Welcome to the February 1, 2016, edition of the HML Post.  A service to the members of the Horace Mann League of the USA.
  Upcoming Event:    The 94rd Annual Meeting of the Horace Mann League  will be held on Friday, February, 12, 2016, at the Phoenix Downtown Sheraton Hotel, starting at 11:45 am. Early registration is encouraged.        Registration information, click here.

2015  Awardees: Drs. Pedro Noguera, Gene Carter and Mark Edwards
The 2016 HML Annual Meeting is an opportunity to visit with leaders and advocates of public education, as well as exchange ideas with colleagues.   The HML Annual Luncheon is recognized by many as the most esteemed event of the AASA Conference.  Don't miss this special event, register now.   Click here to register.
Special awards will be presented to the following at the annual meeting followed by remarks by:

Andy Hargreaves
Outstanding Friend of Public Education award:   Andy Hargreaves is the Chair in the Lynch School of Education at Boston College. Andy has authored or edited over 30 books, several of which have achieved outstanding writing awards for the AERA, the ALA, and the AACTE. One of these, Professional Capital: Transforming Teaching in Every School (with Micheal Fullan, 2012), has received three awards.   His most recent book is Uplifting Leadership (with Alan Boyle and Alma Harris) published by Jossey Bass Business, 2014.

Gene Glass
Outstanding Public Educator award:
Gene Glass  is a researcher working in educational psychology and the  social sciences . He coined the term " meta-analysis " and illustrated its first use in 1976. Gene Glass is a Regents' Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University in both the educational leadership and psychology in education divisions, having retired in 2010.    Currently, Glass is a senior researcher at the  National Education Policy Center   and a research professor in the School of Education at the University of Colorado Boulder. 

Gary Marx
Outstanding Friend of the Horace Mann League award: Gary Marx is the author of the recently published,  Twenty-one Trends for the 21st Century: Out of the Trenches and into the Future.   Gary is the President of the Center for Public Outreach and the Past President of the Horace Mann League.
 


---------------------------------------------------------------

Four Takeaways from League Candidates for Superintendent of the Year  
by Melissa Gedney on the Digital Promise site.
Dr. Steve Webb, Supt. of the Vancouver, WA. school district and HML Board member.
When it comes to education, there is no one right solution. Districts across this country vary in size, demographics, and priorities. Education leaders need solutions that make sense for their students in their context.
Every year,  The School Superintendents' Association (AASA) awards the title "Superintendent of the Year" to exceptional leaders who work to identify and implement these solutions so students can succeed through leadership for learning, communication, professionalism, and community involvement. League of Innovative Schools superintendents were awarded state superintendent of the year designations in California, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin, and two League superintendents are finalists for the national award.
Here are a few key takeaways from the work taking place in each of these leaders' districts that empowers student success.
1. Learning can happen anywhere, anytime.   Pat Deklotz
2. Students benefit long-term from real-world learning experiences.   Pam Moran 
3. Fostering and leveraging partnerships can help drive student achievement.  Devin Vodicka 
4. Storytelling -- around success and failure -- is essential.  Steve Webb

Child prodigies  rarely become adult geniuses who change the world. We assume that they must lack the social and emotional skills to function in society. When you look at the evidence, though, this explanation doesn't suffice: Less than a quarter of gifted children suffer from social and emotional problems. A vast majority are well adjusted - as winning at a cocktail party as in the spelling bee.
What holds them back is that they don't learn to be original. They strive to earn the approval of their parents and the admiration of their teachers. But as they perform in Carnegie Hall and become chess champions, something unexpected happens: Practice makes perfect, but it doesn't make new.  ( Read more.)

