Israel Education

A professor I met with at the Weizmann Institute had a thoughtful explanation for why Israel is the ONLY developed country in which FEWER 25- to 34-year-olds than 55- to 64-year-olds have a college degree:

 

I thought about the statistics you showed me and can suggest a possible explanation:

 

During the 80-90's there was a massive immigration of Jews from Russia to Israel, a high percentage of them with high education. The number of adults with high education was therefore strongly influenced by this influx of educated people. The fact that your curve shows only a minor decline implies that actually the percentage among Israeli born actually increased.

 

Indeed, there was a major increase in the past decade with the "college revolution": tens of new colleges were opened, effectively DOUBLING the number of students in the institutes of high learning

 

I wonder what the numbers would look like if one only looked at people who were born in Israel? 

Are teachers are treated like irresponsible children?

A friend also had an interesting (and, I think, spot on) comment about what another friend wrote (in my last email):

 

"teachers are treated like irresponsible children"

 

The extent to which teachers are infantilized by administration and their unions is not well reported or discussed outside of schools.  It's a key obstacle to greater professionalism.

Arne Duncan spoke at an American Enterprise Institute event last Wed (the 57-minute video is posted at: www.aei.org/video/101341), and Rick Hess liked what he heard:

Lord knows, I've been pretty critical of the Secretary of Education on various counts (see here, here, here... you get the idea). So, let me give him his due. Yesterday, the Secretary weighed in on the pressing need to start spending school dollars smarter in one humdinger of a speech. Duncan touched on every important issue, pulled no punches, and modeled the kind of responsible tough-mindedness that we need from our leaders (full disclosure: the speech was delivered at AEI and I hosted--you can view the speech and subsequent Q&A here).

Department wordsmith David Whitman crafted a masterful speech, which the Secretary delivered without batting an eye. Duncan opened by saying flat out, "I am here to talk today about what has been called the New Normal. For the next several years, preschool, K-12, and postsecondary educators are likely to face the challenge of doing more with less... [This] can, and should be, embraced as an opportunity to make dramatic improvements... It's time to stop treating the problem of educational productivity as a grinding, eat-your-broccoli exercise. It's time to start treating it as an opportunity for innovation and accelerating progress."

Straight up, this was a speech unlike any I've ever heard a Secretary deliver. Duncan said resources are limited, embraced the need to make tough choices, urged states and districts to contemplate boosting some class sizes and consolidating schools, and didn't spend much time trying to throw bones to the status quo. He laid out the bleak revenue picture ahead and then waded into ways that states and districts can save bucks without taking stupid steps like "reducing the number of days in the school year, slashing instructional time spent on task, eliminating the arts and foreign languages, abandoning promising reforms, and laying off talented, young teachers."

The Secretary also finally struck a useful note regarding the stimulus and Edujobs--one that, whatever one thinks of these bills, many of us have been urging him to say for quite a while. Duncan said that the bailouts, while he thought them necessary, were a finished chapter, and that states and districts now need to focus on getting their houses in order. In other words, states shouldn't count on coming back to the D.C. bailout drawer. A little late for him to say this, to my mind, but better late than never.

Duncan made clear the financial drag of the status quo, saying, "The factory model of education is the wrong model for the 21st century. Today, our schools must prepare all students for college and careers--and do far more to personalize instruction and employ the smart use of technology. Teachers cannot be interchangeable widgets. Yet the legacy of the factory model of schooling is that tens of billions of dollars are tied up in unproductive use of time and technology, in underused school buildings, in antiquated compensation systems, and in inefficient school finance systems."

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Bam! Pow! Whomp! Sec. Duncan Knocks It Out of the Park

By Rick Hess on November 18, 2010 9:08 AM | 10 Comments | Recommend

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/rick_hess_straight_up/2010/11/bam_pow_whomp_sec_duncan_knocks_it_out_of_the_park.html

Arne Duncan wants to stretch the school dollar

Mike Petrilli liked what Dancan said as well:

Wow! So in one speech, this (Democratic) Secretary of Education comes out swinging against "last hired, first fired," seniority-based pay raises, smaller class sizes, seat time, pay bonuses for master's degrees, and over-bloated special education budgets. Which means he just declared war with the teachers unions, parents groups, education schools, and the special education lobby. Not a bad day's work!

To be sure, Duncan has control over almost none of this. Still, this is classic bully-pulpit stuff, and I expect it will resonate big-time in state capitols all over the country. When the unions start busing in kids, parents, and teachers to rally against increases in class size or pay freezes, expect a lot of Republican governors to start quoting their good friend Arne.

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Arne Duncan wants to stretch the school dollar

www.educationgadfly.net/flypaper/index.php/2010/11/arne-duncan-wants-to-stretch-the-school-dollar

Too Good To Check!

Diane Ravitch and her mouthpiece at the Washington Post, Valerie Strauss, are up to their usual tricks, spreading lies and disinformation about reform (pasted below).  Thankfully, Andy Rotherham is on top of it and shreds this nonsense:

Too Good To Check!

