Grading Missouri schools

Governor Blunt delivered his 2008 State of the State Address on January 15, 2008. In his address, he spoke at length about the importance of education in our state. "Education is the most important investment we can make in our own and in our children's futures. It promotes our freedoms. It promotes our happiness, and, by creating opportunity, nurtures a society of rising prosperity...Education funding is my highest budget priority," Blunt said.

We need strong leadership in our state to improve the quality of our schools. The Governor is right - our kids deserve a world class education. That's why a recent report from the Education Research Center is so revealing. The Education Week's Quality Counts report gives Missouri schools a grade of C-. That just isn't good enough to make Missouri students leaders in our country and in the world. There are some real issues that need to be addressed in our state if Governor Blunt's visions are to become realities.

The Quality Counts report gave Missouri grades in the following six areas:

Chance for success = C+

K-12 achievement = D

Standards, assessments, and accountability = C

Transitions and alignment = D+

The teaching profession = C

School finance = C

The great thing about this report is that it compares Missouri to other states. We can look for best practices to model in other states. Innovation. Creativity. These are all great ways to improve our current education system. Let's take a more in-depth look at Missouri's report card.

K-12 Achievement

Missouri's lowest rankings in this category are for achievement gains in 4th Grade Reading and 8th Grade Reading based on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. We rank 48th and 47th respectively. Literacy is a critical skill and Missouri needs to do more to improve in this area. The Governor mentioned the importance of math and science in his address and spoke about gains in assessments in those subject areas. While there certainly is a movement towards math and technology, we cannot neglect the reading abilities of our kids.

Transitions and Alignment

In Early-Childhood Education, Missouri lacks a formal definition of school-readiness (13 other states do have a formal definition) and Missouri lacks a process for assessing the readiness of entering students (17 other states do have a process).

In Post-Secondary Education, Missouri lacks a formal definition of college readiness, unlike 15 other states, and does not require college preparation to earn a high school diploma, which only 3 other states require. Missouri also does not align high school graduation credits or assessments with post-secondary systems which is done in 6 and 10 other states respectively. Finally, Missouri does not use high school assessments for post-secondary decisions, something that 9 other states are doing.

The Teaching Profession

Requirements for initial licensure: Missouri teachers lag behind 27 other states which require a substantial amount of coursework in the subject area(s) taught by teachers. This means we do not require our teachers to have a strong background in the subject they are teaching in order to receive their initial licensure. Furthermore, while Missouri does require a test of subject-specific knowledge, we do not require a test of subject-specific pedagogy. Missouri also doesn't do a lot to discourage out-of-field teaching either by notifying parents or by banning or capping the number of out-of-field teachers at a school. When it comes to evaluating teacher performance, student achievement rates are not used and the teacher evaluations are not required on an annual basis nor are they done by well-trained evaluators. Finally, Missouri does not use a pay-for-performance program to reward teachers for raising student achievement, something that only 7 other states are doing.

Governor Blunt's plans center around curriculum improvements in math and science, additional Advanced Placement opportunities, techno-savvy classrooms, and after school programs. While these are all worthy causes, I hope that Missouri leaders take a look at some of the deficiencies identified in this report. There is absolutely no reason why Missouri schools can't provide our kids a world class education.

Florida Can Give Credit to J. Bush

Florida has gone through radical educational changes over the years. Jeb Bush did a lot to further education in Florida. While not everything passed, he did get several great things past. Now that he is out of office, he is starting a foundation that focuses on education. According to the Herald Tribune in Southwest Florida:

Jeb Bush forms foundation to back his education goals

BY BILL KACZOR THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

TALLAHASSEE -- Former Gov. Jeb Bush announced the formation Tuesday of a second organization to advance his education policy goals, including school accountability, teacher merit pay and vouchers that allow children to attend private schools at public expense.

The new Foundation for Excellence in Education will focus on carrying out programs to demonstrate such policies including cash awards of at least $2,500 for up to 100 of Florida's top teachers and their classrooms. Selection will be based on how much their students have improved on standardized reading and math tests.

Unlike Bush's Foundation for Florida's Future, which advocates education policy, the new organization will qualify for tax-free contributions, said Tiffany Koenigkramer, a spokeswoman for both groups.

"Reform is never finished and success is never final," Bush said in a news release. "A perpetual cycle of reform will lead to sustained improvement for the long-term."

Bush's most successful policy as governor was his A-Plus accountability program that grades, rewards and punishes schools based on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test and other standardized exam scores. Even critics acknowledged Bush put a focus on education in Florida like never before, although they say it focuses too much on testing.

Over and over again, I see Florida in the headlines for education. Missouri should try to model some of our educational programs off what they have done. We cannot afford to do any thing less than change.

