Ted Allen, Author at The Center for Education Reform

Out With the Old, In With the New: Education Reform Cannot Be Compromised

January 2, 2013 By Ted Allen

by Jeanne Allen
Huffington Post
January 2, 2013

Among many traditions as we close one year and begin a new one are lists of what is “in” and “out.” At the end of 2012, compromise was definitely “in.” And no wonder. Staring over the precipice of a fiscal cliff, the American people couldn’t understand why politicians can’t seem to agree on things. Compromise, it is thought, is an unadulterated good.

I don’t want to be the skunk at the national compromising garden party, but as we look back at 2012 and ahead to 2013, when it comes to education reform we should think twice about “compromise” being the watchword. Why? Because when education reformers negotiate with unions or others opposed to fundamental changes in K-12 education, often the only thing compromised is children’s education. Conversely, some of the best, most sustainable results come from those who are called “uncompromising.” A litany of examples demonstrates that intransigence in education reform isn’t a bad thing.

Education reformers were heartbroken in November when Indiana’s incumbent Tony Bennett lost his race for Superintendent of Public Instruction. But despite the unions’ successful effort to install a reform opponent, Indiana is likely to remain, as many have termed it, the “reformiest” state in the nation. That’s because Governor Mitch Daniels, Tony Bennett and many other reformers (all of whom were once called “uncompromising”) laid the legal groundwork to allow choice and accountability to flourish in Indiana.

There are good and bad education reform laws. The bad ones — often “compromise solutions” — make people feel good but do little to enhance choice or accountability in a state. Years ago, Indiana codified good measures into law, so despite Tony Bennett’s loss, schoolchildren will continue to benefit. To see what’s ahead, Indianans can look to Florida, which enacted holistic reforms in the late 1990s that yielded choice, accountability, funds for charters and a system for grading schools. These measures are now bearing fruit. Among many other positive results, recent studies show that Florida schoolchildren are reading better than students in other states, and other nations.

The education reform movement, however, will continue to lose ground if state legislatures keep enacting weak, watered down legislation. To wit: Pennsylvania, where everyone worshipped at the altar of compromise during their two year battle over school choice. What survived was almost worse than nothing — an extremely modest tax-credit funded scholarship program for a limited number of kids in failing schools that requires painstaking effort to raise money, rather than permit public funds to follow kids equitably to schools that fit them best.

Tennessee lawmakers passed legislation two years ago to expand the state’s charter program, but left control in the hands of school districts, which are notoriously anti-competition. Tennessee will eventually get what it needs — an expansion of groups authorized to approve charters — but for two years students have languished in bad schools while districts throw obstacles in the way of more school choices.

In New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie called his 2012 teacher evaluation bill “historic,” and, while a step in the right direction, it was hardly groundbreaking. It supposedly “requires” school districts to tie evaluations to performance, but nothing in the law forces them to do so. Some have and will indeed use the law to move out ineffective teachers, but most won’t have the stomach. That doesn’t stop New Jersey lawmakers from patting themselves on the back, claiming to have “done” teacher quality legislation.

Another example: North Carolina had struggled under a mediocre charter law, which limited numbers and left power in the hands of an unfriendly state board. Legislators finally lifted the cap and basked in the praise, but prospective charters still must negotiate a cumbersome approval process and are often dismissed arbitrarily. As to fixing the problem, one lawmaker told me it was too hard because of “all we went through already.” That’s what you get with “compromise” legislation — lawmakers exhaust political will on a bad result. Fortunately for North Carolinians, 2013 will usher in a new crop of lawmakers who believe in expanded parental choice and options for kids. But despite the will, it will be a struggle with the powerful education establishment, the Blob.

The good news, as we look ahead to a new year, is that some of these states and their neighbors — all in the south — appear poised to show the rest of the nation the positive changes that can result from good legislation. In addition to North Carolina and Tennessee making necessary adjustments to their laws, lawmakers in Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma plan to expand substantive choices offered to students and parents, as will elected officials in Mississippi and Alabama, who may also address fixing the teacher quality problem that plagues their states.

It won’t be easy. Teachers unions and their school district allies oppose fundamental education reforms. They have co-opted the language of reform, leading many observers to wrongly declare that the unions are coming along. But their definition of reform and compromise consists of supporting only toothless, ineffective measures that leave all the power in the hands of the traditional system’s adults. Lawmakers must be clear that when the status quo embraces reform measures, it is reform in name only. The two exemplars that did not compromise — Florida and Indiana — demonstrate that enacting substantive, structural education reform laws yields dramatic results.

When it comes to the gritty, detailed business of writing and enacting education reform laws, we must remember what is on the table when we sit down to negotiate — the ability of all children to get a good education, regardless of their race, income or zip code.

