GoBigEd

Posted 10:29 AM by Susan Darst Williams

OP-ED: A POWERFUL REBUTTAL TO THE OPS TAKEOVER

Three cheers for the attached article by Vaughn Anderson, a former teacher who served on a school board for eight years and is dedicated to educational excellence. He lives in Seward, Neb. This explains the folly of the OPS attempted takeover of its neighboring suburban school districts better than anything I’ve seen. Thank you, Mr. Anderson, for giving us the data and the common-sense perspective that are so sorely needed in this controversy.

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To be legitimate, the case to support the OPS merger must be built upon helping students and improving student learning. One could try to base an argument on equality of intentions (funding) but if this argument does not lead to better results, the argument rings hollow. In the end, results not intentions are important.

If OPS has done a better job for students than its neighbors, the merger makes sense. Let the best take charge to improve the rest. The ACT data from the NDE website tells a different story. You cannot find even one year where Omaha’s scores were better than any of the other schools.

Average ACT Scores of Students Who Took Core Courses or More (1999-2004)

(Ed. note: Mr. Anderson supplied tables with the following data that for technical reasons couldn't be posted as tables. It is hoped that the clear track record of OPS' ACT scores as inferior to the others' will still be apparent.)

OPS: 21.4, 21.3, 21.2, 20.9, 21.0
Bellevue: 23.9, 22.6,23.3, 23.4, 22.9
Elkhorn: 23.2, 23.4, 23.5, 23.8, 23.1
Millard: 23.5, 23.5, 23.7, 23.8, 24.0
Papillion-LaVista: 23.5, 23.6, 24.0, 23.5, 22.3
Ralston: 23.2, 21.6, 21.8, 22.1, 21.9
Westside: 23.5, 23.4, 23.6, 23.5, 23.8

Although I haven’t taken the time to study other NDE data (achievement test results, STARS results, graduation rates, etc) I do not believe they will support a claim that OPS is educationally superior any more than the ACT scores do.

OPS claims they have not received adequate state and federal funding to do a good job. According to OPS, factors demanding increased funding include poverty (free/reduced lunches), non-English speaking students (English Language Learners), student mobility (Mobility Rate), and special education numbers. Omaha does exhibit more poverty and non-English speaking students, but in the very expensive Special Ed category Omaha is nearly equal to the other schools.

The percentage of funding from state/federal sources clearly demonstrates that an effort to equalize funding has been made.

(Ed. note: again, Mr. Anderson supplied tables which couldn't be displayed properly. Here is 2003-04 data from the Nebraska Department of Education which shows the percentage of revenues each of these districts received from state and federal taxpayers, as opposed to local property taxpayers, and the key indicators such as student poverty which justified the level of non-local tax support under Nebraska' school financing system.)

OPS: 51.59% of receipts from state/federal taxes; 55.15% on free/reduced lunch; 12.08% English Language Learners, 23.56% mobility rate, 14.49% special ed

Bellevue: 74.55% state/fed (due to military's effect on local property tax structure); 20.94% free/reduced lunch; 1% ELL; 17.15% mobility rate; 13.15% special ed

Elkhorn: 33.52% state/fed; 8.16% free/reduced lunch; 1.31% ELL; 7.42% mobility; 14.17% special ed

Millard: 44.65% state/fed; 7.76% free/reduced lunch; .70% ELL; 6.978% mobility; 13.29% special ed

Pap-LaVista: 52.13% state/fed; 13.9% free/reduced lunch; .61% ELL; 12.83% mobility; 11.04% special ed

Ralston: 30.46% state/fed; 28.94% free/reduced; 4.53% ELL; 13.06% mobility; 14.43% special ed

Westside: 30.22% state/fed; 17.61% free/reduced; 2.19% ELL; 7.42% mobility; 10.44% special ed

Has state/federal funding been sufficient to permit adequate spending? Or has OPS suffered inferior results because of sub-par spending? NDE data shows that OPS spent more than each of the other schools (except Westside which is an entirely different story) by at least $815 per student. Put that in perspective. $815 per student in a classroom of 25 students is equal to $20,375 additional spending per classroom. And they filed the lawsuit which, if successful, will take money from other schools - widening the gap.

2003-2004 Cost per Pupil (Average Daily Attendance)
Elkhorn $7,311
Millard $7,341
Bellevue $7,517
Ralston $7,585
Pap-LaVista $7,605
Omaha $8,420
Westside $8,577

Does increased spending improve education results? Many studies show no relationship between increased spending and improved results. For example http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-518es.html (You might also take note of Westside’s spending and the ACT results compared to the other schools.)

In fact, some of the most successful schools, especially in minority and poverty neighborhoods spend far less than average. Other factors are far more important than spending in determining school success.

In my opinion, if the goal truly is to improve student learning, the OPS merger is a step in the wrong direction. Parental involvement and support is essential. As school districts get larger, parents and community members lose any sense of connection, control, ownership. Having no chance for meaningful input changes feelings of appreciation and support to indifference, despair, and anger over the helplessness of the situation. This isn’t a criticism of OPS, just human nature.

Instead of merging, OPS should be broken up into smaller school districts with school boards elected from neighborhood communities and district offices located in those neighborhood communities. When the responsibility for neighborhood students is given to a smaller community, people will step up, take responsibility, become involved and see that great things happen. This has always been the case in our country. Growth and the drive for efficiency in size have erased the chance to utilize this fundamental strength.

School board members in larger districts operate in a sanitized environment. Very few parents know the board members, have coffee with them, visit with them at church or the kids’ t-ball games. The main source of information quickly becomes the Administrative team. Board members receive data about test scores, the budget, staffing, building plans, accreditation, long term planning and the like. They also may hear reasonable sounding excuses why results aren’t better. All important, but not nearly as urgent as a conversation with an acquaintance whose 1st grader isn’t picking up reading quickly and may never be an adequate reader unless the school and parents work together right now to solve the problem.

Board members and administrators need that dose of reality to remind them of the importance and urgency in their mission. In smaller schools the insulating layers of bureaucracy are much thinner.

Vaughn Anderson

Posted 11:21 AM by Susan Darst Williams

HOW VENDORS ‘GREASE’ SCHOOL OFFICIALS

The good news is, Nebraska’s school spending has wavered just a few dollars above or below the national average for the past 30 years, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

The bad news is, like the national average, Nebraska’s spending per pupil has increased an incredible 900 percent in that time frame.

Nebraska’s spending per pupil has gone from $833 in fiscal year 1971, to $7,547 in fiscal 2002. Figures are in raw dollars, not adjusted for inflation. Take a gander:

http://www.azsba.org/research/NCESstates.htm

Gee whiz. Do teachers make nine times as much money now as they did then? Do pencils cost nine times what they used to? Do books? Does electricity? Bus gas? Pull-down maps?

If not, then what’s fueling that increase? A lot of people say it’s interactions between corporate vendors and school administrators, who are nowhere near as “watchdogged” financially as other important public officials such as mayors and state senators. Lobbying and persuasion by school vendors may be ratcheting up the cost of K-12 education far more than inflation or true academic need.

As we watch the “Battle of the Superintendents” in Omaha going on -- the poohbah of the state’s largest school district, the Omaha Public Schools, trying to take over the districts ruled by the lesser suburban poohbahs -- you have to consider self-interest along with all the other motivations in this battle.

