- District Prepares to Apply for ‘Race to the Top’ Funds for Early Education [Apple Tree Institute is mentioned]
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Brown Proposes Waiving Annual Evaluations to Draw Top Teachers to Struggling Schools
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DCPS Considers Waiving Evaluations for Teachers Moving to Poorer Areas
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"No Child’ Overhaul Proceeds With Support of Both Parties
- Teacher Evaluations Have a Place, But Not in a Washington Mandate
- Senate Panel Votes to Reduce Federal Role in Schools
- Upcoming FOCUS Workshops
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Donate to FOCUS
District Prepares to Apply for ‘Race to the Top’ Funds for Early Education [Apple Tree Institute is mentioned]
The Northwest Current
By Jessica Gould
October 19, 2011
D.C. is scheduled to submit an application today asking for up to $50 million in funds through the Obama administration’s “Race to the Top” grant competition for early learning initiatives. “To win the future, our children need a strong start,” U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a release this summer describing the competition.
“The Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge encourages states to develop bold and comprehensive plans for raising the quality of early learning programs across America.” According to the release, the competition will reward states that have plans to transform the early learning landscape in their communities through “better coordination, clearer learning standards and meaningful workforce development.” HyeSook Chung, executive director of the advocacy organization D.C.
Action for Children, advised the city on its application. She said D.C. is seeking funds to expand infant and toddler programming, create specialized credentials for early childhood educators and strengthen data systems. Meanwhile, she said, the city would use the funds to “equalize” both the number and quality of pre-k slots across the city. “We’re in really good shape,” Chung said. “I think we have a really good shot.” The competition comes on the heels of the Obama administration’s past high-profile Race to the Top contests, which set out to reward states for ambitious school reform plans.
In March 2010, the administration awarded Delaware $100 million and Tennessee $500 million in the first round of the Race to the Top competition. That summer, the administration announced that the District was among 10 winners of the competition’s second round. The city won $75 million for its reforms. The early-learning contest comes at an especially opportune time for the District, where Mayor Vincent Gray has placed a growing emphasis on early childhood education.
For example, during his time as D.C. Council chairman, Gray championed universal pre-k legislation designed to open an additional 2,000 slots to city preschoolers. Then, during his campaign for mayor, Gray made increased infant and toddler programming a key part of his platform. Last spring, Educare, a $12 million early education center for at risk infants, toddlers and preschoolers, broke ground in Ward 7 as part of the emerging Promise Neighborhood Initiative.
Apple Tree Institute, a charter network with locations throughout the city, has received funding from the U.S. Department of Education to develop a curriculum for early childhood educators. Chung said these achievements should make D.C. a standout among applicants. “We have all the right things in place to win this funding,” she said. “The challenge is execution.” Race to the Top early-learning grants are scheduled to be announced by Dec. 31.
Brown Proposes Waiving Annual Evaluations to Draw Top Teachers to Struggling Schools
The Washington Post
By Bill Turque
October 21, 2011
D.C. Council Chairman Kwame R. Brown (D) is developing legislation to encourage the city’s most effective teachers to work in its lowest-performing schools by exempting them from annual evaluations for at least a couple of years.
The measure, which Brown said Thursday he will introduce soon, is an attempt to address one of the most vexing issues facing DCPS: how to put its best teachers in front of the children who need them the most. The maldistribution of teaching talent is illustrated by the location of the 663 teachers deemed “highly effective” on the most recent round of IMPACT evaluations. Just 71 work in the 41 schools in Wards 7 and 8, while the ten schools in Ward 3 are home to 135 top educators.
There are also data indicating that the proportion of novice teachers in high-poverty areas has increased significantly in recent years.
“We have to get high-performing teachers into low-performing schools,” said Brown,who added that he has discussed the idea with Chancellor Kaya Henderson, describing her reaction as “excited.”
Under IMPACT, teachers in high-poverty schools who reach the highly effective level can earn an additional $10,000. There are additional payments for teachers whose students exceed predicted growth on the DC CAS ($10,000) or for those who work in a sought after subject area such as special education ($5,000).