On that we should not compromise.

Filed Under: Opinions

Despite Success, Charters Still Face Inequity

January 2, 2013 By Ted Allen

January 2, 2013

Charters still suffer inequity despite great success, a point reinforced in a recent piece by Peter Roff.

Chester, Pennsylvania, has more than 3,000 students in charter schools, with a better success rate than local public schools. As Roff puts it:

Creating what it calls a “Private, Public School” culture, the Chester charter school offers a 10-1 student-teacher ratio as well as academic programs created in partnership with nearby colleges and universities, which the regular public schools, by contrast, simply cannot match.

…despite 50 percent of the school’s funding being withheld, forcing drastic cuts in student services, its students “outperformed the rest of the Chester Upland School District in the Pennsylvania System of School Assessments in reading and math by 20 percent.”

This supports what CER found in our Annual Survey of America’s Charter Schools and other research on charters and performance:

· Inequity in funding is not exclusive to PA. On average nationally charters receive about 30% less per pupil than their traditional public school counterparts.

· Charters do more with less funding and serve predominantly disadvantaged students.

· Charters in high demand because, as Mr. Roff points out, they typically operate very differently than the traditional system.

But even with those spectacular results (or, perhaps – perversely – because of them) freedom and flexibility is under attack with calls for more regulation and less autonomy.

Especially, though not only, in Pennsylvania.

Filed Under: Commentary, Edspresso

New Year Kicks Off Voucher Expansion

January 2, 2013 By Ted Allen

“Expansion of state’s school-voucher system takes effect today”
by Anne Ryman
The Republic”
January 1, 2013

One out of every five Arizona students in public schools becomes eligible today to apply for public money to attend private schools this fall under an expansion of a controversial voucher-type program.

The program, Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, allows parents to receive a debit card from the state preloaded with money to pay for educational expenses, such as private-school tuition, with state funds.

A recent change in state law expands the program to include children at the state’s lowest-performing public schools.

If schools receive a D or F letter grade from the state, their students can apply for the scholarships, estimated to be worth an average of $3,000 to $3,500 for the 2013-14 school year.

Also eligible are children of active-duty military and children in foster care who have been adopted or are being adopted. The original law provided scholarships only for disabled students.

The additions are likely to be popular with parents who are looking for other options for educating their children. But public-education groups are already suing the state over the scholarships. They contend the program is bad public policy because it takes money from public schools and gives it to private schools that don’t have the same state-mandated academic requirements.

State and school officials say that it’s hard to say how many families may apply for the scholarships and that any estimates are guesses.

The state has about 1million students in public schools. Until now, only about 125,000 students with special-education needs had been eligible for the scholarships; 302 use them this school year, or less than 1 percent of eligible students.

State officials say about 90,000 students in Arizona attend schools that received D or F letter grades and could be eligible for a scholarship. About 14 percent of schools, or 272, received D’s or F’s. Letter grades are based mainly on how much growth a school’s students showed on a state-mandated test in math, reading and writing.

The idea behind offering scholarships to children at poorly performing schools is to provide parents with more options if they want to move their children to better schools.

The additions to the Arizona law boost eligibility to more than 200,000 students this fall. State officials predict that fewer than 1,000 will apply, or as many as 6 percent of eligible students, which would be roughly 12,000.

“I would not predict a mass exodus (from public schools),” said John Huppenthal, Arizona’s superintendent of public instruction. But he added that as word-of-mouth spreads, “I think it will start picking up pretty quickly.”

Huppenthal, a former Republican state legislator, is a proponent of school choice and oversees the Arizona Department of Education, the agency that administers the scholarships under state law.

Private-school groups plan to publicize the program through workshops this spring.

“I think there will be tremendous interest, but the dollar value is pretty low, so that will be the challenge,” said Sydney Hay, executive director of Arizona’s Council for American Private Education, a group that advocates for private schools. Tuition at some private schools can run more than $10,000 a year.

Arizona’s scholarship program is a type of voucher because parents can withdraw their children from public schools and apply that public money toward private schools. The program also allows parents to spend money on educational expenses besides private school. They can purchase tutoring, curricula, online classes and even pay for tuition at the state’s public colleges.

Aaron and Heather Totman of Glendale are using scholarship money this year for their 12-year-old son, Ellis, who has autism. Their son previously enrolled at a public school. But the family felt he needed a smaller classroom and more individual services.

“I was getting reports about my son getting into tiffs with other students and being made fun of,” Aaron said. “As a parent, that just breaks your heart. I don’t want to deal with that. I want a place where my son can thrive.”

The family put the scholarship money toward a private school for students with special needs.

