NEWS
- At-risk funds will follow students; chancellor will have say in spending
- Some D.C. families get extended deadline for school enrollment lottery
- International exams show persistent achievement gaps between boys and girls
- New ‘Consumer Reports’ for Common Core finds learning materials lacking
At-risk funds will follow students; chancellor will have say in spending
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
March 4, 2015
The D.C. Council on Tuesday reaffirmed the intent of legislation to provide more funding to schools based on the number of high-needs students they serve. It also amended the law to give D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson more discretion in how the funds will be spent.
The extra funding was approved in the spring, as part of a plan to provide extra support for students considered most at risk of academic failure, including those who are homeless or in foster care, who qualify for food stamps or welfare benefits, or who are performing at least a year behind in high school.
Because budget planning was already underway, the chancellor got approval to dedicate the extra funding — $44 million in fiscal 2015 — for other priorities, including improving middle schools, refining literacy instruction in low-performing schools and boosting student satisfaction.
The result was that some high-poverty schools got little extra funding while some low-poverty schools received a large infusion. Many school advocates have been concerned about that flexibility and have pushed for the funds to be strictly allocated next year according to the number of eligible students enrolled in each school.
In a letter to the D.C. Council, Henderson said, “I fully understand the intent of the law and will adhere to its requirements.” But she asked to have more say in how the money would be spent.
“We know what will help our neediest students — a longer school day, engaging content, parent engagement, social and emotional supports — and we want to ensure that our at-risk students receive these services,” Henderson wrote.
“Without clear guidelines, well-intentioned principals may be tempted to invest in test preparation or rote remediation, strategies that we know do not work.”
The original law gave principals wide discretion as to what they would do with the extra funds, in consultation with a local school advisory team. The chancellor retained veto power.
D.C. Council member David Grosso, chairman of the Education Committee, said that process set up a “pretty intense relationship between the principal and school community” and a potential for delays while she reviews plans for more than 100 schools.
Under changes approved by the council, the chancellor will instead offer schools a “menu” of pre-approved programs or interventions that are proven for helping at-risk students, such as extended school days, truancy reduction plans, literacy supports, and expanded course offerings, Grosso said. Principals can suggest additional investments, subject to approval.
Soumya Bhat, education finance and policy analyst for the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, called the plan “a good turn” that gave the chancellor discretion and also retained some flexibility for principals. “The main point is to make sure the funds are for at-risk students,” she said.
Some D.C. families get extended deadline for school enrollment lottery
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
March 4, 2015
Nearly 300 District families got extra time to finalize their online school lottery applications after technical glitches crashed the enrollment lottery’s Web site in the hours before the 11:59 p.m. Monday deadline.
It was a heart-stopping moment for last-minute applicants, capping months of school visits and scrutinizing of commute times, school performance reports and educational philosophies.
The city-wide school lottery determines where students will go to school if they choose not to attend their assigned neighborhood schools. This is the second year that parents could apply through a common application and enrollment lottery that includes all traditional public schools and nearly all public charter schools.
Kerry Reichs, a Mount Pleasant mother, went online Monday at 11 p.m. to make some last-minute changes to an application she had already submitted. But she encountered repeated error messages.
“I kept refreshing, refreshing, refreshing,” Reichs said. “I nearly had a stroke. I thought I was not going to have any choices.”
The glitch was the result of a District-wide Internet server outage, not a crush of parents submitting applications in the final hour, said Catherine Peretti, executive director at My School DC, which manages the school-wide lottery.
While about 1,600 families filed their applications on “Deadline Day,” there were 289 applicants logged on to the My School DC application site after about 10:15 p.m. and they could have been affected, Peretti said.
Most of those applicants received an e-mail Tuesday afternoon from My School DC that said: “We see that you accessed your account last night while we experienced a technical error with the application. We want to make sure that you have the opportunity to submit the application you want.”
Applicants were invited to review their choices and call or e-mail My School DC by Thursday at 5 p.m. if anything is incorrect.
My School DC also is reaching out by phone to 116 families who were online during that window but did not submit an application, who speak a language other than English or who do not have an e-mail address on record, to help them finalize their applications by phone.
