WELCOME TO MY BLOG

Thanks for visiting my blog.  I sometimes don’t have time to post on my blog everything that I send to my school reform email list, so if you want to receive my regular (approximately every other day) email updates, please email me at WTilson at tilsonfunds.com.

 

For more about me and links to my favorite articles, posts and videos on education reform, see my School Reform Resource Page at www.tilsonfunds.com/Personal/SchoolReform, in particular the Powerpoint presentation I put together on "The Critical Need for Genuine School Reform -- And How to Achieve It", which is posted at: www.tilsonfunds.com/Personal/TheCriticalNeedforGenuineSchoolReform.pdf. 

 

The idea for this came to me after watching An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's documentary about global warming.  After seeing it, I thought to myself, "That's exactly what school reformers need as well!"  My presentation is meant to be a collection of data and arguments that forcefully advocates for an urgent school reform agenda.  I gave this presentation at an event in Washington DC on Nov. 4, 2009.  Here are links to the videos:

 

Part 1: www.youtube.com/watch?v=2crd5D8ZW1k    

 

Part 2: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiKvBJtUct0

 

Part 3: www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVkeB58INIE

Vote for Khazei; Ed Reformers of the Month: Sam Hoyt & Craig Johnson

For those of you who vote in Massachusetts, please get out and vote today for Alan Khazei.  Here’s the email update from DFER, also with a call to support Sam Hoyt and Craig Johnson:

 

Friends:

We need your help in the next 24-hours on three fronts:

1.       If you live in Massachusetts, get your reformy butt to the polls tomorrow and show your support for Alan Khazei, DFER’s pick in the special election to fill the seat held by legendary Senator Ted Kennedy. If you have friends or relatives in Massachusetts, harass them like you’ve never harassed them before.  Turnout is expected to be light, and – as cliché as it sounds – every vote will count. For more on Khazei, see DFER’s October Education Reformer of the Month.

  

2.       Support New York Assemblyman Sam Hoyt, our November Education Reformer of the Month. Yes, we’re a little late, but Assemblyman Hoyt deserves the support of education reformers nationwide for his longstanding push for reform in the Empire State. More info on Sam can be found at the end of this email, but it is worth noting that he was the first elected official in New York to do ANYTHING to try to help the state win the coveted “Race To The Top” federal funding contest. You can help Sam’s campaign through DFER’s site by clicking here.

 

 

3.       Support New York Senator Craig Johnson, our December Education Reformer of the Month.  Sen. Johnson made history in 2007 as the first Democrat elected to represent New York's 7th District in over 100 years. In the time since, Senator Johnson has been a great partner for DFER and supporter of increased funding for public education, coupled with significant reform to change the status quo. You can help Craig’s campaign through DFER’s site by clicking here.

These are three important races for education reformers nationally. Help us continue to push the envelope for reform by supporting them!

Joe

November 2009: New York State Assemb. Sam Hoyt (AD-144)

Sam Hoyt will go down in history as the first elected official in New York State to take President Obama’s “Race To The Top” education reform contest seriously. This fall, Hoyt (D-Buffalo) introduced a package of legislation designed to make New York State more competitive in the contest for nearly $5 billion in federal funding.

 A self-described "leading proponent for charter schools," Assemblyman Hoyt has a history of standing behind progressive education. He was a strong and early supporter of charter schools in New York - long before it was popular - often defending the concept and legislation in legislative sessions and budget deliberations. In 2004 he was honored by the New York Charter Schools Association (NYCSA) with the annual Charter School Champion Award along with New York City Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein. At that time, NYCSA President Bill Phillips stated that Hoyt was "a fighter for children and a hero to the charter school movement, particularly in the City of Buffalo where charters are changing the face of public education."
 

December 2009: New York State Senator Craig Johnson (SD-7) Sen. Johnson made history in 2007 as the first Democrat elected to represent New York's 7th District in over 100 years. In the time since, Senator Johnson has been a great partner for DFER and supporter of increased funding for public education, coupled with significant reform to change the status quo.

Right off the bat in the Senate, Johnson was an outspoken supporter of the 2007 legislation to lift the cap on charter schools from 100 to 200. His timely election helped fuel the momentum of the successful legislation, and in the time since, he has been a friend of New York’s charter school and education reform movements.

Sen. Johnson’s passion and skilled political maneuvering are a product of a political background and a lifetime as a New York citizen and politician. He was born and raised in Port Washington, Long Island, where he still lives with his family. His mother, Barbara Johnson, was also a local politician. Sen. Johnson replaced her on the Nassau County Legislature in a special election after she passed away in 2000. He served for four terms on the Legislature, where he was given the reigns of a $2.2 billion budget and helped save the county from bankruptcy as the youngest-ever chairman of the Finance Committee.

