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Chicago Public Schools 101: The Politics, Passion and Hopeless Financials Behind a System in Crisis

Matt Barnum and Naomi Nix — Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 +0000

��Ӱ�� profiles the country’s largest school districts. Previously: Explaining the Past, Present and Future of Detroit Public Schools, a ‘National Disgrace’

Why are Chicago schools in the news?

Last Friday, the Chicago Teachers Union staged a to highlight what teachers see as underfunding of schools. The — which amounted to a one-day strike, led to the cancellation of classes for over 300,000 Chicago Public School students — also focused on the ongoing contract dispute between the city and its teachers, as well as broader concerns related to social justice issues in the city and the school reform agenda that has swept much of the country.

Teachers in the country’s third-largest public school district rallied all day at schools, community colleges, and downtown. The union was joined by supporters from across the city, including community groups and other labor unions, as well as civil rights leader Jesse Jackson and national teachers union head Randi Weingarten.

The move was condemned by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who controls city schools, and Gov. Bruce Rauner. Emanuel agreed with the teachers push for more funding, but argued the walkout was wrong, saying, "I don't think the kids should pay the price for a political message."

There was some internal division within the union. About 20 percent of their house of delegates against the strike, and several , though the union warned that any who crossed the picket line would .

The district said teachers who did not show up to work would not be paid, but wouldn’t face disciplinary action; however, the district a claim against the union with the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board, arguing that the walkout was illegal since state law requires a number of conditions be met before a strike can be called.

Who is Rahm Emanuel?

Photo by Getty Images

Emanuel was first elected as the city’s 55th mayor in 2011, after serving as White House chief of staff to President Barack Obama and a congressman from Illinois. Soon after taking office, Emanuel began embarking on an ambitious education agenda that included and closing with declining enrollment on the city’s South and West sides. Emanuel’s stature in the city was quickly tested when the Chicago Teachers Union authorized its . Since then, Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis has been a thorn in Emanuel’s side. Chuy Garcia, a candidate Lewis endorsed, embarrassingly forced Emanuel into a runoff election to reclaim his seat.

Emanuel’s schools chief, Barbara Byrd-Bennett, resigned in 2015 and recently to charges of fraud; she is now being by the district she used to run. Emanuel her with , his chief of staff.

The mayor’s political capital in the wake of the release of a dashcam video showing a white police officer shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times while the teenager was walking away. The city took more than a year to release the video to the public and only did so being ordered by the court. Since then, the mayor’s declined and city leaders have called for his resignation.

Who is Karen Lewis?

Photo by Getty Images

Karen Lewis is the president of the Chicago Teachers Union and a former high school chemistry teacher. In 2010, she ran on the Caucus of Rank and File Educators slate, which accused the incumbent union leadership of caving in to the city on a host of issues including school closures, charter expansion and other initiatives. Her slate of the vote in a runoff election. After leading the union’s 2012 strike, Lewis’s popularity as a labor leader soared inside and outside the city; she easily re-election in 2013. A potentially formidable opponent to Emanuel’s re-election bid, she was considering running for mayor until she was diagnosed with cancer.

Who is Bruce Rauner?

Photo by Getty Images

Rauner is the state’s Republican governor, in 2014 over Democratic incumbent Pat Quinn. Rauner, a wealthy businessman who had never before held elected office, ran on a of cutting taxes and weakening the political influence of public sector unions. He won with the support of suburban Chicago and downstate, but was opposed by city residents.

Rauner has had a with Emanuel, though the two have been publicly of late over school funding. Rauner has also been a of Lewis, and a backer of charter schools. In fact, a school in the Noble Network of charters is Rauner and his wife, Diana.

Recent suggests that just over half of Illinois voters disapprove of Rauner’s job performance, with about one third approving.

What happened during the last strike?

In September 2012, the Chicago Teachers Union struck over pay, education policy and school funding. It was the union’s and the labor group’s leaders had more than 90 percent of its 25,000-membership behind them. While Mayor Emanuel sought to cast the union’s actions as a that burdened city families, the union had the public’s support. A poll beforehand showed that 40 percent of city voters supported the union on overall education issues compared to just 17 percent who supported Emanuel.

Early in their negotiations with Chicago Public Schools, teachers over the course of two years. The union’s leaders had argued that teachers needed to get a large pay increase because the school district was planning to lengthen the school day. The labor group also sought to downplay how much would factor into the new state-required teacher evaluation system and wanted to mandate that teachers who had been laid off get first crack at any new jobs. They also proposed funding for adding art, music, librarians, physical education teachers, smaller class sizes and air conditioning.

In the end, the teachers over four years and were still evaluated on test scores but the district agreed to try and give highly rated teachers at least half of any new job openings in the schools. Arguably the of the strike were more significant. It proved to the larger education world that teachers unions could fight back against education reform movements taking place in their communities — and retain, even grow, public support.

What is the financial situation currently in Chicago schools?

The schools are in bad financial shape. The city faces a $1.1 billion budget and is on a list created by the Illinois State Board of Education. Earlier this year the district completed a $725 million at 8.5 percent interest — an likely in part the spectre of bankruptcy raised by Rauner.

The financial troubles have manifested themselves in schools. Recently the district had $200 million from the budget and 62 staffers; principals to stop spending money; three furlough days were for teachers, including a cancelled day of classes for students. In 2013, amid fierce protests, the city 50 public schools — almost exclusively in black and Hispanic — due to underenrollment in order to cut costs.

Chicago teachers are paid , particularly early in their careers and relative to those in other large cities, and have to teachers in several suburban Chicago districts.

What are the roots of the district’s financial problems?

Chicago schools are struggling with three overarching financial challenges: pension shortfalls, inadequate state and local funding, and declining enrollment.

Like many states, Illinois offers its employees a pension plan or a guaranteed stream of income when they retire. Those pension plans are funded in three ways including individual workers’ contributions from their paycheck, the return on fund investments and contributions made by the state government. In theory, the contributions into the state pension funds each year should roughly equate to what the state has to pay those workers when they retire. The problem is that for many years Illinois—like —has not been making enough contributions into those funds to cover their full costs. A report in 2013 revealed that Illinois and Chicago have some of the worst-funded pension systems in the country. The district has kicked the can down the road and now the bill has come due. Recent efforts to change the pension structure for existing public employees have been by the state Supreme Court.

Under state law, individual educators are required to contribute 9.4 percent of their salary into the retirement system, , including, Chicago have negotiated with local unions torequired contributions. The city school system of that contribution. While the state pays for what other school districts have promised to contribute toward their teachers’ retirement system, Chicago is largely left to pay for that on its own. That means Chicago residents are paying taxes toward two teacher pension funds — their state taxes are helping fund teacher pensions across the state while their city taxes are picking up retirement costs for CTU members. That has prompted Emanuel and Chicago Public Schools CEO Claypool to call state policymakers to implement “.” Senate Republicans acknowledge the pension disparity, but that Chicago gets disproportionate funding for other areas, including early childhood and special education.

In addition to the 7 percent pension pickup for teachers, the district is also putting extra money towards catching up on pension payments it skipped in previous years. A law passed in 1995 required Chicago Public Schools to make sure that the pension reserve was at least 90 percent funded by 2045. Now, Chicago Public Schools has to dramatically increase its payments into the teacher retirement system, but is still coming up short of a fully funded teacher pension fund. For every dollar the city pays towards teacher salaries, it spends about 33 cents on pensions.

Also contributing significantly to the problem are broader funding issues. Since 2010, state funding has , while local funding has increased only modestly and federal funding has been flat or declining.

