In This Issue:
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THE STATE OF THE STATE OF THE SCHOOLS |
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Brown:
"REDUCE THE NUMBER OF TESTS + BROWN SHARPLY DIFFERS FROM OBAMA ON
EDUCATION POLICY + LA Times: “DON'T SKIMP ON SCHOOL TESTS!” |
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FINNISHING SCHOOL: The world's top school system gives pointers in California |
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WHAT’S THE PLAN?: Supplemental Educational Services, Adult Education, Early Childhood Education |
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HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but
not neccessariily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources |
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What can YOU do? |
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Featured Links:
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ON TUESDAY EVENING Diane Ravitch stood before the
altar in Emmanuel Presbyterian Church on Wilshire Boulevard and preached
to the choir of red shirted, red jacketed, red tied and red tie-dyed
UTLA members.
There were a lot of folks there I thought I’d never see in church –
especially a Presbyterian one – unless they entered in a box. (I am a
Scot-by-ancestry – Presbyterianism's roots are in the Church of
Scotland.)
But the event was sponsored by the teachers union and it and the parking
was free and across the street from the UTLA building – and Dr.
Ravitch’s message is their gospel and they are True Believers …as I
rapidly (if not so rabidly) am becoming in late middle-age. (With the
end in sight one must believe in something!)
Dr. Ravitch herself is a recent convert to The Cause. Having washed away
her Bush-era Test-the Kids and Bash-the-Teachers and their Union ways
she now leads the charge against the forces of ®eform and billionaire
foundation /hedge-fund charter, voucher and privateers like a Saint Joan
or Billy Sunday or some other metaphorical redeemed sinner She is a
studious+learned convert who brings the weight of a lifetime of
scholarship and a wealth of not-data-but-information and knowledge and
even wisdom to her evangelism.
Tuesday evening Dr. Ravitch was also a pilgrim, on her way to Stanford
to hear another teacher of teachers, Pasi Sahlberg of Finland – the
promised land of progressive education – and his sermon on how they do
it in Finland. [FINNISHING SCHOOL – follows]
And Dr. Sahlbergs message, the Lessons from Finland?
FINNISH LESSON 1: There is hope
FINNISH LESSON 2: There is another way
FINNISH LESSON 3: Teachers matter
FINNISH LESSON 4: Doing more of the same is not the solution
FINNISH LESSON 5: Learning is more important than achievement
And so while Dr. Ravitch offered a resurrected Late Great American
School System on Tuesday – and Dr. Sahlberg offered hope on Wednesday to
the Empowerment Through Learning in a Global World Conference at
Stanford ― Governor Brown offered his own small-is-better glimmer of
hope in Sacramento …and later in the day at LA City Hall and later still
to teachers in Burbank. …IF two-thirds of us vote for his tax
initiative. [THE STATE OF THE STATE OF THE SCHOOLS – follows]
And if we don’t vote his way, he warned, there is little hope, no other
way, teachers will be laid-off, more-of-the-same will be done and
learning+ achievement will be thrown under the bus. Except there will be
no bus.
“VALUE”, LIKE “CHOICE” & “REFORM”, are words whose meaning has been
tortured into admitting something less than the truth. “Managing for
Value” is the new Orwellian
NewSpeak/business-school-spin-jargon/euphemism for right sizing and
lay-offs and pink-slip-budget-cutting.
Last week the superintendent didn’t announce his plan to reorganize and
reconfigure and value-engineer LAUSD into 4+1 new local Districts
(I,2,3,4 and name-to-be-determined) and three silos of command:
(Education, Operations and Parents).[ 4 Your Review: The Shape of LA
Schools to Come? - http://t.co/9hAApuRb]
The plan wasn’t announced; there was no press release, no discussion,
no debate – it just was, in the key of E: “I wanna tell you how it's
gonna be; you’re gonna give your love to me.”
I was complimented last week by an educator for a thought in the last
4LAKids that “Fiction is something that never happened, not something
that isn’t true”. It’s not an original thought – it’s a framed one on
the bulletin board above my computer.
So I imagine:
INT/DAY: A CUBICLE IN A TRIANGULAR BUILDING ON THE NORTHEAST CORNER OF
THE 24TH FLOOR OF A FICTIONAL SCHOOL DISTRICT HEADQUARTERS BUILDING.
MEDIUM SHOT: An UNDERLING on a Fast Track – Bob Cratchit with
a-three-figure-income, all urgency+data-driven, a Speedracer-to-the-Top
strategizes – steeped in business school thought. His charge and his
mission is subsidized by billionaire philanthropy; he’s a
bought-and-paid-for true believer in Choice+Value+®eform – in
Public/Private Venture Capitalism and Core Standardized Testing; in No
Child Left Behind and outsourcing everything that isn’t tested to
somebody/anyone else who can do it better/cheaper/non-union.
PUSH IN: He is writing a Plan.
