- Skip McKoy to replace Brian Jones as PCSB Chairman
- Gym Class Isn’t Just Fun and Games Anymore
- U.S. schools brace for federal funding cuts
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
February 22, 2013
Word comes from a reliable source at the D.C. Public Charter School Board that at Monday's monthly PCSB meeting current vice-chair John "Skip" McKoy will be elected chairman replacing Brian Jones whose term on this body will expire.
I have known Mr. McKoy for years. He is a man of high integrity who cares deeply about children living in the nation's capital. He is also an extremely kind individual.
Many thanks go to Mr. Jones who skillfully and successfully guided our local charter school movement through a transition from an emphasis on growth to one of quality. I thoroughly enjoyed my conversations with him and he taught me a great deal.
Mr. McKoy, of course, works at Fight for Children where he is the director, programmatic initiatives. It will be particularly interesting to see if the influence of his organization grows within the PCSB. This would not be a bad thing since Fight for Children was founded by Joe Robert.
Just this week Washington Post reporter Thomas Heath had a feature on Jenn Crovato, who served as Mr. Robert's personal chef for six years. The article included this revelation:
"When Crovato wanted a $150,000 salary, more than double what he was paying her, he compromised: $100,000, plus private school tuition for her two children."
Paying for private school for her children was just the type of thing Mr. Robert would do for people. This coming February 24th would have been his birthday. As we did last year, in honor of Joe Robert Day I ask you this Sunday to do something kind for someone else.
Congratulations to Mr. McKoy on his new role. Thank you Mr. Jones for your service.
The New York Times
By MOTOKO RICH
February 18, 2013
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — On a recent afternoon, the third graders in Sharon Patelsky’s class reviewed words like “acronym,” “clockwise” and “descending,” as well as math concepts like greater than, less than and place values.
During gym class.
Ms. Patelsky, the physical education teacher at Everglades Elementary School here, instructed the students to count by fours as they touched their elbows to their knees during a warm-up. They added up dots on pairs of dice before sprinting to round mats imprinted with mathematical symbols. And while in push-up position, they balanced on one arm and used the other (“Alternate!” Ms. Patelsky urged. “That’s one of your vocabulary words”) to stack oversize Lego blocks in columns labeled “ones,” “tens” and “hundreds.”
“I don’t work for Parks and Recreation,” said Ms. Patelsky, explaining the unorthodox approach to what has traditionally been one of the few breaks from the academic routine during the school day. “I am a teacher first.”
Spurred by an intensifying focus on student test scores in math and English as well as a desire to incorporate more health and fitness information, more school districts are pushing physical education teachers to move beyond soccer, kickball and tennis to include reading, writing and arithmetic as well. New standards for English and math that have been adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia recommend that teachers in a wide variety of subjects incorporate literacy instruction and bring more “informational text” into the curriculum. Many states have interpreted these standards to include physical education and have developed recommendations and curriculum for districts and teachers to incorporate literacy skills and informational text into gym classes.
But some parents say they object to the way testing is creeping into every corner of school life. And some educators worry that pushing academics into P.E. class could defeat its primary purpose.
While generations of bookish but clumsy children who feared being the last pick for the dodge ball team may welcome the injection of math and reading into gym class, the push is also motivated by a simple fight for survival by physical education departments.
As budget cuts force school officials to make choices between subjects, “it’s just a way to make P.E. teachers more of an asset to schools and seem as important” as teachers in core subjects like language arts, math and science, said Eric Stern, the administrator in charge of physical education for the Palm Beach County schools, the country’s 11th-largest school district. “We are taking away the typical stereotype of what P.E. used to be like.”
Across the country, P.E. teachers now post vocabulary lists on gym walls, ask students to test Newton’s Laws of Motion as they toss balls, and give quizzes on parts of the skeleton or food groups.
At Deep Creek Elementary School in Chesapeake, Va., children count in different languages during warm-up exercises and hop on letter mats to spell out words during gym class.
Chellie LaFayette, the physical education teacher at Roxhill Elementary in Seattle, used an iPad purchased with a federal grant to show her students pictures of the Iditarod sled dog race and maps of mountain ranges for which she had named routes on a climbing wall.
In some cases, homework and testing have accompanied the new gym content. Last year, the District of Columbia added 50 questions about health and physical education to its end-of-year standardized tests.
Not all parents are pleased with the changes. “I think there is such a thing as taking something too far,” said Kathleen Oropeza, co-founder of Fund Education Now, a nonprofit public education advocacy group in Florida. “If you’ve got children who are learning the joy of being a good goalie or learning that they want to participate as part of the team, why does that have to be overshadowed by the hard, high-stakes test environment?”
For the complete article, see link above.
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
February 22, 2013
Schools across the country are sending out pink slips as they brace for the possibility of deep federal budget cuts that could take effect next week, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Thursday.
Duncan criticized Congress for failing to reach a deal to stop the across-the-board cuts, known as sequestration, which could force thousands of teachers out of their jobs.
“There’s no one in their right mind who would say that this is good for kids or good for the country, yet somehow it becomes tenable in Washington,” Duncan said. He said that “there is no fix” to mitigate the impact of the cuts.
Federal officials estimate that they will be forced to trim more than $1.3 billion in education spending, most of which goes toward programs for poor children and students with disabilities.
Most schools would not face the full effect of those cuts until the fall. But schools that receive more federal aid — including Department of Defense-run schools and those on Indian reservations — are likely to feel the squeeze immediately, which could mean shorter school weeks in spring or a shorter school year.
“These are two populations that we owe more to, not less,” Duncan told a group of reporters in Washington, “and those cuts are going to kick in quicker.”
In addition to potential cuts, Duncan addressed a wide range of subjects related to the Obama administration’s second-term education goals.
Those goals include expanding access to public preschool, encouraging high schools to offer more career and technical education and — two months after a shooter gunned down 26 students and teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. — ensuring that schools are safe.
Security doesn’t mean asking teachers to carry weapons into classrooms, Duncan said, calling that idea — floated by the National Rifle Association after the Sandy Hook massacre — a “marketing opportunity.”
“The vast majority of teachers have spoken pretty loudly and said they’re not interested in being armed. That’s a red herring,” Duncan said. “It’s just an opportunity to sell more guns. That’s a marketing opportunity. That’s not serious.”
The Obama administration is pushing legislation that calls for universal background checks for gun sales and a renewed ban on assault weapons.
Duncan said stemming violence requires not just tighter gun controls but a broad effort to improve opportunities for young children.
One part of that effort will be to expand public preschool, he said. “If we can have a generation of children enter kindergarten ready to be successful and close that opportunity gap, that’s a life-transforming thing for those kids and their family.”
Duncan has exercised unusual influence over education policy during the past four years, using carrots — such as billions of dollars in stimulus funding — to encourage states and school districts to adopt reforms the Obama administration favors.
He also has offered nearly three dozen states relief from the most onerous provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act, the George W. Bush-era federal education law that was supposed to be rewritten six years ago but has stalled in Congress.
To get a waiver from No Child Left Behind, states had to outline alternative accountability plans that Duncan deemed acceptable. Republican critics say the waivers have given the federal government too much power over state policy, and they have hinted that rewriting the law would be an opportunity to rein in that role.
Duncan said he “desperately” wants to pass a new version of the law but refrained from offering a timeline. “We need to get that done at some point,” he said.
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