NEWS
- The decline of neighborhood schools causes discomfort. Should it?
- KIPP DC’s Jennifer Ramacciotti named Teacher of the Year [KIPP DC PCS mentioned]
- J.C. Hayward announces retirement from WUSA 9 after long hiatus [Options PCS mentioned]
- To expand opportunity, expand school choice
- What happens when the Common Core becomes less ... common?
The decline of neighborhood schools causes discomfort. Should it?
The Washington Post
By Jay Mathews
January 25, 2015
I try to impress my grandsons with tales of my difficult childhood. Unlike them, I say, I walked to school every day.
They find this amusing because they often stay at the little house in San Mateo, Calif., where I grew up. They know my walk to my elementary school was about 200 yards, the same as my walk to my middle school in the opposite direction. High school was a longer hike, but still just two blocks.
There was no reason for my parents to worry about my safety during these short strolls in a quiet suburb. It was very different from the situation of Danielle and Alexander Meitiv, the parents who have caused a furor by letting their children walk by themselves much longer distances in the more crowded and more heavily trafficked environment of Silver Spring, Md.
That controversy is about how safe children are these days. If I were in their shoes now, I would not let my children go so far without me. But my colleague Donna St. George’s great reporting on this raises another issue relevant to education policy: Many of us are uncomfortable with the decline of the neighborhood school.
The traditional system of assigning students to the nearest school is still the norm. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 73 percent of public school children attended a school assigned to them in 2007. That, however, was a drop from 80 percent in 1993. The portion of children attending a school their parents chose increased from 11 percent to 16 percent between 1993 and 2007. Twelve percent of all children in 2007 attended private schools, often some distance from their neighborhoods.
In cities like the District, the assigned neighborhood school is slipping. Among parents who had a choice of public schools in 2007, the center reported, 32 percent of those living in cities chose something other than their assigned school, compared with 20 percent in the suburbs. With the rise of charter and magnet high schools of every imaginable kind, many more teenagers are attending class outside their neighborhoods. The suburban district where I grew up now has open enrollment for its eight high schools. New York City high schoolers have hundreds of choices. Only a quarter of Chicago students attend high schools in their neighborhoods.
Probably because of my own cozy upbringing, I don’t like the fact that children have to go so much farther to get an education. But I prefer that to what was happening when I started covering education a generation ago and found many families, particularly in cities, stuck with very poor schools in their neighborhoods.
I reported on the beginning of charter schools in the District in the late 1990s. I had never encountered parents so excited about a new school policy. That widespread embrace of charters is still with us. Approximately 45 percent of D.C. public school students attend charters, many far from home. Tax-funded vouchers send some low-income students to private schools. Few D.C. parents I know bemoan the decline of the neighborhood school.
I understand why parents such as the Meitivs want to give their children chances to go places on their own. But on the other side of that argument is a carpooling parent’s thrill at eavesdropping on secrets being told in the back seat.
Abandoning the neighborhood school does hurt neighborhood cohesion, but modern transportation and the Internet allow distant schools to create their own sense of belonging. Even technophobes like me admit that electronic devices can enrich friendships.
The neighborhood school might still be the best choice if this were a perfect world with ways to teach well each child wherever she or he might be. We don’t have that. Instead we have parents with differing ideas about what works best for their children, and a willingness to spend more time and money getting them to whatever school is No. 1 on their list.
KIPP DC’s Jennifer Ramacciotti named Teacher of the Year [KIPP DC PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
January 23, 2015
D.C.’s Teacher of the Year for 2015 is Jennifer Ramacciotti, an eighth-grade math teacher at KIPP DC-Aim Academy.
The George Washington University graduate spent her first two years in the classroom as a Teach for America fellow in Philadelphia and then came back to the District to teach at the KIPP school in Ward 8.
Colleagues said that since she arrived seven years ago, she has been a leader in the school.
“She quickly changed the trajectory of achievement at the school,” said Lisa Ramish, a math coach at the school who wrote a letter in support of Ramacciotti’s nomination. “Every element in her setup, her routines and procedures, and her lesson delivery was planned with meticulous detail.”
After two years in the classroom, Ramacciotti was promoted to vice principal. Then last year she returned to the classroom to apply what she had learned while coaching other teachers.
“I missed the ‘aha!’ moment kids have when making connections and building those relationships with students,” she said in an interview.