David C. Berliner, Regents' Professor Emeritus here at Arizona State University (ASU), who also just happens to be my former albeit forever mentor, recently took up research on the use of test scores to evaluate teachers, for example, using value-added models (VAMs). While David is world-renowned for his research in educational psychology, and more specific to this case, his expertise on effective teaching behaviors and how to capture and observe them, he has also now ventured into the VAM-related debates.
Accordingly, he recently presented his newest and soon-to-be-forthcoming published research on using standardized tests to evaluate teachers, something he aptly termed in the title of his presentation "A Policy Fiasco." 
Of main interest are his 14 reasons, "big and small' for [his] judgment that assessing teacher competence using standardized achievement tests is nearly worthless."
1. When using standardized achievement tests as the basis for inferences about the quality of teachers, and the institutions from which they came, it is easy to confuse the effects of sociological variables on standardized test scores" and the effects teachers have on those same scores.
2. In law, we do not hold people accountable for the actions of others, for example, when a child kills another child and the parents are not charged as guilty. Hence, "[t]he logic of holding [teachers and] schools of education responsible for student achievement does not fit into our system of law or into the moral code subscribed to by most western nations."  

 Canadian scholar and politician Michael Ignatieff puts it this way: The Prince forces readers to confront, in the starkest terms possible, the most important questions about politics and morality. In the book, what would normally shock us become simple precepts. The book is wickedly simple.    ( Read more. )




The Agenda of National School Choice Week: Don't Be Blinded
by the Bright Yellow Scarves on the People for the American Way site.
National School Choice Week wants everyone to be so busy cheering and dancing for the broad concept of giving parents and students educational options that they don't stop to think about these distinctions. That means destructive policies designed to undermine public education get the benefit of the same public relations push as others. In their own words, "The goal of National School Choice Week is not to place importance or focus on one type of environment over another, but to talk about school choice in a broad and inclusive way."
Public education is a core democratic institution that provides millions of students with the tools they need to become full participants in our society.
Of course, not all schools are working well for all students. Educators and activists are  working to identify and  implement reforms that support teachers, parents, families, and students in order to give every student a chance at a great education. Some kinds of school choice, like magnet schools and fully accountable public charter schools, can be part of the solution.
But robbing our public education system of urgently needed funds, and sending taxpayer money to unaccountable private and religious schools, or turning management of schools over to profit-maximizing corporations, is not in the public interest.   ( Read more .)
 
With the Walton billionaires  doubling down in their efforts to accelerate the charter school industry and with the Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings,  throwing in $100 million to privatize traditional public schools, one might think that the U.S. Department of Education would be a major line of defense for America's public schools educating the most underserved students or even a bold investor in sustainable community schools that are truly public. 
One would be wrong.
The U.S. Department of Education, as with the education agencies of many states, has been co-opted by the spending frenzy of the billionaire class.
It's not just the Waltons and Hastings using their fortunes to undermine public education: Eli Broad has  pledged nearly a half billion  dollars to privatize the public schools of Los Angeles. They are mounting a radical - or really a reactionary - effort to remake public schools into private enterprises, and charters are a key component of the transition the billionaires seek.   And editorial decisions by many in the press have aided and abetted this effort.  (Read more.)

In many places, kindergartners now go with very little - or no - physical education, recess, art and music. Parents have complained, and so have kindergarten teachers, who say they feel as if they are being forced to present curriculum and lessons to kids before they are ready in this era of standardized test-based reform. In this 2014 post, for example, a kindergarten teacher in Massachusetts named Susan Sluyter explained that her job had become all about "tests and data - not children" and that is why she had decided to quit.  (Read more.)

  Gates' Plans for Teacher Education by Laura Chapman on the Ravitch blog.
Gates is not the only funder of specific content in EdWeek. Gates is also the major funder of the annual Quality Counts report in EdWeek, a report card.
Even more interesting is that Gates Foundation has recruited Lynn Olsen, a top EdWeek journalist, to replace Vicki Phillips whose farewell note included some self congratulations about getting the Common Core in place and so forth.
New initiatives for the Gates Foundation focus on getting rid of teacher education in higher education except as an authorizer of credentials, including a masters degree in "effective" teaching. More charter colleges of education are the next step. Relay is one model.
The aim is to dump scholarship in and about education within teacher preparation in favor of a bundle of "high leverage" tricks of the trade for raising test scores, with repeated practice In using these until they become automatic.
Practice could begin with teaching avatars followed by doing an on-the-job residency program, with lots of tests, online tutoring and such.
Gates wants to control who gets to teach, where, and all of the criteria for credentialing teachers. He is certain that critical thinking and almost all scholarship bearing on education is an unnecessary distraction from raising test scores and getting kids launched into college and/or career.   (Read more.)