Money and power, power and money. That’s what drives most people, including most people in public education, all too often.

It’s not only job security for the superintendents that’s at stake. When you puzzle through how a big school district like OPS can think it’s OK to drop a quarter of a million dollars on laptops for fourth-graders in the utter absence of any evidence that it will help them learn better, there’s really no other explanation than that somehow, the decision-makers were “greased” by the technology vendors.

You know: junkets, golf games, lavish dinners, theater tickets, jobs for the superintendent’s family and friends . . . maybe nothing that’s downright unethical, but certainly giving the appearance sometimes of a conflict of interest.

School officials are ripe for schmoozing by corporate vendors because the school budgets they control are in the multi-billions of dollars, all told. And that ain’t hay.

Is it happening in Nebraska? You tell me. It’s happening all over, and here are a few other examples in today’s column.

What’s the answer? Any time human beings and money mix, there’s going to be fandango. Nobody can reasonably hope to contain it all. But we’d make a darn good start by holding school administrators – especially superintendents -- and school-board members accountable for financial decisions the way we do with other public officials.

We really should strengthen our disclosure requirements and reporting about public records of their campaign donations, gifts, favors, expense accounts, compensation packages and retirement deals.

It’s about time we got some sunshine on school spending – and we might be able to dry up some of this flooding.

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How Vendors ‘Grease’ School Officials

Q. Our superintendent’s best friend works for a finance firm. He volunteered as the head of a citizens committee to whip up support for a multi-million dollar bond issue which the superintendent really wanted. It passed. Then his firm got to handle the bonds and made beaucoup bucks. How much do “sweetheart deals” affect school spending decisions, and how can the public stop this sort of thing?

Most states have competitive bidding requirements, of course, and most require public officials to report campaign contributions and gifts over a certain amount.

But there are so many gray areas, ethically, that it’s difficult to gauge how widespread influence peddling really is.

Is a superintendent’s weekend golf outing to resort location paid for by a law firm whose client wants to do real estate business with the school district a proper move?

Is a night out on the town with spouses – a lavish dinner and theater tickets -- with the owner of a construction company, a friend of the superintendent, OK even if there’s a contract coming out on a new school building?

How about accepting favors like free snow removal at your home, free magazine subscriptions, or free office supplies?

The rule is supposed to be that there should be no personal benefit to a school official for interactions with vendors and potential vendors. The ultimate benefit is supposed to be “for the kids.”

But consider what’s gone on recently in Dallas alone:

-- Dallas Independent School District trustee Ron Price was reported as receiving just three political donations last year totaling $25,000, all from three closely associated computer contractors, including one who gave the district's top technology boss years' worth of free sea-fishing trips and use of a 59-foot yacht. One donor was Frankie Wong, president and chief executive of Micro System Enterprises of Houston. That firm is the head company in a consortium that will reap more than 96 percent of federal technology grants that the Dallas district has applied for – $369 million in all. Price, who chaired the committee that heard the technology proposals, has said he doesn’t know any of the three individuals who made the donations, according to the Dallas Morning News.

-- Dr. Mike Moses, superintendent of the Dallas district and former state commissioner of education for Texas, was revealed to be “moonlighting” with a Texas law firm, Bracewell & Patterson, being paid a consulting fee to help find a new superintendent for another school district. At the time, Moses was the highest-paid superintendent in Texas, among the highest-paid anywhere, making $337,500 plus perks last year, according to Texas education activist Donna Garner. He has said he was paid in the “tens of thousands” of dollars by the law firm. The law firm had contracts with the Dallas district worth more than $700,000, according to the Dallas Morning News.

Homework: There’s a good article on ethics from the American Association of School Administrators, http://www.aasa.org/publications/SA/2004_09/pardini_payzant.htm

Posted 9:33 AM by Susan Darst Williams

THE PROBLEM WITH COMPUTER-BASED CURRICULUM

The next time a politician, school administrator or teachers’ union wonk cries that Nebraskans are cheapskates about spending tax dollars in public schools, slap ‘em. Or stuff a sock in it, anyway.

According to Governing magazine’s Source Book 2005, Nebraska ranks fourth and fifth in the country in two important measurements of expenditures on computers in school. (See www.governing.com, though the Source Book isn’t available online.)

Nebraska’s numbers:

2.7 students per instructional computer, ranked 4th

2.9 students per Internet-connected computer, ranked 5th

(Figures from Education Week, 2004)

Lest you think this is something of which to be proud, think again. There’s not a shred of evidence that computers make kids smarter, and in fact, the stark truth is that the more computerized K-12 education gets and the more money we spend per pupil on stuff like technology, the less literate and numerate our kids are becoming.

Computers in the K-12 classroom are swiftly transforming education into a materialistic, control-freak, stimulus-response, knee-jerk, anti-knowledge environment. Computerization maximizes how much money it takes to equip a classroom, and minimizes the influence of the teacher and locally-selected curriculum, not to mention locally-elected school boards, locally-paid educators and administrators, and even that last bastion of local control, moms and dads.

Why? Because computer content, especially the Internet, is swiftly becoming king in K-12. Nothing, and nobody, get between the heart and mind of the student, and the computerized curriculum. And that’s very, very bad.

Read why in today’s column:

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The Problem With Computer-Based Curriculum

Q. Is it a good thing that schools are using technology, particularly computers, so much in classroom lessons these days?

Not according to teachers like Cliff Stoll, an astrophysicist and author. He wrote in a recent L. A. Times op-ed that computers in the classroom are titanic wastes of money, and ineffective and even counterproductive learning tools.

He wrote, “The computer changes the ecology of the classroom. Attention is diverted away from the teacher and toward the magic screen. Electronic media are emphasized at the expense of the written word. Books feel boring compared with their online competitors. As a result, school libraries have morphed into media centers, where Internet feeds and DVDs push aside books and magazines. Increasingly, schools teach the easy stuff: how to change fonts, surf the Web or make a PowerPoint show.”

He says that a broad knowledge base, general academics, and human relations skills are much more important for a constructive, happy adult life than computer skills, especially since kids are already O.D.’ed on electronics as it is.

He’s among a growing chorus of skeptics who say that computers are a toy, not a legitimate instrument of learning.

“Having judged several science fairs,” Stoll wrote, “I notice plenty of projects with professional graphics yet devoid of creativity and individual initiative. Instead of downloaded images from an orbiting observatory, I'd prefer to see a student's hand-drawn observations of the moons of Jupiter as observed through her backyard telescope.”

He added, “What was once an exciting novelty in education has become a distraction from learning. It's because our future is intertwined with technology that schools should unplug their computers and develop the fundamental qualities and human skills needed to manage our increasingly techno-centric society.”

Concerns go beyond the inferiority of computers compared to teachers, the inaccuracies and quagmires of Internet research, and the detrimental effects on human relationships of what Stoll calls “disembodied network interactions.”

A whole other issue, and a disturbing one, is the specter of government control over computer-delivered curriculum and assessment -- excluding parents, teachers, legislators and taxpayers -- and setting the stage for massive and easy brainwashing of children, an entire generation at a time.

