Posted 10:46 AM by Susan Darst Williams

HERE'S HOPING NEBRASKA SCHOOLS
WILL COPY THE SUCCESS
OF THE K.I.S.S. PRINCIPLE:
KEEP IT SIMPLE, SILLY

Happy to see these great results for New York City low-income kids that have been gained with an excellent, back-to-the-basics curriculum, the Core Knowledge series, along with a sensible, cost-effective, back-to-the-basics approach to school management:

http://ednews.org/articles/scrimp-avoid-quick-fixes-watch-academic-achievement-rise.html

This Christian Science Monitor article contains several simple but smart changes that could help those 20 or so failing buildings in the Omaha Public Schools get it back together in a hurry.

Class size is kept fairly large, but test scores are 'way up, simply because these educators were able to say "no" to stupid and expensive fads, and met kids' learning needs in a straightforward way.

The Core Knowledge curriculum is excellent (www.coreknowledge.org), but in Nebraska is in only limited use right now, chiefly at the Core Academy in one grade school in the Millard district.

One of the neatest things the New York principal does is share the annual budget with parents and teachers. What a concept!

Labels: Core Knowledge for low-income students, smart school management ideas

Posted 2:50 PM by Susan Darst Williams

ACT SCORES RELEASED TODAY;
A TIP O' THE HAT TO OPS,
BUT ALSO A DART AND A CHALLENGE

Not so good news: Nebraska students average a mediocre 22.1 on a 36-point scale on this year's ACT college admissions test. The national average is 21.1, so we're not really doing such an impressive job after all.

And that's even though the percentage of low-income and minority students that we have taking the ACT in Nebraska is much lower than in other states. Only about 4% of this year's test pool in Nebraska are African-Americans, for example.

So much for the myth that ghetto kids' test scores are dragging down our statewide averages. We already know that there's a huge racial achievement gap in Nebraska, but the net effect of low scores among 4% of the population is not enough to hurt our statewide average that much.

We also know that over 50% of African-American students in Nebraska are dropping out of high school before graduation. So they're not even taking the ACT because college isn't even in the realm of possibility for them. And from about Grades 8-11, reportedly they are severely under-represented in the higher-level high school courses that prepare a student to excel on the ACT, anyway.

So technically, our statewide, all-race average should be much, much higher than a 22.1. Frankly, a potato should be able to make that score after sitting in our taxpayer-supplied classrooms from kindergarten through the middle of 11th grade, at a cost well in excess of $100,000 per pupil.

Then there's the whole question of how much school spending is going up every year in Nebraska, and yet we are falling closer and closer to the national average in test scores. Given our advantages, we should be advancing higher and higher than the national average: we have favorable demographics, favorable parental employment and educational attainment rates, favorite levels of intact families, higher than average rates of instructional spending, among the nation's lowest staff-to-child ratios, and so forth.

I know it's hard. But really: shouldn't we be doing much better?

Our profile starts on p. 7:

http://www.act.org/news/data/09/pdf/states/Nebraska.pdf

Better news: One statistic that may be lost in the hubbub over today's score release is that the number of African-American students who took the ACT in Nebraska has risen from 492 in 2005 to 647 today. One can only assume that a lot of the growth in that test pool took place in OPS, where the lion's share of the state's African-American students are in school. So hats off to the OPS educators, if they increased that number. That is still only a gain from 3% of the test pool to 4%, though, and still reflects a shockingly low representation of black students in the college-prep population in the Cornhusker State. However, according to U.S. Census figures, African-Americans make up only about 4.5% of the state's population. So the ACT test pool's racial makeup here is getting close to being proportionately equitable.

Dart: We need to look hard at the statistic that the average ACT score for a Caucasian student in Nebraska last year was 22.6, compared to 17.7 for the average African-American test-taker here. What an unconscionable racial achievement gap. I believe the ACT score minimum for entry into the University of Nebraska-Lincoln is a 20. So we're limiting educational opportunity far more harshly for our black students than we are for our white students, and that can't continue.

