It's the most wonderful time of the year.  So begins the late Andy Williams' ode to the gaiety of the season.  It has always been one of my favorites for, indeed, this is a special time.  But not this year.  Not after Newtown.  Not when we find ourselves reeling in the wake of horrific crimes perpetrated upon children and educators.  In a school. 

Those of us who are religious ask, Why, God?  The rest of us simply ask, Why?  None of us has an answer.  And thus, we can but ask.  Why the most innocent?  Why the most guileless...trusting?  Why those with the greatest amount of life ahead of them?  Why the most defenseless?  Why them?  Why?

The endless questions stoke a compulsion to act...to do something that will put a stop to the madness...something sensible in the aftermath of so much senselessness.  And so we will debate the efficacy of more stringent gun control laws, contemplate better ways of responding to mental illness, reconsider the effects of exposure to gratuitous violence in the popular culture, and rethink school security. 

Perhaps channeling our energy in these directions will help restore the illusory sense that we can control more than is possible.  Perhaps.  But might we not be better served by shifting our focus from the macro to the micro, from society to self?  We can and will continue to debate this, that and the other policy.  But as we do so, let us also commit ourselves to achieving ends that are very much within our control (if our will is as strong as our grief is profound).  Let us behave in such a way as to bring more love, caring, compassion, humor, forgiveness and blessing into a hurting and broken world.  Let us do so in little ways, our own ways, now, in this season of hope, disappointment, and hope renewed. That would be most wonderful.

Ron Reynolds

Looking for some thought provoking articles about private education to add to your Winter Break reading list?  A recent House of Commons meeting - the British equivalent of a Congressional hearing - featured consideration of the following question: Should donors be supporting low-cost, low-fee private schools, rather than trying to build state systems to educate the millions of children around the globe who lack a basic education?  The BBC News captures the essence of the discussion in the form of remarks offered by a proponent of a mixed (publicly and privately funded) approach, Sir Michael Barber, and a critic of investment in private alternatives to government-provided education, Professor Keith Lewin.  Their perspectives, as well as comments from readers, are well worth a few minutes of your time.

Writing for Forbes, Richard Grant offers a cogent essay titled, "School Choice and the Advancement of Society."  The author, Professor of Finance and Economics at Lipscomb University, and a Senior Fellow at the Beacon Center of Tennessee, offers the following observation:  "Where once people were both encouraged and expected to grow out of poverty and dependency, our 'safety net' programs have grown their own constituencies that lobby for their growth and perpetuation."  He then proceeds to draw an analogy to government-run schools.  Whether, and to what extent his analogy holds...well, that's for you to decide!

For those of you who just can't seem to get enough football, here's an article that, while focusing on recent developments in Ohio and Indiana, addresses an issue that could just as well be said of California: some people think private school's win too many football championships.  Ohio's equivalent of the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) is contemplating a proposal that would create separate football playoffs for public and private schools.  By way of response, the most successful private schools (in terms of football championships, that is) have threatened to leave the association should the policy be adopted.  Not exactly holiday cheer, but interesting reading for sports fans, nonetheless.

If you're a member of the independent school community and haven't already read Fred Bartels' "Our 1% Problem: Independent Schools and the Income Gap," now would be a good time.  The article, which appears in the current edition of the National Association of Independent Schools' Independent School magazine, pulls no punches.  Its author bluntly raises the question of "...just how committed independent schools really are to a more equitable society," in a "winners-take-more world."  NAIS deserves high marks for both owning and spotlighting hard questions such as those raised in Mr. Bartels' thought provoking essay.

Forty-six states (California included) and the District of Columbia have committed to the adoption of Common Core State Standards in English.  One significant feature of the standards is the requirement that 50 percent of reading assignments in elementary school must involve nonfiction texts.  That percentage grows to 70 percent by grade twelve.  The shift in emphasis has proved controversial, with many teachers expressing concerns about a diminution of emphasis on, and hours of instructional time devoted to the teaching of poetry and prose fiction.  Backers of the standards counter that reading need not be confined to English classes, but can and should be diffused across the curriculum.  The Washington Post presents both sides' views in an article titled, "Common core sparks war over words."

 

The California Private School Advisory Committee, K-12 is pleased to announce several multi-day professional development workshops for private school educators.  Each of these high-quality-at-low-cost programs is funded in part by Title II, Part A of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and is provided in cooperation with the California Department of Education. 

Below, you will find basic information about each workshop. Please click on the relevant accompanying links for descriptions of each program's content, information about the presenters, and downloadable registration forms.   

 

 

A three-day workshop for private school teachers

and administrators of grades 5-12

 

Click here for additional information and registration form.