Homework: Hear the warnings of Texas education activist Donna Garner on a radio talk show in this audio (note: more than 30 minutes): http://www.thewhatsupradioprogram.com/audio/050726DG.mp3

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Footnote to Tuesday’s “laptop lament” over the plan by the Omaha Public Schools to spend $259,545 for 220 laptops for fourth-graders in low-income schools this fall. That figures to $1,180 apiece. Meanwhile, a nimble Go Big Ed reader sent me an ad for another laptop, an Inspiron 1200, for $499 – far less than half the price. It has a CD burner, a DVD drive, a 30 gigabyte hard drive, a 15-inch screen, and so on. Now, I know OPS will have to spend money on training and ongoing operations to support those laptops. But . . . jiminy Christmas. Do they not teach the concept of “comparison shopping” in teachers’ college?

Posted 11:50 AM by Susan Darst Williams

ARE LAPTOPS WORTH THE MONEY?

I grimaced to learn that the Omaha Public Schools will give “free” individual Apple iBook laptops this fall to 10 classrooms of fourth-graders and their teachers at Belvedere, Catlin and Liberty Elementary Schools, at taxpayer expense, of course.

Cost: $259,545 for 220 student laptops.

There’s no mention of how well this investment is working in other public schools around the country, because there IS no such evidence. They’re just giving it a “try.” They have rebuffed repeated pleas to “try” teaching reading with phonics only, and to “try” teaching math the old-fashioned way, at a minute fraction of the cost of all these edu-toys.

Noooooo, they go for the glitzy fads that cost big bucks and just push kids further away from what they need and what beaucoup, beaucoup evidence shows really works in K-12 academics: paper, pencils, books, quiet time for thinking and study, and good relationships with teachers and other students.

Now, I ask you: would that kind of management decision fly in the private sector?

It’s supposed to be a pilot program, and if it doesn’t “work” to improve student achievement, it’ll be scrapped. Suuuuuure it will.

It depends on how OPS administrators define “success.” If kids like them, that’s a “success,” right? Riiiiiight.

How I wish parents and taxpayers would flood their school boards with letters and calls demanding the 3 R’s, not this constant, costly hucksterism.

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Are Laptops Worth the Money?

Q. Private high schools have been requiring students to provide their own laptop computers for a few years now. Public schools are now providing them for “free” – at taxpayer expense, of course – at younger and younger grade levels. But is there any evidence that this ultra-expensive technology pays off for kids academically?

Wireless laptops are becoming a classroom staple around the country, at an initial cost of around $1,000 per pupil. Maine, Michigan and New Mexico have state-sponsored “free” laptop programs for secondary students, while Massachusetts and the District of Columbia have pilot programs in place. Many more districts and states are working on similar set-ups.

Laptops are “sold” as a motivational tool for students, a teaching aid for teachers, and a way to bridge the “digital divide” between rich families, which can provide home computers for their children, and poor ones.

But there’s no research which conclusively shows that students increase their academic achievement by using laptops. There’s no evidence that kids with laptops do better on standardized tests, write more worthy reports, spell better, compute better, or do anything academically better than kids who mostly use pencil, paper and books.

That’s extremely disappointing, given the billions of dollars that taxpayers have already given schools for computers and Internet access, with a national average of about four students per computer.

The suspicion is, at least below the high-school level, that kids with laptops are simply becoming more adept at plagiarizing and busy work. Sure, they can produce glitzy-looking products, but they cover up basic deficiencies in academic skills that could have been delivered to children for far less time and cost with traditional teaching tools.

How did this happen? The tech industry has done a tremendous job of lobbying legislators, superintendents and school boards. In Texas alone, according to education activist Donna Garner of Waco, Dell sent 51 lobbyists to the Capitol last legislative session. And that’s just one company among many in the ed tech market.

The pressure is mounting to join in to the feast, too. There are moves afoot in Texas and elsewhere to require secondary students to have wireless laptops to take their final exams, or receive no credit for the course. Pricetag in Texas alone: $700 million. And that doesn’t count ongoing operating costs.

School administrators say ongoing costs can meet or exceed 100% of the upfront cost. They say wireless access is difficult to manage and has questionable reliability. Concerns about breakage and theft also are mounting.

Can common sense slow down this push? Only time will tell.

Homework: For an idea of the management issues posed by school-based wireless networks, see http://www.districtadministration.com/page.cfm?p=1144

Posted 11:19 AM by Susan Darst Williams

ACADEMICS OVER AMUSEMENTS

Time spent studying vs. time spent with TV, movies, Instant Messengering, iPods, and computer games . . . I wonder what the ratio is among Nebraska’s public-school students in Grades 7-12.

Could it possibly be one hour of academics for every two hours of amusement? That’s what the education activist in the following column says is happening all around the country.

A caring, concerned school board would survey its students to find out – and if students and teachers are slackin’ off like this, apply the Board of Education to the Seat of Knowledge in retooling school for a renewed academic focus:

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A Cry for An Academic Refocus

Q. School these days seems to be more about group dynamics, conflict resolution, special-interest propaganda, sports and “fun” than anything else. Doesn’t anyone want to see a return to strict academics?

Plenty of people do. Consider this excerpt from a column by William Fitzhugh of the online publication The Concord Review (www.tcr.org):

“Today’s college freshmen are ready to use computers, they look forward to an active social life in college, most have participated in community service and several extracurricular activities, and they have taken the new SAT with its writing test.

”How ready are they for the academic demands of their college classes? In Massachusetts, which is usually mentioned as among those having the highest graduation standards, 34% of freshmen at state four-year colleges and 65% of freshmen at state two-year colleges are enrolled in remedial classes, according to The Boston Globe, and they will not be able to engage in regular college classes until they finish the remedial ones.

“Of course we want our high school students to be athletic, social, popular, and involved in their communities, but this spring the Indiana University Study of High School Student Engagement surveyed 90,000 students and found that more than half (55%) spend three hours a week or less on homework, and a Kaiser Foundation study this spring reported that the average high school student spends more than 6 hours a day with electronic entertainment media of one kind or another. . . .

“A study done for The Concord Review in 2002 found that the majority (62%) of our high school students no longer write a single 12-page research paper in school, and it seems likely that a majority, at least of public high school students, may no longer be assigned a single nonfiction book while they are in high school. . . .

“Perhaps there is good and growing reason to be concerned about the academic competitiveness of students in Singapore, Taiwan, Finland and Ireland, not to mention China and India, and we could decide to re-consider our high school academic culture, which celebrates athletics wholeheartedly, yet allows for three hours a week of homework and 44 hours a week for video games, etc.”

Homework: William Fitzhugh’s article is posted with a wealth of other education articles on http://www.educationnews.org/ready-or-not.htm

Posted 8:49 AM by Susan Darst Williams

HELP WANTED: MORE SCHOOL BOARD MEMBERS LIKE THIS

I received this note from a school board member from a large district in eastern Nebraska. How I wish more school board members who think this way would be more vocal. And how I wish we could elect more school board members who can do both: care enough to think through what’s really needed in education policy, and be willing to explain it to the rest of us so that a groundswell of public opinion can be formed, strong enough to meaningfully change the system.

Here’s the letter:

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On the subject of teacher certification, you hit a homerun. In Nebraska, teacher qualification has little to do with state certification.

