50 STATE LOOK AT HOW THE COMMON CORE IS PLAYING OUT IN THE U.S.

 

  | By The Associated Press from the Huffington Post |http://huff.to/Y9fVzD

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smf: The HuffPost likes to make lists of things. This is one of them.

9/02/2014 9:37 am EDT   ::  A state-by-state look at the Common Core standards:

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ALABAMA

The state school board folded Common Core into the state's College and Career Ready Standards for public schools and has been defending the decision ever since.

Legislators introduced bills in 2013 and 2014 to repeal the standards. The repeal movement drew support from tea party groups, but Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh, a Republican, blocked the bills with the support of one of the state's most powerful business groups, the Business Council of Alabama.

By Phillip Rawls.

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ALASKA

The state did not adopt Common Core, although several Alaska school districts did. Deputy Education Commissioner Les Morse said those districts will be held accountable for ensuring that student learning is in line with the state standards in English, language arts and reading that were adopted in 2012. The state standards have some similarities with Common Core.

By Becky Bohrer.

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ARIZONA

Republican Gov. Jan Brewer has tried to defuse criticism about the Common Core standards by issuing an executive order renaming them as "Arizona's College and Career Ready Standards," and reaffirming that Arizona is acting independently from the federal government.

A legislative effort to kill the standards failed this spring.

By Bob Christie.

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ARKANSAS

The Arkansas Board of Education adopted the Common Core standards in 2010, with an effective date of this fall. The Legislature endorsed the board's decision during its 2011 regular session.

A few teachers, parents and national groups asked legislators last year to repeal the standards, and a state lawmaker this year attempted to bring up a bill to delay their imposition for three years. Neither effort gained traction.

By Kelly P. Kissel.

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CALIFORNIA

Most California schools are expected to begin basing instruction on the Common Core standards during the coming school year. Gov. Jerry Brown and the Democrat-controlled Legislature have allocated more than $1.2 billion, about $200 per student, for school districts to spend on teacher training, materials and technology over two years.

California is part of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium that is developing online tests in math and language based on the Common Core. The state has resisted the department's call for teacher evaluations to be based in part on standardized test results.

By Lisa Leff.

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COLORADO

As in many states, the Common Core standards have prompted opposition in Colorado from some conservatives.

The Democratic-controlled Legislature rejected a proposal that would have ordered a yearlong delay for new statewide tests while the standards were reviewed. Colorado is part of a multistate testing consortium, Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, and students are set to take the PARCC test this school year.

By Kristen Wyatt.

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CONNECTICUT

In June, Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy committed spending an additional $15 million to continue launching Common Core in the state's public schools. That includes $10 million in borrowing for new school technology, one of the recommendations of a task force created by Malloy in March after teachers and education professionals raised concerns about whether schools were prepared for incorporating the new standards.

While some of Connecticut's public school districts have begun using the new Common Core standards, others have lagged behind. The issue has become a political one for Malloy, who faces re-election. Both his Republican challenger and a potential petitioning candidate have criticized the rollout of Common Core.

By Susan Haigh.

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DELAWARE

The state is moving forward as Democratic Gov. Jack Markell, a former co-chairman of the Common Core standards initiative, works to dispel notions that they are a federal initiative aimed at the states.

In the spring, students in grades three to eight, and 11th grade will take the new Smarter Balanced assessments in English and mathematics that are tied to Common Core. State education officials have agreed to a one-year delay, subject to federal approval, in using the test results in teacher evaluations. The delay takes into account concerns of the Delaware State Education Association, the teachers' union.

By Randall Chase.

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DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

District of Columbia public schools began implementing the standards voluntarily in 2010. School leaders are making one major concession: Teachers won't be evaluated based on their students' performance on new, Common Core-aligned standardized tests this school year.

That decision made news because the district has moved aggressively to align teacher evaluations with student test scores. The Education Department was initially critical of the policy change, saying it represented a slowdown of the District's school-reform efforts. Hundreds of District teachers have been fired after receiving poor evaluations, while the top performers have received bonuses.

By Ben Nuckols.

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FLORIDA

Florida officials tweaked the standards among a growing backlash. Beginning the fall, the "Florida standards" will be used in state classrooms.

While some have asked GOP Gov. Rick Scott and legislators to jettison the standards, high-ranking Republicans have tried to tamp down the controversy in other ways.

For example, legislators passed a measure that repealed more than 30 mentions of Common Core that were placed into state law just a year ago. Scott initially backed Common Core standards. But after complaints from grassroots conservative groups and activists, he called for public hearings and set the groundwork for the state to pull out of a consortium developing a national test to see if school children are meeting the new standards.

By Gary Fineout

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GEORGIA

Some Republican lawmakers have pushed bills for two years opting out of Common Core, which are supported by Republican Gov. Nathan Deal, backed by the Georgia Chamber of Commerce and former Gov. Sonny Perdue who co-chaired the governors group that created the standards.

Republicans who control the Legislature compromised by forming a study committee to review the standards' origins. Georgia dropped out of a national consortium developing tests in line with Common Core in July 2013, saying it was too expensive. The state signed a contract this summer with CTB/McGraw-Hill to develop its own exam that students are scheduled to take during the coming school year.

By Kathleen Foody.

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HAWAII

Hawaii's Department of Education is asking the public to review test questions aligned to Hawaii Common Core standards and help recommend achievement levels for grade-level proficiency.

Beginning next spring, students will take new Common Core-aligned assessments that will replace the Hawaii State Assessment.

By Jennifer Kelleher.

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IDAHO

There's been growing opposition to Common Core in Idaho, with calls for reconsideration, even repeal, in the three years since the standards were adopted. But schools are slowly moving forward to put them in place, including the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium exams.

So far, efforts to repeal the standards have failed. As the November election approaches, both the Republican and Democratic candidates for state superintendent have said they will work to improve implementing the standards but have not said they must be repealed.

By Kimberlee Kruesi.

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ILLINOIS

Illinois started to adopt the Common Core standards in 2010, and fully implemented them last school year. Next spring, the PARCC tests linked to Common Core standards will be used in school districts across the state.

The tests will be given to students in grades three to eight, but only partially rolled out in high school because the state board of education had its budget request for assessments cut by $10 million. The ACT exam has been a state mandated assessment for high school juniors in recent years and doubles as a college entrance exam.

By Kerry Lester

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INDIANA

Indiana formally ended its participation in Common Core this past spring, when Republican Gov. Mike Pence signed a measure pushed by conservative Republicans. But a key change in the legislation, mandating that any Indiana standards qualify for federal funding, spurred the bill's original author, state Sen. Scott Schneider, a Republican, to withdraw his support.

The state Board of Education approved new education standards in April, a rare moment of agreement between Pence and Democratic Schools Superintendent Glenda Ritz. But the new standards drew criticism from conservatives and tea partyers who said they were too similar to the Common Core requirements.

By Tom Lobianco.

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IOWA

Many of the Common Core components have been blended into Iowa's statewide standards, known as the Iowa Core.

Conservatives in Iowa have attacked the Common Core, but efforts to change the state program have not been successful. But GOP Gov. Terry Branstad last year signed an executive order clarifying that the state would continue to maintain control over education standards and testing, not the federal government.

By Catherine Lucey.

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KANSAS

The state Board of Education adopted the Common Core reading and math standards in 2010, but in recent years they have been attacked by conservative Republicans, who say they're too expensive. Earlier this year, the state Senate attached a provision to an education funding bill that would have blocked their implementation, but it was dropped in the final version of the bill.

The board is moving ahead with developing student tests tied to the standards.

By John Hanna.

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KENTUCKY

In Kentucky, state lawmakers passed a bill in 2009 that set more rigorous academic standards, new assessments and a new accountability system. Kentucky followed up a year later by adopting Common Core and then in 2013 next-generation science standards. The new standards are known as the Kentucky Core Academic Standards.

Teachers first taught the new English/language arts and math standards in the 2011-12 school year. Students began testing on those new standards that same year.

By Bruce Shreiner.

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LOUISIANA

GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal, a one-time Common Core supporter and a potential presidential candidate in 2016, has sued the Obama administration, accusing Washington of illegally manipulating federal grant money and regulations to force states to adopt the Common Core education standards.

Lawmakers this year rejected several attempts to strip Common Core from classrooms and a majority of the education board voted to continue using the standards.

Jindal suspended contracts that the state Department of Education planned to use to buy testing material aligned with the standards. The education superintendent, John White, and education board leaders say the governor overstepped his legal authority, and they sued.

A state district judge has since said the governor's actions were harmful to parents, teachers and students and he lifted Jindal's suspension of the contracts. The decision allows White to move ahead with Common Core-tied testing plans until a full trial is held later over the legality of Jindal's executive orders against the standards.

At the same time, 17 state lawmakers who oppose the standards have lodged their own legal challenge, but lost their first round in court.

