Posts Tagged ‘Race To The Top’

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Money Rolls In

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011

In spite of comments about the Obama administration from the right and the left, one of the big coups that has just landed in California comes from a United States Department of Education’s Race to the Top grant. Anyone in the education world is happy to grab money for young kids to provide readiness before they start kindergarten. Finally, the state has written a grant that has been approved. Would anyone raise his or her hand to vote to give the funds back? The GOP has tried time after time to snuff out funds for early childhood education.

So, the Obama administration hasn’t shown leadership-when?

Here is a list from Elaine who commented on David Brooks and Gail Collins post on the Opinionator, December 14, 2011.

President Obama’s successes:
-End the Iraq War.

-Health care reform-this will change the way Americans can access health insurance . It will make health insurance affordable for everyone. Who in their right mind can argue the benefits?

-Brought down Osama bin Laden. This is a big deal.

-A great deal of financial intervention, aside from stimulus, during a time when the economy was poised to go over a cliff.

-Recognized the problem with unemployment and the reasons behind the problem-meaning recognizing the real reasons unemployment stays high. Corporations are holding back, not hiring, and also taking this opportunity to practice age and other discrimination.

Also one might add, help to orchestrate the demise of Muammar el-Qaddifi.

Stimulus funds, though not enough and fought over since they were voted for, helped California fix Interstate 5 after trucks had destroyed the right lane. Have you seen the ARRA signs around?

The repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

The resuscitation of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (NCLB) that was about to go another year without revision. The administration finally suggested “waivers” and offered them to states.

The California Early Learning Challenge grant of $52.6 million squeezed out of Race to the Top monies given to eight other east coast states is for a specific program that will primarily fund local Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) being developed by Regional Leadership Consortia - voluntary groups of local First 5 commissions, county offices of education, and county governments. These Consortia will work with licensed child care programs, school districts, and child care partners.

Although the current Congress has a perverted way of counting every penny, one of the ways that the administration has led the nation is by looking out for young children. All those, including teachers, who need to criticize, must keep their students in mind.

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Posted in Elementary and Secondary Education Act, NCLB, No Child Left Behind Act, Race to Top, public schools |
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Is It Luck?

Wednesday, November 9th, 2011

I have a student who reads well and is a math whiz, but can be hyper-focused on a book or a math concept that he finds intriguing. Sometimes during discussion time, he will focus on making origami birds, one after another, rather than participate. It’s a quiet activity but can be distracting as other kids at his table watch his progress instead of leaving him to himself. Other times, he uses his pencil like a tiny baton, twisting it back and forth like a drum major. It flicks the table and this time it’s a noisy distraction. His mother is one of my best classroom volunteers. She won’t tell him that he’s been diagnosed with ADHD, even though he has seen articles about the syndrome on television and has said, “Is that me?”

the pencil as distraction

the pencil as distraction

Was it luck that I didn’t blurt out in a conversation with the boy and his parent a comment about such symptoms? I know better than to offer a diagnosis, no matter how distressed the parent is. But just an offhand comment would have been unkind.

Compare my problem in a full classroom of smart children with the articles in the news about Tennessee and Memphis. The state was one of the first lucky grantees of Race to the Top funds to turn around low-performing schools. How can a state turn a piece of luck into the monstrosity that has become the model as depicted on TV and in the news? Speed seems to be the problem. For one, the state instituted a teacher evaluation system based on a single poor test, instead of spending the time to devise a good model for evaluation. Second, the changes were made top-down, not getting buy-in from the teachers or administrators affected before implementing change.

On top of that confusion, imagine re-playing the 70’s when white students left the Memphis schools for the suburbs to avoid integration. At that time the district had a half white and half black demographic, but all black schools on one side of town and all white on the opposite side of the city. Now it’s an issue of money-the inner city district is way down on its luck and the suburban county district is doing fine. A controversy over who gets how much lead to the merger of the districts. Good luck for the students in Memphis, but class and race challenges rise to the surface for the suburbs.

Reading about those shifts makes me wonder what’s going to happen to the children like my ADHD student who need support way down at the classroom level.

Will their luck depend on me as one of the teachers who keeps chugging along even in difficult circumstances? Leave it to the big guys to hash out the system? And hope that the big guys rise above race and class and use some research to guide decisions. Can we depend on such luck?

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Posted in Race to Top, low-performing schools, public schools |
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Teach, Teacher, Teachers Union

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

Newspapers have stopped writing about Race to the Top (RTTT) “winners and losers.”  TV news has been showing off New Orleans schools resurrected from the water-logged marshes.