MONTAGE: The UNDERLING shows the Plan to HIS BOSS, who shows it to Other
Underlings: YES MAD MEN+WOMEN with narrow ties, narrow lapels and
narrowed vision – all similarly steeped and subsidized and co-opted
CLOSE ON BOSS (with a thin smile): “I like it …Go with it!””
CUT to YES MAD MEN+WOMEN (in unison): “Yes!”
ON UNDERLING: “Go with it? Take it to the Board? Put in on the agenda? Run it up the flagpole and see who salutes?”
ON BOSS (You can practically hear the ice water pumping through his
veins): “No. This school district has too many flagpoles, too many
agendas and too few saluters.”
EXTREME CLOSE UP OF BOSS: “Nail it to the flagpole!”
And even if it wasn’t, so it is.
¡Onward/Adelante! - smf
THE STATE OF THE STATE OF THE SCHOOLS
Highlights of the coverage edited from the LA Times by smf - http://lat.ms/A9zgkU
“The governor also asked for changes in public schools, saying the state
has overemphasized student testing and calling for local officials to
have more control over their budgets. He asked state lawmakers to remove
requirements that districts spend certain funds on specific programs.”
●●smf: January 19, 2012 :: I listened to Brown’s State of the State
speech live – and heard him deliver it again in LA yesterday afternoon:
Here is the full text: http://bit.ly/xdw2JZ
► Editorial: GOV. BROWN’S VISION: IN HIS STATE OF THE STATE ADDRESS, HE
OFFERS A CONTROVERSIAL YET SIMPLE PLAN, ONE THAT MOSTLY GETS IT RIGHT.
LA Times Editorial | http://lat.ms/yOAuIQ
January 19, 2012 :: The gist of Gov. Jerry Brown's State of the State
address — that California is recovering — is hard to absorb, given the
continuing high levels of unemployment, the year-to-year
multibillion-dollar shortfalls in the state budget, the shuttering of
state parks, the looming cuts to schools and the dismantling of human
services programs.
Yet the numbers, while hardly overwhelming, show that California has slowly, tentatively, turned a corner. What now?
Brown lays out a plan that is controversial yet simple: Get the rest of
the way over the hump with deeper cuts and with a temporary tax
increase; shift more authority for incarceration and education from
Sacramento to counties and school districts; fix coming budget problems,
most notably public pensions, before they actually become problems; and
keep the state on the cutting edge of environmental policy,
transportation leadership and statewide opportunity.
The governor got most of it right. The tax increase he is seeking would
indeed be temporary and would in fact leave Californians still paying
far less in taxes than they did two years ago. And without it, a further
dismantling of the state's public education system would be necessary,
foolishly robbing from our future. Even if the increases are approved,
the spending cuts he's proposing — including drastic slashes in Medi-Cal
funding — will end up costing the state more in the long run.
He is correct, but moves only halfway to the goal, on so-called
realignment. In transferring responsibility for imprisoning thousands of
inmates to counties, the governor is continuing a rollback of the
Sacramento-oriented centralizing over which he presided in his first
round as governor, in the 1970s. California can cap property taxes, as
it did with Proposition 13 in 1978, and still return to local
communities much of the decision-making power they lost in the ensuing
years when Sacramento back-filled the depleted local coffers. The latest
addition to the governor's prison realignment plan is merely
strengthening the promise of jail funding to counties. To truly realign,
the governor must also return to county residents much of their former
power to raise their own revenue and make their own spending decisions.
Likewise, returning a measure of control over education decisions to
local school districts is a healthy philosophical move, as far as it
goes. But it's not yet clear whether relaxing some testing, as he
proposes, truly moves the state in that direction.
The governor also took an appropriate swipe at "declinists": those
people who insist that the state's predicament is part of some
inexorable fall rather than a fixable result of poor policy and an
especially bad, but temporary, economic turn. Brown knows that when the
state emerges from its budget winter, it must be ready to face the
future — with investments in clean energy, swift transportation and
nimble government.
As in his younger days, Brown has little problem with vision. To get
Californians to follow, he will need to explain further — and to keep
explaining — that he's got the proper destination in mind.
► GOV. BROWN’S SCHOOL REFORM PROPOSAL SHOULD GET A PASSING GRADE: Gov.
Jerry Brown's budget aims to give school districts greater flexibility
in spending state funds.
LA Times Op-Ed by By Bruce Fuller | http://lat.ms/ww8Pg3
January 18, 2012, 4:15 p.m. :: Tucked deep inside Gov. Jerry Brown's
proposed 2012-13 budget for California is a little-noticed proposal for
the most radical reform of school funding in the state since Proposition
13.
Brown has proposed deregulating some two dozen state programs, including
a popular effort to shrink class size in primary classrooms. The
deregulation would free up about $7.1 billion in state funds that are
currently earmarked for the programs to be used by districts for any
educational purpose they see fit, allowing districts far more
flexibility to direct funds where they are most needed.
