A new report by LFA and Grunwald Associates, with support from AT&T, examines how parents perceive the value of mobile devices, how they see their children using mobiles, and what they think of the possibilities for mobile learning.
District wide strategies
Blog Entries
McDowell County Public Schools have been in the news a lot recently and for good reason. They are part of an exciting partnership that brings together public and private partners to revitalize the rural West Virginia community in which they are located.
McDowell faces an uphill battle, especially where statistics are concerned. Once a vibrant coal mining community with more than 120,000 people, McDowell experienced a mass exodus and decline after the industry collapsed in the early 1960s. Today, the county has around 22,000 residents with a median household income of $22,000. For the past decade, McDowell County has ranked last in the state in education, over 40% of students don’t live with their biological parents and 72% of students live in households without gainful employment. Roads are in a poor state of repair, making transportation difficult, many homes lack running water and medical care is hard to find. Significant problems for schools come with these realities – property taxes generate low revenue to fund schools, teachers are hard to recruit and keep, and resources of all kinds are scarce. ...
You know you’re witnessing learning in action when you see children clamoring to answer a math question, hardly able to stay in their seats with hands stretched to the sky. For those who are often removed from the classroom, analyzing data, processing paperwork in human resources or working in national advocacy, it is always refreshing to be in the presence of educators and their students. Two weeks ago, I participated in a National School Boards Association Technology Leadership Network site visit to Clark County. More than 300, 000 students are enrolled in the Clark County School District (CCSD) in Nevada, the nation’s 5th largest district. The district has 37,361 employees on payroll, making it the state’s largest employer. ...
There should be no debate when it comes to children’s wellbeing and ensuring they have a healthy learning environment. Still, in an era where budgets are tight and the public school system finds itself under intense scrutiny, it is understandably necessary to justify the “why” behind a change or shift in policy. Green Cleaning Schools, the February issue of The State Education Standard, which is published by the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE, a member of the Learning First Alliance), covers the why, the how and more of green cleaning in our nation’s schools. It highlights key benefits ensuring thorough and thoughtful consideration. ...
Brookings Institution recently unveiled the Education Choice and Competition Index (ECCI). Its goal is to provide an “informative and consumer-relevant measure of the degree of choice and competition within the geographical boundaries of large school districts.”
This index considers this choice and competition a positive – the nation’s 25 largest school districts are given a letter grade, with an “A” representing the highest “quality” of choice, as determined by the developers’ framework of 13 categories, including the proportion of students enrolled in nontraditional public schools, the mechanism used to assign students to schools, and information available on-line regarding school performance and how to use the choice process.
As far as I can tell, only one of these 13 categories is a measure of quality – and it’s a reflection of the average public (traditional/charter/magnet) school within a district, weighted by the number of students enrolled at the school. While the developers do express concern over the quality of options available to parents, this measure did not appear to greatly impact rankings. For example, Chicago ranked second in the choice index. Yet it was tied for 23 out of 25 when it came to school quality.
It’s a common frustration I have in arguments over school choice policy. Often, it seems the ultimate goal is ensuring choice, with quality concerns to be resolved by market forces. My view: If the options parents have aren’t high quality, how much does choice really matter?
Take New York City, which was the highest-ranked district in this index, in part because of its mechanism for assigning students to ...
Recently I was looking through old paper files in the Learning First Alliance (LFA) office and happened upon a successful grant application that LFA had received some years ago to gather, record, and disseminate the knowledge, skills, and approaches successful school districts use to ensure their students achieve to their highest abilities. The project resulted in a publication called Beyond Islands of Excellence that, indeed did chronicle what goes into an effective public school system and profiled districts whose students had benefited from their wise, effective leadership. I was struck by how much the scope of work described in the successful grant application articulated the concepts and big ideas that LFA organizations and their leaders still work diligently to implement today. ...
Last week I had the interesting and mostly pleasant experience of attending two events showcasing issues in public preK-12 education on the same day: one sponsored by the Institute for a Competitive Workforce (ICW), the education arm of the United States Chamber of Commerce, and the second hosted by the National Association for Elementary School Principals (NAESP) honoring America’s National Distinguished Principals. As one would expect, the two organizations have very different perspectives on the status of public schools and the people who work in them.
With the exception of Steve Brill’s closing luncheon speech, the ICW meeting was generally balanced and featured interesting panel discussions around the event’s theme, “Race to the Top: Are We There Yet?” (Never mind that we’re barely a year into the competitive, federally funded, state administered large scale initiative. It’s lucky the first checks are in the mail much less that we’re “there”, wherever that might be.) A couple of the panelists, Dan Cruce from the Delaware Department of Education and Pat Forgione from ETS in particular, provided reality based presentations on state department collaborations that work towards effective change management. ...
We’ve been hearing a lot recently about the “new normal” - the need to do more with less. And across the country, districts are doing it. They are cutting waste, becoming more efficient in a number of ways.
While educators can be loath to admit it, according to American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC) founder and chairman Jack Grayson, there is a great deal of waste in education. At the APQC Global Education Roundtables yesterday, he shared a list of over 180 examples of waste he has come across in working with school districts.
Of course, some of the “waste” in the system (which Grayson defines as “anything that adds cost without adding value”) neither can nor should be easily eliminated, fiscally. For example, he lists “inadequate professional development” as waste. The best way to address that situation: Assess staff needs and find meaningful professional development experiences that meet them. Ideally, there is no reduction in the budget, just a more effective use of what is there. But things like “food spoilage” (another example) are clearly a fiscal waste…Schools and districts throw money away when disposing of ...
If the mainstream press reporting on public schools wasn’t important, I wouldn’t be writing this blog post. But, the fact is that the general public gets its information about public education (and private education) from the mainstream press both in print and online, so how our work is depicted is key to the support we get from the public we serve. Last week, Jay Matthews, the education reporter/columnist for my home town newspaper, The Washington Post, not only misrepresented how successful school districts operate, he also got his facts wrong. ...
In 2001, The Learning First Alliance wrote a report titled “Every Child Learning: Safe and Supportive Schools – A Summary,” which advocated for systemic approaches to supporting positive behavior in our nation’s schools. The Alliance argued for school-wide approaches to improving school climate, safety and discipline: “In a safe and supportive learning community, civility, order, and decorum are the norms and antisocial behaviors such as bullying and taunting are clearly unacceptable.” Ten years later, schools across the nation continually contend with the harsh and terrifying realities of bullying and the sad reality is that we still have a long way to go when it comes to ensuring a safe and supportive environment for our nation’s children. Fortunately, recent attention to the issue suggests that we are all beginning to take important steps in the right direction. ...
The American Prospect recently featured an article by Sharon Lerner that details an exemplary pioneering effort to combat racial segregation in schools in Omaha, Nebraska, called the Learning Community. It pools resources and allows student movement to help make schools more socioeconomically diverse. But while Lerner argues that this “radical experiment” could serve to be a national model, local resistance may be indicative of potential animosity to similar efforts in other places. If better racial integration in schools is a focus we want to make to improve public education (and I think it should be), this situation provides a prime example of why appropriate legislation, funding, and winning hearts and minds are all integral to success. ...
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A VISION FOR GREAT SCHOOLS
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