By Melinda Deslatte.

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MAINE

Two groups opposed to the reading, writing and math benchmarks are trying to collect enough signatures to trigger a statewide vote in 2015 to repeal them.

Maine Education Commissioner James Rier says he spends much of his time fielding calls from people with a misunderstanding of the standards, adopted in 2011 in Maine. The state is now assembling a team of educators and businesspeople to look at updating the standards for math and English language arts, he said. Any changes would have to be approved by the Legislature.

By David Sharp.

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MARYLAND

Maryland schools began implementing the standards in reading and math two school years ago, and will begin using the PARCC test during the upcoming school year.

In this year's legislative session, Maryland lawmakers voted by large margins to address some issues that have arisen with Common Core in the state. For example, test scores won't be used in teacher and principal evaluations for at least the next two years. In addition, a workgroup including teachers and parents will be formed to improve implementation.

By Brian Witte.

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MASSACHUSETTS

The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education adopted the standards in July 2010, and they became part of the state curriculum the following year. The state is also in the middle of a two-year trial of the PARCC.

The new standards are being challenged by a grassroots group, known as the Common Core Forum, which argues the state's standards should not be dropped and replaced. The group of parents, teachers and local elected officials has called for repeal of the new standards and more transparency from the state.

By Michael Melia.

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MICHIGAN

In Michigan, the 2014-15 school year was supposed to be the first in which students would take exams developed by the Smarter Balanced consortium. But lawmakers balked, despite last year ultimately letting the state continue spending dollars implementing the standards after vigorous debate.

Legislators later directed the state not to administer the Smarter Balanced test this coming academic year. Instead, it must develop Michigan Educational Assessment Program tests that align with Common Core. The new assessment is to be given starting in the spring of 2016.

By David Eggert.

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MINNESOTA

Minnesota has adopted only the English and language arts standards portions of Common Core but augmented them with more rigorous content developed close to home. The state had already redrawn its math standards.

Rather than joining the national testing groups related to Common Core, Minnesota went with its own assessments.

By Brian Bakst.

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MISSISSIPPI

Mississippi schools are supposed to be fully teaching based on the standards this year, and Mississippi plans to use the PARCC tests for most of its state standardized testing beginning this spring.

Attempts were made earlier this year by some lawmakers to roll back the state's implementation of Common Core, but those proposals failed by wide margins.

But Republican Gov. Phil Bryant has called Common Core a "failed program" and said he expected lawmakers to address the standards in the 2015 legislative session. State Superintendent Carey Wright has pushed back against Bryant, saying his description of Common Core is a "gross mischaracterization" and saying students "deserve the opportunity to perform to higher expectations."

By Jeff Amy.

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MISSOURI

Public schools in Missouri have transitioned to the standards, but a new state law backed by opponents could get rid of them.

In July, Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon signed a measure passed by the Republican-led Legislature that creates task forces of parents and educators to develop new state standards for English, math, science and history to be implemented during the 2016-2017 school year.

By David Lieb.

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MONTANA

Montana students for the first time will take a test linked to the standards. There was a trial of the test last spring.

Office of Public Instruction Superintendent Denise Juneau said some schools are behind in curriculum development, teacher training and acquiring textbooks or other equipment to teach to the new standards. The 2013 Legislature rejected proposals to allocate money for training and equipment, and state Sen. Roger Webb has submitted a bill request for the 2015 session to bar any funding for the standards.

By Matt Volz.

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NEBRASKA

Nebraska has not adopted the standards, and uses state standards developed by teachers, said Betty VanDeventer, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Education. By law, they're reviewed once every five years.

A study commissioned by the department last year found that Nebraska's language arts standards are as tough as those of Common Core and more demanding in some areas. The study said Nebraska's math standards cover most of the national Common Core content. Some material is introduced in later grades, but the study said it's often presented in greater depth.

By Grant Schulte.

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NEVADA

Opponents have spoken out against the standards at state school board and interim legislative meetings, and coalesced into a group called Stop Common Core Nevada. Some are working with lawmakers in hopes of introducing a bill next year to repeal the measures.

Meanwhile the Nevada Board of Education now refers to the Common Core name as the Nevada Academic Content Standards, and the state superintendent has launched a communications initiative called Nevada Ready to inform parents and the public about the new standards. The Wynn Family Foundation, funded by casino mogul and state school board president Elaine Wynn, has provided $200,000 to the public relations campaign.

By Michelle Rindels.

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NEW HAMPSHIRE

Local school boards are not required to adopt the Common Core standards, even though they have been endorsed by the state Board of Education. But state assessment tests, which students will begin taking next spring, must be aligned to the standards.

The Legislature defeated several bills this spring aimed at ending or scaling back the state's involvement in the standards.

By Holly Ramer.

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NEW JERSEY

New Jersey is moving ahead. Beginning with the coming school year, schools will be required to use PARCC tests to measure how well students are learning the curriculum.

The Democrat-dominated Legislature wanted to delay consequences of those tests for at least two years until a review of the standards could be completed. That would have meant that the tests could not have been used as part of teacher evaluations.

In a compromise, Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, took executive action that said the exams will count for teachers' grades, but they'll be given lower weight over the first two years. He also established a commission to review the effectiveness of student testing.

By Geoff Mulvihill

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NEW MEXICO

Republican Gov. Susana Martinez's administration has been a strong advocate of the Common Core standards, and students in grade three to 11 will take online tests aligned to the standards for the first time this spring.

The standards have been phased in, and teachers in all grades during the last school year, 2013-2014, were to have integrated Common Core into their classroom curriculum. There has been no push in the Democratic-controlled Legislature to back away from the standards.

By Barry Massey.

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NEW YORK

Dissatisfaction with Common Core and the tests based on them led thousands of New York parents to "opt out" of the 2014 exams, and state lawmakers approved a measure last month that delays the use of the test results in some teacher evaluations.

The Common Core has become an issue in the New York governor's race. Rob Astorino, the Republican who aims to unseat incumbent Democrat Andrew Cuomo, is seeking to capitalize on opposition to the standards by putting a "Stop Common Core" party on the November ballot. If enough people sign petitions for the party, Democrats and independents who oppose the Common Core could use the ballot line to vote for Astorino without voting Republican.

By Karen Matthews.

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NORTH CAROLINA

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory signed legislation in July to rewrite Common Core, creating a commission to come up with new reading and math standards.

Common Core will be in place in the state until the new standards are created and implemented. The commission can choose to integrate parts of the current Common Core into the new standards.

By Katelyn Ferral.

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NORTH DAKOTA

North Dakota adopted Common Core standards in 2011, and began to fully implement them during the 2013-14 school year. Assessments based on the new standards will start for all students next spring.

North Dakota lawmakers have remained mostly silent on the new standards.

By James MacPherson

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OHIO

Republican lawmakers in the Ohio House are beginning a push to repeal Common Core learning standards by year's end, citing widespread discontent they say they're hearing from parents, teachers and communities.

It's unclear whether the bill could pass. Districts already are well on their way to implementing the standards, which have the backing of a diverse coalition of Ohio groups including teachers' unions, superintendents, the Urban League and the Ohio Chamber of Commerce.

By Julie Carr Smyth.

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OKLAHOMA

Gov. Mary Fallin, a Republican who strongly supported Common Core as head of the National Governors Association, reversed course this year and signed into law a repeal of the standards.

In response, the federal government on Thursday did not renew the state's waiver involving stringent requirements in the No Child Left Behind law. The move stripped Oklahoma's power to decide how to spend $29 million in education dollars. The Obama administration said the state no longer could demonstrate that its school standards were preparing students for college and careers.

Education officials estimate that about 70 percent of Oklahoma's more than 500 school districts already had integrated the Common Core standards into their textbooks, teaching methods or curriculum. Now, districts are being directed to return to the Priority Academic Student Skills, or PASS standards, that were in place in 2010, until the state develops its own new standards. That process is expected to take up to two years.

By Sean Murphy.

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OREGON

Eighty percent of Oregon teachers who responded to a statewide survey this spring said what's being taught in their school aligns with the skilled required by Common Core.

But there has been grumbling.

Dennis Richardson, the Republican gubernatorial candidate, said he opposes Common Core. Meanwhile, Portland Public Schools, the state's largest school district, asked the state to delay using Common Core-aligned testing to evaluate teachers, students, school districts and individual schools. State education officials have asked the Education Department to grant a one-year delay in using results from the new, Common Core-aligned assessments as part of a teacher's evaluation.

By Steven DuBois.

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PENNSYLVANIA

Pennsylvania's version, known as Pennsylvania Core Standards, took effect in March.

They were developed in part by examining the national Common Core but are not identical. At least one state lawmaker is attempting to get them repealed, and others have spoken out against them.

By Mark Scolforo.

