts are simply dismissing teachers hired most recently, because union contracts or state laws protect tenured teachers in most states and because few districts have systems to accurately evaluate teacher performance, he said.
“Districts tend to make their problems worse by laying off good teachers and keeping bad ones,” Mr. Daly said.
The Hall County district northeast of Atlanta, which has 35 schools, dismissed 100 of its 2,000 teachers, said William Schofield, the superintendent. John Stape, who taught high school Spanish, and his wife, Janie, who taught third grade, were among them.
Ms. Stape, 50, is still out of work. Mr. Stape, who is 65 and has a Ph.D., found a job teaching this school year, for less pay, in a rural high school southeast of Atlanta. He said that no administrator had ever observed his teaching before the day he was laid off.
“They didn’t know whether I was a good teacher or not,” Mr. Stape said. Mr. Schofield said the district used student achievement data and professional judgment to identify mediocre teachers for dismissal, but he acknowledged that Hall County had to cut so many teachers that strong ones were let go, too.
“We downsized about 50 pretty good folks,” Mr. Schofield said. The district also trimmed salaries of all district employees by 2.4 percent. Mr. Schofield said he cut his own by 3.4 percent, bringing it to $183,000 this year, and relinquished $23,000 in bonuses.
The Hall County schools received more than $18 million in stimulus money, and without it, “those 100 layoffs could easily have gone to 150,” he said.
Among the Hall County educators helped by the stimulus was Ms. Smallwood, who is 25. After she lost her job teaching kindergarten, she went to her mother’s home to cry, then regained her composure and circulated her résumé. A principal eventually hired her to teach third grade.
“I feel like I’m starting over again,” she said.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Grants in Innovation i3 Fund
Grants from Innovation Pot Would Require Track Record
Washington
Federal education officials last week pledged that the economic-stimulus program’s $650 million innovation fund will reserve the largest grants for schools, districts, and nonprofit organizations that want to finance programs with proven track records and are ready to grow.
In the U.S. Department of Education’s first substantial preview of the “Investing in Innovation” grant program—newly dubbed the “i3 Fund”—Secretary of Education Arne Duncan sketched out three broad grant categories that, in essence, will make the biggest awards where there’s the most evidence of success.
The grants start going out early next year, and the largest—of up to $50 million each—will be reserved for “proven” programs that are ready to grow, Mr. Duncan told a gathering of school district superintendents here. The second category will be grants of up to $30 million for programs that already exist in pilot form, where research shows they work. The smallest grants will be for up to $5 million in seed money for “pure innovation”—ideas that aren’t proved but show promise.
“Educational innovation should not be confused with just generating more great ideas or unique inventions,” said Mr. Duncan at a symposium hosted by ACT Inc., the Iowa City, Iowa-based nonprofit organization, and America’s Choice, a school reform group in Washington. “Instead, we need new solutions.”
A formal framework for how the grant process will work, what criteria will be used to judge proposals, and an exact timetable, including application deadlines, will be released in the coming weeks.
Still, Mr. Duncan provided the first insight into how the department will structure those grants and what it will be looking for. Education officials said there would likely be two rounds to the competition, although they would consider consolidating the rounds into one if districts and nonprofit groups need more time to apply.
Discretionary Pot
The i3 innovation grants are part of a larger $5 billion pot of discretionary money available to Mr. Duncan as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed by Congress in February. The i3 program is set aside for school districts, nonprofit organizations, and consortia of schools to encourage innovation.
Separately, Education Department officials are asking the philanthropic community to pledge money beyond the $650 million in the stimulus package toward the department’s goal of scaling up innovation at the district level.
In addition, a larger $4.35 billion is earmarked for the Race to the Top Fund—a competitive grant program for states to pay for large-scale education improvement efforts that focus on bolstering academic standards, teacher quality, data systems, and low-performing schools. President Barack Obama officially kicked off the Race to the Top Fund competition last month in a speech at the Education Department, when the proposed criteria for judging states were released for public comment. ("States Scramble for Coveted Dollars," July 24, 2009.)
Details of a separate $350 million competition within the Race to the Top Fund to help states implement common assessments will be announced later. ("Duncan Unveils Details on Race to the Top Aid," June 15, 2009.)
Evidence-Based Criteria
James H. Shelton, the assistant deputy secretary who leads the department’s office of innovation and improvement, said at the Aug. 20 event that data and validation are important components of any successful innovation-grant proposal.
Mr. Shelton said that when “rock-solid evidence” isn’t available, then the rationale behind a proposal must be grounded in strong theories and research. “We have many anecdotes,” he said. “But we have to get beyond the anecdotes.”
