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Weighing In on Title II, Part A
 Two powerful public policy organizations have weighed in on what they believe a revamped Title II, Part A of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) should look like. The joint recommendations tendered by the Education Trust, and Center for American Progress should be of interest to the nation's private school community, given that more private school teachers and administrators participate in professional development programs subvented by Title II, Part A, than any other federally funded program.
The document is certain to generate controversy. Its first recommendation calls for, "...a specific set of timelines, incentives,
and sanctions for states to implement robust evaluation systems that incorporate measures of teacher impact on student growth." Next, it calls upon states to, "develop a statewide method for measuring teacher impact on student growth in tested subjects and grades as well as create guidelines for districtwide measures of student growth for teachers in nontested subjects and grades." Moreover, the creation of student achievement-based teacher evaluation systems is proposed as an eligibility criterion for receipt of Title II, Part A funding.
Finally, the recommendations propose that states be held accountable for assuring an "...even distribution of strong teachers so that students of color and low-income students have access to successful educators." A phase-in of the proposed evaluation and accountability systems would begin in the 2012-2013 school year, and become fully operational over a five-year period culminating in 2016-2017.
The current law focuses largely upon enabling teachers to achieve "highly qualified" status, and promoting knowledge and skills intended to advance student achievement in core curricular areas. States, and local school districts are afforded considerable flexibility when it comes to establishing the programs and activities designed to contribute to the achievement of those outcomes.
Private schools, through an ongoing process of consultation with local public school district officials, may request that a proportionate expenditure of Title II, Part A professional development funds be used to support comparable programs and services for their teachers and administrators. If recommendations such as those proposed by the Education Trust and Center for American Progress were to be adopted, while the teacher evaluation and accountability provisions would not be applicable, the availability of funding might well diminish in states and districts that balked at the eligibility criteria.
The proposals are likely to receive a receptive ear from the Obama Adminstration, which not only favors increasing the leveraging power of federal dollars to induce state and local education reforms, but has demonstrated strong interest in seeding state and local efforts to develop teacher evaluation models that utilize student achievement data as a source of input. However, as Education Week's Stephen Sawchuck notes on his Teacher Beat blog, the "last time Capitol Hill officials released draft language for Title II, in 2007, they didn't go anywhere, largely because of fears about a proposed performance-pay program." |
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CPSAC Announces New Workshop
 The California Private School Advisory Committee, K-12 is pleased to present a new, three-day workshop for nonprofit, private middle and high school teachers of all academic subjects (in grades 6-12). The workshop, which is subvented in part by ESEA, Title II, Part A funding, will be offered in two locations - one in the San Francisco Bay area, and the other in Orange County.
Harness the Power of Nonfiction Writing
in Every Classroom
Presented by:
Angela Peery, Ed.D.
Dates and Locations
Concord (Bay Area)
April 5-6 and May 13, 2011
Carondelet High School
1133 Winton Dr.
Concord, CA 94518
Tustin (Orange County)
April 7-8 and May 12, 2011
Red Hill Lutheran School
13200 Red Hill Avenue
Tustin, CA 92780
For Both Locations
Per-Person Registration: $75.00
Please register by March 22, 2011
Registration fee includes workshop materials, continental breakfast, and lunch, each day of the program.
Program Hours: 8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., each of the three days.
Space is limited. Registration will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis!
Workshop Description
Participants in this workshop will review compelling information about how increased writing is correlated with academic success. They will learn and apply several writing-to-learn strategies that can be employed immediately, and plan to implement both writing-to-learn and product writing in their classrooms. The content of the workshop will be tailored to the needs of secondary teachers of all subject matter classes and will include information on both instruction and assessment.
Participants will:
- Receive an interactive training manual and Dr. Peery's book, Writing Matters in Every Classroom;
- Review the compelling research about nonfiction writing and its correlation to academic success;
- Learn and apply approximately 10 writing strategies that can be used immediately in all secondary classrooms;
- Discuss various written products that have high applicability to all secondary classrooms
- Write an action plan for using writing strategies in their classrooms;
- Explore the power of common rubrics/scoring tools;
- Draft common rubrics/scoring tools
About the Presenter
Angela Peery, Ed.D., is a Senior Professional Development Associate at The Leadership and Learning Center. Just before joining the Center, she worked for the South Carolina Department of Education as an instructional coach at a low-achieving middle school and helped raise student proficiency in writing. She was also a literacy consultant for the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education, working with teachers in high-poverty schools in Seattle and Indianapolis. Her dissertation detailed her work with a Jewish day school to improve literacy instruction.
Angela has a doctorate in curriculum and instruction. Her varied experience includes secondary teaching and administration, and various curriculum leadership roles at the building, district, and state levels. She has taught graduate education courses and was a co-director of a National Writing Project site. She is the author of five books, including Deep Change: Professional Development from the Inside Out and Writing Matters in Every Classroom. Her professional licensures include secondary English, secondary administration, and gifted/talented education. Although she is a resident of coastal South Carolina, she travels almost every week of the year, working with educators all over the world to improve instruction.
For Additional Information
Please contact Joyce Maksin:
Phone: 916.228.2218
E-Mail: jmaksin@scoe.net |
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You're Kidding Me, Right?
 A Chicago charter school is claiming that it's really a private school - after having received more than $23 million in public funding over the last six years. Why the sudden identity crisis? According to a Chicago Tribune article, teachers employed by the Chicago Math and Science Academy say the school is trying to stop them from unionizing.