The proposal would also, over five years, create a system in which
individual students are funded at different levels, depending on the
actual costs of bringing them to proficiency. Districts would be
allotted more per student for those with more costly needs, a move
likely to shift more dollars to urban systems like the Los Angeles
Unified School District.
Michael Kirst, the Brown-appointed president of the state Board of
Education, says the governor is aiming "to direct more money to the
neediest students and transform a centralized and overregulated finance
system."
The budget would still require schools to do more with less, aiming to
restore only about $4.9 billion to state school funding, roughly half of
what has been cut since 2007. And even that additional funding will be
possible only if voters approve a ballot initiative to boost tax revenue
by $4.6 billion.
Brown's proposals come at a time when a majority of citizens say they
favor modest tax increases for schools, according to polling by the
Public Policy Institute of California, but only if existing dollars are
spent more effectively with less bureaucracy. The reforms proposed in
the budget are a decisive step in that direction.
To shave Sacramento's own bureaucracy, the governor would redirect an additional
$2.6 billion in various funding streams into a block grant incentive
program for which districts would be held accountable. This would mean
that the state would no longer mandate what districts must spend on such
things as textbooks, driver's education, arts and music, shifting that
money into the omnibus grants program. The proposal builds on a
Republican-led effort in 2009 that collapsed 40 other education programs
into a $4.5-billion block grant program.
So what would this mean for a district like L.A. Unified? Currently,
about a third of the district's annual funding is tied up in rule-bound
programs. Not only does that severely limit the district's ability to
direct funds where they're most needed, but, according to the findings
of a recent study carried out by UC Berkeley and Stanford, it also
requires school principals to spend much of their time completing forms
and hosting a stream of compliance officers.
The maze of regulations that binds up school funding today dates to the
19th century, and is now well understood by only a few well-heeled
lobbyists. Brown's budget is an attempt at modernization. "We want to
keep this as simple, as transparent as possible," said Nick Schweizer, a
senior finance advisor to the governor.
The logic behind Brown's proposals is similar to that used to finance
healthcare: Public dollars should be allocated according to actual
costs. In the case of healthcare, this means that more dollars are
directed to patients requiring more expensive treatments. Currently,
Sacramento allocates about the same amount of money to educate a bright,
upper-middle-class child with highly educated parents living in Pacific
Palisades as it does to educate a child struggling to read and living
below the poverty line in the inner city. But the costs of bringing
those two children to proficiency are very different.
Predictably, the politics are already getting ugly. Rural districts are
fighting to retain protected dollars for 4-H clubs. Parents of kids who
have been designated "gifted" are fighting for their set-asides. Teacher
unions will fight to strictly regulate dollars for smaller classes. And
that's nothing compared with the fireworks we'll see when the
governor's plan gets to the Legislature.
The proposals, though, are sound. Rather than focus on trying to defeat
them, stakeholders should focus on developing a sensible plan for
phasing in the new system in a way that doesn't do harm. Growing
suburban districts, for example, need to have the ability to raise local
taxes more easily to fund schools. Schools that show improvement should
be rewarded, and those that don't should be called to account.
Otherwise, schools could benefit from attracting, but not serving, weak
students — just as doctors are rewarded for treating disease, not for
preventing it.
The governor has presented the kind of austere but flexible plan
demanded by these lean times, and his strategy could be good for
California students. Directing scarce dollars to children who most need
support, and untying the hands of local educators to attract stronger
teachers and lift achievement, are potent reforms that are long overdue.
● Bruce Fuller is a professor of education and public policy at UC Berkeley.
Brown: "REDUCE THE NUMBER OF TESTS + BROWN SHARPLY
DIFFERS FROM OBAMA ON EDUCATION POLICY + LA Times: “DON'T SKIMP ON
SCHOOL TESTS!”
► Brown: "I BELIEVE IT IS TIME TO REDUCE THE NUMBER OF TESTS"
Themes in the News for the week of Jan. 16-20, 2012 by UCLA IDEA | http://bit.ly/A9yfkA
01-20-2012 :: In his State of the State address Wednesday, Gov. Jerry
Brown acknowledged that “the house of education is divided by powerful
forces and strong emotions.” Nowhere have those forces and emotions
stirred more distraction and waste than in the passion for high-stakes
standardized testing.
Brown spoke of local control and his belief that schools and districts
know best how to help students by using assessments wisely: “To me that
means, we should set broad goals and have a good accountability system,
leaving the real work to those closest to the students.” Brown noted
that standardized tests—which are not local, but statewide or
national—can draw attention and resources from local decisions and
teaching. The governor wants to dial down the disproportionate energies
spent on tests: “I believe it is time to reduce the number of tests and
get the results to teachers, principals and superintendents in weeks,
not months. With timely data, principals and superintendents can better
mentor and guide teachers as well as make sound evaluations of their
performance. I also believe we need a qualitative system of
assessments…” (Thoughts on Public Education, Washington Post, Education
Week).
