Santa Fe/ State's New Grading System Puzzles Lawmakers
By Robert Nott
The New Mexican
August 23, 2012
A lot of people still don't understand how grades are determined for New Mexico schools under the state's new A-F system.
A hearing of the Legislative Education Study Committee on Thursday that was scheduled for 90 minutes turned into a four-hour session. It included:
- a presentation of a committee report on the grading appeals system,
- testimony from Rio Rancho Public Schools Superintendent Sue Cleveland and
- a lengthy question-and-answer period with Hanna Skandera, secretary of education-designate.
Skandera spent a lot of time reiterating information and answering questions, but it was apparent that a good number of the legislators - many of whom said they were speaking on behalf of their educational and parental constituents - still can't figure out the method behind the new grading plan.
The Legislature adopted the new 100-point grading system into law last year to provide clearer data on how the state's schools are performing. The Public Education Department released preliminary grades in January for the state's 831 schools. The official grades were released in July.
- Up to 40 points are based on the results of three years of data from the Standards Based Assessments administered annually;
- up to 10 points can be earned by showing increased student proficiency over three years;
- 20 points are based on improvement among the highest-performing students;
- another 20 points are based on improvement among the lowest performing students; and
- schools can earn up to 10 points based on attendance records and student views of how their school environment fosters achievement.
- In addition, five "bonus" points can be picked up by demonstrating the school has student and parental engagement programs.
Skandera told the lawmakers that a technical manual explaining the calculations behind the formula in the grading plan will be updated and available online sometime in September. But several lawmakers said some schools within their districts didn't bother appealing their grades because they still don't understand how they were put together, and argued that the specifics should have been spelled out earlier in the process.
The committee report, presented by staffer Sarah M. Amador-Guzman, reflected interviews with 27 superintendents around the state - many of whom, she said, requested anonymity for fear of retaliation for criticizing the program.
Those participants' concerns included:
- confusion over criteria for acquiring bonus points,
- a lack of flexibility within the appeals process, and
- insufficient communication and information about the appeals process.
Among the recommendations was a proposal that the Public Education Department withhold all grades until after the appeals process is complete so schools receive a better understanding of where they stand.
Cleveland told the committee, "It would have been preferable for tentative scores created through a still immature system to have been kept private until the system had been tested, revised and validated."
Skandera, in response, noted that the state had to move fast to qualify for a waiver from several measures under the federally mandated No Child Left Behind Act.
Barbara Vigil Lowder of the New Mexico Coalition of School Administrators stood up during the discussion to note that superintendents around the state have told the coalition, "the complexity of it is an issue ... the changes made along the way are confusing to districts."
Skandera and several representatives made a point of saying that the federal Adequate Yearly Progress report is also difficult to explain and just as complex to comprehend. Skandera kept emphasizing that even though the new system follows a three-year cohort in many instances, it also allows the state to focus on each child individually and follow how she/he is performing.
That led to an exchange between Skandera and Rep. Mimi Stewart, D-Albuquerque, that played up the confusion behind the plan. Stewart said people don't understand how a child moves from one grade to another as an individual if that child is also part of a 25 percent cohort that is followed and graded from third to fourth to fifth grade.
"Are they an individual or (part of) a cohort?" Stewart asked.
"They can move out but we follow their growth within that cohort," Skandera replied.
"So you stay in the bottom 25 percent?" Stewart said.
"I'll need to provide clarification for you," Skandera said.
Later, near the session's end and after checking with an aide, Skandera told the committee that the lowest 25 percentile of students can change if an individual student moves up and out of that cohort group due to increasing proficiency.
In July, 39 of the state's schools received an A, 198 a B, 275 a C, 250 a D, and 69 an F. Since that time, 75 have appealed their grades and according to what Skandera told the committee Thursday, the state has approved about a third of those appeals and expects to give those roughly 25 schools a higher grade by the end of August. In addition, one of the appealing schools may see its grade decrease.
Revised grades for these appealing schools will be posted on the department's website by Aug. 31, she said.
The committee intends to continue studying the A-F system in an effort to understand it, said Sen. Cynthia Nava, D-Las Cruces, co-chairwoman of the committee.
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Grants/ Mount Taylor Elementary Principal Benny Gallegos Explains School's Grade
By Bob Tenequer
Cibola Beacon Staff Writer
August 24, 2012
Mount Taylor Elementary School principal, Benny Gallegos, said he felt that his school was a victim of its own success, when grades for the school were released in July.
Gallegos is referring to the grade the school received, falling from a 'B' in January to a 'D' in July.
As New Mexico's public schools transitioned from Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) to the A-F grading system, the Public Education Department (PED) released grades in January.
The grades released in January were based on scores from the 2009, 2010 and 2011 school years. The final grades that were released in July were scores from 2010, 2011 and 2012.
The 2009 scores were not included.
The principal said he wants to step up to defend the school's 'D' grade and to try to make sense and explain why this happened.
While mathematicians and statisticians struggle to make sense of the complex formula used by the PED to come up with the grades, which for some reason remains unavailable, educators continue to try to explain their grades to parents and staff.
In an attempt to try to clarify why the school's grade went lower, Gallegos explained that in the 2009-2010 school year, Mount Taylor Elementary School had a combined score of 128.9 percent and almost made Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), which was based on standards originally part of the federal 'No Child Left Behind Act.'
"We missed making AYP by one point in the 2009-2010 school year," explained Gallegos.
In 2010, Mount Taylor's scores spiked, and then began to drop.
Falling to 97.3 in the 2010-2011 and again to 91.8 in the 2011-2012 school year. These scores are the combined third, fourth, and fifth grade Standards Based Assessment (SBA) scores.
Gallegos acknowledged that the school has been dropping in scores for the past three years, however, he said, the school is still the second highest school in the Grants/Cibola County district, with students meeting the proficiency-level in math and reading.
The principal commented that the rest of the schools keep climbing, but they haven't reached where the Mount Taylor School is now, even though the school's scores have dropped.
"This year our students scored 84 percent proficiency in math and 85 percent proficiency in reading, and yet we got a low grade," explained Gallegos.
Gallegos, who is in his 29th year as a school administrator, said that he has spoken to his teachers and informed them that "they need to stop the bleeding...our scores continued to go down, and we are going to bring them back up."
"We have to step it up a notch," said Gallegos.
"I want to put my school out there and say the 'D' doesn't represent what we are doing here at the school," said the principal.
His plans to improve the academic scores by having the teachers reflect at the end of each school day on the six 'ws and one h': who, what when and where and how, when it comes to reading comprehension.
For math, the principal said, "We are going to work with the student until they get it and for those whom don't, we will remediate."
