Education News Roundup: July 20

Today’s Top Picks:

You hear that? Crickets

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8E_zMLCRNg).

It’s as quiet as you might expect it to be at midsummer. (Although ENR spoke with three reporters this morning, so don’t expect it to stay quiet. Don’t worry. It’s good news.)

Lt. Gov. Greg Bell discusses education in light of July 4 and 24.
http://goo.gl/4nssW (UP)

Secretary Duncan says NCLB is broken.
http://goo.gl/hSCRQ (AP via WaPo)

For those of you who hang out at the intersection of journalism and education (and you should say ‘hi’ ’cause ENR hangs out there a lot): a former Times-Picayune reporter worries about what happens to such meat, potatoes, and vegetable coverage on topics like, say, education, when click rate determines coverage. And we all know what gets clicked on news websites: the sexy, the salacious, and the scandalous. Hey, ENR is doing what he can to increase click rates on ed stories.
http://goo.gl/ad1F2 (Columbia Journalism Review)

————————————————————
TODAY’S HEADLINES
————————————————————

UTAH

Woman dies day after trying to help injured scooter rider Accident » Ali Hostetter was a fun-loving, unorthodox teacher at North Star Academy, co-worker says.

Granite Park’s windmill a winner
Competition » Three-time state champs bring home silver, bronze medals.

‘Read Today’ program helps thousands of students

New American Fork school nears completion, unveils schedule

Orem student to represent Utah at WWII museum pavilion opening

Middle School Survival Guide – Challenge No. 1: Negotiating the new environment

OPINION & COMMENTARY

School studies and parents

America’s Next War

Senator Osmond shoots for equalization

The quiet overturn of No Child Left Behind

Summer learning loss: What’s true and false

Common-Core Writers Issue Math ‘Publishers’ Criteria’

Business leaders rally around Common Core

Schools Are Not Businesses

ED Urges States to Make Data Systems More Open

The case for public-school choice in the suburbs

An illuminating mistake by Tyler Cowen

How to worry about a clicks-driven Times-Picayune A departing reporter’s worst-case fears

NATION

Duncan: No Child Left Behind ‘Broken’

Districts Bring Tech. Programmers In-House New IT talent, trends add wrinkles to the digital dilemma

Student exchange sponsor suspended

Upcoming: U.S. Department of Education to Host Third Annual Bullying Prevention Summit

Canadian pension fund Teachers’ to buy UK’s Goals Soccer

————————————————————
UTAH NEWS
————————————————————

Woman dies day after trying to help injured scooter rider Accident » Ali Hostetter was a fun-loving, unorthodox teacher at North Star Academy, co-worker says.

A woman who died Thursday after trying to help an injured scooter rider the day before was a valued educator who tried to make learning fun for her students, said a co-worker.
Ali Hostetter, a history, government, humanities and law teacher at North Star Academy in Bluffdale, was remembered by fellow teacher Erin Hemingway as one who knew how to engage her students in unorthodox ways.
“She was just so amazing and touched so many people,” Hemingway said. “She did assignments teachers would never do. She would have them debate topics that were current. She was planning next year to do an inter-disciplinary study on the zombie apocalypse. She would think of ideas kids would be totally into.”
http://goo.gl/M36Pe (SLT)

http://goo.gl/8wH0J (DN)

http://goo.gl/hcUFx (OSE)

http://goo.gl/aYQHN (PDH)

http://goo.gl/Fyi19 (CVD)

http://goo.gl/6dzvp (KUTV)

http://goo.gl/cUIyf (KTVX)

http://goo.gl/oUFv7 (KSL)

http://goo.gl/0hSma (KSTU)

http://goo.gl/EeEdT (MUR)

Granite Park’s windmill a winner
Competition » Three-time state champs bring home silver, bronze medals.

The hard work and dedication of a group of students and their teacher paid off recently for Granite Park Junior High School.
Four ninth-graders and their teacher traveled to Seattle at the end of June to compete in the MESA USA National Engineering Design Competition.
The school has been named state champions three times, and this year returned from the national competition with a silver and a bronze medal.
http://goo.gl/TBKfC (SLT)

‘Read Today’ program helps thousands of students

SALT LAKE CITY — A year-long, grassroots effort has made an impressive difference in the lives of Utah children- more than 2-thousand of them. Last fall, our Read Today program paired struggling readers with volunteer tutors. Test results were nothing short of life changing.
St. George native, Anthony Frausto now tutors younger students in reading, which is remarkable considering at the start of the year, he was two grades behind, has a father in prison and could have easily slipped through the cracks.
After a year of one-on-one tutoring, Frausto’s Read Today report card showed he was caught up with his grade level. He’s one of many.
http://goo.gl/erYY2 (KSL)