Only Newsweek, August 23/30, 2010, p. 25 talked about the Achievement Gap, reminding readers of what works not only in the U.S. but in Europe, South America, and Singapore.  Anyone in the education world who teaches can name the first factor-family circumstances.  Those not fortunate enough to have a family that makes sure of mastery in reading and math skills by age 10 are most likely to fail in school from then on.

Most in the education world can name the strategies to overcome those factors which affect low-performing students.  That’s right.  Pre-schools galore.  Rigorous standards followed through with tutoring from the early grades on.  More time in school-the number of hours and days.  Effort in teacher training in college and during the school year, i.e. don’t cut professional development in order to balance the school district budget.

Of course, in California instead of balancing a state budget so there are enough funds for student education which is the California Teachers Association (CTA) position no matter what the issue, the legislature sits back and lets the teachers unions fight it out with school districts about teacher evaluation, seniority, and layoffs that still are looming for some.

Along came President Pro Tem Darrel Steinberg to propose SB1285 which assures that urban schools with the newest teachers “would not lose a greater proportion of teachers than the districtwide average in layoff.” San Francisco Chronicle, “Seniority vs. civil rights” August 31, 2010.  Sounds like a good change, teachers having struggled with the idea of seniority vs. students’ rights to have strong teachers for a long while.

Few are happy with CTA on the issue of evaluation and seniority, but doesn’t this bill throw one more stone at the wall, given the lack of a balanced state budget and funds from RTTT.  Who is the bad guy and who is the good guy in this standoff?

Now a radio program produced by American Radio Works examined how Chattanooga Public Schools in 2000, well before No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and RTTT was available, looked at achievement in reading and math and took steps.

Be aware, from the start the school district was lucky to have the Benwood Foundation and The Public Education Foundation with lots of money to support steps taken.  The school district was fortunate to have an abundance of test data from the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System to answer why 9 of 20 Chattanooga public schools were so low on the achievement scale.  Yes, it is similar to the system used by the Los Angeles Times recently that is causing a huge ruckus and that is analyzed on the front page of The New York Times, September 1, 2010, “Formula to Grade Teachers’ Skill Gains Acceptance, and Critics” by Sam Dillon.

To make change happen, there was a long fight with the teachers union, but eventually it came out that firing poor teachers didn’t help students do better, increasing the professional development and standards for good teachers did help.  In the documentary the strategies that improved student success were learned right away, e.g. pacing of lessons, knowing the material and how to teach it; and long term, e.g. working as a team, analyzing what helps students learn, teaching each other, using mentors.

Though not as strong as the Chattanooga Public Schools on the hill where family circumstances help, student success continues to improve in the valley, the whole point of “turn around.”

Which tells anyone in the education world to beware of the cost of resistance to change.

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Posted in American Radio Works, No Child Left Behind Act, Race to Top, public schools |
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Core Standards-the Pro and Con

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

Across the U.S., states adopt a set of common standards for academic success-a goal to make our students, rich or poor, literate citizens in this country.  At the same time…

What do we hear in the news?  Unnamed students and adults didn’t know that the colonists were fighting the British in the Revolutionary War.

A highly-esteemed 6th year principal in a Vermont school was replaced in hopes that a change would bring much needed Race to the Top money to the state.

The Washington, D.C. school superintendent has fired about 300 employees, including 241 teachers.  The news reached California July 24, 2010, but never fear, plenty of new teachers have already applied and been interviewed.

The DC superintendent is a graduate of the Teach for America program, the how-to model written about in Atlantic, New York Times, shown on PBS to prepare graduate students for teaching.  The new teachers receive lots of support and supervision to help them succeed in the short 2 years they pledge to teach at a low-performing school.  However, for any principal looking for long term success, teachers moving in and out of a school is the worst problem for an urban site.

Online in The Bay Citizen, July 23, 2010, “Emeryville Schools as a Model” by Gerry Shih described a plan to replicate a tiny school district’s successful improvement of reading and math scores on state tests in a moderately large, financially stressed, neighboring school district.  A strong superintendent with the ability to rally the families and businesses in a city with wide disparity in income and education may be able to improve reading and math abilities-a goal long out of reach for most students in Oakland.

In this blogger’s opinion, lost in the media’s latest news is the recent adoption of common core standards by 29 states as of July 27, 2010.  Right now in California, argument is going on about California’s highly-regarded rigorous standards, including introducing Algebra I in the 8th grade, compared to the core standards designed by the Common Core State Standards Initiative up for voluntary adoption by each state in the union.

