“jump rope” by theothegrey/CC/flickr
Today’s Top Picks:
Utah Policy’s Bob Bernick says it may be time for Utah to put Shirley and Lee (http://goo.gl/Lv1yZ) on phonograph and let the good times roll.
http://goo.gl/Lv1yZ (UP)
Rep. Hutchings wants to put a modern-day Robert Preston (http://goo.gl/ZjyFj) on the phonograph instead to get Utah’s school children exercising.
http://goo.gl/Jz405 (DN)
In Utah, you even get good value on assessments, new study finds. (Sorry, ENR couldn’t think of a song for this one.)
http://goo.gl/sANr4 (Ed Week)
or a copy of the report
http://goo.gl/Lge7R (Brookings)
National Association of Charter School Authorizers calls for tougher standards for charter schools.
http://goo.gl/euhXS (USAT)
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TODAY’S HEADLINES
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UTAH
Utah’s Budget Picture Getting Better and Better
More physical activity in schools could spark an educational revolution in Utah
Prep sports: High schools lobby on eve of UHSAA realignment
American Fork High student selected to Army All-American Band
S. Jordan P.E. teacher was a dedicated, popular educator Randy Treglown remembered by kids, educators as a hard-working, dedicated and popular teacher.
Reducing test anxiety for students and parents
Payson High students raise money with Christmas trees
Children to help decorate Utah governor’s mansion
Utah’s iSchool Campus gets $2 million in venture capital
iSchool Campus Wants To Bring The Next-Gen Wired Classroom To K12 Education
Vote to earn funds for Utah Catholic schools
OPINION & COMMENTARY
School turnaround tales
Louisiana Voucher Test
Meet 11-year-old Gabriel Evans, teachers union enemy No. 1.
Duncan Sharpens Second-Term Agenda, Stresses Teacher Quality
Indiana’s State Schools Chief Reflects on Election Defeat
How the nonfiction backlash could derail Common Core ELA implementation
Colleges that don’t require SAT or ACT: New survey
Rhee-visionist History
NATION
Standardized Testing Costs States $1.7 Billion a Year, Study Says
Charter school group calls for tougher laws
U.S Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights Releases Four-Year Report on Civil Rights Enforcement and Educational Equity
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UTAH NEWS
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Utah’s Budget Picture Getting Better and Better
Good times are here again for Utah State government.
An analysis of yearly tax revenue growth by UtahPolicy, based on figures of the General Fund and the Education Fund provided by legislative budgeters, shows that tax collections are well on the upswing following the Great Recession of 2008 through 2010.
As GOP and Democratic leaders were told recently, there are still many needs to be met, especially in public education.
Utah remains 51st in the nation in per-student funding, more than $900 per student below the next “poor” state, Mississippi.
And just this week GOP Gov. Gary Herbert heard that Utah ranks in the middle of the pack in high school graduation rates, a situation Herbert said was unacceptable.
Still, Utah tax revenues have rebounded, the analysis shows.
http://goo.gl/tI3x6 (UP)
More physical activity in schools could spark an educational revolution in Utah
SALT LAKE CITY — If one lawmaker gets his way, Utah students may be more active during the seven or so hours they spend at school five days a week.
But the move for more movement might help Utah students achieve better health and perform better academically, according to nationally recognized scientific research.
“We may be doing absolutely the wrong thing by putting kids in school all day, putting them in the same seat and leaving them there too long,” said Rep. Eric Hutchings, R-Kearns.
Hutchings hopes to change the way school officials, parents, teachers and students look at education.
http://goo.gl/Jz405 (DN)
Prep sports: High schools lobby on eve of UHSAA realignment
Midvale • High school administrators concerned about longer bus rides, lost rivalries and smaller gate margins lobbied Wednesday night, hoping to improve their lots on the eve of an athletics realignment decision and the state’s move to a six-classification system for football.
The Utah High School Activities Association’s 30-member board of trustees took public comment from dozens of school officials from around the state, and will make a final decision during a meeting Thursday morning.
“One thing that is clear is how much passion people have,” board chairman Bill Boyle said.
It might be the only thing that’s absolutely clear after the two-hour meeting.
http://goo.gl/ttRCw (SLT)
http://goo.gl/MNBrn (DN)
American Fork High student selected to Army All-American Band
AMERICAN FORK — American Fork High School student Joseph Baldwin has been accepted to the 2013 U.S. Army All-American Marching Band. He is one of 125 students selected.
Joseph will be a member of the mellophone section.
http://goo.gl/BVvEi (DN)
S. Jordan P.E. teacher was a dedicated, popular educator Randy Treglown remembered by kids, educators as a hard-working, dedicated and popular teacher.
