Headline in today’s LA Times: AS BAD DATA PILE UP, OPTIONS WANE

…unfortunately the story wasn’t about the Times’ “Value Added Subtracted” teacher evaluation data scheme!

L.A. SCHOOLS CHIEF VOWS TO USE EVALUATION DATA TO HELP TEACHERS

-- Howard Blume | LA Times

August 25, 2010 |  1:02 pm -- L.A. schools chief Ramon C. Cortines talked about revamping teacher evaluations as a tool for helping teachers improve as part of his final, annual address to administrators Wednesday morning at Hollywood High School.

Overall, the 30-minute speech celebrated progress at various schools, including Hollywood High, and challenged educators to do more.

During his remarks, Cortines emphasized that the nation's second-largest school district plans to develop and adopt a “value-added” measure that uses students test scores to determine individual teachers' and schools' effectiveness. This data should be part of a multifaceted evaluation for teachers, he said.

The value-added method has become a central topic in the Los Angeles Unified School District in the wake of a Times series on the subject. The Times also plans to publish a database later this month containing the value-added rating for about 6,000 third- through fifth-grade teachers. The newspaper found that the school district had the ability to do such an analysis but, like other school systems, never did so.
“It is critical that we look at multiple measures to support our employees,” Cortines said, and “how value added fits into our overall strategy.”

The district plans on publishing such data about schools “once this information has been validated,” he said.  Moreover, such efforts should be developed in partnership with employee bargaining units. “Supporting all employees is about creating a culture of collaboration and trust.”

Cortines supported teachers by quoting a Polytechnic High school custodian who talked about how teachers were on campus when he arrived to work and still working when he left for the day.

Cortines -- who plans to retire in 2011 -- lost his composure near the end of his address as he thanked those assembled for the opportunity to work with them. A packed auditorium, that included parents, district officials and community leaders rose for a 45-second ovation as school board president Monica Garcia rushed to the microphone to proclaim Cortines the nation’s best superintendent.

The superintendent also defended the new Robert F. Kennedy complex of six schools built on the site of the Ambassador Hotel at a cost approaching $600 million. He then remarked on his age by noting that he first visited the old hotel when Adlai Stevenson was running for president. His second visit to the hotel, he said, was a youthful streaking episode with some friends. On a second such jaunt, at a different hotel, Cortines said, police collared him and called his father to collect him.

The confession drew extended, warm applause and some uncomfortable chuckles from the largely buttoned-up crowd of more than 1,000.

In a later interview, Cortines talked about California’s unsuccessful bid to win a federal Race to the Top school improvement grant. Cortines had been part of California’s five-member delegation to present the state’s bid. He noted that federal evaluators grilled him on whether his district could obtain union consent for a teacher-evaluation process that includes linking student data to individual teachers. He told federal officials he was confident that the union could be won over to such a plan. He also said the district would take advantage of rules for the next round of funding that would likely allow L.A. Unified to apply directly to the federal government rather than part of a state effort.

Just after his address, the diminutive, 78-year-old superintendent demonstrated that his impending departure is unrelated to physical fitness. He nimbly and swiftly lowered himself off the stage -- a 4 1/2-foot drop -- landing on his feet unharmed among a bank of plants, where well-wishers mobbed him for hugs and photos.

School board member Steve Zimmer called Cortines' expression of emotion “a remarkably pure moment from someone who did not have to take this job except for his lifelong passion for kids and their families.  We won’t get another moment like this because there’s not another person like him.”

 

Photo: L.A. Unified Supt. Ramon Cortines. Credit: Los Angeles Times

Cortines: LAUSD’s SUCCESS DEPENDS ON CONTINUED EMBRACING OF REFORMS

By Connie Llanos, Staff Writer | LA Daily News

08/25/2010 09:08:58 PM PDT -- An emotional Ramon Cortines delivered his last "back to school" address as head of Los Angeles Unified on Wednesday, urging principals, parents and district officials to embrace reforms as the district faces increasing outside pressure to improve schools.

In a 30-minute speech at Hollywood High School, Cortines celebrated gains made by local students in the last few years and outlined programs he plans to launch in his final months at LAUSD, including the use of student test data in teacher evaluations.

Cortines plans to step down in the spring. Deputy Superintendent John Deasy is expected to replace him.

Cortines spoke hours before U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan chided LAUSD for failing to give teachers and parents more data on student achievement exam scores.

However, Cortines stressed his need to support employees as district officials work to negotiate controversial changes to labor contracts with union leaders.

"This is a time of transition ... but we all have much to be proud of and we must continue working together to continue improvements on behalf of our children," Cortines said.

"Thank you for the opportunity to work for you ... and with you," a teary Cortines added.

Cortines said he plans to include the controversial value-added analysis of exam scores, but only as one of several elements in district teacher evaluations.

Value-added, which compares a student's test score with his or her

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performance on previous tests, has received increased attention this month in the wake of stories published by the Los Angeles Times, which used the method of analyzing test scores to rate the effectiveness of some 6,000 elementary teachers.

A database of the teachers and a ranking of their effectiveness using the value-added method is expected to be released later this month by the newspaper.

Cortines said the district is developing a plan to use these scores as one of several pieces of a re-vamped teacher evaluation system. Parents can also expect "value-added" scores for all LAUSD schools in the next few months, including charter schools.

On Wednesday, though, Duncan criticized LAUSD for taking too long to release data and urged school officials across the country not to make the same mistakes.

"Los Angeles illustrates the problem. Like school systems throughout our nation, the L.A. Unified School District has years of data on its students, yet most administrators never shared that information with teachers in a useful way," Duncan said.

"Every state and district should be collecting and sharing information about teacher effectiveness with teachers and – in the context of other important measures – with parents."

Cortines and other LAUSD leaders have said that they believe teacher effectiveness information should remain, largely, a personnel issue that should not be public.

On Wednesday school board member Steve Zimmer said he thinks the data could be used in evaluations, but should not be public.

Board member Richard Vladovic, on the other hand, said "to deny accountability is to deny you make a difference."

Vladovic said while parents should have access to the information, reporters and other members of the public should not.

Board President Monica Garcia said she will push for the board to move quickly on the issue.

"I think we are all in agreement that we have an evaluation system that is flawed," Garcia said.

"But I am interested in being effective here."

WHERE IS THE VALUE IN ‘VALUE-ADDED’? DOES ‘LOS ANGELES ILLUSTRATE THE PROBLEM’?

john cromshow, host of KPFK’s “Politics or Pedagogy?” writes

26 August 2010 - I encourage you and those who are concerned to call and/or tune in to KPFK 90.7 "Politics or pedagogy?" tonight, Thursday 8/26/10 @ 8:00 PM re: this issue and others - - Lisa Karahalios, Mat Taylor, Ingrid Villeda, Annette Scheer, Scott Folsom & Stephen Krashen are in-studio guests: 818.985.5735

“Los Angeles illustrates the problem” -- EDUCATION SECRETARY DUNCAN’S SPEECH TO THE CLINTON FOUNDATION TODAY IN LITTLE ROCK

from the Dept of Ed website

August 25, 2010

Good evening.

It's an honor to be here tonight under the auspices of the Clinton Foundation and School of Public Service. This institution not only embodies the spirit of public service at the heart of the 42nd President's legacy but also reminds us of the importance of education in society today.

President Clinton was an early and active voice in the education reform movement -- both as governor and as president -- where he began the direct lending program, passed a school to work law, and launched the movement toward higher standards and better assessments.

Today, our administration is building upon his accomplishments. His education secretary Dick Riley remains an important voice in the national conversation around education reform and a valued advisor to me on a host of issues.

And so I begin by saluting President Clinton for his life of service to his state and his nation, and his continuing work on behalf of disadvantaged people both here and abroad.

He is an inspiration to people of every generation. He has made a difference in so many ways for so many people and yet -- by all appearances -- he shows no signs of slowing down.

He is -- in the fullest sense -- a public servant whose extraordinary insights into the challenges facing our world are exceeded only by his tireless efforts to address them. So I thank him for providing this opportunity and I thank all of you as well for coming tonight.

I have come to Little Rock to begin our back to school bus tour at historic Central High School where -- 53 years ago -- the nation's attention was riveted by the courageous efforts of nine African-American students and their families in search of a better education.

