Closing the Achievement Gap Requires Closing the Gap Between Schools and Central Offices   by Max Silverman on the Center for Educational Leadership site.

In many ways the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) marks a departure from No Child Left Behind (NCLB). But at least in one way it stays the course: the notion of school turnaround is alive and well.

Under ESSA, the federal government still requires states to identify their worst-performing schools and come up with a plan to make them better. If ESSA plays out like NCLB, then schools and districts will be working mightily to stay just above the line that triggers a turnaround - an aspirational low bar for sure.

As part of these efforts, schools and districts will be reaching out for the helping hands of a variety of newly minted - or as is often the case, re-minted - programs and solutions.

Unfortunately, we already know that most of these programs will not adequately meet the needs of students. While they might keep some schools away from the dreaded turnaround designation, the achievement gaps between their students will continue.

Command and control vs laissez-faire

Before looking at ways to get at this achievement gap, let's take a closer look at a reason why we think it persists: the chronic gap between schools and their central offices.     (Read more.)

Educators have unique role in reporting suspected abuse    by Julie Underwood on the PDK Sage site.

Why Parents Choose Private Schools and Implications on School Marketing   on the Inspired ED site.

The top and bottom of leadership and change  by By Andy Hargreaves and Mel Ainscow on the PDK Sage site.

For 15 years and more, in the U.S., England, parts of Canada, and elsewhere, reforms to improve educational equity and achievement have come in large-scale measures - designed and delivered in detail by big government across whole systems. Such top-down reforms promised a sharp focus on improving literacy and mathematics achievement and boosting high school graduation. 

Training, coaching, and other professional development supports accompanied some top-down strategies. Others, like the No Child Left Behind law, proved excessively demanding, requiring progress for all categories of students every year and imposing punitive consequences when schools and districts fell short. But punitive or supportive, all top-down reforms have an Achilles heel: Their focus on micromanaging two or three measurable priorities only works for systems pursuing traditional and comparatively narrow achievement goals. A digital age of complex skills, cultural diversity, and high-speed change calls for more challenging educational goals and more sophisticated and flexible change strategies. (Read more.)

Cashing in on Kids: 172 ALEC Education Bills Push Privatization in 2015 by Brendan Fischer on the PC Watch site.

Despite widespread public opposition to the corporate-driven education privatization agenda, at least 172 measures reflecting American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) model bills were introduced in 42 states in 2015, according to an analysis by the Center for Media and Democracy.

One of ALEC's biggest funders is Koch Industries and the Koch brothers' fortune. The Kochs have had a seat at the table-where the private sector votes as equals with legislators-on ALEC's education task force via their "grassroots" group Americans for Prosperity and their Freedom Partners group, which was described as the Kochs' "secret bank."

ALEC's agenda would transform public education from a public and accountable institution that serves the public into one that serves private, for-profit interests. ALEC model bills divert taxpayer money from public to private schools through a variety of "voucher" and "tuition tax credit" programs. They promote unaccountable charter schools and shift power away from democratically elected local school boards. ( Read more.)

Washington House passes bill aiming to fix charter schools   by Walker Orenstein and Donna Blankinship on the SFGate site.

The  Washington House  passed a measure on Wednesday that would change the funding source of the state's charter schools, which some lawmakers and advocates of the independent public schools say would ensure the future of the charter system.

The schools have been in limbo since September when the state  Supreme Court ruled the charter school law approved by voters in 2012 is unconstitutional. The justices had a problem with the new schools getting state money set aside for traditional public schools but not being controlled by a voter-elected school board.

The proposal would re-establish a statewide charter authorizing commission and use lottery money to pay for the schools. But it would not give them access to local levy dollars.   ( Read more.)

Washington Public Schools Are Criminally Underfunded, But Governor Inslee Won't Commit to Vetoing Charter School Law   by  Ansel Herz on the Stranger site.

Yesterday, Democratic Governor Jay Inslee made a big deal out of  vetoing a series  of obscure bills because lawmakers didn't send him a supplemental budget. But his office won't say whether it will veto a bill that stands for everything the Democratic Party opposes: the reeestablishment of charter schools in Washington state.

The bill would divert revenues from the state lottery to privatized schools. At the same time, the state continues to unconstitutionally underfund public schools serving millions of Washington children, according to the 2012 McCleary ruling from the State Supreme Court.

The state's highest court has held lawmakers in contempt ever since, but they still haven't fixed the funding issue.

The right-wing wankers at the Seattle Times editorial board are celebrating and  calling on Inslee  to immediately sign the charter schools bill into law.  ( Read more.)

Premise of lawsuit challenging education savings account law is flawed   by Thomas Mitchell on the 4th ST8 site.

T his past week a second lawsuit was filed in state court challenging the constitutionality of a state law creating education savings accounts that would allow parents to use a portion of the state funding that would otherwise be used in public schools to be spent on private school tuition or homeschooling.