He added, "We are going to do a better job communicating with our parents and paying better attention to the data."
"I have the greatest students, teachers and parents," said Gallegos. "I will continue try to explain the grading system, but it is very complicated and not easy."
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Carlsbad/ Schools Hire Architect Firm for Bond Measure
By Ben Gibson
Carlsbad Current Argus
August 23, 2012
The Carlsbad Municipal Schools Board of Education Tuesday approved in a 4-0 vote for NCA Architects to make preliminary preparations in advance of a $60 million bond to fund the construction of four new elementary schools.
CMS Superintendent Gary Perkowski said NCA will begin to conduct interviews with teachers, parents and other interested community members to find out what the new elementary schools will need.
- "We want to find out what we need in schools, what the teachers and parents want. We want to find out what technology and what we'll need in theses new schools.
Perkowski said they'll use one prototype for all four elementary schools and make and adjustments as needed. He said that prototype will be used to show the community what the $60 million will be funding before it is voted on.
With the unanimous vote, CMS begins preparing construction of new schools in Carlsbad for the first time in more than 60 years, but there was some controversy at the board meeting.
"We had a couple of people in opposition," Perkowski said. "They thought we should award it (the contract) to someone in town. NCA has offices in town, plus (Robert Calvani, who owns NCA) grew up here, lived here, but ended up in Albuquerque."
Another concern was that the school board has not properly allowed the project to be bid on by other construction firms, but Perkowski said the school handled it through the Cooperative Educational Services. Perkowski said it is a process approved by the state and that it was used to begin the project quickly.
- "The reason CES was set up was so things like this could be handled more quickly and there would be less man hours involved," Perkowski said. "We would not bid an architectural proposal anyway."
Perkowski said it was a common way to handle certain projects within the state while also noting that NCA was not being paid for the preliminary work.
"This doesn't guarantee them anything. When we have this completed and if the bond is approved, then we will most likely begin sending out requests for proposals," Perkowski said.
The four new elementary schools will replace several of the older ones in the city, including Walter Craft Elementary, which was built in 1924.
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Questa/ Superintendent Roy Herrera Resigns; Public Calls for Board Unity
By Matthew van Buren
Taos News
August 23, 2012
A sizable crowd filled Tuesday's (Aug. 21) Questa Independent School Board meeting, with teachers, parents and students calling for board unity in the wake of superintendent Roy Herrera's resignation.
Board president Bernie Torres said he received Herrera's letter of resignation, effective immediately, Monday (Aug. 20), and the board voted 5-1 to accept his resignation Tuesday evening.
Torres said Herrera, who was hired over the summer, had a "great track record" and was "very highly qualified."
"It's been pretty rough," he said. "I was very saddened to see this person resign. He was an excellent person, an excellent leader.
Herrera was the third superintendent to serve Questa in as many years. Torres said he blames micromanagement from board members for Herrera's leaving the district; he said some board members "do not know their role."
"I think that's the problem that we have," he said. "Superintendents can't take it."
Torres referred to House Bill 212, saying it clearly enumerates the role of school boards. The bill calls for school boards to set district policy, approve budgets and hire and fire superintendents, who are referred to as the "chief executive officer(s)" of their districts, responsible for personnel and other decisions. Torres said Herrera was "overwhelmed" by "board members trying to do his job."
About 60 members of the public attended Tuesday's meeting, and several addressed the board. Among them was former board member Urban "Bob" Jaramillo, who recently stepped down for reasons related to his health.
Though the selection of Jaramillo's replacement appeared on Tuesday's agenda, and several who were interested in the appointment attended the meeting, the remaining six members of the board held three 3-3 votes over Jaramillo's replacement and ultimately could not choose one.
The board has 45 days from a member's resignation to select a replacement before the decision goes to the state Secretary of Education.
Jaramillo called for "unity and consistency" in the district's staff and administration and urged the board to work on behalf of students and teachers.
Also referring to House Bill 212, he said individual board members cannot give directives to employees or oversee construction projects, and that board members should put aside their own self-interest and personal vendettas to work toward the education of Questa's students. He said those guilty of overstepping their authority should be reported to the state Public Education Department (PED), which had two representatives in Tuesday's audience.
State law allows the Secretary of Education to suspend a board's authority and for the PED to take over its role in the district.
Questa High School Language Arts teacher Maria Cintas spoke to the board, saying she believes the district has become a "hostile work environment." She received applause when she told the board that staff members should serve as good examples to the students and stand up to bullies.
"If we have to file a complaint with the (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), we will," she said.
A group of staff members from the Questa schools also submitted a list of concerns to address with board members "due to low staff morale" earlier this month. They include accusations of "(not letting) the superintendent do his job," abusing board positions for personal gain, targeting staff members' families, and "focusing on petty issues rather than on academics."
During a discussion about Herrera's resignation, Torres said the move came as a surprise to him.
"He never really indicated that he would be leaving," he said.
Torres said "there's no question" that divisiveness on the board led to Herrera resigning.
"He worked very hard to try to unite the board," he said. "It's a loss for our district. It's a loss for us."
Board member Kenneth Gallegos also said the board needs to take responsibility.
"We failed as a board," he said. "I feel embarrassed to be a part of this board, because we let a good guy go."
Several members disagreed, however. Tammy Jaramillo said she thinks other factors besides board division must have affected Herrera's decision. Daryl Ortega said the board alone can't be held responsible for Herrera's leaving.
"It has to fall on the entire district," he said.
Board member Matt Ortega said he believes some board members didn't take to Herrera because Ortega was close to him and encouraged him to apply for the superintendent position (Herrera was hired with a unanimous vote of the board). However, one staff member in the audience said she had seen 11 different superintendents who "didn't take to the board" in a dozen years of working for the district.
"You guys need to start changing," she said, garnering applause from the audience.
The board eventually voted 5-1 to accept Herrera's resignation, with Matt Ortega voting against it.
"I refuse to let Mr. Herrera go, so I say, 'nay,'" he said.
Torres said the timing of Herrera's resignation is unfortunate, as many would-be superintendents who were searching for jobs earlier this year have found them by now.
"The worst part about it is that we are at the start of the school season," he said.
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ABQ/ Lawsuit Filed by Former Associate Principal
By Scott Sandlin
ABQ Journal Staff Writer
August 24, 2012
A onetime associate superintendent at Albuquerque Public Schools who was demoted after complaining about Superintendent Winston Brooks' "pattern of treating women with disdain and disrespect" is suing Brooks and the school district in federal court for alleged civil rights violations.
Ruby Ethridge, who was in charge of middle schools for APS, claims that standing up to Brooks' "sex-related bullying" - and telling the school board that his conduct created a hostile work environment - led to adverse employment actions against her, including demotion and termination.