David Brooks’s op ed in today’s NYT with some wise thoughts, esp. this one:

But there are several things the government can do to improve the economic ecology. If you begin with that framework, you can quickly come up with a bipartisan innovation agenda.

First, push hard to fulfill the Obama administration’s education reforms. Those reforms, embraced by Republicans and Democrats, encourage charter school innovation, improve teacher quality, support community colleges and simplify finances for college students and war veterans. That’s the surest way to improve human capital.

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December 8, 2009

Op-Ed Columnist

An Innovation Agenda

By DAVID BROOKS

The economy seems to be stabilizing, and this has prompted a shift in the public mood. Raw fear has given way to anxiety that the recovery will be feeble and drab. Companies are hoarding cash. Banks aren’t lending to small businesses. Private research spending is drifting downward.

People are asking anxious questions about America’s future. Will it take years before the animal spirits revive? Can the economy rebalance so that it relies less on consumption and debt and more on innovation and export? Have we entered a period of relative decline?

The first thing to say is, let’s not get carried away with the malaise. The U.S. remains the world’s most competitive economy, the leader in information technology, biotechnology and nearly every cutting-edge sector.

The American model remains an impressive growth engine, even allowing for the debt-fueled bubble. The U.S. economy grew by 63 percent between 1991 and 2009, compared with 35 percent for France, 22 percent for Germany and 16 percent for Japan over the same period. In 1975, the U.S. accounted for 26.3 percent of world G.D.P. Today, after the rise of the Asian tigers, the U.S. actually accounts for a slightly higher share of world output: 26.7 percent.

The U.S. has its problems, but Americans would be crazy to trade their problems with those of any other large nation.

Moreover, there’s a straightforward way to revive innovation. In an unfairly neglected white paper on the subject, President Obama’s National Economic Council argued that the U.S. should not be in the industrial policy business. Governments that try to pick winners “too often end up wasting resources and stifling rather than promoting innovation.”

 

Jay Mathews reporting on an interesting study about 655 schools that have extended learning time by at least 25% (about 10% are KIPPs).  The conclusion reminds me of spending more money: doing so in the absence of reform is a waste, but can be an important contributor to reform if reform is actually going on:

I got an advance look at the first count of U.S. public schools that have significantly expanded learning time. The report, released Monday by the National Center on Time & Learning, reveals that a surprisingly large number -- 655 -- give students an average of 25 percent more time than the standard 6 1/2 hours a day, 180 days a year. But I was disappointed that only about 160 in that group are regular public schools.

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Longer day might be worth a try

By Jay Mathews

Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 7, 2009

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/06/AR2009120602191.html

I got an advance look at the first count of U.S. public schools that have significantly expanded learning time.

 

Another reason why NY should lift the charter cap:

See cap, run.

Charter-school operators from other states are urging New York's elected officials to increase the number of charter schools allowed in the state or risk having them set up elsewhere, letters obtained by The Post reveal.

Directors at the highly regarded MATCH Charter Public School in Boston, Citizens' Academy in Cleveland and The SEED Foundation in Washington, DC, have all said they won't even consider opening shop in New York without an assurance that there will be charters left to issue above the state's current limit of 200.

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US charter schools 'state' case to NY

By YOAV GONEN Education Reporter

Last Updated: 6:29 AM, December 7, 2009

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/us_charter_schools_state_case_to_zeUxz8GQwWHjsdYFn0AGaP#ixzz0Z3frbc55

See cap, run.

Plan to raise standards for new teachers proceeds

More on the incredible things RI’s Deborah Gist is doing:

Starting next fall, it will be harder to become a teacher in Rhode Island.

As promised, Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist, who has made improving teacher quality the cornerstone of her five-month-old administration, is moving forward with her plan to raise the standards for prospective teachers.

But in a compromise, Gist said she will phase in the tougher requirements over a two-year period instead of one, as she originally proposed.

Over the objection of several of the state’s teacher training programs — including the largest at Rhode Island College — Gist is significantly increasing the scores people who want to become teachers must achieve to be accepted into the teacher training programs. She says the change is part of a larger effort to revamp the entire career track of educators, starting with who is allowed to become a teacher.

“We know that while there are many factors that contribute to student success, teachers’ own academic achievement is an important factor,” Gist said. “This change is just a tiny step in an entire strategy we have to raise expectations for our educators and for ourselves, in supporting educators at every point in their careers.”

Gist informed local colleges and universities that they have to increase the “cut scores” students must achieve on a basic skills test required by all of the state’s teacher training programs starting next fall, and raise it even higher in the fall of 2011.