Every day I think about the people in our history who had that quality of courage -- people like Dr. Martin Luther King and all of the heroes of the civil rights movement who forced a complacent nation to face the shameful realities of discrimination and do something about it.

Today, I see the same kind of courage in schools and classrooms all across America -- teachers, and principals who get up every day and face the extraordinary challenge of preparing our children for life in a democratic society and a global economy.

They -- as much as anyone -- are fulfilling the promise of equality embedded in our founding documents and codified in our laws over the past 234 years -- and that is why I often say that education is the civil rights issue of our generation.

They have chosen to be educators because -- like Bill Clinton and Dr. King -- they want to make a difference. They want to see our children succeed. They want to see America grow stronger.

These educators are willing to work in our toughest schools, with our most-challenged students -- devoting themselves completely and selflessly. They are heroes in every sense of the word and we launched this bus tour to honor America's teachers and to celebrate courage in our classrooms.

Over the next week, in large and small communities across America we will be meeting with teachers, hearing their voices, highlighting their success, acknowledging the hard work ahead and -- most of all -- thanking them for their commitment.

Joining me on the tour will be several public school teachers who are spending a year at the Department of Education helping shape policy and serving as resources to their colleagues in the classroom.

As my staff travels the country, they will also carry this same message of gratitude and appreciation for the hard work and commitment of our teachers -- and an open ear to hear them as they share their aspirations and their frustrations.

Our hope is that -- in the coming weeks -- every community in America and every parent in America takes time to thank their teachers and offer a helping hand -- because the responsibility for educating our children doesn't fall to teachers alone. It is everyone's responsibility.

It begins at birth—years before a child sets foot in a school. It continues every afternoon and evening in the home. It happens in the community every day wherever people gather and bond.

And it doesn't end when the college diploma is granted. Employers spend tens of billions of dollars each year training employees to meet the changing demands of the workplace. More than any other issue -- education is our shared responsibility, and we all play a role.

We begin this new school year at a time when so much about public education is changing. All across America, stakeholders inside and outside the education system are breaking down barriers to reform, forging new partnerships, and pursuing bold new strategies for improvement.

The need for change has never been greater. A quarter of our students never graduate high school. Many of those who do either don't enroll in college or fail to earn a degree.

That is morally unacceptable and economically unsustainable. Dropouts are condemned to social failure with little chance of getting a good job.

In just one generation we have fallen from first in the world to 12th in the percentage of young adults with college degrees. The President set a goal of becoming first again by 2020 and that goal drives everything we are doing from cradle to career.

It starts with early learning, where we are realigning our work with the Department of Health and Human Services -- which runs Head Start -- in order to boost both access and quality. Every study shows that one of the best investments we can make is to expand quality early learning programs.

If we're serious about closing achievement gaps we must do more to level the playing field before children ever enter kindergarten.

Among the more noteworthy events of the past year was a press conference held by top military officials saying that declining educational quality was a threat to national security and calling for greater investment in Pre-K programs.

On the back end, we are dramatically boosting access and quality in higher education -- both through increased Pell grants, greater investments in community colleges and institutions serving minorities, and a variety of reforms to our student lending programs. There is much more we are doing in the higher education arena but I will save that for another speech.

Tonight I want to talk about what we are doing at the K-12 level to drive reform through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act -- which is currently known as No Child Left Behind.

Today, more than half a century after Brown versus Board of Education and the Little Rock Nine, the promise of equal education remains unfilled for millions of low-income and minority Americans. This unfilled promise led Congress in 1965 to create a federal law specifically aimed at overcoming inherent inequities in education.

Virtually every administration has put its stamp on that law -- including Bill Clinton's and George W. Bush's. Now it's President Obama's turn. Our work has been underway for more than a year and while it may not make it to the finish line in the current session of Congress we expect it to be among the top priorities in the next one.

In any case, our approach to reforming the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is fairly straightforward and is defined by three words: fair, flexible and focused.

We want more fairness in how states, districts and schools are held accountable. We want more flexibility in how schools and districts can improve. And we want more focus on the schools and students most at risk. Essentially, we want a smarter, humbler and more effective law.

Instead of holding only schools accountable we want to hold districts and states more accountable. No school is an island operating in isolation.

Instead of prescribing specific and often impractical interventions for the vast majority of schools -- we want to offer a clear definition of success and let most schools figure out how to get there. We must better support creativity and innovation at the local level which is where the best ideas will always come from.

And for the very lowest-performing schools -- we want to provide much more resources in exchange for dramatic and comprehensive reforms that have demonstrated success in districts across the country.

We will maintain key formula programs for low-income students, English learners, special education students and other special populations like homeless, migrant and rural students.

But we also want to embed into the law competitive grant programs like Race to the Top that are proving so effective in driving reform at the state and local level.

This $4.3 billion program -- representing less than one percent of education spending nationally -- has prompted states and districts across America to change laws, remove obstacles to reform, and force stakeholders to work together in ways that they haven't for decades.

More than 30 states have changed laws around the issue of public charter schools, and teacher evaluation. As of today, 37 states have agreed to adopt higher standards and others are still considering them. I congratulate your state, Arkansas, on taking this bold step for your students last month.

All told, 46 states and the District of Columbia applied for Race to the Top funds and just yesterday we announced the final winners of this year's competition. We now have 11 states along with DC positioned to bring real and lasting change to American education and 35 others with comprehensive plans in hand that can shape their reform agenda.

Whether or not they received funds under this program, we will find ways to help every state push forward with reforms -- because every state in America needs to get better - and I just want to salute Arkansas for its work in a number of areas.

Arkansas has adopted Common Core Standards developed by governors and chief state school officers and will use student growth in its accountability system. These higher standards are an absolute game changer. As a country we will stop lying to our children and dumbing down standards.

Arkansas is also a national leader in expanding student access to rigorous high school courses. The state requires every high school to offer at least four AP classes. The state has also tripled the percentage of graduating seniors who took at least one AP exam.

My understanding is that Central High School, in fact, is now drawing kids from the suburbs attracted to the school's high-quality programs.

Finally, Arkansas is a leader in the use of data. It is one of the few states with all 10 of the essential elements identified by the Data Quality Campaign (DQC). Based on the state's record and a strong application, Arkansas recently won a federal grant of nearly $10 million to develop a statewide data system that will support data-informed decision making at the state and local level.

Meanwhile, Arkansas and all of the other states that have adopted the common core standards will ultimately benefit after we award $350 million in Race to the Top funds to create a new generation of assessments that will better measure students' critical thinking skills and be more useful in helping improve instruction.

We also recently identified 49 districts and non-profit partners for grants under the Investing in Innovation Fund -- both to bring good ideas to scale and expand promising ones. And we will soon announce winners of other major competitive grant programs funded under the Recovery Act.

The big game-changer for us, however, in terms of both formula and competitive programs, revolves around the issue of teacher quality.

Nothing is more important and nothing has a greater impact on the quality of education than the quality and skill of the person standing in the front of the class -- and there is so much that needs to change in the way that America recruits, trains, supports and manages our teachers.

Today, there are many different approaches to strengthening the teaching profession -- both here in America and in countries that are outperforming us like Finland and Singapore.

The Asia Society recently held an international symposium on teacher quality and they found that high-performing countries put much more energy into recruiting, preparing, and supporting good teachers -- rather than on the back end of reducing attrition or firing weak teachers.

Our competitors in other parts of the world recognize that the roles of teachers are changing. Today, they are expected to prepare knowledge workers, not factory workers, and to help every child succeed -- not just the "easy to teach." They have to harness new technologies and teach higher order thinking.

According to the report from the symposium, Singapore selects prospective teachers from the top third of the class and in Finland only one in ten applicants is accepted into teacher preparation programs. They only pick the very best.

England undertook a series of steps to raise the status of the teaching profession including a sophisticated advertising campaign, a televised awards program to raise the profile of teaching, and encouragement for alternate routes into teaching.

They also provide bonuses to attract teachers to commit to teaching in high-need communities. In five years, teaching went from being one of the least-desired professions in England to being one of the most-desired.