South Jordan • The death of one of Elk Ridge Middle School’s most popular teachers began as a rumor in the hallways.
When it was announced that longtime physical education teacher Randy Treglown died after being hit by a pickup truck as he jogged to school Wednesday morning, the chatter went silent, one student said.
“It was really quiet in the halls,” said Elk Ridge ninth-grader Allison Vorwaller. “There was a lot of crying. It was just really, really hard.”
http://goo.gl/A3yoy (SLT)
http://goo.gl/bOk8A (DN)
http://goo.gl/Wk2Qw (OSE)
http://goo.gl/Ct9Nu (KTVX)
http://goo.gl/dQxKA (KSL)
http://goo.gl/o5txl (KNRS)
Reducing test anxiety for students and parents
…
If you are a high school student, or an adult who loves one, this time of year likely coincides with anxiety about assessments of all types, especially the SAT and ACT. America’s relationship with standardized testing is a strained one at best. For a nation obsessed with numbers and rankings, there is something about these assessments that make us uncomfortable. These concerns are typically expressed in three ways:
http://goo.gl/Q18Qj (DN)
Payson High students raise money with Christmas trees
PAYSON — Students at Payson High School are helping to make the holidays extra special for their fellow classmates. The Payson bagpipe band is one of those groups. Members of the bagpipe band and their instructor Diana Lees are working hard to get the finishing touches on the Christmas tree that they decorated to be auctioned off as a fundraiser for Payson High School families in need this holiday season.
This is the PTA’s second year for this school-wide fundraiser and the bagpipe band’s first year to participate.
http://goo.gl/eXabP (PDH)
Children to help decorate Utah governor’s mansion
SALT LAKE CITY — Elementary school students will be joining Utah’s Gov. Gary Herbert and first lady Jeanette Herbert in decorating their mansion for Christmas.
Third and fourth graders from Salt Lake City’s Woodrow Wilson Elementary School are set to help decorate a Christmas tree in the mansion library Thursday morning. They’ll also be performing a skit and singing Christmas carols.
http://goo.gl/28198 (OSE)
http://goo.gl/6nfng (PDH)
http://goo.gl/ICI2K (CVD)
Utah’s iSchool Campus gets $2 million in venture capital
Park City-based iSchool Campus said it has received $2 million in venture capital from Crocker Ventures, a privately held Utah-based investment firm that funds promising early stage companies in life sciences, information technology and education.
iSchool said the investment will help it bring its education technology platform to more schools across the county.
Currently being piloted in schools in Utah and seven other states, iSchool has created a learning platform that uses iPads and other technologies to deliver curriculum to students.
http://goo.gl/4OSse (SLT)
iSchool Campus Wants To Bring The Next-Gen Wired Classroom To K12 Education
Technology is increasingly becoming a part of the classroom experience, particularly thanks to smart devices. Tablets and iPads offer students a more portable, engaging and interactive experience than many of the tools of old, and schools are catching on. The San Diego School District’s recent purchase of 26,000 iPads is just one of many recent examples of districts and states pushing to deploy tablets in their schools.
The problem, however, is that, while the use of smart devices and learning-management systems is growing (and the quality, especially of the latter, is improving in turn), many schools still lack the infrastructure that would enable their various digital tools to work together. Not to mention, if schools don’t have a secure, working Wi-Fi network, there’s little point in buying 26,000 iPads.
This is where iSchool Campus thinks it can help. Launched in 2011, the Utah and Washington D.C.-based startup has developed a collaborative, “whole-school” learning environment that includes iPads (for each student), teaching and classroom-management tools and hardware all integrated into a secure Wi-Fi network. The startup is initially targeting K12 schools and districts, but with blended learning gaining in popularity, iSchool sees application for their infrastructure in both public and private sectors and is currently in discussions with government-training facilities.
http://goo.gl/KmKXA (TechCrunch)
Vote to earn funds for Utah Catholic schools
SALT LAKE CITY — Three Catholic schools in Utah have applied for a Clorox Power a Bright Future Grant, which gives schools nationwide a chance to win up to $50,000. Seven grants will be awarded among three categories – explore, play and create. The school with the most overall votes (via text and online) will win $50,000; the school in each category with the most votes will each win $25,000, and one in each category will be awarded solely on merit.
The three Utah Catholic schools are Saint Francis Xavier and Saint John the Baptist Elementary, both of which are seeking to improve its technology; and Our Lady of Lourdes, which wants the funds to create a new science lab.
http://goo.gl/sXn2r (IC)
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OPINION & COMMENTARY
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School turnaround tales
Deseret News commentary by columnist Mary McConnell
School turnarounds are tough. As the Department of Education reported last week, even “a big infusion of cash” from the School Improvement Grant program offers no guarantee of success. From Education Week:
http://goo.gl/oy1Wt
Louisiana Voucher Test
Meet 11-year-old Gabriel Evans, teachers union enemy No. 1.