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson was heartened
by Brown’s comments: “Like many teachers, I have long argued that
students need to spend more time learning and less time taking exams”
(CDE).
Sue Burr, executive director of the State Board of Education, agreed,
noting that standardized tests have narrowed curriculum to English
language arts and mathematics. “While those are critically important, we
can’t ignore history. We can’t ignore science. We can’t ignore civics.
We can’t ignore the arts” (Sacramento Bee).
Historian Diane Ravitch, speaking across the state, is broadly critical
of standardized tests; but she does believe they are useful for
diagnostic purposes. Ravitch cautions against high stakes use of tests
and favors “a full curriculum, with arts and dramatics and libraries.
All those things matter.” Testing, she believes, focuses attention on
“what’s your number” (or score on the test) and away from meaningful
instruction and learning (Lodi News-Sentinel).
Gov. Brown’s speech has set a promising tone. Policymakers and
stakeholders need to continue the conversation about the effects of
standardized tests, asking how tests that focus on math and literacy
affect other courses such as foreign language and the arts; and asking
educators to produce alternate assessments that support authentic
learning.
Guidance for improving California’s tests is close at hand. In a 2010
white paper, Linda Darling-Hammond outlined key benchmarks for a quality
student-assessment system:
Address the depth and breadth of standards as well as all areas of the curriculum, not just those that are easy to measure
Consider and include all students as an integral part of the design
process, anticipating their particular needs and encouraging all
students to demonstrate what they know and can do
Honor the research indicating that students learn best when given
challenging content and provided with assistance, guidance, and feedback
on a regular basis
Employ a variety of appropriate measures, instruments, and processes
at the classroom, school, and district levels, as well as the state
level. These include multiple forms of assessment and incorporate
formative as well as summative measures
Engage teachers in scoring student work based on shared targets.
►BROWN SHARPLY DIFFERS FROM OBAMA ON EDUCATION POLICY
IN HIS STATE OF THE STATE ADDRESS, BROWN CALLS FOR LIMITS ON
STANDARDIZED TESTS AND WANTS REDUCED ROLES FOR THE U.S. AND STATE IN
LOCAL SCHOOLS.
By Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times | http://lat.ms/x50Akc
January 20, 2012 :: Deviating sharply from education reform policies
championed by President Obama, California Gov. Jerry Brown is calling
for limits on standardized testing and reduced roles for federal and
state government in local schools.
Brown's positions, outlined in Wednesday's State of the State address,
align closely with the state's two major teachers unions, but also
embody Brown's independent streak.
The governor's call for a reduction in standardized testing comes at a
time when such tests are gaining influence across the nation, due in
part to heavy federal support. Most notably, U.S. Secretary of Education
Arne Duncan has called for results from these tests to become part of a
teacher's evaluation.
"It is time to reduce the number of tests and get the results to
teachers, principals and superintendents in weeks, not months," said
Brown, who hasn't articulated where he stands on teacher evaluations.
Much of the attention to Brown's speech focused on painful budget cuts
and a proposed tax increase as well as the expensive high-speed rail
project that he supports. But Brown also delivered important cues on
education, which consumes more of the state budget than any other
program.
A recent USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll suggested that voters would
raise their taxes to increase funding for schools, which have suffered
steep cuts during the economic recession. Brown's signature tax
initiative gambles on this sentiment. It would make education the chief
beneficiary of new taxes — and, as Brown made clear Wednesday, the
primary target for cuts should his proposed ballot measure fail in
November.
But his attention to education goes beyond funding. Besides taking on
testing, Brown called for getting the federal and state government out
of the details of schooling.
"What most needs to be avoided is concentrating more and more
decision-making at the federal or state level," Brown said. "We should
set broad goals and have a good accountability system, leaving the real
work to those closest to the students.... We should not impose excessive
or detailed mandates."
Brown can't unilaterally limit testing, but his views are influential
within a generally friendly Legislature, which has responsibility for
approving changes to education law. Also, Brown appoints members to the
state Board of Education, which oversees the writing and interpretation
of education rules.
Observers from across the ideological spectrum have found things to like, worry and puzzle over in Brown's address.
One interpretation is that "the governor recognizes we need to move
beyond the first generation of accountability to something more
sophisticated," said Dominic Brewer, a USC professor of education,
economics and policy. "A more cynical read seems to suggest the governor
is against testing and even would prefer a return to an era where
frankly there was little accountability for outcomes. It's hard to tell
which view he holds."
Former L.A. school board member Yolie Flores expressed dismay at Brown's approach.
"He essentially is saying that neither the state nor the feds should be
involved, and instead let's leave it to the schools at the local level,"
said Flores, who now heads a local education-advocacy group. "I've been
at schools at the local level, and there is much lacking there in terms
of leadership, capacity and ability to improve things."