An educated citizenry provides significant benefits to individuals, communities and our state's economy.   Higher levels of education aren't just a luxury. Research suggests our future demands it. Employment projections in Washington state for the period of 2018-23 show a robust demand for skilled workers with postsecondary credentials and education.
The trend toward increasing complexity in the workplace and the need for more skilled and educated workers are clearly reflected in Washington's employment outlook. The vast majority of all job openings (77 percent) will require at least some education beyond high school, with 67 percent requiring at least a year or more of postsecondary education or training. Yet for adults ages 25 through 44, only 44 percent of the working population possessed at least an associate degree in 2013.
Washington's attainment levels are far below what is needed for our future economic needs. The results are clear: Business as usual just isn't enough for our students, families and businesses.  ( Read more.)

We Need a Two-Generation Approach to End Child Poverty by Lori Pfingst & Elena Hernandez on the Washington State Budget and Policy Center site.
 The growing research on brain science suggests that children who grow up with economic hardship are at greater risk of experiencing events that lead to levels of stress so toxic to them and their families that the impact will ripple throughout their lifetime. And if the individual impact of economic hardship on children doesn't raise eyebrows, this statistic should:  A conservative estimate of the economic costs of children who grow up in poverty is $11.7 billion per year in Washington state. 
We need to rethink child poverty in Washington state. The individual, societal, and economic costs are too great, and would surely be trumped by the benefits to reduce it. The question is - how? 
Nationally, two-generation approaches to reducing poverty - those that focus on economic success of families, as opposed to a focus on children or adults alone or in silos - are gaining momentum and showing promising results. In Colorado, Utah, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Oklahoma - to name just a few states where two-generation policies and programs are being put to the test - lawmakers, agencies, and service providers are taking innovative and holistic approaches to advancing family economic security. They are doing this by coordinating across five key domains - high-quality early childhood education; post-secondary education and career pathways; asset-building; health & well-being; and social capital (see graphic).  ( Read more.)
 
 The Public Pays Twice for Some Schools  
b
y  Donald Cohen on the In the Public Interest site.
Get this. In some states, charter school operators can purchase school buildings from public school districts...using taxpayer money. That's right. The public pays twice for a building it no longer owns.
Many current policies allow new actors into public education who skim profits from the system, pocketing money that might otherwise be spent on direct services for children.
These policies have serious costs. In Florida for example, recent analysis by the Associated Press found that now-closed charter schools in 30 school districts had  received more than $70 million in taxpayer money for capital needs. The state has since recovered only $133,000 of those funds.   Many current policies allow new actors into public education who skim profits from the system.
Where does the money go? On top of complex real estate deals, charter school operators often 'save' money by cutting teacher pay, hiring inexperienced school staff, and avoiding children with disabilities. These 'savings' are added to executive salaries rather than invested in serving all children and providing solid middle class jobs for teachers and staff.  (Read more.)


CREDO matched students with similar demographics in charters and nearby district schools, and, as it did with its other charter school studies, translated the differences in achievement into roughly equivalent additional days of learning (with the caveat that they should be "interpreted cautiously"). The result: charter school students gained 14 learning days in reading but lost the same number of days in math, based on a 180-day school year.
However, there were marked differences among charter schools.  Students in urban locations, poor students and African-Americans  who attended charters gained learning days compared to their peers at traditional schools.  Students in rural areas, and Asian and white students enrolled in charters lost learning days (72 days lost in math learning for white students).