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RHODE ISLAND

The Common Core standards have been in place since the start of the 2013-2014 school year, and students will take the first assessments aligned with them next spring. The state is using the PARCC.

The state's largest teachers union, National Education Association Rhode Island, has criticized the Common Core standards — including the pace of implementation — and what it considers an overemphasis on standardized tests. During debate over use of another test as a high school graduation requirement, state lawmakers generally expressed support for the standards and the alignment of the curriculum with the PARCC test.

By Erika Niedowski.

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SOUTH CAROLINA

A South Carolina law signed May 30 requires new standards to replace Common Core by the time students walk into classrooms in August 2015. Meanwhile, full implementation of Common Core, to include aligned testing, continues as planned this school year.

Many legislators saw the new law as a way to satisfy the opposition by essentially stepping up a review that would have occurred anyway, expecting little to change. Leaders of the state Board of Education and Education Oversight Committee — the two groups that must approve any changes — said there's no time to start from scratch.

But Superintendent Mick Zais, a Republican who didn't seek a second term, insists there is and that there will be no simple editing of Common Core. An agreed-to timeline calls for the new standards to receive final approval in March.

By Seanna Adcox.

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SOUTH DAKOTA

South Dakota began to fully implement the standards during the 2013-2014 school year.

A number of bills seeking to scrap the Common Core standards failed during the 2014 Legislature. Lawmakers, however, approved a bill that would delay the adoption of multistate standards in any other subjects until after July 2016. GOP Gov. Dennis Daugaard signed the bill in March.

By Regina Garcia Cano.

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TENNESSEE

During the last Tennessee General Assembly, lawmakers proposed several measures to do away with the state's Common Core standards. All of them failed.

But lawmakers voted to delay the testing associated with Common Core for one year. Republican Gov. Bill Haslam reluctantly signed the measure. He said the standards are needed to better prepare students for college and the workforce and play a role in attempt to raise the state's high school graduation rates from the current 32 percent to 55 percent by the year 2025.

By Lucas L. Johnson II.

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TEXAS

Texas refused to adopt Common Core, instead mandating curriculum standards known as the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, though as much as two-thirds of the state's math standards are thought to overlap with Common Core requirements.

Conservatives continue to worry about Common Core seeping into Texas classrooms, so much so that the Legislature in 2013 passed a law expressly forbidding school districts from using it as part of lesson plans. Then, in June, Republican Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, the front-runner in November's governor's race, issued an opinion reiterating that schools using Common Core standards "in any way" would violate that law.

By Will Weissert.

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UTAH

Gov. Gary Herbert, a Republican, has defended the state's Common Core standards, which are generally referred to as Utah Core or Utah Core Standards.

But after protests and swelling complaints from conservative activists, Herbert has asked the state attorney general's office to review the adoption of the standards and to report the level of control Utah and local districts and schools have over curriculum. He also asked education experts to review how well the standards will prepare students for success and established a website where parents and others can leave comments about the standards.

Utah passed a law two years ago that requires the state to abandon any agreements or contracts if Utah's control of standards or curriculum is ceded to the federal government. Earlier this year, the Legislature passed and Herbert signed a measure creating a standards review committee.

By Michelle Price.

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VERMONT

Common Core was introduced to Vermont educators in 2010 and this year schools are expected to have their curriculum fully aligned with the standards.

The agency has heard about pockets of parents who are upset. But Pat Fitzsimmons, the Common Core implementation coordinator for the state's Agency of Education, says there's been misinformation. She said some opponents are upset about the Smarter Balanced Assessment, to be given in 2015, and have concerns about technology involved and protecting student data.

By Lisa Rathke.

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VIRGINIA

Virginia refused to participate in the national Common Core system, instead deciding in 2010 to strengthen its own Standards of Learning.

The state introduced new standardized math tests in 2012 and more rigorous reading, writing and science assessments in 2013. The state is reducing the number of standardized exams that middle and elementary school students have to take from 22 to 17.

In addition, state Secretary of Education Anne Holton has appointed a 20-member committee to study the Standards of Learning and make recommendations to the Virginia Board of Education and the General Assembly on ways to improve SOL tests and student growth measures, and encourage innovative teaching.

By John Raby.

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WASHINGTON

Washington state adopted the new Common Core standards for math and English in 2011 and began using them in its public schools the following school year. During the coming school year, tests aligned to the standards will be used instead of the previous state-developed system.

Washington teachers and their union have expressed concern about both the new education standards and the new tests, saying they need more time to get used to the new program before they are judged on how well their students are doing. The Legislature decided not to require test scores to be part of the teachers' evaluations, resulting in the state's loss of its waiver from the requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Law.

By Donna Blankinship

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WEST VIRGINIA

In 2010, the West Virginia Board of Education approved Common Core state standards for math and English, customizing the content specifically for the state's students. More than 100 teachers developed the content standards aimed at giving teachers more focus and flexibility while preparing students to be college and career ready.

The transition must be complete in all grades by this fall, but the state is allowing counties to determine how to adopt the changes.

By John Raby.

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WISCONSIN

Republican Gov. Scott Walker, a potential 2016 presidential candidate facing re-election this year, has called for repeal of the standards, a move opposed by his Democratic opponent in the governor's race, Mary Burke.

Repeal also is opposed by the nonpartisan state superintendent of schools, who argues changing course now after spending millions of dollars to implement the Common Core the past four years would send Wisconsin schools into chaos. Testing tied to the standards will begin this spring.

By Scott Bauer.

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WYOMING

Some Wyoming school districts have implemented the standards, which were adopted in 2012, but critics have been persistent in speaking out against them.

A bill to repeal the standards in Wyoming failed to get enough votes for consideration in last winter's legislative session. Under state law, the standards will be up for review again in 2017.

By Bob Moen.

A TOUGH TEST FOR NEW GED:

By Caitlin Emma, With help from Allie Grasgreen, Maggie Severns and Stephanie Simon | Politico Morning Ed | by email

2 Sept 2014  ::  High school dropouts seeking an equivalency degree have been struggling with the revised GED exam, launched Jan. 1 as a profit-making joint venture between publishing giant Pearson and nonprofit American Council on Education. The pass rate on the old GED hovered around 72 percent and dipped only slightly after the last major revision to the exam in 2002. The new exam, aligned to the Common Core, is meant to be much harder - and indeed, just 53 percent of test-takers have passed. Most have gotten tripped up on the math section, which includes more algebra and word problems, according to CT Turner, senior director of state accounts for the GED Testing Service. The good news: About 80 percent of people who fail the math section "are just two to three right answers away from passing, so it's not a hopeless cause," Turner said. The GED Testing Service is analyzing the concepts that have proven most tricky and plans to help adult education teachers hone in on those subjects.

- The new test is not only harder, it's also more expensive, with exam fees of up to $120, plus $30 to retake a section. (Some states subsidize the exam costs, so the actual cost to students varies.) Students appear quite wary of giving it a go. Through the end of July, just 105,000 students had taken the new GED. In a typical year, 750,000 students take the test. Turner said a steep drop was expected because of the format change - but even so, the numbers have been disappointing, he said. "We've seen a lot of anxiety from adult learners and from education centers," Turner said. "I think we have a lot of work to do."

ALSO:

THE LATEST TENURE TALK: California Gov. Jerry Brown late last week appealed a judge’s final decision that struck down certain job protections for teachers and challenged tenure in the Golden State. Attorney General Kamala Harris filed the appeal on Friday in a Los Angeles County court, the Associated Press reports [http://bit.ly/1A0vUvl]. Here’s a refresher of the judge’s final decision from Maggie Severns: http://politico.pro/1n3zXRX.

 

 

Judge sets up battle over teacher protections

Politico ‎- 4 days ago

By MAGGIE SEVERNS | 8/28/14 9:34 PM EDT Updated: 8/29/14 4:23 PM EDT. A Los Angeles judge on Thursday affirmed a tentative June ruling that struck ...

The revolving door revolves: NEW ED ®EFORM GROUP DEBUTS

from the Politico Morning Ed Report | by email

Sept 2, 2014  ::  Peter Cunningham, a former assistant secretary for communication in Arne Duncan's Education Department, launched a new ed reform group this weekend with backing from the Broad Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies.

The group backs charter schools, Common Core and teacher evaluations based in part on student test scores. The website: http://bit.ly/Z59ePg

EducationPost: We are a non-profit, non-partisan communications organization dedicated to building support for student-focused improvements in public education from preschool to high school graduation.

●● smf: Do the words “non-partisan” have any meaning anymore?