I was puzzled by this article by Washington Post national education reporter Valerie Strauss. She relays an account from a Baltimore teacher (that came via Diane Ravitch) about how he/she was almost squeezed out of a job because the city was hiring all these Teach For America teachers and teachers from The Baltimore City Teacher Residency.   Sounded too good to be true.  Or from Strauss' point of view, too good to check as they say.  In fact, the email touched all the right talking anti-TFA talking points and sounded like a thinly veiled attack on the two reform-oriented prep programs operating in the city – the residency is an initiative of The New Teacher Project.

And in fact, well, it is.  When you look at data on hiring in Baltimore it looks like while Teach For America provided 160 teachers in Baltimore in '09 and '10, the city hired 584 new teachers in '09 and 477 this year (with 37 vacancies still open as of August so presumably some of those have been filled, too).  Meanwhile, here's a New York Times story on Baltimore hiring teachers from overseas because they can't find enough… For its part the Baltimore City Teacher Residency, which launched in the early part of the decade, seems to provide about 20 percent of the district's teachers.

As a function of their size big city districts hire a lot of teachers from multiple sources each year, which is why you should always be skeptical when any particular pipeline is singled out as representative of anything.  In Baltimore, given those numbers, it seems ridiculous to blame these two routes for making it really difficult to find a job.  Hundreds apparently didn't have that problem…And again, the research is quite clear that teachers entering teaching through these routes do as well or better than others.  The variance is within the different routes not between routes.

Strauss can't be bothered to explain any of this context.   Nor any context or analysis on a host of other claims in the email, which is reprinted verbatim and anonymously. In The Washington Post. Really

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Teacher runs into power of Teach for America

By Valerie Strauss

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/teachers/teacher-runs-into-power-of-tea.html

A very interesting new study about the phenomenon of "acting white", with nuanced results:

Such a study has at last been published.

It used a sample of over 13,000 students, averaging about 15 years old. Social acceptance was measured with a simple 4 question interview that asked whether they felt socially accepted, and the frequency with which they felt lonely, felt disliked, or felt people were unfriendly to them.

The study took measures at two time points and examined the change in social acceptance across the year. The question of interest is whether students' academic achievement (measured as grade point average) at Time 1 was related to the change in social acceptance over the course of the year.

For White, Latino, and Asian students, it was—positively. That is, the higher a student's GPA was at Time 1, the more likely it was that his or her social acceptance would increase during the coming year. It was not a big effect, but it was present.

For African American and Native American students the opposite was true. A higher GPA predicted *lower* social acceptance during the following year. This effect was stronger than the positive effect for the other ethnic groups.

Thus, it seemed that the simpler version of the "acting white" hypothesis was supported.

But the story turned out to be a bit more complicated.

Further analyses showed that there was a social penalty for high achieving African Americans *only* at schools with a small percentage of black students. The cost was not present at high-achieving schools with mostly African-American students, or at any low-achieving schools.

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The social cost to academic achievement

By Daniel Willingham

(Cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham is a psychology professor at the University of Virginia and author of "Why Don't Students Like School?")

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/achievement-gap/the-social-cost-to-academic-ac.html#more

Some surprisingly good data on the NAEP 12^th grade reading test:

Reading scores for the nation's 12th-grade students have increased somewhat since they dropped to a historic low in 2005, according to results of the largest federal test, released Thursday. Average math scores also ticked upward.

Experts said the increases, after years of dismal achievement reports, were surprising because every year the nation's schools are educating more black and Hispanic students, who on average score lower than whites and Asians.

The black-white achievement gap dates back more than a century, though researchers debate why it persists. Researchers presume that language barriers pull down scores for Hispanics.

"It's very good news because you have scores going up despite a demographic trend that pulls scores down," said Grover J. Whitehurst, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who directed the Department of Education's research division in the Bush administration.

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November 18, 2010

12th-Grade Reading and Math Scores Rise Slightly After a Historic Low in 2005

By SAM DILLON

www.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/education/19education.html

Some surprisingly good data on the NAEP 12th grade reading test:

Reading scores for the nation's 12th-grade students have increased somewhat since they dropped to a historic low in 2005, according to results of the largest federal test, released Thursday. Average math scores also ticked upward.

Experts said the increases, after years of dismal achievement reports, were surprising because every year the nation's schools are educating more black and Hispanic students, who on average score lower than whites and Asians.

The black-white achievement gap dates back more than a century, though researchers debate why it persists. Researchers presume that language barriers pull down scores for Hispanics.

"It's very good news because you have scores going up despite a demographic trend that pulls scores down," said Grover J. Whitehurst, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who directed the Department of Education's research division in the Bush administration.

I remain convinced that the for-profit education industry, at its current size and as it currently operates, has become similar to the subprime mortgage industry: on a small scale, carefully targeted, it was a good thing, but then a flood of easy (mostly government) money plus deregulation (see next article) attracted a host of bad operators, the industry exploded in size, and utter depravity occurred that swept up even the good players – like Kaplan, which was profiled in this NYT cover story two weeks ago.  This is why the funds I manage remain short many companies in the sector, though not WPO. 