The other big findings are that the best teacher preparation programs place more emphasis on guided practice in classroom settings, more focus on problem solving and creativity, and more attention on the use of data and assessment to guide instruction.

When it comes to compensation and evaluation, there is greater variation. We know that entry- level salaries for teachers need to be competitive with other jobs in order to attract high-quality graduates, but beyond that, working conditions are more important than salary.

Finland and Canada do not pay teachers based on their performance, but China and Singapore do. And many countries use financial incentives to teach in hard-to-staff schools.

Most important, teachers in Singapore are appraised annually by several people and across multiple measures, including classroom delivery, collaboration with parents and community groups, and contribution to their colleagues and the school as a whole.

The issue of teacher evaluation is especially important today for a number of reasons. First of all, everyone agrees that our evaluation system is broken.

In many districts, 99 percent of teachers are rated satisfactory and most evaluations ignore the most important measure of a teacher's success – which is how much their students have learned. Many teachers get little or no meaningful feedback or have access to the data that can show them if they are making a difference -- and that's a tragedy. Teachers want -- and need -- this information.

Teachers also worry that their job security and salaries will be tied to the results of a bubble test that is largely disconnected from the material they are teaching. As I said a few weeks ago in a speech in Washington, no one thinks test scores should be the only factor in teacher evaluations, and no one wants to evaluate teachers based on a single test on a single day.

But looking at student progress over time, in combination with other factors like peer review and principal observation can lead to a culture shift in our schools where we finally take good teaching as seriously as the profession deserves.

This is a complicated and emotional issue for teachers, and it just got more emotional in the past 10 days with a series of articles on teacher quality published by the Los Angeles Times.

Essentially, the Times took seven years of student test data and developed what is called a "value-added" analysis to show which third- through fifth-grade teachers are making the biggest gains. The results are about to be posted on the newspaper's website in a searchable data base by teacher name -- taking transparency to a whole new level.

Needless to say, concerns are running very high in Los Angeles-- not only among teachers themselves but also among a wide spectrum of administrators, academics and reformers who question the validity of the scores and the value of the entire exercise.

Still others worry about parents with a limited understanding of what this information really means jockeying to place their children with the highest-ranking teachers.

I am a strong advocate for transparency. This is one thing that NCLB got right. By requiring districts to publish test scores for subgroups like minorities and special needs students -- it changed the national conversation and forced us to focus more closely on achievement gaps.

If it was up to me and the law allowed it, I would put out student attendance data and hold parents accountable. And while we're at it, let's put out funding and facilities data and hold school boards and politicians accountable.

Let's put out data on dropouts, college enrollment, college completion, loan default rates, and every other kind of data that can help us highlight our remarkable success and help us better understand why too many of our children are unprepared.

Let's do what the State of Louisiana is doing -- tracking student scores to teachers and teachers back to their colleges of education so we know who is doing a good job of preparing educators -- because the vast majority of teacher colleges in this country are doing a mediocre job at best.

The truth is always hard to swallow but it can only make us better, stronger and smarter. That's what accountability is all about -- facing the truth and taking responsibility and then taking action.

The fact is we publish a school's scores next to the name of a principal and a district's scores next to the name of a superintendent. As CEO of the Chicago Public Schools I absolutely felt personally accountable for the achievement of all my students. All of us in education have this responsibility though it can be difficult at times.

There are real issues and competing priorities and values that we must work through together -- balancing transparency, privacy, fairness and respect for teachers. This work is not easy but it is critically important.

I appreciate how painful this may be for these L.A. teachers, and I also appreciate the fact that even the best data systems won't tell the whole story. That's why it's so important to get teacher evaluation right to ensure they look at both student learning and other factors to paint a fuller picture.

What is especially interesting about the L.A. Times series is the reaction of some of the teachers quoted in it -- and one particular quote haunts me. According to the newspaper, one of L.A.'s most effective teachers is Nancy Polacheck, a fourth-grade teacher with 38 years of experience. She said something that was utterly heartbreaking.

"In the past, if I were recognized, I would become an outcast," she told the Times. "They'd say, 'She's trying to show off.' "

That shame of success has pervaded America's educational culture for far too long. I've heard it repeatedly -- not just from teachers -- but also from low-income and minority students who are picked-on and ridiculed because they want to do their best in school.

As a country we must stop highlighting only ballplayers and rock stars and start highlighting teachers who are our true heroes and role models.

We should celebrate Nancy Polacheck and the many effective teachers like her. Unfortunately, we rarely know who they are. The fact is, instead of shining a spotlight on excellent teachers, our education system hides them.

There are countless teachers who can help even the most challenging students grow, while others have only marginal success. In that sense, teaching is no different than any other profession. However, our system keeps all our teachers in the dark about the quality of their own work.

In other fields, we talk about success constantly, with statistics and other measures to prove it. Why, in education, are we scared to talk about what success looks like? What is there to hide?

Los Angeles illustrates the problem. Like school systems throughout our nation, the L.A. Unified School District has years of data on its students, yet most administrators never shared that information with teachers in a useful way. Similarly, parents don't get solid, helpful information on their children's schools and teachers. Instead they rely on legend, intuition and chance.

The State of Tennessee has been collecting value-added data since 1992, but it wasn't until this year that Tennessee changed its law to allow its use in teacher evaluation and to identify the state's lowest-performing schools. That change in the law helped Tennessee win its Race to the Top grant.

Every state and district should be collecting and sharing information about teacher effectiveness with teachers and -- in the context of other important measures -- with parents. And we also have to engage students themselves so they can take more ownership of their education.

Teachers want the information. They want the feedback. And they want to get better.

Consider the words of two other teachers who ranked among L.A.'s lowest performers -- according to the analysis. Instead of being defensive, one of them was quoted saying:

"Obviously what I need to do is to look at what I'm doing and take some steps to make sure something changes." He also advocated sharing the data with parents to keep him and his colleagues "on their toes a little bit more."

When another teacher saw her low score, she asked, "What do I need to do to bring my average up?"

More than two thousand L.A. teachers have asked the Times for their scores. It makes no sense that they had to wait for a newspaper to share this information with them and for this to be unfolding in such a public way without their input.

We didn't publish this in a newspaper in Chicago and I don't advocate that approach for other districts -- but the fact that teachers did not have this information is ridiculous.

Local school districts must decide in collaboration with their teachers how to share this information -- how to put it in context -- and how to use it in order to get better. But we cannot shrink from the truth.

Ideally, a good evaluation system will protect teachers because it gives principals the evidence they need to intervene when they see a problem. A principal should not have to wait for the scores to come out to realize that a teacher is struggling.

Educators deserve more than statistics to do their jobs well. They need constructive feedback from their principal and their peers against clear standards and other relevant measures.

This information should be rolled up into a meaningful, ongoing assessment of their work that both helps improve instruction and is tied to opportunities for advancement, bonuses, collaboration and professional development.

Fortunately, the field of education is moving in this more sophisticated direction. States, school districts and teachers' unions are developing new ways of assessing student growth and—along with other measures—identifying, rewarding and learning from effective teachers.

In fact, administrators and union leaders in Los Angeles are working together to develop a better evaluation system, even as the L.A. Times situation plays out. I am hopeful that they will come up with a model that is fair and useful to both teachers and parents. Frankly it's been too long in coming -- not just in LA but around the country.

The L.A. Times has ignited an important debate but it falls to all of us to meet the challenge and talk openly and honestly about this issue. This is going to start happening all over the country and the administrators and unions need to lead the conversation. And we must be thoughtful about how they engage the broader community.

I know that our national union leaders are eager for this conversation. The current systems don't work for their members. Many state and local leaders are as well.

For example, right here in Arkansas, the state is developing a comprehensive teacher evaluation system with more than 20 different indicators -- including student achievement.

We begin with the understanding that the purpose of evaluation is not to blame teachers but to support and empower them, recognize and reward them -- and give them -- as AFT President Randi Weingarten once said -- the tools, the time and the trust to succeed.

NEA President Dennis Van Roekel has urged me to look toward other countries for better ways to elevate and honor the teaching profession -- places like South Korea, where teachers are viewed as nation builders that are critical to the country's economic future.

The public is also yearning for this discussion. A new poll released today by Phi Delta Kappa and Gallup shows that the number-one education priority is improving the quality of teaching.

