- D.C. Council schedules five hearings on education bills
- It's going to be a long hot public education summer
- Consequences for teachers from school testing can wait a year
- Educare Celebrates First Anniversary
- Report: Humanities, social science education needed for innovation along with STEM
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
June 18, 2013
Most D.C. schools will let out for summer break at the end of this week, but debate over the city’s education policies is just beginning. D.C. Council Member David Catania, who has proposed wide-ranging legislation to overhaul city schools, has scheduled five hearings during the first two weeks of July. Catania (I-At Large), chairman of the council’s education committee, has also scheduled eight summertime “community conversations” to give residents a more informal opportunity to air their concerns about and ideas for D.C. schools.
Meanwhile, Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D), who has not embraced Catania’s legislation, plans to give an address Thursday on his vision for the future of D.C. public education. Gray administration officials have argued that some of Catania’s proposals would replicate efforts already underway while others would not necessarily improve student achievementand may interfere with mayoral control of the schools.
Catania, a potential 2014 mayoral candidate who has been critical of Gray’s education record, said he is scheduled to meet with Gray on Thursday afternoon. It will be the pair’s first extended discussion about school issues since Catania took over the education committee chairmanship in January.
Here is the schedule for D.C. Council hearings on Catania’s legislation. All hearings begin at 9 a.m. Those wishing to testify can call Jamaal Jordan at202-724-8061 or e-mail him at JJordan@dccouncil.us.
●July 2: Government witnesses, including Chancellor Kaya Henderson, will testify on Catania’s legislation. They will also testify on Gray’s proposal to give Henderson authority to approve new charter schools and a proposal from Council Member Vincent Orange (D-At Large) to retain third-graders who can’t read proficiently.
The public will have a chance to testify at four other hearings, each focusing on different issues:
●July 3: The subject of this hearing will be two of Catania’s bills, one calling for a unified lottery for charter and traditional schools and the other laying out a system for transferringsurplus DCPS buildings to charter schools. Gray administration officials argue that these are two areas in which work is underway and don’t need to be legislated.
●July 8: Two more Catania bills are the focus of this hearing. One calls for establishing a new “student advocate” charged with running parent education centers that would offer help navigating traditional and charter schools. The other deals with governance, giving the state superintendent of education more independence by allowing her to be fired only for cause, and only with the vote of the State Board of Education.
●July 9: This hearing is likely to be long and heated. At issue are some of the most controversial proposals on the table:
Catania’s “school accountability” bill, under which DCPS schools would be closed or turned into charter-like “innovation schools” if they repeatedly fail to meet performance targets, and which gives principals the authority to decide who should be promoted to the next grade level and calls for students to be retained, in most cases, if they are not working on grade level; Gray’s bill to give the DCPS chancellor authority to charter new schools; and Orange’s bill calling for retention of students not reading proficiently at the end of third grade.
●July 11: This hearing will focus on Catania's funding bill, which would raise per-pupil funding for poor children, students enrolled in vocational programs and schools with low graduation rates. It would also send 80 percent of schools funding directly to principals to design their own budgets and programs.
The schedule for Catania’s community conversations is available on his Web site.
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
June 19, 2013
The Washington Post's Emma Brown reports that David Catania, Chairman of the D.C. Council's Education Committee, has scheduled five hearings during the first part of July to discuss the seven bills he has crafted to demonstrate his influence over traditional and charter schools. Ms. Brown also revealed that Mr. Catania has set up eight "community conversations" to hear the local citizens take on the schools.
Shouldn't the public's input have come before legislation was sent to the Council? Over at the executive branch Mayor Gray has another major announcement on public education coming Thursday afternoon. Then, once he has pontificated on the latest solution to what has ailed our schools for decades here in the nation's capital, he will finally sit down with Mr. Catania for their first discussion on, guess what, public education.
Shouldn't the conversation have happened before his new proposals are crafted?
It is all such a farce. What is clear is that micromanagement of classrooms by politicians has never improved academic student performance by one standardized test point. The last time our representative did anything to truly impact education in Washington, D.C. is when Congress allowed the creation of D.C. charter schools in 1996 and President Bush created the Opportunity Scholarship Program in 2004. Other than that our leaders have been wasting our collective time and energy.