Students with special-education needs receive more state money on average than those who don’t require special services. Even so, the scholarship doesn’t cover all the costs. The Totmans still have to pay $5,000 of their own money toward the school’s $22,000 yearly tuition.

Then, there is the commute to the Scottsdale school to consider. The Totmans must provide their own transportation. From Glendale, it’s a 52-mile round trip. Carpooling with other families helps.

Despite the expense, the personal attention their son receives is worth it, the Trotmans believe. “He’s in a much better place,” Aaron said.

School choice

Besides Arizona, 11 other states and the District of Columbia have voucher programs. Many of them started in the past decade. The idea, though, has been around more than 100 years, since Maine and Vermont began allowing students in rural areas without public schools nearby to use state money to attend private schools.

Wisconsin started the country’s first modern school-voucher program in 1990 for low-income families in the Milwaukee Public Schools. A few years ago, the state removed the cap on the number of families who could enroll. Vouchers also were expanded to the nearby city of Racine.

Indiana launched the nation’s first statewide voucher program in 2011 for low-income students. This school year, 9,324 students enrolled, more than double the first year.

Although voucher programs vary by state, there are some common themes. States usually limit vouchers to specific groups such as students with disabilities or from low-income families. A few states allow vouchers for students in schools labeled as failing. Families usually have to try public schools first to get vouchers to pay for private school.

Arizona’s voucher program is part of a larger school-choice movement that has been under way since the 1990s. Championed by Republicans, the goals of the movement are to give parents more options and increase academic achievement.

The 1990s saw the introduction of charter schools, which are public schools that are independently run. That same decade, the state passed an open-enrollment law, allowing students to apply for admission to any public school as long as space is available.

The school-choice movement has its critics, including some school-district officials who oppose voucher-type programs because public money is going to the private sector.

Supporters of vouchers contend that allowing more choice increases competition among schools. This leads to better student achievement and lower education costs, they say.

The Goldwater Institute, a conservative watchdog group, has been a big supporter of Arizona’s program. Jonathan Butcher, the institute’s education director, said the scholarships give parents more options for educating their children. Some students do very well in their neighborhood public school, he said. Others don’t.

“I feel like we’ve expected public schools to be all things to all people, and frankly, that’s not really fair to public schools. Let public schools focus on what they do well,” he said.

Criticism

Vouchers are unpopular, though, with many public-school officials. In Arizona, public-education groups have sued the state, saying the scholarship program violates the state Constitution because public money is flowing to private schools.

Last year, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge ruled that the scholarships did not violate the law because the money is first going to parents, who can decide where to spend the funds. The ruling has been appealed.

Critics, including Tim Ogle, executive director of the Arizona School Boards Association, say the program has no accountability for educational quality. For example, he said, unlike students in public schools, students in private schools aren’t required to take state tests that measure their achievement.

Private schools can set special admission requirements, he said, unlike public schools. So, while the school-choice movement is supposed to be about parents getting more choices, the schools are really the ones choosing the students, he said.

“You have created an elitist environment using taxpayer money,” he said.

Public-school officials also worry that allowing vouchers for specific groups of students is the first step in eventually letting everyone use them. This could create an unpredictable financial nightmare for school districts.

Ogle said that although school-district officials are generally confident in the education their schools provide, there is concern about the possible budget impact if children leave for private schools. State school funding is based on student-enrollment numbers.

Supporters of the program predict the numbers leaving public schools will be modest, at least in the first year.

“It’s going to take some time for parents to get used to the idea,” said Butcher, of the Goldwater Institute. “Parents have been used to sending their child to school down the street. It’s a real shift for a parents to think, ‘Wow, we don’t have to send the child to the school down the street if we don’t want to.’”

Filed Under: Breaking News

Your Gift of Education and Choice Makes a Difference

December 28, 2012 By Ted Allen

Dear Friend,

Thank you for your generous support of CER’s nearly two decades of real education reform work. Working together, you have made a difference by putting choice back into thousands of parents’ hands this year.

We truly can’t do all this without you.

Together, with your help, CER influenced and enabled more laws and reform policies this year so schools have freedom to meet student needs and so equal money follows students – ultimately, giving parents more options and providing students with the quality education that they deserve. If you have already made your year-end gift – thank you. If not, there’s still time to send a gift now.

Please Remember CER in Your Year-End Giving

You can make your secure donation today by clicking the Donate Now button below, sending a check to The Center for Education Reform, 910 Seventeenth Street, NW, 11th Floor, Washington, DC 20006, or by calling 800-521-2118.

Your generous year-end support will help us continue to make sure equal money follows students and parents continue to have the power of choice in their hands.

Best regards,
Jeanne Allen
President

P.S. Please make your year-end, tax-deductible gift by December 31, 2012 so we can keep education choices for parents and students at the forefront of our education reform work in 2013 – thank you!

