The Huffington Post has provided readers with excellent reporting on potential Reforms in Education.  Check their website frequently at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

 

School Parent Groups Empower Push For Education Reform

CHRISTINA HOAG   10/ 9/11  Huffington Post

LOS ANGELES — Shoehorned into a small living room in a South Los Angeles apartment, a dozen parents discuss why their kids' school ranks as one of the worst in the nation's second-largest school district.

The answers come quickly: Teachers are jaded; gifted pupils aren't challenged; disabled students are isolated; the building is dirty and office staff treat parents disrespectfully.

"We know what the problem is – we're about fixing it," said Cassandra Perry, the Woodcrest Elementary School parent hosting the meeting. "We're not against the administrators or the teachers union. We're honestly about the kids."

School parent groups are no longer just about holding the next bake-sale fundraiser. They're about education reform.

The Woodcrest mothers and fathers, all wearing buttons saying "parent power," are one of the newly formed "parents unions" that are springing up from San Diego to Buffalo, N.Y., with the same goal – to push schools to improve academic achievement.

Behind the parent empowerment movement is a feisty Los Angeles-based nonprofit, Parent Revolution, which in 2010 pushed through a landmark law giving parents authority to force turnarounds at failing schools through a petition.

Known as the "parent trigger," the California law was the first of its kind in the nation. It inspired Texas and Mississippi to adopt similar laws and legislation is under consideration in 20 other states. Two states have voted down parent trigger bills.

"Parents have a different incentive structure than anyone else," said Ben Austin, Parent Revolution's executive director. "They're the only ones who really care about kids."

It's a compelling argument for many parents.

San Diego mother Teresa Drew founded United Parents for Education after her daughter's reading and math scores fell below grade level for two years. The district is not doing enough to ensure teachers are effective and weed out bad educators, she said.

"I talked to other parents and found they had the same experience," Drew said. "I have nothing against the PTA, but the problem for me is there's a T in PTA. This is parent-led."

Unions say it's oversimplistic to blame teachers. Parents should enlist educators in the solution, not dismiss them, they say.

"It's well meaning, but misguided," said Frank Wells, who heads the Southern California chapter of the California Teachers Association. "Parents shouldn't be acting with authority in a vacuum."

Parents already have a tool to leverage policy change – school board elections, Wells said.

Unions have mobilized against parent-trigger laws. In July, the American Federation of Teachers posted a slide presentation on its website detailing how it successfully won a dilution of the Connecticut parent-trigger proposal so parents can recommend change but have no authority to enact it.

After ensuing media coverage of "Plan A: Kill Mode," the union took down the document and disavowed it.

For Austin, union opposition to parent trigger underscores what's wrong – unions reject reform efforts such as charter schools, tenure changes and new performance evaluation measures in order to protect jobs, but at the same time many schools are failing, especially in the inner-cities.

"The system is calcified," he said. "`It's designed to go against change."

In somewhat of an ironic twist, Parent Revolution is organizing parents using old-school, labor organizing tactics, employing a former union organizer with United Farm Workers and Service Employees International Union to lead the effort. So far, more than 20 unions have been formed.

Organizing parents is a lot tougher than workers, said Pat DeTemple, the organizing director. "Simply finding parents is a ridiculous amount of work. Parents don't know each other," he said.

And, unlike with an employer, parents don't usually have common grievances with a school – they all have different experiences depending on their child. Still, parents' heartstrings are a powerful tug.

"Their kids are at stake, so at a deep level there's an incentive there to organize," DeTemple said.

Organizers show parents how to conduct effective house meetings, distribute flyers in front of schools, canvass door-to-door, write letters, and create surveys and petitions. They also inform parents about their rights and students' rights, and about how educational system works, how to judge a school's state test scores, for example.

Woodcrest's Perry said the training has opened parents' eyes. "We're not informed so we don't know what to ask for," Perry said. "We don't know where we fit in." The Parents Union is now surveying parents of Woodcrest students, in the Los Angeles Unified School District, and will present the results to the principal for action.

At a community center in a South Los Angeles park, Spanish-speaking parents from nearby Los Angeles Academy Middle School are starting to organize. They've gathered for a training session on a textbook union organizing strategy called "stories of self," learning how to succinctly tell why they became motivated to stand up for a better education for their kids.