On the subject of teacher compensation, you hit a standup triple. Until proper economic forces are allowed to adjust compensation, hiring bonuses, qualifications, and work rules, Nebraska schools will not notice an improved quality of teachers.

The current pay approach for Nebraska teachers is broken. From experience on my local school board and in business, I find the schools’ pseudo-union setup counterproductive. It doesn’t serve students or taxpayers. Heck, it doesn’t even serve the long-term interests of the union membership or school administrations.

I say “pseudo union” because it is not a normal union/management arrangement. In a normal union/management arrangement, the union can strike and management may lockout union employees. Those two rarely-used, extreme possibilities generate a willingness – a seriousness – necessary to re-structure compensation, work rules, and hiring policies to ensure the organization adapts to changing times.

Unfortunately, Nebraska teacher unions cannot strike, nor can school boards lockout teachers. The law requires binding arbitration in the Commission of Industrial Relations (CIR). And, the CIR court uses an ossified method for settling disputes: 1.) usually all contract provisions remain the same, and 2.) the pay raise is set according to the school districts in your compensation array. Thus, if four like-schools gave their teachers a 5% raise, that what will be imposed. Of course, all the old practices remain locked in place. No progress can be made; even the desire for personnel-practices improvement disappears.

Are Nebraskans ready for real teacher union/management negotiations? I don’t know. But, since the public is apprehensive about any disruption, even momentary, to school operations, I suspect the public would not support changes to the law.

Yet, until the false union/management negotiation rules are changed, no significant improvement in teacher staffing will occur. And, that is the sorry state of affairs for Nebraska students and taxpayers.

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GO BIG ED WILL RESUME ON MONDAY, JULY 25 . . . THAT IS, IF I CAN MANAGE TO GO OUT OF TOWN FOR ONCE WITHOUT HURTING MYSELF!!! :>) PUNCTURED LUNG, FRACTURED RIBS ARE MUCH BETTER AND THANKS FOR YOUR PRAYERS AND SUPPORT.

Posted 10:55 AM by Susan Darst Williams

ANSWER #7 FOR NEBRASKA: ELECT THE STATE SCHOOLS CHIEF

This is nothing against Nebraska State Education Commissioner Doug Christensen. He has done an OK job in his longtime appointment by the State Board of Education to what is the highest-paid job in state government, other than the psychiatrists at the Regional Centers, which is rather humorous in and of itself.

No, this is about our system of state governance for public education. It’s time for a state senator to push through a bill, or perhaps it would take a change in our state constitution, so that we voters can elect our state schools superintendent every four years or so, instead of having him or her appointed by the State Board of Education.

Right now, the constituency of this highly important governing job is the teachers’ unions and the school administrators – not the voters, taxpayers, parents and students. The way the system is set up, there’s no accountability to us – no need to get our buy-in – and that’s obvious in Nebraska’s sad, strange status as one of the highest-spending states when it comes to public education, with so-so results, and an utter lack of educational freedom compared to other states, since we’re one of only about 10 states without charter schools and publicly-funded school choice to help low-income kids escape failing schools.

I really don’t blame this on Christensen or fault his leadership: I fault the way the system is structured. It might have made sense in decades past, but as things get more and more complicated, the need for a great education system gets even more critical for Nebraska’s economic future, and the dollars get eye-poppingly high, it’s time for the people to have the say-so and influence over Nebraska’s top educator – not the education establishment itself.

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State Schools Chief: Elected, or Appointed?

Q. We have an appointed state commissioner of education who oversees a gigantic state budget for K-12 education and makes a lot of important policies. But I bet fewer than 1% of our state’s residents know his name or have any idea what he does. Yet I think his job affects people in this state just as much as, if not more so than, the governor, senators, congressmen, state lawmakers, and many others in important government jobs. Shouldn’t the state superintendent be elected by the people, rather than appointed?

In 14 states, such as Arizona, California and Wisconsin, the state school superintendent is elected by partisan or nonpartisan ballot. Candidates don’t have to be educators, but must have the same credentials as candidates for any kind of public office: they must be an American citizen, must not be a convicted felon, and so forth.

In 14 other states, the state schools chief is appointed by the governor.

In the remaining 22 states, the elected state board of education appoints the state schools chief, often with the approval of the governor, and he or she works at their pleasure.

The latter system is being termed an anachronism and an impediment to change for the statewide job. The state schools chief has to please the 8 or 10 or 12 individuals on that board plus state legislators who fund schools, and they often have conflicting demands; the teachers’ union and bureaucracy often wind up calling the shots behind the scenes.

Appointment by the governor has its perils, too, and is thought to make the schools job too politically-tinged if the two officials walk in lockstep with the same power base.

When they don’t, though, governors and education commissioners have tangled, and politics rule the day, anyway, as recently seen in the political squawk between Michigan Superintendent Tom Watkins and Gov.Jennifer Granholm that resulted in Watkins’ forced resignation from the $168,300 job in March 2005 (www.bridges4kids.org), and the union-driven ousting of well-regarded Cheri Pierson Yecke from the Minnesota state schools job last year (www.EdWatch.org), two states without elected school commissioners.

The state school superintendent is often one of the highest-paid state employees, if not the highest. That’s why a growing number of people are calling for the job to be elected, on a four-year cycle, like other high-paid, high-impact state jobs.

There are concerns, however, about whether being able to manage a political campaign, fund-raise and do public speaking are fair indicators of how good a job a person can do in the state school superintendency.

On the other hand, having the top job appointed rather than elected insulates that person from competition from other qualified candidates, and from accountability to the voters, including people whose views differ from the governor’s, which doesn’t seem right in an area of governance as universally important as public education.

The job entails being responsible for gigantic education budgets, managing large groups of civil servants, meeting with legislators and constituents to determine the level of support for proposed programs, and navigating the increasingly choppy waters of funding streams and regulatory rapids between federal, state and local governments, teachers’ unions, special-interest groups, and many other influences on the public education system.

Knowing you have a majority of your state’s voters behind you might be enough “juice” to meet all those challenges – and keep the emphasis on what’s best for kids.

Homework: http://www.ccsso.org/Chief_State_School_Officers/method_of_selection/1863.cfm

Posted 12:47 PM by Susan Darst Williams

ANSWER #6 for NEBRASKA: IMPROVE SCHOOL MANAGEMENT

Nebraska is one of only a handful of states that is a “closed shop” for important and lucrative school leadership jobs. The only ones who can be public school administrators here are educators who are, probably without exception, longtime teacher’s union members. Of course, they quit the union when they attain administrator status, but the years of union propaganda, indoctrination and habits of thinking are entrenched.

Once again, the power of Nebraska’s teacher’s union is exposed, since as long as their ideology controls the pursestrings of school districts, the unions control the school districts.

This explains why collective bargaining is such a joke, since it is educators bargaining with other educators – their longtime buddies. The attitude of “what’s best for educators” prevails, rather than a classic labor-management negotiation with a rallying cry of “what’s best for stockholders” – students, parents and taxpayers, in the case of public schools.

But the playing field is changing. Once again, Nebraska is behind the times, and once again, there’s an opportunity for a Nebraska state senator to do some catch-up and make a real difference with a proposed new law.