Currently, Rhode Island ranks among the lowest in the nation, alongside Mississippi and Guam, with cut scores in math, reading and writing set at 170 in each subject. At that score, about 30 percent of test-takers in Rhode Island fail the test, called Praxis I or the PPST, pre-professional skills test.

Gist says she wants to raise the scores to the highest in the country. She was willing to phase in the changes over two years, she said, to give the eight colleges and universities and one nonprofit program time to adjust and to avoid a dramatic drop in the number of new teaching students in a single year.

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Plan to raise standards for new teachers proceeds

01:00 AM EST on Monday, December 7, 2009

By Jennifer D. Jordan

Journal Staff Writer

http://www.projo.com/news/content/teacher_cut_score_update_12-07-09_UNGM14K_v43.3a624f1.html

Starting next fall, it will be harder to become a teacher in Rhode Island.

 

Looking Back on a 1st Year of Teaching

An interesting story from Caitlin Sullivan, a new teacher at KIPP DC: KEY Academy – see: http://www.pcw-dc.org/article.html?aid=783&nl=124

As a first-year teacher at KIPP DC: KEY Academy, I now embrace the
adrenaline and pace of fall mid-terms week every day. There are a
couple complicating layers, though. The first is the gratitude I feel to
be learning to teach in such an exceptional setting. I am so lucky to
have landed at a school that has soaring expectations and full
confidence in its students, families and teachers. The second is that
the stakes of my work are now exponentially higher than what I was
responsible for as an undergrad. A few years ago, the consequences
of turning in a half-baked paper were restricted to my transcript. Now,
eighty-seven 11 year-olds are testing me, as they should, at every turn.
They will only be sixth graders once, and the urgency of now makes
me strive to be at my best at all times. 

 

This is great to see!

In her last job in the Air Force, Tammie Langley gave prospective pilots and navigators an introduction to aeronautics. Four years later, Ms. Langley is in a different sort of classroom, teaching sixth graders in North Carolina everything from reading to math.

The settings may be radically different, but Ms. Langley said the transition from teaching 22-year-olds to teaching 11- or 12-year-olds had been fairly seamless. “Either way, you still have to kind of wipe their noses a bit and kick them in the behind every now and then,” said Ms. Langley, who is in her second year at Kannapolis Intermediate School, about 25 miles north of Charlotte.

Ms. Langley, 36, became a schoolteacher in large part because of Troops to Teachers, a federal program that, over 15 years, has helped about 12,000 former service members transition into second careers in the classroom. Now, a bipartisan group in Congress is hoping to expand the program to allow more veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan to sign up, while also increasing the number of places in which they could find employment.

Not all of the veterans who enter the classroom with the help of Troops to Teachers, some of whom are up to a generation older than teachers starting right out of college, share Ms. Langley’s background in formal instruction. But the program’s supporters and participants say that military service in general provides the sort of discipline and life experiences that translate well to teaching.

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Troops Finding New Service as Teachers

By BERNIE BECKER

Published: December 5, 2009

www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/education/06troops.html

WASHINGTON — In her last job in the Air Force, Tammie Langley gave prospective pilots and navigators an introduction to aeronautics. Four years later, Ms. Langley is in a different sort of classroom, teaching sixth graders in North Carolina everything from reading to math.

 

STOP THE PRESSES!!!  This is a GREAT NY Times story (the cover story in the Sunday Styles section) about hedge fund managers starting and supporting numerous charter schools in NYC.  I'm quoted briefly:

The schools present the kind of opportunity that "electrifies" hedge fund managers, said Mr. Tilson, 43, who is on the board of the Knowledge Is Power Program, which manages charter schools around the country. A founding member of Teach for America in the late 1980s (before earning an M.B.A.), Mr. Tilson also blogs about charters at edreform.blogspot.com. "It's the most important cause in the nation, obviously, and with the state providing so much of the money, outside contributions are insanely well leveraged," he said.

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Scholarly Investments

 

By NANCY HASS

Published: December 4, 2009

www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/fashion/06charter.html

THEIR company names were conspicuously absent from their nametags, but that is how these hedge fund managers and analysts — members of a field known for secrecy — preferred it. They filled the party space at the W Hotel on Lexington Avenue in late October, mostly men in their 30s. Balancing drinks on easels adorned with students' colorful drawings, they juggled PDA's and business cards, before sitting down to poker tables to raise money for New York City charter schools.

Working the room, the evening's hosts, John Petry and Joel Greenblatt, who are partners in the hedge fund Gotham Capital, had an agenda: to identify new candidates to join their Success Charter Network, a cause they embrace with all the fervor of social reformers.