As the Tribune article reports: "In papers filed with the National Labor Relations Board, attorneys for the Chicago Math and Science Academy on the city's North Side say the school should be exempt from an Illinois law that grants employees of all public schools the right to form unions for contract negotiations." Why? Because "charter schools don't have the governmental ties that characterize public schools, such as government-appointed leadership or controls over wages, hours and working conditions. In other words, they say, the same freedoms over personnel and policy that many credit to charter schools' success are also indicative of their independence."
Let's get this straight. The school is arguing that it should be regarded as a private school because it's unlike public schools in certain respects, while avoiding mention of the fact that it charges no tuition. School leaders might want to perform a quick makeover of their website. The first sentence found under the "About" section begins with the words, "Chicago Math and Science Academy is a public charter school..." Clicking the "Board of Directors" link produces no names.
The school's faculty seem to have nailed it: "The school's teachers say the academy wants it both ways: public when it's accepting millions each year from Illinois taxpayers, but private when it wants to assert power over employees."
The school's claim may come as music to the ears of those who characterize the proliferation of charter schools as evidence of the "privatization" of public education. Meanwhile, the private school community remains unconvinced. |
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Quick Takes
 Big Spenders List
Political spending figures provide one important indicator of who wields power. The National Institute on Money in State Politics has compiled a list of the top 10,000 contributors to state and national political campaigns, which can be found here. The website provides a useful feature permitting state-specific searches by donor category.
It may come as little surprise that the National Education Association stands atop the list, with combined state and federal campaign spending of more than $56 million during the 2007-08 election cycle. (One wonders whether Meg Whitman will head an updated list?) And, if union leadership has its way, that figure will increase by an additional $40 million per election cycle, subject to approval of a proposal to double member's annual contributions to the NEA's political and media funds.
Credit Where Credit is Due
The E-Mailer has been known to take an occasional shot at New York University Professor Diane Ravitch. But when the venerated historian recently responded to a CAPSO "tweet" in an immediate and gracious manner, she is deserving of our gratitude.
Last Friday, Professor Ravitch posted a pair of tweets (AKA Twitter messages) lamenting $43 million in private contributions to Newark, New Jersey public schools tendered by philanthropists to whom she refers as members of the "Billionaire Boys Club." Her first tweet read, "Billionaire Boys Club buying Newark schools." That was followed up with, "As public sector shrivels, private sector takes control of basic services like schools."
Upon reading those messages, CAPSO tweeted the following to Dr. Ravitch: "Please encourage "Billionaire Boys Club" to direct their donations to struggling inner-city PRIVATE schools." Three minutes later, Professor Ravitch delivered the following response to her 8,350 (and counting) followers: "Why don't billionaires save highly effective Catholic schools in inner city, stop the privatization of public schools?"
Thank you, Diane Ravitch. |
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Showdown in Wisconsin
 The clash between Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and the Badger State's public employees unions has generated a slew of claims and counterclaims concerning relative levels of compensation earned by public and private sector workers. The union-friendly Economic Policy Institute (EPI) produced a report claiming: "On an annual basis, full-time state and local workers and school employees are undercompensated by 8.2% in Wisconsin, in comparison to otherwise similar private-sector workers. When comparisons are made for differences in annual hours worked, the gap shrinks bur remains at 4.8%."
Meanwhile, on the Reason Foundation's blogsite, Nick Gillespie cites figures from the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics showing that, "Using 2007-2008 data (the latest available), the average 'total school-year and summer earned income' for public school teachers was $53,230 . The equivalent for private-school teachers was $39,690."
The EPI's claim gives rise to an ironic inference. Over the course of the past decade, membership in private sector unions has diminished considerably, while public union membership has grown. According to a recent Bureau of Labor Statistics report, "The union membership rate for public sector workers (36.2 percent) was substantially higher than the rate for private sector workers (6.9 percent)." If the EPI is right about the relatively higher levels of compensation received by private sector employees, perhaps Governor Walker's alleged commitment to "union busting" is actually doing the protestors a favor.
The business-friendly Wall Street Journal weighed in with an op-ed piece in which it was observed that, "The average Milwaukee public-school teacher salary is $56,500, but with benefits the total package is $100,005, according to the manager of financial planning for Milwaukee public schools." If you're skeptical, read the article, in which author Robert M. Costrell walks readers through the math.
How do public school teachers end up with such lopsided contracts? One recurring scenario has likely played out as follows: Teachers unions use their money, organizing prowess, and ability to mobilize voters to elect their preferred school board candidates. In the collective bargaining process, the union asks for X amount of salary, and the board offers something less than X. A deal is then struck in which the teachers settle for "less than X" in salary, but are compensated with an increase in benefits. The school board members know there is no "current money" with which to provide significant salary increases, so they "kick the can down the road" by "backloading" the contract, defering the obligation to make good on the commitment to future boards. Absent continuously robust economic growth, such tradeoffs become unsustainable. Like Wisconsin, California finds itself saddled with massive, and growing, unfunded pension liability.
Governor Walker has been branded a villain by some, and a hero by others. If he should prevail, teachers will be required to increase the amount of money they contribute to their own medical insurance and pension plans, but their increased contributions will still be below the national average for public employees. If they should lose their ability to engage in collective bargaining, they will remain protected by some of the strongest civil service regulations in the nation. It's not farfetched to imagine that Wisconsin's teachers might fare better in the long run if Governor Walker has his way. The short term, however, is a different matter.
From a purely political perspective, the removal of collective bargaining would come as a bitter defeat to the already embattled unions. The unfolding denouement of the showdown in Wisconsin will be rife with implications for other states, including our own. With a special election in the offing that may take the form of a referendum on California's public education system, we should all keep our attention directed to Madison.
Ron Reynolds |
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