Wall Street Journal editorial
Here’s the bizarre world in which we live: In 2007 Gabriel Evans attended a public school in New Orleans graded “F” by the Louisiana Department of Education. Thanks to a New Orleans voucher program, Gabriel moved in 2008 to a Catholic school. His mother, Valerie Evans, calls the voucher a “lifesaver,” allowing him to get “out of a public school system that is filled with fear, confusion and violence.”
So what is the response of the teachers union? Sue the state to force 11-year-old Gabriel back to the failing school.
This week a state court in Baton Rouge is hearing the union challenge to Louisiana’s Act 2, which expanded the New Orleans program statewide and allows families with a household income less than 250% of the federal poverty line to get a voucher to escape schools ranked C or worse by the state. Gabriel’s voucher covers $4,315 in annual tuition.
The tragedy is how many students qualify for the program.
http://goo.gl/lD3Tj
Duncan Sharpens Second-Term Agenda, Stresses Teacher Quality Education Week commentary by columnist Michele McNeil
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan continued to lay out his priorities for the next four years in a speech today, emphasizing that he thinks teacher preparation is broken and that the best educators need to be teaching the highest-need children.
In remarks at the two-day forum in Washington of the Foundation for Excellence in Education, run by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Duncan said he has an “ambitious” second-term agenda that includes holding the line on initiatives he started during his first four years. He cited specifically the tough road ahead for common standards, common tests, and teacher evaluations.
“Do we have the courage to stay the course there?” he asked during his 30 minutes of remarks, which included a question-and-answer session.
http://goo.gl/IG1yP
Indiana’s State Schools Chief Reflects on Election Defeat Education Week commentary by columnist Sean Cavanagh
Washington – Indiana state schools chief Tony Bennett’s rise within the education policy world was swift. On Nov. 6 came a sudden fall.
Bennett, a Republican who helped lead the successful push for his state’s adoption of a raft of far-reaching, mostly conservative-leaning laws affecting education—in support of vouchers, stricter forms of teacher evaluation, charter schools, among other issues—was defeated in his bid for re-election by Democratic challenger Glenda Ritz.
Bennett spoke Tuesday with Education Week at the Foundation for Excellence in Education’s annual conference, an event organized by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, and shared his thoughts on the loss at the polls, and what the future holds.
http://goo.gl/w9Whx
http://goo.gl/qS5qx (Washington Times)
How the nonfiction backlash could derail Common Core ELA implementation Fordham Institute commentary by Kathleen Porter-Magee, Senior Director of the High Quality Standards Program
Everywhere you look these days, someone is running down the Common Core. One of the most frequent critiques comes from those who argue that the CCSS “mandate” the percent of time that English teachers must spend on nonfiction and who worry that this requirement will force educators to replace Shakespeare and Twain with technical manuals and bus schedules. It’s one of those lines that’s apparently “too good to fact check” because the deeper you dig, the more it unravels. Here are the facts:
First, it’s literally wrong. Nowhere do the CCSS “mandate” the percent of time ELA teachers need to spend on nonfiction. In fact, the reference to the balance of fiction and nonfiction in the classroom specifically warns,
“The percentages on the table reflect the sum of student reading, not just reading in ELA settings. Teachers of senior English classes, for example, are not required to devote 70 percent of reading to informational texts. Rather, 70 percent of student reading across the grade should be informational.”
It’s hard to imagine the authors being clearer on this point. Yet commentators on all sides of the debate regularly—and mistakenly—claim that the CCSS wants to see literature in ELA classrooms go the way of the dinosaur.
http://goo.gl/cjZH2
Colleges that don’t require SAT or ACT: New survey Washington Post commentary by columnist Valerie Strauss
A new survey of accredited colleges and students shows that more than 800 admit all or many students without requiring SAT or ACT scores.
The survey was done by the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, known as FairTest, which has kept tabs on the number of test-optional schools for years. FairTest Public Education Director Bob Schaeffer said that in the past few years 80 schools have joined the list, which includes schools that rank high on the U.S. News & World Report rankings.
Schools that have dropped SAT/ACT requirements say they do it because they don’t think a high-stakes test score is very revealing about a student’s abilities and find that high school grades are a more accurate reflection.
http://goo.gl/zjrNT
A copy of the survey
http://www.fairtest.org/university/optional
Rhee-visionist History
Washington Post commentary by columnist Alan Suderman
Like most sequels, the current round of D.C. Public Schools closings is a lot less dramatic than the first wave presided over by former Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee four years ago.