"It brings people together," DeTemple explained. "It helps them connect by sharing their values through their stories."

One mother said she became disgusted after seeing kids smoking and bullying another child and reported it to a group of teachers, who were busy gossiping and did not take action, another said she was angry that poor parents and students are treated dismissively.

District officials welcome efforts to get parents more engaged in their kids' education, especially in low-income areas. Parental involvement is the key factor outside school in boosting student achievement, said Maria Casillas, chief of school, family & parent/community services for Los Angeles Unified.

Parents unions can be an effective tool. "They're loud, they're pushy, and they have every right to be," she said. "We want to promote parents as advocates for their children's learning. For our low-income kids, that's the part that's missing."

The idea of parent activists is spreading.

In New York, parents formed Buffalo ReformED and wrote a parent-trigger bill for their district after hearing about the California movement.

"There's systemic dysfunction here," said Hannya Boulos, ReformEd's director. "We have a 47 percent graduation rate, 25 percent for black and Latino males. The district has failed to turn the schools around."

Organizing the parent unions marks a shift in strategy for Parent Revolution, which went through a bruising court fight and divisive community battle with the Compton Unified School District earlier this year over the first use of the parent-trigger law at a low performing elementary school in Compton.

More than half the school's parents signed a petition to turn over the school to a charter operator, but at the district's request, a judge ruled the petition invalid – the signatures lacked dates.

Parent Revolution, which is funded by a handful of deep-pocketed foundations including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, still claimed victory – the county authorized two charter schools to open in Compton, the first independent, publicly funded schools in that district.

Austin, a 42-year-old father of two preschoolers, acknowledges his organization made mistakes in Compton by not allowing McKinley Elementary School parents to decide their own destiny. The parent-trigger law allows parents to choose charter conversion, replacing the staff or closing the school.

"We came in with a pre-packaged solution," Austin said. "I think it was the right solution, but we didn't have enough parent leadership. Signatures were gathered by Parent Revolution organizers, not school organizers."

Now, instead of organizing parent-trigger campaigns, the nonprofit is focusing on developing parent leaders to foment their own change. "This movement is way more than signing a petition," Austin said. "No one has ever done this before."

Contact reporter Christina Hoag at http://twitter.com/ChristinaHoag

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/09/unions-empower-parents-to_n_1002463.html?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl1%7Csec3_lnk3%7C102925

***************

No Child Left Behind Bills Proliferate After Obama Announces Waiver Plan

Huffington Post, October 4, 2011

In the two-and-a-half weeks since President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced ways in which states could overhaul No Child Left Behind without Congress's consent, lawmakers have introduced several bills that would alter the sweeping federal education law.

The latest bill, introduced Tuesday by Colorado's Democratic senators Mark Udall and Michael Bennet, would shift the measurement of student exam performance, moving from a model based on the raw number of students who pass math and reading tests to a "growth model" that would measure student growth over time.

One of NCLB's most maligned provisions requires states to report student test scores by the raw number of students who pass. The law requires that targets for percentages of students scoring above that mark, known as proficiency rates, rise annually until meeting about 100 percent proficiency in 2014. Schools and states that fail to make those targets are marked as failing under the law and face increasing sanctions.

Bennet said that a growth model that tracked student performance over an extended period would be more effective.

"The point is to create an accountability system which is actually of use to kids, parents and teachers," Bennet told The Huffington Post. "The one that's enshrined in No Child Left Behind that compares this year's fourth graders to last year's fourth graders isn’t of any use to anybody who's in the field."

As superintendent of Denver's schools, Bennet helped develop a growth model now used by the state. The bill introduced Tuesday does not specify which exams would be used to set the growth benchmark, only saying that students would have to be "college and career ready," echoing the administration's own language.

The bill also allows for different variations of growth formulae. "It's not an effort to implement one growth model across the country," Bennet said

Duncan lauded the bill after it was announced. "We need to be able to measure students based on their growth and progress, not one test taken on a single day," Duncan said. "I thank both Senator Udall for his thoughtful leadership on this issue and Senator Bennet, who has been a tireless advocate for education -- both as Denver Superintendent and in the US Senate."