 

Yes, many low-income and minority adults who have been failed by the K-12 system attend these schools, but it's not clear to me that most of these students are benefitting.  Instead, the majority appear to receive degrees of questionable value and are saddled with very high debts that they can't possible repay – or discharge, even in bankruptcy (thanks to an outrageous law that prohibits discharging ed loans (and ed loans only) in bankruptcy).  Here's an excerpt from the NYT story, which highlights how Kaplan preys on returning veterans, only 28% (!) of whom are repaying their loans:

Though Kaplan is not the largest in the industry, the Post Company chairman, Donald Graham, has emerged as the highest-profile defender of for-profit education.

Together, Kaplan and the Post Company spent $350,000 on lobbying in the third quarter of this year, more than any other higher-education company. And Mr. Graham has gone to Capitol Hill to argue against the regulations in private visits with lawmakers, the first time he has lobbied directly on a federal issue in a dozen years.

His newspaper, too, has editorialized against the regulations. Though it disclosed its conflict of interest, the newspaper said the regulations would limit students' choices. "The aim of the regulations was to punish bad actors, but the effect is to punish institutions that serve poor students," Mr. Graham said in an interview.

He said the regulations' emphasis on debt would make it harder for Kaplan to serve older working students who must take out loans to attend school.

He added that Kaplan could play an important role in meeting President Obama's goal of a better-educated work force. Kaplan Higher Ed, Mr. Graham said, has also broadened the reach of the Post Company — beyond the middle-income students who typically use its test-prep services — to include lower-income students.

"We purchased colleges that served mostly poor students, and we have embraced that role," Mr. Graham said. "For students with risk factors, older working students with children, Kaplan has dramatically better graduation rates than community colleges."

The company has acknowledged, however, that the new rules could hurt Kaplan. According to 2009 data released this summer by the Department of Education, only 28 percent of Kaplan's students were repaying their student loans. That figure is well below the 45 percent threshold that most programs will need to remain fully eligible for the federal aid on which they rely. By comparison, 44 percent of students at the largest for-profit, the University of Phoenix, were repaying their loans.

Kaplan is facing several legal challenges. The Florida attorney general is investigating eight for-profit colleges, including Kaplan, for alleged misrepresentation of financial aid and deceptive practices regarding recruitment, enrollment, accreditation, placement and graduation rates.

Kaplan is also facing several federal whistle-blower lawsuits whose accusations dovetail with the findings of an undercover federal investigation of the for-profit industry this summer, including video of high-pressure recruiting and unrealistic salary promises.

"The claims they make are absurd and simply not reflective of the kind of company that Kaplan is," said Andrew S. Rosen, Kaplan's chairman. "We're confident that when a court rules, we'll have a clear demonstration that this is not who Kaplan is."

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Scrutiny Takes Toll on For-Profit College Company

By TAMAR LEWIN

Published: November 9, 2010

Kudos to the Obama Administration, Arne Duncan and the DOE for finally cracking down on the widespread abuses in the for-profit ed sector:

For-profit colleges that pay recruiters on the basis of the number of students they sign up may lose access to U.S. government student aid, which provided the colleges with $26.5 billion last year and can account for as much as 90 percent of company revenue.

The Department of Education, seeking to strengthen oversight of the for-profit college sector, is considering boosting fines and disqualifying colleges from participating in federal-aid programs when they give bonuses to admissions officers for enrolling more students, said James Kvaal, deputy undersecretary of education, in a telephone interview. For- profit colleges got about 23 percent of all federal student grants and loans that went to U.S. universities in 2008-2009, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, while educating about 12 percent of all students.

The Education Department plans, in July, to make incentive compensation for recruiters illegal, removing 12 types of exemptions, or "safe harbors," that were put into place in 2002 under President George W. Bush. At that time, the department's enforcement power was reduced to levying fines, Kvaal said. Revoking aid eligibility would be used rarely to punish widespread violations, Kvaal said.

"We take our responsibility to prevent these abuses very seriously," Kvaal said. "We're going to look at what tools we need to make sure the law is being followed."

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For-Profit Colleges May Lose Access to U.S. Aid Over Violations

By John Lauerman - Nov 22, 2010 9:37 AM ET Mon Nov 22 14:37:17 GMT 2010

www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-22/for-profit-colleges-may-lose-access-to-u-s-aid-over-violations.html

You know that Pete Peters was a great man when BOTH the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald editorialize about him favorably.  Here's the Globe:

 

Peters: Creating a market for education

November 22, 2010

 

Lovett C. "Pete'' Peters loved ideas, so he founded a place where they could thrive. In 1988, at age 75, he launched the Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research, a think tank that became an incubator for today's charter school movement. It also launched key political players such as recent Republican gubernatorial candidate Charles D. Baker.