ANALYSIS FINDS CALIFORNIA STUDENTS ATTEND SCHOOL MORE THAN U.S. PEERS

By Teresa Watanabe, LA Times | http://lat.ms/1qXEW7D

First-grade teacher Gail Lemmen, left, welcomes each student to the first day of the school on Monday, Aug. 11, 2014 at Los Robles Elementary School in Porterville, Calif. (Chieko Hara / AP)

• A study finds California fourth- and eighth-graders had better attendance than peers in about 40 other states
• Nearly 1 in 5 California fourth- and eighth-graders missed more than three days of class in a month
• California fourth-graders with poor attendance scored 11 points lower in reading and 15 points lower in math,

Sept 2, 2014  ::  California students attend school more consistently than most of their U.S. peers, and such attendance directly relates to better performance on national math and reading tests, a new analysis has found.

The analysis by Attendance Works, a San Francisco nonprofit aimed at combating school absenteeism, found that California fourth- and eighth-graders had better attendance than peers in about 40 other states in 2013.

But nearly 1 in 5 of those students still missed more than three days of class in the month leading up to the National Assessment for Educational Progress, a standardized math and reading test typically given to fourth- and eighth-graders between late January and early March annually.

Nationally, as many as 7.5 million students missed nearly a month of school.

"This lost instructional time exacerbates dropout rates and achievement gaps," said the report, which was written by Alan Ginsburg, Phyllis Jordan and Hedy Chang.

The state-by-state analysis found that students who missed more than three days of class scored lower on the national test — known as "the nation's report card" — across ages, subjects, race, income level, city and state.

California fourth-graders with poor attendance scored 11 points lower in reading and 15 points lower in math, while eighth-graders scored 15 points lower in reading and 16 points lower in math. The same trend held true for Los Angeles.

In recent years, however, state Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris and Los Angeles Unified Supt. John Deasy have focused on combating the problem of poor attendance.

Harris has commissioned statewide studies on elementary student truancy and sponsored a package of four measures aimed at addressing the problem. The bills, which would require the state to collect student attendance data and help school districts better track and prevent truancy, passed the Legislature last week.

In L.A. Unified, the percentage of students with attendance rates of 96% or higher has steadily increased over the last five years to 71% during the 2013-14 school year from 60% in 2009-10. Among other things, the district has launched an incentive program that rewards monthly perfect attendance with drawings for such prizes as movie tickets and iTunes gift cards.

The Attendance Works analysis found that the city of Los Angeles outperformed the national average in keeping low-income students in class. Among L.A. low-income fourth-graders, for instance, 18% were absent three days or more compared with 22% nationally.

Latino students in L.A. attended school more consistently than their national peers. But African Americans recorded more absences: 31% of eighth-graders, for instance, missed three or more days of school compared with 22% of their national peers.

Overall, the analysis found that students in Montana and New Mexico had the worst attendance and those in Texas, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana and Massachusetts had the best.

Why not L.A.?: FREE FLU VACCINES FOR 60,000 OAKLAND KIDS

By Doug Oakley, Oakland Tribune | http://bit.ly/1x65uMz

9/02/2014 12:00:00 AM PDT  -  OAKLAND  ::  The largest ever seasonal flu vaccine program for Oakland youngsters will roll out Oct. 1, with the Alameda County health department targeting 60,000 elementary school students with free vaccines at 130 schools.

And one of the better parts of the Shoo the Flu program, besides keeping kids and by extension older folks healthy, is that most kids won't get a shot.

"Ninety percent of the vaccines will be the nasal spray," said Dr. Erica Pan, director of communicable disease control and prevention in the Alameda County Public Health Department. "It's the preferred method for kids ages 2-8 because more and more data show it is more effective than needles."

She said the county health department is collaborating with the California Department of Public Health and Oakland schools to offer the free vaccines in schools. All parents have to do is fill out a consent form.

Pan said the county health department has offered free flu vaccines to Oakland youngsters before but never on this scale. Flu clinics will be set up in every Oakland Unified School District elementary school, most private schools and all the elementary schools of the Catholic Diocese of Oakland.

Pan said the health department is targeting pre-kindergarten through fifth-graders because they are considered "super spreaders" of flu. Owing to their underdeveloped hygiene practices, kids often spread it to older folks who are more vulnerable and kids' immune systems respond very well to the vaccine.

"The recent data show that if you vaccinate a large portion of children in a community, you are protecting the rest of the population because they are not spreading it to grandparents or caregivers or the elderly," Pan said.

Getting the flu is no fun. Symptoms can include fever and chills, sore throat, muscle aches, fatigue, cough and headache. It is spread by people coughing, sneezing and just being in close contact with others, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

She said the health department would like to turn this large-scale vaccination program into a model and expand it to other parts of the county. The department is focusing on Oakland right now, Pan said, because it already has a good working relationship with the public schools and Oakland is a city with a large number of kids who don't have easy access to health care.

Free+Reduced School Meals: POPULAR CHILD-POVERTY MEASURE GETS ANOTHER LOOK

By Sarah D. Sparks, Education Week | http://bit.ly/W6r3eX

Published Online: August 19, 2014 Published in Print: August 20, 2014, as Analysts Rethinking Popular Indicator of Child Poverty

Washington   ::  When it comes to free school meals, it's increasingly clear that students aren't always what they eat.

The federal free- and reduced-price meals program, launched decades ago by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to combat child hunger through schools, has become a ubiquitous proxy for poverty in federal and state education and health programs, and public and private research on poverty. As eligibility criteria and participation in the program changes, however, researchers and state data experts argue it is a less-accurate lens through which to view disadvantaged students.

"It's Department of Agriculture data," said Matthew Cohen, the chief research officer for the Ohio education department's office of policy and research, in a seminar at the National Center for Education Statistics annual meeting last month. "It's becoming progressively less suitable for the education community. Rather than repurposing data needed to administer a meals program, we need to advance the data needed by educators and policymakers."

Mr. Cohen chairs a working group of data watchers from eight states and the U.S. Department of Education who are searching for alternatives to lunch program eligibility for measuring socioeconomic status.

 

Ubiquitous Yardstick The percentage of students in a school or district who qualify for free and reduced-price school meals is used in dozens of ways by researchers, program administrators, educators, and others. Health Some state agencies, like the Minnesota health department, use school lunch eligibility as a proxy for poverty when assessing poverty’s effects on children. Money Federal supplemental grants for disadvantaged students are based in part on this indicator. It’s also used to “weight” students in state school funding formulas. Interventions Researchers use this indicator as a stand-in for poverty in developing interventions for low-income children. Program Planning Federal and state agencies rely on school-meal-eligibility rates to develop programs aimed at school-age children. Testing Accountability Most state testing programs use free- and reduced-lunch eligibility as an indicator for “economically disadvantaged” when disaggregating scores. Meals Schools use this criterion to decide which students qualify for subsidized breakfasts or lunches. City Planning Local agencies and organizations sometimes use school-meal eligibility rates in urban planning. Extracurricular Activities Fee-based school sports, field trips, and other activities often waive or reduce fees for students who qualify for free and reduced-price meals. Philanthropy Philanthropies often use the measure as an index of poverty when awarding grants to improve education outcomes

The need for alternatives and supplements is becoming more urgent, as recent federal rule changes broaden eligibility for the program to include whole communities and changing school structures, such as charters and online schools, mean more students don't eat on campus.

Students' socioeconomic status "is the one thing we are the worst at capturing, and it might be the single most important variable for us as academics, as teachers, as clinicians," said Ramani Durvasula, an associate psychology professor at California State University, Los Angeles, in a lecture on poverty at the American Psychological Association meeting in Washington this month.

Coming to the Table

While federal meals programs have been used to identify low-income students at least as far back as the landmark 1966 Coleman Report on economic disparities in education, critics have argued for nearly that long that eligibility becomes less accurate as poor students get older and become less inclined to eat in the school cafeteria.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress in science, for example, was unable to use free-meal eligibility to disaggregate scores for 12th graders in 2009 because too few students participated in the program. Similarly, high schools applying for federal Title I grants often must use data from feeder schools to help prove their poverty rates, because older students are more reluctant to sign up for meals.

"Free and reduced-price lunch just doesn't always work," Deborah Rodrigues, the education statistics director of the Center for Data Quality and Information Technology at the Pennsylvania education department, said at the meeting. "Kids aren't always educated where they eat. Charter school kids may be eating in a district school or the church down the street if the school doesn't provide meals."

On the other side of the coin, the Agriculture Department's "community eligibility option," rolled out in 2012, allows high-poverty districts to offer free meals to all students without requiring income proof from individual families. That has been a boon in getting hungry children fed, but has complicated schools' ability to collect individual students' poverty data. Michigan and Kentucky are among the states that now collect that data separately.

But it's not easy, especially at a time when parents are becoming increasingly wary of giving information out to schools. "A data collection without the leverage of feeding kids who need to be fed is problematic," said David Weinberger, the executive director of student information, assessment, and reporting for Yonkers public schools in New York.