He acknowledged the administrative challenges ahead for the department, as thousands of applications are expected. Judging the smaller “pure innovation” grants could be particularly vexing, Mr. Shelton added, as the task will likely involve comparing “apples and oranges.”
For the majority of school districts that have tight budgets, the i3 grants are particularly attractive, said Sheryl R. Abshire, the chief technology officer of the 32,400-student Calcasieu Parish district in Lake Charles, La.
“School districts don’t have the luxury of sitting around and waiting for money anymore,” said Ms. Abshire, who attended the briefing. Her school district is already starting to plot strategy on how to win one of the grants. She said the focus will be, at least in part, on improving technology in the classrooms and the professional development teachers need to use it.
In making the awards, Mr. Duncan said the Education Department will want to see programs driven by student outcomes that can be successfully scaled up and are sustainable once federal grant money runs out.
The secretary specifically cited his interest in increasing graduation rates and college preparedness, expanding the school day and academic year, and improving the quality and reach of prekindergarten programs.
Models Cited
In his speech, Mr. Duncan singled out several models as examples of innovation, including the Teaching Fellows programs that have been established in a number of cities. He also cited Mastery Charter Schools, in Philadelphia, the Los Angles-based Green Dot Public Schools, and the Academy for Urban School Leadership—a Chicago-based not-for-profit—as examples in the area of turning around failing schools.
And Mr. Duncan devoted a sizable portion of his speech to praising Wendy Kopp, who started Teach For America while a Princeton University undergraduate. TFA recruits recent liberal arts graduates into the teaching profession.
The department also is working to establish an interactive i3 Web platform that will allow for online discussion and reviews—by anyone—of promising innovative practices that can help districts and others prepare proposals. For example, it could be a way for a school district to find a partner for an innovative program it wants to try, or a way to solicit ideas to improve a program.
That is one way, said Mr. Shelton, the assistant deputy secretary, that the department itself is trying to be innovative.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Monday, July 6, 2009
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Saturday, March 14, 2009
REFORM tied to the DOLLARS! (MAKES CENTS)
Obama Says Public Schools Must Improve
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 11, 2009; A01
President Obama sharply criticized the nation's public schools yesterday, calling for changes that would reward good teachers and replace bad ones, increase spending, and establish uniform academic achievement standards in American education.
In a speech to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Obama called on teachers unions, state officials and parents to end the "relative decline of American education," which he said "is untenable for our economy, unsustainable for our democracy and unacceptable for our children." The speech, delivered in a venue meant to underscore the changing demographics of the nation's public education system and its long-term priorities, sought to bring a bipartisan approach to education reform by spreading blame across party lines for recent failures.
"For decades, Washington has been trapped in the same stale debates that have paralyzed progress and perpetuated our educational decline," Obama said. "Too many supporters of my party have resisted the idea of rewarding excellence in teaching with extra pay, even though it can make a difference in the classroom. Too many in the Republican Party have opposed new investments in early education, despite compelling evidence of its importance."
Obama's speech, his first as president devoted to education, struck a tone of urgency at a time when public education is slated to receive about $100 billion in new federal money under the recently passed economic stimulus package. The money may give Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan, more influence in reshaping a public education system traditionally guided by state governments and local school districts.
"The resources come with a bow tied around them that says 'Reform,' " Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff, said in a telephone interview. "Our basic premise is that the status quo and political constituencies can no longer determine how we proceed on public education reform in this country."
Although Obama proposed many of the ideas on the campaign trail, he used the speech to link those prescriptions to the future success of the ailing U.S. economy. He encouraged experimentation in the public school system, including proposals to extend the school day -- to bring the United States in line with some Asian countries whose students are scoring higher on tests -- and to eliminate limits on the number of charter schools.
"A number of these things are simply encouragements to the states on matters that the federal government has little authority over," said Jack Jennings, president of the nonpartisan Center on Education Policy. "But with this stimulus money comes the ability to talk more about these issues. And that is very powerful in itself."
The president signaled a willingness to take on influential Democratic constituencies, including teachers unions, which have been skeptical of merit-pay proposals. He said he intends to treat teachers "like the professionals they are while also holding them more accountable."
Good teachers will receive pay raises if students succeed, Obama said, and will "be asked to accept more responsibility for lifting up their schools." But, he said, states and school districts must be "taking steps to move bad teachers out of the classroom."
"If a teacher is given a chance but still does not improve, there is no excuse for that person to continue teaching," he said. "I reject a system that rewards failure and protects a person from its consequences."
Obama's support for ideas such as merit pay and toughened accountability for teachers is similar in tone to proposals placed on the table by D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee in contract negotiations with the Washington Teachers' Union.