Any changes have to be made by a My School DC official, otherwise the applications would be counted in Round 2 of the lottery, since the official deadline for Round 1 has passed.
Reichs said she is relieved to have the extra time to review her list of schools.
“I made my changes in haste,” she said. “I was so panicked about submitting my application.”
My School DC received more than 20,000 applications in the first round this year, Peretti said. Final numbers are still being finalized, but applications are up from 17,322 submitted in Round 1 last year.
The increase reflects an extensive grass-roots outreach campaign by My School DC, including door-to-door canvassing, phone banking, and community events to get more families to apply during the first round, when most seats are available.
International exams show persistent achievement gaps between boys and girls
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
March 5, 2015
International math, science and reading exams show that across dozens of countries, 15-year-old boys are more likely to be low achievers than 15-year-old girls, especially in reading. But among the highest-performing students, girls trail boys, and girls have far less confidence in their ability to solve math problems.
The findings were published Thursday by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in a report based on the Programme for International Student Assessment, an exam administered every three years to OECD members and other countries.
The analysis provides a trove of data on everything from the amount of time boys and girls in various countries spend playing video games and reading for pleasure to their views on school, their belief in themselves and their career expectations. It found that even though average performance varied widely across countries, gender gaps were remarkably consistent.
“Low-achieving boys appear to be trapped in a cycle of poor performance, low motivation, disengagement with school and lack of ambition, while high-achieving girls are somehow thwarted from using their mathematical skills in more specialised higher education and, ultimately, in their careers,” the report says.
The report points out that girls in the highest-performing countries, such as China and Singapore, out-perform all boys in other countries. And though boys score lower in reading than girls in all countries, boys in the strongest education systems outscore girls elsewhere. In other words, the report says, both boys and girls can and do perform at high levels.
“These results strongly suggest that gender gaps in school performance are not determined by innate differences in ability,” the report says, calling on parents, teachers and policy makers to help identify and change social factors that contribute to the gender gaps.
New ‘Consumer Reports’ for Common Core finds learning materials lacking
The Washington Post
By Lyndsey Layton
March 4, 2015
A new organization calling itself the “Consumer Reports” of K-12 textbooks has issued its first analysis of classroom materials in the age of the Common Core State Standards, and it found most of the materials lacking.
EdReports.org, a non-profit organization, looked at 20 sets of K-8 math materials in widespread use around the country and found just one series — Eureka Math for grades K-8 — met its criteria for being properly aligned with the Common Core for all grade levels. The organization first released its findings Wednesday morning.
The speedy adoption of the Common Core in 43 states and D.C. has created great demand for new curricular materials to help educators teach to the new standards. Several recent analyses have found that while many academic publishers slap a “Common Core aligned” label on their books and teaching materials, few actually follow the new standards.
“We created EdReports.org to provide educators a trusted resource for rigorous, independent and public reviews of the alignment and usability of classroom curricula, a sort of ‘Consumer Reports’ for school materials,” said Eric Hirsch, EdReports.org’s executive director.
Among some of the organization’s other findings:
● My Math, published by McGraw-Hill, met the alignment criteria in grades 4 and 5
●Four series had at least one grade that partially met the alignment criteria:
●Go Math (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt): Grades 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, and 8
●Expressions (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt): Grades K, 1, and 2
●Digits (Pearson): Grades 6 and 8
●Math in Focus (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt): Grade 8
The Common Core State Standards spell out the skills and knowledge that students should possess in reading and math at the end of each grade. They do not dictate how the standards should be taught or what materials should be used; those decisions are largely left to local school districts.
To analyze the K-8 math materials on the market, EdReports.org hired teachers with an average of 15 years of classroom experience to join math experts in examining the texts.
The initial report posted Wednesday examined materials that have at least a 10 percent market share and were endorsed by at least two states that said the materials were aligned with the Common Core. The free, online reviews are available at www.EdReports.org.
EdReports.org next plans to review high school math and K-12 English Language Arts materials.
Funding for EdReports.org comes from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which played a major role in the development and promotion of the Common Core, as well as several other philanthropic organizations, including the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust.
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