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Recently I have been harping on the impact of budget cuts on public schools. And I've come across another potential victim of these cuts: Early college high schools, a school improvement model that allows students to take college courses while still in high school. Early college high schools often target disadvantaged students who would be the first in their families to attend college. Many of these students earn associate degrees by the time they graduate high school.
But a recent EdWeek article pointed out that many of these schools are struggling to cover costs – some have even had to close for financial reasons. This is despite findings that these schools have increased access to college for underrepresented students and enabled them to succeed in postsecondary education. One forthcoming study will show that students in early college high schools appear to have higher proficiency rates on standardized tests, higher attendance rates and higher four-year graduation rates than students in a control group.
The article implied that these several of these programs are struggling financially for mainly two reasons: One, state subsidies for the programs have decreased. And two, many ...
Last week I wrote about the impact that the economic recession has had on personnel, as determined by the American Association of School Administrators’ survey Surviving a Thousand Cuts: America's Public Schools and the Recession.
And it’s bad. 34% of respondents anticipate furloughs in 2011. 66% anticipate layoffs. But in the nature of education debates, those are very “adult” concerns. Lest anyone get confused that I am not putting “students first,” let me draw attention to a few of the survey’s other findings.
- 57% increased class size for the 2010-11 school year, while 65% anticipate doing so in 2011-12
- 27% eliminated summer school programs for the 2010-11 school year, while 40% anticipate doing so in 2011-12
- 17% reduced collaborative planning time within the school day for the 2010-11 school year, while 26% anticipate doing so in 2011-12
What does this mean?
Well, research has shown that students in grades K-3 who are put in smaller classes, with a maximum of 15-18 students, perform better than students in larger classes on standardized reading and mathematics tests – and the performance gap widens for each year (K-3) they are in a small class. These benefits are lasting. And ...
The recent report Building a Grad Nation gives us some good news: Our national graduation rate is up. 75% of the class of 2008 graduated, compared to 72% of the class of 2001. And the number of “dropout factories” – high schools where 60% or less of the entering class makes it to 12th grade – is down. There were 2,007 of these schools in 2002 and 1,746 of them in 2008 (a 13% decline).
Of course, this also means that a quarter of American students fail to earn a high school diploma, which is unacceptable. And we still see significant gaps when comparing graduation rates by racial and ethnic groups. For example, 91% of students classified as Asian earn a diploma in 2008, compared to just 62% of African-American students.
But in general, the report offered us hope. And Education Secretary Arne Duncan sang its praises (at least in his prepared remarks). As he put it, “[This report] ought to be required reading for those who believe that the high school dropout problem is too intractable to successfully take on. … [I]t documents that, in fact, many failing schools do turn around. It shows that chronic underperformance doesn’t need to stay that way.”
Certainly, we at the Learning First Alliance believe that. And we have told the story of a number of schools at all levels – elementary, middle and high – that have undertaken some of the hardest work there is, improving a struggling school.
But I also appreciate that this new report acknowledges that low graduation rates are not just about struggling high schools. With the “Civic Marshall Plan” it proposes to ...
Last week Education Secretary Arne Duncan gave a speech on the “new normal”—the challenging fiscal circumstances that public schools and districts will face over the next several years. He also called attention to concerns with the quality of our public education system. In other words, he asked us to do more with less.
Unfortunately, he is right. All of our schools don’t work for all of our students. And as high a priority as education is, state and local budgets (which provide the vast majority of funding for our public schools) are in a world of hurt. While education funding is desperately important, will it increase any time soon?
So yes, we have to do more with less. But how? According to Duncan, we have to do more of what works—and less of what doesn’t. He suggests we be smarter about how we use technology in learning. How we pay teachers. How we support our neediest schools. And how we reduce class sizes.
Duncan’s comments on class size reduction can be taken a couple of ways. He first points out that, “up through third grade, research shows a small class size of 13 to 17 students can boost achievement.” He then suggests, “in secondary schools, districts may be able to save money without hurting students, while allowing modest but smartly targeted increases in ...
Yesterday over at Always Something, National School Public Relations Association Executive Director Rich Bagin offered some thoughts on how we can best promote public schools, taken from private schools’ marketing campaigns.
Chief among those thoughts: Promote individual schools. In public education, we typically promote school districts, not individual schools. But private schools – and though Rich does not mention them, I think charter schools as well – focus to great effect on what one individual school does for its students. And as Rich points out:
When real decisions are made, it comes to a school versus school and program versus program decision.
Given that we already know this, why does this PR strategy run so counter to what we in public education do? Do we want to avoid creating competition within the system, to avoid potentially concentrating families who lack the social capital to get into a better school in a struggling one? (Though isn’t that happening anyway, with charters, private schools and the ability of ...
Only 12 percent of black fourth-grade boys are proficient in reading, compared with 38 percent of white boys, and only 12 percent of black eighth-grade boys are proficient in math, compared with 44 percent of white boys.
Poverty alone does not seem to explain the differences: poor white boys do just as well as African-American boys who do not live in poverty, measured by whether they qualify for subsidized school lunches.
