School Climate Shouldn’t Be An Afterthought

School climate and culture often seem like an afterthought in education policy discussions, a mushy diversion from the hard measures of achievement and graduation rates that really define student success. The truth of course is that it is impossible to divorce school climate from the harder measures. For this reason it was very heartening to read the recent Center for Education Policy (CEP) report, Special Reports on School Improvement Grants, written by Jennifer McMurrer, on how schools receiving School Improvement Grants (SIG) are focusing on improving school climate. 

Morning Announcements: March 21, 2012

It’s the middle of the week. You’re almost there. Keep yourself motivated with the latest in education news.

Republican Congressman John Kline of Minnesota, who serves as the chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, wants to see Congress put more money into state grants for special education. Education Week reports that the sent a letter to the leading lawmakers on the House panel that oversees K-12 spending

Morning Announcements: March 20, 2012

Happy first day of spring! Although most of the nation has enjoyed unseasonably warm temperatures for the last several weeks, today marks the official start of the spring season. Take a moment catch up on the latest in education before taking a springtime stroll to smell the budding flowers… unless you have really bad allergies, then we wouldn’t suggest that.

Two years into the implementation of the federal School Improvement Grant program, Education Week reports that state officials are generally optimistic about its potential, but have a lot of ideas for perfecting it. After a pair of reports were released today by the Center on Education Policy, Education Secretary Arne Duncan finds the early data on School Improvement Grant program to be promising. Education Week also discusses whether the combination of large federal investments and tight federal strings actually make a difference for the nation's lowest-performing schools.

Afternoon Announcements: November 15, 2011

Good afternoon and happy Tuesday! Here are your afternoon announcements.

The Huffington Post details a proposed California Student Bill of Rights that education advocates are trying to get onto the ballot for next November. The bill would expand online education and offer students in rural and urban communities more educational opportunities. California was ranked last in states open to online learning by Digital Learning Now!, a project of the Foundation for Excellence in Education and the Alliance for Excellent Education.

The Associated Press describes a new plan in the Lafayette County School District that allows students to take one of three different paths to get a diploma. The traditional pathway, which is designed to help students transition to a four-year college or university, remains as an option. It is joined by two other paths set up for those wanting to attend community college after graduation or to go directly into the workforce or military. Lafayette High School Principal Patrick Robinson notes, “We want to make sure we are offering options for students.”

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.

Report Round-Up

Beyond the School: Exploring a Systemic Approach to School Turnaround from the American Institute for Research. This brief uses the experience of eight California school districts—all members of the California Collaborative on District Reform—to suggest a more systemic approach to school turnaround.

Implementing Statewide Transfer and Articulation Reform: An Analysis of Transfer Associate Degrees in Four States from the Center for the Study of Community Colleges. This report examines several states that have creating transfer associate degrees that allow students to both earn an associate degree and transfer seamlessly into a state university.

Incentivizing School Turnaround: A Proposal for Reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act from the Center for American Progress. This report argues that federal policy can play an instrumental role in rectifying the systemic failures that allow schools to flounder and that the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, or ESEA, is a ripe opportunity to revise the law’s main program that supports school improvement—the School Improvement Grant fund.

Report Round-Up

Unlocking the Power of Expanded Learning Time: Year Two Report on TASC ELT from America’s Promise Alliance. This report highlights the second year of its three-year Expanded Learning Time pilot and introduces a new Grad Tracker tool under production. The Grad Tracker tool uses the “ABCs” indicators to identify kids at risk for school failure and measures whether elementary and middle school students are on track to graduate on time from high school.

Changing Tires En Route: Michigan Rolls Out Millions in School Improvement Grants from the Center on Education Progress. This study examines Michigan's early implementation of the ARRA School Improvement Grant funds, including how many and what type of schools are receiving funding, the school improvement models being implemented, and the type of assistance provided by the state and districts to help improve low-performing schools. The report includes case studies on three SIG-participating schools: Lincoln High School (Van Dyke Public Schools), Romulus Middle School (Romulus Community School District), and Phoenix Multi-Cultural Academy (Detroit Public Schools).

Report Round-Up

How Many Schools and Districts Have Not Made Adequate Yearly Progress?  Four-Year Trends by the Center on Education Policy. This report analyizes the  trends over four years in the number of schools and school districts that did not make adequate yearly progress (AYP) in raising student achievement under the No Child Left Behind Act.

State Test Score Trends through 2008-09, Part 2: Slow and Uneven Progress in Narrowing Gaps from the Center on Education Policy.  This report analyzes state student achievement trend and gap data for states and the District of Columbia in math and reading for grades 4, 8, and high school.  The data is analyzed by student race, ethnicity, income, and gender from as early as 2002 through 2009 for states with three or more years of comparable testing results.

Hear Us Out: High School Students in Two Cities Talk about Going to College by Center for Youth Voice.  According to this study, students do not get the college-going help they need from schools until far too late in the game; instead parents and guardians largely step in to fill that role.

Morning Announcements: September 3, 2010

Washington Post columnist Jay Matthews discusses how students’ struggle to apply their AP or International Baccalaureate credits towards their college degrees.

At a new experimental school in Michigan, two teachers and an executive administrator will lead instead of a principal and assistant principal.

Michigan receives nearly $82.7 million in school improvement grants for twenty-eight of the lowest-performing schools in the state.

Read more about the federal aid money that is being awarded to two state coalitions for the development of new assessments in the New York Times, Miami Herald, and the Boston Globe.

Under a plan that the North Carolina Board of Education has been developing for months, most high school juniors will be required to take the ACT and the state will pay the students’ test registration fees.

A federal focus on high schools is long overdue

In a recent blog post on the Washington Post’s The Answer Sheet, Sarah Garland, a staff writer for the Hechinger Report, discussed how high schools were receiving a disproportionate amount of funding in the Education Department's School Improvement Grants program. Phillip Lovell, AEE Vice President of Federal Advocacy, and Fred Jones, AEE Legislative Associate, respectfully disagreed and in their own blog post explained why a federal focus on high schools is long overdue:

A recent post on The Answer Sheet written by Sarah Garland lamented that a majority of schools included in the School Improvement Grants program, the federal government’s funding stream for turning around the nation’s lowest and most chronically failing schools, are high schools.

Unfortunately, the problem for years has been too little concentration on high schools, not too much.

Garland’s argument is that turning around high schools is difficult and expensive, so it would be better to focus efforts on early childhood, elementary, and middle schools. The problem is that this has been the basic strategy employed by the federal government, and it has failed.