"He's already in," Mr. Petry said as he passed John Sabat, who manages a hedge fund for one of the industry's big stars. (Like Voldemort in the Harry Potter novels, no one in the group would name him aloud.)

"I wasn't hard to turn," said Mr. Sabat, 36, whom Mr. Petry drafted last year to be a member of the board of Harlem Success Academy 4, on East 120th Street, the latest in its network of school in some of the city's poorest neighborhoods. Boards agree to donate or raise $1.3 million to subsidize their school for the first three years. "You can't talk to Petry without taking about charters," Mr. Sabat added. "You get the religion fast."

Mr. Petry, 38, and Mr. Greenblatt, 52, may spend their days poring over spreadsheets and overseeing trades, but their obsession — one shared with many other hedge funders — is creating charter schools, the tax-funded, independently run schools that they see as an entrepreneurial answer to the nation's education woes. Charters have attracted benefactors from many fields. But it is impossible to ignore that in New York, hedge funds are at the movement's epicenter.

"These guys get it," said Eva S. Moskowitz, a former New York City Council member, whom Mr. Petry and Mr. Greenblatt hired in 2006 to run the Success Charter Network, for which they provide the financial muscle, including compensation for Ms. Moskowitz of $371,000 her first year. "They aren't afraid of competition or upsetting the system. They thrive on that."

Hedge fund managers may be better known for eight-figure incomes with which they scoop up the choicest Manhattan penthouses and Greenwich, Conn., waterfront estates. But they also dominate the boards of many of the city's charters schools and support organizations. They include Whitney Tilson, who runs T2 Partners; David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital; Tony Davis of Anchorage Advisors; and Ravenel Boykin Curry IV of Eagle Capital Management.

This article highlights perhaps the single biggest challenge for charters: space.

"They're D.C. taxpayers, and they're sending their children to a public school, so they want them to have access to the same resources as other kids," she said.

Although the Franklin School was closed long before Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee announced plans to close a number of schools last year, it is part of the larger pool of former school buildings that charters have coveted but, in large part, have not received. Charters serve 38 percent of D.C. public school students, but just under a third of charter students attend classes in former public school buildings, according to an analysis by Friends of Choice in Urban Schools, a charter advocacy organization. Most of the rest have found space on the commercial market.

Of the 26 public schools whose closures have been announced since last year, seven are or will eventually be occupied by charters. One will be used by the University of the District of Columbia. Four have been filled by other branches of D.C. government, taking them over for, among other purposes, a temporary recreation center and offices for the Department of Public Works. Three will be turned over to developers and two to nonprofit groups. Five are in use as D.C. public schools. One will be torn down and the land turned into a park. The fates of three have not been decided.

Concerns about the process for deciding how the buildings are used led D.C. Council member Harry Thomas Jr. (D-Ward 5) to propose legislation this year that would catalogue city property online and set up an advisory committee to monitor what is done with empty buildings.

"There didn't seem to be a lot of transparency or inclusion" around the recently closed buildings, he said.

Charter advocates point to city law, which says charter schools have a "right to first offer" on excess school buildings.

"Why are charter schools being forced to take out expensive loans to go and convert commercial spaces, for example a warehouse, to send little children there?" asked Barnaby Towns, a spokesman for Friends of Choice in Urban Schools. He said it would be more prudent to take the public money that charters spend on facilities and channel it back to the city through leases on D.C. school properties.

And some charter advocates think there is room for accommodation.

"The space is there. How you organize it and allocate is the challenge," said Thomas A. Nida, chairman of the D.C. Public Charter School Board. He said that in the early days of the charter movement, in the 1990s, charters had relatively little trouble buying or leasing school buildings from the city.

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Finding frustration instead of a home

Charters are increasingly seeking space in former public school buildings, but the District has repeatedly rejected their applications

By Michael Birnbaum

Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 4, 2009

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/03/AR2009120304698.html

Walking through a vacant District school building Thursday, Mary Shaffner could visualize the peeling paint replaced by fresh blackboards. Dusty hardwood floors marred by bird droppings could be polished to a gleam. Teachers and students would once again fill the halls of the Franklin School.

But to the developers also attending Thursday's open house, a hotel or condominiums might be more attractive, and it's likely they'll get their way. Two applications from charter schools to use the building have been rejected, including one from Shaffner's Yu Ying Public Charter School. The city said the renovation costs were too high, and there's little indication a new application will be accepted this time around.

It's a drama that has occurred repeatedly in the District, and the 1869 Franklin School, at 13th and K streets NW, is just the latest instance. Because of the credit crunch, which makes it more difficult for charters to finance private projects, and space newly available thanks to the closure of more than two dozen D.C. public schools, charters are clamoring more than ever for public school buildings.