Most other states already have, or are working on, alternative certification programs for school administrators. This way, “outsiders” with broader, deeper management expertise can come into big-dollar, highly-complicated school district executive offices, and get rid of a lot of the archaic, wasteful management practices that persist in public education but would never fly in the private sector.

In Florida, for example, some superintendents only have to meet the qualifications of anybody running for public office – American citizen, can’t be an ax murderer, etc. – to seek elective office for superintendent seats. Others are appointed the usual way, but the point is, there’s “choice” allowed, and school boards are empowered by the open political process, rather than just being rubber stamps for the edu-machine.

Who knows how much of Nebraska’s $2 billion annual bill for public schools could be cut out, and how much better our schools could be, if management pro’s without so many conflicts of interest could get their hands on the reins of public schools?

It would only take one or two of these “outsiders” to be given a chance in Nebraska to prove the point, that there’s plenty of room for improvement in the public education executive suite.

That’s not to say that it is adviseable to give noneducators the cushy principal and superintendent seats everywhere, willy-nilly, especially in small districts where the top brass have more direct, operational duties by necessity, and sometimes are needed to teach and so forth.

But boy, it’d be great to see some options, and some fresh, new blood among those big shots, personnel heads, curriculum chiefs, and other central-office jobs.

You know, they’re the ones always spouting the Politically Correct slogans about “diversity.” Let’s make them seek diversity among their own ranks, shall we?

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How to Get Quality Administrators

Q. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but the chief financial officer of our multi-million dollar school district is a former gym teacher, and the superintendent’s expertise is in special ed. I realize they contract with professional accounting and law firms, and other advisers, but is it really in our best interests to limit complicated administrative jobs to educators who’ve come up through the ranks of school staffs?

Yes and no. The best managers know the nuts and bolts of the operation they lead, whatever it is. There are many examples of private-sector CEO’s who started at the bottom and count that experience as crucial to their effectiveness. Education experience is obviously valuable for a job in educational leadership.

But most states have now passed laws that say that it isn’t essential any more, and alternative certification programs for school leaders are on the grow.

There’s a lot to be said for a fresh perspective, cross-disciplinary training, and an attitude of loyalty to the “stockholders” – in the case of public schools, the students and parents -- more than to the employees. That attitude is common in the private sector, but not, so far, in public education.

Basically, “outsiders” who didn’t go to teacher’s college, aren’t certified, and haven’t worked in education ever, or for a while, can’t have those administrative jobs. Thus, the talent pool is pretty stagnant. That creates inbreeding, nepotism, overspending, biased thinking, defensiveness and lots of other impediments to good management. No wonder collective bargaining is such a mess: it’s educators bargaining with educators, rather than labor and management.

No one is saying we should mandate that you CAN’T be an education manager if you’re an educator. Increasingly, though, people are saying that alternative certification for administrators is long past due. Schools are much more complicated enterprises now than in the past, and the budgets being managed are much bigger.

Most people believe that a retired military leader, a private-sector executive, or an entrepreneur still in his or her prime, should be allowed a chance at a high-paying, fulfilling school leadership job.

Many states have alternative certification and conditional licensure programs for superintendents, principals and other key school staff already operating, or about to. If it becomes commonplace to have a nonteacher at the helm, most school observers say it’ll be a very good thing.

Homework: You can check your state’s requirements for school administrators on the website of the National Center for Alternative Certification, www.teach-now.org/frm2003princsupercert.asp

Posted 10:22 AM by Susan Darst Williams

ANSWER #5 for NEBRASKA: AUDIT STATE AID TO EDUCATION

I find it tremendously hard to believe that Nebraska taxpayers can be expected to pony up $2.16 billion for public schools (see for yourself on the statewide tallies at http://ess.nde.state.ne.us) and yet nobody is double-checking those expenditures on behalf of us taxpayers.

Of course each district has an annual audit, but it’s what they call “pro forma.” Did the district spend what they said they spent? Yes. So they “pass.”

Well, that’s not the kind of spending oversight that more than two billion big ones deserve to get. It’s long past time for Nebraska’s state auditor to be empowered to begin forensic audits on at least a spot-check basis on certainly state aid to education, at the very least. Please, please, won’t some upstanding state senator get this done next legislative session?

Look. I’m like most Nebraskans: I can’t believe there could be widespread fraud, waste and incompetence in our public education system. These are my neighbors and friends. The vast majority of educators are honest and give us the best bang they can, for our bucks.

But hey: let’s get real. Can we say that it’s NOT going on? How do we KNOW, in the absence of corroboration? It’s going on everywhere else, so how can we say it isn’t here? And if it IS going on, why on Earth wouldn’t we want to find it, and put a stop to it? Wouldn’t the mere fact that we’re finally LOOKING be a deterrent, at any rate?

I’m telling you, folks. I read a lot of stuff from all over about public education. There is corruption aplenty from coast to coast. Nebraska is oddly out of the action. It just doesn’t seem credible that there’s none of that here. And it just doesn’t feel good to know that we’re not lifting a finger to even try to find it.

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STOPPING SCHOOL CORRUPTION

Q. What guarantees do we have that our tax dollars are really going for education, and for waste, fraud, nepotism and corruption?

According to a New York University law professor who has studied corruption, incompetence and mismanagement in the public schools all across the country in districts large and small, the answer comes in two words: “forensic audits.

It’s unacceptable that there is so little oversight on school spending in this day of computerized records and sophisticated investigative techniques. States that do not have at least a minimal spot-check performance audit system in place are letting taxpayers down, bigtime.

The law professor, Lydia G. Segal, says in her 2003 book, Battling Corruption in America’s Public Schools (Northwestern University Press) that waste, fraud and abuse are by no means limited to big cities like New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles, although she documented plenty of evidence from them. Examples:

-- $8 million in undocumented expenses were found in the Roslyn School District on Long Island, where superintendent Frank A. Tassone and an administrator have pleaded not guilty to stealing more than $1 million for four homes, a Lexus, airline travel, cruises, dermatology treatments, furniture, jewelry, and no-bid contracts for the superintendent’s roommate. The school board has also been investigating huge expenditures to companies that have no record of doing business with the district, rentals of limousines, and other irregularities.

-- A school construction scandal in Fort Worth, Texas, ended with prison sentences involving $15.9 million in kickbacks between an executive director of maintenance for the public school district and a contractor.

-- Eight employees of the New Orleans public school system pleaded guilty to stealing more than $70,000 in a phony payroll scheme, though the state legislative auditor of Louisiana believes the paycheck fraud totals $3 million.

-- In Oakland, Calif., accounting was so messed up, state auditors couldn’t tell if the district was in compliance with state and federal regulations or not, and multi-million dollar repayments might be assessed.

-- The Los Angeles school district has the most expensive high school ever built still under construction, at a pricetag of $270 million in an appalling comedy of errors and mismanagement.

-- An audit has charged the Miami-Dade County, Fla., school district with wasting more than $100 million in its school facilities program.

Homework: The article is on http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=15595

Posted 10:14 AM by Susan Darst Williams

ANSWER #4 for NEBRASKA: A NEW APPROACH TO TEACHER PAY

If you’re serious about wanting to make Nebraska’s K-12 education system the best in the country, you have to look at the No. 1 personnel issue: teacher compensation.

We’re stuck with an antiquated, union-devised seniority system, with stairstep raises based solely on how many years you’ve been breathing.