A from the Education Law Center, which supports more funding, identified Chicago (along with Philadelphia) as one of the two “most fiscally disadvantaged large urban districts in the country.” The city gets 15 percent less state and local funding than average, compared to other districts in the metropolitan area, despite having a significantly higher poverty rate. Another from the same group, as well as a separate from nonprofit Education Trust, identified Illinois as having one of the least equitable school funding systems in the country. These inequities are driven by the state’s heavy reliance on property taxes to fund schools, which disadvantages poor areas, and aren’t made up for in the state’s funding formula. Chicago does receive a amount of federal dollars.

Meanwhile Chicago Public Schools have faced enrollment declines largely because of the expansion of independently run charter schools. Compared to a decade ago, the district-run schools are serving about 14 percent fewer students. As enrollment declines, so does revenue, but districts often struggle to reduce costs at a similar rate. The controversial school were an attempt to address this.

Are Chicago schools at risk of going bankrupt?

It’s not currently legal for a school district to do so, but that’s what the governor is , which has made it more difficult for the district to borrow money. Democrats in the legislature say such a proposal is dead on arrival.

What’s happening with the current Chicago teachers contract?

The Chicago Teachers Union and Chicago Public Schools are at odds over the contract that expired last July. Earlier in the negotiations, the union asked for a decrease in class size, a three percent salary boost, pay for snow days, and hundreds more counselors, nurses, and social workers. Meanwhile, the district originally wanted to forgo the 7 percent teacher pension pickup, saying without it the schools might need to of teachers. As negotiations lagged, the districtbudgets and implemented mandatory furlough days for educators. Claypool recently to cut the district’s pension pickup until negotiations end. If the two sides cannot agree on a proposal, the earliest the Chicago Teachers Union could go on strike would be the end of May. The final day of classes is June 21.

What’s happening with the state budget?

For more than nine months, Illinois lawmakers have been at for the fiscal year that began last July, making it the longest state budget impasse in recent memory, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Gov. Rauner is to curtailing union power, a tradeoff the Democratically-controlled legislature won’t approve. The state has racked up nearly since 2014. The stalemate has prompted credit rating agencies Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s to warn that the state’s public universities may be unable to pay their debts. Public colleges and social service organizations that depend on state funding have been forced to make cuts. Some are not being paid raises that they were awarded last year.

What does the union want, what does Emanuel want, and what does Rauner want?

The Chicago Teachers Union says there is a need to raise more money for schools but wants to see implemented that would take a deeper cut from the state’s highest earners. Union leaders estimate that the policy could generate an extra $6 billion in revenue for education and other needs. The labor group also wants to see the city tap into its Tax Increment Financing, funds geared toward economic development, to pay for education.

Emanuel says that he agrees with the union about the need for changing the state’s funding system in order to drive more resources to poor districts including Chicago. He has , however, some efforts by the union and some legislators to increase school funding using the economic development fund.

The union and Emanuel are generally aligned with Democratic state legislators who have put forth to raise revenue and distribute more to low-income districts.

Rauner, on the other hand, wants to , allow city schools to and enable schools — all opposed by the Democratic state legislature, the union, and Emanuel. Rauner has also raising revenue, which many say is necessary to address the funding issues, while also efforts to steer money away from wealthier districts to poor ones.

Who does the Chicago public think?

Chicago teachers picket during a one-day strike at Northeastern Illinois University on April 1 in Chicago. (Photo by Getty Images)

By large margins, most Chicago residents support the teachers’ union over Emanuel when it comes to education issues. A by the Chicago Tribune found that 60 percent sided with the union and just 20 percent backed the mayor (with the remainder saying ‘neither’ or that they didn’t know). This has been a finding in polling since 2012.

The same poll found that 70 percent of the city disapproved of Emanuel’s record on education, particularly among African-American residents and those with students in the public schools.

How are Chicago students doing academically?

On the, a federal test, Chicago students lag behind the rest of the state and the country, but their scores are about on par with students in other large cities. In 2003, the city’s scores, especially in math, were generally significantly worse than other big cities, but Chicago has closed the gap in recent years. At the same time, however, achievement gaps between white and black students have expanded.

The city’s high school graduation rate has been — from about 57 percent in 2011 to nearly 70 percent in 2015 — but it also a point of controversy after an suggested that the numbers were inflated due to miscounting dropouts as transfers. The city to the error, retroactively downgrading the 2014 rate by about 3 percentage points.

Have the recent reform efforts — including closing schools, expanding charters, lengthening the school day, and revamping teacher evaluation — improved academic outcomes?

This is a hotly disputed question. Here’s what some of the research has found to dateOn school closing, a showed that students displaced by closing did not either improve or regress academically over the long run. Unsurprisingly, students who attended highly ranked schools did see academic gains, but students who transferred to low-performing ones lost ground. A on the nearly 50 closures in 2013 found that the vast majority of displaced students moved to a school with a higher performance rating than the one they left and there was no evidence that students departed the district altogether as a result of closures. However, there were many barriers for families who wanted to choose a school other than the one that was recommended.

On charters and school choice, a showed that Chicago charters narrowly outperformed district schools as measured by math test scores, but did no better in reading. found that the city’s charter high schools had a positive effect on students’ high school graduation and college attendance. A showed that the city’s intra-district choice system had little positive effect on students, except for those attending career academies, which led to increased graduation rates.

On teacher evaluation and accountability, there is that the city’s pilot had a positive impact on student achievement in its first year, but not its second. A of teachers and principals found that most believed the expanded observation process had improved instruction, though there were concerns about the use of test scores in the system. A found that weakening job protections for non-tenured teachers improved their attendance rates.

There is little evidence on the impact of the city’s longer school day; research in other parts of the country is , not , .

Why is Chicago important in the larger education debate?

Chicago is the third-largest city in the United States, which makes it an ample testing ground for education policy. The city caught the attention of researchers and the education world in 2009 when Obama tapped Arne Duncan, the former Chicago Public Schools CEO, to be Secretary of Education. While Duncan was steering the city’s public schools, he implemented a number of reform strategies he brought to the White House, including the department’s turnaround program for struggling schools. The Chicago Teachers Union’s combative approach and popularity within the city may have contributed to a rise in more adversarial unions across the country.

What will happen next?

Right now there’s no clear answer. Chicago Public Schools are on an unsustainable financial path, but the solutions proposed by both sides are fundamentally at odds.

Stay tuned.

5 Key Lessons from the Successes (and Failures) of President Obama’s Teacher Evaluation Reforms

Matt Barnum — Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 +0000

Lessons for the post-NCLB era.

The passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act and the waning of the Obama administration brings to a close federal efforts to improve teacher evaluation — a practice once for its infrequent and pro forma observations, inflated ratings, and lack of consequences.

Today most states combine different measures, including classroom observations and student test data, to produce a rating that describes effectiveness. But problems with the system persist.

by Matt Kraft of Brown University and Allison Gilmour of Vanderbilt University confirm other evidence that in most of the country new teacher evaluation systems still rate the vast majority of teachers effective — even though uniformly high ratings in the past were part of the for creating new systems.

Based on this study, the American Enterprise Institute’s Rick Hess “all that time, money, and passion” dedicated to teacher evaluation “haven’t delivered much.” The Shanker Institute’s Matt Di Carlo also that evaluation systems can’t be judged primarily on how many low-performing teachers they identify.

(More: The War Over Evaluating Teachers — Where It Went Wrong and How It Went Right)

Another , “Beyond Ratings,” by Kaylan Connelly and Melissa Tooley of the New America Foundation, argues that evaluation systems need to better calibrated to enhance professional growth and development. A from the Aspen Institute lays out a 10-lesson “roadmap for improvement” on teacher evaluation.

Meanwhile, Georgetown University’s Thomas Toch has taken to , , and to defend the Obama administration’s accomplishments. Toch argues that “state and local studies, teacher surveys, and other evidence reveals that many of the new [teacher evaluation] systems have been much more beneficial than the union narrative would suggest.”