I recently had the opportunity to spend some time with one of the best teachers in America. Her name is Sarah Brown Wessling. She teaches in Iowa and she is the National Teacher of the Year. She said it much better than I ever could. She said:

"We must commit to innovative teaching practices that will create openings to treat students as individuals, rather than defer to movements that homogenize them. We trust that high-quality teachers — rich in content knowledge, confident in their skills, and poised to teach habits of mind — are the people who will turn our students into autonomous learners."

Tomorrow, I'm getting on a bus to meet with teachers in Arkansas and seven other states. My message to these dedicated public servants is simple and clear:

You are our unsung heroes. Not only do we trust you but we hold you in the very highest esteem. We understand that you are doing society's most important work. We will support you in your work and we will work together with you to elevate and strengthen your profession because nothing less than America's future rests on your collective shoulders.

Thank you.

“PAGING DR. FREUD, PAGING DR. FREUD …GOVERNOR PATTERSON’S’ SLIP IS SHOWING!”

New York Governor David Patterson announces that New York has been selected as a winner in Race to the Top v.2.0 : "We thank President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan for coming up with The Race to the Cock."

It addition to the malapropism, I defy any English teachers reading to diagram the attempted sentence misspoken. -smf

U.S. SCHOOLS CHIEF TO PUSH DISCLOSURE OF SCHOOLS DATA: Education secretary Arne Duncan will call on districts across the nation to make information on teachers public.

By Jason Song, Los Angeles Times

August 25, 2010 -- U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan will call for all states and school districts to make public whether their instructors are doing enough to raise students' test scores and to share other school-level information with parents, according to a text of a speech he is scheduled to make Wednesday.

"The truth is always hard to swallow, but it can only make us better, stronger and smarter," according to remarks he plans to deliver in Little Rock, Ark. "That's what accountability is all about — facing the truth and taking responsibility."

____________________________________________________________

smf: This article is the L.A. Times print reportage on on the failure of California to secure Race to the Top funding  - costing the state 700 million educational dollars.- Howard Blume’s story from yesterday was web only. But that coverage is buried in an article about a speech Arne Duncan is going to make and The Times continuing coverage of their continuing coverage of their own news story about Value-Added accountability.  Duncan and the Times whining that it’s too bad  teachers have to turn to The Times to get their test data could define disingenuous, self-serving and cheesy for Wikipedia.  But we like cheese with our whine – it’s as close to Arts Education and we’re apt to get in LAUSD.

____________________________________________________________

The lack of public accountability in California's schools compared with those in some other states could have been a factor Tuesday in the state's failure to win any money in the federal government's competitive Race to the Top education grant program.

State officials had hoped to get up to $700 million, of which $153 million would have gone to the Los Angeles Unified School District. Among the factors judged most heavily in the competition for the money was whether a state linked teachers to their students' standardized test scores; the Obama administration used the grant competition to spur its vision of reform nationwide.

The winning applicants are Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia. In the first round of the competition, earlier this year, California also lost out: Only Delaware and Tennessee earned grants from a fund that, all told, will distribute $4.35 billion.

The Obama administration had already announced plans to ask Congress for a third round of Race to the Top funding. In a Tuesday news conference, Duncan said the money ran out before all deserving states could receive a share.

California and local education officials said they would continue with planned reforms even without the additional funds.

"The work, already underway and taking root in the district, will continue," L.A. schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines said in a statement.

L.A. Unified Deputy Supt. John Deasy announced Friday that to improve instruction, the district by this fall would begin using so-called value-added analysis of teachers' performance based on student test scores. He also said he hopes that value-added analysis will become at least 30% of teacher evaluations, although that must be agreed to by the teachers union, whose president has long criticized the method as inaccurate.

In a memo Tuesday to the Board of Education, Deasy said that a teacher's value-added score should not be reported publicly and that including it in a performance review "would shield it" from public disclosure. He also said the district had had "positive" preliminary talks with the unions on a new evaluation system.

United Teachers Los Angeles President A.J. Duffy told hundreds of union members last week that he was "ready, willing and able" to negotiate a new evaluation system but stopped short of endorsing value-added analysis as part of that.

The union did not sign an agreement to abide by the state's Race to the Top application, which probably cost the state points under the rules for scoring state bids. Union cooperation was a key component of the competition, and California fell 17 points short of the total achieved by the states that were awarded funding.

In the speech, Duncan said he was responding, in part, to the controversy in Los Angeles generated by stories in The Times about the performance of Los Angeles Unified teachers and schools and the newspaper's plans to publish an online database showing how teachers rank according to the value-added method.

L.A. Unified, the state's largest school system, has long had the ability to conduct its own value-added analysis but has largely avoided it because of its own inertia and fear of the teachers union, The Times found. The method could have helped the district identify high-performing teachers and offered help to struggling ones.

Duncan will single out Los Angeles repeatedly in his remarks: He praises the teachers' and administrators' unions for beginning to discuss developing a new teacher evaluation system but he criticizes the district.

"The L.A. Unified School District has years of data on its students, yet most administrators never shared that information with teachers in a useful way," according to the remarks.

"The L.A. Times has ignited an important debate, but it falls to all of us to meet the challenge and talk openly and honestly about this issue," he will say in a speech at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library & Museum in Little Rock.

In addition to test score information, Duncan will also advocate releasing data on school funding and college completion and student loan default rates, among other things, as ways to increase public awareness about schools and teacher performance.

"If it was up to me and the law allowed it, I would put out student attendance data and hold parents accountable," he will say.

Duncan said, however, that information about teachers should be released "in the context" of other measures. And, he expressed concerns that Los Angeles teachers are having to turn to The Times for their value-added scores.

The Times plans to publish a database containing the value-added rankings of about 6,000 third- through fifth-grade teachers later this month. As of Tuesday afternoon, nearly 1,700 teachers had asked for and received their scores from the newspaper.

"It is unfortunate they had to wait for a newspaper to share this information with them in such a public way," Duncan will say.

He will also decry a reluctance to identify effective teachers and see if the secrets of their success can be duplicated.

He will cite Nancy Polacheck, a highly effective fourth-grade teacher featured in a Times story who was reluctant to be recognized for her accomplishments.

"That shame of success has pervaded America's educational culture for far too long," he will say. "We should celebrate Nancy Polacheck and the many effective teachers like her.... However, our system keeps all our teachers in the dark about the quality of their own work."

Poll: LANGUAGE A BARRIER FOR LATINOS IN SCHOOLS

By HOPE YEN and CHRISTINE ARMARIO, Associated Press Writers

AP – In this Monday, July 26, 2010 photo, Doris Chiquito, right, and her children Jonathan, 11, left, and …

Thu Aug 5, 5:09 pm ET -- WASHINGTON – English only?

With Hispanic enrollment surging in schools, many Spanish-speaking parents are having trouble helping their children with homework or communicating with U.S. teachers as English-immersion classes proliferate in K-12.

An Associated Press-Univision poll highlights the language and cultural obstacles for the nation's Latinos, who lag behind others when it comes to graduating from high school.

The findings also raise questions about whether English-immersion does more to assimilate or isolate — a heated debate that has divided states, academics and even the U.S. Supreme Court. Arizona recently ordered its schools to remove teachers with heavy foreign accents from English-language instruction, while the Obama administration is seeking to push more multilingual teaching in K-12 classrooms.

"The language barrier is still a serious risk factor for Hispanics," said Michael Kirst, a Stanford University professor emeritus of education who helped analyze the survey. Even with many schools replacing Spanish with English in classrooms, for a student evaluated as learning English, "the odds of completing high school, and particularly college, significantly drops."

The nationwide poll, also sponsored by The Nielsen Company and Stanford University, found the vast majority of Hispanics — 78 percent — had children enrolled in K-12 classes that were taught mostly in English, compared with 3 percent in Spanish.

Just 20 percent of mainly Spanish-speaking parents say they were able to communicate "extremely well" with their child's school, compared with 35 percent of Hispanics who speak English fluently.

About 42 percent of the Spanish speakers said it was easy for them to help with their children's schoolwork, compared with 59 percent of the Hispanics who speak English well.