Ethridge had been at APS for about 20 years in the fall of 2010 when she and Brooks, at odds over Ethridge's plans to call in a middle school principal for a job performance evaluation, had a heated email exchange.
Ethridge was unhappy about his belittling her Mississippi accent and objected to his orders not to take action about the principal's performance, as well as his alleged harassment and belittling, according to the lawsuit.
Less than 15 minutes later, he put her on leave and banned her from APS property.
She was later demoted from her $117,000-a-year position to assistant principal at Rio Grande High School, where her salary would have been $71,785. She never worked at that position, opting to retire after her contract was not renewed, and she is now starting to seek employment, her attorney said.
APS communications director Monica Armenta said Thursday in a statement, "Although Ms. Ethridge's legal complaint has just been filed this week, APS has been aware of (her) allegations for some time. It is true that Ms. Ethridge was placed on administrative leave in November of 2010 and that her contract with APS was not renewed for the 2011-12 academic year. However, APS categorically denies that anyone at APS engaged in any wrongful conduct with respect to Ms. Ethridge specifically or female employes generally."
Ethridge's suit claims sex discrimination under the U.S. Civil Rights Act and the New Mexico Human Rights Act, retaliation, violation of equal protection and due process rights and breach of contract.
The complaint, filed this week in Albuquerque by attorneys Jason Lewis and Kari Morrissey, seeks lost income, back pay and pay for lost compensation during the period between judgment and reinstatement, if any. It also seeks punitive damages on some of the claims from Brooks, APS and a John or Jane Doe employee who allegedly leaked the emails to the media.
Lewis and Morrissey also represent three APS principals who have sued the district, alleging that women were disproportionately demoted in 2010, when Brooks changed leadership at more than 20 schools.
In the November 2010 email exchange, Brooks responded to Ethridge's complaints by saying that she might be removed from the leadership position because of insubordination and personal attacks.
"I have little time for this kind of behavior and certainly do not want to place my complete trust and confidence in a person who (has) made these types of allegations," according to the email.
That and the rest of the email exchange went out to most of the school board and other APS employees as well as Brooks.
The lawsuit contends that the words between Brooks and Ethridge were the latest chapter in a long history of Brooks becoming agitated with and dismissive of women while having no such problems with male staff or administrators.
According to the lawsuit, Brooks:
- Once said another female administrator had "slept her way to the top."
- Twice, while sharing an elevator ride with Ethridge, commented about her short skirts - comments that Ethridge had also heard other female employees complain about.
- Frequently questioned Ethridge's supervisory judgment but rarely questioned her male colleagues' decisions.
- Used performance evaluations to berate female employees who disagreed with his policy decisions.
The complaint says Ethridge was "humiliated" by publicity, including stories in the Journal, about her "retaliatory administrative leave, demotion and potential pay cut or termination." It says she was not given any reason for the non-renewal of her contract, despite her nearly 20 years at APS.
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New York NY/ NYC Study Finds Vouchers Boost Blacks' College-Going Rates
By Jaclyn Zubrzycki
Education Week, Vol. 32, Issue 2 [Edweek.org]
August 23, 2012
Receiving a voucher to attend a private school in New York City did not increase the likelihood of attending college for most students, but did increase college-going rates for black students, a study of participants in a privately funded scholarship program concludes.
- 42 percent of 1,363 students who received vouchers through the New York School Choice Scholarship Fund and
- 42 percent of those who applied for but did not receive the tuition aid had enrolled in college within three years of their expected high school graduation date, according to the study, which is being presented this morning at the Washington-based Brookings Institution co-written by Paul E. Peterson, a professor of government and the director of Harvard University's Program on Education Policy and Governance, and Matthew M. Chingos, a fellow at Brookings' Brown Center on Education Policy.
- But African-American students who used the vouchers to attend a participating private school, most of which were Roman Catholic, were 8.7 percentage points, or 24 percent, more likely to attend college, and were twice as likely to attend a selective private university, as their peers who were not winners in the voucher lottery.
"This is consistent with evidence from other voucher programs ... and shows that vouchers are an effective intervention," said Michael J. Petrilli, the executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washington think tank that favors parental-choice-based schooling options.
But vouchers are a highly politicized topic, and some researchers and advocates disputed how much could be extracted from the results of the study.
"While it provides some information, it really lacks the depth to generalize to a bigger population," said Jim A. Hull, a policy analyst with the National School Boards Association's Center for Public Education, which opposes school vouchers, in Alexandria, Va. "The rhetoric doesn't necessarily match the findings."
There is no longer such a voucher program in New York City, but five states offer low-income students vouchers to help defray tuition costs at private schools and several others offer similar programs for special-needs students, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The New York state legislature considered a bill that included vouchers in its most recent session.
Effects for Some
The study tracks 2,642 New York City students entering elementary school in 1997 who applied for vouchers from the scholarship fund, which provided tuition aid of up to $1,400 for low-income students to attend private schools in the city.
- Approximately half of those students received the scholarships, and
- 78 percent of the scholarship winners used them to attend private school for at least one year.
- The vouchers were distributed to students by lottery, allowing researchers to compare students from families that were similarly motivated for their children to succeed in school.
The researchers used college-enrollment data from the National Student Clearinghouse to track participants' educational attainment after high school.
- The rate of college enrollment of Hispanic students was unaffected by whether or not those students had received a voucher-45 percent attended college either way.
- On the other hand, African-American students, who made up about 40 percent of the study's participants, were more likely than peers who had failed to win a voucher to enroll in college (42 percent compared with 36 percent), twice as likely to enroll in a selective private university (7 percent versus 3 percent), and 50 percent more likely to enroll in a private university if they received a voucher.
The authors speculate that Hispanic families may have been more likely to be interested in vouchers for religious reasons in addition to dissatisfaction with their current schooling options. The parents of black students in the study were less likely than the parents of the Hispanic students to be Catholic, and indicated that they were less satisfied with their other options than the Hispanic parents were.
"The Hispanic students who participated in this study were more likely to go to college in any case," said Mr. Peterson, a finding that he said may suggest that the black participants were a more disadvantaged group.
"Choice makes a bigger difference when students' options without additional choices look bleak," said Jay P. Greene, the chair of the education reform department at the College of Education and Health Professions at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
Christopher Lubienski, an associate professor of education policy, organization and leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, pointed out that the impact of actually using a voucher was not much greater than the effect of being offered one.