The Udall-Bennet bill follows an announcement last week that Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) will convene the Senate's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on October 18 to mark up a comprehensive NCLB reauthorization bill based on Harkin's negotiations with Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.).

“This reauthorization is now more than four years overdue, and our students, schools, and communities cannot afford to wait any longer,” Harkin, who chairs the committee, said in a statement. “Our bill will take important steps to advance the state, local and federal partnership that is needed to improve educational equity and ensure all students graduate from high school prepared for success in college and careers."

A week prior to that, Republican senators, led by former U.S. Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), introduced a slew of bills that would amount to a rollback of the federal government's role in NCLB.

Some believe that Duncan and Obama's Sept. 23 announcement of their waiver plan, during which they condemned Congress for failing to overhaul NCLB and offered a method to skirt Congressional approval, has prompted lawmakers to move to revamp the law. "Congress is now upset that the law is being changed by the administration and not by them," said Jack Jennings, a former education Hill staffer who now heads the Center on Education Policy. "They're hearing complaints back home that the Congress isn't doing its duty."

The Republican senate bills resemble ones that the House Education committee, chaired by Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.), has advanced. The day before Alexander announced his bills, a Kline-sponsored bill that would alter the federal government's role in creating charter schools passed the House. Other Kline bills would remove some federal controls from education spending and slash federal education programs.

Despite movement in both chambers of Congress, it remains unclear what the end game will be, given that Harkin's bill is comprehensive and Kline's measures are piecemeal.

"It's just like falling dominoes," Jennings said. "Duncan announced that he's going to give waivers, which meant bypassing Congress. That had the effect of Harkin and Enzi, the chief senators, deciding that they would make an effort to reach agreement in order to take legislative action. If they do get a bill through the Senate, that's going to have an effect on the House. People back home will say to congressmen, 'Why aren't you taking action?'"

Once the House and Senate advance their respective NCLB overhauls, a conference committee will be tasked with tying them together. "I think Kline is going to surprise everybody in the end," said Bruce Hunter of the American Association of School Adminstrators. "I see a glimmer of hope."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/04/no-child-left-behind-bill_n_995101.html

************************

 

Michigan Public Schools Privatizing Teachers 'Very Real' Possibility, State Lawmaker Says

October 4, 2011 Huffington Post

The privatization of public education in Michigan is a "very real" possibility, a state lawmaker said Monday, the Kalamazoo Gazette reports.

At a town hall forum in Kalamazoo, Democratic state Sen. Bert Johnson said the movement is being driven "by money" at a time when the state's districts face a $300-per-student budget cut -- a total of almost $500 million across the state.

In another attempt to account for the funding shortfall, Michigan's Republican lawmakers proposed last month legislation that would expand charter schools and privatize teacher hirings by employing from for-profit companies. Contracting with private teachers could encourage competitive compensation packages among teachers unions and private companies.

The legislation was introduced by Republican state Sen. Phil Pavlov, who chairs the state Senate's education committee.

The state already outsources much of its public schools' noneducational operations. Nearly half of Michigan's school districts already contract out for one of three noninstructional services of custodial, dining and transportation, according to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy's 2010 School Privatization Survey. And schools are expecting major savings for doing so. A 6,000-student district is expecting to save over $3.5 million over 30 months by contracting out custodial services, according to the Mackinac Center.

There is also a likelihood that the Republican push for privatization could pass through the state legislature, as there is a two-thirds GOP majority in the state Senate and a 63-47 majority in the state House of Representatives.

A poll of 800 voters commissioned by the Michigan Education Association, the state's largest teachers' union, revealed that over 68 percent are against privatizing teaching services, according to the Livingston Daily.

"What's especially troubling is the proposal to outsource teaching to private, for-profit corporations. This will undermine local control, mean less accountability in the classroom, and gut public education at a time when we should be focused on investing in our kids' future and creating good jobs that pay a fair wage," We Are the People Michigan spokesman Zack Pohl told the Livingston Daily. We Are the People Michigan is a pro-education and pro-union organization.