By the end of the year, 64 percent of her students were rated advanced and 30 percent proficient on the DC CAS test last year, far above city averages.
The Office of the State Superintendent of Education announced the award earlier this month. The application and review included interviews, classroom observation and a series of essays.
The following is an excerpt from Ramacciotti’s application:
Philosophy of teaching
Teaching is an adventure. No matter how many routines you have, no two days are the same. No child is the same no matter how many siblings, cousins and relatives from the same family you have taught. You can plan the most perfect lesson and have every detail scripted and as you deliver it, you look out and Carlos is making silly faces. You just laugh! This adventure is full of joy and laughter and silliness and also struggle and tears and frustration. It is the hardest adventure that I have ever undertaken, but it is also the most rewarding.
Teaching is about modeling for others. You model for your kids and for your colleagues. You model character and learning. Modeling character is not always easy as this is a very emotional career, but in my classroom we are in this together. I have to model what hard work looks like. I have to make transparent that work ethic. I will work hard for you, if you work hard for you. We will joke and play, but we will also switch to serious work. I have to model what it means to problem solve, not just math problems but life problems. Just last week, a student broke down crying during my small group remediation block. She wrote to me that she’d lost two loved ones recently. I wrote back that I did not know what it felt like to lose two people you love, but I did know what it felt like to lose one. We wrote back and forth and eventually decided that crying for a bit was fine, but maybe earning a lot of energy points by practicing on Khan Academy would take our minds off of the loss. I have to model how to handle our emotions and how to address conflict maturely and professionally. After being at my school as long as I have and in leadership roles, this modeling is not just for my students but for my teammates.
Teaching is about being more than teacher. You are a doctor offering a bandage. You are a counselor consoling grief. You are mediator resolving an argument. You are an artist and designer decorating bulletin boards. Often these roles are not just necessary, but are a priority. You cannot teach how to solve linear equations if everyone is angry or grumpy. Your lesson falls on deaf ears. I took a lot from the book Schools of FISH! after my first year. We started each day with a red, yellow or green popsicle stick to let each other know how we were feeling to start. We ended each day by shouting out those who had done something kind for us that day. These strategies have carried over into my time with KIPP DC as well. Every Do Now ends with a getting to know you question, some serious and some silly, so that we can share not just the math but who we are. Addressing the social-emotional needs of my students clears the way for learning and builds deep trust amongst us.
Teaching is about growth. To become the best teacher you can be, you have to believe that growth is possible and necessary for ourselves and our kids. This profession is not about checking tasks or skills from a list and one day just being done. Every year there is a new curriculum or a new website. Every year that I have taught, a child has presented a challenge for which I had to find new strategies. I know that even with the honor of this nomination that I have so much more to learn and so many ways that I can improve my instruction, my approach and my relationships. This year I have faced new challenges in using a new curriculum, Eureka Math. With a history of strong results at our school, it was important that we did not settle but continued to grow as educators so our students could grow. The new curriculum has increased rigor for our students and requires that we anticipate challenges and plan more carefully to help reach our kids where they are while still pushing them to think more critically about mathematics. The growth-mindset must carry over into our perceptions and interactions with children. They must know that we believe that everyone can grow at everything. They must believe that about themselves. Celebrating growth and celebrating those who embrace the challenges makes classrooms joyful and safe.
Teaching is about being you. You must be a genuine teacher. If not, kids will see right through it. My happiest moments throughout the days are when you can share part of you with a child and they share in return. Our eighth grade team has split our students into small advisory groups for lunch. After we eat, my group sits in a circle on the carpet and we share one word that is on our mind or how we are feeling. After everyone has shared the one word, we can share more about that word. Our conversations have led to me being invited to a birthday party, questions about my upcoming wedding, serious concerns about neighborhood violence, students sharing advice on getting homework done and lists of what we want to do, where we dream to go and who we want to be when we grow up —myself included! My students know me and I work hard to know them individually. It doesn’t always mean that each day is a piece of cake, but it does mean that at the end of the day they know I have their best interests at heart.
Teaching is about the rewards. No other career seems like it would be nearly as rewarding, maybe not as challenging but also not as rewarding. Our school sits so close to the home of Frederick Douglass and on the wall of the second floor is a large mural of Douglass with his quote, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” Each lesson, class and day presents challenges, but each lesson, class and day offers great rewards. At the end of a lesson, students are helping one another with the work. By the end of the class a student is solving challenging equations on his own and looks at you with a huge grin. At the end of the day, a student brings you her sticker chart covered in praises for her hard work all day. At the end of the year, students achieve results beyond what you had hoped, planned or expected.