Rethink School Choice     by Kevin Weiner on the Huffington Post site.
If I told you, "I favor school choice," what might I actually mean? Perhaps I'm a libertarian, so I favor choice because I place an extreme value on individual freedom. Or perhaps I believe in the invisible hand of the free market or I buy into certain assumptions about the benefits of school competition. Maybe I want a school that reinforces my religious beliefs. Or perhaps I see school choice as a way to create more diverse schools, uncoupled from neighborhood segregation.
But in truth, favoring school choice means about the same thing as favoring computers -- the statement means very little unless and until the ideas take on a specific form. After all, a choice plan intended to mitigate neighborhood segregation would be designed with very different rules than a choice plan envisioned as a way to increase competition.
So if I say, "I favor school choice," your next question should be, "How do you favor designing and operating school choice?" That is, "What does your school choice policy actually look like in practice?"  ( Read more.)


Great School Leadership: Communication   by Tom Sherrington on the Headguruteacher site.
Communication is complicated. You're always saying more than you think.
Choose your cliché: It oils the wheels. It's the glue that holds everything together. It's the institutional life-blood.
Without effective communication things go badly wrong. The school ethos is incoherent, the vision is a fragmented collection of ideas that no-one has confidence in, improvement strategies fall at an early hurdle in confusion. People feel frustrated and demotivated.
On one level communication is simply a matter of letting people know what is going on. Most obviously that is about events and activities....it's so annoying to find that the lesson you planned clashes with the trip or special assembly you didn't know about. It's also vital for effective behaviour management and learning support systems.  But this post isn't about having a good diary system, staff bulletin and referal process.   It's about how you communicate the other elements in this series: Ethos, Vision, Strategy.
From a leadership perspective, there are various aspects to communication than I think are worth giving some thought to:
1. Ethos.  2. Shared Vision,  Documents. 3. Live it; don't laminate it.  4. Expectations and standards. 5. Relationships. 6. Personal presence and profile. 7. Power dynamics! 8. Status and responsibility. 9. Preparing the ground for change.  10. Celebrating successes; admitting to failings.  (Read more.)

Schools aren't startups and kids aren't consumers by Karen Quartz on the Los Angeles Times site.
The  Los Angeles Unified School District will wrestle with enormous challenges in the year ahead. It's on the brink of financial insolvency, enrollment is dropping, and its board is about to hire a new superintendent to fix these fiscal problems.
The new superintendent will face more than money issues, though. A philosophical controversy is also churning inside LAUSD: Should LAUSD become a competitive marketplace of schools, or grow as a democratic civic institution?
Looking back at the events of last fall, it's clear how high the stakes are in this debate.
 In September, a proposal from Great Public Schools Now, an initiative led by billionaire Eli Broad, unleashed ferocious debate. Rife with business-speak, it suggested LAUSD could be fixed by attracting edupreneurs to launch 260 new charter schools that would capture 50% of the district's "market share" by 2023. Within weeks, battle lines were drawn. Rallying anti-charter-school activists, former school board president Jackie Goldberg declared "This is war!" On its website, the teacher's union posted "Hit the Road, Broad."  (Read more.)

Charter schools, which have been criticized for grabbing  billions in taxpayer dollars with promises to reinvent public education using corporate efficiencies and values, are finding themselves under fire from industry insiders who are saying that these hyped market-based reforms don't work.  But the remarks appear to reflect a new public relations and lobbying strategy, where allies of non-profit charter operators are blaming their for-profit brethren as a way to duck political fallout, avoid scrutiny for many of the same practices and to boost their market niche.  ( Read more. )

On the surface of it, school choice sounds like a great idea.
Parents will get to shop for schools and pick the one that best suits their children.
Oh! Look, Honey! This one has an exceptional music program! That one excels in math and science! The drama program at this one is first in the state!
1) Voucher programs almost never provide students with full tuition.
2) Charter and voucher schools don't have to accept everyone
3) Charter Schools are notorious for kicking out hard to teach students
4) Voucher and charter schools actually give parents less choice than traditional public schools
5) Charter Schools do no better and often much worse than traditional public schools
And five more reasons.  (Read more.)