Filed Under: You Can Make a Difference

Maryland Charter Opening Finally Near

December 27, 2012 By Ted Allen

“‘Classical’ charter school closer to reality”
by Margarita Raycheva
Maryland Gazette
December 27, 2012

It took one rejection by the school board, one unexpected delay and almost three years of planning and advocacy, but the Frederick Classical Charter School is finally starting to take shape.

Energized by last month’s appointment of their first principal, the school’s founders are finally ready to recruit teachers, move forward with the construction of their building and gear up to hold their first student-selection lottery in March.

If everything goes as planned, the school — which will be the first in Frederick County to teach a “classical” curriculum — should be ready to welcome its first 280 students in kindergarten through sixth grade in the fall, according to Suzanne Middleton, a parent and community outreach director at the school.
The Frederick Classical Charter School borrows ideas from the classical education movement by using the Socratic method, in which the teacher raises questions for students to discuss, keeping up a disciplined class discussion.

Students will be taught grammar, logic and rhetoric in different stages of a child’s development. In kindergarten to fourth grade, they will learn grammar, not just in terms of linguistics but the fundamental knowledge and skills of all subjects. In grades five through eight, students focus on logic, using reasoning to understand previous learning and acquire more knowledge.

Initially, the charter school was slated to open in the fall of 2011, and last year founders received 430 applications for 280 available slots. Middleton expects to get at least as many when the school holds its student selection lottery this year.

Although charter schools are a part of the public school system, they are typically run by parents and receive taxpayer funding.

In Maryland, charter schools are required to hold an admissions lottery to ensure that every student has an equal chance of getting in. Charter schools are allowed to reserve a small number of seats for the children of founders.

The date for the lottery has not yet been set, but organizers expect to know soon when local families can sign up to participate in the process, Middleton said.

“It feels more real than ever,” she said.

The Frederick Classical Charter School will be run by Frederick Classical Charter School Inc., a nonprofit organization created by a group of local parents who came together in 2009 because of shared concerns with the direction and focus of Frederick County Public Schools.

The group’s leaders questioned why the school system does not teach history chronologically and were the first to fight the use of TERC math, a disputed curriculum that takes the emphasis away from standard algorithms and encourages students to use a variety of methods to reach a solution.

By the time county schools decided to drop the controversial curriculum, the group had started plans for a charter school that would have a traditional, fact-oriented approach to math.

The Frederick Classical Charter School ultimately aims to educate 360 students in kindergarten through eighth grade.

It will teach Spanish classes, use Latin to explain the origins of the English language and, unlike public schools, teach reading based on phonics, in which students learn to “sound out” letters and connect them into words.

The school would also teach history chronologically and use it as the basis for teaching other subjects. For example, students will learn biology while they study ancient history, astronomy and science while learning about the Middle Ages, chemistry while studying the Renaissance and physics while learning modern history.

When the school opens, it will be the third charter school in Frederick County, which is also the home to the Monocacy Valley Montessori Public Charter School in Frederick — the first charter school in Maryland. The county’s second charter school, the Carroll Creek Montessori Charter School, opened in Frederick this fall.

A rocky road

Although plans for the Frederick Classical Charter school have been in the works since 2009, the school founders ran into one setback after another as they worked to get school board approval and set up a building.

In November 2010, the Frederick County Board of Education denied the charter school application based on concerns with the school’s curriculum and proposed building, which at the time was based in an industrial zoning area.

But just a month later, a newly elected school board member majority reversed the decision of their predecessors and gave the school conditional approval, based on finding a new building.

Charter advocates then tried to partner with the Frederick Alliance for Youth, a group dedicated to improving conditions for youth in the west side of Frederick and developed plans to lease a 45,000-square-foot building that the group was supposed to build on the south side of U.S. 40, off Hillcrest Drive.

That agreement fell through because the alliance could not get money for the building, leaving advocates for the Frederick Classical Charter scrambling to find a new space.

In November 2011, the school board approved a new building plan that aimed to locate the school at 8420 Gas House Pike in Frederick. But in March, after advocates asked again to change their building plans, the board decided to delay the school opening for another year, until the fall of 2013.

After years of those struggles, advocates now say they are making progress toward that goal and finally feel confident that the school will become a reality.

The group now has an agreement with St. John’s Properties to construct a 30,000 square feet building at 8445 Progress Drive in Frederick, Middleton said. A small part of the building is already completed, and the company is set to start construction of the rest of the building in February, she said.

Headmaster hired

The group also reached a major milestone this year, when the school board on Nov. 14 approved the appointment of Jacqueline Piro as principal for the school, where she will be known as the headmaster.

A former chairwoman of the history department at Governor Thomas Johnson High School, Piro has experience with both charter schools and classical curriculum, Middleton said.