Brown expressed his views on testing and local control more bluntly when speaking to The Times' editorial board late last year.
The tests take "too damn long," Brown told the board. "Second-graders
take five days of tests. That's longer than I spent on the bar exam. I
think that's absurd. You've gotta have some room for creativity."
He was similarly insistent about limiting the role of Washington.
"The federal government should butt out," Brown said at the time. "You
have more and more people who aren't teaching, who are managing the flow
of the money and all the various rules and mandates.
"They have this idea that schools are like businesses and if you set the
right metrics, can you reward and punish and you get the outcome,"
Brown said. "I don't feel things quite work that way."
Brown's criticism of the growing emphasis on standardized tests has found a receptive audience among California teachers.
"The governor's speech demonstrated a respect for the practitioner,"
said Dean Vogel, president of the California Teachers Assn. "We've been
waiting to hear that from a governor," he added, in a dig at Brown's
predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Schwarzenegger's positions were a nearer match with Obama's Department
of Education, which has awarded funding to states that adopt favored
policies, such as linking student test scores to teacher evaluations or
converting low-performing schools to independent, and typically
nonunion, charter schools.
It remains unclear how Brown would assess schools if testing is
relegated to a diminished role. Some options include classroom visits
and a more rigorous accreditation process, said state Board of Education
President Michael Kirst, a Brown appointee.
In his address, Brown also touted a new school funding method, called
"weighted student formula," which is part of his budget proposal. Its
goal is to allocate more funding based on individual student needs.
Those challenged by poverty, disability or limited English-speaking
skills would have additional dollars assigned to their education.
At the same time, more than 60 separate education programs would be sharply reduced in number, with their rules simplified.
"This will give more authority to local school districts to fashion the
kind of programs they see their students need," Brown said. "It will
also create transparency, reduce bureaucracy and simplify complex
funding streams."
Overall, school districts such as L.A. Unified, where most families are
low-income, should see a significant boost of dollars under the
governor's plan, said Bruce Fuller, a UC Berkeley professor of education
and public policy.
At the same time, proposed budget cuts, such as one that eliminates
funding to transport students to school, would reduce funds that
previously benefited L.A. Unified.
"I don't see an enlarging pie of funding," said L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy.
►DON'T SKIMP ON SCHOOL TESTS: CUTTING BACK ON SUCH TESTS, AS GOV. JERRY
BROWN HAS PROPOSED, WILL NOT IMPROVE EDUCATION. THE TESTS REMAIN KEY
YARDSTICKS OF ACHIEVEMENT.
L.A. Times Editorial | http://lat.ms/yPuM5w
January 20, 2012 :: There are plenty of problems with the school reform
movement, but the number of standardized tests isn't one of them. The
tests are still the most objective and affordable yardsticks of
achievement available. They should be improved and the results should be
kept in perspective, but there is no evidence that cutting back on them
— as Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed — will improve education.
Students in California take more annual standards tests than are
mandated by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The state tests
students in English and math each year through 11th grade; federal law
requires that, in high school, the tests be given just once. California
does additional testing in science and history. In his State of the
State address Wednesday, Brown called for eliminating some testing. His
proposal was light on details, but reducing the number of end-of-year
tests would have several downsides and little obvious benefit beyond
adding a few instructional hours to the year.
Brown hearkens back to an era before "data driven" became an educational
catchphrase. He calls for teams of evaluators to visit schools to look
for the indicators of quality instruction that fill-in-the-bubble tests
can't measure. That's an enticing idea. Like Brown, we're concerned that
hardly anyone talks anymore about fostering intellect in schools, or
the value of learning for its own sake rather than as a means to getting
a job. But team evaluations are complicated and expensive to do right.
Education funding is scarce, and putting money into the classroom rather
than into administrative functions is more important than ever.
Standardized tests are, by comparison, objective and cheap. They also
ensure that teachers cover the material in the curriculum; before the
era of testing, many teachers would simply ignore required subjects.
Evaluation visits couldn't ascertain that.
The problem isn't the number of standardized tests that California gives
— most high-achieving nations do even more testing — but the collective
national obsession with scores. Test results show, over time, whether
students at a particular school are learning required material, and
whether performance is improving. They can serve as a guide for how to
improve pedagogy. But they are limited measurements in many ways.
Policies that punish schools and teachers because of year-to-year
declines, or that make teachers' evaluations depend heavily on the
scores, are misusing the data.
By all means, let's add other meaningful measures of what schools
achieve, if California can afford to do it well. California already is
collaborating with other states on devising tests that measure for deep
understanding rather than broad and shallow information. Even those
tests will give the public only part of the picture, but why do without
that part?
FINNISHING SCHOOL: The world's top school system gives pointers in California
By Kathryn Baron | Thoughts on Public Education | http://bit.ly/yxMdAG
20 January 2012 :: Forget Santa Claus and saunas, the biggest export from Finland these days is its educational system.
During a two-day conference this week at Stanford University, Finnish
educators discussed how they improved so dramatically and what the
United States can learn from the Nordic country.