Altogether, a 2010 study in Educational Researcher estimates 20 percent of students are misidentified by school meal programs, either as ineligible when they are, or eligible when they are not.

A Full Plate

Even among qualified meal-program participants, there can be a wide range of income and resources.

In the 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia, a family of four earning $44,123 per year—185 percent of the federal poverty line—or less would qualify for reduced-price meals, while one earning up to $31,005 per year—130 percent of the poverty line—would be eligible for free meals. Families in Alaska have slightly higher eligibility cutoffs, while Hawaii's are lower, according to the Agriculture Department's 2014-15 guidelines.

"Your perception of your family status can have more of an impact on educational outcomes than the income coming through that household," said Susan Williams, the manager of data management and accountability systems for Virginia's education department.

For educators and researchers, there may be differences in academic risks and needs of the child of a new teacher in Colorado making $31,300, the child of a freelance writer in New York who earns the same amount but has become homeless, and a child in Atlanta whose home is secure but whose parents are earning the same income through several part-time jobs.

Quantifying Disadvantage

"What we're really talking about here is education disadvantage; one's access to financial, social, cultural, and human capital resources," Mr. Cohen said. While malnutrition and food instability have been linked to poor academic performance, he noted, other indicators, like parents' education and occupation, may be more tied to educational disadvantage. "Free- and reduced-price-lunch eligibility is the de facto standard, but these data reflect only the economic part of the [socioeconomic] concept," Mr. Cohen said.

In a 2012 report, the National Forum for Education Statistics working group laid out three interconnected aspects of poverty which might be used to create more comprehensive indexes: community-, neighborhood- and school-level socioeconomic status.

Catching these facets of poverty will mean getting more comprehensive economic information, and potentially, other information about the resources available to students.

On the economic front, many states and programs also track participation in other government support programs, such as supplementary nutrition assistance, often known as food stamps; Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, which is used for child-care subsidies in many states; and heating oil supplements in colder states. Some categories, such as students who are homeless, migrant, or in foster care, encompass low-income children but show different risk factors.

But the working group is also looking for ways to capture educational resources beyond family income, such as parents' education levels, school resources, and community concentration of poverty. More contextual data could allow researchers to better study the differences in rural versus urban poverty, and so on.

Some of these supplemental measures also raise concerns, though. For example, the NAEP collects data on parents' occupations and highest education levels by asking students as young as 4th grade to report that information. These data would be stronger if they could be matched against existing Census Bureau information.

The working group is still developing one or several index measures that combine multiple measures.

"We're used to having this silver bullet lunch data," Douglas Geverdt, an analyst in the Census Bureau's governments division, said, "and maybe now we are entering a period when we need to move beyond a silver bullet."

LEGISLATIVE ANALYST’S OFFICE PROPOSES PARADIGM SHIFT IN MANAGING STATE EDUCATION: Beyond compliance to true collaborative oversight – not “permissible” …but “effective”

By Jane Meredith Adams | EdSource Today  |  http://bit.ly/1lFtm52

The California Department of Education building in Sacramento.

August 29, 2014 |  Proposing a fundamental change in the way the California Department of Education operates, a report from the Legislative Analyst’s Office Thursday suggested the department move beyond its current focus on federal compliance, an emphasis it said school districts find “increasingly reactive and punitive.”

Instead, the 28-page report proposed that the department encourage collaboration among its staff members, particularly those who are overseeing federally funded programs for students with disabilities, English learners and low-income students. The goal would be to make oversight activities more valuable for school districts, the report said.

As an example, the report noted that education departments in other states have merged staff responsibilities to include not just an evaluation of  whether federal funds are being spent in ways that are permissible, but whether districts are spending funds in ways that are effective, the report said.

“Such an approach would represent a paradigm shift for CDE and would require more coordination across – or a reorganization of – CDE divisions,” the report said.

Richard Zeiger, chief deputy superintendent of public instruction, praised the report as “thoughtful.”

“What the report is urging us to do, and I don’t think we disagree with them, is where we can find opportunities to have more supportive models of compliance, we should,” Zeiger said.

Yet, he noted, when department staff members visit schools, districts like to know “are you the compliance person or the helper person?”

Special education is an area where the state already is examining better ways to deliver services, he said.

Vicki Barber, co-executive director of the Statewide Special Education Task Force, said the task force had received numerous comments from the public that, like the LAO report, suggested increasing collaboration and coordination among California Department of Education staff members. The task force will be releasing its recommendations in a final report in late fall.

While the report suggested that the department “explore ways to add value” to its federally required compliance activities, it also stated that county offices of education continue to be better sources for on-the-ground support for school districts, including professional development and technical assistance.

In other findings, the report said staffing at the department is reasonable given its current responsibilities, but new assignments would require additional staffing.

In a recommendation that was warmly received at the department, the Legislative Analyst’s Office reviewed 77 reports that the Legislature requires the department to create and suggested the repeal of 54 of those reporting requirements. Those 54 reports are “no longer pertinent, do not provide sufficient information to merit their costs” or the information is already available or available upon request, the report said.

The report was the first from the non-partisan office, which analyzes finance and policy for the Legislature, about the department, which has about 1,500 employees and an annual budget of around $250 million.

• Jane Meredith Adams covers student health and well-being. Email her or Follow her on Twitter. Sign up here for a no-cost online subscription to EdSource Today for reports from the largest education reporting team in California.

‘Principally’: SINGLE WORD AT HEART OF LCFF/LCAP REGULATORY DEBATE

By John Fensterwald | EdSource Today | http://bit.ly/W5bZhr

Credit: John Fensterwald/EdSource Today - Surrounded by other members of the student group Californians For Justice, Karla Rodriguez, a junior at James Lick High in San Jose, asks the East Side Union High School District school board to include students in the LCAP process during a meeting in May. The State Board of Education will consider amending LCAP regulations to require school districts to solicit the views of students.

August 28, 2014  ::   The State Board of Education next week will consider and possibly settle a debate over one word in the proposed final regulations for the Local Control Funding Formula. The decision would end a year-long disagreement between school districts and civil rights organizations over spending flexibility under the state’s new school funding formula.

The word at issue is “principally.” It would be in a section of regulations controlling the Local Control and Accountability Plan, the three-year budget and academic improvement plan that districts completed in June. It would spell out when districts can use money allotted for “high-needs” students – low-income students, students learning English and foster youths – for purposes that would benefit all students in a school or district. In those cases, districts would have to justify that the services and programs using that money would be “principally directed towards, and are effective in, meeting the district’s goals” for high-needs students. For example, a district could propose using funding for high-needs students to extend the academic day or offer summer school for all students who are behind. The district would have to show that such a use would help close the achievement gap for the high-needs students who must benefit from  the extra money under the funding formula.

Advocates for low-income children, including Public Advocates, the ACLU and Children Now, lobbied to have “principally “ added to prevent districts from using money in ways that wouldn’t benefit high-needs students. Organizations representing districts and school administrators wanted the word taken out. In a July 3 letter to the state board, the California School Boards Association said that “principally” is subjective. “Its inclusion would likely confuse the public rather than make the LCAP more transparent,” it said. School board members predicted in testimony that including the word might lead to needless litigation.

The staff of the state board has sided with the advocates and left “principally” in the proposed regulations, while arguing that, really, it won’t make that much difference.

“We think ‘principally’ is consistent with the provision,” said Brooks Allen, deputy policy director and assistant legal counsel with the state board. “It provides a little more emphasis but does not substantially change the meaning. We don’t understand how this represents a significant change.”

There is more agreement among education and advocacy groups over the other final changes to the regulations that the state board staff is proposing.

One, strongly pushed by student activists who demonstrated at two state board meetings this year, would state that district administrators should seek the ideas of students when creating the LCAP – and not just wait until it’s been written.

Staff have also redesigned sections of the LCAP template, which districts must use to make it clearer and make it easier to match a district’s academic goals with expenditures to achieve them. There also would be a separate update section so that the public could readily see whether a district spent the money on programs it committed to and whether it was making progress toward improving student engagement, parent involvement, academic achievement and other goals.

The state board will adopt the proposed changes either at its meeting on Sept. 4 or at its next meeting in November.

Going Deeper

• Current LCAP template, adopted January 2014
• Proposed LCAP template, August 2014
• Proposed revisions to Local Control Funding Formula regulations, August 2014

CALIFORNIA ATTORNEY GENERAL HARRIS ANNOUNCES PACKAGE OF TRUANCY LEGISLATION PASSES STATE LEGISLATURE + THE COSTS OF CHRONIC ABSENCES

 

Reposted

from the SI&A  Newsroom | http://bit.ly/1x3YHmK

Attorney General Kamala D. Harris Announces Package of Truancy Legislation Passes State Legislature

State of California Department of Justice Office of the Attorney General
Kamala D. Harris ~ Attorney General

Posted: Thursday, August 28, 2014

SACRAMENTO – California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris today announced that a package of legislation to help local school districts and communities address California’s elementary school truancy crisis has passed out of both legislative houses and is on its way to the Governor’s desk.