While teachers weigh a variety of factors when deciding whether to switch schools (working environment, the principal) the high-stakes nature of IMPACT is clearly a disincentive for working with more challenging students. A poor IMPACT score can mean dismissal. Even Henderson has acknowledged that a teacher who is highly effective in one school may not be highly effective somewhere else. Waiving IMPACT would alleviate the career risks involved in such a move.
Brown said he is still workng out the details, but that he might propose that the idea be tried on a pilot basis in the city’s middle schools, most of which have dismal academic records.
Brown’s proposal was first reported earlier Thursday evening by The Washington Examiner.
DCPS Considers Waiving Evaluations for Teachers Moving to Poorer Areas
The Washington Examiner
By Lisa Gartner
October 20, 2011
D.C. Public Schools is considering a proposal from D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown to lure top teachers into the city's poorest schools by waiving their Impact evaluations for two to three years, The Washington Examiner has learned.
If implemented, the incentive would be the second significant change to the controversial evaluation tool in the past three months.
Currently teachers rated "highly effective" -- those who impress during classroom observations, and some who improve student test scores -- are clustered in affluent areas.
Highly effective teachers who work in high-poverty schools, where at least 60 percent of students quality for free or reduced-price lunch, are eligible for $10,000 bonuses, whereas their peers in more affluent schools get $5,000.
But because the evaluations also determine who gets laid off each summer, Brown said the extra $5,000 isn't worth the risk of moving into a more challenging classroom environment -- and getting fired.
"Some of them don't want to take that risk, and there's no compensation except if you do well; but if you don't, guess what happens," Brown said. "Right now it is a plan of failure to take a brand-new Teach For America teacher and put them in a low-performing school and expect results."
Under the proposal, teachers forgoing evaluations still would receive bonuses of $5,000 to $10,000.
Inequity among wards has been an issue as city officials try to overhaul the troubled public school system.
Fred Lewis, a spokesman for Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson, said DCPS also is open to other options that would get top performers in needy schools. "At the same time, we believe that a strong, annual evaluation process is essential to improving the quality of our work force and raising student achievement."
Teachers are typically observed in their classrooms five times each year. In September, The Examiner first reported that DCPS would allow teachers rated "highly effective" on their first two evaluations to waive the remaining three.
The Washington Teachers' Union embraced this change. President Nathan Saunders said teachers would endorse Brown's proposal as well, and would like to see the waiver extended to highly effective teachers already working in poorer schools.
"No Child’ Overhaul Proceeds With Support of Both Parties
The Washington Times
By Ben Wolfgang
October 20, 2011
After 13 hours of debate, a key Senate panel approved its long-awaited education reform bill with bipartisan support Thursday night, a major step in the process of overhauling the 10-year-old No Child Left Behind law.
The process was nearly derailed Wednesday, when Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul objected to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee markup of the bill by using a procedural tactic known as the “two-hour rule,” which requires unanimous consent for a committee to conduct business for more than two hours once the full Senate has begun its daily session.
The conservative Republican said he and other Republicans needed more time to review the 868-page measure, crafted by HELP Committee Chairman Sen. Tom Harkin, Iowa Democrat, and Sen. Michael B. Enzi, Wyoming Republican. He also lamented the fact that there have been no education reform hearings since he took office in January.
Mr. Paul planned to object again Thursday morning, but struck a deal that allowed the process to go forward.
“It was a classic compromise,” Mr. Harkin told reporters after the 9 p.m. vote, at which the proposal passed by a 15-7 margin.
The committee has tentatively scheduled a hearing for Nov. 8, before the bill reaches the Senate floor. Witnesses have not yet been announced, but the agreement seemed to satisfy the Kentucky senator, even though he ultimately voted against the legislation.
Other Republicans, however, joined with Democrats and approved the proposal, which replaces many parts of NCLB such as the “adequate yearly progress” federal assessment system and limits federal intervention to the lowest-performing 5 percent of schools in a state and the 5 percent with the highest achievement gaps between ethnic groups.
Mr. Enzi, Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois and Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee voted “yes,” but each made clear they expect a transparent, robust debate on the Senate floor and hope to make substantive changes.