The study suggests that being offered a voucher increased the college-enrollment rate by 7.1 percentage points, suggesting that the 8.7 percentage point gain from actually using the voucher to attend private school caused only a 1.6 percentage point increase more than being offered a voucher and not using it, Mr. Lubienski said. "I'm very much in doubt that this is statistically significant," Mr. Lubienski said.
Mr. Peterson was a co-author of a previous controversial study of the same group of New York City students. It found no significant impacts overall on standardized tests but some growth for black students.
"This nicely lines up with those results," said Mr. Chingos.
Impact on the Disadvantaged
The authors touted the improvement as evidence of a positive impact on the most disadvantaged students from what Mr. Chingos described as a "modest intervention."
But it is unclear whether the most disadvantaged students were represented at all, said Mr. Greene. Since the scholarships provided through the fund did not cover full tuition at most schools, which was an average of $1,728 in New York City Catholic schools at the time of the study, parents who could not make up the difference may not have applied.
The New York City program also took place before other alternatives to regular public schools, such as charter schools, were widely available to parents.
"These are highly limited choice programs," Mr. Greene said. "This doesn't necessarily tell us what a larger, full-scale choice program could do. That uncertainty could go in either direction."
Voucher programs seem to have a stronger impact on students' educational attainment than on their performance on standardized tests, said the Fordham Institute's Mr. Petrilli. "Test scores are proxies," he said. "What you really care about is how kids do in the real world."
Mr. Petrilli said that Catholic schools may be more effective at teaching students certain character traits, like grit, that lead to future success.
The research adds to a growing body of work that looks at students' educational attainment rather than their performance on standardized tests when measuring the effects of vouchers, charter schools, and other forms of school choice.
Mr. Chingos said his research team would likely look at whether the same set of students actually graduated from college a few years later.
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Boston MA/ Do Private School Vouchers Help?
New study offers data.
By Stacy Teicher Khadaroo, Staff writer
CSMonitor.com
August 23, 2012
A new study suggests that private school vouchers can have a positive impact on the rate at which African-American students attend college. The study takes a rare long-term view of vouchers, which are often studied for shorter-term effects such as gains on test scores. To read the study: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Impacts_of_School_Vouchers_FINAL.pdf.
"We want to have our students college-ready, and to learn that for African-American students, this is a way of improving their chances of being college-ready ... is a really important finding," says voucher advocate Paul Peterson, a Harvard professor and director of the university's Program on Education Policy and Governance, which published the study with the Brookings Institution on Thursday.
The randomized experiment compared about 1,300 students who won a New York City lottery in the late 1990s for privately funded vouchers with a control group that applied for but did not win the lottery.
Tracking them until 2011, it found no significant effect in the overall group, but African-American students who used the vouchers to attend private schools were 24 percent more likely to go on to college than African-Americans in the control group.
- For private four-year college attendance, the increase was 58 percent.
Because vouchers are such a politicized issue, the study has stirred up a variety of reactions.
- Voucher proponents cite it as another reason to support programs that provide public dollars to low-income parents who want to send their children to private or parochial schools.
- Groups opposed to vouchers, as well as some academic researchers, point to the limited scope of the study and raise questions about the methodology.
"Pundits may dismiss vouchers, but African-American parents know they work, and strong scientific data prove they work," said Robert Enlow, president of the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice in Indianapolis, in a statement.
"The grandiose statements made in the executive summary are not substantiated by the data," countered Anne Bryant, executive director of the National School Boards Association, in a statement. The NSBA opposes publicly funded vouchers for private schools.
The study doesn't track what happens to people who left the voucher program, nor does it effectively isolate the impact of private school or school choice, NSBA contends.
Expanding voucher programs wouldn't necessarily yield the same kinds of results because including more low-income students in private schools changes the social composition of schools - the "peer effect" on student achievement when there are more middle- or upper-income students, says Christopher Lubienski, an education policy professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
While the study authors acknowledge that near the end of the report, he says, "it would be better to control for that [peer effect] in the study."
Research as a whole indicates "there doesn't appear to be much of an impact" on student success from school vouchers, Professor Lubienski says.
During this presidential election season, school choice is one education issue Mitt Romney is trying to use to appeal to the Republican base. He cites strong results from a voucher program in the District of Columbia that President Obama did not propose to continue funding in his 2013 budget.
Republicans make a moral argument that Mr. Obama is standing in the way of school choice for poor African-Americans, but a study showed the program didn't have a major impact, Lubienski says.
In the 2012 Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll on education, 44 percent of Americans say they favor allowing students to choose a private school at public expense. Since 1993, such support has fluctuated between 24 percent and 46 percent.
Thursday's study suggests that vouchers could be a cost-effective policy option when compared with other education-related spending. The vouchers were for $1,400 a year and were used for an average length of 2.6 years. The study contrasts that with the $12,000 per-pupil price tag of a Tennessee program to reduce class size - which was found to increase African-American college enrollment by 19 percent.
The authors - Professor Peterson and Matthew Chingos, a fellow at Brookings's Brown Center on Education Policy - also interpret a study on the impact of having a more effective teacher, and they say their voucher study yields better results.
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Washington DC/ As Competition Grows, Districts Make Pitches To Boost Enrollment
Educators turn to billboards, direct mail, and retooled programs to attract students
By Christina A. Samuels
Education Week [Edweek.org]
August 22, 2012
Public school enrollment in Grand Rapids, Mich., has dropped slowly during the past five years, from about 21,000 students to 18,500 today.
Parents have left the west Michigan city for better jobs elsewhere, as have many throughout the state. Or, they've stayed in the area but departed the district for independently run charter schools or other enticing "schools of choice," which, in Michigan, are schools run by traditional school districts that are able to recruit students from a wide geographic area.
In response, the school district and the city have teamed up for a campaign they call "We Are GR," intended to excite residents about the community and about the offerings of the regular public schools. The push, which involves billboards, direct mailings, ads on buses, neighborhood door-knocking campaigns, and Web videos, will culminate in a back-to-school event at the city's zoo this week.
Focused Efforts
John Helmholdt, the communications director for the district, likens it to a political campaign.
- "There's a reason during elections that you get inundated," he said. "You've got to beat a message into a voter's head seven times before it sinks in."
Across the country, students returning to the classroom this fall, as well as their parents, are increasingly likely to have been the focus of intensive marketing campaigns like this one.
- Charter schools, voucher programs, private schools, and state laws that allow parents to enroll their students in schools outside their normal attendance boundaries have all had an impact on districts.
- And, as students leave a school system or a school, state money often goes with them.
The enrollment drain has been particularly pronounced in urban districts, which have the highest concentration of charter options for students.
- According to the Washington-based National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, the number of students enrolled in charter schools, which are publicly funded but largely independent institutions, rose from about 580,000 in 2001-02 to more than 2 million in 2011-12.
