NEWS
- Maryland tops U.S. News high schools list. Did your school medal? [Washington Latin PCS, KIPP DC College Prep PCS and Cesar Chavez Capitol Hill PCS mentioned]
- Is Public Boarding School the Way to Solve Educational Ills? [SEED PCS mentioned]
- Some Schools Embrace Demands for Education Data
Maryland tops U.S. News high schools list. Did your school medal? [Washington Latin PCS, KIPP DC College Prep PCS and Cesar Chavez Capitol Hill PCS mentioned]
Washington Business Journal
By Drew Hansen
May 12, 2015
Maryland is the leading performer in U.S. News and World Report’s state-by-state breakdown of the Best High Schools for 2015.
Sixty-seven high schools in Maryland earned gold or silver medals, given to reflect the schools that most successfully prepare students for college. That means 29 percent of the state's high schools eligible for the publication’s rankings earned a medal, putting Maryland atop all states and D.C. California was second, with 27.2 percent of its eligible schools earning gold or silver.
In Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, 16 schools earned either gold or silver medals, with Walt Whitman in Bethesda ranking as the best high school in the state.
School Without Walls High School, a small public magnet located in Foggy Bottom, was the lone school in the District to earn a gold medal. Across the District, seven schools (21.9 percent of the eligible schools) earned either a gold or silver medal.
In Virginia, 52 schools (16.1 percent) received either gold or silver. That included 21 schools in Loudoun, Fairfax, Prince William, Arlington counties. The Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a magnet school in Fairfax County, was named the third-best high school and the second-best STEM school in the entire country.
Here are the 44 schools in Greater Washington that earned gold or silver medals:
District of Columbia schools (Rank in state, name, medal)
1. School Without Walls High School — GOLD
2. Benjamin Banneker Academic High School — SILVER
3. Washington Latin Public Charter School High School — SILVER
4. Ellington School of the Arts — SILVER
5. McKinley Technology High School — SILVER
6. KIPP D.C. College Prep Public Charter School — SILVER
7. Cesar Chavez Capitol Hill Public Charter School — SILVER
Northern Virginia schools (Rank in state, name, medal)
1. Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology — GOLD
2. Langley High School — GOLD
3. W.T. Woodson High School — GOLD
4. McLean High School — GOLD
5. George Mason High School — GOLD
6. Oakton High School — GOLD
7. James Madison High School — GOLD
9. Briar Woods High — GOLD
10. Fairfax High School — GOLD
11. West Springfield High School — GOLD
12. Yorktown High School — GOLD
13. James W. Robinson Jr. Secondary School — GOLD
14. Lake Braddock Secondary School — GOLD
15. George C. Marshall High School — GOLD
19. Chantilly High School — SILVER
20. Washington-Lee High — SILVER
21. South County High — SILVER
22. Osbourn Park High — SILVER
23. Battlefield High — SILVER
27. Loudoun County High — SILVER
36. Wakefield High — SILVER
Suburban Maryland schools (Rank in state, name, medal)
1. Walt Whitman High School — GOLD
2. Winston Churchill High School — GOLD
3. Thomas S. Wootton High School — GOLD
4. Poolesville High School — GOLD
5. Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School — GOLD
6. Richard Montgomery High School — GOLD
8. Rockville High School — GOLD
11. Northwest High — GOLD
13. Damascus High — GOLD
19. Col. Zadok Magruder High – GOLD
20. Montgomery Blair High School — GOLD
26. Eleanor Roosevelt High School — SILVER
28. Gaithersburg High School — SILVER
29. Wheaton High School — SILVER
34. Albert Einstein High School — SILVER
54. Oxon Hill High School — SILVER
Is Public Boarding School the Way to Solve Educational Ills? [SEED PCS mentioned]
The Associated Press
By Carolyn Thompson
May 12, 2015
Buffalo, n.y. — Buffalo’s chronically struggling school system is considering an idea gaining momentum in other cities: public boarding schools that put round-the-clock attention on students and away from such daunting problems as poverty, troubled homes and truancy.
Supporters say such a dramatic step is necessary to get some students into an atmosphere that promotes learning, and worth the costs, estimated at $20,000 to $25,000 per student per year.
“We have teachers and union leaders telling us, ‘The problem is with the homes; these kids are in dysfunctional homes,’” said Buffalo school board member Carl Paladino.
He envisions a charter boarding school in Buffalo where students as young as first or second grade would be assured proper meals, uniforms, after-school tutoring and activities.