So, with the political fight moving to the states, what can we learn from the research debate? Here are five key lessons policymakers should consider as we head into (another) brave new world of teacher evaluation.

Kraft and Gilmour’s not only documents the high marks teachers in many states are earning, but also asks principals in one district why they tend to grade teachers on a generous curve. What they find is revealing: Principals say they are worried about finding better teachers to replace low-performers, don’t like telling teachers they’re not doing well, fear that a low rating will damage a teacher’s morale, lack time to remediate, and are daunted by difficult-to-navigate teacher dismissal processes.

The new wave of evaluation systems don’t seem to have addressed these concerns sufficiently. If districts want better-differentiated teacher ratings — important for targeting professional development and making smart personnel decisions — they need to confer with principals to ensure new programs are useful to the school leaders who will be implementing them.

Under Obama, states were strongly incentivized by the federal government to use test scores in teacher evaluation; the vast majority of states now do.

The problem with this approach was that while every state tests students in grades 3–8 in reading and math, there were few standardized assessments in other grades and subjects. Consequently, new tests — of generally unknown reliability or validity — materialized around the country for rating physical education, social studies, and first-grade teachers, among others. In some areas have been based on school averages or on test scores in subjects the teacher didn’t teach — prompting confusion, outrage, and .

Using test scores for all teachers was poor policy and proved to be even worse politics for reformers — it exacerbated the anti-testing backlash and contributed to the rollback of federal power in new education law. That, in turn, has led many state policymakers to try to student growth from teacher evaluation systems.

There is a simple solution to the problem of overtesting and unfair attribution of test score: Evaluate teachers by test scores only if there is a valid test to do so — one that rigorously isolates a teacher’s impact on student growth. Hastily creating new assessments is usually unwise.

The New America says, “For the most part, states have prioritized getting evaluation systems up and running and are only beginning to think about using them to promote ongoing teacher learning and growth.”

The research has not yet clearly identified how to use teacher evaluation systems as a tool for improving teacher practice. However, there is encouraging new that when highly rated teachers work with poorer performers the latter group improves.

Another found that Chicago’s teacher evaluation pilot, which provided extensive training for principals to revamp how they observed teachers, had a positive impact on student achievement in its first year (but not in its second when it expanded but received less budgetary and central office support for school leaders).

While there’s still a lot we need to learn, it’s clear that states and districts should create systems to help struggling teachers improve, provide support and training for evaluators, and not expect to get this done on the cheap.

Most states have systems that assign a fixed value to each part of the evaluation.¹ For example, 50 percent might be based on principal observations, 35 percent on student test scores, and 15 percent on student surveys. Sum the separate scores and out pops a rating.

It’s not obvious that this is best way to do things, though. It constrains the principal’s judgment and discretion: she may believe a component of the evaluation to be misleading, for instance, but can do nothing to adjust it.

Some may argue that a mechanical model provides needed principal-proofing, but there is that principals typically make smart personnel decisions. Given their accountability for school performance, it’s worth experimenting with less rigid systems that engender rather than diminish principal autonomy.

Many suggest that tougher accountability and evaluation systems have contributed to what some see as a nationwide teacher shortage. There is zero empirical evidence to support this claim, to my knowledge.

However, it is that recent evaluation systems have made teaching less appealing in some circumstances — high-poverty schools, for instance, which already often struggle to recruit and retain teachers in part because of . Teachers in these schools are generally at greater risk of being identified as low-performing, and potentially fired, under new evaluation systems. Making the teaching profession riskier, in perception or reality, less appealing.

Some lessons may be drawn from Washington, D.C., which has been among the most aggressive in identifying and dismissing struggling teachers in disadvantaged schools. have found that the district has been able to replace poor performers with better ones, perhaps in part because of differentiated by performance and school population. D.C. public schools have also developed performance screens when hiring that in determining who will be effective in the classroom.

Districts with aggressive evaluation systems that generate more teacher dismissals should pay particular attention to this issue, and ought to consider pairing evaluation reform with higher salaries or other efforts to make the job more appealing.

Footnotes:

1.��A handful of states use a in which scores on two dimensions are combined to create a summative rating. This is essentially a cruder version of a percentage-based system.

New Research Shows How a Federal School Turnaround Program Backfired in North Carolina

Matt Barnum — Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 +0000

Under former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, the federal government focused on turning around low-performing schools. “We want transformation, not tinkering,” Duncan in 2009 as he discussed his department’s attempts to dramatically shake up the bottom five percent of schools across the country. Since then, such efforts have been , even as studies from from Massachusetts and California found federal School Improvement Grants had a positive impact on student achievement.

Now by Helen Ladd of Duke and Jennifer Heissel of Northwestern gives ammunition to the critics of federally backed school turnarounds. The study — released today as a working paper by the research group CALDER — focuses on elementary and middle schools exclusively in North Carolina that were part of the state’s , which was funded with federal dollars through Race to the Top.¹

The researchers found that the program had at best no effect on student achievement, and by some measures had a negative impact. More students were suspended and slightly fewer were in attendance because of the program. Middle class parents often transferred their kids to different schools. Teachers said they spent more time collaborating and receiving professional development, but also doing paperwork and administrative tasks; they were more likely to leave turnaround schools than similar struggling schools.²

This is one study of one state — and in fact a of the same program found more positive outcomes³ — but the results are nevertheless stark and disappointing. A program designed to turn around low-performing schools, if anything, may have made them worse. (A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment.)

Four specific takeaways that may prove instructive for future turnaround efforts:

Federal school turnaround grants laid out four options: close the school; convert it to a charter; fire the principal and half the staff; or fire the principal and take efforts to improve instruction, increase community involvement, and extend the school day. The vast majority (85 percent) of schools in North Carolina — including all of those in rural districts — went with the last option, which was seen as less disruptive.

In North Carolina, though, replacing principals with better ones was apparently quite difficult. The research found that new principals were less experienced than those they replaced; has tied fewer years on the job to lower student performance. According to teachers, school leadership at turnaround schools did not improve. Teacher turnover also increased, and, based on the disappointing overall results, it doesn’t seem like new teachers were any more effective.

This suggests that requiring the dismissal of school staff may be counterproductive in places, particularly rural areas, where effective educators are scarce commodities.

True to the programs aims, teachers reported that they spent more time on professional development and collaboration with colleagues. But this change didn’t evidently translate into benefits for students. Ladd, one of the study’s coauthors, said the research on professional development has generally been disappointing. “Most studies that I have seen, even studies that start out thinking that professional development is going to be helpful, don’t find that it is. Maybe it’s that we’re doing it the wrong way,” she said.

The fact that collaboration increased was a bit more puzzling, said Ladd, because other research is more positive on this point. For instance, teachers when working at schools with more supportive and collaborative environments.

The study also found that teachers reported spending more time on paperwork, staff meetings, and delivering assessments. Teachers at turnaround schools may have been overwhelmed by administrative duties that didn’t directly improve instruction — to the detriment of activities that did.

In sum, the turnaround efforts did not seem to make schools more desirable place to work; in fact, since turnover increased, for some teachers it did the opposite. Part of this was by design, but the program only works if new, better teachers come into the school. That apparently didn’t happen here, and the increased administrative burden could be partially to blame.

Putting a school into a turnaround program may make families leave for fear that it’s underperforming. That’s exactly what Ladd and Heisel find for the small group of non-poor students who attended turnaround schools. What that means is that the schools served an even more segregated group of disadvantaged students because of the turnaround program. This accounts for some, but not all, of the decrease in test scores attributed to the program.

Research has found that highly segregated schools lead to lower student achievement, so policymakers might consider using integration as a school improvement strategy.