- That represents about4.2 percent of the public school population.
The push to market traditional districts and regular schools "is stronger than it's been before," said Rich Bagin, the executive director of the National School Public Relations Association in Rockville, Md. "We have principals coming to us and saying we have a great school here, but everybody seems to be leaning towards what's new."
In Grand Rapids, the district also plans to spend this school year figuring out what other changes it may need to make to hold on to its students, said Teresa Weatherall Neal, who was named the superintendent in January. While no plans have been made yet, she said some of the changes coming for 2013-14 will certainly involve closing some schools, some of which are operating at only 60 percent capacity, and bringing in new programs.
- "We really need to reinvent the school district in the next school year," Ms. Neal said.
For other districts, promoting their offerings has been a long-running practice.
Terry Locke, the spokesman for the 40,000-student Chandler Unified district in Arizona, said that 10 years ago, the district used movie theaters as a venue to run advertisements touting the benefits of the school system. Arizona is the "parent-choice capital of the country," Mr. Locke said, and Maricopa County, where Chandler is located, has 20 charter schools within its boundaries.
The state had close to 135,000 students enrolled in 526 charter schools in the 2011-12 school year, according to the national charter school alliance.
Reaping Results
Currently, the district focuses on direct mailings, promotional efforts on public-television stations during children's shows, and social-media outlets. In all, it spends about $100,000 a year on advertising and marketing, he said.
At the same time, Mr. Locke said, the district has tried to draw in parents with popular programs, such as:
- "traditional academies" that focus on highly structured instruction;
- an accelerated program for middle school students based at a high school;
- a new academy for gifted students based at an elementary school; and
- a junior high school with a single-gender option for some classes.
The marketing efforts appear to have had some impact:
- Last school year, the district had about 10,000 students who did not attend their neighborhood schools.
- Of those, about 4,000 students came from outside the district, Mr. Locke said.
In Missouri, the St. Louis school system, which has been unaccredited by the state since 2007 and is located in a community with a shrinking population, devoted $1 million to marketing efforts in the 2011-12 school year, said Patrick Wallace, the spokesman for the district.
Hammered by bad publicity and a party to a desegregation agreement that allows students to leave for surrounding jurisdictions, the district has seen its enrollment dwindle from about 45,000 five years ago to a projected 23,000 for 2012-13. The loss has meant a budget reduction of $50 million for the district, Mr. Wallace said.
It will be hard to judge the effects of the St. Louis advertising this school year because of a confounding event: The state education department closed six charter schools that operated within the city, all for academic failure. At least a portion of the 3,300 students affected by the closings have enrolled in regular St. Louis schools, boosting enrollment and reversing years of decline for reasons unrelated to any district marketing effort, Mr. Wallace said.
Preschool Hook
St. Louis can point to one especially bright spot, however, in its promotional efforts: a concerted push by the school system to expand all-day-preschool seats in 2011-12. Sheryl Davenport, the executive director for early childhood and early-childhood special education in St. Louis, said the district had about 1,600 seats for 3- and 4-year-olds in late 2010, with about 800 more students on a waiting list for general preschool and 500 waiting for a spot in a magnet preschool program.
The district pushed to add about 700 seats. The advertising around that effort lured parents who were looking for all-day, academic oriented preschool options for their children, including free transportation for 4-year-olds and free before-and-after care.
"For a lot of our families, this was their first experience with St. Louis public schools," Ms. Davenport said. The district also tried to make the enrollment process efficient for parents, by signing up pupils at a central location and giving parents acceptance letters on the spot to take back to their neighborhood preschools.
Ms. Davenport said that a survey of parents whose children would be enrolling in kindergarten this school year indicated that the vast majority of them planned to remain with St. Louis schools.
While many districts position themselves in competition with other school options in their communities, Denver's marketing efforts include its charter school options. All those schools are advertised together in mailings to parents, said Marissa Ferrari, the director of marketing for the 81,000-student school system.
In the last school year, Denver also introduced a streamlined enrollment system that allows parents to submit one form for the district's regular public schools, charter schools, and magnet offerings.
"We view all of our schools as a portfolio of quality options, so we do think that it is our duty to promote them equitably," said Alyssa Whitehead-Bust, the district's chief of innovation and reform. Though state aid follows students if they choose to attend a charter school, the Denver district is measured on test scores of students no matter what type of school they attend, Ms. Whitehead-Bust said.
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Denver CO/ Schools to Ask Voters for More Than $500 Million
By Karen Augé
The Denver Post
August 24, 2012
City voters will decide in November whether to provide Denver Public Schools with an additional $500 million for a menu of school and classroom upgrades, from building maintenance and repair to restoration of art and physical-education classes that have been sacrificed to budget cuts.
The district board voted 5-to-2 to put measures on the ballot that would raise $466 million in bonds, and add a mill-levy override that would generate $49 million.
After a lengthy discussion, in which some board members expressed concerns that the money would not be spread equally across district schools, board President Mary Seawell assured voters that, if the measures are approved, the money would go directly to students and teachers.
"We will use your money well," she said.
Members Arturo Jimenez and Andrea Merida voted no.
If approved, the tax hike would equate to about $12 a month, or $143 per year, for the owner of a home valued at $225,000, according to district calculations.
DPS Superintendent Tom Boasberg called the bond and mill levy an opportunity for the fastest -growing district in the state to recover from "brutal state funding cuts" that have knocked $800 per student - or about 10 percent of the overall budget - from the district's coffers over the past three years.
Projects the $49 million mill-levy override would fund include:
- $11 million to restore instruction in arts, music, and physical education
- $13 million to increase full-day preschool and kindergarten programs
- $17 million for tutoring, small-group instruction, counseling, and community and parent engagement
- $8 million to upgrade classroom technology.
The $466 million general-obligation bond proposal would pay for:
- $230 million in repairs and renovations to address health and safety issues in aging schools and to improve schools' energy efficiency.
- $78 million to renovate and expand existing schools to address overcrowding and to make room for expanded preschool and kindergarten programs.
- $119 million for new construction in areas of town with the greatest population growth.
- $39 million for upgrading technology.
Earlier this summer, a district-appointed committee of business and civic leaders recommended asking voters to help make up for revenue the district has lost during the economic downturn.
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Washington DC/ COLUMN: What to Do - and Not Do - for Growing Number of ELLs
By Larry Ferlazzo and Katie Hull Sypnieski [Teachers at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, California. They are co-authors of the new book, "The ESL/ELL Teacher's Survival Guide: Ready-to-Use Strategies, Tools, and Activities for Teaching English Language Learners of All Levels"]
Answer Sheet daily column
Washington Post
August 24, 2012
It's hard to find a school or district in this country that doesn't have an English learner population.
