Getting Students Back on Track

There is one phrase that is among the most common to hear in a federal education policy conversation: the nation’s lowest-performing schools. In fact, I think I probably say it at least twice a day. There’s another phrase, though, that’s equally important yet far less common to hear: the nation’s most at-risk students.

Since the inception of No Child Left Behind, federal education has focused primarily on improving underperforming schools as its vehicle to boost the outcomes of struggling students. The most recent iteration of the federal School Improvement Grant program has only cemented this emphasis. Unfortunately, the school-centered focus has emerged without a parallel student-centered focus on those who are most at risk of dropping out of high school.

To be sure, both strategies are necessary—it’s important to improve struggling schools so as to prevent students from falling off track to graduation in the first place, but a student can fall off track at any high school, whether it is considered to be one of the nation’s worst or not.

In New York City, this point is not lost. As part of its nearly decade-long effort to transform its school system, the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) has balanced a dual emphasis on both its lowest performing schools and its most at risk students, or those who are off track to graduate from high school with their peers.

Morning Announcements: June 21, 2011

Education Week reports, “Right on the heels of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's announcement that it might be time to consider, maybe, possibly offering a package of waivers to states on aspects of the No Child Left Behind Act, 40 states and the District of Columbia have announced a new accountability road map.”

The Los Angeles Times covers a new College Board report finding that young black and Latino men lag behind their contemporaries in nearly every measure of educational attainment, with many failing to attend college or earn degrees and large numbers facing the prospect of unemployment or incarceration.

Morning Announcements: June 20, 2011

States seeking relief from the requirements of the 9-year-old No Child Left Behind Act are taking a wait-and-see approach to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s plan to offer those that embrace his reform priorities wiggle room when it comes to the law’s mandates, Education Week reports.

In the Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson writes about the great jobs mismatch:

One puzzle of this somber economy is the existence of unfilled jobs in the midst of mass unemployment. You might think (I did) that with almost 14 million Americans unemployed — and nearly half those for more than six months — that companies could fill almost any opening quickly. Not so. Somehow, there’s a mismatch between idle workers and open jobs. Economists call this “structural unemployment.”

Just how many jobs are affected is unclear; there are no definitive statistics. Economist Harry Holzer of Georgetown University thinks the unemployment rate might be closer to 8 percent than today’s 9.1 percent if most of these jobs were filled. That implies up to 1.5 million more jobs. Economist Prakash Loungani of the International Monetary Fund estimates that 25 percent of unemployment is structural; that’s more than 3 million jobs. A recent survey of 2,000 firms by the McKinsey Global Institute, a research group, found that 40 percent had positions open at least six months because they couldn’t find suitable candidates.

Straight A's Covers NCLB, High School Graduation Rates, Common Standards, State Budgets and More

Here's a quick summary of the articles in the June 13 issue of Straight A's, the Alliance's biweekly newsletter.

Click on a title below to access the complete article or download a printer-friendly version of the entire newsletter at: http://www.all4ed.org/files/Volume11No12.pdf.

Afternoon Announcements: June 13, 2011

In an op-ed in today’s Politico, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said the Obama administration will be "prepared with a process that will enable schools to move ahead with reform in the fall" if Congress does not complete work on an ESEA reauthorization soon.

The New York Times quoted Duncan as saying, “We’re not going to sit here and do nothing. Our first priority is to have Congress rewrite the law. If that doesn’t get done, we have the obligation to provide relief in exchange for reform... What I want to see in the fall is real action. It’ll either come from Congress or from us. It’s got to happen in real-people time, not Washington time.” In the same article, Senator Tom Harkin, Chairman of the Senate education committee, is quoted as saying, “The best way to fix the problems in existing law is to pass a better one. We are making good progress towards introducing a bill that will advance that goal. Given the bipartisan commitment in Congress to fixing No Child Left Behind, it seems premature at this point to take steps outside the legislative process that would address N.C.L.B.’s problems in a temporary and piecemeal way.”

Straight As: Highlights Deeper Learning, Education Spending, International Benchmarking, and more

Click on a title below to access the complete article or download a printer-friendly version of the entire newsletter at: http://www.all4ed.org/files/Volume11No11.pdf.

President Obama Calls for Replacing No Child Left Behind This Year

In his weekly address, President Barack Obama discusses his recent visit to Booker T. Washington High School in Memphis, Tennessee to deliver the commencement address. The school was the winner of the administration's 2011 Race to the Top High School Commencement Challenge and has significantly improved student achievement levels and graduation rates.

In the video, the President talks about the Race to the Top program, saying, "We need to reward the reforms that are driven not by Washington but by principals and teachers and parents. That’s how we will make progress in education; not from the top down but from the bottom up.”

On NCLB, the president says, "We need to promote reform that gets results while encouraging communities to figure out what's best for their kids. That's why it's so important that Congress replace No Child Left Behind this year so schools have that flexibility. Reform just can't wait."

Morning Announcements: April 29, 2011

Education Week covers a new Center on Education Policy report finding that the proportion of schools failing to make adequate yearly progress under No Child Left Behind last year rose to 38%, as the 2014 deadline for getting all students "proficient" in reading and math approaches.  Ed Week also reports on a study finding that U.S. students typically encounter an easier math curriculum than those in many other nations, with wide differences also seen across states and school districts.  And one more story from Ed Week on proposed changes to federal privacy rules likely to take effect this summer that would offer first-time guidance on managing student privacy in using longitudinal education data just as states and districts put the finishing touches on federally mandated data systems. 

The Christian Science Monitor asks what should happen to a homeless child enrolled in the wrong school?

Morning Announcement: April 25, 2011

The New York Times reports on New York City schools that are experimenting with implementing the common standards in the classroom. The article provides several examples of what teachers are doing differently writing, “A math teacher, José Rios, used to take a day or two on probabilities, drawing bell-shaped curves on the blackboard to illustrate the pattern known as normal distribution. This year, he stretched the lesson by a day and had students work in groups to try to draw the same type of graphic using the heights of the 15 boys in the class.”

Duncan Issues Far More NCLB Waivers Than Predecessors, Education Week reports.

The Charleston Gazette writes about high school dropout prevention legislation that was passed last year in West Virginia. The GED’s Options Pathway offers students an alternative to regular school . They take technical classes such as welding or train to become an Emergency Medical Technician and spend half the day in the classroom.

Seeing How High Tech Works with High Touch

I went to observe a learning technology platform in Orlando, but soon was caught up in the importance of blending high tech with high touch.

I had asked Cheryl Vedoe, the CEO of Apex Learning, to point me to one of the high schools where her company is involved. I ended up at a LifeSkills of Orange County in a section of Orlando that the Magic Kingdom has not reached. The campus is in a gritty shopping center where one story chiropractors and dentist offices have largely replaced retail stores.

This is a school for students that the traditional public schools could not reach.  Many had dropped out or were failing when they reached LifeSkills. One tattooed young man told me "I am a thug; well, I was a thug." Another young woman talked about how she has boosted her GPA from failing to exceeding a 3.0. She will graduate in June and then enroll at the local community college. A petite Haitian immigrant who had fled devastation of the recent hurricane spoke confidently about entering a career in medicine. A 22 year old proudly explains he is now ready to enter the military

The students credited the Apex learning system and its adaptive capability. "I am a visual learner," one student matter-of-factly explained, "Apex permitted me to move at my own pace."