Children of Spanish-dominant parents also were less likely to seek help with homework from their families. Fifty-seven percent of those parents said their children came to them with school questions. That's compared with 80 percent for mainly English-speaking Hispanic parents, who also were more likely to send their children to relatives or friends for answers.

The hardships often center on language for Latino parents, who value a high school diploma more than the general population and want to support their children, according to the poll. But educators say the problems can be cultural, too, if some Hispanic parents feel less comfortable acting as vocal advocates for education, such as meeting with teachers or lobbying for an extra honors class.

Under federal law, if the parents' English is limited, schools must provide notices and information about student activities in a language they can understand. The Education Department's Office for Civil Rights is now reviewing some school districts to see if students are being denied a fair education.

"It's difficult for me," said Carmen Arevalo, 30, who arrived in the United States 12 years ago from El Salvador and doesn't speak English. Arevalo has an 8-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter in Miami public schools and says she has constant challenges with communication, even though many of her children's teachers speak English and Spanish.

"Sometimes I feel uncomfortable, because sometimes I don't know what they will be saying to the children," Arevalo said as she watched her son play soccer.

Roxana Montoya, an El Salvador native in Miami who is learning to speak English, says she often struggled to help her 12-year-old son with school. Montoya said she would check the Internet to translate her questions for teachers and spend hours going through his middle-school coursework. "He'd get out at 3 and at 9, we still wouldn't be done with the homework," she said.

The educational stakes are high.

Roughly 1 in 5 people in the U.S. speaks a language other than English at home, with Hispanics representing the largest share, according to 2009 census data. Hispanics also now make up one-fourth of the nation's kindergartners, part of a historic trend in which minorities are projected to become the new U.S. majority by midcentury.

Still, Hispanics are nearly three times as likely than the general U.S. population to drop out of high school, and half as likely to earn a bachelor's degree.

Other AP-Univision poll findings:

_Many Hispanics lack confidence in the quality of education at their local public schools. About 47 percent said they believed the K-12 schools were excellent or good, compared with 48 percent who described them as "fair," "poor" or "very poor."

_About 63 percent of Hispanics believe it would help the U.S. economy "a lot" if more students completed high school, compared with 40 percent for the general population.

Citing some of the racial gaps, Education Secretary Arne Duncan is urging parents to take more responsibility. He said the government will require districts to get input from communities on ways to improve underperforming schools before receiving federal money.

The Education Department also wants to devote an additional $50 million next year to promote English learning. Part of that will be used for research and development of "dual-language immersion," a bilingual approach gaining favor among many linguists.

Dual-immersion is a shift from the direction of states such as California, Arizona and Massachusetts, where voters have largely banned bilingual classes. On a broader level, some 30 states and numerous localities have passed laws making English the official language, a move that critics say will lead to more cuts in bilingual programs.

The debate has splintered the Supreme Court, which sided 5-4 with Arizona last year in saying the federal government should not supervise the state's spending for teaching students who don't speak English.

Doris Chiquito, 30, of Miami, who was born in the U.S. to Ecuadorean parents, is among those who would like their children to value Hispanic culture. Chiquito, fluent in English, says she enrolled her 11-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter in bilingual classes so they would also speak Spanish and not "feel ashamed of being Hispanic."

Her daughter, Ariana Gonzalez, says she likes having classes in both languages.

"It helps me learn Spanish, and I know how to talk with my grandparents," she said. "I like that I get to speak English because some of my friends don't know Spanish, and then I talk to them in English."

The AP-Univision Poll was conducted from March 11 to June 3 by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. Using a sample of Hispanic households provided by The Nielsen Company, 1,521 Hispanics were interviewed in English and Spanish, mostly by mail but also by telephone and the Internet. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Stanford University's participation in the study was made possible by a grant from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

___

Associated Press Polling Director Trevor Tompson and AP News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius contributed to this report. Armario reported from Miami.

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VALUE-ADDED IS NO MAGIC: Assessing Teacher Effectiveness

John Rogers, Director, UCLA's Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access In  the Huffington Post

August 24, 2010 11:05 AM

That old sorcerer has vanished And for once has gone away! Spirits called by him, now banished, My commands shall soon obey.

In Goethe's classic, the apprentice uses a sorcerer's spell to ease his daily chores. Chanting the master's words, he brings a broomstick to life and tells it to fetch water to clean the workshop. The broomstick obeys, only too well. It races between the well and back until the workshop begins to flood. Although the apprentice had enough knowledge to set magic in motion, he could not think ahead to what he did not know.

I worry about a similar flood of unintended consequences if the Los Angeles Times moves forward with its plans to publish a database that places 6,000 Los Angeles third- to fifth-grade teachers on a spectrum from "least effective" to "most effective." The Times believes that the data will be a powerful tool to force better teaching, but it cannot anticipate all of the consequences. For example, consider that capable prospective teachers might avoid a profession in which they risk public embarrassment based on an undeveloped science. Consider the well-documented estimates that 25% of the value-added assessments are likely to be in error.

Publishing the database might easily undermine parent and teacher morale and make it more difficult for principals to advance school improvement. Being told that their child's teacher is "ineffective," or even marginally less effective than a teacher across the hall, may lead some parents to pressure the principal to place their child with a "high-scoring" teacher. Pitting parents against one another or against their principal is not a recipe for school improvement.

The Times' teacher effectiveness rankings are based on an elaborate statistical model created by Richard Buddin, a senior economist and education researcher at the Rand Corporation. (Significantly, Buddin did not attach teachers' names to his analysis; that was done by the Times.)

Buddin is one of many researchers across the country exploring so-called value-added approaches to assessing teacher quality. The assessments measure gains that students make on standardized tests from one year to the next. For example, researchers compare test scores of fourth graders with their scores as third graders to determine the "value added" by the fourth grade teacher. Proponents believe that the "value added" reliably distinguishes between more and less effective teachers. And they think that school officials would use such comparisons to target support to struggling teachers and motivate them to do better.

Yet value-added analyses focus narrowly on standardized tests, usually in math and English Language Arts. These tests give important information about student learning, but they ignore much learning that matters to students, parents, and teachers. That's why it can be a useful tool, but cannot possibly stand alone as a measure of "effectiveness." The National Academy of Sciences has identified several of the problems posed by value-added methods. These cautions should be taken seriously.

• First, student assignments to schools and classrooms are rarely random. As a consequence it is not possible to definitively determine whether higher or lower students test scores result from teacher effectiveness or are an artifact of how students are distributed.

• Second, it is difficult to compare growth of struggling students with the growth of high performers. In technical terms, standardized tests do not form equal interval scales. Enabling students to move from the 20th percentile to the 30th is not the same as helping students move from the 80th to the 90th percentile. These test score numbers are not like inches along a tape measure that have the same value regardless of where they occur.

• Third, estimates of teacher effectiveness can range widely from year to year. In recent studies, 10-15% of teachers in the lowest category of effectiveness one year moved to the highest category the following year while 10-15% of teachers in the highest category fell to the lowest tier.

The National Academy of Sciences concluded that value-added analysis "should not be used as the sole or primary basis for making operational decisions because the extent to which the measures reflect the contribution of teachers themselves, rather than other factors, is not understood."

And yet, the Los Angeles Times is about to publish a database with the teacher effectiveness rankings of 6,000 elementary school teachers. The Times argues that its role is to provide "parents and the public ... information that would otherwise be withheld" about the "performance of public employees." The Times should not believe in the magic of this data, and should realize that it cannot foresee or control all of the consequences.

LAUSD SOPHOMORES IMPROVE ON STATE'S HIGH SCHOOL EXIT EXAM + Scores

By Connie Llanos, Staff Writer | Contra Costa Times

08/24/2010 10:29:15 AM PDT -- Nearly two-thirds of Los Angeles Unified sophomores passed the California High School Exit Exam on their first try, up 2 points from last year but well below the statewide average, according to results released today.

The state Department of Education said 62 percent of LAUSD's 10-graders passed both the English and math portions of the test, which is required before they can graduate. That compares with 69 percent of all sophomores statewide who passed CAHSEE on their first attempt.

However, LAUSD's results are a dramatic improvement from the 44 percent of sophomores who passed both tests in 2004, when CAHSEE was first administered.