If those in office really wanted to help kids they would increase the number of vouchers available to low income people and make it easier for charters to open and obtain facilities. If this is not the path they wish to take then they are free to take a few months off.
The Washington Post
By Lyndsey Layton
June 18, 2013
States that are implementing the Common Core academic standards and new standardized tests in public schools can have an additional year before they have to use those student test scores to decide pay and job security for teachers, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Tuesday. The U.S. Education Department will decide on a case-by-case basis whether to grant the extensions for using new tests as a factor in personnel decisions, Duncan said. Some states already link the tests to teacher evaluations, while others had committed to using test scores in personnel decisions during the next two years.
Duncan also said that states that “field test” new assessments based on the new standards next year won’t have to use those test scores to measure overall school performance to meet federal guidelines. Instead, states can choose to freeze the accountability status of its schools for a year — meaning that the scores will not adversely affect the school districts — but they would still be required to take corrective action in the weakest schools.
The move would allow schools to avoid “double-testing” or giving students both the old state tests and the new Common Core exams during the same academic year. Duncan is offering that leeway to 37 states and the District, which have received waivers from the Obama administration on most aspects of No Child Left Behind, the main federal education law. Teachers groups said the decision was prudent in the face of new national standards that have barely made their way into classrooms, while Republican legislators and reformers slammed it as a delay in accountability. In a call with reporters, Duncan said the additional time is not a delay.
“We’ve heard from some teachers, state chiefs and others about the need to give teachers more time to learn the standards and integrate them into their practice before they’re held accountable,” Duncan said. “We will not have a pause. Those time frames will absolutely remain the same. The need for change frankly is too urgent.” To get the waivers from No Child Left Behind, states had to agree to adopt new academic standards in K-12 reading and math that would ensure students graduate ready for college or careers. Most states chose to adopt the Common Core standards in reading and math, which are rolling out in 45 states and the District.
States are required to develop new standardized tests that relate to the new standards and administer them annually to students from third through eighth grades and once in high school. New York and Kentucky already have implemented the new tests, but many states were aiming to roll out the new standards in 2013-14 and launch the new tests in 2014-15. In recent months, teachers and state education officials have pressed the Obama administration for relief, saying that it was unfair for teachers to be judged by student scores on new tests based on new academic standards.
“If we say the Common Core is really important and it’s going to change the DNA of learning and it’s what kids need for the jobs of today and tomorrow, then we have to give teachers the time and the wherewithal to actually do it and get it right,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, who in April called for something similar to what Duncan announced Tuesday. Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, called it “a step in the right direction.”
But critics, including Republican leaders in Congress and a small group of education officials known as “Chiefs for Change,” slammed the plan as a step backward from accountability. “We will continue to strive for full implementation of all accountability measures that have proven successful in preparing our children for the future,” said Tony Bennett, Florida’s education commissioner and a leader of Chiefs for Change. Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, said the maneuver is another example of federal overreach. “If anyone is looking for further proof that our education system is congested with federal mandates, the education secretary is now granting waivers from waivers,” Alexander said. “The waivers were meant to give states relief from unworkable requirements, but the education secretary put so many conditions on states that now the waivers are unworkable.”
Maryland State Superintendent of Schools Lillian Lowery said she expects that the state will ask the federal government to allow it to wait until 2016 to tie test scores to personnel decisions and to freeze the accountability status of its schools next year. A spokeswoman for the District said it hadn’t decided whether to apply for flexibility. Virginia did not adopt Common Core standards.
The Washington Informer
By Dorothy Rowley
June 18, 2013
Educare, a state-of-the-art $16 million preschool initiative touted by the Obama administration as a catalyst for change, recently celebrated its first year in D.C. The local program, part of the nationwide initiative comprised of 18 schools in 11 states, has been described as a model for the country. During the groundbreaking ceremony last year, Mayor Vincent C. Gray, who along with Council members Marion Barry (Ward 8) and Yvette Alexander (Ward 7) has been a staunch supporter of teaching children to read as soon as possible, said that the time had come to stop the rhetoric and do something with the city's children.