Among other teaching positions, Piro has worked at the Academy of Detroit, an inner city charter school in Detroit, Mich., and at a private classical elementary school in Germantown.

“She has taught at every level in the gamut,” Middleton said. “She is very qualified and very energetic.”

Piro, who was one of 12 educators who applied for the position, impressed both charter school founders and school system officials who had to approve her appointment with her credentials and experience, according to Middleton.

Since her appointment, Piro was able to meet all of the school founders and their families and is ready to start the process of building the new school, from selecting teachers to creating a class schedule and making sure that it has the needed equipment to serve its future students.

Piro said she became interested in the Frederick Classical Charter School because of her own experiences with classical education.

“I knew that the families of our growing community needed an educational choice such as this,” said Piro, who lives in Middletown with her 4-year-old son, Max.

“Of course, I was motivated by my own desire to have this choice for my son’s education.”

Although starting a school is a daunting task, Piro said she is not intimidated and plans to focus her efforts on selecting the best possible teachers for the school and creating positive relationships with parents in the community.

Over the next few months, she will also work on developing the school’s handbook, creating her schedule and ensuring that she has all the instruction materials necessary for the success of students, Piro wrote in an email.

The jobs for teachers at the school, which include 14 classroom positions, have already been announced internally, and the school system will give preference to any current teachers who are interested, according to Middleton.

Once internal candidates are selected, the school system will post the remaining positions to external candidates, she said.

“A lot of young teachers have either studied the classical approach or are excited about it,” she said.

Under current plans, the school founders plan to open with 280 students in kindergarten through the sixth grade. The school hopes to add seventh grade students next year and eighth grade the year after, Middleton said.

In the meantime, Middleton said she is confident about the future of the school now that Piro has met the new school community and is starting to generate support for the project.

“Her appointment has given us a way more favorable attention,” Middleton said. “They (school officials) are really very supportive of her.”

Filed Under: Breaking News

A Gift from CER — Redeem by Dec. 31

December 21, 2012 By Ted Allen

Attention all state and local education reform groups! Get in the Holiday spirit with a gift worth approximately $15,000 from the Center for Education Reform!

Want free access to the most complete news coverage on issues affecting your organization, regularly throughout the day AND on your website? Now you can have your own Media Bullpen — free. Keep reading…

One of the greatest single influencers of community opinion, legislative action, and public policy is news coverage and editorial analyses. That is especially true in the area of education policy.

Be it academic standards, student performance, teacher pay, funding, enrollment, testing or any of the dozens of other issues that make up education policy, the media, by and large, shape the debate. If you work in the education policy arena or are affected by education policy decisions, you can’t afford to be indifferent to, or unaware of how the media are looking at and reporting on education issues.

But how can you effectively monitor and improve an information environment as pervasive and vast as that of the news media?…

…By bringing The Media Bullpen to your organization! The only aggregator – and analyst – of education news in the country.

CER’s Media Bullpen is the largest aggregator of education news in the country. Each day, the Bullpen’s unique technology, which the Center spent considerable time and money developing, downloads all the education reform related media from throughout the nation and stories in the “Pundit” database in the backend. The news is available by source, state, issue title and more.

Each day, Bullpen editors look at how key education issues are being covered and provide the insight and analysis needed to help subscribers better understand those issues. Working in a virtual newsroom they monitor the dozens of stories and commentaries on education that appear day-in and day-out across the country and analyze them for accuracy, fairness, objectivity, context, and use of credible data – separating fact from fiction and opinion from analysis. They also identify omissions or other gaps in reporting.

The editors then post their findings on the Bullpen site, explaining the hows and whys of who got their stories right, who got them wrong, and who struck out completely. Using the vernacular of baseball, stories are graded as strikeouts, pop-ups, singles, doubles, triples or homeruns. The Media Bullpen also calculates on-going statistics from its analyses, maintaining “batting averages” for various categories and an “All-Time Batting Average” for media reliability.

Bullpen posts are sorted into national, regional, state, and local categories. The Bullpen has a database of thousands of stories, upon which readers can comment, email comments directly to reporters and, create their own personalized Bullpen news feed which alerts them when articles are waiting

Thanks to the technologists behind the Bullpen, we now can offer organizations a tailor-made feed on any issue or area they choose. That feed, once developed, can be emailed to a large or limited group of people at regularly scheduled intervals AND can also be made into an actual rolling feed on their website.

Imagine no longer needing to use people or resources to do Google, Cision or other searches for news each day? The Bullpen reduces the amount of time people must spend looking for pertinent media and frees those people or resources up to do more substantive work.

Having a Bullpen feed gives you access to ALL media coverage of education in your selected issue or state (or both!). Imagine not having to “clip” articles, subscribe to costly services or wait to learn what’s out in the press from your colleagues.

Because anyone involved with, or concerned about, education policy in America uses the Bullpen, we know that having your own feed will give new constituents and citizens a reason to come to your website more often. Lawmakers, school administrators, community leaders, parents, teachers, policy analysts – even members of the media themselves – have found CER’s Media Bullpen an invaluable source of news, information and insight and they will find your organization’s Bullpen as valuable.

To make it possible for us to produce the feed for any organization does cost us money, and this new effort is fee-based to cover our costs of the technology, the alterations in the search and the management and maintenance. Thanks to the services of an MBA-Education Pioneer this year, we have developed a plan for making the Bullpen and all its assets available to state based groups, for an approximate cost of $9,000 – $15,000 a year, depending on how extensive the organization’s needs are.

However, CER is offering a special, one-time, one year “gift” during this season of giving. We are seeking bold, dedicated organizations that provide great services to reformers in their state or community and want to provide cutting edge media coverage and access to citizens and policymakers. Upon selecting our two first customers, the Center will produce and maintain for a full year a robust, tailor-made Bullpen that is distributed to your staff and board, and available on your website.

The offer is good until December 31 so you must act quickly. Here’s how:

• Go to www.mediabullpen.com and explore the site. Keep in mind that what you see is only a fraction of the news coverage that the Bullpen stores in the backend and that would be part of the news feed we produce.
• Write us at [email protected] and tell us what your existing media operations (if any) is like, how you currently get yours news and how your organization works to address reporters.
• Then, tell us how you think The Media Bullpen co-branded for your local purposes would advance our shared goals of helping the media get the issues right.

Note: Thanks to the generous support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, we will give priority to the applications of groups from our target states. You know who you are!

The Center’s leadership team will review all “applications” and make public a final decision by January 4, 2013. At that point, we will work with your team to develop your specifications and complete your own Bullpen feed by January 31st.

So get in the game, today! We look forward to hearing from you!

Filed Under: News & Analysis

Forecast for Blended Learning

December 20, 2012 By Ted Allen

As our society becomes increasingly more technological, the best in the education field are coming up with innovative ways of using technology to improve student learning. One of these is blended learning.

Blended learning experts Michael Horn and Heather Staker note in THE Journal Magazine how they predict blended learning programs will evolve in 2013, and even throw in an important new years wish at the end of the list.

Here are the 10 Predictions for Blended Learning in 2013:

1. More Rotation Models at the Elementary School Level

Station rotations have existed in elementary classrooms for decades, so incorporating an online station is a natural fit. Early proof-point schools, such as KIPP Empower and Rocketship Education, have run successful Rotation models for enough years now to offer helpful blueprints.

2. More Self-Blending at the High School Level

Millions of students already take at least one online course to supplement their traditional courses. Next year we expect to see even more self-blending as states implement policies to require online coursework (Alabama, Idaho, Florida, Michigan and Virginia) or to fund course-level choice (Florida, Utah, Louisiana and others).

3. More Flex-Model Prototypes

Transitioning from a traditional program to a Flex model involves significant restructuring of human resources and operations. Many districts and charter-school networks are starting to feel the need to at least get their feet wet. Expect to see many prototype schools emerge next year.

4. Growth in Enriched-Virtual Models Among Full-Time Virtual Schools

Many virtual schools appear to be finding that their models generate lackluster results among at-risk students. Expect them to take a page from the “no excuses” charter schools by integrating backward and doing more of what families used to do to help those students succeed. To do this, more full-time virtual schools will offer brick-and-mortar components to shore up results among that population.

5. Software with “Groupinator” Functionality

Scholastic’s Read 180 Program includes a “Groupinator” tool that recommends optimal small groups for differentiated instruction. Education Elements provides a similar solution with its Hybrid Learning Management System (HLMS). As blended learning grows next year, more software companies will translate student data into actionable intervention suggestions for teachers.

6. Tablets Gaining Disruptive Traction

The biggest drawback to replacing PCs with tablets has been that tablets are great at consumption but lousy at creation. But successful disruptive innovations always get better over time. Next year, chances are that even more classrooms will opt for the portability and relative affordability of tablets as the device of choice.

7. MOOCs Disrupting Advanced Placement Courses

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are becoming hugely popular at the higher education level (see Coursera, edX, and Udacity). Advanced middle and high school students are increasingly eyeing the chance to take physics from MIT or Shakespeare at Harvard. Next year this trend will accelerate.

8. Clashes Over Teacher Policies.

Debates are brewing over how best to ensure teacher quality in blended-learning environments. The top-down approach is to legislate dedicated dollars for professional development and more specific teacher evaluation systems. A more innovation-friendly approach is to increase flexibility at the local level for school leaders to use funds to train and compensate teachers according to individual circumstances. This debate will become a bigger deal in 2013 as more states note an increase in blended-learning schools.

9. Increased Emphasis on “Learning To Do”

As online learning takes over some of the job of helping students learn to know, the new buzz is over how blended environments can deliver the other half of the equation–learning to do, or the application of knowledge. The 20 grantees of Next Generation Learning Challenges awards stand out for their emphasis on hands-on learning experiences. Plan for growth in organizations like Educurious and Hackidemia that offer compelling maker curriculum.

10. More Cramming of Technology into the Existing Model

In many quarters we’re seeing schools buy technology for technology’s sake, and it ends up collecting dust in the corner or contributing little to student outcomes. Our New Year’s wish is for leaders to champion blended learning exclusively for the sake of students. Designing a student-centric system is the key to making next-generation learning designs enticing for the people at the heart of the issue–kids.

Filed Under: Online Learning

Louisiana Tenure Provisions Intact

December 18, 2012 By Ted Allen

“La. judge trims superintendent authority, leaves teacher tenure provisions intact”
by Mike Hasten
Alexandria Town Talk
December 18, 2012

A district judge today threw out part of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s legislation dealing with teacher tenure and school board authority.

Instead of ruling the entire act unconstitutional, as hoped by the Louisiana Federation of Teachers, Judge Michael Caldwell threw out only the portion dealing with school superintendents assuming duties that have been delegated to school boards.

The decision left intact the portion of the bill that federation President Steve Monoghan says ” guts tenure.”

Monaghan said he is “leaning toward” appealing the ruling but that will be a decision made by the union’s members.

Act 1 has language allowing parts of the law to be stricken if another part is ruled unconstitutional.

Attorney Jimmy Faircloth, a Pinevillle attorney representing the state, said he will consult with Superintendent of Education John C. White on whether to accept the ruling or appeal.

Earlier: Judge to rule today
BATON ROUGE — A Baton Rouge district judge is set to rule today on the constitutionality of a key Jindal administration education bill approved by the Louisiana Legislature this year.

The Louisiana Federation of Teachers says in a lawsuit that the legislation, now Act 1 of the 2012 legislative session, is “a hodgepodge” of bills consolidated into one, which violates the Louisiana Constitution provision that each bill “shall be confined to one object.”

Judge Michael Caldwell Monday delayed until 1:30 p.m. his decision on whether the new law is constitutional.

“I have gone back and forth on this case,” Caldwell said after reading filings by both sides and hearing arguments Monday on whether legislation making it harder to get teacher tenure and easier to lose it, stripping school board hiring and firing authority and giving it to school system superintendents, and six other changes in school law violates the single object provision.

“I still have not decided where I am right now,” the judge said.

LFT attorney Larry Samuels said the judge’s decision not to issue an immediate ruling “tells us this is a legitimate issue.” Caldwell deciding to wait a day before issuing a ruling “means this is a judge that considers things very carefully.”

Attorney Jimmy Faircloth, representing the Jindal administration and the state, said he was “not really surprised at all” by Caldwell’s decision. “I’m sure he’s being very careful.”

The LFT lawsuit says that at least portions of the law should be thrown out, if not the entire matter.

Samuels said in court, “These are such major ticket items they should have been stand-alone items.” The original goal was to strip teachers of tenure and “this was a calculated way to railroad it through, pure and simple.”

Jamming so many items into one bill “flies in the face of single object,” he said. “The constitution isn’t a set of suggestions. It says, in this case, ‘thou shall have a single object.'”

Faircloth acknowledged that there are several parts to the legislation he says all were related to teacher employment. “Some things are more related than others,” he said.

“The single object rule has not been offended in this instance,” Faircloth said.

He said legislators “knew exactly what they were voting on” and “there wasn’t one single amendment to strip out what a legislator didn’t think they should be voting on.”

Lawmakers opposed to the bill did argue that it had too many objects but in the face of what appeared to be certain approval in the fast-track that the bill was on, no amendments were offered to break it into separate bills.

But Samuels pointed out “the constitution doesn’t say legislators have to object” for something to be ruled unconstitutional.

LFT President Steve Monaghan said after the hearing “Legislators are asking themselves now ‘Why didn’t they?'” try to split the issues. “We know tremendous muscle was applied by the governor’s office”» A steamroll is a steamroll is a steamroll.”

The new law greatly changes the teacher tenure process, making it harder for teachers to earn tenure and easier to lose it. Failing to be rated “highly qualified” under a new teacher evaluation system makes a tenured teacher an “at-will employee,” meaning he can be fired, if a review panel agrees.

“It didn’t have to be like this,” Monaghan said. “We all could have worked together for a better evaluation system, if that was the aim. To attempt what they did, in the manner that they did it was a grievous insult to the process and we think an insult to the constitution.”

Besides the oral arguments, attorneys have presented to the court extensive written arguments on both sides of the issue.

Caldwell said he is taking all of the arguments into consideration in drafting his ruling.

Also included in the LFT complaint that the law includes more than one object are that the legislation changes the contractual relationship between local school boards and their superintendents; strips the authority to hire and fire teachers from school boards and gives it to superintendents; gives superintendents sole authority to determine layoff policies; creates a new section of law regarding how teacher salaries will be determined; and changes due process rights that teachers have under law.

Referring to the reaction from the governor’s office to District Judge Tim Kelley’s ruling last month that using the public school funding formula to fund Act 2, the governor’s voucher bill, was unconstitutional, Monaghan said the LFT would make no comments about the judge, regardless of how he rules.

Jindal’s office issued a statement that Kelley’s ruling was “wrong headed.”

Filed Under: Breaking News

Newswire: December 18, 2012

December 18, 2012 By Ted Allen

Vol. 14, No. 35

NEWTOWN. Angels, heroism, tragedy, pain, compassion, condolences, fear, love, regret, action. These are some of the words we feel, but there really are no words. Coping is about all we can expect and pray for, and to that end, we join those offering resources and ideas from the best. This is a time to put aside differences and politics. We offer grateful thanks to the President for representing all of us so well to the people of Newtown, and to the education groups who so quickly responded to provide support. That the superintendent and educators in the area are remaking to the best of their ability the walls and halls of the school those children have lost in their new environment today is brilliant and we are grateful for all those playing a role in helping our friends there to heal. God Bless them all.

FALSE PROPHETS. During this season of religious celebration, and given the enormity of the tragedies around us, it’s hard to fathom how some people and groups can be so small. What we accept at face value during the course of the “normal” year suddenly seems ridiculous. So whether it’s the “irrational fear” by the government over companies involved in education that AEI’s Rick Hess addresses in today’s Wall Street Journal, or the continued push back on groups wanting to start schools in league with such providers (whose profits have helped them invest and grow their products — just like our economy is supposed to do!), it’s hard to fathom how anyone would deny or obstruct efforts to give children the best America can offer simply because of a tax-status.

DISTRICTS ARE NON-PROFITS. And they can make big mistakes. “Georgia’s third largest school district, DeKalb County, was placed on probation Monday after a six-month-investigation into scores of complaints of mismanagement,” says the Atlanta Journal Constitution this morning. According to the Philadelphia School Partnership, “last week [Philly] Superintendent Hite proposed a bold facilities plan for the District aimed at stabilizing tenuous finances ….” Failing schools — dozens — will be closed. Clearly being non-profit wasn’t a guarantee of success in these two districts or schools nor in scores of non-profits nationwide. This publication is brought to you by a non-profit, but that’s no guarantee. What makes us accountable is our funders, our shareholders, our customers. That is the way it should work with all organizations, no matter how they are legally structured. Let’s get over it and move on to the more important things in life.

‘TIS THE SEASON?…Not if charitable orgs go over the fiscal cliff! Non-profits have to raise money to stay in business — donations which are usually tax-deductible. But that little incentive for people to give may be on the chopping block as the President’s proposal to cut out deductions for charitable contributions gets pushed in his negotiations with Congress on avoiding the fiscal cliff. Learn about why it’s critical to save the charitable deduction. The Philanthropy Roundtable is committed to the survival of private donations for institutions, which support those who need it the most. Read their extraordinary argument for why we must avoid throwing charities under the bus in the federal budget. And ponder how this difficult business of raising money even when there IS an incentive makes the non-profit business superior to being able to attract and grow investments in education.

MORNING SHOTS. Are you getting yours? Edspresso brings you into the heart of US reform efforts, up close and personal, every day. So be sure to get your cuppa ed-java every day, here.

AND THE GOOD NEWS…

• Nashville Mayor Karl Dean said this morning that charter schools are a large part of the solution to increasing student test scores.

• Florida last week tapped its fifth top educator in 18 months: former Indiana school chief, Tony Bennett.

• Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and area charter and private schools are gearing up to compete and collaborate at the same time. The new year ushers in the season when families choose where their kids will go to school in August. The competition can be fierce – but leaders of all types of schools have launched talks about working together to benefit students and teachers.

• Teachers working for the St. Charles Parish public school system will undergo reconfigured pay raise scales after the School Board passed a rule change last week.

For these and more news stories, EVERY DAY, get the Daily News Clips. But if commenting and engaging in the news every day is more your style, get in the game at the Media Bullpen.