"Once again, our upward trend in student achievement continues," Superintendent Ramon C. Cortines said in a written statement.

"I want to commend our students, administrators and entire school community for thriving and aspiring despite the numerous obstacles and challenges they faced last year."

Several LAUSD campuses exceeded both the district and state averages, including Polytechnic High in Sun Valley, with an 80 percent success rate among its sophomores.

Other schools also made large gains from previous years despite budget cuts that reduced funding for CAHSEE prep classes.

For example, Arleta High School recorded a 67 percent passing rate compared with 61 percent last year and 44 percent three years ago.

The state also reported that 2,000 LAUSD seniors - 13 percent of the Class of 2010 - failed to pass CAHSEE by their scheduled graduation date. However, students can continue to retake the exam for two years after their scheduled graduation date.

from the California Dept of Education:

California High School Exit Examination (CAHSEE)

2009-10 Summary Reports

• School Reports
• District Reports
• County Reports
• State Reports

HEALTHCARE REFORM APPROPRIATIONS UPDATE FROM THE CHILDREN’S ORAL HEALH PROJECT

CDHP Health Policy Check-Up: The Latest Updates on Children’s Oral Health Policy From Capitol Hill

Founded in 1997, the Children's Dental Health Project is a national non-profit organization with the vision of achieving oral health for all children to ensure that they reach their full potential.

CDHP Website ● Join the CDHP ● Facebook Page●Follow CDHP on Twitter

August 23, 2010 - Before leaving for the August recess, the Senate and House appropriations subcommittees on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies passed their respective versions of the FY 2011 appropriations bill.  Although the oral health funding levels requested by nearly 200 public health organizations and oral health advocates fell short, both chambers clearly recognized the need to address oral health funding in the coming year despite a very tight budget.

While the members of the subcommittees should be applauded for their effort to address oral health funding, it is important for them to fully understand the implications of not funding many of the new initiatives authorized by the Affordable Care Act (ACA), particularly those designed to enhance cost effective prevention based activities.   For example, it is encouraging to see an increase in infrastructure dollars to the CDC Division of Oral Health but the value of that investment will be far from realized without the complementary CDC programs targeting disease management or public education.  While the workforce numbers are more robust, we need to ensure that HRSA and the states have sufficient guidance and flexibility to diversify their workforce and have a strong foundation for addressing the oral health demands in states. 

The committee reports display a much welcome acknowledgment of the importance of oral health and some incredibly important oral health initiatives now stand to receive initial or increased funding when the appropriations process moves into conference some time after the recess.  Advocates should remain vigilant in expressing their support for these provisions and in particular, supporting the Senate's overall approach to oral health funding.

Some of the Senate subcommittee's proposed funding levels worth mentioning are:

• $47.982 million for primary care dentistry training and workforce improvements

• $3 million for the National Health Workforce Commission

• $673 million for the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant

• $25 million for the CDC Division of Oral Health

The committee report encourages agency and program directors to utilize funding specifically for oral health and prevention within the context of more general appropriations.  The full reports can be viewed online at the Senate and House appropriations websites.

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Contact Your Representatives

While advocates should be pleased to see the attention paid to oral health by the appropriations committees thus far, many essential oral health provisions are being left off the table for FY 2011.  The oral health provisions in ACA are necessary to effectively support the pediatric dental benefit and enhance existing oral health infrastructure.
It is important that advocates continue to put pressure on their representatives so that every new oral health program receives the seed money necessary to make an impact.  When speaking with your representatives, we encourage you to use the following talking points adapted from the sign on letter sent to Senator Harkin and Congressman Obey in May:

General ACA Oral Health Information

• Benefit:  Thank you for passing a bill with a strong dental benefit.  Although dental caries (tooth decay) is preventable, it remains the #1 chronic disease in childhood.  Making the commitment in ACA to ensure that all children receive dental coverage through medical and stand-alone plans in the exchanges is a necessary step in the right direction.

• Funding other ACA provisions:  Almost 20 additional oral health provisions in ACA need funding.  These essential provisions dealing with access, prevention, infrastructure, training, and research are essential in supporting the dental benefit and create a system-wide change to end childhood tooth decay. 

Prevention

• Message of Prevention:  Dental caries, the disease that causes cavities, is an infectious, transmittable, but preventable disease.  By focusing on prevention, thousands of lost school days and millions of dollars can be saved.  Low-income children who have their first preventive dental visit by age one are not only less likely to need subsequent restorative or emergency room visits, but their average dentally related costs are reduced by almost 40%.

• CDC Oral Health Prevention Public Education Campaign ($5 million):  Public education is a broad reaching and  inexpensive strategy to minimize tooth decay similar to what has been done to address other chronic diseases (such as diabetes and heart disease).  This campaign will focus on promoting good oral health among those who stand to benefit most, especially children, pregnant women, and underserved and at risk populations.

• Dental Caries Disease Management grants ($8 million): Dental caries is entirely a manageable disease.  However, unlike many other chronic conditions like diabetes and cardiovascular disease dental treatment lags far behind in utilizing effective disease management.   These grants will help demonstrate how to close the knowledge gap among insurers, health professionals, and communities, so they can invest earlier, smarter, and with more targeted interventions.

• School-based Dental Sealants Program ($15 million): Among high-risk children, sealants applied to permanent molars have been shown to avert tooth decay over an average of 5-7 years.  Funding for  this program will allow for the effective targeting of schools with large numbers of underserved children across the nation. 

Infrastructure

• CDC Oral Health Infrastructure grants ($25 million):  In order to effectively address the oral health needs of communities, there needs to be leadership and a strong infrastructure in place.  CDC's investment in a limited number of states has proven incredibly effective to date and must be expanded to all 50 states for communities to fully benefit from federal support related to program guidance, surveillance and above all, building a more efficient oral health delivery system at every level.

Workforce

• ACA significantly expands Medicaid, which will undoubtedly add new challenges to the existing dental workforce. There simply are not enough dental professionals, particularly in rural and impoverished areas, The workforce provisions in ACA aim to meet the increasing need.

• Alternative Provider Demonstration grants ($15 million): In addition to investing in the current workforce, ACA supports states that want to expand their dental workforce, specifically by training or employing new mid-level dental providers.  This provision is targeted at supporting underserved communities.

• Primary Care Training Programs ($30 million):  Expanded funding for primary care training program is yet another strategy to addressing the maldistribution and shortage of dental providers in the country.  Providing training and loan forgiveness to serve in shortage areas will provide immediate care in communities in addition to a long-term investment in a future workforce with the knowledge and skills to serve the underserved.  

Surveillance & Monitoring

• National Oral Health Surveillance ($5 million):  In order to adequately address the oral health needs, data collection is necessary to measure the current status in addition to identifying any measurable changes.  Multiple federal data and surveillance systems provide the full oral health picture including pregnant women and at-risk populations is integrated into the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS), the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), the Medical Expenditures Panel Survey (MEPS) and the National Oral Health Surveillance System.

CALIFORNIA LOSES BID FOR RACE TO THE TOP v. 2.o

Howard Blume – A Times/LA Now blog

August 24, 2010 |  8:45 am -- California has fallen short in its bid to win a controversial federal Race to the Top school-reform grant.

The winners, just confirmed by federal officials, are Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia.

Had they prevailed, participating California school systems stood to receive as much as $700 million. The Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation's second-largest school system, was in line for about $120 million; Long Beach Unified would have received at least $18 million.

The Obama administration created the competitive grant program to spur its vision of reform nationwide. A total of $3.4 billion was available.

In California, school districts had pledged to pursue reforms that included linking teacher evaluations to the standardized test scores of their students. The grant application committed them to using this test-score analysis for at least 30% of a teacher's evaluation.

A new evaluation system, however, would need to be negotiated with local teacher unions, and that was by no means automatic. In fact, California representatives were queried about that issue during a 90-minute presentation this month before federal evaluators in Washington, D.C.

The five-member California delegation included L.A. schools chief Ramon C. Cortines and Supt. Christopher J. Steinhauser of Long Beach Unified. Neither teacher union signed the state application nor did either of the two major state teacher unions.

As a result, California lost some points with evaluators, but officials stressed that no single virtue or shortcoming would by itself determine the fate of an application.