An earlier lawsuit filed by the ACLU challenges the law because the savings accounts could be used for sectarian schools and the state constitution prohibits using tax money for any religious purpose. The issue there is whether money once in the hands of parents is still tax money.

The latest suit,  Lopez v. Schwartz, filed in the 1st Judicial District Court in Carson City by a group called Educate Nevada Now, claims the law reduces state funding for public schools to below the level determined to be sufficient. The suit repeatedly refers to the law, Senate Bill 302, as a voucher law, though the law never uses that word and mentions only savings accounts.

Sylvia Lazos, policy director for Educate Nevada Now, said in  a press release , "This lawsuit does not challenge the right of parents to choose a private or religious school for their child. But it does seek to ensure that public school funding is not diverted and depleted by subsidizing that choice."  ( Read more.)

Most literate nation in the world? Not the U.S., new ranking says.    by Valerie Strauss on the Washington Post site.

A new world ranking of countries and their literacy rates puts the United States at 7th. Who's No. 1? Finland.

The study, conducted by John W. Miller, president of Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, Conn., analyzes  trends in literate behavior and literacy in more than 60 countries. It found that Nordic countries are among the most literate in the world, but countries in the Western Hemisphere didn't do well.  

 "The factors we examined present a complex and nuanced portrait of a nation's cultural vitality, and what the rankings strongly suggest and world literacy demonstrates is that these kinds of literate behaviors are critical to the success of individuals and nations in the knowledge-based economics that define our global future."

The rankings look at variables related to tested literacy achievement - scores on the PIRLS or Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, and on the PISA, Program for International Student Assessment - as well as to literate behavior characteristics.  ( Read more.)

Teacher Career Advancement Initiatives: Lessons Learned from Eight Case Studies by Catherine Fisk Natale, Lynn Gaddis, Katherine Bassett and Katherine McKnight, 0n the  National Network of State Teachers of the Year site.

The purpose of this report is to describe what we learned from studying eight teacher career advancement initiatives implemented across a variety of contexts, including urban, suburban, and rural districts; high poverty and affluent districts; and in schools/districts both with and without strong union presence. We describe key principles for developing successful, sustainable teacher career advancement initiatives.  Our goal is to identify, based on our research, the components of a successful, sustainable teacher career continuum that has a positive impact on teacher recruitment, teacher retention, teacher job satisfaction, and student achievement. Our recommendations reflect the importance of intentional and systematic policies and strategies in order to create sustainable and long-term solutions that address the career aspirations of a new generation of teachers who want to be leaders from the classroom.   (Read more.)

This is an exciting time to be a mathematics teacher-educator.

In the past two decades, we have developed a much better understanding not only of how children learn math, but also of how to teach math - and how to prepare teachers to teach math. A short (though incomplete) list of teaching practices that we know work to support student learning includes posing challenging tasks that connect to children's prior understandings and out-of-school experiences, providing opportunities for children to make sense of and talk about mathematics, and promoting the use of mental mathematics based on patterns in our number system.

Yet it is also a challenging time to be a mathematics teacher educator because these teaching practices are not being used in most classrooms and schools. Further, there are many constraints limiting the use of these practices - ranging from high-stakes testing to crumbling schools.  ( Read more.)

Anyone who actually follows reality knows charters don't outperform public schools. Even Waiting for Superman, that steaming pile of propaganda, acknowledged that only 17% of them actually outperformed public schools. And the big secret, not so secret anymore, is that charter students that do better tend not to reflect the same demographics as a public school. My public school takes everyone that walks through the door, no matter what disability, and no matter if they speak not a single word of English. I don't need to check very thoroughly as to how many Moskowitz Academy students just got here yesterday from El Salvador.
It's kind of amazing. If we could make rules that demanded parents participated in our school, if we get rid of students who were inconvenient, if we could harrass parents into withdrawing students who didn't get high scores, we'd have even better stats. 

(Read more.)

Debating School Choice  

What does it mean to fully fund education?  by  Anika Anand on the Seattle Times site.

n 2007, a group of families, schools districts, teachers unions and a host of others sued the state of Washington over school funding. The case, which you may be familiar with, is known as McCleary vs. State of Washington, named after the lead plaintiffs, parent Stephanie McCleary, her husband and children, who live in the Chimacum School District near Port Townsend.

The McCleary plaintiffs  argued that the state wasn't giving schools enough money, which forced local school districts to raise the rest through local property-tax levies. (We'll come back to levies in just a bit.)

They also argued that the needs of schools and students had changed over time but state funding hadn't kept up. For example, the state, until recently, wasn't paying for six periods of high school, even though that's what most students need to get into college these days.

The McCleary plaintiffs took their arguments all the way to the state Supreme Court. And in 2012, the majority of justices ruled in their favor.