But Kalamazoo Public Schools Superintendent Michael Rice said at the town hall forum Monday that statewide surveys indicate residents still support "appropriate funding of pre-K-12 education" and not the the recent slashes to public schools' budgets, according to the Kalamazoo Gazette.

He also noted that districts should be permitted to solicit voters for an increase in local taxes to cover educational expenses if the state won't provide "adequate and stable" school funding.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/04/michigan-public-schools-p_n_994285.html?ref=mostpopular

**********************

Detroit Announces New Authority For Failing Schools

August 20, 2011  Huffington Post

A plan revealed Monday to overhaul Detroit's public schools left stakeholders with more questions than answers about the future of education in the Motor City.

The lowest performing schools in Detroit will be taken over by a new authority created in partnership with the state, Detroit Public Schools and Eastern Michigan University, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder (R) and DPS Emergency Manager Roy Roberts announced at a news conference to much fanfare and some protests.

The new "Education Achievement System" (EAS) has the support of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, signaling its resonance beyond the borders of Detroit. Duncan has called the district "ground zero" for education reform and spoke via satellite at the Monday news conference.

Snyder and Roberts also announced a second initiative Monday: a scholarship program that would finance two years of college or vocational school for all Detroit high school graduates. The fund would be sponsored by "businesses and philanthropic organizations," Roberts said.

Though no official has said which groups will contribute the money, a representative in Snyder's office confirmed the program will receive donations from the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation. Billionaire Eli Broad is a Detroit native, and his foundation has been influential in recent reforms to Detroit's schools.

The idea of targeting failing schools with specific reforms has been promoted by the Obama administration. If done right, Duncan said, the EAS has the "potential to be a model not just for the city, not just for the state, but for the entire country."

HOW IT WORKS

The plan mirrors similar efforts in New Orleans and Tennessee that target the lowest-performing schools. But how Michigan's EAS will live up to its promise to improve Detroit's schools -- and address the district's crippling debt -- has yet to be revealed.

What Roberts did say is that the state will run the EAS in partnership with EMU beginning in the 2012-2013 school year. The coming 2011-2012 school year will be an "incubation" period for the development of the system. In addition enveloping schools from DPS, the system is slated to expand to include low-performing schools throughout Michigan.

Schools deemed low-performing based on standardized test scores and student grade point averages will enter the EAS. After five years in the system, an evaluation will determine whether the school can choose to go back to local control.

A parent advisory council will be created at each school, and each parent will be required to sign a contract certifying involvement in his or her child's education.

The new authority will function with an 11-member board. Two members will be appointed by DPS, two appointed by the university and seven by the governor. Five of those board members will make up the system's executive committee, chaired by Roberts.

The goal, Snyder said, is streamlined authority, and the plan includes a restructuring of the DPS central office.

"Only 55 percent of the dollars show up in the classroom," he said. "We need to strive for a system where we get 95 percent of the dollars in the classroom."

Roberts said EAS would help eliminate Detroit Public Schools' $327 million debt in five years, but he did not specify how it would do so.

Detroit's education unions are skeptical.

"More questions than answers remain at this point, not the least of which include who will be part of the planning team, how the new system will be designed, and what will happen to the collective bargaining rights of employees of the Detroit Public Schools and the Education Achievement System," DPS union leaders wrote in a joint statement.

According to a FAQ on the new plan released by DPS, teachers whose schools are moved into the new system would be required to reapply for their jobs.

HOW IT CAME TO BE

The state planted the seeds for implementing this type of reform in 2009 by passing legislation to pad its application for federal Race to the Top grant dollars, said Michael Addonizio, Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in the College of Education at Wayne State University, in Detroit.

"This idea of the 'lowest five percent' [of schools] has been around for awhile," Addonizio told HuffPost.

Despite passing the required reforms, Michigan lost the Race to the Top competition. But officials say EAS, with all its bells and whistles, comes under the auspices of those laws.

"When we did Race to the Top, the failing schools had to be addressed," said state Sen. Phil Pavlov, a Republican involved in crafting the EAS plan. "This partnership is another tool to help implement that."

Snyder first approached EMU several months ago, according to Roy Wilbanks, chair of the Board of Regents at the university.