 

Presenter:  Kay Psencik, Ed.D.

 

Dates:         January 28 & 29 AND February 27, 2013

Times:        8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., each day 

 

Location:    North Hills Christian School

                   200 Admiral Callaghan Lane

                   Vallejo, CA  94591

 

Registration Fee:  $50.00 per person if postmarked or faxed on or before January 14, 2013.  Otherwise, $70.00 per person.  Fee covers all three days of the program and includes materials, continental breakfast, and lunch.  

Read the CAPE Outlook!

How much might it cost recipient organizations if Congress acted to cap deductions for charitable contributions at $50,000, or $25,000?  What if such deductions were to be entirely eliminated?  Such proposals have been floated before key Congressional decision makers, as they attempt to work out compromise legislation designed to avert the impending "fiscal cliff."  To get a better handle on the ramifications likely to follow a curtailment of charitable deductions, check out this month's edition of the CAPE Outlook newsletter.  It's available in PDF format, here.

This month's Outlook also contains articles summarizing the Excellence in Action National Summit on Education, describing how blended learning models might be advantageous for private religious schools, noting recent court decisions affecting school choice in Louisiana and Oklahoma, and more.  The CAPE Outlook newsletter is published monthly during the course of the school year by the Council for American Private Education.



Three California Districts Win RTTF Grants

Last week, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan named 16 winners of Race to the Top Fund - District level competitive grants.  A total of $400 million will be allocated over the course of a three-year period, with individual awards ranging from $10 - $40 million.  The magnitude of individual grants is linked to district enrollment.  A total of 372 public school districts submitted applications, with the 16 winners eventually selected from among a pool of 61 finalists.

The three winning California districts are Galt Joint Union (Sacramento County), Lindsay Unified (Tulare County), and New Haven Unified (Alameda County).  Galt and Lindsay will each receive about $10 million; New Haven will be awarded approximately $29.4 million.  While nearly 19 percent of the winning districts are located in the state of California, the three recipients enroll a combined 21,077 pupils, accounting for just three-tenths-of-one-percent of the state's total public school population.


Global Report Card

Speaking of districts, if you'd like to see how a particular public school district's test scores compare to an international sample of students, the George W. Bush Presidential Center offers a web-based utility that makes doing so a snap.  The Center's Global Report Card enables viewers to select any public school district in the nation, and produce figures showing how the average student in that district would compare, in percentile terms, to a composite distribution of test scores obtained from students educated in 25 different nations.  A district's performance can also be compared to that of four individual nations (Canada, Finland, Singapore and Switzerland), as well as to state and national test scores.
 
The E-Mailer tried the feature using the Berkeley Unified School District, located in Alameda County.  With a few mouse-clicks, it was discovered that the average pupil in this district would have scored at the 33rd percentile in math, and the 44th percentile in reading, when compared to students hailing from the other 25 nations.  (This means that the Berkeley students' scores were higher than 33 percent of those of the international group in math, and higher than 44 percent of the group in reading.)  When compared to U.S. students, nationwide, the Berkeley students fared better, scoring at the 42nd percentile in math, and the 46th percentile in reading.  Finally, when compared to statewide results in California, Berkeley did best, scoring at the 54th percentile in math, and the 57th percentile in reading.  To provide additional context, the website provides district demographic data that include the percentage of students receiving free and reduced price meals, and the percentage of minority students in the district.  In the case of Berkeley Unified, 39 percent of the students fall into the first category, and 70 percent into the second.

You can explore the Global Report Card, here.

I often confide that I wish I had gone to law school.  I'm always quick to add that while I have no burning desire to actually practice law, legal training would have proven particularly useful to the discharge of my current responsibilities as CAPSO's executive director.  Among other things, I am a registered lobbyist who spends a considerable amount of time poring over proposed legislation, existing statutes, regulations, legal briefs and judicial opinions.  Not infrequently, I have occasion to propose changes to the manner in which bills are written, and even go so far as to provide legislators with model substitute text.  Sometimes, my suggestions actually make their way into law, and I confess to a certain satisfaction that comes with the ability to point to some element in a statute - even if it's only a few words - and to think, Hey!  I wrote that!  But I digress.
 
I have the utmost respect for lawyers, and have had the pleasure of working with a number of attorneys who, contrary to popular belief, are the nicest people you'd ever want to meet (in addition to being stellar professionals).  So, yeah...maybe I possess a degree of lawyer-envy.  If so, it certainly doesn't help that I find myself beginning at least several emails a week with my standard disclaimer: I am not an attorney.  Nothing contained in this correspondence is either intended as legal advice, or should be construed as such... 