- For teachers in states like California, Texas, Florida, and New York it is sometimes hard to find a classroom without any English Language Learners (ELL).
- In fact, the U.S. Department of Education estimates that approximately 4.5 million English Learners are enrolled in public schools across the country, roughly 10% of all students enrolled in K-12 schools in the United States.
- The number of English Learners has increased by over 50% in the last decade, with some states, like South Carolina and Indiana, experiencing extremely rapid growth of English Learner populations (400-800% increases).
- Some demographers predict that in 20 years the ratio of ELL students to English-only students could be one in four.
In light of these numbers, we'd like to suggest a few "Do's" and "Don'ts" - first for teachers with ELLs in their classrooms, and then for non-teacher policymakers who have substantial power over the resources and policies that affect those of us in the classroom.
For Teachers of ELLs:
- Do model for students what they are expected to do or produce, and don't just tell students what to do and expect them to do it.
- Do speak clearly and slowly and provide students with enough time to formulate their responses in speaking or writing, and don't speak too fast or repeat something back to students in a louder voice
- Do use visuals, sketches, gestures, intonation, and other nonverbal cues to make both language and content more accessible to students, and don't stand in front of the class and lecture, or rely on a textbook as your only "visual aid.
- Do give verbal and written instructions - this practice can help all learners, especially ELLs, and don't act surprised if students are lost when you haven't clearly written and explained step-by-step directions.
- Do regularly check that students are understanding the lesson by having all students respond with "thumbs up or down" or writing their responses on a sticky note or individual whiteboard, and don't simply ask, "Are there any questions?"
- Do encourage students to continue building their literacy skills in their L1 as research shows learning to read in their L1 promotes reading achievement in L2 as "transfer" occurs, and don't "ban" students from using their native language in the classroom.
For ELL Policymakers:
Assessment:
- Do use student pre- and post-tests designed by teachers and schools, portfolios, and performance-based assessments to evaluate student progress. These types of formative assessment practices allow teachers and students to continually evaluate assessment evidence in order to make adjustments to their teaching and learning. Only use results of standardized tests for ELLs as a way to be data -informed, not data-driven (just use it as one more piece of information to consider and not attach high-stakes to it).
- Don't require English Language Learner students who enter school at the Beginning Level to take standardized tests - in their present form -for at least three years after they first arrive to this country (see the "Attitude Towards Research" section for how long it takes for students to gain fluency). Taking a test that you do not understand is not likely going to enhance student motivation.
Next Generation of Standardized Tests:
- Do put words (read more about what the developers of these upcoming tests have said here) into action and create standardized tests which are more connected to performance-based assessment, which offer translations in multiple languages, and that adhere to the concept of "universal design" by simplifying language demands that aren't relevant to content being measured.
- Don't just give lip service; make it happen!
Financial Resources:
- Do have states support "weighted formula" proposals like the one Governor Jerry Brown is trying to implement in California, where schools that have large numbers of students living in poverty or who are English Language Learners receive more state funding. Do increase federal funding for English Language Learner Acquisition State Grants that support local school efforts to expand and enhance learning opportunities for ELLs.
- Don't have states and local governments continue to cut into the "bone" of our schools and, instead, make equitable school funding a priority. Don't continue to reduce federal funding for English Language Learner Acquisition State Grants, as the Obama Administration has done since 2010.
Professional Development:
- Do support teacher collaboration time and offer professional development based on what teachers want and need. Do advocate for excellent instruction for ELLs at all levels and provide adequate resources and training for teachers and administrators to ensure this happens. Do listen to the recommendations on professional development from researchers and advocates for ELLs.
- Don't allow top-down consultants to parachute in and provide training that teachers have not requested or do not need. Don't ignore teacher requests for professional development that they need to develop their practice and better support their students.
Teacher Evaluation:
- Do use forms of teacher evaluation designed to support and improve teacher quality, not punish educators, and which have been discussed at length in previous posts here.
- Don't use standardized test scores to evaluate any teachers, and especially teachers of ELLs. Research has demonstrated the shortcomings of value-added measures as an accurate tool for teacher evaluation. Further research has shown that it is even less accurate for ELL teachers.
Technology:
- Do provide adequate technology resources (including equipment and training) to ELL teachers and students. Research shows that technology - audio and visual support for text, immediate and private feedback on errors, among other features - can provide extraordinary benefits to English Language Learners and support (not replace) classroom instruction.
- Do encourage schools to take advantage of almost countless high-quality free or very, very low-cost resources on the Web that can benefit ELLs. Do provide support for ELL family literacy activities, many which can take advantage of technology.
- Don't get seduced by many for-profit companies who might say their proprietary software is "The Answer" to English Language Learner instruction, or who claim that using it can let schools increase the teacher/student ratio.
Attitude Towards Research:
- Do respect language acquisition research that has found that ELLs progress through several stages of language acquisition. Generally students progress much more quickly from the beginning to intermediate level (often taking two-three years) than from intermediate to advanced proficiency (often taking four or more years).
- Don't buy the argument that students who are immersed in all-English instruction will quickly become fluent, and don't support the policies proposed and implemented in some states requiring ELLs to move into mainstream classes after just one year of school.
In the Aesop's fable, "The Tortoise and the Hare," the hare demonstrates arrogant self-confidence over the tortoise. We can only hope for the sake of our English Language Learner students that policymakers who promote the "Don'ts" on our list do make the same mistake that the hare did, so that the promoters of the "Do's" can end up winning the race.
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Washington DC/ OPINION: Preschool Investments Critical for Global Competitiveness
By Julie Rasicot
Education Week [Edweek.org]
August 23, 2012
A non-partisan think tank says that we should look to India and China as examples of what the United States needs to do to educate our kids so they will become competitive in the global workforce.
In a new report released this week, The Competition That Really Matters, the Center for American Progress points out that China and India have "ambitious national strategies of investing and promoting improved educational outcomes for children to strengthen their positions as contenders in the global economy."
The United States, on the other hand, lacks "a coherent national policy for boosting student outcomes," the report said, noting that a lack of political will and uneven progress on the state level don't help matters.
The authors note that these countries "demand our attention because of the sheer size of their populations and economies" and that they are educating their students in larger numbers than the United States. That means more students from those countries, based on the sheer numbers, will be ready to compete in the global workforce.
As the debate continues in this country over the value of providing preschool, here are some interesting notes from the report on what the United States' main economic competitors are doing to prepare their youngest children for academic success:
By 2020, China plans to enroll 40 million kids in preschool, 50 percent more than today; and provide 70 percent of them with three years of preschool. Also, China plans to graduate 95 percent of Chinese youths through nine years of compulsory education.