 

Peters — who died Nov. 11 at age 97 — believed in free-market principles as the way to improve education, especially for low-income children. His dedication to the cause impressed others who shared his overall goal, even if they disagreed with his philosophy.

 

Personally and professionally, Peters was a generous and optimistic man. Back in 1990, when the Pioneer Institute found a soulmate in the new governor, William F. Weld, Peters told an interviewer: "We are not in politics. We hope to change the intellectual climate in the Commonwealth.'' That he did.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2010/11/22/peters_creating_a_market_for_education/

Correction from previous Israel post

In my last email in which I highlighted the similarities between the U.S. and Israeli K-12 public education systems, I wrote that in both countries "only the lowest caliber college students become teachers".  Obviously this is incorrect.  What I meant to write is: "new teachers are mostly drawn from the bottom tier of college graduates".  Thanks to a friend for pointing this out – and making other good points:

 

Dear Whitney,

I really enjoy getting your emails.  Sometimes, though, it makes me tired to keep hearing how only the lowest-performing college graduates become teachers. While I know the research shows this in aggregate, there are many of us teaching public school who don't fit that category. (I graduated magna cum laude from Barnard).  I work with smarter, more strategic, better educated teachers now in a New York City public school than I did when I taught in New York City independent schools for twelve years. When I am at work on a Saturday or at 7 p.m., it's insulting when Geoffrey Canada talks about how teachers only became teachers because they wanted to leave work while it's still light out.

Does my defense of my colleagues mean I agree with everything my union does? No - reading the weekly union newspaper is so frustrating to me. I wrote to the UFT paper to complain about spending our dues to fight for the right for people to take Holy Thursday off; serious Catholics do not take Holy Thursday off from work, so why should that be something our union is fighting for in the name of "religious freedom"? I have supported virtually everything Klein and Bloomberg have done in the last eight years. On the other hand, I could tell you all the things that make teaching public school extremely challenging from space and overcrowding problems to the fact that teachers are treated like irresponsible children (today I went to a funeral and the payroll secretary reminded me that I had to bring something that proved I was at the funeral; fortunately they had given out a prayer card at the wake that someone gave to me at the funeral).

Just keep in mind that we are not all a bunch of dolts...

STOP THE PRESSES!!!  This article on the front page of today's NYT captures what I think is a HUGE problem in our country: young people are getting addicted to the TV and electronic gadgets, to the detriment of studying and learning:

Students have always faced distractions and time-wasters. But computers and cellphones, and the constant stream of stimuli they offer, pose a profound new challenge to focusing and learning.

Researchers say the lure of these technologies, while it affects adults too, is particularly powerful for young people. The risk, they say, is that developing brains can become more easily habituated than adult brains to constantly switching tasks — and less able to sustain attention.

"Their brains are rewarded not for staying on task but for jumping to the next thing," said Michael Rich, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and executive director of the Center on Media and Child Health in Boston. And the effects could linger: "The worry is we're raising a generation of kids in front of screens whose brains are going to be wired differently."

But even as some parents and educators express unease about students' digital diets, they are intensifying efforts to use technology in the classroom, seeing it as a way to connect with students and give them essential skills. Across the country, schools are equipping themselves with computers, Internet access and mobile devices so they can teach on the students' technological territory.

It is a tension on vivid display at Vishal's school, Woodside High School, on a sprawling campus set against the forested hills of Silicon Valley. Here, as elsewhere, it is not uncommon for students to send hundreds of text messages a day or spend hours playing video games, and virtually everyone is on Facebook.

The principal, David Reilly, 37, a former musician who says he sympathizes when young people feel disenfranchised, is determined to engage these 21st-century students. He has asked teachers to build Web sites to communicate with students, introduced popular classes on using digital tools to record music, secured funding for iPads to teach Mandarin and obtained $3 million in grants for a multimedia center.

He pushed first period back an hour, to 9 a.m., because students were showing up bleary-eyed, at least in part because they were up late on their computers. Unchecked use of digital devices, he says, can create a culture in which students are addicted to the virtual world and lost in it.

"I am trying to take back their attention from their BlackBerrys and video games," he says. "To a degree, I'm using technology to do it."

This article profiles one girl who sends and receives 27,000 text messages per MONTH!!!  When I read this to my family, my 14-year-old said, "That's more than I've sent in my life."  (I hope it's 20x more!)

 

As I was reading this article, I wanted to scream: "Why the hell are parents allowing this?!?!?!"  I don't blame schools for this (though I certainly wouldn't allow use of cell phones or any texting/electronic devices during the school day) – it's up to parents to monitor how their kids spend their time.  And it's my firm belief that, left to their own devices, kids will spend every moment messing around unless guided/forced to do otherwise.  The plethora of distractions today (video games, texting, Facebook, YouTube, etc.; when I was growing up, there were only two choices: watch TV or hang out with friends) makes it even more imperative that adults monitor kids and set boundaries – but clearly this isn't happening. 