There are many ways to interpret this research. One is that, policymakers have been going about school improvement all wrong. Ladd generally takes this view and is skeptical that prevailing school turnaround models are up to the task of significantly improving student outcomes. She advocates for a , which address out-of-school factors like health and nutrition. “There’s nothing in this federal turnaround program, or there’s very little in it, that says, ‘Let’s make sure all these kids are healthy and can see the blackboard and don’t have asthma,’” said Ladd, who is part of the group Broader, Bolder, which advocates for more wraparound services for students.

On the other hand, the research might also suggest that the purportedly dramatic turnarounds just weren’t dramatic enough. Remember, almost all of the schools in North Carolina chose the least disruptive school improvement model. But from California found that schools selecting a more severe turnaround approach — involving firing the principals and half the staff — made the most gains in achievement. of Boston and New Orleans found that schools taken over by charter schools, as part of federal turnaround, made large achievement gains.

Cutting against this hypothesis, however, is the fact that teacher attrition in North Carolina turnaround schools did significantly increase, even though it wasn’t mandated by the prevailing model.

So maybe the question isn’t simply what types of turnaround approach “works,” but when and where different turnarounds work. That is, one approach may be effective in urban areas of California, but it won’t necessarily translate to rural North Carolina. Which may be the most frustrating aspect of the school improvement debate: Determining why some turnaround efforts succeed and other don’t is both the key question for policymakers, and among the most difficult for researchers to answer.

Footnotes:

1.��The North Carolina program does not appear to be part of federally backed School Improvement Grants, but was the federal program Race to the Top. Both programs’ approach to school turnaround seem to be substantially similar.

2. Ladd and Heisel use a strong methodology that can isolate the impacts of the turnaround program. Since it applied to schools that were ranked as the bottom 5 percent in the state, they compare schools right below and right above the 5 percent cut off. The idea is that these schools are quite similar, but some were part of the program and others weren’t solely because they were on different sides of a statistically arbitrary cut point. The authors also used state-administered surveys of teachers to gauge their opinions and time use in both treatment and control schools.

3. Ladd says that may be because other turnaround and school improvements efforts were going on at the same time that positively affected some of the schools in the federal turnaround program that her study zeroed in on.

UCLA Report on Charter School Discipline Makes Important Points — But Has Some Important Limitations

Matt Barnum — Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 +0000

Allegations of harsh, “no excuses”–style discipline have long dogged charter schools. Now a new by UCLA’s Civil Rights Project seems to confirm some of these concerns. The group’s , published Wednesday, claims that “Study Finds Many Charter Schools Feeding ‘School-to-Prison Pipeline.’” The same night The Huffington Post : “Charter Schools Are Suspending Kids More Than Other Schools, And That’s A Problem.”

But a closer look at the UCLA data paints a much more nuanced picture: Charter schools have significant disparities in suspensions by race — but that difference is quite similar to disparities at traditional public schools. In some cases, charters suspend students of color at higher rates than non-charters; in other cases charters had lower suspension rates. There is also published evidence, not acknowledged in the report, that “no excuses” charter schools generally produce large student achievement gains.

The UCLA report is a valuable contribution to the growing school discipline debate, but its limitations should also be addressed and taken seriously. Four things to consider:

The UCLA study is descriptive, as researchers would say, meaning it reports the data, rather than explains it.

In this case, the data show that charter schools on average have slightly higher rates of suspension than non-charters: 7.8 percent versus 6.7 percent. This is a small but real difference.

But why does that difference exist? Is it because charter schools are more likely to have zero-tolerance discipline policies? The report can’t really answer these questions, but it does, to its credit, disaggregate the data in a way that helps. In the chart below, we see that when comparing students of the same race in secondary schools, charters suspend higher numbers of students with disabilities, black students and Asian students than non-charters. But charter schools actually have lower suspension numbers for other groups, including Latinos and students learning English. As the report itself says, “Charter schools are not consistently higher-suspending than non-charters for every subgroup, and that, whether higher or lower, the differences between the types of schools are not large.”

Source: UCLA Civil Rights Project

As the report notes, having a certain student population is not a justification for having higher suspension rates, but when trying to understand differences between charters and district schools, it’s crucial to take those factors into account.

Regardless, it is clear that both types of schools have problems with disproportionate discipline for certain student populations. It’s less clear that this problem is significantly worse in charter schools.

The UCLA report relies on data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. The researchers find that charter schools were especially likely to report zero suspensions, sometimes contradicting state numbers. The authors reasonably conclude that these numbers might not be reliable, and so simply exclude all schools at the secondary level — charter and non-charter — that report no suspensions.

Again, this may be an appropriate methodological choice, but it is important to note that the numbers look somewhat different when zero-suspension schools are not excluded. As can be seen in the chart below, charters come out with lower suspension rates than non-charters in most subgroup comparisons when zero-suspension schools are included.

Source: UCLA Civil Rights Project

The report has other important limitations that it generally acknowledges, but that don’t always make it into media reports.

For instance, the data comes from school year 2011–12, so is somewhat dated, though is the most recent available. The data also does not differentiate by length of suspension, so one that is two weeks long is treated the same as a suspension that lasts only one day, or partial day.

In some respects, the report may understate the charters’ effect on suspensions. For example, students who attend charter schools may be different than those attending traditional public schools. Moreover, charter schools generally serve , particularly those with severe disabilities. This again points to the challenge of getting at apples-to-apples comparisons.

Looking specifically at a few cities, analyses of Boston and have found that charter schools there have significantly higher suspension rates than the cities’ district schools. A of Massachusetts’ urban charters found that they did in fact cause an increase in school suspensions by about one day each year in middle and high school⁴.

On the other hand, the large expansion of charter schools in New Orleans has actually coincided with a decrease in suspensions over the long run. And Washington D.C. charters have a than traditional public schools.

The UCLA report speaks confidently about research on different discipline approaches: “As many independent studies indicate…there are effective evidence-based alternatives to harsh discipline available that not only decrease overall rates of disciplinary exclusion and reduce racial gaps in school discipline, but also are associated with higher achievement, improved graduation rates, and an increased sense of safety.”

This statement is correct in many respects: higher suspension rates are associated with worse outcomes at both the and level. There is also strong evidence that implicit bias by teachers lead to and for students of color.

But the suggestion that high suspension rates cause less safe or lower achieving schools, albeit plausible, is on shakier ground. This is your classic correlation vs. causation problem: Some have found that school suspensions harm all students by contributing to a toxic school environment, while other show that higher suspension rates can actually help increase student achievement.

The research literature on “no excuses” charter schools — which, admittedly, is a somewhat underdefined term — suggests that they produce large test score gains, and may have positive long-run outcomes. from Massachusetts showed charters that embraced a strict discipline approach saw significant student achievement gains. A separate of New York City charters showed similar results. In Boston, charter students were to enroll in four-year, as opposed to two-year, colleges. Perhaps these gains are outweighed by concerns about discipline or perhaps they would persist with less punitive discipline policies, but it’s important to be clear about these potential trade offs.

None of which is to say that charter schools’ discipline policies are good or ideal. The racial disparities, at both charter and non-charter schools, are large and clearly should be addressed. Alternatives to suspension may very well be preferable for promoting positive school cultures and for keeping students in class.

Many districts and charter schools across the country appear to be trying to improve on this front (we’ve covered a few here), but the UCLA report spotlights the fact that schools in both sectors have a long way to go. But policymakers, pundits and the mainstream press should also recognize the limitations of this report, and steer clear of the suggestion that high suspensions rates are a problem unique to charter schools.