“Let’s stop talking about what we can do with children and let’s start making a difference [with Educare],” Gray said, adding that teaching to children as young as a year old to read is one way parents can help them to build their vocabulary. “Quite frankly, if I were in the position to be able to have a fetus in the program, I would do that.” One of a dozen such efforts across the country, the District’s Educare – funded with both public and private dollars – is based in Ward 7’s Kenilworth-Parkside community.
The full-day program, which provides education and care for nearly 160 of the District’s most vulnerable children, is staffed by teachers who’ve earned at least a bachelor’s degree. Obama’s Educare plan, which extends over a 10-year period, calls for raising $75 billion in other programs and services that will help to double the number of 4-year-olds in preschool from 1.1 million to 2.2 million. The proposal also focuses on raising an additional $15 billion for the education of toddlers and babies as young as six weeks old.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius took part in the District’s June 12 anniversary celebration. During the Educare Learning Network's Investors Luncheon, both talked about the need to radically expand high-quality early learning and the significance of forging ahead with the president’s landmark “Birth to Five” plan. “If we want to be a competitive country, if we want to make sure that we can achieve prosperity for all of our people, we have to figure out a way to have productive citizens throughout our population,” Sebelius said.
Duncan agreed, stressing that “public-private partnerships like Educare are the only way we're going to get there ... Educare is a better way to do [early education], and [the D.C. program] is starting to become a real national model.”
The Washington Post
By Lynh Bui
June 19, 2013
A workforce lacking robust a humanities and social science education could be just as detrimental to the country’s future economic competitiveness as one deficient in science and technological expertise, according to an American Academy of Arts and Sciences report released Wednesday. “The Heart of the Matter” aims to highlight the importance of humanities and social sciences to the country’s economic future and urges Americans to value a well-rounded education. The findings are the social science community’s answer to a 2007 report that pushed the importance of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education into the national spotlight.
As China, Singapore and several European nations are boosting the humanities as “a stimulus to innovation and a source of social cohesion — we are instead narrowing our focus and abandoning our sense of what education has been and should continue to be — our sense of what makes America great,” the report says. The report outlines broad policy recommendations to improve humanities and social science education from kindergarten through college and beyond. Humanities and social sciences include a broad range of subjects: history, literature, language, civics and the arts.
Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), and Reps. Tom Petri (R-Wis.) and David E. Price (D-N.C.) requested the study in 2010. The legislators will discuss the findings and recommendations at a news conference scheduled for Wednesday morning. A companion film featuring Yo-Yo Ma, George Lucas and others is expected to debut at the event. “Having a strong knowledge of civics, comprehensive reading and writing skills, and an appreciation of history are important for a well-rounded member of the 21st century world,” Warner said. “We must use this report as a foundation to continue to engage with the public on how best to keep our humanities and social sciences robust.”
Alexander said the American character is defined “by a common set of ideals and principles that unite us as a country.” “Those ideals and principles have always been shared and learned through the study of history, philosophy and literature, but today their study is at risk,” Alexander said.
A liberal-arts education combined with STEM disciplines could improve innovation and inventiveness among the American workforce, according to the report, but there has been a diminished focus on, and funding for, humanities and social sciences. Parents are spending less time reading to children, history and humanities teachers aren’t as well trained as STEM teachers, and civic education has declined. In 2010, about 45 percent of high school students had a basic understanding of U.S. history, the report said.
Stephen Kidd, executive director of the National Humanities Alliance, said humanities and STEM education should not be mutually exclusive. For example, doctors are studying literature to help them better relate to patients and produce more coherent narratives for medical histories. And engineers are paying more attention to the humanities to better understand the social and cultural context of the communities for which they design products.
“It is really the combination of skills and habits you learn from studying social science with knowledge you learn from STEM that leads to innovation,” Kidd said. “This broad-based education creates people who are able to think creatively and analytically about problems more so than a very narrow specialized education.”
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