In India, an integrated child development system is making gains in boosting kids' readiness for school and its preschool system currently reaches 38 million of the country's 160 million children under age 6, with the goal of increasing the number of kids who are kindergarten ready from from 26 percent to 60 percent by 2018. "By comparison, in the United States, publicly supported preschool education reaches about 3.5 million children ages 3 to 5 years old."
And the report notes that India's "effort to ensure universal primary school enrollment is the world's most ambitious elementary school enrollment effort," in what amounts to a rate of primary school attendance that is seven times the rate in the U.S.
The report also looks to what European countries are doing to strengthen their educational systems and services to help families.
So what should the U.S. do? The report's authors call for the country's next president to convene a national summit involving the leaders of every state with a "laser-like focus" on such issues as establishing a national early education system and improving teacher effectiveness.
"Only with renewed leadership on education as a national priority and real investments at all levels of government will the United States hope to be able to remain economically competitive," the report said.
It remains to be seen whether our presidential candidates are listening.
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Washington DC/ OPINION: China Aiming for the Gold in Starting Kids Early, US Is Late to the Game
By Ann O'Leary [Director, Children and Families Program at The Center for the Next Generation; Lecturer, Berkeley, School of Law]
Huffington Post
August 23, 2012
In 2010, China and the United States each conducted a national census. China found that 76 million of its citizens were children under the age of five, about four times the number the United States has, 20.2 million. No real surprise there: China's overall population of 1.34 billion, the most of any country, is four times that of the United States, at 309 million.
What is a surprise - and may well be a major cause for alarm, from an American perspective - is how many of those Chinese kids are getting a jump start in life through enrollment in early education programs, which researchers say helps build the cognitive, social and emotional skills that give them a greater chance for successful lives.
A new report from the Center for the Next Generation and the Center for American Progress, "The Competition that Really Matters: Comparing U.S., Chinese, and Indian Investments in the Next Generation Workforce" shines a light on the very different - and very aggressive - approaches China and other countries are taking to prepare their young people for the challenges of an increasingly competitive global marketplace. For China, providing early education has become a national priority while in the United States, not so much.
The report serves not only as a wake-up call for American policymakers to take notice of strategies underway elsewhere but also as a reminder that the key jobs of the future - the engines of national economies - will go to the best, brightest and most qualified applicants, no matter what country they come from.
By virtue of its size and population, China stands as the supreme challenger to the United States in global economic leadership. Recognizing the need to take greater advantage of its people as a national asset, China is now making it possible for much larger numbers of youngsters to start their education early as preparation for the in-demand job opportunities of the years ahead.
As our report shows, 51 percent of China's kids age 3 and 4 in 2009 had at least a year of publicly-supported and subsidized pre-primary schooling, compared with 50 percent of children in the United States who have access to pre-school through both public and private funding. True, the percentages are not so different, but the numbers they represent are staggering: nearly 30 million in China versus 3.5 million in the United States.
If the implications of that disparity aren't enough, consider this from the report:
"Total state funding for pre-K programs (in the U.S.) decreased by $60 million in 2011, after decreasing by $30 million the previous year. So just as China is ramping up its investments in early childhood education, aiming to serve 80 percent of all 3 and 4-year-olds by 2020, the United States is reducing investment in preschool learning and has set no clear national goals to counter China with a bold plan to increase access and improve quality of early learning in our country."
The specter of those projections - 80 percent of all 3 and 4-year-olds by 2020 - is ominous for the United States, especially if Americans do not change their thinking about the critical value and importance of early education.
For now, in these crazy days of a presidential election campaign and arguments over budget cuts and tax policy, it seems unlikely that anything is going to change any time soon. Sadly, neither candidate is talking much - if at all - about long-term policies to strengthen the future of the country by expanding educational opportunities for the youngest of Americans - our future leaders.
"The Competition that Really Matters" cited a U.S. Department of Commerce report issued earlier this year that listed three critical needs for fueling global competitiveness that thrives on innovation: research, infrastructure and education, all of which need of a new infusion of investment.
Why?
The World Bank ranks the United States eighth in research and development spending as a percentage of gross domestic product; the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness report ranks the overall condition of U.S. infrastructure 24th in the world, down from 8th place in 2005.
As for education, which the commerce department called "the single critical focal point for U.S. policymakers' attention, without question," the United States is anything but a leader. In the last Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the most respected measure of country by country performance for children aged 15 and 16, the United States ranked 14th in reading and 25th in math.
- For China, only kids in Shanghai and Hong Kong were assessed, but here's how they fared:
- Shanghai: 1 in reading, 1 in science, 1 in math.
- Hong Kong: 4 in reading, 3 in science, 3 in math.
In a recent speech at a Children's Defense Fund conference, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke framed early education as an economic issue for the United States. Here's what he said:
"Early childhood programs are a good investment with inflation-adjusted annual rates of return on the funds dedicated to these programs, estimated to reach 10 percent or higher. Very few alternative investments can promise that kind of return. Notably, a portion of these economic returns accrues to the children themselves and their families, but studies show that the rest of society enjoys the majority of the benefits, reflecting the many contributions that skills and productive workers make to the economy."
We have reached a point in the United States where short-term, band-aid approaches to preparing our kids properly for the years ahead aren't enough. They're like putting sand in potholes. We need bold, aggressive, long-term, sustainable solutions that contemplate U.S. leadership for years to come. It all starts with early education.
Just ask China.
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Washington DC/ BOOK REVIEW: Exam Schools: Inside America's Most Selective Public Schools
By Erik Robelen
Education Week [Edweek.org]
August 23, 2012
Although public schools that admit students based on academic performance are rare, and the practice controversial, such institutions can be found in many states. A new book takes a look under the hood of America's small set of selective public high schools, an "obscure yet consequential corner of the public education cosmos," as the authors put it.
Some of these schools you've probably heard of-think Boston Latin or Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology-others probably not.
How did they get started? Who exactly do they serve, and how are those students chosen? Who teaches there? What do the curriculum and instruction look like? Could, and should, such academically selective public high schools play a more expansive role in educating the nation's high-potential, high-achieving students.
These are some of the questions that longtime education pundit Checker Finn, joined by educational consultant Jessica Hockett, set out to answer in their book.
The volume, Exam Schools: Inside America's Most Selective Public Schools, will be publicly available early next month. Tomorrow, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a think tank led by Finn, is hosting a forum to discuss the book, published by Princeton University Press. (The event also can be viewed online: http://www.edexcellence.net/events/exam-schools-the-ups-and-downs-of-selective-public-high-schools.html.)