I find such great reward in the relationships I have with students that allow us to face the struggles together and celebrate the progress we all make.
J.C. Hayward announces retirement from WUSA 9 after long hiatus [Options PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler and Emma Brown
January 23, 2015
Longtime television news anchor J.C. Hayward is retiring from WUSA Channel 9 after four decades on the air, following a hiatus that began in late 2013, when she was linked to allegations of financial irregularities at a D.C. charter school whose board she chaired.
The first female news anchor in the Washington area 43 years ago, Hayward has been a prominent supporter of local charities and is a familiar face to many residents. She said Friday that she is grateful for the opportunities she had and the people she met at Channel 9.
“I’ve always wanted to leave a legacy,” she said by phone from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where she lives much of the year. “I was blessed. I had an incredible, fantastic career. I started when women weren’t in the business. It was a predominantly white, male profession, and I had the opportunity to enter and to make a mark.”
Hayward has not been on the air since October 2013, when she was placed on leave pending an investigation into the leadership of an alternative charter school in the District. The D.C. attorney general named her in a lawsuit involving an effort to divert millions of dollars from the charter school for at-risk teenagers.
Hayward was chairwoman of the Options Public Charter School board and allegedly signed off on contracts that steered tax dollars to two for-profit companies founded and run by school managers, according to the complaint. The lawsuit also alleges that she helped incorporate one of the companies and had an ownership interest in it.
The civil case has been on hold since July as the U.S. attorney’s office conducts a criminal investigation. The federal government filed a request Friday to extend the stay in the case until May.
Hayward declined to comment on the allegations but said the civil case and criminal investigation had no bearing on her decision to retire.
“I’ve moved on with my life,” she said. “Sometimes life hands you cards that you don’t exactly like, but you have to play them, and you can’t just sit around and be sad about the hand that was dealt you.”
She said she recently celebrated her 70th birthday and felt it was the right time to say goodbye: “The one thing that I always wanted to be able to do was to know when to exit gracefully.”
Hayward’s lawyer, Jeffrey S. Jacobovitz, has said that she is innocent and was unaware of the alleged scheme. He said Hayward’s work for Options was just one example of the volunteerism that has made Hayward a “stellar member of the D.C. community.”
Longtime Channel 9 anchor Andrea Roane announced Hayward’s retirement during the noontime news on Friday.
“It was tough just reading that because it is the end of the era,” Roane said afterward. “Even knowing it’s what she’s happy with now, it brought a tear to me knowing that another legend is not on the air.”
The station posted pictures of Hayward at different points in her career and a news segment about her breast cancer treatment, which she televised in 2012 to raise awareness.
Friend and supporter Rocky Twyman said he has mixed emotions about Hayward’s retirement and thinks she should have been allowed to stay on the air because she has not been convicted of a crime.
“I think it’s a great loss to the community. I must say that, because she was just like the queen of community service here,” Twyman said. “She impacted the lives of so many people.”
WUSA’s president and general manager, Mark Burdett, thanked Hayward in a statement Friday.
“J.C. has been an inspiration to all, as she devoted her passion and energy every day to WUSA 9,” he said. “For more than 40 years J.C. worked tirelessly to inform and serve the community in an effort to help make Washington, D.C., a better place to live and work.”
To expand opportunity, expand school choice
The Hill
By Jared Meyer
January 26, 2015
Americans are free to choose where to live and work, what products to buy, and which services to use. But there is one important sphere in which Americans do not have freedom of choice—education, both primary and secondary. State and local governments have the power to force students into one-size-fits-all public schools, regardless of parental choice and individual student differences.
This week, January 25 to 31, is National School Choice Week. The occasion is an opportunity to raise awareness that school choice works. Expanding school choice, primarily through educational vouchers and charter schools, consistently improves the quality of all schools, including public.
In the American public education system, children’s educational prospects are determined by their families’ zip codes. This system reinforces a cycle of poverty as parents living in poor districts are left with no choice besides local public schools. By giving low-income families the option to send children to higher-quality schools, school choice extends to low-income families a choice that is already available to wealthy families.
One way to provide parents choices about where to educate their children is by expanding educational vouchers.