Paying for the best

Merit Pay

The state of Florida can provide us insight into many great education ideas. First of all, they have wonderful educational options for special education students. Secondly, they have several school districts that are participating in merit pay for teachers. Unfortunately, not all districts are taking advantage of this option. According to Tampa Bay’s 10 News, “Officials say the latest incarnation of merit pay for teachers continues to lag with only 26 of Florida's 67 county school districts having applied to participate.”

Merit pay can work on several levels. It can attract better teachers to the field knowing what they could be paid if they excel. Many people would not want to teach because they could find better paying jobs elsewhere. Furthermore, it may give teachers incentives to teach better once they are teaching. When teachers are all paid the same, there is only inner motivation to excel, and not everyone has this. Many teachers may leave the field due to the countless frustrations they must deal with. They encounter red tape around every corner; they should have some bonuses. Merit pay may also help drive the inadequate teachers out of the field.

All in all, merit pay for teachers has many ways it can improve the quality of people in the field. Education is a stepping stone for children, why shouldn’t they have the best?

Education is big enough for the both of us

http://freedomisthesolution.blogspot.com/2007/11/let-my-people-go.html

“As always, shrill voices rise to defend the status quo. They call this risky and they call it a threat to public schools. They ignore the fact that 7 different studies have shown that students that switch to private schools under voucher programs show improved test scores AND the test scores of the students who stay behind at the public schools also improve. Nobody is left behind. Competition forces everyone out of old habits to make needed changes ignored for years. History has shown that dumping billions upon billions of dollars into failed school systems hasn’t improved test scores at all. A mountain of evidence supporting school choice rises before them, but these patrons of the past defend the status quo.

They also ignore the fact that Milwaukee has had school vouchers for 17 years. They ignore that Cleveland and Washington D.C. have school vouchers, and when it came time to rebuild the tattered schools of New Orleans’, the choice was clear: Vouchers and School Choice. They ignore the fact that Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Ireland all have nationwide voucher and school choice programs. None have gone back to our old system. All of these countries not only outperform our students, they are getting further ahead every year. The only risk is to expect our children to compete in the future marketplace with a school system based in the past.”

My Thoughts: I believe that a conversation between parties and ideologies is necessary to come up with a solution for the ills of public education. Instead of pointing out potential problems with a reform measure that is sorely needed, the Educrats and teachers’ unions would be better served helping to perfect a new definition of public education. Having said that, I also think that widening choices for students will benefit ALL, and not at the expense of SOME. Milwaukee has shown us that public schools do not face decreased funding when choice is in play. Many people cite enormous class sizes as a hindrance to urban public education, and small class sizes as a plus for private schools. Private schools are not obligated to educate ALL students, and can focus their resources. The same stands true for public schools: when they are no longer burdened by educating ALL students, the more they can focus their resources. It logically follows that barring corruption and waste, public schools would be able to provide a caliber of education to compete with private schools. Private schools already compete with public schools, and win. Schools choice can be looked at as a way for private schools to take more students from the public schools system, or it can be looked at as an opportunity for public schools to get back in the running, with the underpinning that because it is the child’s education, that money should follow that individual child to wherever he or she is best educated.

Dumbing down is, well, dumb

Dumb down class, asks principal memo

By ETHAN ROUEN and ERIN EINHORN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Thursday, December 13th 2007, 4:00 AM

The principal of an East Harlem high school last month stunned his staffers by suggesting they dumb down their classes.

"If you are not passing more than 65% of your students in a class, then you are not designing your expectations to meet their abilities," Principal Bennett Lieberman wrote in a Nov. 28 memo to teachers at Central Park East High School. "You are setting your students up for failure, which in turn, limits your success as a professional."

The memo, obtained by the Daily News, urges teachers to review their homework and grading policies, and reminds them that "most of our students ... have difficult home lives, and struggle with life in general. They DO NOT have a similar upbringing nor a similar school experience to our experiences growing up."

One teacher who received the memo said she and her colleagues were "outraged," especially because the school is one of 200 where teachers will receive $3,000 bonuses if their schools improve.

"It's like bribery," she said. "It's not the achievement. It's just the grades."

"Why are they going to let some pass who don't deserve it? It's not fair to those who want to work," said Estevan Cruz, 16, an 11th-grader.

Senior Richard Palacios, 17, said 65% of his classmates don't even show up for school. "It's already too much of an easy ride," He said. He estimated that only three or four of the 15 kids in his math class routinely appear.

From: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2007/12/13/2007-12-13_dumb_down_class_asks_principal_memo.html

This is an alarming trend in many inner-city schools, and I’ve heard parents and teachers mention that same attitude in St. Louis. We need to make sure that when our kids walk through the door on the first day of kindergarten, our teachers and administrators are saying “This is where you can go,” instead of “This is where you came from,” and proceed accordingly.