New American Fork school nears completion, unveils schedule

If the name of a school featured at the Steel Days Parade Saturday doesn’t sound familiar, you are not losing your mind.
American Fork’s newest school, Aristotle Academy — which is set to parade Saturday morning — is a charter school that will open next month after years of preparation.
The school will be located at 680 S and 500 East and cater to children kindergarten through eighth grade. As of today, 407 students had signed up, according to Jeanne Whitmore, who heads the school and said she was “very excited” about the launch. Like all charter schools, which are public schools, there is no tuition.
http://goo.gl/bhvk9 (PDH)

Orem student to represent Utah at WWII museum pavilion opening

OREM — Olivia Baird, an eighth-grade student from Orem, has been named one of The National WWII Museum’s “Salute to Freedom” award winners and will be one of 51 students nationwide to travel to New Orleans to participate in the grand opening of the Museum’s new US Freedom Pavilion: The Boeing Center, in January 2013.
http://goo.gl/B3p30 (DN)

Middle School Survival Guide – Challenge No. 1: Negotiating the new environment

ST. GEORGE – While it may be summer now, school will begin soon enough. For St. George-area students who said goodbye to elementary school earlier this year, this fall represents the start of a critical transition to middle school.
Middle school means new beginnings, experiences and challenges. And while these changes — new friends, new teachers and new school environment — can be exciting, they also can be a bit unnerving for new middle-schoolers.
“These transition years can be exhilarating and full of promise, but they also can cause some measure of anxiety,” said Clark Hatfield of Sylvan Learning located in St. George.
http://goo.gl/7dNqn (SGN)

————————————————————
OPINION & COMMENTARY
————————————————————

School studies and parents
(Ogden) Standard-Examiner editorial

A Mountain Green mother was absolutely correct in calling out DaVinci Academy of Science and the Arts for allowing a research study to be conducted with its students without taking sufficient measures to make sure parents were informed and properly offered a chance to give consent.
However, school administrators have responded effectively to the complaint, even destroying the survey results. The task now is to take steps to make sure that parents have more information and say in the future when such studies are conducted.
A solution is to have schools require that parents actively consent to their child’s participation in a survey.
http://goo.gl/80VmZ

Cal Grondahl cartoon
http://goo.gl/hR2z9

America’s Next War
Utah Policy commentary by Utah Lt. Governor Greg Bell

July 4th and 24th renew our patriotism and reverence for the founders and pioneers. We honor the great men and women who fought to create and preserve America and establish Utah. However, this year I direct your attention to America’s next war: The War Against Dependence.
I recently heard a Native American leader say to some of his tribe, “We were once a proud and independent people. How is it we have become so dependent? We must restore our pride and self-reliance, our spirit of independence.” Federal anti-poverty programs have mired multiple generations of Native American and other families in dependency. We have taken away many of the incentives to work, to save, to get an education, to make one’s own way in the world.
Children from dependent homes are much more likely to drop out of high school or obtain no post-secondary education or training.
http://goo.gl/4nssW

Senator Osmond shoots for equalization
Commentary by Charter Solutions President Lincoln Fillmore

One of my principles of education reform is that the value of a child’s education doesn’t change by zip code. If a child’s education is worth something to taxpayers–to the tune of thousands of dollars per child per year, that value stays the same whether he child is in Riverton or Draper, Park City or Cedar City.
But the value of property does change by zip code, significantly. And not only does the value of the land change, but the makeup of how the land is used, and therefore the revenue it generates. One reason Canyons District has so much more in local funding than Jordan is because property values are higher. Another reason is that Canyons has four ski resorts. Salt Lake City raises more property tax because of their massive commercial tax base, and Park City because of that and a ton of second homes taxed at a higher rate, among other reasons.
And that creates a disconnect.
http://goo.gl/AV9Gz

The quiet overturn of No Child Left Behind Washington Post commentary by columnist Michael Gerson

The Obama administration is increasingly becoming known not for its legislative achievements but for its federal waivers to legislative achievements. It has exempted favored groups from immigration laws, welfare-reform work requirements, even provisions of the Affordable Care Act (more than 1,300 businesses and unions have been given a reprieve from health-care coverage rules).
The boldest use of the waiver power, however, has come on the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). More than half of the states have been granted exemptions from the law’s requirement that all students be proficient in reading and math by 2014. When a law’s provisions are ignored in a majority of cases, it can properly be considered overturned.
In this instance, the overturning has not provoked much controversy. The political constituency for NCLB was always limited. Many conservatives reject any federal role in education. The educational establishment has been in a decade-long revolt against NCLB’s onerous performance requirements and obsessive focus on test results. Right and left — Republican governors and teachers unions — have found rare ideological agreement on educational federalism.
The only problem: Education is a massive failure of federalism.
http://goo.gl/KUWn2