"If we can be of service to any of the k-12 districts out there, I think it's incumbent upon us to provide any service and expertise we can," he said. But when pressed for specifics on the day-to-day management of the schools, he told HuffPost, "You probably know more about this than I do."

The plan was developed to mirror earlier efforts by former DPS emergency manager Robert Bobb, as revealed in documents subpoenaed by a lawsuit, said Donna Stern, national representative of BAMN, an activist coalition in Detroit. Bobb's plan called for an aggressive conversion of failing DPS schools into charter schools, but had been since tempered by Roberts.

When asked whether EAS would focus on creating charter schools, Wilbanks pointed to the eight charter schools EMU runs across Michigan. "That's one mechanism we might use to improve performance," he said.

The FAQ on EAS says the system will include input from "top quality charter authorizers" in developing its "objective criteria for identifying high quality schools."

"Performance against these criteria will be the basis for all decisions made within the EAS," the fact sheet reads.

Anthony Adams, president of Detroit's school board, said he had heard bits and pieces of the plan over the last week.

Before Monday's announcement, the school board -- which has been stripped by the emergency manager of its powers -- met with Roberts to learn about the plan's details. That meeting resulted in a heated exchange, Adams said, when one member asked for details on eliminating the district's debt.

"One of our board members wanted more detail regarding the deficit elimination portion of the plan," Adams told The Huffington Post. "The emergency manager didn’t necessarily like the questions. People here are very aggressive."

Requests for comment from Roberts following the news conference were not returned.

IMMEDIATE OPPOSITION

The official announcement took place at Renaissance Academy, a high-performing magnet school.

Some teachers were curious to hear about the changes to their schools, but they were turned away at the door, so they started picketing, forming a crowd of about 20.

Joined by several students, they chanted: "No layoffs, no cuts, Detroit won't get to the back of the bus."

Among the student protesters was Leroy Lewis, a 16-year-old rising senior at Southeastern High School.

"They were holding a press conference to destroy public education, so I wanted to see it," he told HuffPost. "My school is on the list of failing schools. I'm prepared to fight around it and gather up support."

"They took our teachers away, cut our fine arts program. It's very difficult to learn here," he added.

Some critics said the move to create a separate district run by an appointed board invites further privatization of Detroit's schools.

"This is the next level in the attack on public education," said Nicole Conaway, a science teacher at Catherine Ferguson Academy. "They're trying to implement a New Orleans plant model that will have severe brutality and be segregated."

"Classrooms will be overcrowded. Supplies will be shorter. It is like the new Jim Crow in creating a second-class tier of schools," she added.

LOCAL REPRESENTATION

Some Detroiters said they were upset to learn about EAS, because it places decision-making power in the hands of an appointed, rather than elected, board.

"There's a notion that the people who live here don’t know what's best for them," Adams said.

Michigan's recent Public Act 4 grants an emergency manager almost unlimited power to manage Detroit's schools. That law passed the state legislature in March along party lines, with no support from Detroit's representatives.

"I believe it is a loss of democracy," said state Rep. Harvey Santana (D-Detroit). "It's insulting. What the state has done is effectively saying, 'You don’t know how to make decisions on your own behalf.' That flies in the face of democracy."

Roberts took over Detroit's indebted schools with increased powers as his predecessor, Robert Bobb, stepped down as emergency financial manager. Roberts was formerly an executive at General Motors.

Addonizio, the Wayne State professor, drew a parallel between the Detroit schools' predicament and the auto company.

"[EAS] reminds me of the model for restructuring General Motors," he said. "You had a good GM and bad GM, financially speaking."

Adams said he is reserving his judgment.

"I still need more detail," he said. "There are a lot of empty spaces that need to be examined much closer."

But he noted that EAS seems to be yet another drastic reform designed to promise the same thing.

"What did we spend the last two years doing?" he asked, referring to the emergency manager takeover of the school system. "We need to have greater transparency so people don’t have to guess what's going on," he said.

Pedro Noguera, a professor of education at New York University, said plans that target failing schools can only succeed with community buy-in.

"Where do the people of Detroit fit in?" he asked. "Questions of accountability have to be still raised. Otherwise whole communities will end up disenfranchised."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/20/detroit-announces-new-authority_n_880757.html?page=1

**********************