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.
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Recently, NPR did a special series on violence among youth in Chicago. Schools and students all over the country—especially in urban areas—deal with the everyday-threat of violence. Clearly, this omnipresent factor can take a huge toll on public schools.
Mayor-elect of Rahm Emanuel says the violence in the city is unacceptable, and he has promised to hire a thousand new police officers as part of his crime policy. One article quotes him stating, "My goal for the four years, and the measurement of my progress, will be whether that child can be thinking of their studies, and not their safety."
Already the city—relying on schools and police—is implementing intensive efforts to try to combat what some consider an epidemic of youth violence in Chicago—efforts that may provide good models for other cities and school districts facing these problems. ...
February is National School-Based Health Care Awareness Month, so I wanted to discuss school-based health centers (SBHCs) as beneficial models for communities nation-wide. The National Assembly on School-Based Health Care explains that SBHCs are comprised of partnerships between schools and local health care organizations to deliver health care (physical and mental) to students on a school campus. Currently, schools with SBHCs predominantly serve low-income students who historically experience health care disparities (although even schools with different student demographics could benefit from the SBHC model.) And while SBHCs serve the student and faculty population at the school where they are housed, many also open their doors to students from other schools, as well as to other members of the community. SBHCs can be funded from both government (local, state, and federal) and private groups, depending on the model each community develops. Currently, there are more than 1,900 SBHCs in 48 states and territories.
There are many compelling benefits to SBHCs. Besides providing care for populations that otherwise might not receive it, research indicates they increase school attendance and academic performance, decrease school drop-out rates, and ...
As we all know, the current economic climate is challenging. And schools and their districts are among those struggling. Funding is being cut as demands on schools are increasing. So of course, districts are looking to save money anywhere they can.
One potential starting place: cutting energy costs. And one potential model for doing so: Virginia's York County School Division.
Over the past 12 years, York County has developed a comprehensive, three-pronged strategy to managing energy. It includes not only high-reward (but high-cost) activities such as building, renovating and replacing using energy-efficient equipment, but focus on controlling systems and energy education.
Since the middle of 2004, this strategy has saved the district over two million dollars. It has had positive environmental impacts as well--the energy savings are equivalent to removing 2,115 cars from the road. The district has been recognized for the program by everyone from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the Association of School Business Officials International (ASBO International). And imitation is the sincerest form of flattery--the district knows of several schools built using the same technology as in York after visits to their schools.
We recently talked to Doug Meade, the district's Director of Information Technology, and Mark Tschirhart, Associate Director for Capital Plans and Projects, to learn more about the program.
The Background
Public School Insights: Tell me about your district.
Meade: We're a district of about 12,600 students. We have 19 academic facilities—four high schools, four middle schools, ten elementary schools and one charter high school. And we have two administrative locations.
Tschirhart: We have about 1.8 million square feet in total.
Meade: That is important, because for a district three times our size, the $2 million we have saved may not seem like a lot, but it's quite a bit for us.
Public School Insights: Why did the York County School Division decide to start a comprehensive energy management program?
Meade: One theme will run throughout this interview: When we take any particular tact toward energy conservation, it's because it saves money. That's the driving force behind our energy conservation efforts.
Tschirhart: Back in 1997, our former chief operations officer looked at our energy consumption. He wondered if there was a way we could cut those costs. So we ...
There's been a lot going on with Baltimore City Public Schools lately. The district recently received the CUBE Award (Council of Urban Boards of Education). It has made remarkable progress over the past three years in test scores (especially of minority students), increasing public support and cutting the number of students dropping out of school. A couple examples: Special education students in grades three to eight have improved reading scores on state tests by nearly 30 percentage points—and math scores by nearly 28. English language learners in those grades have improved reading scores by 39 percentage points—and math scores by 39, too, outperforming their English-speaking peers in that subject.
But it's not just what has happened in Baltimore that's exciting--it is also what is to come. For example, a revolutionary new teachers contract. The proposed contract eliminates the “step” pay increases that compensate teachers based solely on their years in the workforce and degrees obtained. It incorporates effectiveness, identified in a number of ways, and also creates a career ladder that gives lead teachers the potential to earn up to $100,000.
And the contract isn’t just about pay and evaluation. It also includes “school-based options.” So teachers at a school, with an 80% majority, can determine school-level working conditions not outlined in the general contract, such as a longer working day or more planning time. It puts teachers at the center of transforming schools.
Remarkably, considering what is included, these contract negotiations went smoothly. The union and district quietly went about ...