Summer learning loss: What’s true and false Washington Post commentary by Alfie Kohn, the author of 12 books about education and human behavior, including “The Schools Our Children Deserve,” “The Homework Myth,” and “Feel-Bad Education . . . And Other Contrarian Essays on Children & Schooling.”

The idea of summer learning loss — the implication being that it’s risky to give kids a three-month vacation from school because they’ll forget everything they were taught — has become the media’s favorite seasonally specific education topic. And that’s not just because they’re desperate for something to write about when school’s out. It’s a story we’re all predisposed to embrace because we’re already nervous about time off for children. It’s widely accepted, for example, that kids need to be doing some homework every night during the school year lest they find themselves gravitating to insufficiently constructive activities.
Experts who study creativity like to talk about doing and resting, painting and stepping back from the canvas, thinking about a problem and taking a break during which a new insight may sneak up when we’re not expecting it. (Recreation can mean re-creation.) If, on the other hand, we’re enamored of a factory model, then we’re going to be more concerned about productivity than imagination — and, theologically speaking, more worried about idle hands being the devil’s tools. Busyness becomes an end in its own right. We frown when our kids waste time and feel a little ashamed when we ourselves are guilty of it.
http://goo.gl/Ifj9O

Common-Core Writers Issue Math ‘Publishers’ Criteria’
Education Week commentary by columnist Erik Robelen

The lead writers of the Common Core State Standards in mathematics have finalized a set of guidelines for curricular materials that seek to promote “faithful” implementation of the new standards at grades K-8. The 24-page document, to be published online today, is intended to guide the work of educational publishers in developing textbooks and other instructional materials, as well as states and school districts as they evaluate and select materials or revise existing ones.
The so-called “publishers’ criteria” document homes in on the issues of focus, coherence, and rigor, and gets pretty specific at times. It suggests, for instance, that elementary math textbooks should be fewer than 200 pages in length, and that at any given grade level, approximately three-fourths of instructional time should be devoted to the “major work of each grade.” (To illustrate, in grades K-5 the “major work” generally consists of arithmetic and the aspects of measurement that support it, one of the authors explained.)
In addition, the criteria spell out when it is appropriate for certain topics to be assessed in curricular materials, such as through chapter tests or unit tests.
http://goo.gl/QKCxP

Business leaders rally around Common Core Thomas Fordham Institute commentary by Terry Ryan, Vice President for Ohio Programs & Policy

Earlier this week I attended the GE Foundation’s Summer Business and Education Summit in Orlando. Most of the two-day conversation among the 150 or so participants revolved around Common Core implementation. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush captured the scale of the challenge when he told the gathering on the first morning that states are heading for a “train wreck.” He noted that when the new standards and assessments come fully online in 2015 that many communities, schools, and families are in for a rude awakening.
Running away from the Common Core would be a huge mistake for the country, its children, and its future. Governor Bush said that the more rigorous Common Core standards, if backed by equally rigorous assessments, will show that only one in three children in America qualify as college or career ready. Bush warned that such bluntness about the poor health of American education and student achievement will trigger serious political backtracking. He said, “My guess is there’s going to be a lot of people running for cover and they’re going to be running fast.”
But, as Governor Bush and other speakers during the two-day conference argued, running away from the Common Core would be a huge mistake and a serious step back for the country, its children, and its future. This, in fact, was the overwhelming feeling of the group of business leaders gathered in Orlando. A recurring message throughout the event was that states must move forward with the Common Core, and that business must be a key champion for the effort, especially when the going gets tough.
http://goo.gl/bMkux

Schools Are Not Businesses
The Nation commentary by Dana Goldstein, Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation

There’s a reason why business-minded education reformers like New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Bill Gates have been attracted to testing, says The Nation’s Dana Goldstein. But education is a very different realm from the that of the boardroom, and, as she explains, “it can be really problematic to bring this more corporate way of thinking into schools.”
http://goo.gl/f5FUv

ED Urges States to Make Data Systems More Open Education Week commentary by columnist Sarah D. Sparks