 

What's scary is that the parents in this article – who are acting like (let's be honest) total morons by doing almost no monitoring/boundary setting – are probably among the BEST parents in this country: well educated, employed, loving, intact families…

 

This is why I write (on page 49 of my school reform presentation, posted at www.arightdenied.org/presentation-slides): "If I could fix either all of the parents or all of the schools in America, I'd choose the former in a heartbeat."  The problem is, as I write in the next line: "But I'm not sure it's possible to fix the parents – and I know it's possible to fix the schools."

 

Page 27 of my school reform presentation highlights where our young people are spending (mis-spending) their time.

 

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Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction

By MATT RICHTEL

Published: November 21, 2010

www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/technology/21brain.html

 

On the same topic, here's Jay Mathews with a column about a teacher who says students in what is supposed to be one of the best school districts in the country are lazy and coasting – and the school system doesn't impose any consequences:

The SAT and Advanced Placement results put out so proudly by the Montgomery County school system suggest that it is among the best districts in the country, but that country has seen no significant increase in math or reading achievement for 17-year-olds in 30 years.

Dan Stephens, who teaches math at Northwood High School, thinks he knows why. It is a reason I have never heard before from his renowned district.

The most prevalent complaint, buttressed by the new documentary "Race to Nowhere" being shown in Montgomery County, is that teachers and principals put too much pressure on the kids. They are jittery, sleep-deprived, maybe suicidal.

Stephens, who teaches Precalculus and Geometry to mostly average kids, thinks his students are the opposite of too stressed. They don't try very hard and know they will still graduate, so no problem.

"All I can do is beg my students to study. Ultimately, they know they don't have to and don't," said Stephens, who has taught for 20 years. "I would guess fewer than a handful actually studied for their test last week. No joke."

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Top district lets average kids lag behind

By Jay Mathews

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle/2010/11/top_district_lets_average_kids.html#more

A fantastic op ed in today's NYT by Tom Friedman:

When I came to Washington in 1988, the cold war was ending and the hot beat was national security and the State Department. If I were a cub reporter today, I'd still want to be covering the epicenter of national security — but that would be the Education Department. President Obama got this one exactly right when he said that whoever "out-educates us today is going to out-compete us tomorrow." The bad news is that for years now we've been getting out-educated. The good news is that cities, states and the federal government are all fighting back. But have no illusions. We're in a hole.

Here are few data points that the secretary of education, Arne Duncan, offered in a Nov. 4 speech: "One-quarter of U.S. high school students drop out or fail to graduate on time. Almost one million students leave our schools for the streets each year. ... One of the more unusual and sobering press conferences I participated in last year was the release of a report by a group of top retired generals and admirals. Here was the stunning conclusion of their report: 75 percent of young Americans, between the ages of 17 to 24, are unable to enlist in the military today because they have failed to graduate from high school, have a criminal record, or are physically unfit." America's youth are now tied for ninth in the world in college attainment.

"Other folks have passed us by, and we're paying a huge price for that economically," added Duncan in an interview. "Incremental change isn't going to get us where we need to go. We've got to be much more ambitious. We've got to be disruptive. You can't keep doing the same stuff and expect different results."

Duncan, with bipartisan support, has begun several initiatives to energize reform — particularly his Race to the Top competition with federal dollars going to states with the most innovative reforms to achieve the highest standards. Maybe his biggest push, though, is to raise the status of the teaching profession. Why?

His last paragraph is spot on as well:

All good ideas, but if we want better teachers we also need better parents — parents who turn off the TV and video games, make sure homework is completed, encourage reading and elevate learning as the most important life skill. The more we demand from teachers the more we have to demand from students and parents. That's the Contract for America that will truly ensure our national security.

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November 20, 2010

Teaching for America

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/opinion/21friedman.html

Democrats for Education Reform Taps State Senator Gloria Romero to Lead 2011 California Expansion

Some BIG news: DFER has hired CA State Senator Gloria Romero to lead the expansion of DFER to California.  I've been following Sen. Romero for some time (and met her for the first time last week), and she's a WARRIOR for kids!

California State Senator Gloria Romero (D — East Los Angeles), Chair of the Senate Education Committee, has been selected to lead the expansion of Democrats for Education Reform to California, the national organization announced today.

"With a bold vision and a fearless approach, Senator Romero has been leading the way on critical education reform in California for years," said Joe Williams, DFER's Executive Director. "Gloria recognizes the destructiveness of California's achievement gap, and she's committed to closing it for the benefit of all of the state's young people. There's simply no better person to steer our Golden State expansion."

Launched in 2007, DFER has active chapters in New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Colorado, with others on the way. The organization pushes to make Democratic politicians more active participants in efforts to dramatically improve public schools for students.

DFER's Joe Williams with an op ed on the five major challenges facing NYC schools:

New York City's public schools are dramatically better today than they were eight years ago, in large part thanks to the tireless work of Chancellor Joel Klein. But there's still a long way to go, and the city needs its next chancellor, Cathie Black, to chart a clear path forward, and quickly.