“Each year approximately one million California elementary school children are truant from class. Good education policies are meaningless if students aren’t at their desks,” Attorney General Harris said. “I applaud the legislature for bringing us one step closer to stopping this crisis.”

If signed into law, these bills will:

Help schools and counties work with parents to address the core reasons behind truancy and chronic absence.
Give local school districts and counties tools to comply with attendance tracking requirements in the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), state truancy mandates and state and federal reporting requirements.
Modernize state and local systems to track and prevent truancy and chronic absence.
Ensure that schools, districts, counties and the state can evaluate the success of interventions to combat truancy and chronic absence.

Attorney General Harris announced her sponsorship of the four bills and introduced the legislative package at a March 10, 2014 press conference with State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson and Assemblymembers Raul Bocanegra, Rob Bonta, Joan Buchanan, Isadore Hall and Chris Holden.

A complete list of education, public policy, and law enforcement leaders and organizations who have endorsed the legislation is available here: http://bit.ly/1liXv9O.

The legislation will, if signed, put recommended reforms from Attorney General Harris’ 2013 report, In School + On Track (https://oag.ca.gov/truancy) into law. The report contained the first state-wide statistics on California’s elementary school truancy crisis. It revealed that in the 2012-2013 school year, 1 million elementary school students were truant and 250,000 elementary school students missed 18 or more school days at a cost of $1.4 billion in lost funds to California school districts. Annually, dropouts cost California taxpayers an estimated $46.4 billion in incarceration, lost productivity and lost taxes.

Next month, Attorney General Harris will issue the 2014 In School + On Track report containing updated statewide figures on elementary school truancy and its fiscal impact on local school districts.

Attorney General Harris’ Truancy Legislation Package:

ASSEMBLY BILL 1866 - Statewide Attendance Data System

Author: Assemblymember Raul Bocanegra

Adds truancy and absenteeism to the information collected by the state Department of Education. California is one of only a few states in the country that does not collect student attendance data. This bill will allow local school districts to monitor and analyze attendance patterns, as required under the Local Control Funding Formula.

ASSEMBLY BILL 1672 - Enhanced Student Attendance Review Board (SARB) Reports

Author: Assemblymember Chris Holden

Expands annual reports from local School Attendance Review Boards (SARBs) to include information on student enrollment, absence and truancy rates, district attorney referrals and SARB intervention outcomes. Current annual SARB reports provide minimal information about intervention outcomes, so it is difficult to get the full picture of SARB efforts around the state. This bill ensures schools, districts and counties can evaluate the success of truancy intervention efforts.

ASSEMBLY BILL 1643 - Improved SARBs

Author: Assemblymember Joan Buchanan

Adds representatives of a county district attorney’s office and county public defender’s office to both county and local School Attendance Review Boards (SARBs). This will provide local courts with a broader understanding of attendance issues and will enhance the ability of SARBs to solve the root cause of truancy problems.

ASSEMBLY BILL 2141 - District Attorney Referral Outcome Reports

Authors: Assemblymember Isadore Hall, Assemblymember Rob Bonta

Requires that district attorney’s offices provide a report to school officials on the outcome of a truancy related referral. This helps school officials determine which outcomes are most effective and guarantees baseline information sharing between referring agencies and prosecutors.

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Reposted from the SI&A  Newsroom | http://bit.ly/1x3YHmK

The costs of chronic absences

The Bakersfield Californian
By: The Bakersfield Californian and Al Sandrini
Posted: June 2, 2014

It's unfortunate that when people talk about truancy or school absences it is always through the prism of lost funding to schools. There is a much larger, dangerous and destructive effect of truancy/chronic absences I choose to address: the impact of students not learning.

Research abounds that if kids miss school at any age -- but especially in the first three or four years of school -- though not destined, they are heading toward that well-known "school-to-jail pipeline" where citizens' taxes are paid to incarcerate them instead of educate them.

Did you know that, nationally, 1,300 teens drop out of school every day? Did you know 500,000 kids drop out every year? In California, for every 120,000 high school dropouts, the state loses $45 billion due to lost tax income, crime prevention expenses and other costs (California Dropout Research Project). Over two-thirds of dropouts will use food stamps to pay for food and other necessities. Dropouts make up 30 percent of federal prisoners, 40 percent of state prisoners and 50 percent of all prisoners on death row.

Guess what? A leading contributor, in addition to poverty, to those startling numbers is chronic absences of children between kindergarten and Grade 3. Chronic absences are described as missing 10 percent or more of school for any reason -- excused, unexcused, etc. In 2012, five out of six elementary schools in Oakland, Calif., reported between 12-16 percent of their students were chronically absent. Students chronically absent in kindergarten and first grade are much less likely to read proficiently in third grade. Chronic absences within families seldom "spike" from year to year. Analysis by Attendance Works provides that each year of chronic absence in elementary school is associated with a substantially higher probability of chronic absence in the sixth grade. Lower test scores and higher levels of suspension are also measurable impacts on chronic absences in a student's early years.

Over 61 percent of high school seniors who dropped out of school in a Utah study were chronically absent during their four years of high school, according to the Utah Data Alliance.

Three massive myths perpetuate this problem: 1) Absences are only a problem if they are unexcused. 2) Sporadic versus consecutive absences aren't a problem. 3) Attendance only matters in the older grades. (As a life-long educator, I must confess to falling victim to the first one.)

Why do primary age kids miss school? A variety of reasons exist, but the root of chronic absences can often be found when one of the following conditions exists: The child is struggling academically. There's a lack of engaging instruction. There's a poor school climate or ineffective school discipline. The child's parents had negative school experiences. Or, the child lives in poverty.

What has to happen to change this self-fulfilling prophecy? It's never easy, but the answer lies in that we must first recognize chronic absences as a problem. Second, we must recognize it is not just a school problem but a societal problem. Third, and most difficult, we must change the culture and attitude of schools and parents that excused absences are OK.

In December 2013, at the invitation of Juvenile Court Judge William Palmer and several others from Kern, I had the good fortune to attend a summit, "Keeping Kids in School and Out of Court Initiative," sponsored by Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye and Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson. Representatives from each county in California were challenged to address this problem at the local level.

Over that past several months, we have met with representatives from the offices of the district attorney, public health, welfare, probation, foster care and TRACK (Truancy Reduction & Attendance Coalition of Kern). In Kern, we were fortunate to discover we had the superstructure in TRACK (led by the Kern County Superintendent of Schools) to begin our assault on chronic absences. We needed to reach beyond Truancy to focus on all absences, and we need cooperative work of all agencies -- from the mayor's office, to the Kern County Board of Supervisors, to any person who wants to create a better world for our current youth and future adults.

It will take more than the resolutions adopted by local leaders. It will take more than laws passed in Sacramento (Local Control and Accountability Plan). It will take more than schools accepting chronic absences as injurious to the future of students. It will take more than educating parents that accumulative absences are harmful to their children, and they must find the will to get them to school on time and ready to work.

September has been declared "Attendance Awareness Month." Let's not wait until then to start our efforts to improve attendance. Let the discussion and eventual solutions to chronic absences and its impact on society begin today.

Photo courtesy of The Bakersfield Californian. Al Sandrini is former superintendent of the Norris School District and former executive director of the Sacramento-based Small School Districts' Association.

DEADLINE L.A.: Howard Blume explains iPadGate/The iPad Kerfuffle …whatever it is.

Deadline L.A. with Barbara Osborn & Howard Blume on KPFK 90.7 FM  |  http://bit.ly/1qwCV4Q

Deadline LA Mondays, 3:00 PM (pst)

CO-HOSTS: Barbara Osborn and Howard Blume,  Producer: Laurie Kaufman

DESCRIPTION: Deadline L.A. is KPFK's roving eye on the media. We praise and pummel the news media for how it is - or isn't - covering stories.

• BIO AND OTHER INFO:
  Host Barbara Osborn is a communications consultant at Wow The Crowd. She consults on strategy, storytelling and style for nonprofit leaders. She also teaches a doctoral seminar at USC Annenberg in community based participatory research.
  For 15 years, she was strategic communications director at Liberty Hill Foundation, one of the country's leading social change foundations. She  also has an extensive background as a  print reporter, and radio and TV documentary producer. She has conducted several studies of the local L.A. news media in conjunction with Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting. In them, she revealed that our most cynical suspicions about the local tv news are true: If it bleeds it leads and surfing dogs do get more airtime than public officials. Shortly after its debut in spring 1997, Deadline LA, was hailed as L.A.'s "best new radio program" by New Times L.A.
• Co-host Howard Blume is an education reporter at The L.A. Times. Prior to joining The Times, he was managing editor at The Jewish Journal and an award-winning reporter at The L.A. Weekly. He joined Deadline L.A. in November 2004.