Challenge: Let's see what the average ACT scores are, by race, for each individual high school in Nebraska, with, of course, the raw numbers showing how many students took the ACT test and what percentage of that age group actually took the ACT. Let's see those stats for the private high schools, as well. Let's see if more racial minorities are taking the ACT at the private schools than the public schools, and scoring higher. I bet that's true, and if it's true, then why in the Sam Hill don't we start a school choice program NOW to help minority kids get into the college prep race?!? OPS and the other districts should be made to reveal that statistic since it is our tax dollars paying for everything they do, and we deserve accountability. Another stat we really need is the number of students, by race, in Nebraska who are scoring a "4" or "5" on the Advanced Placement tests each spring and thereby demonstrating that they have excelled in those academic subjects areas and gaining free college credit. I'll bet you the number of black kids getting AP credit is embarrassingly tiny in this state -- and that can't continue, either!

Labels: black underachievement, Nebraska ACT scores

Posted 4:18 PM by Susan Darst Williams

DETROIT PAYS 257 INVISIBLE TEACHERS;
COULD THAT BE HAPPENING HERE?

The Detroit Public Schools have been issuing paychecks to 257 nonexistent employees and millions of dollars in benefits for dependents who aren't eligible, an auditor's report issued recently has reported.

The district, which is about twice the size of the Omaha Public Schools, also has a warehouse full of unused motorcycles, BlackBerrys, metal detectors and other equipment in the face of a quarter-of-a-billion dollar budget deficit and talk of filing for federal bankruptcy protection.

See the cavalcade of management prowess on:

http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/us/2009/08/05/D99SSBVO1_us_detroit_schools_audits/

If even 10% of this is going on in the Omaha Public Schools, it would go a long way toward explaining why that urban district's spending is going up, up, up . . . while minority dropout rates do the same darn thing.

Makes you wonder if THIS is why certain Nebraska politicians and unions have fought tooth and nail against performance audits of our billion dollars annually in K-12 school spending. Maybe they know something we don't know . . . or should.

The audits we have now are pretty much pro forma: the school district says it spent this much, and yep! The auditors that the school boards hire and pay agree that they spent that much. It isn't a real check-and-balance at all.

What we need is more of a forensic audit that would turn up frauds like "invisible teachers" who get paychecks, or "invisible students" on doctored enrollment tallies for whom taxpayers are paying bogus state aid.

At the very least, we need to employ spot-check performance audits that can tell the people how much they spent and what on. We should start with the major urban districts in Omaha and Lincoln. Who knows what we may find? You never know until you look.

Labels: Detroit Public Schools, school audits

Posted 6:39 PM by Susan Darst Williams

HOW TO ACHIEVE A WIN-WIN-WIN
FOR BLACK STUDENTS, OPS AND TAXPAYERS

Are you cringing over the low test scores in the Omaha Public Schools, published in The World-Herald today?

See how, for many of the neediest kids in Omaha, the test scores are going DOWN, even after the multimillion dollar bond issues and increased spending of the past decade or so directed at meeting their needs?

It's long past time to put to rest the bogus assumption that more spending on education produces better academic results. Wrong-o!

The new test scores sure show the Charles Dickens "It was the best of schools, it was the worst of schools" character of OPS. But therein lies a real opportunity for improving things for pupils, OPS and taxpayers. Consider:

The newspaper showed a chart with 64 elementary schools listed by their California Achievement Test scores last spring in reading, language and math in Grades 2, 5 and 8. Some of the top schools are doing very well, averaging above the 80th and 90th percentiles.

Look at Dundee Elementary, with 43% of its pupils from families whose incomes are low enough to qualify for free or subsidized lunch. Yet that school still scored in the 90th percentile on the CAT compared to pupils in other schools across the country. That is admirable. OPS should be applauded.