If Black wants to finish what Chancellor Klein started, she must work to make parents, teachers and the public feel invested in the process.

Chicago's Renaissance 2010 plan is an excellent example of this: It let the city's leaders explain to Chicogoans exactly what they hoped to accomplish, and then frame each reform, like closing schools, in the broader effort to improve the system. Mayor Cory Booker is starting a similar process in Newark.

But the key to Black's success -- and to school reform -- is how she addresses the five major challenges facing New York City's schools:

* Tame the beast that is the United Federation of Teachers contract.

-----------------------

The keys to Chancellor Black's success

By JOE WILLIAMS

Last Updated: 4:38 AM, November 11, 2010

www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/the_keys_to_chancellor_black_success_gdSlhEflfyVxZAGCmCwYLJ

A to-do list for N.Y.C. Schools Chancellor Cathie Black: Eva Moskowitz lays out her priorities

Eva Moskowitz with her list of five priorities:

 

Times have changed since Joel Klein took the reins of the Department of Education back in 2002, but the overarching challenge remains the same: spur drastic reform within a system that stubbornly resists change.

 

When Klein took office, he was faced with a public school system in major disarray - the state of education in Harlem, where I grew up, at the time could be described only as profoundly subpar. Citywide, less than half of students were graduating, corruption was rampant at the community school board level, and before Mayor Bloomberg took control of the schools, the buck stopped with no one. Frankly, the city was guilty of gross educational negligence.

 

Fast-forward eight years. Failing schools have been closed, new high-performing public charter schools and small schools have been opened, the graduation rate is on the rise, and, under Klein's leadership, the city has become the epicenter of a national education reform movement. It hasn't come easy, and there is still much, much work to be done, but progress has been made.

 

Cathie Black, (above) reportedly a no-nonsense manager and bold leader in her four decades of work in the private sector, has the potential to spark the type of improvements our schools need today. Black's challenge as the next chancellor will be to keep reform moving forward as her opponents - most likely, these will include the city's powerful and well-connected United Federation of Teachers - marshal a last stand at protecting their own interests.

 

Progress must continue on several fronts.

 

First, we must continue to expand parent choice. Every parent in this city should have access to high-performing public schools, whether traditional or charter. No child should have a failing zoned school as his or her only option.

===================

A to-do list for N.Y.C. Schools Chancellor Cathie Black: Eva Moskowitz lays out her priorities

 

By Eva Moskowitz

 

Monday, November 15th 2010, 4:00 AM

www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/11/15/2010-11-15_a_todo_list_for_cathie_black.html#ixzz15MGiiFwj

DFER 2 reformers need our help

Two ed reformers need our help:

 

Dear friend:

Thanks for your support of our "Funky 15" list of education reform-supportive candidates for office that we prioritized for the elections a few weeks ago. You helped some really great candidates win some important races around the country, even in a tough election year.

We do, however, want to alert you to two of our top races which are still playing out. Anything you could do to help push these races over the finish line would be welcome, and now is the time.

1.       Deep in the heart of Texas, former TFA'er Judith Cruz is locked in what has become a heated run-off battle for a crucial "reform" seat on the Houston Independent School District board. The Houston Chronicle lays out why the race is so important here (and also explains why Cruz is the best candidate for the job.)

 

But in a nutshell: Houston's status as a leader in the movement to assure that great teaching becomes the focal point of public education system will be seriously weakened if special interests trying to block teacher-quality reforms can win this seat.

 

This is a low turnout election, so while your resources are welcome, even more important is anything you can do to get friends and family to the polls if they live in HISD's District VIII which includes Rice Military, south Heights, portions of Montrose, midtown, downtown, and the eastside into Denver Harbor.

 

This is a tense one. You can contribute to Judith's campaign via her website: http://www.judithcruzforhisd.com/

 

Go Judith, go!

 

2.       Meanwhile, in New York's 7^th Senate District in Long Island, our friend Sen. Craig Johnson is involved in a race that is so close it will go to a hand re-count. Aside from this race being another reminder that every single vote matters, it will have a significant impact on the overall power structure of the New York State Senate.

 

Sen. Johnson has been a great friend to education reform, and losing his leadership in the Senate would be significant.

 

Please consider supporting the re-count effort for Sen. Johnson via DFER's "Education Reformer of the Month" page.  http://www.actblue.com/page/dferdec09

 

Thanks for everything you are doing to save public education. On behalf of the wild and crazy crew here at DFER, we wish you and yours a very happy Thanksgiving.

 

Gobble, gobble.

Israel Trip

I just got back from Israel at 4am this morning.  The trip focused on Israeli innovation – it's really quite remarkable how a mini-Silicon Valley has emerged there.  As my cousin correctly put it: "Israel is the only other country that does start-ups right."  