I also have the highest esteem for teachers.  While I can't pretend to be an attorney, I was a teacher.  (Some say, once a teacher, always a teacher.  I think my wife and kids buy into that, although they call it being pedantic.  Just kidding.)  In the field of education, teaching is where the rubber hits the road, and I am very much aware that while I am currently distanced from the classroom in a physical sense, virtually everything I do is ultimately intended to support what goes on, therein.  If I didn't believe teachers can and do make a world of difference, my job would have little meaning.

As one who venerates both lawyers and teachers, how does this writer view a proposal currently being floated by the American Federation of Teachers calling for the establishment of a bar exam for teachers?  In short, I regard it with considerable skepticism. 

Consider the following: The July, 2011 administration of the California Bar Exam produced an overall passage rate of 54.8 percent.  In 2009-2010, the cumulative passing rate for those taking the California Basic Educational Skills Test (CBEST) - an exam that must currently be passed in order to receive a state-issued teaching credential - was 84.7 percent.  If the American Federation of Teachers is serious about implementing the equivalent of a Bar Exam for teachers, it will significantly increase the barrier to entry for the field, meaning that the supply of teachers will be diminished.  Unlike the legal profession, the state, through the enactment of compulsory education laws, creates and maintains a near constant demand for teachers.  Pop Quiz!  What happens when demand remains constant and supply decreases?  That's right.  In this instance, the cost of labor increases.  Add union demands for class-size reduction to the equation, and demand increases.  More demand and less supply of teachers is hardly a happy prescription for a public education system already teetering on the edge of insolvency.

But wait a minute.  Compulsory education notwithstanding, isn't this pretty much what the Bar Exam accomplishes for attorneys?  That is to say, doesn't the imposition of a difficult exam with a relatively high failure rate have the effect of inflating salaries by decreasing supply?  I believe the answer to that question is "yes."  The late Nobel laureate economist, Milton Friedman, taught as much in Free to Choose, which he co-authored with his wife, Rose.  In that seminal work, Dr. Friedman had the following to say about the nation's largest medical society: "The American Medical Association is seldom regarded as a labor union.  And it is much more than the ordinary labor union.  It renders important services to its members and the medical profession as a whole.  However, it is also a labor union, and in our judgment has been one of the most successful unions in the country.  For decades it kept down the number of physicians, kept up the costs of medical care, and prevented competition with 'duly apprenticed and sworn' physicians by people from outside the profession - all, of course, in the name of helping the patient."  Clearly, the same could have been written of the American Bar Association, or its state counterparts, and the analogy to what the teachers union has in mind is obvious.  All, of course, in the name of helping the students.  In AFT President Randi Weingarten's own words: "This is about raising the standards of our profession and making sure that kids get teachers who are prepared."

I do not begrudge the AFT for endeavoring to increase teachers' salaries.  That's one of the things a union is supposed to do.  My problem is with the lack of appropriateness of a "Bar-type" exam.  And my concern goes well beyond the irony emerging from the fact that the teachers unions have complained long and loudly about the misapplication of standardized, high-stakes tests. 

At its heart, my difficulty with the AFT's proposal is that teaching is simply different than law and/or medicine.  There is no cumulative, specialized body of knowledge that must be mastered in order to function effectively as a teacher, as there is in the fields of law and medicine.  I suspect that law students will continue to study Marbury v. Madison, as long as this great nation exists, and that medical students will continue to memorize normal hemoglobin and blood gas values as long as there are medical schools.  By contrast, there is little that can be said to be truly foundational, or enduring in the field of teaching.  Were it to be otherwise, what gets taught at a place like Teachers College, today, would bear far closer resemblance to what was taught there 40 years ago.  Don't believe me?  Take a look at the mission statement of Teachers College's Department of Curriculum and Teaching, whose mission statement signals commitment to "...critical analyses of the ways in which curriculum, teaching, and schooling contribute to social inequalities and a commitment to educating for social justice."  What is considered "foundational" today was largely absent from the professional lexicon just a few decades ago, and will be absent a few decades down the road.

I, for one, hope the AFT's proposal fails to gain traction (as I suspect it will).  The combination of artificially inflated demand coupled with artificially diminished supply is an idea we can scarcely afford to consider.
 
For alternative takes on the AFT proposal, see Andrew Rotherham's Eduwonk commentary, here, and Checker Finn's Flypaper article, here.

Ron Reynolds

The next edition of the CAPSO Midweek E-Mailer will be published January 16, 2013.  CAPSO wishes all readers of the E-Mailer a meaningful holiday season and a happier New Year.