Footnotes:

1. Zero is used if the data is missing or incomplete, further complicating comparisons. (return to story)

2. This amount to an exclusion of about 9 percent of non-charters and 17 percent of charters. (return to story)

3. Readers may wonder how it’s possible in this chart that charters appear to have lower subgroup suspension rates than non-charters, but a higher overall suspension rate. This is known in statistics as . In this case, charters serve student populations — particularly black students — who are more likely to be suspended regardless of whether they attend a charter or non-charter school. This again points to the challenge of making comparisons between suspension rates at charter and district schools. (return to story)

4. Notably, there was no difference in suspensions between Massachusetts’ non-urban charters and district schools. (return to story)

Feeling Confused by The Bern? 4 Theories on What Sanders Actually Thinks About Charter Schools

Matt Barnum — Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 +0000

Bernie Sanders has been entirely consistent in saying that he supports “public” charter schools but opposes “private” ones. He’s said so repeatedly during the campaign, most recently during Sunday’s Democratic Town Hall in Columbus.

The problem is that nobody knows what he means, since there is no agreed-upon distinction between public and private charter schools.

As a reminder to readers — and perhaps Bernie Sanders himself — charter schools are publicly funded, independently run schools that are legally required to be tuition free and open to all students. They are usually non-unionized and free from certain regulations. Depending on the state, charters are subject to varying degrees of public oversight.

(More: 13 Things to Know About Charter Schools)

The Sanders campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

There have been many attempts to make sense of Sanders’ comments on charters schools; here are four working theories:

Nina Rees, president of National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, said she thinks this is the most likely explanation. “There is a bit of confusion and this is not the first time an elected official has been confused about charters,” she said in an interview.

Rees points out that formally speaking, no charter school is set up as a for-profit; however her group that 15 percent of charters have deals with for-profit companies to operate the school in its entirety¹.

Rees says that her organization hasn’t had a direct discussion with the Sanders campaign, but that she’s hoping to.

There’s no specific evidence that this is what Sanders was referring to, but it’s a common distinction, with even many charter supporters questioning the role of for-profit companies operating charter schools.

However, his in an American Federation of Teachers questionnaire suggest this interpretation might not be right: “I believe charter schools should be held to the same standards of transparency as public schools, and that these standards should also apply to the non-profit and for-profit entities that organize charter schools.” If Sanders were opposed to for-profit charter operators across the board, this comment doesn’t really make sense because he wouldn’t be worried about what standards they followed. It also shows the campaign at least acknowledges the difference between for- and non-profit charter operators.

Charter schools are authorized by an external body, called an authorizer or sponsor, which is supposed to hold the schools accountable for their performance. Sometimes that authorizer is a local school district or the state Board of Education; sometimes it’s a state or private university, a nonprofit entity, or a district from another part of the state. (Laws on who can authorize charter schools vary from state to state.)

Some states allow or require charter schools to have a much closer relationship with the local school district. For instance, in Massachusetts “Horace Mann” charters must be approved by the local school board and staffed by unionized teachers who are generally covered by that district’s collective bargaining agreement. (“Commonwealth” charters are much more common in Massachusetts and are not subject to those requirements.)

Sanders said Sunday that he opposes “privately controlled” charters, which may suggest that the authorizing body or relationship with the local school board is an important distinction. But even if that’s what he was referring to, it’s not clear what he means. Perhaps Sanders only backs charters overseen by the local district; maybe he supports charters overseen by any public entity. We just don’t know.

Nothing about Sanders’ statements on the campaign trail has suggested a deep knowledge of charter schools. When asked about them, he often quickly pivots to other issues. Sunday night was no exception: of being asked about charters, Sanders was talking broadly about education and childcare. The fact that Sanders is making a distinction — public versus private charters — that no one in education clearly understands, also suggests that instead of making a nuanced point, he may just be unclear about what charter schools are. Relatedly, when Sanders wanted to laud school innovation happening in Burlington, Vermont, his hometown, during Sunday’s Town Hall he struggled to come up with the term magnet schools — public schools with specialized curriculum — until prompted by moderator Roland Martin.

A more cynical explanation of Sanders’ position on charters is that he is trying to avoid taking a clear side in the education debate, which has at times fractured the Democratic Party — with some members, such as President Obama, supporting charter schools, while labor unions and some others generally opposing them. Sanders’ campaign site’s issues page about charter schools or K–12 education generally. The ambiguity allows both charter supporters and opponents to fill in the blanks on his position. And, in fact, since charter backers see the schools as public and skeptics see them as “privatized,” Sanders’ language gives ammunition to each side.

The question, though, is whether the Senator can continue to avoid taking a specific position on such an important education issue.

Footnote:

1. About 20 percent of all charter students attend schools operated by for-profits, according to Rees. This is because for-profit operated schools are on average slightly larger in size (students per schools) than other charter schools. (return to story)

Don’t Rush That College Application! Admissions Counselors Reveal 5 Common Last-Minute Blunders

Lizzie Thompson — Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 +0000

Many colleges require supplemental essays and short answers to questions that are specific to that particular school. And nothing says “copy + paste” louder than reading an answer to the question “Why Harvard?” that begins with “What appeals to me about Georgetown is…”

Remember, these supplemental essays are designed to showcase who you are and why you are interested in a particular institution, so the admissions committee can evaluate whether or not a prospective students is a good fit for the school community. So make sure you are writing about the same school that is asking you a particular question.

An admission representative from a southern university expressed frustration over this common mistake: “I am never quite sure whether to laugh, cry, or throw a temper tantrum when an applicant includes the name of another institution in their application.”

Details are important as well when it comes to the names of schools. Holly Buttrey, an admissions representative at Carleton College bemoaned the fact that many students miss the “e” in her school’s name. “Carleton has an E in it and we often see that misspelled and think ‘that’s a bummer’,” she says.

Gimmicks are “prevalent but hard to explain,” said an admissions officer at a women’s college. You want to showcase your strengths, she said, not try your hand at something new on your application. Your college application essay is not the time to dabble in writing a sonnet if you’ve never written one before.

Another former admissions officer relayed her experience: “When I used to read applications, there was a Common Application essay prompt about a place where an applicant feels at peace. I read at least a dozen essays that deteriorated into an ‘I-spy’ around the applicant’s room. By the end, I rarely knew anything about the applicant beyond the color of her walls, and as a result the next essays I picked up that began ‘When you first enter the door, you’ll see to your left…’ made me yawn.”

The lesson here? Break out of the formula. Be yourself and let your passion and voice shine through, free from gimmicks. For example, if cooking is central to your identity, write authentically about it. Don’t write an essay about something else where everything becomes a reference to cooking: A tablespoon of this, a dash of that, a hearty stir of whatever creates the perfect recipe of who you are. It’s contrived. Write about what you know.

Or if you’re talking about a specific experience, like a soccer game, you may be tempted to use the gimmick of play-by-play to create the illusion of drama – “Five minutes to go…Three minutes to go…Thirty seconds to go.” But our experts say it is far more important to make a meaningful connection between the event you are describing and you as a person. It’s less about the hook than the applicant.

How did the event, or game, or moment that you are writing about affect you as a person? Or create a meaningful impact on your life? “Otherwise,” one admissions officers says, “It’s like watching a soccer game on TV and then arguing for the goalie to get admitted to college.”

Her point: The admissions committee doesn’t know anything about the goalie just from watching him/her on TV — and they won’t know anything about an applicant who writes a story that fails to tie back to the individual’s life.

The curse of the grandmother returns: “I know you love your grandmother, but I’m not admitting her to my college,” said an admissions representative at a prestigious liberal arts college in New England.

Your college application is just that – yours – so be sure to write about yourself. And with specificity.

The same representative told me, “The essay is the one shot that readers get to hear from you in the entirety of the application. If you are not using it to talk about yourself, we have a harder time advocating for your admissions.”

Another admissions officer says that if there is more than one essay prompt (a main essay as well as supplements specific to a school), don’t just write the same thing twice. “Admissions committees seek interesting students – re-telling us information makes us scratch our heads and think ‘perhaps this student doesn’t have anything else going on to bring to our campus,’” she said.

So be conscious of variety and specifics — and know when it’s time to toss modesty aside and toot your own horn.