Last night I watched The Astronaut Farmer, a delightful movie about Charles Farmer (Billy Bob Thornton) whose dream was to go into space. His life seemed to take a sharp turn away from that dream; he has a ranch and a family, and very little money, but instead of seeing that as a burden, he involved his family in his dream, built a rocket and orbited the earth. Now there were some cheesy moments about America being about dreams, and how your dreams are your most important possession, but it was a nice sketch of making hard decisions, taking risks and dreaming bigger than your upbringing.

This should be the statement that is planted into a child’s head in school especially when there is a gang of outside influences telling a child that they can’t succeed, that there are a set of “accepted” professions for their neighborhood, and they have to lower their expectations. What happens so often is that those expectations follow a child everywhere, and their role models set the bar lower even though there never was an inherent reason that child couldn’t be a concert pianist or a doctor or an entrepreneur.

From an education administration standpoint, environment should not define a child’s potential—it should define what we have to do to help that child reach his or her potential. That ‘we’ includes teachers, parents, principles and the community, but it’s worth it. It’s never worth it to push human beings under the rug for the appearance of success.

Great Idea of the Week

Highlandville students receive computers from unlikely source

By: Emily Hoffman, staff writer emilyh@cpimo.com

12/12/2007

When Stefanie Reubell's Highlandville Elementary Discovery class needed new computers for class work, help came from an unlikely source-the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield.

"My first year here, I started writing letters and e-mails and making phone calls to various places requesting their used computers for my gifted classroom," Reubell said. "I wrote to the Federal Medical Prison in Springfield sometime at the beginning of last year. Then a couple of months ago, they called to ask if I still needed computers for my classroom."

Reubell said the idea to write to the prison came from her need to be more "creative" in obtaining the things she needed in her classroom.

"I have a wonderful, generous school district that really takes care of our kiddos, but there are some things on my 'teacher's wish list' that I have to be more creative about getting," she said. "Most teachers, especially in rural school districts, have to know how to write grants and where to find good but inexpensive supplies and tools. In this case, I wrote to a prison."

Reubell's creative efforts paid off when the elementary received more than 14 computers from the prison.

"They sent 14 or 15 computers as well as two massive servers, a ton of software and network cards and probably 30 or 40 brand-new monitors," Reubell said. "It was so nice that we had a lot of overflow. I just kept six useable ones for my classroom, and I kept a few extras in my room that are ones we're still working on getting installed and booted. I thought the kids could learn some things about the inner workings of a computer and try to solve the problems."

"When most people find out the federal prison donated the computers, they do a double-take," she said. "I realize a prison plus a school is an unusual 'pairing.' I suppose some would say that in investing in a school, the prison was taking extra steps to make sure fewer people end up there by staying here."

Reubell said the students also use the computers for blogging, learning other languages, researching projects, improving keyboarding, creating spreadsheets, developing Web sites and even programming.

Reubell says she and the school will never forget the generosity the prison showed.

"We were so appreciative of their big heartedness," she said. "I have future plans to involve the students in digital creation as well as communications with other online classrooms as a kind of 21st century pen-pal program. And this is just the first year we've had computers, imagine how much more we will think of and do as the years go on."

Reduce, Recycle and Reuse

What a neat and unusual story, I thought. It brings up an adage about spending a little for education saves a lot of social and economic cost down the road from imprisonment and social services and crime, and I think that’s true. Finishing high school drastically increases your chances of having something better (more rewarding, less risky and more profitable) to do than turn to crime.

This from Focus Adolescent Services Website:

The gap between dropouts and more educated people is widening as opportunities increase for higher skilled workers all but disappear for the less skilled. · In the last 20 years the earnings level of dropouts doubled, while it nearly tripled for college graduates. · Recent dropouts will earn $200,000 less than high school graduates, and over $800,000 less than college graduates, in their lives. · Dropouts make up nearly half the heads of households on welfare. · Dropouts make up nearly half the prison population.

There are many different ways to get that statistic—to make it greater or smaller—but the bottom line is that Prison is not an asset to anyone’s resume and the burden falls back to taxpayers to an increasing extent. Yet, we’re paying more for schools than ever before—so where is the problem?

The problem is in schools that aren’t doing what Ms. Reubell is with her “teacher’s wish list”. Instead of buying new computers, or spending a fortune in a lawsuit asking taxpayers for more money, Missouri could save so much by writing a few letters asking for donations. Instead of spending thousands of dollars, Ms. Reubell was able to re-use something already paid for by taxpayers.

It’s so refreshing to see initiative and a respect for the fact that taxpayers and towns themselves aggressively support education, and the more bang we get for our buck, the better our students will be educated, the more resources will be available to them, and the more taxpayers will be able to support those endeavors that DO require a lot of additional funding.