Washington – Researchers must have access to the mountains of education data being produced by schools and districts in order to mine new instructional materials, federal officials told state and local administrators at an annual data conference here this month.
As part of the Obama Administration’s Education Data Initiative, Joanne Weiss, the U.S. Education Department’s chief of staff, said information from multiple federal data systems, including EDFacts, the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, the Civil Rights Data Collection and others would be “mashed together” in common platforms. Last week, the department held its first “data jam” for researchers and entrepreneurs interested in using the data to develop instructional tools; the participants are expected to return in October to present their ideas.
“Policy analysts and politicians often warn of the law of unintended consequences—as if all unintended consequences are negative ones—but in the world of data, we should also be aware of the law of welcome surprises,” Ms. Weiss said at the start of the National Center for Education Statistics’ annual conference, called STATS-D.C., also held last week. “We’ll see electronic ‘backpacks’ where students can carry their own transcripts and portfolios, personalized college-choice tools, financial aid shopping sheets, and yes, more school and college scorecards,” Ms. Weiss said.
Toward that end, the National Forum on Education Statistics, part of the U.S. Department of Education’s research agency, released a report to help states develop partnerships with researchers to use student, teacher, and administrative information in their longitudinal data systems.
http://goo.gl/rR3fl

A copy of the report
http://goo.gl/eBlme

The case for public-school choice in the suburbs Thomas Fordham Institute commentary by Michael J. Petrilli, executive vice president

For two decades now, school-choice supporters have advanced two main arguments. First, it’s unfair to trap poor kids in failing schools when better options are available. And second, giving these kids a choice will force the entire public-education system to improve.
Those assertions are still compelling, but they have their limitations. Namely: What about kids who aren’t poor; attend schools that aren’t failing; and live in school districts that, by some measures at least, aren’t in dire need of improvement? I’m talking, of course, about our affluent, leafy suburbs. Do their residents deserve school choice too?
Set aside, for a moment, the fact that many suburban communities are diversifying, with low-income and otherwise disadvantaged children moving into them in greater numbers than ever before. Forget, too, that even our best suburban districts are no great shakes when judged by international comparison. Focus just on the most affluent, high-achieving, homogeneous communities you can picture: Say, Scarsdale (New York) or Bethesda (Maryland) or McLean (Virginia) or most of Marin County (California). Does school choice also have a place in these “super zip codes”?
Many people believe it doesn’t—witness recent debates about suburban charter schools in New Jersey, Tennessee, and the Washington, D.C.-metro area. If people in those bedroom communities want choice, goes the argument, they can purchase it via the private-school market.
Perhaps.
http://goo.gl/6ixP9

An illuminating mistake by Tyler Cowen
Commentary by Sherman Dorn, University of South Florida

As the common quip goes, remember when teachers, police, and firefighters set up a system of fraudulent real-estate financing and ran our economy into the ground in 2007-08? Me, neither, but guess who’s paying now for it?
Back in mid-June, economist Tyler Cowen argued that the reason why teachers were being attacked politically and paying the price of the financial crisis of 2008 and the Lesser Depression was a consequence of lost trust in government: “voters have lost faith in the social returns of these jobs and our ability to afford them. The voters have responded by looking to cut expenses, and they’ve chosen state and local government employment as a target” (emphasis added). Cowen was projecting onto the general public his own skepticism of the effectiveness of government intervention, and Ezra Klein was quick to argue that “Cowen has the causality backwards: He says policy is following the declining trust Americans have in their political institutions. I’d say the trust Americans have in their political institutions is declining in part because policy is doing so little to follow their preferences.” Klein pointed out that the financial crunch in the vast majority of states in 2007-2010 was the result of inevitable connections between the economy, national policy, and state finances, not great evidence of conscious choices by voters at the state level (unlike the “they’ve chosen” language of Cowen). Cowen responded by referring to a recent paper on cyclical declines in public trust in major national institutions.
The problem with Cowen’s argument is the slop between public distrust of national institutions and views of schooling, which don’t have the same profile over the past 40 years as the institutions Cowen is thinking of (national government institutions and the media).
http://goo.gl/2ygu0

How to worry about a clicks-driven Times-Picayune A departing reporter’s worst-case fears Columbia Journalism Review commentary by Sarah Carr, author of Hope Against Hope