Other than a refusal to adopt something new a la Alaska and Texas, criticism is useful to list.  Valerie Strauss‘ blog and Daniel Willingham, University of Virginia, remind everyone that Common Core Standards are not the magic dust that will make schools better.  First in any teacher’s mind is equitable resources needed to make the revised standards teachable.  Curriculum may need to be overhauled; teacher and administrator professional development needs to be provided; and time to revise lesson plans.  Not to forget that any state reform needs accurate data for rigorous comparisons of how the standards are implemented.  That means a lot of time spent on revising the assessments used by each state before any changes to teacher evaluation will be accepted.  Last, speed of improvement must be realistic-this blogger knows it takes years of determined collaboration to improve reading and math ability for a school full of students who enter unprepared for academic learning.

On the other hand, the advantages are worthwhile.  According to the Fordham Institute July 21, 2010, the English/Language Arts (ELA) standards are more clear and rigorous than 37 states’ current standards and more rigorous than 39 states’ math standards.  Higher Ed groups know that common standards will help college admissions, currently flailing at the mixture of applicants.

Rapid adoption of the standards means that the criticisms summarized above must be addressed just as rapidly.  Which means MONEY and while Race to the Top has been an unprecedented impetus to assert change, money will not be distributed equally among school districts that need the most help.

This sounds like wishful thinking, but one hopes over time a student entering a Los Angeles, California, school from another state will sit down and pick up what the fifth grade class is learning about the army George Washington and the colonial militias defeated.  No guessing, no “oh yeah, that’s what I meant,” every student’s hand shooting up, even the new child’s hand waving.

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Posted in Race to Top, public schools |
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When At First You Don’t Succeed

Wednesday, April 7th, 2010

The first winners in the Race to the Top competition were two small states: Delaware and Tennessee.  Good for them.

Being small compared to say California, they managed to get all school districts and teacher’s unions on board.  Not only that, it seems the two states wrote decent, clear proposals.

Too bad the other states didn’t take their lumps without fussing and excusing themselves, without criticizing the judges and scores on the proposals as if they were unfairly disqualified.

This is like any competition: the grant writers, state departments of education, and state legislatures knew the rules of the game.  Some states refused to take the cap off the number of charter schools.  Some states couldn’t persuade all school districts to collaborate.  Some states couldn’t manage to change their education laws to allow reform of teacher evaluation combined with state testing.

For some states-like California-the depths of fiscal collapse is the real reason that the state didn’t win a prize.  Like many contestants, the state needed the money to compensate for its own deficit and now complains because of a cap on the next set of awards.  California, for instance, asked for $1 billion in the first round and has found out it can only max out at $700 million if it wins in the second round of application.

Now, now, swallow your pride and dig in.  That’s what students are told to do.

For one, rewrite the grant to allow small rural schools and big urban districts to reform the issues that affect each individually.  If the school is persistently low-performing (whether large or small), there are at least two ways to restructure, not counting change to a charter, the least best of the ways to reorganize for most schools.  An adept grant writer could show how a school might combine parts of all the possible models; the point is to design a reform model and stick to it along with improvements as needed over time.

The most difficult issue to resolve and the one that held up many proposals is linking teacher evaluation and state testing.  There are those who can’t imagine how to design a teacher evaluation that is fair and accounts for the variables that lead to discrepant test results.  How can the two be combined?

Above all content standards must be agreed upon and assessments must be improved.  Common content standards are being revised right now.  A multiple choice test doesn’t assess all the learning skills a student needs.  Not all teachers are working in a grade or subject that the current state test assesses.

Next, systems must be set up to provide a community of accountability in a public school.  For example, yearly a principal with a formal evaluation rates plans to reach the many groups of student abilities in the class and analyzes assessments for improved student growth. Also observers come into the classroom frequently, using a checklist of items that teachers collaborate on to design a successful classroom.  Those are the techniques to observe.  Feedback is provided immediately, either from the check list or by conference and an ‘action plan’ is developed to help the teacher with any strategies that might improve class work.

Of course, this kind of reform needs financial resources to include administrators to take on school operations and observers who agree to help with this type of accountability, leaving the principal to attend to the learning in the school.  Please note that the district’s school board must focus on academic achievement for each school, high as well as low-achieving.

It will not do to leave the teachers to take on all of the above and then be handled roughly if achievement doesn’t immediately improve.  This blog has long maintained the relentless, consistent nature of reform for an entire school community.

So the moral for state is “try, try again.”

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Posted in California budget crisis, Race to Top, low-performing schools, public schools, school accountability, school community, school reform |
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