Too Hot to Handle: A Global History of Sex Education 
 by  Tonya Callaghan  &  Tanya Surette    on the Teachers College Record site.
"Only in the area of sex education would modern school systems fail so dramatically-and so universally-to impose themselves upon individuals". This assertion, made by Jonathan Zimmerman in his book"Too Hot To Handle,"  conceptualizes the synopsis of his depiction of the "stormy and delicate" (p. 3) relationship between schools and sex education. Too Hot To Handle  provides a historical account of the origin and trajectory of sex education in schools internationally. Zimmerman delivers a comprehensive exploration of the influences locally and globally, and the arguments both for and against the inclusion of information about human sexuality into the school curriculum.  Zimmerman so aptly points out, sexuality and sexual rights are heavily value-laden, and little progress has been made during the last 100 years that have passed since the birth of modern sex education to resolve the age-old dilemmas, which remain largely the same: "whose values are right for children and adolescents, who would decide, and why?" 

Interesting Quotes by School Superintendents - by School Superintendents
The following are quotes offered by some experienced educational leaders:
1.      Don't mistake the edge of the rut for the horizon.
2.      You are only as good as your teaching staff.
3.    You should always introduce yourself by saying "I am the current superintendent of ... ."
4.      Even if you can successfully swim against an angry tide as a school leader, you will be criticized for not walking on water
5.      All will be right with the world when the military has to hold bake sales to buy bombs and schools have all the money they need.
6.      A (school) board's perception of reality is reality; regardless of the facts. 
1st Corollary: The function of the superintendent is to make the reality and the facts fit as closely as possible. 
2nd Corollary: Any administrator's tenure in a district is directly related to how close the facts and reality correlate.
7.      Being a superintendent is a fine line between leading a parade and being run out of town by an unhappy mob.
8.      The key to leading a public school system is hiring great people and keeping everything that might prevent them from doing their job out of the way.
9.      Don't tell me what you value, tell me what you do and I will tell you what you value.
 
Does Your Personality Influence Who You Vote For?   in the Science Daily on the HMLeague.blob site.
Does your personality influence who you vote for? The short answer is yes, according to John Mayer, professor of psychology at the University of New Hampshire. As Americans go to the polls in record numbers to vote for the next U.S. president, some voters will crave social stability and others will crave social change. Liberals and conservatives divide according to these personality preferences.
Our votes are an expression not only of which candidates are best - the Republicans, Democrats, or those candidates of another party - but also of our own way of perceiving and thinking about the world and what is good or bad about it. Our personal perceptions and thoughts in this area (and others) have been shaped over time within our personalities," Mayer says.  ( Read more.)

Upcoming Event:    The 94rd Annual Meeting of the Horace Mann League will be held on Friday, February, 12, 2016, at the Phoenix Downtown Sheraton Hotel, starting at 11:45 am.  Registration information, click here. 

Upcoming Event:   The 94rd Annual Meeting of the Horace Mann League will be held on Friday, February, 12, 2016, at the Phoenix Downtown Sheraton Hotel, starting at 11:45 am.  Registration information, click here.
Special awards will be presented to the following at the annual meeting.
Dr. Andy Hargreaves Outstanding Friend of Public Education. Professor and Author, Boston College 
Dr. Gene Glass
Outstanding Public 
Education. Professor and Author, National Education Policy Center
Gary Marx
Outstanding Friend of the League. Author and Past President of the HML, President of Public Outreach
 

Sponsor a Professional Colleague for membership in the Horace Mann League.
Click here to download the "Sponsor a Colleague" form.
 
Starting the week off with a cartoon.  