Seven years ago, Washington’s Everett School District awoke to a harsh reality. A change in how the state calculated graduation rates revealed that only 53% of the district’s students graduated on-time. Officials were shocked and embarrassed. They sprang into action.
Today, Everett’s on-time graduation rate is just under 84%. Its extended graduation rate is just over 90%. And the improvement has occurred across the board, in all ethnic groups and special populations.
To what do they credit their success? Getting a group of committed adults focused on the problem and meeting regularly to try to solve it. And they also moved from numbers to names—getting personal about who is not on track to graduate and what they can do about it. Everett’s Chief Academic Officer Terry Edwards recently told us more.
Public School Insights: Your district has recently gotten some press because of its improved graduation rates. Could you tell me a bit about the success you have had?
Edwards: It is something that I call “An overnight wonder that took seven years to get here.”
About seven years ago, in 2003-2004, the state of Washington changed how it calculated graduation rates. It moved from looking at the number of graduates in the senior class plus those who dropped out over the past four years to a cohort model, the on-time model that the federal government has adopted. This model looks at the number of kids who enter in ninth grade and the number who graduate four years later.
When we converted to that model, our district’s graduation rate was 53%. That was very hard for Everett to accept, because we had always believed that we were a very good school district and doing a good job. 53% was shocking and embarrassing. And it did not seem to follow what we perceived as reality. We did not see hundreds of children standing around on street corners in ...
It is no secret that districts are struggling in the current economic climate. They are looking to cut costs every way they can.
One area worth exploring in cost-cutting debates is energy. With energy costs rising—to say nothing of the environmental impact it is becoming more and more clear that our current sources of energy can have—districts need to take a closer look at how they are using energy.
Louisiana’s St. Tammany Parish Public Schools did. And as a result, this growing district, which currently has 72 facilities and serves about 36,000 students, has saved about six million dollars in utility costs over the past four and a half years. They’ve put that money back into schools, providing resources to help the district maintain its reputation as one of the best in the state. And they’ve received national and state recognition for their work.
How did they do it? A comprehensive energy management program. And when we say comprehensive, we mean COMPREHENSIVE. The program includes everything from customized reports for principals on their school’s energy performance (generated by the district’s two energy management tracking systems) to an energy awareness curriculum correlated to the state’s grade-level expectations. Automated lighting and temperature controls to daily reminders of energy saving behaviors in the form of posters, stickers and morning announcements. And much, much more.
Of course, in a time of fiscal crisis, districts may not be able to afford the upfront costs of some of the software and automation that St. Tammany now has. But it is important to note that St. Tammany started this program right after Hurricane Katrina, at a time when they were unable to do more than tell principals to turn off the lights and set thermostats to the lowest possible setting in the winter and the highest in the summer. But those behaviors alone saved the district 7% in energy costs.
We recently spoke to the district’s supervisor of administration, John Swang. He told us more about the program and its results. Below are some highlights of our conversation. Or read the full edited transcript.
At the Beginning: Runaway Energy Costs
Public School Insights: Why did St. Tammany Parish decide to start a comprehensive energy management program?
Swang: About four and a half years ago, our energy bills were skyrocketing. At one point, the cost of energy doubled in three years. We were sending a lot of our resources to the utility companies. It was no different than what the rest of the country was experiencing—it was a kind of runaway situation. And still, to a large extent, the cost of energy is increasing and probably will continue to do so.
But at that point the St. Tammany Parish School Board began talking about getting control of ...
An innovative program out of Boston College is making a big difference for children in 11 Boston elementary schools. City Connects (CCNX) works with the schools to link each child to a "tailored set of intervention, prevention and enrichment services located in the community."
Its efforts have gone a good distance towards closing achievement gaps between the low-income children in the program and children who meet state averages. CCNX's results offer powerful support for what should be common sense: When we address the challenges poor students face both within and beyond schools, they flourish.
A rigorous study (PDF) of the program's outcomes tells a pretty stunning story:
- The beneficial impact of BCNX [the former name of CCNX] on student growth in academic achievement (across grades 1 to 5) was, on average, approximately three times the harmful impact of poverty.
- By the end of grade 5, achievement differences between BCNX and comparison students indicated that the BCNX intervention moves students at the 50th percentile up to or near the 75th percentile, and the students at the 25th percentile up to or near the 50th.
- For multiple outcomes, the treatment effects were largest for students at greatest risk for academic failure. For example, English language learners experienced the largest treatment benefits on literacy outcomes, by third grade demonstrating similar report card scores to those proficient in English in comparison schools. In fact,as a result of BCNX, there was no longer an achievement gap between these students.