Even though it’s hard to find teachers qualified on the secondary level for certain specialties and skills, because of union rules and longtime practice, they can be paid no more than an elementary-level teacher with no particular specialization – so the regular market forces of supply and demand can’t establish fair salaries.

We can’t pay hiring bonuses to teachers willing to pull up stakes and move to a small town. We can’t pay “battle pay” to teachers willing to go into the inner city and work with the toughest challenges.

There’s no financial incentive for teachers to try anything new to improve student achievement, since teacher pay is totally divorced from student achievement. Excellence gets no more money than mediocrity. Therefore, the best people stay in the classroom for a few years, and then go up or out, for the most part. We’ll never have excellence if we keep setting our pay scales this way.

We all know that there are young teachers with bachelor’s degrees working for small salaries in small towns who are actually doing a better job than veteran teachers with master’s degrees or an Ed.D. in the big city. I’m not saying small-town teacher salaries ought to be on par with big-city salaries; of course, that would be silly because of big differences in the cost of living. But at least the quality of a job a teacher does ought to have some direct connection to what’s on that paycheck.

Now here’s a compilation of studies that shows that all the reasons we pay teachers more – because they have more continuing education, because they’re more experienced, etc. – are bunk.

An enterprising state senator ought to look at sponsoring a law next session that would establish a 21st Century pay system for Nebraska’s public-school teachers. The components:

-- Freedom of setting salaries would transfer from the union to elected school boards, with guidelines to protect teachers from arbitrary decisions, making K-12 education’s compensation system a lot more like the private sector.

-- Guidelines for value-added assessment would be created, so that the better a teacher’s kids do on standardized tests, the more pay they make.

-- Bonuses of any kind any school board wants to pay would be allowed, including hiring bonuses for people who had high GPA’s in college, have math or science expertise, or scored high on the teacher prep exam, Praxis.

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What Makes a Teacher More Effective?

Q. Is there a definitive study that shows clearly what makes a teacher effective?

Teacher quality is the No. 1 in-school influence on student achievement. But according to a major policy report by the National Council on Teacher Quality, research shows that the things most of us THINK are trademarks of a quality teacher, aren’t necessarily true.

The study found that teachers with high levels of literacy – big vocabularies, good speaking and writing skills, high test scores – are much more effective than their counterparts who may have more experience, professional development and other seeming advantages.

Teachers who went to more selective colleges also are better in the classroom, as are teachers who are high-achieving, responsible, critical thinkers, organized, motivating, respectful, and loyal to their employers.

These findings signal that it is bad public policy to pay more money to teachers just for earning a master’s degree, since the evidence is clear that post-graduate education does not make a teacher more effective, and in fact, can have a slightly negative impact on student achievement.

Another widespread belief is that teaching experience equals quality. This isn’t true, after the gains of the first four or five years. It’s possible that the best teachers move up the pay scale into school administration positions or other careers, making it look as though teachers get better in the first few years, and then plateau. Bottom line: it is not wise to have stairstep pay scales based on seniority, the way we do.

Here’s a whopper: the most effective teachers aren’t even necessarily education majors. Teacher prep is nowhere near as important as other factors, including academic caliber, course work across a broad spectrum of disciplines, and the type of content-based experience and course work the teacher has had. The finding suggests that an end to requirements that teachers be graduates of teachers’ colleges is on the way.

Another whopper: teacher certification adds “some marginal value,” but not enough to justify the costs, including barring many good people from teaching for lack of certification. Answer: alternative certification programs that value nontraditional routes into teaching by capable people.

Homework: Download the report, “Increasing the Odds: How Good Policies Can Yield Better Teachers,” as a pdf from www.nctq.org, and sign up for that group’s free bimonthly e-newsletter, Teacher Quality Bulletin.

Posted 12:43 PM by Susan Darst Williams

ANSWER #3 for NEBRASKA: DECONSOLIDATION

If you want to get serious about school reform, you have to talk about making more than just a few cosmetic changes. Here’s one of the most exciting and promising proposals yet: deconsolidation.

Middle-class parents in suburban Omaha don’t want the Omaha Public Schools to take their schools over, and who can blame them? OPS has problems they don’t want.

So let’s not let the Omaha Public Schools grow. Let’s make it shrink!

Let’s push for deconsolidation of the state’s largest school district, turning over a number of its more troubled schools to management teams in Millard, Ralston, Elkhorn and District 66. Give each of those districts one or more of OPS’ most troubled schools, and watch those suburban educators turn things around! If you only have one or two schools with big problems, it’s a lot easier to work on them, than if the majority of your district is a headache.

Meanwhile, get OPS’ bureaucracy under control by relieving that district of, say, 50% of its staff, who’d go along with the transferred schools to the smaller, better suburban districts. Naturally, the OPS central office wouldn’t have to be so big, either, and that would be a good thing, cost-wise.

If you really want to be smart, you could consolidate the nonclassroom functions into one big, county-wide business office, to get economies of scale in things like ordering toilet paper, lightbulbs, running the buses, and so forth. But let separate management teams of educators keep doing the academic management in the separate districts. That would keep the spirit of competition alive in Omaha, instead of a deadening monopoly, as would happen if we let OPS take over the schools in the ‘burbs.

Instead of one big, less-than-great urban district and four or five pretty good suburban ones, we’d end up with several equal sized districts which would all have more diversity, and in which the low-income kids and middle-class ones alike would have more of a chance for success.

Deconsolidation makes just as much sense in greater Nebraska, where the Class I parents are having to go to war to try to save their schools from being consolidated into town schools against their will.

Around the country, the trend is more toward smaller, better districts. So for once, let’s be in the “in” crowd:

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DECONSOLIDATION

Q. Are there any moves around the country for going back to medium- and small-size school districts?

Yes, several. The reasons people want to break up huge school districts:

-- the years-old, ever-widening achievement gap between rich and poor, white and black which begs for a different school management approach;

-- a perceived overemphasis on special-needs students, including non-English speaking immigrants, at the expense of longtime citizens of normal or strong academic ability;

-- chronic overspending on nonclassroom pursuits because of the empowered bureaucracy;

-- overcrowding;

-- safety issues;

-- inequitable funding;

-- lack of responsiveness by elected officials and school leaders since individual students and their families have minute political pull in a huge district;

-- resistance to change because of the excessive power which school consolidation gives to unions and school employees, and

-- an overwhelming sense of a lack of local control.

Thinkers such as Allan Carlson, president of The Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society (www.profam.org), are calling for deconsolidation down to the individual school level. Each school would have its own elected governing board and its own tax levy. It could serve all ages, or just offer traditional K-12, and it could be open full- or part-time, offering a broad curriculum or a more narrow focus. Where the economic circumstances of a school district are inadequate, a state education board could make a supplemental grant out of general revenues.

Ironically, the school system where court-ordered busing got its start has a raging battle going on about deconsolidation. The 120,000 students in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., would be divided into three districts, but a state law to make that change failed this legislative session. The battle pitched mayors and parents against school-district officials, union leaders and Democratic politicians.

Various scenarios are being proposed to keep an equal amount of low-income students in the smaller districts that would be created, including cutting up the big district like pieces of a pie to include inner-city neighborhoods in each new district.