It’s one of a pair of boarding school proposals that have been floated in the city, where only 53 percent of students graduate in four years, English and math proficiency hover 20 points below the state average and a majority of public schools are considered by the state to be failing. Around 80 percent of students meet federal guidelines for free and reduced lunch.
“We are not hitting various measures set by the state or ourselves,” said Tanika Shedrick, a former charter school dean who is trying to open the state’s first public boarding high school in Buffalo. “Our students are leaving school not prepared for college.”
Her charter Buffalo Institute of Growth would supplement a college-style academic schedule with life skills and social activities that would keep students on campus seven days a week, with the goal of sending 100 percent of graduates to college or a vocational program.
“We want to make sure we’re there every step of the way,” said Shedrick, who plans to submit a charter school application to the state this year. She estimates the per-student cost at $20,000 to $25,000 per year, to be paid for with public funding and fundraising. New York’s traditional charter school allocation is about $12,000 per student. (The average private boarding school in New England costs $35,000 a year, according to the National Association of Independent Schools.)
Both proposals in Buffalo would be subject to state approval.
About 115,000 students board at private schools in the United States, federal statistics show, in a tradition that predates the Revolutionary War, but the idea of public boarding schools is relatively new.
The Washington, D.C.-based SEED Foundation opened its first public boarding school for poor and academically at-risk students in 1998 and followed up with a school in Baltimore in 2008 and Miami in 2014. A fourth school is in the works in Ohio at the request of the state’s Department of Education. The model, in which students in grades six through 12 return home for weekends, required changes in state laws.
The idea has been discussed in cities including Detroit and Niagara Falls, as well. Advocates say the high price is the biggest obstacle.
“Even I have to admit, in the short run it’s expensive,” SEED Foundation co-founder Eric Adler said. “That’s an argument for not doing it. I don’t think it’s a good argument, but it’s a valid argument.”
Adler continued: “Not every child needs this, but there are many who do, and without it, they wouldn’t have much of a shot.”
Tasha Poulson found SEED and its 90-plus percent graduation rate while researching schools after seeing her daughter, who had excelled in elementary school, begin to lose ground upon entering one of Washington’s public middle schools.
“It was horrible,” Poulson said. “I knew that I had to get her out of that school, and there wasn’t another school that I saw as a fit for my daughter.” But she hesitated at the thought of her sixth-grader living away from home.
In the end, Poulson decided it would give her daughter the independence and confidence she would need to go to college. She visits frequently and also attends events such as poetry nights that welcome parents. Her daughter is headed for North Carolina Central University next year, and a niece and son now attend the SEED school as well.
A Buffalo Board of Education committee is looking at Paladino’s proposal to explore a SEED school.
While SEED’s Adler acknowledged the annual per-pupil cost is high in the short term, he said it pays off with successful, taxpaying citizens down the line.
A study of SEED published in the Journal of Labor Economics last year found that changing both a student’s social and educational environment through boarding significantly raised student achievement in math and English.
Paladino has proposed asking the state to fund a Buffalo boarding school as a kind of pilot project.
“Next year, we’ll take in another 6,000 kids to our traditional public schools,” Paladino said. “Eighty percent of those kids are condemned to a school opportunity that will not teach them. It will just put them on the streets at some point.”
Some Schools Embrace Demands for Education Data
The New York Times
By Motoko Rich
May 11, 2015
MENOMONEE FALLS, Wis. — In this small suburb outside Milwaukee, no one in the Menomonee Falls School District escapes the rigorous demands of data.
Custodians monitor dirt under bathroom sinks, while the high school cafeteria supervisor tracks parent and student surveys of lunchroom food preferences. Administrators record monthly tallies of student disciplinary actions, and teachers post scatter plot diagrams of quiz scores on classroom walls. Even kindergartners use brightly colored dots on charts to show how many letters or short words they can recognize.
Data has become a dirty word in some education circles, seen as a proxy for an obsessive focus on tracking standardized test scores. But some school districts, taking a cue from the business world, are fully embracing metrics, recording and analyzing every scrap of information related to school operations. Their goal is to help improve everything from school bus routes and classroom cleanliness to reading comprehension and knowledge of algebraic equations.
On a recent morning at Riverside Elementary School, Alyssa Walter, 7, opened her first-grade “data binder,” in which she recorded progress on reading and math tasks throughout the year. On one page, she showed a visitor six colored circles pasted into a drawing of a gumball machine, each dot representing her successful completion of a three-minute addition quiz.
“I like that it makes school more fun, and I like that you get to keep track of goals,” Alyssa said. Even though the quizzes sometimes make her nervous, looking over the collected charts and graphs “makes me feel proud of myself,” she said.
Anything that can be counted or measured will be.