- After grade 5, the lasting positive effects ofthe BCNX intervention can be seen in middle-school MCAS scores. The size ofthe positive effect of BCNX ranged from approximately 50% to 130% as large as the negative effects of poverty on these scores.1
We recently caught up with two of the program's leaders: Dr. Mary Walsh, its Executive Director, and Patrice DiNatale, its Director of Practice.
Public School Insights: What is City Connects?
Walsh: City Connects is a systemic, evidence-based approach to school-based student support. It involves assessing, in conversation with teachers and other school staff, each child in the school at the beginning of the school year and then developing a tailored student support plan based on that student's strengths and needs in four areas: academic, social emotional/behavioral, health and family.
That support plan involves accessing services, supports, resources and enrichment for the child, both school-based resources as well as, and importantly, community resources. A trained professional with a Master’s degree—either ...
[Editor's note: This is the second in a series of three posts on school-based health centers. Yesterday we briefly reviewed evidence supporting the use of these clinics. Today, Linda Gann talks about how her district founded two such centers. Soon Jennifer Danielson will take us through a day in the life of a nurse practitioner and tell us how her school-based health center has impacted kids.]
School-based health clinics have shown a great deal of promise in improving health outcomes for students, decreasing Medicaid costs at a time when every penny counts and even in potentially raising academic outcomes for low-income students. But yet there are only about 2,000 school-based health clinics (SBHCs) in the United States. Why don’t more districts take this approach? Does it seem too expensive? Too risky? Too separate from the district’s academic mission?
We recently spoke to Linda Gann, Communications and Special Project Coordinator in Colorado’s Montrose County School District RE-1J, to learn more about how her district came to embrace SBHCs. She also told us about her experience planning and implementing the district’s first school-based health clinic three years ago and its second a few months ago. Some keys to their success? The clinics get all their funding outside the general fund. They keep the community engaged in and informed about these efforts. And they consider not only the physical but also the mental health needs of students.
SBHCs alone will not close the achievement gap. But in Montrose, they are part of a broad strategy to address the needs of its growing Hispanic community. And that strategy appears to be working—for example, the district has a 20% higher graduation rate for Hispanic students than the state does.
Here's the story as Gann told it to us in a recent phone conversation.
About Montrose County School District RE-1J
I think from a researcher’s standpoint our district is almost a perfect universe, as far as data analysis goes. We are located in west central Colorado. We are five hours away from Denver. We are about 1,100 square miles, with two distinct communities. Montrose is about 30,000 people. Olathe is probably about 8,000 people. So we are not very large. And we are separated from our neighboring districts by open space, so it is really easy to tell where our school district stops and another one starts.
In our district, we have 6,500 students. District-wide, 54% receive a free or reduced price lunch. But on the south end of our district, which is close to the ski resort of Telluride, the houses are larger, and there are more families considered upper middle class. The free and reduced price lunch population at the elementary school in that area is about 11%. On the north end of our district, the free and reduced price lunch population is 80%. ...
The US economy is improving overall, but our schools will be among the last to share in the wealth. Deep and persistent economic troubles can be a deadweight on vital reforms.
A new survey of superintendents released by AASA reveals the depth of the problem. School leaders report that things were bad last year and worse this year. And they're likely to be even worse next year.
A full 80 percent expect cuts in state and local revenues before next year, and many expect those cuts to be more severe than they were last year.
The AASA report's title is as clever as it is grim: "A Cliff Hanger: How America’s Public Schools Continue to Feel the Impact of the Economic Downturn." The cliff, of course, is the abrupt drop in funding districts will face when stimulus funds run dry. And lest people think district cups have been running over with stimulus dollars, almost nine in ten superintendents "reported that [those] dollars did not represent a funding increase."
This is an important point, because it challenges the notion that districts had gobs of new money to support new reforms. System leaders were clearly grateful for ...
It seems we're in for another tiresome round of arguments that we have to fire school district staff to focus our dollars in the Classroom. Del Stover recently came across these words from a Maryland State Senator:
We don’t want to cut public education, so we’re going to have to go to superintendents of schools and say: "Listen, you’ve got to find us some administrators, some bureaucrats, some public relations people that we can cut, because we’re not going to furlough teachers."
Stover praises the Senator for wanting to save teachers' jobs, but he bridles at the suggestion that central offices are "bloated, stuffed by people who don't do essential work."
After all, someone has to write those paychecks. Someone has to make sure the schools are compliant with the myriad laws and ...
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A VISION FOR GREAT SCHOOLS
On this website, educators, parents and policymakers from coast to coast are sharing what's already working in public schools--and sparking a national conversation about how to make it work for children in every school. Join the conversation!