Rhee, a Democrat, said last year that voting for Obama was "a very hard decision" because of the party's traditional reluctance to take on influential teachers unions. A spokeswoman said last night that Rhee had no immediate comment on the president's speech.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, a union with more than 1 million members, said in a statement that "as with any public policy, the devil is in the details. And it is important that teachers' voices are heard as we implement the president's vision."
Obama's call for states to adopt uniform academic achievement standards is likely to anger conservatives, who generally favor giving local school districts the authority to design curriculum and grading criteria. To make his point, the president said: "Today's system of 50 different sets of benchmarks for academic success means fourth-grade readers in Mississippi are scoring nearly 70 points lower than students in Wyoming -- and getting the same grade."
To encourage classroom innovation, Obama said, he wants the District and the 26 states that now limit the number of permitted charter schools to lift those caps. Such schools, founded by parents, teachers and civic groups, receive public money but are allowed to experiment broadly with curriculum. The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools says 365,000 students are on waiting lists for charter schools.
Obama chose to deliver his remarks at the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, senior administration officials said, to emphasize the growing proportion of Latinos entering the public school system. He said a quarter of kindergartners in public schools are Latino, adding that they "are less likely to be enrolled in early education programs than anyone else." He said the stimulus plan includes $5 billion to expand the Early Head Start and Head Start programs.
The president also noted that Latino students are "dropping out faster than just about anyone else," a national problem that cuts across ethnic lines. He noted that "just 2,000 high schools in cities like Detroit, Los Angeles and Philadelphia produce over 50 percent of America's dropouts."
Regarding higher education, Obama said he plans to expand several federal grant programs, including increasing the maximum amount of a Pell grant and allowing it to rise with inflation, and ending "wasteful student loan subsidies." The goal, he said, is to make college "affordable for 7 million more students."
"So, yes, we need more money. Yes, we need more reform. Yes, we need to hold ourselves accountable for every dollar we spend," Obama said. "But there is one more ingredient I want to talk about. The bottom line is that no government policies will make any difference unless we also hold ourselves more accountable as parents."
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
BIG PICTURE! (Unfolding)
President Obama says the decline of education is "unacceptable for our children."
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Obama began to flesh out the details of one of his signature campaign promises Tuesday, outlining his plan for a major overhaul of the country's education system "from the cradle up through a career."
President Obama says the decline of education is "unacceptable for our children."
"We have let our grades slip, our schools crumble, our teacher quality fall short and other nations outpace us," Obama said in an address to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. "The time for finger-pointing is over. The time for holding ourselves accountable is here."
"The relative decline of American education is untenable for our economy, unsustainable for our democracy and unacceptable for our children, and we cannot afford to let it continue," he said.
The president outlined a five-tier reform plan, starting with increased investments in early childhood initiatives.
Obama noted that the recently passed $787 billion stimulus plan includes an additional $5 billion for Head Start, a program to help low-income families.
He highlighted a proposal to offer 55,000 first-time parents "regular visits from trained nurses to help make sure their children are healthy and prepare them for school and life."
He also pledged to boost federal support in the form of "Early Learning Challenge" grants to states that develop plans to strengthen early education programs.
Second, Obama called for an end to "what has become a race to the bottom in our schools" through lower testing standards. Echoing former President Bush's call to end "the soft bigotry of low expectations," Obama said states needed to stop "low-balling expectations" for students.
"The solution to low test scores is not lower standards; it's tougher, clearer standards," he argued.
At the same time, however, he urged states to develop standards "that don't simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test but whether they possess 21st century skills like problem-solving and critical thinking, entrepreneurship and creativity."
To help promote this goal, Obama said he would push for funding in the No Child Left Behind law to be more effectively tied to results. The Education Department, he said, would "back up this commitment to higher standards with a fund to invest in innovation in our school districts."
Obama's third tier focused on teacher training and recruitment. He noted that federal dollars had been set aside in the stimulus plan to help prevent teacher layoffs. He also reiterated a promise to support merit pay, as well as extra pay for math and science teachers with the goal of ending a shortage in both of those subjects.
At the same time, however, the president warned that ineffective teachers should not be allowed to remain on the job.
"If a teacher is given a chance but still does not improve, there is no excuse for that person to continue teaching," he said. "I reject a system that rewards failure and protects a person from its consequences."
Teachers' unions have opposed merit-based pay, arguing that it is unfair because it leads to competition among teachers and because teachers face different challenges depending on where they are located.
Fourth, Obama called for the promotion of educational "innovation and excellence" by renewing his campaign pledge to support charter schools. He called on states to lift caps on the number of allowable charter schools.
He also urged a longer school calendar.
"I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas," Obama said. "But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom."