But, like us, Israel's future is threatened by a poor-and-getting-worse public school system, which was a shock to me because if there's one thing that's defined Jews for 4,000+ years, it's an overwhelming focus on education.  But check out page 27 of my school reform presentation (posted at www.arightdenied.org/presentation-slides) – Israel is the ONLY developed country in which FEWER young people get a college degree today than 30 years ago.

 

Why is this happening?  Mostly the same reasons as here: teachers are unionized and it's nearly impossible to fire a bad one, only the lowest caliber college students become teachers, and there are big achievement gaps between Israeli Arabs and certain Jewish immigrants (like Ethiopians).  Once big difference: teachers are VERY poorly paid – about 4,000 shekels/month ($1,100) vs. an average income of twice that.

If I were Czar

The more I think about page 31 of my presentation, the madder I get: (posted at www.arightdenied.org/presentation-slides)

 

How is it that ANY child can get to 4^th grade – much less a MAJORITY of black and Latino children – and not be able to read?  If I were czar, I'd decree that a child can't be promoted from 3^rd to 4^th grade unless they are a Proficient (not Basic, and certainly not Below Basic) on the NAEP test.

A Trailblazer With Her Eye on the Bottom Line

Here's a long profile of Cathie Black on the front page of today's NYT.  She's an unconventional selection to be sure, but she seems like a super person and manager, so I'm willing to give her (and Mayor Bloomberg) the benefit of the doubt and support her nomination.  I sat next to her at a charity event a few months ago – we had a nice chat, but I certainly now wish I'd engaged her more!

Cathleen Prunty Black, who is Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's choice to be the next chancellor of the New York City public school system, has during more than 40 years in the publishing industry broken numerous glass ceilings — and amassed a personal fortune — with quick and definitive decision making, crystal-clear goal setting and an all-surpassing attention to the bottom line. She not only produced results but also carefully managed up, winning the confidence of powerful bosses like Allen H. Neuharth and Rupert Murdoch. And she threw herself into knotty problems, developing two tennis elbows from carrying around overstuffed briefcases in her first year as president of USA Today.

"She's the closest thing to Superman that exists," said Atoosa Rubenstein, on whom Ms. Black placed an audacious bet, letting her start a new magazine, CosmoGirl, at age 26.

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A Trailblazer With Her Eye on the Bottom Line

Michael Appleton for The New York Times

Cathleen P. Black, the mayor's pick to lead New York schools, waiting for a taxi outside her Park Avenue apartment.

By DAVID M. HALBFINGER, MICHAEL BARBARO and FERNANDA SANTOS

Published: November 18, 2010

www.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/nyregion/19black.html?hp=&pagewanted=all

Here's Andy Rotherham with some wise thoughts about what it takes to be a successful school super:

What kind of credentials do you need to run a school district? Especially a really big one? Is a degree in education a better predictor of a superintendent's success than, say, a track record of turning around distressed companies? These are hot questions in the education world right now. Last week, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg surprised everyone (and that includes the senior leaders of his city's school system) by tapping publishing executive Cathleen Black to be the city's new school chancellor. By doing so, Bloomberg set in motion an arcane deliberation process. Because Black has not spent three years working in public schools — in fact, her only education leadership experience consists of serving on an advisory board for a charter school in Harlem — and because she also lacks the requisite 60 hours of graduate-school credits, she will need a waiver from the state in order to take charge of the city's 1,700 schools, 80,000 teachers and more than a million students.

It's understandable why some teachers and education advocates are objecting so vociferously to an outsider coming in to run such a massive system (though it should be noted that if the new chancellor pledged to undo the current reform efforts, many of these same people wouldn't care if Bloomberg had just hired Carrot Top as his new schools chief). If you've never worked in a school before, critics wonder, how can you oversee so many of them? But precisely because the New York district is so gargantuan, its chancellor needs a skill set far different from your average principal or teacher; the school system's annual budget of more than $21 billion exceeds the gross domestic product of nearly half the world's countries. Let me be clear, however, on two things: at this point, there's no way to tell if Black will be an effective leader of New York's mega-district. But what is lost in all the speculation about her is how outmoded — and counterproductive — American education's approach to credentials is in the first place. (See what makes a school great.)

After World War II, reformers saw credentials as a way to create prestige and respect for educators. An elaborate state-based and now quasi-national credentialing regime sprang up as a result. New York's rules about who can lead a school district are not unusual. Today's educators are obsessed with education degrees and credentials, regardless of the evidence about how useful they are in creating effective teachers or leaders.

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School of Thought

Who Is Best Qualified to Run a School System?

By Andrew J. Rotherham Thursday, Nov. 18, 2010

www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2031772,00.html#ixzz15kJylsZ9

Joe Nocera, a top business columnist in the NYT, with a first-rate article last Saturday about Joel Klein, who's had the toughest job in America for the past 8 years.  I'm quoted near the end:

In the intervening eight years, Mr. Klein transformed both himself and New York's $23 billion school system. He will leave his post with a reputation as the country's pre-eminent education reformer. He has welcomed the charter school movement with astonishing fervor — some 30 percent of Harlem's schoolchildren now attend a charter school. He spent millions on technology so that the school system could distinguish between schools that were improving and those that weren't. He has closed down dozens of the worst schools, replacing them with smaller schools that have more intimate classroom settings. He empowered principals, making them, as he puts it, "the C.E.O.'s of their buildings."

