Tom Sobal Memorial Service At Teachers College

Experts predict the opt-out movement will get some of what it wants  by  Emmanuel Felton on the Hechinger site 

  With up to 80 percent of students refusing to take federally mandated tests in some districts, politicians and education policymakers are paying attention to the national opt-out movement.

A survey conducted this month by the consulting firm Whiteboard Advisors revealed that education policy and political "insiders" think that the opt-out movement will likely sway many state legislatures, but will struggle to change things in Washington.

Only 47 percent of those surveyed, including current and former U.S. Department of Education leaders, Congressional staffers, state school chiefs and experts at think tanks, expect to see any change to federal law.   ( Read more.)

  The Problem With Opt-outs (And How to Move Forward)  b y Stephen Fink on the Center on Educational Leadership site.

This year,  one in five New York state students in grades three through eight did not take the state's standardized test. In Washington state  53 percent of 11th-graders opted out of the new Smarter Balanced Common Core exams. If this trend continues - and the coming election year will certainly fuel the fire around Common Core and testing - the future of recent school reforms will be called into question.

As much as I can understand some of the motivations behind opting out of standardized tests, I think it complicates the goal of helping all students to achieve at higher levels and close long standing academic achievement gaps.

So how did we get here and what can we do to lower the pressure around the issue and focus on improving student learning?

( Read more.)

5 Public Speaking Tips for Standing Ovations   by  Janice Celeste  pn the Huffington Post site.

There are trainers, presenters and keynote speakers available to talk about any topic for every business. I know. I represent speakers at WeSpeak Worldwide as the CEO. There are presenters whose charisma will charm you while they speak, phenomenal speakers who will leave you in awe and then there are speakers who can put you to sleep within their first paragraph. Most speakers fall somewhere in between. How do good speakers become great presenters, and how do great presenters become effective speakers?

5 Attention Getters:

1. Ask a question or series of questions. i.e., "How many of you . . .?"
2. State something startling. i.e., "Do you realize . . . ?"
3. Use a powerful quote.
4. Tell a story.
5. Use an analogy or an example.     (Read more.)

A Loss for ALEC and the Privatizers Makes Me Happy  on the Seattle Education site.

  What Liv Finne and the Washington Policy Center (ALEC related) wrote about me was rambling, off topic, filled with assertions lacking evidence, and so poorly argued that I actually don't think it warrants a point-by-point rebuttal. However, I do believe it does warrant some kind of response. Readers, please take a moment to read my original commentary on the charter school constitutionality ruling, and then check out the attack on me for a more full understanding of this conversation. What follows is a rolling update of responses after the attack.  (Read more.)

The School Principal as Leader  by Linda Darling Hammond on Youtube

Watch Linda present a special webinar sponsored by the Wallace Foundation that discusses how principals and school leaders can work directly with teachers and staff to improve instruction and student achievement. 

Learn strategies to:
* Shape a vision for academic success
* Create a hospitable climate
* Cultivate leadership
* Manage staff data and processes.

Working Group to Finalize Refreshed Standards for Education Leaders   on the CCSSO site. 

Despite Supreme Court ruling, charters may get some tax money   by John Higgins on the Seattle Times site

Despite the state Supreme Court's ruling earlier this month that charter schools aren't eligible to receive public money, the state plans to send at least $770,000 to the state's nine charters early next week, the first in a series of payments they were expecting this school year.

The reason? The justice's 6-3 decision isn't final until the court has dealt with requests to reconsider its ruling - and there likely will be at least two of those.

Until then, the state's education department intends to keep funding the charter schools.  ( Read more.)

Washington State Charter School Ruling: Part One, Overview of Reaction to Ruling   on the Seattle School District forum site

High rates of teacher turnover likely mean greater school instability, disruption of curricular cohesiveness, and a continual need to hire inexperienced teachers, who typically are less effective, as replacements for teachers who leave. Unfortunately, research consistently finds that teachers who work in schools with large numbers of poor students and students of color feel less satisfied and are more likely to turn over, meaning that turnover is concentrated in the very schools that would benefit most from a stable staff of experienced teachers. Despite the potential challenge that this turnover disparity poses for equity of educational opportunity and student performance gaps across schools, little research has examined the reasons for elevated teacher turnover in schools with large numbers of traditionally disadvantaged students.

Conclusions: Descriptive analyses confirm that observable measures of teachers' work environments, including ratings of the effectiveness of the principal, are generally less positive in schools with large numbers of disadvantaged students. Regression results show that principal effectiveness is associated with greater teacher satisfaction and a lower probability that the teacher leaves the school within a year. Moreover, the positive impacts of principal effectiveness on these teacher outcomes are even greater in disadvantaged schools. These findings suggest that policies focused on getting the best principals into the most challenging school environments may be effective strategies for lowering perpetually high teacher turnover rates in those schools.  ( Read more.)