 

Monday, September 1, 2014 3:00 pm

from Howard’s Tweets:

Howard Blume @howardblume : On Deadline LA today, we discuss the LAUSD iPad project (first half-hour) , and we also tackle environmental issues with Louis Sahagun. (second half hour) It's all on a special, one-hour edition of Deadline LA, from 3 to 4 PM today on KPFK 90.7 FM and http://KPFK.org .

• Play the show
• Download the podcast  

LIBRARIANS ARE A LUXURY CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOLS CAN’T AFFORD

by Becky Vevea | fromWBEZ | Morning Edition | National Public Radio | http://n.pr/W4aFvF

Listen to the Story | 3 min 53 sec

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i

There aren't mass layoffs of librarians; they're just doing different jobs.  - Robyn Mackenzie/iStockphoto

September 01, 2014 4:22 AM ET  ::  Two years ago, the Chicago Public Schools budgeted for 454 librarians. Last year, the budget called for 313 librarians, and now that number is down to 254.

With educators facing tough financial choices, having a full-time librarian is becoming something of a luxury in Chicago's more than 600 public schools.

It's not that there's a shortage of librarians in Chicago, and it's not mass layoffs. The librarians are being reassigned.

"The people are there, they're just not staffing the library; they're staffing another classroom," says Megan Cusick, a librarian at Nancy B. Jefferson Alternative School. She says all across the district, certified librarians are being reassigned to English classrooms, world languages or to particular grade levels in elementary schools.

"We got down to the point of saying, well, we have a classroom and it doesn't have a teacher," says Scott Walter, a parent at Nettelhorst Elementary, a popular school in the upper-middle-class Lake View neighborhood on the city's North Side.

He says when the district stopped funding specific positions and let principals and school councils decide how to spend their money, the numbers weren't adding up.

"Here's the position and she can be in a library or we can have a teacher in front of 30 kids. And no matter how much you love libraries, and as much as I do, you can't have a classroom without a teacher in front of it," Walter says.

Ultimately, Nettelhorst had to move its librarian, who is also a certified teacher, into a fourth-grade classroom.

In Illinois, all librarians must also have teaching certifications, and most have endorsements to teach specific grades and subjects.

There's no required amount of minutes for library instruction in the state, so schools won't face any repercussions if they don't have a librarian or a school library.
Scott Walter says Nettelhorst students are still able to check out books, because the clerk and parent volunteers help staff the library. Still, he says, it's a lose-lose.

"It feels [like] CPS [Chicago Public Schools] has set us up into a situation where we have to decide which finger we don't want," he says.

School officials wouldn't go on tape for this story. In a fact sheet sent to WBEZ, they touted the district's expanded virtual libraries available to all students. A spokesperson wrote, "we will not be satisfied until we have central and/or classroom-based libraries in every school."

At a school board meeting this summer, CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett addressed the issue and said the real problem is with hiring.

"It's not that we don't want to have librarians in libraries. Nobody can argue that point, but the pool is diminished," she says.

Cusick says if the hiring pool is empty, that's because so many librarians are being reassigned.

She says with so many librarians being transferred to the classroom something bigger is being lost. In the library, they teach kids how to do research, how to find and evaluate information, which she says is even more important in the digital age.

"Kids don't just know how to do that. It's not a skill that they develop just because they have an iPhone or because they have a computer at home, which many of our students don't have," she says.

Cusick and her colleagues don't want to see librarians added at the expense of other positions, like art teachers and physical education teachers. But they also don't want to see school libraries just become places where books are stored and meetings are held.

CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE PASSES STIFFEST LAW IN NATION TO PROTECT K-12 STUDENTS ONLINE DATA

By Sharon Noguchi, San Jose Mercury News | http://bit.ly/1q5gG7q

8/31/2014 03:39:02 PM PDT  ::  SACRAMENTO -- Trying to protect children from marketers, identity thieves and predators, California could establish the nation's toughest protections of student privacy and forbid the sale and disclosure of schools' online student data.

"It's a big win for kids," said James Steyer, whose advocacy group Common Sense Media pushed hard for the bill. He called it a landmark for student privacy and said he hopes other states will follow suit.

Despite forceful pushback from high-tech heavies, the bill by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg passed the Legislature unanimously last week.

If signed by Brown, Senate Bill 1177 would prohibit targeted ads based on school information and creating student profiles when not used for education purposes. And it would require that educational tech data be kept secure.

Steinberg, D-Sacramento, called the bill "a reasonable but aggressive measure that makes clear that data collected by private companies needs to be used only to enhance and improve the education for young people."

A tandem bill by Assemblymember Joan Buchanan, D-Alamo, that was also approved by the Legislature requires that student data managed by outside companies remain the property of school districts and in their control. Some data-management contracts have awarded companies the right to use records as they please.

The legislation comes amid rapid growth in the educational software and digital content industry, estimated more than a year ago at $8 billion nationally. School districts outsource management of student records -- covering attendance, grades, discipline, health, academic progress as well as parent and student contact information and sometimes even a child's physical location.

Teachers use programs to teach and track progress or control behavior. Both types of systems include individual accounts brimming with information on each student, the type of data enticing to those wishing to sell to or prey on children.

Needed guidance

Federal law already prohibits districts from releasing student information but doesn't limit the firms that contract to manage data.

"That information is never supposed to leave the district, but, by definition of the cloud infrastructure, it's already left the district's hands," said Steven Liao, a Danville parent who has been alarmed about gaps in schools' cybersecurity. Classroom technology, he said, is proliferating more quickly than systems to manage it.

"Teachers are under tremendous pressure to implement web-based technology. Students learn to type in third grade, do Google Docs in fourth grade, blog in fifth grade," said Liao, a former information security auditor.

"It puts children's physical security at risk," he said. "It's irrelevant for the data to be encrypted if people have access to it."

The bill offers needed guidance for educators and protection for students, said Kelly Calhoun, chief technology officer of the Santa Clara County Office of Education. It will enable teachers, she said, "to use good instructional materials without worrying about what might happen to any data shared in the process.

Industry officials have vehemently denied that they use any student data for anything other than the intended educational purposes, even though studies have pointed out that educational technology contracts often fail to prohibit the sale of students' personal information.

Last spring, Google admitted to Education Week magazine that in its classroom applications it scanned the content of student emails for advertising purposes. Illustrating the sensitivity of the issue and the push to protect children online, tech companies did not register formal opposition to the Steinberg bill and declined to explain any concerns about it. In a statement, Mark Schneiderman of the Software & Information Industry Association said that current laws already safeguard student privacy.

"We appreciate both Senator Steinberg's leadership on this issue and his willingness to work with industry groups and other interested parties on SB1177," the statement said, adding that the group and its members will carry out the law, known as the Student Online Personal Information Protection Act.

Track performance

The bill is likely to force companies to more diligently encrypt data, although it's unclear how that will work in class. San Francisco-based ClassDojo, an application that helps manage class behavior, is encrypted -- but some schools block such encryption in order to monitor teacher-parent-student communication, company cofounder Sam Chaudhary said.

But Los Altos parent Tony Porterfield has found portions of ClassDojo not fully encrypted. He has lobbied schools, sports teams and companies to tighten privacy protections. And he calls the bill "a great start."

Unlike the finance industry, he said, for education technology "there are no standards and no real transparent metrics for a lay person to know if a site is secure or not."

Porterfield pointed to proliferating software that helps educators track how students perform and that collect names, achievement and behavior. In the case of behavioral management programs, "What if they aggregate that and start tracking kids?" he asked. "That's a huge concern."

Aden Fine, chief privacy officer for EdModo, said the San Mateo-based company "never had any concerns with the intent of this bill." The company was founded to link teachers and students securely online; last year it became fully encrypted.

Steyer of Common Sense Media said that "technology used wisely can transform learning, but students should never have to surrender their privacy at the schoolhouse door."

iFail: WHY JOHN DEASY’S RISKY iPAD GAMBIT CRASHED+BURNED AT LAUSD

By Hillel Aron | The Informer || LA Weekly | http://bit.ly/1A11jxW

• Flavio~ / Flickr

Wed, Aug 27, 2014 at 6:30 AM  ::  In a surprising reversal, L.A. Unified Superintendent John Deasy has abruptly halted the district's billion-dollar technology program, which aimed to put an iPad into the hands of every student and teacher by the end of, yes, this year.

It's a rare retreat for the headstrong superintendent intent on getting the tablets into classrooms as soon as humanly possible. But it comes after more than a year of negative news stories – everything from LAUSD students "hacking" devices to the incomplete iPAD-friendly software to an allegedly chummy bidding process in which Deasy gave Apple and Pearson, the software company, a leg up.