The underlying concept of a voucher system is that per-pupil funding follows the student, not the school. Voucher systems give parents the freedom to send their children to any state-approved school, whether public, private, or charter. The better job schools do educating students, the more money they receive. If parents are unhappy with their child’s current school, they are free to move them to another—an option that is often not available in the current public school system.
Vouchers have been implemented in Louisiana, where children in failing schools receive tax dollars to attend a state-approved school of their choice. Positive results from increased school choice are especially impressive in New Orleans, where the high school graduation rate has increased to 78 percent, from 54 percent in 2004. Other voucher programs for students from low-income families or failing schools are seen in Arizona, Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, and Wisconsin.
Vouchers have positive effects on the education system as a whole. The key to success in any market is adaptation and competition, and vouchers infuse both into public schools. Under a voucher system, schools have to compete against each other for students’ dollars, thereby enhancing performance at public and private schools.
School choice programs and education vouchers are also sound fiscal policy. For example, by increasing graduation rates and educational achievement, the Washington, D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program was found to produce benefits of $2.62 for every dollar spent.
Critics of school choice programs often allege that many schools are failing because they are underfunded. But this argument is not supported by data. U.S. per-student spending on primary and secondary schools has risen by an inflation-adjusted 33 percent in the last two decades, and 239 percent over the last 50 years. Per-student spending now hovers around $13,000. Imagine the possible success if this money were provided directly to parents for education. Education vouchers would be at-worst budget neutral, and at-best a substantial money saver.
Another complaint about vouchers is that competition would lead to some schools closing and some teachers losing their jobs. This generates strong opposition from entrenched interests, including teachers unions. However, talented individuals with gifts for teaching would be in higher demand if schools began competing on value, which could attract more people to the occupation
Some critics of school choice argue that children who perform well under voucher or charter school programs do so mainly because their parents are motivated to care about their education. However, a study led by Harvard professor Caroline Hoxby shows this is not true. Hoxby looked at two groups of New York City students, those who won the lottery for charter schools and those who did not. Both groups of students had equally motivated parents, but those students who were selected by the lottery outperformed those who were not.
Concerns that many parents are not capable of choosing the best schools for their children are overstated. In 2014, 70,700 applications were submitted for New York City charter schools, even though only 21,000 seats were available. These parents, similar to most others, put in extra effort for the 30 percent chance that their children could receive a better opportunity for future success. More than anyone else, and certainly more than government bureaucrats, parents want their children to have the best education possible.
School choice programs, especially educational vouchers, are the best of both worlds. Market competition forces schools to constantly work to improve, and government funding ensures all students have access to primary education. National School Choice Week serves as a reminder of the successes of school choice initiatives, and as a call to action to continue expanding that which is essential to escape poverty—a quality education.
What happens when the Common Core becomes less ... common?
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
January 25, 2015
The Common Core State Standards were envisioned as a way to measure most of the nation’s students against a shared benchmark, but education experts say political upheaval and the messy reality of on-the-ground implementation is threatening that original goal.
“Part of the whole point was you were going to have commonality that would let you compare schools in Chicago to schools in Cleveland,” said Frederick M. Hess, director of education policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, who supports the concept of common standards but has been critical of efforts to implement the Core. “We may not see the benefits that folks were hoping to see. . . . The whole notion of commonality, which was so attractive, is more and more a phantasm.”
One of the bipartisan hopes for the Common Core, a set of guidelines for what the nation’s kindergarten-through-12th-grade students should learn and when, was that states would leave behind their patchwork of 50 different sets of standards measured by 50 different tests. It would, for the first time, be easy for parents and policymakers to directly compare student performance in one state to the rest of the nation, and it would be much more difficult for lagging states to game the system in an effort to hide weak performance.
That goal seemed easily within reach in 2011, as 45 states and the District of Columbia adopted the new standards. The Obama administration spent hundreds of millions of dollars to help states develop two new online tests, known as PARCC and Smarter Balanced, that would measure student progress on the Common Core, and most states signed on to administer those tests starting this spring.
But as some states head into their first round of testing, the picture has fragmented amid political blowback from parents and conservative lawmakers who criticize the Core as nationalized education and have found the new course material confounding.
Indiana and Oklahoma have dropped the Core, and four other states are moving to review and potentially replace the standards. Lawmakers in other statehouses are taking up anti-Common Core bills as the legislative season gets underway.