Finnish education reform can be summed up in ten points, according to
Pasi Sahlberg, a director at the Finnish Ministry of Education and
Culture and author of Finnish Lessons: What can the world learn from
educational change in Finland? The first nine are instructive, but it’s
number ten that sums it up neatly and harshly.
“All of these factors that are behind the Finnish success seem to be
the opposite of what is taking place in the United States and the rest
of world where competitive, test-based accountability, standardization,
and privatization seem to dominate,” Sahlberg told participants at the
Empowerment Through Learning in a Global World conference. “There is
hope, but you have to be smart in the way you do things…and in many of
the things that you are trying to do here I see very little hope.”
Yep, that smarts, especially since Sahlberg acknowledged that Finland
borrowed a lot of its reform ideas from the United States, as did many
other countries, when American education was the envy of the world.
Since then, the U.S. hasn’t progressed so much, at least where PISA, a
triennial international exam of 15-year-olds, is concerned. In addition
to Finland, PISA shows that Canada, Korea, Singapore, and Shanghai,
China have all surpassed the United States.
About those other nine lessons, well, they’re a mix of common sense,
shifting priorities, and paradoxes. Here are some of the key elements:
● Pursuing excellence and equity: Achievement differences among schools in Finland is small, about 5 percent.
● Standardized-free test zone: There’s no standardized testing until
students are in their last year of school, and the scores aren’t used to
evaluate teachers.
● Wrapping education with health and welfare: There’s a nurse in every
school and every child gets a free comprehensive check-up every year.
Dental and mental health services are also provided, as is universal
free lunch. Play is a priority and children must, by law, have recess.
● Less is more: The school day is relatively short – about four hours in
elementary school – and younger students get little homework. But
teachers get a lot of time for collaboration to develop curriculum and
independent learning plans tailored to each student’s strengths and
weaknesses. Finland also spends less money per student than the United
States.
● Professionalizing teaching: The Finns focused on teaching as a key
driver of reform and of the education system, and made it a noble and
attractive profession by making salaries commensurate with other
professionals such as doctors and lawyers, by requiring teachers to earn
a research-based master’s degree and making it tuition free, by
providing high-quality professional development, by giving teachers a
lot of autonomy and time to work collaboratively with their colleagues,
by offering career development paths that don’t just include
administration, and by not evaluating teachers based on their students’
test scores. As a result, they created one of the most, if not the
most, competitive teacher education systems in the world. The
acceptance rate into colleges of education is about one-in-ten, and only
ten to fifteen percent of teachers leave the profession before
retirement, compared to about 50 percent for teachers in urban schools
and a third for other areas
in the United
States.
LEANING POWER OF PISA
Finland’s educational reputation is largely a result of its students’
scores on PISA, and critics say that’s not enough. Lee Shulman,
Professor emeritus of education at Stanford, noted the irony of the very
people who decry the use of high-stakes testing being willing to rely
on a single exam to rank the world’s school systems.
“PISA is another standardized test. It’s not a proof test. It’s
credible because it fits our belief system,” argued Shulman during his
presentation at the conference. “We should commit ourselves to multiple
measures, not just one test.”
Other skeptics have raised questions about making comparisons between
countries that differ so widely in size and demographics. Finland has
3,500 schools and 60,000 teachers. Its entire population of 5.5 million
is smaller than California’s entire student population.
“You could argue that the main reason [for lower U.S. scores] is
that we have a 24 percent child poverty rate and you have a four percent
child poverty rate,” said one audience member during a
question-and-answer session. “You could argue that we have a segregation
problem where we bunch our poor children into bad schools.”
What’s more, Finland’s reading scores on PISA fell slightly from 2006 to
2009, dropping from an overall score of 547 to 536. This is the sort
of variable that American teachers say is natural and illustrates why
rankings based on single exams are inadequate measures. Despite that
setback, however, Finnish students remained in the top three for
reading, math and science, while scores for U.S. students placed them
smack in the middle.
STATES SHOW IT COULD HAPPEN HERE
America’s diversity is an issue, but shouldn’t be an excuse said
Stanford education professor Linda Darling-Hammond, co-director of the
Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education and author of
numerous books including The Flat World and Education: How America’s
commitment to equity will determine our future.
“PISA rankings in the United States are driven by inequality. If you
looked only at schools where less than 10 percent of the students are
low poverty, we’re number one in the world,” said Darling-Hammond during
her talk at the conference. In Finland, the focus on the dual goals of
excellence and equity have significantly closed the achievement gap. In
California, where there’s a three-to-one difference in spending between
high- and low-wealth districts, the gap has barely budged.
Some states have implemented reforms similar to Finland’s with
noticeable results. Massachusetts, New Jersey, Vermont, and Connecticut
have raised and equalized teacher salaries, made it more difficult to
become a teacher, and invested in high-quality professional development.