A gift for your Community Leaders: On the Art of Teaching by Horace Mann. 
The book, On The Art of Teaching by Horace Mann has been presented to new teachers as a welcome gift by a number of schools district.  For orders of 50 or more, the district's name is printed on the front cover.

Ordering Information
Cost per copy: $12.50
Orders of 50 to 99: $11.00
Orders of 100 or more: $10.00
Send orders to:  (include name of district, P.O. #, and address)
The Horace Mann League of the USA
560 Rainier Lane
Port Ludlow, WA 98365
or   email:  Jack McKay
FAX (866) 389 0740
 


  
     The Horace Mann League  on the The Horace Mann league site
 
"School Performance in Context:  The Iceberg Effect"   by James Harvey, Gary Marx, Charles Fowler and Jack McKay.
To download the full or summary report,
Summary Report, Click here 
Full Report,  click here 
To view in an electronic magazine format,
Summary Report, click here.
Full Report, click here 

 -------------------------------------------
A Few Political Cartoons for the Week


 


 ------------------------------------- 
Horace Mann Prints
 The 11 * 18 inch print is available for individual or bulk purchase.  Individual prints are $4.00.  Discount with orders of 50 or more.  
For additional information about this or other prints, please check here .
 
    
  
 
A Gift:   On the Art of Teaching   by Horace Mann
In 1840 Mann wrote On the Art of Teaching. Some of HML members present On the Art of Teaching to new teachers as part of their orientation program.  On the inside cover, some write a personal welcome message to the recipient.  Other HML members present the book to school board members and parental organizations as a token of appreciation for becoming involved in their schools.  The book cover can be designed with the organization's name.  For more information, contact the HML ( Jack McKay)
 
  
  
  
 
   
    


All the past issues of the HML Posts are available for review and search purposes.
 
Finally, 7 links that may be of interest to you.
Jack's Fishing Expedition in British Columbia - short video


 
The Horace Mann League of the USA Post
About Us
The Horace Mann League of the USA is an honorary society that promotes the ideals of Horace Mann by advocating for public education as the cornerstone of our democracy.

 

Officers:
President: Dr. Charles Fowler, Exec. Director, Suburban School Administrators, Exeter, HN
President-elect: Dr. Christine  Johns-Haines, Superintendent, Utica Community Schools, MI
Vice President: Dr. Martha Bruckner, Superintendent, Council Bluffs Community Schools, IA
1st Past President: Mr. Gary  Marx, President for Public Outreach, Vienna, VA
2nd Past President: Dr. Joe Hairston, President, Vision Unlimited, Reisterstown, MD

Directors:
Dr. Laurie Barron, Supt. of Schools, Evergreen School District, Kalispell , MT
Dr. Evelyn Blose-Holman, (ret.) Superintendent, Bay Shore Schools, NY
Mr. Jeffery Charbonneau, Science Coordinator, ESD 105 and Zillah HS, WA
Dr. Carol Choye, Instructor, (ret.) Superintendent, Scotch Plains Schools, NJ
Dr. Brent Clark, Executive Director, Illinois Assoc. of School Admin. IL
Dr. Linda Darling Hammond, Professor of Education, Stanford U. CA
Dr. James Harvey, Exec. Dir., Superintendents Roundtable, WA
Dr. Eric King, Superintendent, (ret.) Muncie Public Schools, IN
Dr. Steven Ladd, Superintendent, (ret.) Elk Grove Unified School District, Elk Grove, CA 
Dr. Barry Lynn, Exec. Dir., Americans United, Washington, DC
Dr. Kevin Maxwell, CEO, Prince George's County Schools, Upper Marlboro, MD
Dr. Stan Olson, President, Silverback Learning, (former supt. of Boise Schools, ID)
Dr. Steven Webb, Supt. of Schools, Vancouver School District, WA

Executive Director:
Dr. Jack McKay, Professor Emeritus, University of Nebraska at Omaha, 
560 Rainier Lane, Port Ludlow, WA 98365 (360) 821 9877
 
To become a member of the HML, click here to download an application.