State Rep. John Rhodes pledged to keep trying, saying, “If the local school system will not listen and act on our customers’ – the taxpayers’ – concerns about safety, overcrowding and inefficiencies, then their state representative is listening, and will.”

Homework: There’s a large and active grassroots organization pushing for deconsolidation in the Charlotte area: Don’t Underestimate Mecklenburg Parents, www.dumpcms.com

Posted 12:06 PM by Susan Darst Williams

ANSWER #2 for NEBRASKA: A SCHOOL CHOICE PLAN THAT’S FAIR TO ALL INCOME LEVELS

The Nebraska State Education Association is too powerful of a union for there to be much hope for charter schools to ever be established in this state.

But there’s a better way to break up the state’s education monopoly, and one that has something in it for everyone: parents of public-school students, parents of private-schoolers and homeschoolers, taxpayers, educators, and even the unions.

It involves a controlled amount of school-choice vouchers for Nebraska’s neediest students, in the worst inner-city or rural schools, combined with tax deductions for private-sector educational spending by middle-income and wealthy families, to encourage the development of opportunities and alternatives in the Nebraska education scene.

Oooooh, I hope the Omaha Public Schools is paying attention. This is the kind of an end-run that could pay them back for failing to level the playing field between whites and blacks despite the billions of tax dollars we’ve given them over the decades. It also would provide a way out and sweet revenge for their recent hostile takeover attempt of those suburban districts, and punishment for their ill-advised overspending on technology, class-size reduction, and other things that clearly don’t work – but they’re doing them, anyway.

Let’s get school choice going in Nebraska. Then let them take over those suburban districts in a few years. There’s not much point in taking over school districts that have been emptied out in favor of private schools, through the start of a long-overdue school choice system for Nebraska. Besides, the kids and teachers alike will be ‘way better off with lots and lots of choice and opportunities. Is there life after monopoly education? You bet!

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A SCHOOL CHOICE PLAN THAT'S FAIR TO ALL INCOME LEVELS

Q. Breaking up the public education monopoly is a good idea, especially for inner-city and minority kids. They should have the same opportunities for a higher-quality private education that rich kids can afford. So I’d be for free tuition to private schools for poor kids. But there’s no way we could afford vouchers for everyone, and besides, tax funding going in to private schools would wreck them, because they would be subject to the same government regulations and requirements that are plaguing public schools. Anyway, I don’t think it’s fair for taxpayers to subsidize private-school tuition for middle-income and wealthy kids. So what’s the answer, if there is one?

It’s hard to beat this solution, proposed by a North Carolina think tank, the John Locke Foundation:

1. For needy students in public school districts where a significant percentage of the students are not testing at grade level, give a government voucher of $4,500 per pupil per year. That’s equal to the average private-school tuition in that state. The student’s parents can use it as tuition in a private school, if they choose. The public district would still receive the difference between the $4,500 and its actual cost per pupil, which is several thousand dollars higher. That way, the public school would have more even money to work with the students who choose to stay in the public setting.

2. For all other students, there would be no vouchers granted, but there would be tax-deductible educational savings accounts established. Parents could deposit up to $4,500 per child per year. This money must be spent for private-school tuition, tutoring, textbooks, and other bona fide educational expenses, from preschool through college, or the tax shelter would be lost.

The foundation says its research indicates that the performance gap between black students and white students in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg public schools was cut by 25% in one year, simply by enabling black students to attend private schools with the aid of partial tuition subsidies through the Children’s Scholarship Fund. It would actually save taxpayers money to offer school choice to needy pupils, the foundation contends.

It cited a National Bureau of Economic Research study, which found that offering school choice options is a much better and cheaper way to improve academic performance than the expensive solutions that the government and most public-school districts are trying: class-size reductions, and rigorous standardized tests. The study showed a reduction in class size would produce only one-third as high of an average test-score increase, for example, as opening a charter school, and yet a charter school costs taxpayers no more, and usually less, than a traditional public school.

Homework: See the policy report, “School Choice and Competition,” on www.JohnLocke.org

Posted 10:23 AM by Susan Darst Williams

ANSWER #1 for NEBRASKA: CHARTER SCHOOLS

Everyone agrees that it’s unacceptable to have significantly higher percentages of low-income kids who drop out or are in remedial classes in the Omaha Public Schools, and significantly lower percentages of them in honors classes.

Everyone agrees that the push by OPS to take over the suburban districts of Ralston, Millard and eventually Elkhorn is a mess.

Everyone agrees that it’s too bad the parents who want to keep their Class I country schools going don’t have an alternative to a big, expensive, draining petition drive.

So here’s the answer: charter school legislation.

Doesn’t it make you itchy that Nebraska is one of only 10 states in the country that hasn’t allowed this common-sense alternative? I was there in the 1990s when the union quashed the proposed charter-school bill, and saw the strong-arm tactics they used. Eww, eww, ewwww.

I couldn’t understand why charters didn’t go through, since everywhere they’re being tried, they’re working. They foster innovation and accountability, and serve as the answer for a lot of families whose educational needs aren’t being met by the status quo. Best of all, the little bit of competition they give the public schools is enough to kindle a little “catch-up” in them, with curricular improvements and a more quality-friendly attitude, which is great for everybody.

The union pulled out every trick in the book to try to stop the charter school that was formed in Princeton, N.J., as you can read in the “homework” link provided below. So let’s learn from that and be ready for the union’s opposition . . . and get a group of Nebraska state senators with some vision and some guts to get this done next legislative session, and solve those three big problems in one fell swoop.

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HOW TO START A CHARTER SCHOOL

Q. If charter schools are such a great idea, how come there aren’t any in our state?

Forty states passed charter school legislation beginning in the early 1990s, and last year, according to the Fordham Foundation, there were more than 700,000 students in 3,000 charter schools around the country. Significantly higher percentages of minority and lower-income students attend charter schools than are enrolled in the traditional public schools.

In those 10 states in which charter schools are not yet allowed, it is thought that the strength of the teachers’ unions have kept them out . . . so far. Charter schools don’t have to kowtow to the union, and that’s why they find them threatening.

If you want to make charter schools legal in your state, you will have to find a skilled state senator willing to do battle with the teachers’ union lobbyists to get enough votes to get it passed. But it’s been done in 80% of the country. So go for it.

Besides enabling legislation, it takes a small, determined group of parents and teachers to form a charter school. Ironically, they find themselves battling other parents, who fear that a charter school will drain resources away from the public schools, create divisions among a community’s children, become elitist, and undermine teacher morale.

Those were the contentions working against parents in Princeton, N.J., who had tried to get better curriculum in place through the convention routes – electing a majority on the school board, presenting a petition with hundreds of signatures to beef up the math curriculum and so forth – but still couldn’t budge the teachers’ union and powers that be.

So they formed a charter in 1997, working with the New Jersey Department of Education, and 25 percent of the student body applied to get in it. A lottery system had to be devised. The charter receives $9,500 per student per year, vs. the $12,000 apiece given to the traditional public school students in Princeton. But a strong curriculum makes up that funding gap, and then some.

Results: test scores have been “spectacular”; for example, some children improved their writing skills by three years after just one year in the charter, and others advanced two years in math.