If clicks drove coverage at The Times-Picayune in New Orleans —a more realistic prospect than it’s ever been—what kind of publication would we get? We can look at past traffic and get a rough answer: In a doomsday scenario, we would read only about sex, sports, crime, and more crime. The most clicked on stories in the month of June, for instance, included the following headlines: Child among five shot (#1 most viewed); Gretna attorney accused of masturbating in law firm associate’s office (#4); Tattoos help Mississippi deputies identify dismembered remains of Jaren Lockhart (#7); and The deadline to sign Drew Brees to a long-term deal is looming (#13).
The 100 most popular stories that month included no coverage of education, health, immigration, or housing. Less than 10 percent of the stories were even tangentially related to social or public policy. Only two addressed a serious political debate (and one of the two probably made the list simply because Drew Brees was mentioned in the headline). But the stories documented murder, mayhem, and mischief in abundance. As a chronicle of human cruelty and misfortune, the list was nothing short of sublime.
http://goo.gl/ad1F2

————————————————————-
NATIONAL NEWS
————————————————————-

Duncan: No Child Left Behind ‘Broken’
Associated Press via Washington Post

Education Secretary Arne Duncan says No Child Left Behind forced many states to ‘dumb down’ educational standards. He also says many states are developing creative new approaches to education http://goo.gl/hSCRQ

Districts Bring Tech. Programmers In-House New IT talent, trends add wrinkles to the digital dilemma Education Week

About a year ago, the city of Boston was searching for a way to roll out a new school selection process. Traditionally, parents were sent a 28-page brochure outlining the criteria for choosing their children’s schools, or they could access a clunky website.
That same year, Boston had welcomed to its city offices a small group of fellows from Code for America, a new organization based in San Francisco that sends young computer programmers to work in government for a year, using their skills to help solve problems. Working with the fellows, Boston decided to build a Web application for school selection.
Hiring an outside contractor would have taken the 56,000-student Boston public schools at least a year and cost millions, Jennifer Pahlka, Code for America’s founder, recalled during a speech at a recent conference. The fellows built a Web application, called Discover BPS, to serve the entire district’s school-selection process. They did so in three months. Excluding the $150,000 fee Boston paid to host the fellows and pay for their stipends, it cost the city nothing.
http://goo.gl/FukFx

Student exchange sponsor suspended
Associated Press

JACKSON, Miss. — Hundreds of high school exchange students could be affected by a State Department decision to suspend the sponsor-company that was to bring them to the United States.
A department official told The Associated Press on Thursday that Pacific Intercultural Exchange, or PIE, of San Diego was suspended from the popular exchange program on Tuesday.
The official said the agency is working with at least four foreign students now in the U.S. Other sponsoring organizations are trying to find host families for 455 students from 18 countries who had been recruited by the company, but they may have to put off their exchanges until later.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the matter, said PIE was suspended for “violating exchange program regulations,” but wouldn’t elaborate.
http://goo.gl/CMTTW

Upcoming: U.S. Department of Education to Host Third Annual Bullying Prevention Summit U.S. Department of Education

The U.S. Department of Education will host the third annual Federal Partners in Bullying Prevention Summit Monday-Tuesday, Aug. 6-7, 2012, at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D.C. The summit will focus on ensuring that anti-bullying efforts are coordinated and based on the best available research. Panels will highlight the connection between bullying and suicide, and ways to help students who bully others. Keynote speakers will include U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and the First Lady of Maryland Katie O’Malley. In addition, there will be a special discussion between White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett and Cynthia Germanotta, mother of musician Lady Gaga. Additional details on the summit, along with the agenda, will be forthcoming.
http://goo.gl/dpXHw

Canadian pension fund Teachers’ to buy UK’s Goals Soccer Reuters

TORONTO – Goals Soccer Centres Plc accepted a 73.1 million pound ($115 million) buyout offer from one of Canada’s biggest pension funds on Friday, setting the stage for a possible bidding war over the British operator of recreational-football centers.
The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan — better known simply as Teachers’ — said Goals’ board is unanimously recommending its all-cash offer to shareholders.
The agreement with Teachers’ comes roughly three months after the pension fund put forward a preliminary bid for Goals, which runs five-a-side football centers in the United Kingdom.
http://goo.gl/2zPhW

————————————————————
CALENDAR
————————————————————

USOE Calendar
http://tinyurl.com/5x9oh9

UEN News
http://www.uen.org

August 3:
Utah State Board of Education meeting
250 E. 500 South, Salt Lake City
http://www.schools.utah.gov/board/Meetings/Agenda.aspx

August 9:
Utah State Charter School Board meeting
250 E. 500 South, Salt Lake City
http://1.usa.gov/Axtt5K

August 14:
Executive Appropriations Interim Committee meeting
1 p.m., 445 State Capitol
http://goo.gl/E0hoC

August 15:
Education Interim Committee meeting
2 p.m.
http://goo.gl/8WODJ

Related posts: