Joe Williams' Blog
CAP's Cindy Brown On NCLB
Cindy Brown, the director of education policy at the Center for American Progress, put this statement out today:
The Center for American Progress joins the Commission on NCLB in calling for Congress to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, now known as the No Child Left Behind Act. NCLB took important steps to hold educators and institutions accountable for ensuring all students learn to high levels. Its reporting requirements for every school on how subgroups of children—particularly children from low-income families, minority groups, and those with disabilities or learning English--compare to their more advantaged peers have been a wake-up call to the nation about the shortcomings of our public education system.
Though substantially under funded, NCLB has provided a down payment on needed improvements in public education. Achievement gaps are closing, but more intensive interventions are needed. It's important for Congress to make mid-course corrections in NCLB's accountability structure without weakening its principles of ensuring steady and significant progress toward academic proficiency for all students.
In addition, Congress needs to add new, innovative financial incentives to NCLB to quicken the pace of reform. We at the Center for American Progress are particularly supportive of proposals to strengthen the quality of teaching in high poverty schools through the TEACH Act provisions introduced by Senator Kennedy (D-MA) and Congressman Miller (D-CA), a federal demonstration program to expand learning time in high poverty schools through a bill introduced by Congressman Payne (D-NJ), and the Graduation Promise Act, introduced in the House by Congressman Hinojosa (D-TX) and Senators Bingaman (D-NM, Burr (R-NC) and Kennedy (D-MA) in the Senate, to target schools with high dropout rates.
If we don't reauthorize the law now, we postpone the opportunity to address such important issues as low high school graduation rates and additional help for struggling schools. These changes are needed now and Congress must act this year.
Posted by Joe Williams on January 31, 2008 12:09 PM
Hoeing Wheat In North Dakota?
Alexander Russo had this yesterday, but it is still worth noting, even if he accuses me of being late to the scene of the crime. A few weeks ago we noted that Republican legislators in Minnesota were gearing up to burp up a case of Schmidt on the federal NCLB law. We used a tired and overused Garrison Keillor quote about all the kids being above average, etc. But it seems Keillor, an old Democrat, actually has some strong feelings on the matter but he's aiming his complaints at righteous Dems.
Writing on Salon.com, Keillor opened up a can of whoop-rump on Democrats who instinctively oppose education ideas merely because they are associated in some quarters with Republicans.
It includes these gems:
Continue reading "Hoeing Wheat In North Dakota?"....
Posted by Joe Williams on January 31, 2008 9:46 AM
January 29, 2008
Merrick Update In NYC
On the heels of this post on NYSUT's charter school name game, the UFT's Jonathan Gyurko provides an update on the organizing effort at Merrick Academy Charter School on EdWize. Lots of folks have been watching this one closely.
Posted by Joe Williams on January 29, 2008 2:40 PM
'Big Labor' Takes On... 'Big Charter???'
It has often been painful to watch (even for my union friends who like charter schools) the cigar-chomping New York State teachers union bosses try to navigate the whole charter school issue for the last few years.
At their core, the bosses hate the idea of charter schools upsetting any of the power-arrangements they worked so hard to create in the traditional system. Yet, because they are popular and because the best charters get a lot of attention and - more recently - because teachers from their own local in NYC sought professional empowerment by starting their own charter schools, they have had to pretend that it isn't really charter schools they hate, but, uh, bad charter schools.
But everyone knows they are full of crap on that point. They hate these schools. We all watched as they delighted in a recent audit that showed that teachers at KIPP took some end of the year vacations to someplace tropical. Instead of asking why more teachers in the state aren't treated to that kind of reward for doing an extremely tough job year-in and year-out, NYSUT jumped up and down and demanded that control of these popular and successful schools be turned over to auditors that the union bosses could strong-arm behind the scenes.
It's been all the more awkward, because at the same time they want to kick the bejesus out of the people who work in charter schools, they sometimes pretend that they are interested in someday organizing the same schools. It's like the bosses want to love them to death or something.