Of the top 32 schools on the chart, only four are doing worse than a statistical analysis of the poverty factor in those schools would suggest. In other words, only in only four of the top half of OPS grade schools are the kids doing worse than one would expect, given their demographics. The vast majority of the top half of grade schools in OPS are beating the odds. That's something to celebrate.

But in the BOTTOM half of the school roll in OPS, 22 out of 32 were doing worse than they should be.

That's the problem -- the major, major problem, and the reason Omaha has egg on its face before the nation. Omaha's African-American students, who mostly populate those troubled schools, score at or near the bottom of the whole country in another nationally-standardized test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

So we have crummy scores in half of our schools, and minority kids are doing worse than they should be even if all other factors were equal, demographically-speaking. On its face, it looks like racial discrimination, for taxpayers are tolerating educational practices that are obviously and chronically negatively impacting African-Americans and other minorities in educational outcomes, compared to whites.

Can you say "major lawsuit"? Can you say "ruinous consent decree," similar to what happened in Kansas City, which caused a judge to nuke their public schools because of a problem that wasn't even as bad as this?

Note that these disappointing scores come despite the fact that most of the bottom 32 schools are "academy" schools, in which Nebraska taxpayers are pouring much more money, per-pupil. If spending levels had anything to do with educational quality, you'd certainly expect to see a better return than that on our investment. Once again, we can see that pouring good money after bad doesn't do a darn thing to help.

But there's a way out of this, as easy as 1-2-3:

1. Form a new private, nonprofit corporation. Put an educational leader of impeccable credentials at the helm -- City Councilman Franklin Thompson comes to mind. Allow that new corporation to manage the per-pupil spending in those 22 OPS schools on a long-term management contract with the Omaha Public Schools board. Pass through the tax funding for those kids straight to the new nonprofit. Declare an educational emergency that negates the union contract and supercede collective bargaining for employees of those 22 schools. Make sure to give Thompson, as the ad hoc superintendent, and the principals he puts in place, hiring and firing power. Most of the existing OPS staff would probably hire on, and salaries and benefits will no doubt be better if management could get out from under oppressive union rules. Cut the per-pupil spending in those 22 schools to the same as the OPS average, saving millions in taxpayer dollars right off the bat. Remember? More spending does NOT mean better academic results! It's a paradox, but if we set out to spend less, and do the simple things like delivering academic basics better because we can't AFFORD the more expensive things that are obviously screwing things up, the kids will be better off! You CAN get more for less!

2. Contract with an experienced private, nonprofit school management firm such as KIPP (the Knowledge Is Power Program, www.kipp.org). Allow them to put in place the simple, firm, effective curricular and operational changes that they have proven work very well for disadvantaged students at other schools all over the country. Examples: academic basics such as phonics for reading and computation for math, tangible incentive prizes for good grades and attendance, better discipline, longer school days and some Saturday sessions. If parents don't want to sign off on that, they should be allowed to put their kids in any private school in the city -- there are plenty of openings -- and the tuition is about one-third as much as OPS is now spending per pupil -- so we'd save beaucoup bucks that way, too.

3. Here's the beautiful part: Nebraska's NAEP test scores for African-American students would zoom high overnight, as if by magic, the very next year, and stay high. We would no longer be the bottom-feeders of the nation for our students of color. Omaha's economic development picture would brighten because we would be free of our current black eye -- the implication that we are a racist community because our minority students do so much worse in school than our Caucasian students. How would this happen, as soon as the 2010-2011 school year? Because we will have removed most of the low-scoring African-American pupils from the test pool in the public school setting, where we KNOW they don't do well, into a private school setting, where evidence from around the country shows that minority students do better. You remove the bottom-scoring one-third from a test pool, and what happens to the average? It zooms sky-high! Bottom line: minority kids not only will do better academically in the long run, but their scores in the meantime won't be counted against OPS, and in the long run will look much closer to what the other kids in OPS can do. OPS teachers will look like geniuses . . . and so will Nebraska taxpayers!

Labels: KIPP, long-term management contract for 22 worst-performing OPS schools, Omaha Public Schools racial achievement gap, solution