BOTH need to be a top priority. Spelling and grammar check is useful for catching those typos you’re making at 2 a.m. when you’re sprinting to the finish line, but proofreading is a horse of a different color.

Buttrey, the Carleton College admissions representative, points out that students “know to do that for their English essays that they hand in at school, so why can’t they do it for a college application essay?”

Beyond spell-check, proofreading was mentioned across the board as a non-negotiable. “We have read essays where students talk about ‘peasant hunting’ as a favorite pastime,” an admissions representative from an elite all-women’s college told me. (The applicant clearly enjoys ‘pheasant hunting’).

Spell-check isn’t going to pick up on that error, because ‘peasant’ is spelled correctly. So be sure to proofread your writing more than once, because you don’t want your future college to think you enjoy hunting humans for sport.

The questions are designed the way they are for a reason. So answer what they are asking. The Common Application has five pre-determined topics an applicant can pick from, in writing his or her college essay. Once you pick one, stick to it. “For example, if an essay question is asking you to describe a moment you’ve experienced failure and what you learned from it, don’t talk about how much you love your family’s yearly camping trip,” one admissions representative recalled.

“Let’s say the question asks you to describe a time where you chose the path less taken, or did something separately from the pack. Actually answer that question,” the representative continued. “Don’t make the mistake of defiantly proclaiming that you are not answering the question, and that THIS is the path less taken. One, you’re missing out on an opportunity to highlight you, and two, it’s not nearly as rebellious as you think it is. It’s been done before, and just doesn’t look good.”

Some applicants see these predefined topics as obstacles to navigate around, in writing about what they want to write about. But the experts agree: These topics, and questions, matter. And not answering the question stands out in a very bad way, regardless of how well your essay is written.

Leave the texting lingo behind when communicating with admissions offices at the schools to which you are applying. Kthx. “When communicating with admissions officers, always be respectful and professional,” wrote one admissions representative. “It is not appropriate to use texting language in emails to admissions officers. Beginning an email with ‘Hey Mary’ or ‘Hey Ms. Smith’ is not professional.”

By the Numbers: ‘Reagan,’ ‘Taxes’ and 5 Other Terms That Have Trumped Education at the Debates (Thus Far)

Bellwether Education Partners and ��Ӱ�� — Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 +0000

EDlection 2016 is The Seventy Four’s ongoing coverage of education news, debates and votes in the lead up to the 2016 presidential election.

We tune in to each presidential debate, hoping that the candidates will eventually talk about education — that at some point, between the personal attacks and blustering about smaller taxes and bigger walls, we’ll eventually come around to solid policy proposals about things like pre-k access, grade school standards, achievement gaps and graduation rates.

But despite all the polls we’ve seen showing education as a key issue to swing-state voters, and all the substantive proposals we’ve heard from top candidates who have sat down for extensive one-on-one video interviews with Editor-In-Chief Campbell Brown to talk about their K-12 platforms, debate moderators continue to seemingly forget the topic — and the candidates don’t seems eager to broach it themselves.

As a result, K-12 education has been all but absent from the debates — and the campaign trail.

But don’t take our word for it. We downloaded and reviewed every single debate transcript, searching for every mention of schools, every utterance about education and taking note of the other terms that earned more air time.

And we think you’ll be every bit as surprised as we were, about what got bigger play at the debates than the education of America’s next generation:

Maybe interest in education will trickle-down? Even though President Ronald Reagan left office more than 25 years ago, candidates have invoked his name 42 times in debates. “Education,” a top issue for many voters? Only 27 mentions.

Republican and Democratic contenders talked at length about fixing “Obamacare,” but didn’t leave much time to discuss problems with the “Department of Education (DOE)”. DOE only got 4 mentions, but Obamacare had 47.

Will kids know which states border Mexico if we don’t fix K-12? It’s a salient question, given that the phrase “build a wall” was said 12 times in debates, while “Common Core” got 9 mentions.

Research shows that both “climate change” and “K-12” education are challenges that need to be explored, as both could pose threats to our future without an open dialogue. GOP and Democratic candidates may not have seen it the same way. K-12 was snubbed in all 6 debates, while climate change was surfaced 27 times.

Dollars and sense? “Taxes” were easily one of the most popular debate topics, called out 150 times. “Common Core” standards, what some say are integral to helping kids learn math, didn’t get the same amount of love though, only getting called out 9 times.

K-12 wasn’t mentioned at all in the debates, but it’s clear that “education” also took a backseat to issues like “immigration”. The topic of education was only broached 27 times, versus 48 references to immigration.

While talk about “college” – in the context of it as a social issue – did get some airtime in the debates, candidates showed slightly more attention to “Hillary Clinton” and emails related to an attack in Benghazi. Why was one candidate the focus instead of our children’s future? Your guess is as good as ours. Hillary was said 78 times. College, 61 times.

While “college” definitely got a bit of discussion, Democratic debaters clearly took more interest in the issue. The blue state politicians brought up college 46 times, GOP candidates only cited it 15 times. Now that’s higher ed.

Beware the NAEP Overreactions: 4 Reasons Why Education Pundits Should Rein in the Rhetoric This Week

Matt Barnum — Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 +0000

On Wednesday, the latest results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) — the gold standard, low-stakes test given to a representative cross section of 4th and 8th graders across the country — will be released. Virtually every news outlets, including The Seventy Four, will cover the numbers, which makes sense since the scores are important and have some limited value for policymakers. But if history is any guide, for one day the educational world will collectively lose its mind over NAEP, engaging in what Mathematica researcher Steve Glazerman “m��ʱ��”.

Here are four reasons why NAEP results should be interpreted very cautiously:

When the 2013 NAEP scores were released, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan pointed to the relatively large student “gains” in Washington, D.C. NAEP scores, , “Leaders in D.C. have shown tremendous courage and taken bold steps that are resulting in strong growth.” Commentators across the country, including the editorial boards of the , , and , picked up on this to suggest that D.C.’s NAEP gains (as well as Tennessee’s) were showing that school reform was working.

Unfortunately, such claims are entirely unsupported. it is inappropriate to use raw NAEP scores to judge the success or failure of specific policies.

The basic reason is a wonky, boring but crucially important one: NAEP scores, on their own, offer no comparison (or “control”) group by which to judge specific policies or even packages of policies. Remember eighth-grade science class? To make causal inferences, there must be both a treatment group and a control group.

As an example, let’s say Wednesday brings good news in the form of higher NAEP scores. Reformers will claim their policies are working — but how do we know? Maybe scores would have been even higher if a different set of policies were pursued. Maybe scores went up for reasons entirely unrelated to reform policies. We simply can’t say.

Student achievement is based on everything that has happened in a student’s life before taking the test.

We tend to think of schools as driving test scores because students take tests and formally learn academic content in schools. Indeed, schools have an extremely important impact on student learning, but out-of-school factors have an even on student test scores. This is yet another reason we can’t use NAEP to judge school policies. The many out-of-school factors driving achievement — the economy, access to healthcare, etc. — mean we can’t even be sure that changes in NAEP scores had anything to do with changes in schools.

In the coverage of NAEP scores, we will almost surely hear about some state whose students “showed the most growth.” For example, in 2013, the Washington Post that “the District [of Columbia]’s fourth- and eighth-graders made significant gains on national math and reading tests this year, posting increases that were among the city’s largest in the history of the exam.” This is , because the fourth- graders who took the test in 2013 are not the same fourth-graders who took the last NAEP years earlier. In other words, all we can say is that one group of students has a higher average score than a completely different group of students from a couple years ago.

This may seem like an academic point, but it raises yet another problem with trying to make inferences about policy based on NAEP: demographic changes among students tested to changes in average test scores. What look like ‘gains’ may just be differences in which students were tested.

I can guarantee that the NAEP results — regardless of what the actual data are — will be used by commentators to reinforce their previously held policies positions. That people will use the same data to reach opposite conclusion is an indication that we shouldn’t read too much into said data.