And, as any education reformer must, he fought endless battles with the teachers' union. He eliminated New York's infamous rubber rooms, where bad teachers literally spent years waiting, at full pay, for the hearings that would determine whether they could be fired. And he wrenched some important concessions from the union, like gaining for his principals the ability to hire the teachers they wanted, rather than those imposed on them by the union's seniority system. (Alas, seniority still rules when it comes to letting teachers go.)

The improvement is unarguable. Graduation rates are up over 20 percent since he took over. Thousands of parents sign up for the lotteries each year that decide whether their children will get into a coveted charter school slot. Test scores are up…

… That was the accountability part of the equation. The competition part came in the form of those charter schools. As part of his drive to open charter schools, Mr. Klein courted an important ally: New York's wealthy hedge fund community, which has backed them with tens of millions of dollars.

Charter schools, explained Whitney Tilson, the founder of T2 Partners and one of their most ardent supporters, are the perfect philanthropy for results-oriented business executives. For one thing, they can change lives permanently, not just help people get by from day to day. For another, he said, "hedge funds are always looking for ways to turn a small amount of capital into a large amount of capital."

A wealthy hedge fund manager can spend more than $1 million financing a charter school start-up. But once it is up and running, it qualifies for state funding, just like a public school. Except that in most cases, charter schools save the taxpayers money because they are much more cost-conscious than the typical big city public school. "It is extremely leveraged philanthropy," Mr. Tilson said.

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Talking Business

Lesson Plan From a Departing Schools Chief

By JOE NOCERA

Published: November 12, 2010

www.nytimes.com/2010/11/13/business/13nocera.html

Jay Greene with a good summary of the enormous progress NYC schools and students have made under Klein:

Never has so much venom been spilled over so little. Joel Klein's departure as chancellor of New York City's schools is sure to produce another round of exaggerated denunciations, just as his tenure over the last eight years has.

No, Klein didn't transform New York City's schools into paragons of excellence overnight -- but neither is he a villain, undermining the foundations of public education. Indeed, his willingness to break with the status quo -- closing failed schools, supporting the expansion of charter schools -- and his emphasis on educational results were vital to bringing a marked change to a long-stagnant system.

In context, his achievement was impressive: In a nation where academic achievement has been stagnant for four decades despite a tripling in per-pupil spending (adjusted for inflation), and where the urban picture has typically been even more gloomy, he delivered steady progress.

According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the US Department of Education's national measure of student achievement, New York City students have been making solid gains in math and reading.

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Small gains add up

Klein's impressive achievement

By JAY P. GREENE

Last Updated: 12:44 AM, November 10, 2010

www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/small_gains_add_up_8xfWC2jfltKobIHF6rJ7TM#ixzz14vxUzIIi

A spot-on WSJ editorial:

·         REVIEW & OUTLOOK

·         NOVEMBER 11, 2010

·         http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703805004575606481103226208.html

Joel Klein's Report Card

If you can reform schools there . . .

Education reformers tend to react to the ferocious opposition of the status quo in one of two ways: Either they fade away in resignation, or they become even more radical. Joel Klein did the latter, which is why he leaves New York City's 1,600 public schools and 1.1 million students better than he found them.

A Democrat without education experience when he became schools chancellor in 2002, Mr. Klein began as a mainstream reformer. Raise standards, end social promotion, hire better teachers, promote charter schools. But as he was mugged by the reality of the K-12 public school establishment, he began to appreciate that real improvement requires more than change at the margin.

Thus he led the fight for far more school choice by creating charter school clusters, as in Harlem, that are changing the local culture of failure. Kids from as far away as Buffalo will benefit from his fight to lift the state charter cap, which increased to 460 schools from 200. Mr. Klein helped to expose the "rubber rooms" that let bad teachers live for years on the taxpayer dime while doing no work. He gave schools grades from A to F and pushed to close the bad ones, and he fought for merit pay in return for ending teacher tenure.

Mr. Klein leaves with much of that work uncompleted, but with reformers on offense and the public more engaged. Mayor Mike Bloomberg has chosen former media executive Cathie Black, another education rookie, as the next chancellor. Lack of experience in this failed system can be an advantage, so long as Ms. Black has the toughness to take on the teachers unions and their political retainers on the city council, the state board of regents and in Albany. She should worry when they start to praise her.

The school reform movement has gained momentum in recent years as more Democrats like Mr. Klein and Michelle Rhee in Washington, D.C., have taken up the task and spoken honestly about a system that serves the adults it employs, rather than the students it claims to serve but fails to teach. The unions believe they can prevail simply by waiting out the reformers. They'll be right if others don't continue the fight as tenaciously as Mr. Klein and Ms. Rhee.