The California superintendents told evaluators that they thought they could bring local unions on board, and, if they could not, they were prepared to return federal dollars accordingly. L.A. Unified has moved on that front in the last few days, with union officials signaling a willingness to negotiate over the possible inclusion of test scores as part of a reshaped, multifaceted teacher evaluation.

California's plan focused on strategies favored by the Obama administration, such as placing the most effective educators in struggling schools and improving instruction through the improved use of data.
The state blueprint also embraced the federal endorsement of aggressive remedies, such as replacing the staff at a poorly performing school and converting it to an independently run charter school. Most charters schools are non-union, another arena of discomfort for teacher unions.

In the end, the number of high-quality applications overstretched the available funding, said department spokesman Justin Hamilton. As a result, a few deserving states had to go home empty-handed, he said.

Delaware and Tennessee already had prevailed in a first round, which concluded in March.

Critics have long argued that some states, including California, were too willing to trade the prospect of badly needed, one-time funding for policies that were academically unproven and that could prove prohibitively expensive over the long term.

Still, some unions supported the final product in their states. The efforts in New York and Florida were endorsed by Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers. She praised leaders in those states for being inclusive of teachers. She said such collaboration was missing in California.

California officials were divided on whether to bid a second time, especially because the state had failed to make the finals. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan personally urged Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to try again.

The result was a revamped approach that relied on a core of superintendents who committed to deep and fast changes. But even that wasn't enough.

DRIVE TO OVERHAUL LOW-PERFORMING SCHOOLS DELAYED

By SAM DILLON | New York Times

August 23, 2010 -- SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — Secretary of Education Arne Duncan set an ambitious goal last year of overhauling 1,000 schools a year, using billions of dollars in federal stimulus money.

But that effort is off to an uneven start. Schools from Maine to California are starting the fall term with their overhaul plans postponed or in doubt because negotiations among federal regulators, state officials and local educators have led to delays and confusion.

In this sprawling district east of Los Angeles, for example, the authorities announced plans earlier this year to use the program to convert Pacific High, one of California’s worst-performing schools, to a charter school, involving a comprehensive makeover.

But with time running short this summer, the San Bernardino district switched course, adopting only smaller changes — a crackdown on tardiness and extending the school day, among others — that officials said would be more manageable.

When students returned for classes on Aug. 3, even the plan for a longer school day was delayed because California had still not distributed the $5.2 million in federal money the district hopes to spend on the school.

“This program is about making ambitious changes,” said Arturo Delgado, the San Bernardino superintendent. “But the timelines were so quick, and we had to make adjustments on the fly.”

The initiative is a key part of the Obama administration’s overall education strategy, but has been overshadowed by Race to the Top, a parallel competition that will culminate Tuesday when Mr. Duncan announces the dozen or so states that will share in $3.4 billion in grants.

The turnaround effort is being financed with $3.5 billion this year.

Federal officials say the turnaround initiative is on track, as low-performing schools in many states have reorganized teaching staffs and instructional programs.

From the outset, states have had the option of delaying disbursement of federal money to schools if more planning was needed, said Peter Cunningham, a Department of Education spokesman.

“A lot of schools are well ahead of the game,” Mr. Cunningham said, “and those that aren’t can roll the money over until next year.”

Still, experts have been warning for months that the administration’s timetable was too tight, forcing schools and districts to create last-minute plans.

“To do this right, schools needed to know probably nine months ago that they’d be funded, but many are only finding out now,” said Robert Manwaring, an expert on school turnaround efforts at Education Sector, a nonprofit research center in Washington.

In March, Mr. Manwaring wrote in his blog that the Education Department was pursuing a “crazy timeline” and should postpone the initiative to allow better planning.

But the program is financed with stimulus money that by law must be awarded this fall, so federal officials have rushed to inaugurate it this year.

The lag in disbursing the money will affect students in different ways. For some, it will mean less-qualified instructors in the classroom, because many schools getting money were not ready to hire new teachers in the spring, when the best candidates were available.

And in several states, students were unable to participate in summer activities that were supposed to be part of their school’s turnaround strategy, but were canceled because financing did not arrive in time.

Some eligible districts concluded that the schedule was too tight to allow time to develop coherent reorganization plans. Los Angeles Unified, the nation’s second-largest system, applied for only 13 of its 31 eligible schools.

“It wasn’t feasible to do so many schools within this timeline,” said Sharon V. Robinson, a special assistant to the Los Angeles superintendent.

• smf: as result of this, LAUSD is in very real danger of getting no money – neither for the 13, nor the the 31. see http://bit.ly/cgcIUy: Wednesday, August 11, 2010 MANY SCHOOLS ON CONTROVERSIAL REFORM LIST MAY NOT GET A DIME OF $416 MILLION: “LA … didn't include enough struggling schools in its funding application. LAUSD officials retorted they were never told of such a requirement”

In Wyoming, 12 of 18 eligible schools turned down the money.

“We only had a couple of weeks before the deadline and would just about have had to shut down regular operations to figure out how to spend all that money,” said M. Neil Terhune, superintendent of Carbon County No. 1 District in Wyoming.

State grants range from $8.5 million for Vermont to $415 million for California. Each of a state’s lowest-achieving schools can apply for up to $6 million to be used over three years.

During the last decade, many low-performing schools found ways to get federal money without making significant changes, and Mr. Duncan insisted that rules be tightened to require new initiatives.

Some experts note that the long-term benefits of the ambitious turnaround program matter more than any short-term difficulties in carrying out changes.

“Everybody could always use more time, but this year we’re seeing a lot of energy being applied to find creative solutions,” said Bryan C. Hassel, a Harvard-trained consultant who is advising several states on their turnaround programs.

To obtain grants, states submit applications to Washington, pledging that their lowest-performing schools will carry out one of four strategies: a turnaround, including replacing the principal and at least half the staff, and using more data to develop instruction and other changes; reopening as a charter school; closing the school and transferring the students; or so-called transformation, centered on replacing the principal, training teachers and lengthening the school day.

After federal officials approve a state’s application, state officials in turn review districts’ proposals before awarding money.

Some of the longest delays have resulted from negotiations between state officials and superintendents over drafts of proposals. But it also took many months for federal officials to process all the state applications.

“We have been focused on making sure that schools and districts will have the capacity to do this well,” said Ann Whalen, a special assistant to Mr. Duncan.

By April 30, the federal department had approved about 30 state applications, including those of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

But approval of almost all the rest of the applications did not come until June, July and August.

Hawaii and Tennessee were still awaiting federal approval for their applications the third week of August. Dozens of schools in Tennessee began the fall term still hoping to begin turnaround plans in midsemester.

When Mr. Duncan made turnarounds a centerpiece of his tenure as schools chief in Chicago, he allowed schools more time to plan. Schools were approved for overhaul in February, allowing a new principal to begin hiring new teachers in March, giving a new instructional team six months to coalesce before fall classes.

The national timetable this year “has been really tight for a true turnaround,” said Robin Lake, a University of Washington researcher who studies school overhauls.

Some schools have had to cancel summer initiatives that were part of their strategy. At Livermore Falls High School in Maine, educators began carrying out some elements of the school’s overhaul plan, including hiring a new principal, well before the state’s application gained federal approval on July 12, said Susan Pratt, the local schools superintendent.

But because state officials had not approved the school’s proposal or disbursed the federal money, a summer program to help eighth grade students transition to high school had to be canceled, Ms. Pratt said.

“This was a great deal of work for our school system, and then we waited and waited,” she said.

In San Bernardino, teachers and parents who felt a burst of energy in the spring as they helped imagine Pacific High’s redesign as a charter school were dispirited and confused when the district abruptly abandoned those plans.

“That was a little rough,” said Tex Acosta, Pacific High’s principal. “Our teachers, students and community didn’t know what to make of it.”

SHUTTING OUT THE CHARTERS – in which the charter school chief argues that that charter operators can build better schools cheaper than LAUSD …and complains that LAUSD won’t let them have more of the bad expensive schools!