Republicans have already succeeded in making one significant change after a measure offered by Mr. Alexander passed with bipartisan support and adjusted a key portion of the bill.
Under the original draft, the bottom 5 percent of schools would have to choose among six turnaround models, four of which would mandate that the principal be fired and another that calls for 35 percent of teachers to be ousted, though they could reapply later for their jobs. Schools also could choose to reopen as a charter school or close.
Mr. Alexander’s amendment adds a seventh option: permitting a state to develop its own turnaround model, which would then be subject to approval by the federal education secretary.
States “may come up with a smarter idea than any one of us could,” Mr. Alexander said in defense of his amendment, which drew unanimous support from Republicans. Four Democrats and Sen. Bernard Sanders, Vermont independent, also voted in favor of the plan.
Mr. Harkin voted against it and expressed fear that future education secretaries could be influenced by members of Congress or would only approve reform plans from states controlled by their own political party.
“I’d like to insulate the secretary from that political pressure,” Mr. Harkin said just before the vote.
Before settling on Mr. Alexander’s amendment, Republicans tried to alter the turnaround provision even further.
Sen. Richard Burr, North Carolina Republican, proposed axing all six turnaround models and giving all power over reform plans to the states. His amendment met stiff resistance from Democrats, some of whom say the federal government is already relinquishing a great deal of power under the Harkin plan and must at least retain some on the worst schools in the country.
Sen. Michael F. Bennet, Colorado Democrat, said the turnaround proposal outlined in the Harkin bill “is a federal intrusion, but it’s an important one.”
The bill “is the biggest retreat that we’ve had in domestic policy in this country that I can remember,” he said. “We have given up in this bill oversight over 95 percent of the schools. We’re down to the bottom 5 percent, the worst of the worst.”
Other approved changes to the bill include: a measure allowing schools to implement computer-adaptive testing; an amendment requiring schools to better track students who drop out after eighth grade; and a measure letting foster children be placed in a new family to continue attending their old school if it’s deemed to be “in the best interest of the child.”
Dozens of amendments were withdrawn, and senators from both parties promised to resurrect them during Senate floor debate, setting up a lengthy showdown that calls into question whether a reform bill can reach President Obama’s desk by Christmas, as leaders in both parties hope.
Teacher Evaluations Have a Place, But Not in a Washington Mandate
The Washington Post
By Dennis Van Roekel
October 20, 2011
When The Post’s editorial board compared educating students to remodeling a kitchen [“A provision left behind,” Oct. 19], it was clear that it doesn’t understand how learning occurs. Teachers don’t install knowledge like carpenters install cabinets, and every student learns in his or her own way. Good teachers try different methods to reach and inspire each student, realizing that no single approach will work for every child.
That’s why it takes more than a multiple-choice test to measure a student’s progress, and it’s also why we shouldn’t judge teachers on the basis of standardized tests alone.
Contrary to what the editorial stated, the National Education Association recognizes that student achievement is an important indicator of teacher effectiveness. A number of our state affiliates, including Massachusetts, Illinois and Wisconsin, have endorsed plans to use student assessments as one measure of effective teaching, and 37 affiliates endorsed their state’s efforts to win funding under the Race to the Top program that incorporated test scores. This past summer, delegates to our national convention endorsed the use of student learning in teacher evaluations. We have developed a framework for teacher evaluations that are meaningful and robust, and that include student learning as a component.
Nevertheless, we applaud Sens. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) for recognizing that the federal government should not dictate from Washington how teachers in local school systems are evaluated. We don’t have federally mandated evaluations of firefighters, police officers or other public-sector professionals, and we shouldn’t have them with teachers.
Dennis Van Roekel, Washington
The writer is president of the National Education Association.
Senate Panel Votes to Reduce Federal Role in Schools
The Washington Post
By Lyndsey Layton
October 21, 2011
A Senate panel voted 15 to 7 Thursday to reduce the role of the federal government in overseeing the nation’s 100,000 public schools as part of a revamping of No Child Left Behind, the key education law.
The government would stop supervising the performance of 95 percent of the nation’s schools under a bipartisan bill crafted by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and the ranking Republican, Sen. Mike Enzi of Wyoming.