Advocates will surely declare “[State X, which had ‘good’ results] did [Policy Y, which I already like]; therefore everyone should do [Policy Y].” If scores show improvement reformers will say, “This shows our policies are working — full speed ahead!” If there aren’t improvement reformers will say, “This shows why our schools are in desperate need of reform — full speed ahead!”

Similarly reform skeptics will gleefully point to disappointing results as evidence that reform policies are failing. But if scores rise, they will that NAEP scores shouldn’t be taken seriously and that tests don’t much matter.

People believe what they believe; NAEP scores won’t — and frankly shouldn’t — change this. But can we just drop the charade?

This is not to say that NAEP scores are useless. They are genuinely important indicators about whether students across the country are learning more math and reading than past students. And although raw data cannot be used to judge specific policies or policymakers, it is absolutely reasonable to make hypotheses about policy that can then be tested rigorously.

In turn, NAEP scores have been used by researchers with careful, statistically rigorous designs to test the efficacy of certain policies. (For example, much of the research on No Child Left Behind uses NAEP data, but does so by creating controls and applying careful statistical analyses.) The key words here are statistically rigorous — an eyeball test does not count.

So, yes, although some rumors that they’ll be lower, I hope NAEP scores go up on Wednesday. It will be nice to see and a hopeful sign for education reform and our country. But no, I won’t be using raw NAEP scores to judge the success of policies or politicians or to support the things I already believe — however tempting it might be.

After Caitlyn Jenner, a New Day for Transgender Rights and a New Push to Make Schools Safer

T74 Staff — Thu, 30 Jul 2015 16:44:00 +0000

This is one in a series of articles surveying the complexities of gender identity, the evolving political debate surrounding the transgender rights of today’s youth, and the ways in which these issues intersect with the policies and practices of K-12 schools across the country. To see the complete series, .

Long before Caitlyn Jenner’s cover shoot sparked a broader national discussion about gender, identity and the evolving state of transgender rights, the role of schools in assisting and protecting transgender youth was already emerging as a mainstream news story. For some parents, a Today Show series that aired earlier this year thrust the issues of parenting, teaching and protecting transgender children into a far brighter spotlight.

For many kids and teenagers, the issues of identification, self-expression and bullying arise everyday around school – in classrooms, bathrooms, school buses and playgrounds. The Seventy Four recently published a series of stories that examined the ways in which issues of gender identity and transgender rights intersect with the policies and practices of K-12 schools across the country. The first stories in this ongoing series are collected below (you can also find the latest entries here). We invite you to read the complete archive and, as always, share your views at info@the74million.org.

USWNT soccer player Abby Wambach (left) presents Caitlyn Jenner the Arthur Ashe Courage Award onstage during The 2015 ESPYS at Microsoft Theater on July 15, 2015 in Los Angeles, Calif. (Caitlyn Jenner photos by Getty Images)

The Seventy Four’s Naomi Nix reported on the ongoing push among LGBT activists to win state-level fights – in both courts and statehouses – to protect transgender students from discrimination. Read the full article here.

Without the possibility of an amendment written into federal education law, LGBT activists’ attention will likely remain focused on state legislatures.

Courtesy of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network. (Current as of July 24, 2015)

Thirteen states (California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington) and the District of Columbia have passed laws banning discrimination against students on the basis of both sexual orientation and gender identity. Wisconsin has passed anti-discrimination legislation that protects students only on the basis of sexual orientation. But 36 states still have yet to address issue, and have not yet passed any nondiscrimination laws that apply specifically to LGBT students.

The Cook Family (Courtesy Terri Cook)

Terri Cook is a proud mother of a transgender child who transitioned at the age of 15 (she’s also written about the experience in the book ), and she writes exclusively for The Seventy Four about what she witnessed when her teenager girl started identifying as a teenage boy. Read the full essay here.

I now hold my hand up and profess to the world that I was ignorant. Ignorance is not the same as intolerance. Ignorant is defined as “lacking knowledge, information, or awareness about something in particular.” Many good people simply have not been exposed to information and experiences different from their own. My husband and I had a lot of misconceptions about what it means to be transgender. Having never met or known a transgender person, and having had no reason to learn or understand, we remained ignorant.

The Seventy Four’s Lizzie Thompson interviewed Susan Landon, a licensed marriage and family therapist, who has worked with transgender children and their families in Southern California for years. From individual and family counseling to advising with a transitioning student’s school, she has worked with high-schoolers, grade-schoolers and children who started identifying as young as 18 months. For kids who feel as if they cannot share their true self with the world, she’s their advocate – and their hero. Read our extensive and insightful interview with Landon here.

Middle school can be harder because kids are entering a time of self identifying at that age and are being met with the challenges of puberty. It can be a more difficult period with classmates. When gender nonconforming children are hitting puberty and are not wanting secondary sexual characteristics to develop, they may become very anxious and depressed. They don’t want to develop and there is so much pressure at this age to “fit in”. This is a period of time when I first see a number of kids. Often at this time, medical intervention is a choice the family will make to block physical development, ease the anxiety and depression, and allow the child and family to determine their next steps. A lot of the older kids, kids who are 16, 17, or 18, don’t seem to be having as much trouble as they used to transitioning in school.

Some experts, like Susan Landon above, believe it’s imperative to deal with gender identification issues at younger ages, particularly when it comes to helping kids avoid bullying at schools. But not everyone thinks that issues as complicated as gender identity belong in the grade school environment. In an exclusive essay for The Seventy Four, Dr. Brian Russell makes the case that parents know best, about when their kids are ready to have a deeper conversation about transgenderism. Read the full essay here.

I prefer that schools not presume to know better than individual children’s parents when to expose those children’s minds to the concept of transgenderism — certainly with any degree of specificity. I encourage educators of preteens to teach their children that it’s right to be decent, and wrong to be bullies to anyone. But specific lessons on transgender issues? That’s a parent’s call.

Edmodo: 6 Things to Know About the ‘Facebook of Education’ As It Moves from Teachers to Parents — to Stockholders?

Mareesa Nicosia — Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 +0000

Teachers sign up for free, create a profile and seek out connections with other educators in their school and around the world. They join groups or start their own based on their interests and the classes they teach, then invite students to sign in so they can access assignments, polls, messages and quizzes. Similar to Facebook, the homepage features a customizable news feed and a drop-down list of activity notifications. The light-blue interface is friendly and not too cluttered.

Simply put, “It’s a global education network,” said Ketan Kothari, general manager of consumer business for the San Mateo-based company.

Photos courtesy Edmodo

One of the site’s most popular uses by educators is networking and professional development, Kothari said. For example, an English Language Arts teacher in Iowa planning a lesson on Shakespeare posts on the newsfeed seeking ideas for getting her students interested in the Bard of Avon. She receives a great suggestion from another teacher in Australia, along with ideas from others around the world.

It was founded by two former school employees.

Edmodo’s origin story goes like this, Kothari says: In 2008, Nic Borg and Jeff O’Hara were working in information technology at two neighboring school districts in the Chicago suburbs. As their districts looked to join the growing group of K-12 institutions blocking access to social media sites like Facebook because of concerns over security and cyber-bullying, Borg and O’Hara decided there had to be a better, safer alternative for connecting educators and students online. And they would build it.

“They wanted to deliver a tool that allowed for safe communication inside the classroom, that worked like the tools that everyone was starting to use outside of school,” said Edmodo spokeswoman Mariana Kosturos.

The two spent nights and weekends working in O’Hara’s basement to build the platform, while working their district day jobs. O’Hara tapped into his network of educators for input and managed the servers while Borg designed and coded the product.

Within a few months, they launched Edmodo and sent it out into the world with a single tweet, according to Kothari. As the company approaches its seventh birthday in September, it counts more than 51 million users around the world and is one of most widely used learning management systems available.