In Jenks, Okla., for example, the school district tracks how often teachers use photocopiers. With a bump in use, curriculum supervisors may offer teachers help finding supplemental class materials or with planning lessons further in advance. After documenting a drop in the size of marching and concert bands, the Arlington Independent School District, near Dallas, suspended instrument rental fees. Band participation at the middle and high schools jumped.
Those who advocate more use of data in the classroom say it can give teachers concrete evidence of what instructional strategies work.
“We’ve been making most decisions up until now by anecdote or by hunch or who had the greatest sales pitch or what worked when I was in school,” said Aimee Rogstad Guidera, the president of the Data Quality Campaign, a nonprofit advocacy group. For many teachers, using data, she said, is “a cultural shift.”
But critics worry that an increasing focus on metrics could lead schools to play down intangible factors that enhance learning and inspire students. With many measurements based on some kind of test, some critics say the drive to collect more data could exacerbate the testing culture in schools or simply create more busywork.
Just as doctors need to observe more than blood pressure or cholesterol readings when treating patients, “the same is true in education,” said Pedro Noguera, a professor of education at New York University. “If you only look at the numbers, and you don’t probe and look at the learning environment, the culture of the school or the relationships between teachers and students, you’re going to miss out on a lot.”
Others worry that the relentless collection of data, along with the technology to handle the information ocean, could lead to privacy violations of students.
Parents say their children may sometimes feel as if they are being reduced to widgets.
“From a learning perspective for kids, I think it’s too numbery,” said Kimberly Mackay, whose daughter Hope, 10, is in fourth grade at Shady Lane Elementary School here. “They don’t always see the big picture.”
Seeing scores posted in the classroom — albeit anonymously — sometimes frustrates her daughter, Ms. Mackay said. “She sees where her scores fall on all these charts compared to all these other kids, and then she feels like she is behind or ahead or right in the middle, so she feels like she’s just average rather than excellent at what she does,” she said.
Patricia Greco introduced the data-driven approach in the Menomonee Falls School District, with its 4,200 students, most from middle-income families, when she became superintendent in 2011.
For her doctoral dissertation, Dr. Greco read the theories of W.Edwards Deming, a statistician and engineer. Mr. Deming is credited with having helped Japanese manufacturers raise the quality of their products by using statistical analysis and soliciting regular feedback from workers and customers.
Under Dr. Greco’s leadership, departmental leaders attended classes at a local technical college, training alongside managers from manufacturing companies or hospitals. The business influence crops up in jargon, with teachers leading students in “plan-do-study-act” cycles, a popular problem-solving method, and in student binders full of charts and tables worthy of a boardroom presentation.
Every 45 days, teachers and administrators submit data-rich reports — filled with items like bar charts and quiz score records — to the school board. Once a week, teachers assemble after school to review data together.
Some parents like the approach because they feel it brings them more in tune with their children’s education. “I find it really helpful,” said Erica Schellhaas, whose daughter, Kylee, 5, is in preschool here at Ben Franklin Elementary School. “I know she’s learning and she’s on track.”
Dr. Greco has emphasized that teachers should not only look at numbers and scores, but also ask students for input into what kind of instruction works best for them. For some teachers, that has meant a change in thinking.
David Mahlum, who has taught chemistry at Menomonee Falls High School for two decades, said his initial thought was “I don’t think the students are going to tell me anything that I haven’t thought of or done before.”
Once he started looking at quiz and homework data to identify where students were struggling, he also asked them what kinds of lessons they preferred. He discovered that one group of students learned best with computer simulations while another liked word problems. When he tailored the class experiences, their performance improved.
With teachers posting charts of quiz scores on classroom walls, students can see how they compare with their peers. “Even though they don’t show our names, you get your test back and you can see how others did in your class,” said Amari Hackett, 16. “That kind of motivated me to do better.”
Amari said that after earning mostly C’s and D’s during the first semester in Mr. Mahlum’s classes, he was now earning solid C’s.
Beyond academics, school officials look at disciplinary data, zeroing in on problems before they get too big. This year, administrators at North Middle School noticed a striking uptick in the number of students being sent to the principal’s office for misbehavior.
“We said O.K., time out, we really need to put our finger on this because this should not be happening,” said Scott Marty, the associate principal at North Middle School.
After discussion, teachers and administrators realized that they had stopped offering incentives like movies or ice-skating or sledding trips for good behavior — a response, in part, to parent surveys that suggested such trips were taking away too much learning time.
The school decided to reinstate some trips. Students were also invited to suggest other rewards, like a costume day. Behavioral citations subsided.
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