- "Partly it was just curiosity about an utterly unexplored sector of public education," Finn told me of what inspired the project. "And partly it was a continuing interest in what most people call 'gifted and talented' and my awareness from several studies ... that the so-called 'high flyers' in our schools were being neglected in the No Child Left Behind era."
The book identifies 165 "exam schools" across 30 states and the District of Columbia. (Chicago, New York City, and Philadelphia are especially well represented.)
- To be counted by the authors, a school must use academic measures such as prior grades and test scores to select applicants, but also meet several other criteria, including being primarily focused on preparing students for college. The book covers a lot of terrain, but I'm going to set my sights here mainly on the academic experience these schools offer.
Before I do, I'll briefly say something about the student population served.
- On the whole, the authors report, it's only slightly less poor than in the total public school system.
- Asian-Americans are heavily overrepresented, as some might guess, but so are African-Americans, who make up 30 percent of enrollment at the 165 schools, compared with 17 percent in all public schools.
- Nearly all the schools that responded to a survey said they have far more applicants than spaces, and most engage in serious efforts to expand or diversify the applicant pool.
For each of the 11 schools that Finn or Hockett personally visited, the book describes the climate for learning. Here's how they summed it up:
- By and large, all the schools we visited were serious, purposeful places: competitive but supportive, energized yet calm. Behavior problems (save for cheating and plagiarism) were minimal, and students attended regularly. The kids wanted to be there, and were motivated to succeed.
Most classrooms they observed were "alive, engaged places," and teachers had high expectations, as might be imagined.
- One distinguishing feature of many exam schools is a more flexible schedule than is usual in public high schools, the book says, to facilitate opportunities for more in-depth learning and to prepare students for the college experience.
"We found an awful lot of these schools organize their weekly calendar like colleges do, with two-hour blocks and three-hour seminars, so the course doesn't meet every day for 47 minutes," Finn told me. The book notes that there is typically ample time in the schedule for collaborative and independent research projects.
When it comes to curricula and course offerings, the book found diverging pathways that reflected "differing philosophies about what and how academically talented students should learn," the book says.
- Some, for instance, make Advanced Placement courses, along with prerequisite honors courses, the heart of the curriculum; others sprinkled them in, and several simply don't offer them. (Finn said a common complaint he heard from teachers, however, was that pressure students feel to take lots of AP classes was squeezing out time for other valuable learning activities, like building a robot or doing extensive historical research. "Teachers feel like the school's ability to develop these kids into all they can be is actually constrained by the AP pressure," he said.)
- Some of the schools with a STEM focus or a university affiliation reported a variety of upper-level math and science courses rarely seen in high schools, such as Human Infectious Diseases, Chemical Pharmacology, or Vector Calculus.
An important, recurring theme they found was a focus on independent research projects by students, "ranging from classroom-supported guided-inquiry models to extended team-based problem-solving challenges to collaborative research with university students and professors."
Many of the exam schools offer mentorship and internship opportunities. And oftentimes, students had reason to leave campus for such activities, as well as independent research projects, or to attend class at a nearby college or university.
When administrators were asked to pick the term that best describes the approach guiding most classroom instruction, a popular choice was "other." (Options included didactic instruction, problem-based learning, project-based learning, cooperative learning, and so on.)
For those readers still with me and wanting to get a few more specifics about individual schools, below is a sampling of what Finn and Hockett learned during school visits and follow-up research.
Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (Aurora, Ill.)
- The academic program at this statewide boarding school is framed by its own Standards of Significant Learning, "an extensive set of expectations for IMSA graduates that 'articulate valued habits of mind which contribute to integrative ways of knowing."
- All students are required to perform at least 100 hours of community service before graduation.
- As part of its mission statement, the academy strives to "ignite and nurture creative, ethical scientific minds that advance the human condition." The authors observe that this isn't just words, but appears to be "woven into the language of staff and students."
- IMSA does NOT calculate GPAs or have class rankings. No valedictorian is named, either.
- Time is a "flexible commodity" at the school, with room to accommodate courses of different lengths, out-of-class experiences, meetings with mentors, etc. ... In fact, no classes are held on Wednesdays, when students engage in yearlong independent and collaborative research projects on and off campus.
- About half the teachers have doctorates; all have at least one master's degree.
Townsend Harris High School (Queens, N.Y.)
- Students must take two years of Latin or Greek, and a "Great Books" course at nearby Queens College.
- One distinctive curricular feature is a "heavy, schoolwide emphasis on writing in almost every class."
- Classroom instruction is often the traditional teacher-led approach, but it typically entails "a heavy Socratic element."
Liberal Arts and Science Academy (Austin, Texas)
- The school features four interdisciplinary "signature" classes developed by the faculty: Electronic Magazine (creating a print and digital publication); SciTech (employing robots and other sophisticated technology); Planet Earth (geobiology); and Great Ideas
- "The school's other course descriptions read more like those of a college than a public high school, with subjects including medical microbiology, playwriting, constitutional law, and fifth-year Japanese."
- The students "almost without exception, appear motivated, self-directed, eager, intellectually acute, and self-aware."
- However, some veteran teachers complain that "accountability pressures and the college-admissions frenzy are eroding the school's distinctiveness."
Benjamin Franklin High School (New Orleans)
- Students must maintain at least a 2.0 GPA to return the following year.
- The school offers 22 AP courses and has a strong record of passing AP exams. In fact, students must pass at least two AP exams to graduate.
- Through a relationship with the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, located in the French Quarter, about a tenth of students enroll in one or more courses in the performing and visual arts.
- The school has "an impressive array of extracurricular activities, including a prize-winning literary magazine and a first-rate orchestra."
Stepping back, the book explores the question of whether more public exam schools are warranted in the United States.
Linked with that, of course, is the question of whether the students would thrive just as well in a regular high school. (As Finn remarked: "We do joke about the Harvard-Stanford quip, 'The curriculum is fine, the faculty is good, but the admissions office is terrific.' ")
Finn cautions that the research base on such schools' academic impact is thin. A couple of recent studies "throw some cold water" on the value the schools bring, he told me, though he pointed to some limitations of that research.
Ultimately, Finn said that while he's mindful of the downsides of having more exam schools, particularly the creaming off of top students from ordinary high schools, and the effect that may have, in the end he sees reason to multiply them.
"I think the country would be better off with more such schools, and the market data makes clear there is demand," he said.
As the book puts it at the end: "Selective-admission schools aren't the only way to incentivize or educate high-ability youngsters in the K-12 world, but they're a valuable part of a comprehensive strategy that the United States neglects at its peril."