"We have an opportunity to put a halt on the current contract, write a new contract, address those issues that are suboptimal,"  Deasy tells us. "We’re a tiny way into it. We've given them out to 47 schools. There are 1,019 [schools] to go."

• Deasy: City Year / Flickr

Deasy's plan had gotten all sorts of bad press over its cost, over Apple's involvement and over the troubled initial roll-out to the schools. And during the weekend, the Los Angeles Times and KPCC published eyebrow-raising emails that were released to both news organizations in response to their public records requests.

The emails between Deasy, district officials, Apple and Pearson showed that Pearson, which sells the interactive software the kids are using on their tablets, was chummy with LAUSD's top dogs long before the district began officially soliciting bids.

The stories seemed to confirm the longtime rumor that Pearson and, to a lesser extent, Apple, were unfairly favored.

Critics say the specifications of the "request for proposals" – bureaucratic jargon for the wish-lists government agencies are required to publicly release, detailing how they plan to spend taxpayer money on a specific project – were tailor-made to help Apple and Pearson win their bids.

Deasy says he "didn’t write the bid specifications" and "was not allowed to see the bid specifications" created by the district bureaucracy. Deasy had recused himself from the process, in part because at the time he owned a bit of Apple stock.

He is dismissive of the notion that he shouldn't have been chatting up the two firms long before bidding, saying, "I meet with vendors all the time, and of course I should. If people want to be vendors, they want to discuss what [you want]."

The district started small — for LAUSD — when it awarded a pilot project to Apple, but that immediately set off questions raised by the losing bidders (as well as Deasy's critics, like the school employee unions) about why the district hadn't set up parallel pilot programs to test other devices and software simultaneously.

Deasy seemed intent on embracing just one type of device, even though older students — high schoolers in particular — clearly needed keyboards to write their reports and papers. IPads don't automatically include keyboards, and that lack of foresight forced LAUSD to spend a large extra chunk of money on Bluetooth keyboards, driving up the contract costs.

And there were other troubles. As Deasy himself tells us, "There were firewall issues. People have criticized the content. Fine. ... Now we'll pause and correct those problems."

But initially, Deasy was anxious to get the devices out to kids as quickly as possible.

A Facebook group called "Repairs Not iPads" responded by highlighting the fact that many schools are in desperate need of physical repairs (the page has over 5,000 "likes"). They and others pointed out that the iPad money was being taken from school construction and modernization bonds that many critics think should be used only for physical improvements.

Last year, Los Angeles magazine writer-at-large Ed Leibowitz, who'd authored a rather glowing profile of John Deasy, wrote a new piece criticizing Deasy's iPad program:

Unfortunately, repairing hazards like broken play structures and corroded gas lines, or replacing trailers that pock so many LAUSD schools with new classrooms, doesn’t carry the kind of cachet than iPads bring—or at least, brought 15 minutes ago, before the fast-paced digital economy came out with something even newer and exciting. 

In June, school district leaders began backing off of their "all-iPad" stance, allowing several LAUSD high schools to choose among six laptops instead of Apple's tablet. That was a tacit acknowledgment that one-size-fits-all was not going to work.

That same month, the board voted to reappoint Stuart Magruder, an outspoken critic of the iPad plan, to the school bond fiscal oversight committee.

Now, in the wake of the Deasy-Apple-Pearson emails, the district will open a new bidding process, soliciting offers from companies like Google and Microsoft for their tablet computers and laptops.

The schools that already have iPads and Pearson software will continue to use them – assuming they can overcome technical glitches.

The goal of this technology program was always one part practical, one part idealistic.

The practical part is to give children some practice in the months leading up to California's big switch in testing, when some students, this spring, will begin taking their standardized tests on computers, not on paper. Loads of students won't do well if they don't know their way around a computer.

The idealistic part is to narrow the very real digital divide that separates poor and working-class Los Angeles children from middle-class and rich kids.

"My responsibility is to lift kids out of poverty," says Deasy. "They have the right to technology."

A lingering question is how this will affect Deasy's already-tenuous relationship with the elected school board, which can fire him at any time. As Steve Lopez writes in today's L.A. Times:

It remains to be seen whether the superintendent, having lost a great deal of credibility, can survive the political fallout and learn enough from his blunders to lead the way more capably.

"I think that John Deasy lives by the sword and suffers by the sword of urgency," L.A. Unified board member Steve Zimmer said. "I wouldn't want him to not be urgent, and not be impatient, but sometimes there's a cost to that."

Investor Update: APPLE INC. ON WATCH OVER LAUSD ISSUES

by Ed Palmer| Financial Wired | http://bit.ly/1nQ647K

August 26, 2014  ::  by Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is on watch after Los Angeles schools Superintendent John Deasy says he is suspending a $1 billion iPad initiative with AAPL amid scrutiny over Deasy’s close ties with AAPL and Pearson Plc (PSO) and the integrity of the bidding process.

An initial $30 million contract with Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and PSO was approved just over a year ago, according to the LA Times. That was expected to expand to about $500 million with the project rolling out over the next year or so. An additional $500 million investment was to be made for expansion of Internet and other infrastructure at schools.

Vergara: GOV. BROWN APPEALS RULING THAT STRUCK DOWN TEACHER JOB PROTECTIONS

By Howard Blume , LA Times | http://lat.ms/1nQ9uak

California's governor takes opposing view from reelection opponent in lawsuit over teacher protections

An appeals court will now decide such issues as whether tenure laws should be declared unconstitutional

Gov. Jerry Brown addresses the American Federation of Teachers convention in June in Los Angeles. (Damian Dovarganes, AP)

Aug 30, 2014  ::  The state’s two largest teacher unions are expected to follow suit in the case of Vergara vs. California. A tentative ruling, announced in June, became final this week, starting a 60-day window for an appeal.

“We do not fault doctors when the emergency room is full.„ 

- Tom Torlakson, superintendent of public instruction

The decision, by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf M. Treu, threw out the state’s tenure process for gradeschool teachers. It also stripped instructors of rules that made dismissing them more difficult and expensive than firing other state employees. And he eliminated regulations that made seniority the primary factor in deciding which teachers to lay off.

Treu accepted the argument of plaintiffs that these rules resulted in a lower-quality teacher work force, damaging the education of students, especially low-income or minority students.

The outcome of the trial “is a victory not only for our nine plaintiffs, but also for students, parents, and teachers across California,” said attorney Theodore J. Boutrous, who represented the students who brought the case.

Treu didn’t ban these job protections in all forms, but absent a successful appeal, his ruling would leave teachers without them pending action in the Legislature.

One time defendant, now star witness for the plaintiffs John E. Deasy>>

The litigation was pursued under the banner of Students Matter, a Silicon Valley group founded by tech entrepreneur Dave Welch and also supported by other philanthropists active in education policy.

The group had urged the governor to let the ruling stand and had taken encouragement from Brown’s silence on the issue. Brown was under pressure to appeal from teacher unions, who are among his biggest political backers.

The notice of appeal cited several issues, including that “changes of this magnitude, as a matter of law and policy, require appellate review.”

<< Plaintiff Beatriz Vergara

The notice also faulted the trial judge, saying that he had “declined to provide a detailed statement of the factual and legal bases for [his] ruling.”

The appeal was submitted by state Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris.

Any position the governor took could have political impact as he runs for reelection, but he didn’t have the option of waiting until after Election Day.

In Superior Court, the state defended the challenged laws, assisted by lawyers representing teacher unions. They argued that limiting the rights of teachers would be bad for students as well as their members.

“This ruling says that education reform should be driven by how we fire teachers,” said Joshua Pechthalt, president of the California Federation of Teachers.  “We think that completely misses the boat about what needs to happen in school,” he said, citing such issues as the proper training, mentoring and evalution of teachers and funding for lower class sizes.

Earlier Friday, an intent to appeal was announced by state Supt. of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson, a Democrat and teachers union ally who also is running for reelection.

“We do not fault doctors when the emergency room is full,” Torlakson said in a release. “We do not criticize the firefighter whose supply of water runs dry. Yet while we crowd our classrooms and fail to properly equip them with adequate resources, those who filed and support this case shamelessly seek to blame teachers who step forward every day to make a difference for our children.”

Torlakson also noted that a bill somewhat streamlining the teacher dismissal process has become law since the Vergara filing.

His opponent, Democrat Marshall Tuck, applauded the Vergara ruling.

Torlakson “stands with his Sacramento funders and not with students,” Tuck said in a release. “Never has it been more clear that it is time for change in California than when the only [statewide] elected official dedicated to education will not side with kids -- even after an independent judge found that the status quo ‘shocks the conscience.'”

Brown’s challenger, Republican Neel Kashkari, also strongly supports the Vergara ruling.

In the wake of the Vergara case, legal challenges to teacher job protections have launched in other states.