There has been even broader resistance to the common standardized tests. In 2010, for example, there were 26 states aligned with the testing consortium known as PARCC, but that has whittled down by more than half: Now only 12 states plus the District plan to give the PARCC exam to students, according to the Council of State School Officers, an organization of state education chiefs. Mississippi became the latest state to back out of the PARCC testing consortium this month amid calls from Gov. Phil Bryant (R) to drop the Common Core.
Smarter Balanced has seen less attrition, but just 18 states plan to give that test this spring. The states that are planning to administer one of the two tests account for about 40 percent of students nationwide, according to an analysis by the trade newspaper Education Week. The remaining 20 states have chosen their own tests, which could make meaningful comparisons difficult.
Common Core advocates say they never thought every state would sign on to the standards or that every state would agree to one of the two consortia tests. But they also acknowledge that the fragmentation is not ideal, and they hope more states will decide to return to the fold.
“The real issue is what some of these independent state assessments are going to look like, and I think the jury is still out,” said Gene Wilhoit, the former director of an organization of state schools chiefs who played a key role in promoting the Core.
Wilhoit said he had initially envisioned a much more limited number of tests that would allow for a broad comparison of student performance across many states, providing a national picture of achievement.
Although it’s not clear how testing will shake out, Wilhoit said he’s confident that the nation’s focus on Common Core will make it impossible for states to slide by with easy tests that make their students look more accomplished than they are. That has been an issue since 2002, when the federal No Child Left Behind law established sanctions against schools that failed to meet testing targets.
“I am convinced that whatever comes about will be scrutinized to a degree that no one has ever seen,” Wilhoit said. “I think it’s going to be difficult now for any state to hide.”
Some teachers say it’s important to be able to compare their students’ performance with students elsewhere.
Eu Hyun Choi, a seventh-grade math teacher in Chicago, said on a trip to New York for literacy training she realized that, because the two states gave different tests, it wasn’t possible to gauge how her students measured up against those in New York. She feared that her students were being held to a lower bar than their peers elsewhere.
“I just felt like Illinois students were getting cheated,” she said.
The Chicago school system announced this month that it would administer PARCC to 10 percent of its students because of concerns about limited technology access.
Choi said she hopes her students are among those who will take the PARCC exam this year, but she was dismayed to find out that she’ll only be able to compare her students’ performance with 11 other states.
“That’s pretty shocking,” she said.
Other teachers say they don’t care much about the ability to compare test scores across state lines. But they’re tired of the indecision that has come with the political tussles over the standards and their tests.
Natalie Shaw, a second-grade teacher in Indiana — which is choosing an exam — said the turmoil is frustrating. For much of the past year, she said, it has been unclear what Indiana teachers are supposed to teach and what students will be expected to know on spring tests.
“At the end of the day, people just want to know what do they want us to teach so we can make sure that kids are prepared for the types of assessments that are coming up,” Shaw said.
Opposition to the Common Core tests has come amid a broader national debate about standardized testing, which many parents and teachers argue has warped public education. Critics of the Common Core and testing have cheered the fracturing of the testing consortia, but many advocates play down the impact of states withdrawing from the common tests.
“I really don’t see it as a problem,” said Karen Nussle, executive director of the pro-Common Core Collaborative for Student Success. “I think the testing landscape is going to continue to evolve, and I’m really optimistic.”
Nussle and other Core advocates argue that the standards are more important than the tests because they aim to push teachers to better prepare students for life after high school. Most states have retained the standards, although some have backed away from the name “Common Core” because of its political volatility.
Although membership in the two testing consortia has shrunk, there are still large swaths of the country where, for the first time, students will take the same test.
“This is huge, considering the idea of common standards, let alone common assessments, was unfathomable less than a decade ago,” PARCC spokesman David Connerty-Marin said by e-mail. He added that PARCC hopes more states will join the consortia because “students and their families have a right to know if they are on track, and to know how they are performing compared to students in schools across their state and the country.”
Luci Willits, Smarter Balanced’s deputy executive director, said that while cross-state comparisons are ideal, “the real value of the assessment is the quality.” Both consortia say their tests are built to assess students’ critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, providing a more accurate picture of students’ preparedness for college and careers.
Advocates also say they think the number of states administering the consortia tests will grow if states see that the tests are cheaper, and of better quality, than tests that states develop independently.
“States are going to go at their own speed,” said Chad Colby, a spokesman for Achieve, a nonprofit organization that managed the development of the standards.
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