By Jed Wallace | Op-Ed in the LA Times

August 24, 2010 -- The Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools cluster, scheduled to open this fall on the site of the former Ambassador Hotel, was built at a cost of $578 million, or nearly $140,000 per student seat. It is without question the most expensive public school ever built in the Los Angeles Unified School District, and quite possibly the most expensive public school in the country.

The project's astronomical cost raises a question about whether the school district is using resources efficiently. It also raises issues of fairness.

Proposition 39, which was passed by voters in 2000, requires school districts to provide charter schools with facilities that are reasonably equivalent to those of other schools in the district. About 60,000 students in L.A. Unified have opted to attend charter schools. But administrators have in no way tried to meet the "reasonably equivalent" standard.

Take the new school at the Ambassador site: It will consist of several small, independent schools sharing facilities such as playing fields and auditoriums. But will any of those small schools be a charter? Not a chance.

When charter schools manage to get funding to build their own schools independent of the district, they do so for far less money than the LAUSD does. Recently, the Alliance for College Ready-Public Schools broke ground on a facility within sight of the Watts Towers that will serve 550 students and will cost $8.8 million. That is $16,000 per student seat, or one-ninth the cost of the Ambassador site project.

And the Alliance site is no exception. Over the past several years, Green Dot built seven charter schools in the vicinity of the RFK Community School, and it spent less than $85 million for all of them. Those schools currently serve about 4,300 students, which means they were built for under $20,000 per student seat.

If the district had given the $578 million it spent on one school to charter schools, we would have created many more seats for students, and the seats would have been in schools that are providing great results for kids and their families.

Not only does the district overspend on the schools it builds; it consistently denies dozens of charter schools equitable use of its existing facilities. Each year, as required by Proposition 39, charter schools submit applications for space in LAUSD schools. But while some charters have been granted adequate facilities in the district's existing schools, many have to rent their own space, which takes about 13% of their general funds on average.

This year, under Proposition 39, 81 of the 163 charter schools in the LAUSD applied to the district for facilities. About half received offers, but in our view the offers were not compliant with the law. Not only were none of the offers for space in the lavish new schools like Robert F. Kennedy, which were built at huge taxpayer expense, some were for far too little space — they would have housed only a portion of the students attending the charter. Other offers would have required schools to move far from their existing locations. As a result, my organization — the California Charter School Assn. — has filed a lawsuit against the LAUSD accusing it of failing to live up to the law.

Charter students deserve better, particularly when the schools many of them attend are making great strides in academic achievement in Los Angeles. The LAUSD has every reason to help charter schools grow, because that would help parents gain more faith in local public schools. As more families see the successes our schools are having, the charter movement will continue to grow, and the need for facilities will continue to expand. The LAUSD needs to work in partnership with the charters instead of treating our students as second-class citizens.

Separate and unequal is simply not OK.

Jed Wallace is president and CEO of the California Charter Schools Assn.

smf notes  – not 2¢ worth – but billion$ with a ‘B’ worth:  LAUSD MUST & DOES build schools compliant with California's Field Act – which sets stringent survivability standards for earthquakes. All plans must be stamped and approved by the Division of the State Architect. Inspectors must be present and inspecting every minute and day of school construction.

Charter Schools must simply comply with local building codes and inspectors inspect each step of the way – like they do (or don’t) when you remodel your kitchen. Building codes and inspection efficacy  vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction; there are 26 different municipal jurisdictions within LAUSD.  Charter schools can and do exist in church basements …LAUSD schools not so much.

The separate-but-equal divide  will become all the more separate and much less equal – and hopefully not tragic - if/when we ever have a major temblor during school hours. Charter school operators are betting that local building codes and city inspectors and plan checks are good enough. However, they are not just betting their reputations, the viability of their five-year educational and business plans or the bragging rights over test scores on that outcome.  Green Dot Public Schools and the Alliance for College Ready Schools and their like are not mom-and-pop local-start-up charter schools doing good by doing well in their neighborhoods – they are major corporate entities funded by venture capital and major foundations.

They are betting the safety of children.  Ask Dr. Lucy Jones, seismologist with the US Geological Survey and a Visiting Research Associate at the Seismological Laboratory of Caltech what she thinks of that gamble: jones@usgs.gov

Test Score Bomb: DON’T NAME NAMES, FIX THE SYSTEM

The Los Angeles Times teacher rankings bomb has ignited a firestorm of controversy, a little light and a lot of heat.

 

By Charles Kerchner - Research professor, Claremont Graduate University - in The Huffington Post

August 23, 2010 -- Pundits have lined up and taken sides. Education secretary Arne Duncan has supported the pending release data on 6,000 Los Angeles Unified School District teachers, ranking them by the "value-added" shown by student test scores. United Teachers Los Angeles is predictably outraged, and its president, A. J. Duffy, has called for members to boycott The Times. American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten met with the paper's editorial board to urge them not to publish or post the list.

She probably should have saved her breath. There is little doubt that the Times is intent on publishing the names. But they shouldn't. Here's why:

First, there is a difference between public officials and public employees. Public officials are fair game for just about anything, from their expense accounts to their sex lives. Traditionally, journalism has had a different relationship with public employees. We recognize that exposing rogue cops and racist firefighters falls within the purview of journalism, but we haven't seen their performance rankings listed. That's considered an internal personnel matter, just as it is with employees in the private sector.

There is a reason for privacy. It's the same reason that none of the academic public policy researchers and statisticians in Los Angeles has published this test score analysis even though we have had access to the underlying data for years. The answer is that personal ethics and the institutional review boards that govern research involving humans would not allow it. Jason Felch, one of the writers of the teacher evaluation story, wrote in response to a blog post, that: "It was not an academic publication, it was investigative reporting done in the public interest with public records."

Not good enough. I understand shaming mayors, school board members, even superintendents, but using a test that teachers were never told that they were to be evaluated by to publicly shame them doesn't pass the "all the news that's fit to print" test. There is a public interest in exposing the school district's inadequate evaluation system. There is no public interest in shaming teachers. It's just mean-spirited.

Second, the data and the method used are highly prone to error. I support using value-added assessment and refining its techniques. I cheered when I first saw it used about two decades ago. At last, I thought, here was a method that offered the promise of recognizing teachers who taught poor kids who had struggled in school and with whom schools had struggled. The statistical method has the possibility of leveling the playing field so that a teacher in Pacific Palisades and one in Boyle Heights can be compared on how much their students learn, not where they started.

But the statistics are prone to error and need to be used in combination with other indicators to gain an accurate picture of teacher effectiveness. To begin with, value-added calculations are no better than the data used to calculate them: garbage in, garbage out, as statisticians say. LAUSD student data records are notoriously prone to mistakes. I have analyzed thousands LAUSD student records and remember well the task of seeing that data from one year matched the next, that students had actually taken classes from the teachers that were listed in the student record. I am sure that Richard Buddin did a careful job with the 1.5 million student records he analyzed, but I wouldn't bet that the data were as clean as they need to be to call out the names of individual teachers.

The second source of error comes from the statistical techniques used in calculating value-added measures. There is much controversy among academic statisticians about which of the many value-added calculation techniques yields the best results. As with other powerful statistical techniques, the answers one gets depends on the techniques used. At the very least, we should know how sensitive the results are to the techniques used and the assumptions made during the calculations. Buddin's technical analysis, which is impenetrable to the lay reader, doesn't give us much help.

The propensity of value-added techniques to produce errors has been recognized for a long time, and a recent U.S. Institute for Education Sciences report concluded that the error rate could be upward of 30 percent. Moreover, rankings tend to be unstable from year to year: this year's high ranking teacher might be more poorly ranked next year, and vice versa.

I suspect that these limitations will have no effect at all on the Times' decision to publish the teachers' names, and that teachers will be angry. I am too.

But my anger would not be directed at the Times. Even if the newspaper overstepped the bounds of public and private, the school board, the district, and United Teachers Los Angeles are the culpable parties in this little drama. They dithered for decades, avoiding the question of a robust teacher evaluation system. More seriously, they failed to put in place a system of reliable data feedback so that schools and teachers could get smarter about how well they are teaching.

In one respect, the continuing newspaper series has made public what educators and parents, teachers and unionists, have known for decades. Some teachers are much more effective than others. It has also laid bare the education system's dogged refusal to build on that knowledge. Shame on them.