Homework: Read how the Princeton parents got their charter school going in this account by one of the founders, a theoretical physicist:
http://www.edexcellence.net/foundation/publication/publication.cfm?id=22

Posted 11:09 AM by Susan Darst Williams

HOW TO GET HIGH-QUALITY MATH AND SCIENCE INSTRUCTION

Nebraska has once again missed the boat, since our powerful teachers’ union has been able to extinguish the flame of educational innovation in this state by blocking attempts to start charter schools.

Now look what a good thing is happening in the Boston area, because Massachusetts does have enabling legislation for charter schools. Charter schools have public funding but private management, with far more say-so by parents and teachers, and thus more flexibility and accountability than the public schools.

If Nebraska had charter schools, the Class I parents could have saved their country schools, and inner-city and minority kids could have been far better prepared for college and high-tech careers if they could have skirted the inept management of the Omaha Public Schools, which has failed to give them what they need in the way of good math and science instruction, and so we have the spectacle of high dropout rates, and almost no disadvantaged or minority students in upper-level math and science classes in OPS.

Then again, it’s early. Charter school legislation can always be introduced next legislative session. Offering everybody some real alternatives would be a much better solution for kids all across the state than the forced consolidation of the Class I country schools, or of all those quality suburban districts into OPS. Hint, hint!

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A Math and Science Charter School

Q. I’ve read that educators don’t realize how dumbed down math and science instruction is today, because they took so little math and science in high school and college themselves. How do parents find educators who “get it” and are delivering excellent math and science education?

In Massachusetts, a charter school is opening this fall that has been controversial, but carries with it great promise for doing just what you ask, and great potential for replicating its services in your community, if someone will undertake the task.

The Advanced Math and Science Charter School is set to open in the western suburbs of Boston, serving students in 6th through 12th grades with a high-quality, sequential approach to all school subjects, particularly math and science. So far 230 students from 42 school districts have enrolled for Grades 6 and 7, with an ultimate goal of 1,000 students, Grades 6-12. The staff credentials are considerably higher than those of the typical public-school teaching staff.

A charter school has public tax funding and does not charge tuition, but has more freedom than the typical public school to vary the curriculum and approach to education. This charter school is aimed at improving the qualifications of the technology workforce in the Boston area. It projects an 80 percent increase in demand for high-tech workers over the next 10 years, but students are underachieving in math and science to qualify for those jobs.

Controversy has come because the school’s founder is a Russian immigrant, a geochemist who was persecuted in her native country for being a Jew and spent time in refugee camps. She found great career success in the U.S. and attributes it to the rigorous education she received in her native country, so she wants to offer it here. The concern is that the curriculum will be too technical, but so far, there appears to be the same quality approach to the humanities and the arts as to math and science.

Local educrats, who have sued the Commonwealth over this start-up, are frightened because they fear this school will “skim” off the top students, which would reduce the average test scores of the other public schools. On the other hand, it’s argued, don’t smart kids have a right to work up to their level of ability just like everybody else?

The school will offer special education services, with an emphasis on “the forgotten gifted,” underachievers with high IQ’s who often languish in public school settings.

Homework: The school’s homepage is www.amsacs.org

Posted 1:39 PM by Susan Darst Williams

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!

Here are some fun ideas to raise up a new generation of American patriots.

Patriot Lessons

Q. My daughter says they never say the Pledge of Allegiance in school. She knows very little about American history. How can I make sure she grows up to love the USA?

-- At sporting events, teach her that whenever the flag is on the field of play, you should stand.

-- By age 5, children should know to put their hands over their hearts and take a pretty good stab at the words to “Star-Spangled Banner.”

-- Teach your child patriotic songs and the stories behind them.

-- Read famous patriotic poems and stories together.

-- Have a framed copy of the Declaration of Independence in your home.

-- Check out biographies from the library about American founders.

-- Ask the teacher and principal for daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. Most states have Americanism statutes that schools are supposed to follow.

-- Scan textbooks for Politically Correct distortions about America’s past that put our country in a false, negative light. Discuss these with your child.

-- Suggest that your school have an American Heroes day instead of, or in addition to, Halloween.

-- Take your child with you to vote, discuss your choices, and check results together with the next day’s newspaper.

-- Shield children from criticism about our country until they’re old enough to think for themselves.

-- Watch your own speech; model respect for individuals who are in power.

-- Discuss censorship and oppression in other countries; compare and contrast.

-- On vacations, visit places that are important to American history or culture. Examples: Jamestown; the Statue of Liberty; Revolutionary and Civil War battlefields; Pearl Harbor, and Washington, D.C.

-- Have fun celebrating the Fourth of July and Memorial Day, but also have family observances for Presidents Day, Flag Day and Veterans Day.

-- Display a flag outside your home. Teach your child flag etiquette.

-- Pray with your child every night for our country and its leaders.

Homework: Help your child make a folder about your family’s “military genealogy.” Include facts about the countries and battles your ancestors fought in. Add pictures, letters and documents if you have them. These make a great school report.

Posted 6:15 PM by Susan Darst Williams

Posted 6:07 PM by Susan Darst Williams

OVERWRITING SHOULD BE OVER AND OUT

How many times have you read something written by an educrat that leaves you wrinkling your brow and scratching your head, trying to understand what it means?

You know what they say: you can’t teach what you don’t know. Unfortunately, many teachers have not received very good writing instruction. No wonder employers and the public are complaining more and more about the lack of quality in the writing skills of today’s high-school and college graduates.

Here’s a book that can help those of us who care enough to at least try to get it right, keep it short, and make it sing.

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How Not to Write In “School-ese”

Q. It’s almost funny how many college graduates today write in an archaic, formal, hard-to-understand style. They use words like “nevertheless” and “thus,” even though nobody ever uses such stiff and pretentious words in everyday speech. How did this happen, and what can we do about it?

First, we should all demand that K-12 teachers receive better writing instruction themselves in teachers’ college and in district-provided inservices. There’s no excuse for crummy writing by an education professional, since communication skill is the single-most important quality any educator should have.

In addition, there’s a really good book that should be acquired by English teachers from 7th grade on, any businessperson who has to write reports and memos, and anyone else who wants to be a better writer. It’s called “Championship Writing: 50 ways to improve your writing,” by writing coach Paula LaRocque (Marion Street Press, Inc, 2000, 204 pp., $18.95).

She is known for teaching people how to write clearly and concisely, the way we speak when we are focusing on communicating without talking over the heads of our audience, or beneath them, either.

Writing takes a lot of work – but that work should be done by the writer, not the reader. Text shouldn’t be so “fancy” that the reader has to plow through it and look up a lot of complex words in order to understand what’s being said.

Ms. LaRocque and others say the cause of this “school-ese” is that high school and college teachers have rewarded students for "stiff, dense, pretentious" writing, "glutted with gobbledygook and arcane phrasing." Because teachers’ colleges often spout pompous, abstract and jargon-cloaked verbiage, teachers tend to think that’s a superior way to write. But of course, it’s not. It’s gibberish.

The author uses colorful word pictures to explain the problem, such as "octopus writing" -- which "sinks readers in a sea of words" -- as well as “sentence clutter” and "fadspeak.” She discusses the "building blocks of sentences" and demonstrates how short words and simple phrases usually communicate best.

Homework: This book and others about writing and journalism are available at www.marionstreetpress.com