So writes Trip Gabriel in The New York Times, summarizing the findings from A Call for Change, a study released yesterday by the Council of Great City Schools that was designed to bring attention to the state of the Black male student in the United States.
I have not yet read the study in its entirety, just the executive summary. And it is discouraging. In addition to test scores, the study examined “Readiness to Learn,” finding, for example, that in 2008 Black children ages 17 and under were nearly 50 percent more likely to be without private or government health insurance than White children. It looked at “College and Career Preparedness,” reporting gaps in dropout, Advanced Placement test taker and college enrollment rates, as well as ...
We hear a lot about urban schools—their performance, the challenges they face, how we can make them better. We don’t hear nearly as much about rural schools, despite the fact that almost half of our public schools are rural and about a third of America's students attend these schools.
Rural schools face challenges similar to urban schools (such as poverty and high mobility rates), as well as unique challenges related to attracting and retaining staff, capacity to apply for large competitive grants, access (or lack thereof) to providers of supplemental educational services and more.
But there are a number of successful schools and districts that are overcoming these challenges and helping rural students meet their potential. South Dakota’s Wagner School District is one such place. The district, located next to the Yankton Sioux Reservation, has one school that serves grades pre-K through 12. Its diverse student population is overwhelmingly poor. It has a high mobility rate.
Yet students in Wagner graduate at a higher rate than others in South Dakota. And Native American and high school students outperform their peers across the state on standardized assessments.
Critical to the district’s success is technology. By embracing initiatives ranging from a one-to-one laptop program to online AP courses to iPod touches that help differentiate instruction for kindergarteners, this district is truly using technology to enhance student learning.
Wagner Superintendent Susan Smit recently told us more about this remarkable district.
Wagner: A Rural, Diverse District
Public School Insights: Tell me about the Wagner School District.
Smit: Wagner is located in rural South Dakota, along the Missouri River at the base of the state. It’s a beautiful part of the United States.
We get federal impact aid under Title VIII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. We're right next to the Yankton Sioux Reservation, which is a checkerboard reservation. It was one land mass at one time, but pieces have been sold by different entities through the years and now it's a checkerboard. One piece of land may be reservation, the piece next to it may not be.
We're a rural community with changing demographics and a diverse population. The two primary demographics are Native American and non-Indian. When I came here six years ago, we were under 50 percent Native American. Now ...
Not in most states, according to a recent report by the Education Law Center.
Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card examines the school funding systems of our states. It considers four interrelated measures: funding level (state and local contributions to per pupil revenue), funding distribution (how well a state provides funding to schools based on their poverty), effort (the ratio of state spending on education to that state's per capita gross domestic product) and coverage (the proportion of school-age children attending public schools and the income disparity between families using private versus public schools).
Unfortunately, most states do not do a great job of ensuring equality of educational opportunity for all children. Just seven states get an "A" or "B" from the authors for funding distribution: Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, New Jersey, Ohio, South Dakota and Utah*. Overall, the authors find that six states perform relatively well on all measures: Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Vermont and Wyoming. And four perform below average on each indicator: Illinois, Louisiana, Missouri and North Carolina.
There are, of course, limitations to what is presented in this report. And many of those are addressed in the report itself. One is that the report is based on the analysis of pre-recession data--district-level U.S. Census data from 2007. Depending on ...
I just read an article by a well-known superintendent on the importance of improving teacher quality, and how one might go about it. I agreed with some of what was said, though not all of it, but by the time I finished reading it I was smoking.
It was missing two key words: school-based.
The piece claimed that "the single most important factor" in student achievement is the teacher. But that is not exactly what the research shows. Rather, time and time again, the research shows that family background—aka socioeconomic status—is by far the most influential factor in a student’s academic achievement.
Research does show that teachers are the most important school-based factor in a child’s achievement. Effective teachers can work with students to overcome some of the challenges that they bring to school, helping them achieve at high levels. So clearly in designing school improvement efforts, a number of policies around teachers—their quality, development, compensation and more—should be considered.
But too many debates on education reform leave out those two little words. And that can create some unrealistic ...
It was recently announced that Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg is donating $100 million to help improve Newark’s long-troubled public schools. Those funds will be matched by donations raised by the city, which is also raising $50 million for another youth effort. In other words, Newark’s children will have a lot more money available to them over the next few years.
As part of this agreement, Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie will cede some control over Newark Public Schools (currently state-run) to Democratic Newark Mayor Cory Booker. Together, they will select a new superintendent, and Mayor Booker will have freedom to redesign the system (though the governor retains formal authority over it).
This partnership is great news in some respects--a Democrat and a Republican overcoming political conflicts, joining forces for the sake of the children. Hopefully it is the first of many such unions across the country.
But I do have some concerns with this set-up. First, we must question the wisdom of short-term infusions of private funds into public schools. While $100 million--or even $250 million--is a lot of money, it won't last forever. What happens when the money runs out?
And second, what is the role of philanthropy in school reform? Some argue, as NYC Chancellor Joel Klein puts it, that while private philanthropy will never be a large part of a system's budget, it is money that can be used for research and development and for ...
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