Obama's final reform initiative focused on higher education. Among other things, the president promised to boost college access by raising the maximum Pell Grant award to $5,550 a year and indexing it above inflation. He also promised to push for a $2,500 a year tuition tax credit for students from working families.
The American Federation of Teachers, a union with 1.4 million members, said Tuesday that it embraces Obama's goals to provide "all Americans with a comprehensive, competitive education that begins in early childhood and extends through their careers."
"We also fully support the president's call for shared responsibility for education -- among public officials, school administrators, parents, students and teachers," the group said in a statement.
"As with any public policy, the devil is in the details, and it is important that teachers' voices are heard as we implement the president's vision."
In promoting his program, the president called for an end to the "partisanship and petty bickering" that many observers believe has typically defined education policy debates in the past.
"We need to move beyond the worn fights of the 20th century if we are going to succeed in the 21st century," he said.
Obama also offered a rebuttal to critics who have accused him of diverting attention to issues such as education and energy at the expense of the deteriorating economy.
"I know there are some who believe we can only handle one challenge at a time," he said. But "we don't have the luxury of choosing between getting our economy moving now and rebuilding it over the long term."
Saturday, March 7, 2009
MODEL the PROMISE!
VIDEO: Cradle-to-College Education
An organization targets children in a 24-block area of Harlem, assisting more than 7,400 children and 4,100 adults.
By Converge Staff
Geoffrey Canada is the man behind what The New York Times Magazine calls "one of the most ambitious social experiments of our time." He is the president and CEO of Harlem's Children Zone (HCZ), a project that targets children in Central Harlem and follows them from birth to college.According to its Web site, HCZ operates pre-school programs, after-school programs and the Promise Academy high "to ensure that Harlem students are prepared to enter and excel in college."
WASHINGTON POST / Secretary of Education Arne Duncan
Fixing Our Schools
Having uniform standards and rejecting old excuses would help, the new education secretary believes.
Thursday, March 5, 2009; A18
COUNT US as among those who worried that the economic stimulus plan's huge infusion of new money for education would produce only more of the same failed programs. So it was heartening to hear Education Secretary Arne Duncan describe an unacceptable status quo of broken schools in this country. Not only does he aim to use stimulus dollars to drive reform, but Mr. Duncan envisions this moment as the start of a historic opportunity to dramatically improve the education of children.
"Our job, my job is to fight for kids," Mr. Duncan told Post editors and reporters yesterday as he sketched his plans for the more than $100 billion in new stimulus spending and his ambitions for U.S. education. He made clear that school systems in search of the new federal dollars must be willing to pursue his agenda for change and that his reforms will be built around programs with proven records of success. Refreshingly blunt in describing a "crisis" in education, Mr. Duncan lambasted the system of 50 different states setting 50 different standards for student achievement. He is right to call it a "race to the bottom" in which neither parents nor students know where they stand in relation to the rest of the country, much less the world. Mr. Duncan is not prepared yet to require national standards, but he made clear that a single set of standards, aligned for college readiness and benchmarked to international standards, is where the country needs to be headed.
Equally exciting is his push for improved student assessments as well as sophisticated data systems to track the effectiveness of teachers and the education schools that produce them. Mr. Duncan, former head of Chicago's public schools, has firsthand knowledge of the challenges faced by schools and of what works. For example, he knows that students need more time in schools -- and that "talent matters," so schools have to reward excellence, put the best teachers where they are most needed and get rid of bad teachers. He realizes that it's important to reward everyone who is involved in helping a school succeed. But he's learned that there are bigger differences in teacher performance within schools than between schools.
We admire the fact that Mr. Duncan has absolutely no use for those who would use the social ills of poor children as an excuse for not educating them. "They are part of the problem," he said with disdain, arguing that education is the best way to end poverty. No doubt there will be opposition to his ideas from those traditionalists accustomed to the status quo. But Mr. Duncan made clear that his only interest is in what works.
Our President
Geoffrey Canada and Steven Colbert
Geoffrey Canada at Harvard University
The Pontiac Promise
Please join
STATE REPRESENTATIVE TIM MELTON
& THE PONTIAC SCHOOL BOARD
For a town hall meeting to discuss the
"Promise Zone"
and find out how you can get involved.
Monday, March 16
6 p.m.
Pontiac City Hall
(Council Chambers)
47450 Woodward Ave., Pontiac
"Promise Zone" legislation was recently enacted that gives
our community the opportunity to provide FREE college
education to ALL students that live and attend school in
the Pontiac School District.
"The Oakland Ministerial Fellowship, as a faith-based group,
support the Pontiac Promise Zone district."
- Bishop Robert Simmons of Living Word Ministries
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