That soap opera included a protest outside the Wilson Building set to Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power,” police removing a man who yelled expletives at Rhee during a D.C. Council hearing, and some very unhappy councilmembers who had been kept in the dark about Rhee’s plans. This time around, there are still councilmembers irked at some of the planned closures and plenty of parents upset that their kids will either have to change schools or welcome a large influx of students from other schools. But the rage the District saw under Rhee is absent.
Instead, several councilmembers have made it a point to note how much better Kaya Henderson, Rhee’s one-time deputy and successor, is handling the process.
“We didn’t have all this interaction and engagement before,” says Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander. “This seems more like it’s a collaborative effort, it really does.”
Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry, who was probably Rhee’s most vocal critic on the council, got in a not-very-veiled jab at his old nemesis at a hearing, calling Henderson a “breath of fresh air.”
So why the muted response compared to when Rhee shut roughly the same number of schools?
That question gets at the heart of what kind of legacy will be left in D.C. for Rhee, who resigned shortly after Mayor Vince Gray defeated Adrian Fenty in 2010 and went on to form a well-funded advocacy group called Students First.
http://goo.gl/TRjAt
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NATIONAL NEWS
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Standardized Testing Costs States $1.7 Billion a Year, Study Says Education Week
Standardized-testing regimens cost states some $1.7 billion a year overall, or a quarter of 1 percent of total K-12 spending in the United States, according to a new report on assessment finances.
The report released Nov. 29 by the Washington-based Brown Center on Education Policy, at the Brookings Institution, calculates that the test spending by 44 states and the District of Columbia amounted to $65 per student on average in grades 3-9 based on the most recent test-cost data the researchers could gather. (The Brown Center report was not able to gather that data from Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Wyoming.)
It also says that the District of Columbia spends the most on its assessments per student—$114—of the 45 jurisdictions Brookings measured, followed by Hawaii, Alaska, Delaware, North Dakota, and Massachusetts. New York, where test scoring is a local responsibility, spent the least—$7 per student—followed by Kansas, North Carolina, Oregon, and Utah.
Despite the relatively small amount states spend on tests overall, compared with total education spending nationally, the report, written by Brown Center fellow Matthew M. Chingos, warns that the testing costs take on growing importance during difficult budget periods for states.
http://goo.gl/sANr4
A copy of the report
http://goo.gl/Lge7R
Charter school group calls for tougher laws USA Today
In what may be a wake-up call to many of the USA’s 6,000 charter schools, an influential group called Wednesday for tougher standards for these independently run public schools, saying lawmakers should have more power to close down underperforming schools.
Since the first charter school opened in 1992, their rise has been meteoric – about 2 million students attend charter schools, and many top schools have helped to reinvigorate urban education. Others haven’t always outperformed traditional neighborhood schools.
The National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) — which represents the largest number of officials who authorize charter schools in the USA — estimates that as many as 1,300 charter schools are in the lowest 15% of schools statewide, but that fewer than one in seven schools seeking renewal of their charters, or operating agreements, failed to get it last year. That’s about double the previous year’s rate, but the group says it’s still too low, considering recent research showing that many charter schools underperform.
http://goo.gl/euhXS
U.S Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights Releases Four-Year Report on Civil Rights Enforcement and Educational Equity U.S. Department of Education
Today, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) released a report describing OCR’s progress and activity over the last four years on civil rights enforcement and educational equity.
The report, “Helping to Ensure Equal Access to Education,” describes how OCR has transformed its enforcement approach to better promote and advance educational equity for all students, while maximizing the office’s efficiency and impact, even as the number of complaints received by OCR has grown by almost a quarter over the last four years. OCR both received and resolved over 28,500 complaints during this time period, a record figure compared to past four-year periods.
http://goo.gl/LuK3d
A copy of the report
http://goo.gl/1qITM
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CALENDAR
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USOE Calendar
http://tinyurl.com/5x9oh9
UEN News
http://www.uen.org
December 3:
Executive Appropriations Interim Committee meeting
2 p.m., 445 State Capitol
http://le.utah.gov/asp/interim/Commit.asp?Year=2012&Com=APPEXE
December 7:
Utah State Board of Education meeting
250 E. 500 South, Salt Lake City
http://www.schools.utah.gov/board/Meetings/Agenda.aspx
December 11:
Public Education Appropriations Committee meeting
8:30 a.m., 445 State Capitol
http://le.utah.gov/asp/interim/Commit.asp?Year=2012&Com=APPPED
December 13:
Utah State Charter School Board meeting
250 E. 500 South, Salt Lake City
http://1.usa.gov/Axtt5K
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