New app takes parents inside their kids’ education

The “dog-ate-my-homework” excuse is rendered forever obsolete. Dads and moms who download the free app get real-time notifications about their children’s assignments — when they’re received, turned in or overdue — or when they have a quiz. They can check school announcements and send messages directly to their child’s teacher. It’s still in beta, but look for updates in the coming months.

As the company evolves from a solely growth-focused first few years with an eye on generating revenue, it has expanded its roster to include tools and products for purchase. Edmodo holds in-district workshops to train teachers to use its site for anywhere from $2,500 to $7,500, Kothari said.

, a student assessment tool aligned with the Common Core and the Texas state learning standards, is another feature that’s free to most users with a premium version available for a cost.

The most substantial revenue will come from , the company’s new digital marketplace for resources like lesson plans, worksheets, quizzes, PDFs, Word documents, video, audio — basically any material that can be uploaded and shared by teachers and publishers. Of the tens of thousands of items now on the site, most appear to be priced under $10, though some are free, such as this explaining how the human heart works. Spotlight is now in beta. Teachers currently download purchases with a credit card or PayPal, and Edmodo eventually plans to offer a districtwide purchasing system.

Speculation about Edmodo’s plans to make an initial public offering has been brewing for months, especially after its venture capital funding was bumped up to $87.5 million last summer. Kothari puts to rest the notion that a public launch is imminent — but it’s clearly something Edmodo is eyeing.

“That is a great goal for us to achieve but I don’t think it’s impending,” Kothari said. “We have to kind of do a litmus test in investment banks and others to determine what is the right time. Companies that are going public in our space tend to (focus on) three things: revenue, profitability and growth … so we’re working towards all three of them and when the time is right, that’s when we can make those determinations, but it’s certainly not now.”

Edmodo doesn’t disclose its revenue figures. But leveraging the Spotlight marketplace is its best new opportunity for revenue growth, Kothari indicated.

EdmodoCon is the company’s annual professional development conference. More than a are lined up for the day-long live webcast that is virtually attended by tens of thousands of people around the world.

, who teaches English for speakers of other languages at Miami Killian Senior High School in Florida, flew to San Mateo last year to be an EdmodoCon 2014 presenter. This year, she’s one of the many educators who will hold viewing parties at their home schools, complete with treats, a raffle and Edmodo swag.

“I love connectedness and I think that social media and teachers using social media helps break down the walls that separate them,” Place said.

In addition to being an Edmodo “ambassador,” the 33-year veteran teacher considers herself a power user: She initiated her district’s use of Edmodo soon after the company launched and now oversees use of the platform by about 11,000 teachers — nearly half the teachers in the Miami Dade County Public School district, the fourth-largest in the nation.

Place personally counts almost 700 teacher and student “connections” on six continents and uses the site every day.

Her advice to newbies? “Don’t be afraid. Ask for help — there are always people who are willing to help … And look for me!”

6 Reasons Why Singapore Math Might Just Be the Better Way

Mark Keierleber — Sat, 11 Jul 2015 07:42:00 +0000

“When is Cheryl’s birthday?”

When the ambiguous high school math problem went viral in April, complete with a handful of seemingly arbitrary answers, it sent many older Americans into a tailspin of confusion. Given the relatively cryptic clues provided, so many wondered, how could you possibly arrive at a definitive answer.

But the quiz wasn’t designed for American adults; it was developed for advanced teenagers in Singapore — and as it’s reached stumped web surfers around the globe, it became the most visible example yet of a national approach to math education that’s raising the bar.

Since the 1980s, schools in Singapore have taken an innovative approach to teaching elementary math — a curriculum that focuses on problem solving with pictures and diagrams. Before the switch, the country’s math students “weren’t even registering on the charts as far as international ratings go,” says Dan Brillon, director of Singapore Math Inc., a company that distributes Singaporean math textbooks in the United States.

Within a decade, Singapore “shot to the top!”

In the U.S., Kevin Mahoney said he hears it all the time: “I’m just not a math person.” But it doesn’t work that way, said Mahoney, a math curriculum coordinator at a school near Boston who helps to implement the Singapore math curriculum at schools across the country.

And students and parents in Singapore know it.

“In the States, we tend to — whether we like it or not — we believe children are born with mathematical ability,” Mahoney said. “But that’s not true in countries like Singapore, where it’s believed that effort is the thing that makes you smarter in math.”

In 2013, only 34 percent of fourth-graders in the U.S. performed at a proficient level in math, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Only 27 percent of U.S. eighth-graders performed at a proficient level in math. Although some school districts have found the Singapore math curriculum is difficult to implement, advocates argue it could boost America’s math scores. So far, more than 2,500 schools — and an even greater number of homeschoolers — have made the leap.

Here are six reasons why “Singapore Math” is catching on in American schools:

1 Singapore students are the world’s math leaders.

Since the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study started ranking countries’ competitiveness in math literacy in 1995, Singapore has consistently ranked among the best. Established by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, TIMSS 2011, the most recent report, ranked Singaporean fourth-graders in first place and eighth-graders in second.

Another international study, the Program for International Student Assessment, shows Singapore’s 15-year-olds are among the best at problem solving, able to solve unstructured problems in unfamiliar contexts.

2 Singapore Math focuses on mastery, not just learning for a test.

The Singaporean curriculum, which the country’s Ministry of Education created, generally focuses on fewer topics but in greater depth. Students don’t just learn equations to reach an answer; they learn how the equation works. “We generally cover 13 to 15 concepts per grade level,” Brillon said, “but really refining the curriculum allows students to hammer home those skills.”

3 Visual and audible learners are thriving.

Learning math begins with the concrete: blocks, cards, buttons, whatever. Then there are abstract equations: 2 + 3 = 5. But Singapore math introduces the “pictorial” phase — a bridge between concrete and abstract.

Based on the work of American psychologist Jerome Bruner, the Singaporean curriculum begins with hands-on group activities with objects like buttons or dice. Next, students move onto the pictorial phase — drawing representations of concrete objects before moving on to abstract equations.

This visual approach, Brillon said, helps drive Singapore math’s success. “If they were first counting buttons or coins, they would open the book to see buttons or coins,” Brillon said.

4 Layered strategies build upon one another.

With the Singaporean curriculum, one skillset is a foundation for future lessons “like LEGO bricks carefully situated next to the other,” Mahoney said. This differs from the typical approach in the U.S., which follows a “spiral” — where material is revisited in the course of months or years, which Mahoney said is often jarring for teachers and students alike.

5 It aligns with Common Core State Standards.

When the Common Core standards were developed, policymakers looked to the success of other high-performing countries, including countries that scored well on the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. Remember: Singapore is consistently at the top.

It’s no surprise Common Core standards mirror several Singaporean approaches, including a narrower focus with greater depth. But to better align to the standards in each state, Brillon said Singapore Math Inc. introduced new textbooks last year.

6 Studies show instant improvement.

In 2005, a study from the American Institutes for Research highlighted why Singapore’s approach to teaching math was successful. But the study didn’t show how the approach would work in American classrooms.

As a doctoral student at Northeastern University, Mahoney published the first study examining the effects of Singaporean teaching techniques on American students.

“Across the board in every case, all of these students were able to make substantial gains,” Mahoney said. In June, a study released in the United Kingdom reached a similar conclusion: teaching Singapore math in the west can drive a small gain in students’ math skills. After one academic year of Singapore math education, gains were equivalent to about one extra month of instruction, according to the study.

Still, Mahoney said he is vying for a comprehensive, national study to investigate the effects of the Singapore math curriculum in the U.S. “It’s not something that is radically different,” Mahoney said. “It sounds exotic, but it’s just elementary mathematics taught in a powerful and potent way.”

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