It wasn’t always altruistic; a judge ordered New Jersey to invest more
money in low-wealth schools after decades of litigation. But once that
happened, it became one of the top-performing states. Darling-Hammond
says Hispanic and Black students in New Jersey now outperform California
students, on average.
Gov. Brown is also taking a page from the Finnish model with his
proposals to reduce the number of standardized tests that students take,
and to switch to a weighted-student formula for funding, through which
schools would receive a flat amount of money for each student and
additional funds for children who need more resources to help them
succeed, such as English learners and low-income students (read more
about this proposal here).
“The house of education is divided by powerful forces and strong
emotions,” said Brown in his State of State address earlier this week.
“My role as governor is not to choose sides but to listen, to engage and
to lead. I will do that. I embrace both reform and tradition – not
complacency. My hunch is that principals and teachers know the most,
but I’ll take good ideas from wherever they come.”
Seems like some of them are coming from Helsinki.
WHAT’S THE PLAN?: Supplemental Educational Services,
Adult Education, Early Childhood Education
From the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles Weekly Update/www.aalausd.com | http://bit.ly/zgZvDb
Week of January 23, 2012 :: Federal regulations require LAUSD and other
districts that have entered their second year of Program Improvement to
spend about 20% of their Title I, Part A, allocation on Supplemental
Educational Services (SES) and transportation for public school choice.
The regulations also prohibit “Program Improvement” or “Corrective
Action” districts like LAUSD from providing SES themselves (34 C.F.R. §
200.47(b)(1)(iv)(B). In these cases the regulations require that the SES
be delivered by nondistrict entities.
As LAUSD faces yet another year in Program Improvement status, we have learned:
• SES “had little impact on student achievement.” (LAUSD Publication, No. 2008-03, March 2008 | http://bit.ly/A5WTyG)
• Students served by District providers and those served by nondistrict
providers statistically did not differ significantly in either the
mathematics or reading achievement gains relative to nonparticipation
(American Institute for Research, and RTI study for U.S. Dept. of Ed.,
2011, http://1.usa.gov/A8mt5o.
In other words, the research shows that SES is a failure regardless of
who provides the remediation. So what are our partners at Beaudry
planning? Shut down the District’s highly successful Adult and Career
Education programs and move the funding into K-12 to provide the support
services already offered by the Adult Division.
As published in our December 19 Update, AALA believes that this
ill-conceived plan should be scrapped to avert a political and
educational debacle. The Superintendent speaks of preserving the K-12
core by, in part, eliminating budget support for adult education.
Eliminating adult education programs would have an immediate negative
impact on K-12 education.
• In bringing his Fiscal Stabilization Plan to the Board, the
Superintendent cited counselor-to-student ratio as a major issue. Are
these overburdened counselors prepared to manage an additional 88,000
"credit recovery" cases and 52,000 alternative placements resulting from
closure of CTE programs?
• Is the District prepared to fund huge amounts of overtime for clerical staff in counseling offices?
• Will additional administrators be hired to manage this mess, or will oversight be added to current administrators' workload?
• As graduation approaches, how will the District address the needs of
the hundreds of seniors who must meet their graduation requirements?
• What's the plan?
The American Association of School Administrators has advocated for SES
waivers for many years, and they have been granted to five Districts
including Boston and Chicago. In the light of the recent AIR/RTI
findings, an SES waiver is the correct way for LAUSD to address this
issue. Keeping Title 1 funding in-house while sustaining adult education
is a win-win that makes more sense than closing the Adult Division,
moving the money and reinventing the wheel.
►CORRECTING DR. DEASY: ADULT EDUCATION FUNDING
On Patt Morrison’s KPCC radio show of December 21, 2011, Superintendent
Dr. John Deasy commented that adult education was “in arrears,” or
“encroached” on the District’s General Fund by $100 million last year.
It would appear that Dr. Deasy was given faulty information, when the
facts are that adult education actually under spent by 16.1% and
returned $26,670,239 (twenty-six point seven million dollars) to the
District this past June 30, 2011. These savings were achieved by lease
reductions, closing positions, operating more efficiently and targeting
those areas that best met District needs.
Adult education administrators work hard to serve their students,
support District objectives and do their fair share in addressing the
District’s fiscal challenges. Rather than being lambasted, adult
educationadministrators, teachers and support staff should be praised
for what they accomplish. AALA recognizes that all superintendents rely
on others to provide accurate information. We urge those who give input
to Dr. Deasy to do so in a fair, objective and accurate manner so that
he is not placed in potentially embarrassing situations on public radio.
►EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION
There is no question that early childhood education is essential,
especially in the second largest school district in the United States.
Because of LAUSD’s fiscal crisis, the Board of Education is considering
cutting early education programs by up to 50% for the 2012-2013 school
year. AALA believes that doing so will damage children, their families
and the community as a whole. It is evident that Superintendent Deasy
intends to take this step with great reluctance.