Only 5 percent of a state’s worst-performing schools — often known as “dropout factories” — would be subject to federal oversight under the measure.
Another 5 percent of schools — those with the greatest achievement gap between students of different racial groups — would also be required to make improvements under the proposed legislation, but states would determine how to intervene in those schools.
The legislation would drop requirements that all public schools meet yearly achievement goals or face federal sanctions.
Republicans on the committee pushed to further shrink the federal role and return more authority to states and local districts. Democrats argued that the federal government must maintain oversight to ensure that struggling children get the attention and resources they need.
In an unusual political pairing, teachers unions and conservative Republicans pressured Harkin to scrap a provision that would have required schools to evaluate teachers using student test scores, classroom observations and other methods. Unions have been adamant that student test scores do not adequately reflect teacher performance.
“For 95 percent of schools, Washington is going to get out of the business of deciding who is succeeding and who is failing,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), a committee member and former education secretary. He was among three Republicans — including Enzi and Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) — who joined with Democrats to approve the bill.
It now heads to the full Senate for a vote.
Harkin said that he wanted to keep the teacher evaluation requirement and to require states to set annual goals for student achievement but that he made the concessions to win the backing of Republicans.
“I refuse to let the perfect to be the enemy of the good and for my own views to take precedent over the needs for bipartisan legislation,” Harkin said.
The bill would retain a key provision of No Child Left Behind, which requires schools to test students annually in reading and math in grades three through eight and once in high school. Schools would also be also required to break down those results by gender, racial group and English language ability.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), elected last year with support from the tea party movement, wanted to get rid of that, too. He unsuccessfully tried to persuade the panel to roll back national education policy to 1994, when the federal role was much more limited.
Some Democrats argued that the Harkin-Enzi bill is too soft on the states and would not do enough to compel failing schools to improve.
“This is the biggest federal retreat that I think we’ve had in domestic policy that I can remember,” said Sen. Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.), a former Denver school superintendent. “Children are being shackled to a place where they’re getting no education at all. . . . We’re holding onto one small sliver, children who are marooned, and were saying, ‘You need to do something about it if you take federal funds.’ To insist that the very bottom of the heap be dealt with is not excessive federal intervention.”
When No Child Left Behind was enacted in 2002, it marked an unprecedented reach into education by the federal government, propelled by a bipartisan alliance between President George W. Bush and the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who argued that states receiving federal money for education must be held accountable for results.
The law was embraced by civil rights groups that believed that struggling children were hidden from view, their test scores obscured by school averages, and that failing schools had no incentive to improve on their own.
But in the nine years since No Child Left Behind was enacted, schools, states and teachers unions have widely complained that its goals are unrealistic and the sanctions draconian.
The law was due for reauthorization four years ago.
Last month, President Obama said he was so frustrated by congressional inaction that he would direct Education Secretary Arne Duncan to waive the requirements of the law for states that embrace education policies favored by the White House. At least 39 states, in addition to the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, intend to apply for a waiver.
Harkin, Enzi, Alexander and others in the Senate want to pass a bill by the end of the year, before the waivers are issued.
Harkin agreed to hold a hearing on the legislation next month before the bill goes to the Senate floor.
Upcoming FOCUS Workshops
FOCUS Workshop: Avoiding the Landmines of Social Media in DC Public Charter Schools
October 26th, 8:45 - 11am
The use of social media in recruiting and the student experience has become widespread in schools throughout the country. This increased popularity of the use of social media creates challenges for public charter schools. Learn how to avoid the landmines of social media and minimize the risks of liability. Join Alison Davis and Kevin Kraham of Littler Mendelson in a discussion of the ethical and legal implications of social media for District of Columbia public charter schools.
Cost: $40 for VSP schools, $80 for non-VSP schools.
Click here to register or go to www.focusdc.org/workshops.
FOCUS Workshop: Parent Engagement Strategies
November 1st, 4-7pm
This session is designed for school leaders and parent coordinators or counselors. The focus will be on helping you to understand how to engage parents in a meaningful way in your school program.
Cost: $50 for VSP schools, $100 for non-VSP schools.
Click here to register or go to www.focusdc.org/workshops.
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