But the latest New York Teacher magazine shows they have finally discovered the way to have their cake and eat it too. Paging George Lakoff! The NYSUT bosses have figured out if they word it properly, they can be player-haters (playah-haytah's for our friends in the South Bronx) and players at the same time!
Check out this uproariously funny piece where they avoid slamming charters but instead slam "charter management" and "charter corporate"!!! Totally freaking brilliant. I love it. And probably even effective.
Posted by Joe Williams on January 29, 2008 9:56 AM
January 24, 2008
Lift The Gag Order On University Presidents
UV Law prof James Ryan raised a damned good question on the back-page commentary in the latest Education Week: Where in God's name are the nation's university presidents when it comes time to talk about the nation's K-12 education disaster?
His entry point is the recent news that Harvard, Princeton, and UVA are in the process of trying to actively recruit more low-income students to their incoming freshman classes. Writes Ryan:
The effort by these three institutions to recruit more poor students is laudable, but it’s also like treating the symptom rather than the disease. The real problem is not that there are bus loads of qualified poor students every year who just decide to give Harvard a pass. It’s that there are far too few poor students who are even remotely prepared to attend Harvard. Stepping up the recruitment of poor students might create a more diverse campus and therefore benefit colleges and universities, as well as the lucky few poor students who attend them. But why don’t college presidents also talk publicly about the fact that so few poor students seem prepared to attend college, let alone an elite university? Better still, why not talk about what to do about that fact?
Can you imagine what would happen if the pipes and collars in university administration buildings all across the country started talking about how much time (and resources) are devoted to teaching even our best and brightest students remedial skills like how to write a term paper? If they came out and said, gee we'd love to admit more low-income minority students but by the time we get them from out K-12 system, they are utterly unprepared for anything resembling academic rigor?
Posted by Joe Williams on January 24, 2008 12:14 PM
January 23, 2008
Bailing Out FairTest (Updated)
A few years ago I worked on a report for Education Sector on the relationships between the National Education Association and a constellation of activist, political, civil rights and other interest groups. These relationships (traced through money doled out from the union to these nonprofits) were not new and represented the kind of effective coalition building that had helped make the NEA such a political powerhouse. (And, as noted in the report, prominent right-wing groups have funded similar groups around the country for years to help advance a conservative agenda.)
The dots I was attempting to connect in the report suggested that a lot of the anti-NCLB noise that was appearing in the media and at public hearings could all be traced back, financially, to one common denomenator (the NEA), which also happened to be the organization most wildly opposed to the accountability measures contained in NCLB.
No scandal, no illegalities - just a rather obvious connection which nonetheless seemed to have been lost to reporters and policymakers who were listening to the growing debate.
At the time, one of the reporters who was writing about the report pointed out to me that while the "echo chamber" argument was strong, it would have been even stronger had there been some connection to a group like FairTest, which has been extremely effective across the country in publicly criticizing testing of students. FairTest has been an important part of attempts to bring people into the anti-NCLB fold by making tests the enemy, rather than the achievement gap that exists in this country.
I had gone through piles and piles of documents and saw no connection whatsoever between FairTest and the NEA. Until yesterday.
Continue reading "Bailing Out FairTest (Updated)"....
Posted by Joe Williams on January 23, 2008 6:54 AM
January 22, 2008
Let's Make A (Charter) Deal?
Andy Rotherham (who is a DFER board member) has a fun think piece for policy wonks in the latest from Education Sector: Fair Trade: Five Deals to Expand and Improve Charter Schooling.
His starting point assumes that not much happens in ed policy without some horse-trading, and he offers a few deals that he argues will both expand and improve public charter schools in states brave enough to accept his challenge/advice:
Continue reading "Let's Make A (Charter) Deal?"....
Posted by Joe Williams on January 22, 2008 11:52 AM