In the spirit of partnership, AALA urges the Superintendent immediately
to use every means at his disposal to inform the larger community about
the impact such significant cuts will have on LAUSD students for the
foreseeable future. Here are some facts to assist with this effort:
According to A Blueprint for Great Schools, published by State
Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson’s Transition Advisory
Team in 2011 (pp. 17-19), “Research confirms that children who attend
high-quality early education programs are better prepared for
kindergarten, have stronger language skills in the first years of
elementary school and are less likely to repeat a grade or drop out of
school.” The Blueprint further states, “High-quality early care and
education offers one of the highest returns of any public
investment—more than $7 for every dollar spent—by reducing future
expenditures on special education, public assistance and the criminal
justice system.”
Students who are not proficient readers by the end of Grade 3 struggle throughout their school years;
many drop out. Without the push and support provided by early childhood programs, increasing
numbers of children are likely to have difficulty achieving the goal of reading proficiency. Children
living in poverty frequently start school behind their peers and stay behind, despite the hard work of
their teachers and administrators. Consequently, they are the ones who
will suffer the most if early childhood education programs are slashed.
Further information about the benefits of early childhood education will
be provided in future issues of Update.
HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T
FIT: The Rest (but not neccessariily the best) of the Stories from Other
Sources
Just in:
ON L.A. COLLEGES PROJECT, FIRM PAID BY COMPANY IT WAS OVERSEEING -
Records show, Gateway Science & Engineering collected consulting
fees from one of the main contractors it was supervising on the
$450-million rebuilding of Mission College | http://lat.ms/z2DCQR
DISTRICT VIOLATES CONTRACT ON FURLOUGH DAYS: UTLA takes legal action | http://bit.ly/zMH6mT
Arts Ed: SB 789 + THE CREATIVITY INDEX!: From ArtsEdMail and The California Alliance for Arts Education | http://bit.ly/xAcLuQ
School Bus Transportation: DEATH VALLEY STUDENTS FACE LOSS OF LIFELINE: California has pulled funding for school... http://bit.ly/AwewSX
BIG MAN ON CAMPUS: LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy on the latest challenges facing the district: Episode: Patt ... http://bit.ly/zSNIkM
Gallup Poll - EDUCATION: AN ELECTION NON-ISSUE + smf's 2¢: Carrie Russo, San Pedro Special Education Examiner | ... http://bit.ly/wJG7EY
Superintendent’s letter and list of impacted schools: …BUT NO OTHER ORIFICE WAS AVAILABLE…: Satire from notyet LAUSD!. http://bit.ly/AvfUp3
Superintendent’s letter and list of impacted schools: PROP 39 OFFERS TO CHARTER SCHOOLS FOR 2012-2013 SCHOOL YEA... http://bit.ly/zKGTve
SAVE NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOLS!: An Open Letter To The Superintendent and Board from LAUSD’s Principals: From the Ass... http://bit.ly/xXzs95
NO CHILD LEFT UNTABULATED: “What does not emerge is a clear philosophy of education. “Nor is it likely to emer... http://bit.ly/ztfF1s
LAUSD WITHOUT BORDERS: What if the District erased attendance boundaries? + smf’s 2¢: A district without boundar... http://bit.ly/Aeb4He
TRANSITIONAL KINDERGARTEN FACING THE AX UNDER BROWN’S PROPOSAL: Thandisizwe Chimurenga, New America Media News R... http://bit.ly/wGaqf7
What can YOU do?
• E-mail, call or write your school board member:
Tamar.Galatzan@lausd.net • 213-241-6386
Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 213-241-6180
Bennett.Kayser@lausd.net • 213-241-5555
Marguerite.LaMotte@lausd.net • 213-241-6382
Nury.Martinez@lausd.net • 213-241-6388
Richard.Vladovic@lausd.net • 213-241-6385
Steve.Zimmer@lausd.net • 213-241-6387
...or your city councilperson, mayor, the governor, member of congress,
senator - or the president. Tell them what you really think! • Find
your state legislator based on your home address. Just go to: http://bit.ly/dqFdq2 • There are 26 mayors and five county supervisors representing jurisdictions within LAUSD, the mayor of LA can be reached at mayor@lacity.org • 213.978.0600
• Call or e-mail Governor Brown: 213-897-0322 e-mail: http://www.govmail.ca.gov/
• Open the dialogue. Write a letter to the editor. Circulate these
thoughts. Talk to the principal and teachers at your local school.
• Speak with your friends, neighbors and coworkers. Stay on top of education issues. Don't take my word for it!
• Get involved at your neighborhood school. Join your PTA. Serve on a School Site Council. Be there for a child.
• If you are eligible to become a citizen, BECOME ONE.
• If you a a citizen, REGISTER TO VOTE.
• If you are registered, VOTE LIKE THE FUTURE DEPENDS ON IT. THEY DO!.
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