Mayoral Control Alone Doesn’t Fix Schools, Rutgers Institute Study Finds – Bloomberg

Mayoral Control Alone Doesn’t Fix Schools, Rutgers Institute Study Finds – Bloomberg

I couldn’t resist sharing the version of this study on Bloomberg, the news agency owned by the Mayor of NewYork, Michael Bloomberg…..the irony is rich…..

Mayoral control, advocated by politicians pushing to overhaul underperforming school systems,
fails to improve student achievement, according to a two-year study.

The research, conducted by the Institute of Education Law and Policy at Rutgers University, looked at improvements in nine education systems where there were changes in how the schools were governed, led by Baltimore, Boston and New York City.
The study will provide guidance to New Jersey policy makers as the state prepares to return schools in Paterson, Newark and Jersey City to local control after as many as 21 years under
state operation, the authors said.

The findings, the subject of a seminar today at the university’s Newark, New Jersey campus, raise questions about New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s plans to overhaul the schools in the state’s largest city by putting Mayor Cory Booker in charge, said Alan Sadovnik, professor of Education, Sociology and Public Administration and Affairs at Rutgers and co-author of the report in a telephone interview yesterday.

“Solving Newark’s problems will require more than mayoral control alone,” Sadovnik said. “Governance is one part of urban school improvement, which has to include effective school
and administrative strategies and a variety of economic, community and health initiatives at the local level.”

Facebook Donation

Facebook Inc. founder Mark Zuckerberg said on Sept. 24 that he will donate $100 million to Newark’s schools. Almost half of all students in the district don’t graduate from high school.

Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Washington and Hartford, Connecticut, were the other school systems that were part of the Rutgers study.

New school leadership helped improve efficiency and reduce corruption in Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington. In almost all the cities, mayoral control was associated with increased funding by either the state or the private sector, the study found.

Increased stability enabled school leaders and the community to concentrate on improving student achievement, the report said. In Cleveland, which had 13 superintendents in 15,
turnover ended once the new governance system was installed, while frequent strikes by the unions stopped after mayoral control in Chicago.

Successful Bargaining

Mayoral leadership in New York and Chicago resulted in successful bargaining agreements with the teachers’ union to lengthen classroom hours and allow the creation of charter
schools, the report also said.

At the same time, community input has diminished under the new models for running schools, the report noted. New York City parents, seeking a stronger voice in school policy, lobbied for changes in the mayoral control law, while parents in Chicago and
Boston have complained they don’t have enough say in school closings, the report said.

“That’s a real negative,” Sadovnik said. “Most of the research indicates that parental involvement is a key ingredient in increasing student achievement.”

Christie has said he will give Booker a larger role in overseeing the district’s schools and its 39,000 students, and the mayor will also get a say in picking a new superintendent.
Christie’s plan raises questions regarding the legality of the move without legislative action, the report said.

Mayoral involvement, or control, should be considered as part of an overall systematic approach to urban district improvement, the study said.

“The data certainly do not indicate that forms of governance with mayoral involvement have a negative effect on student achievement, but rather that governance may not be the
most important factor; or, at the least, may be one of many factors in raising student achievement,” it said.

The mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, is founder and
majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP.

Parent Engagement is Critical so what’s going on in Delaware. DE Parent leaders need to mobilize…..

Parents Across America demand to be heard

Leonie Haimson

Executive Director, Class Size Matters

Posted: September 4, 2010 02:04 PM

Last spring, a new grassroots organization called Parents Across America wrote a letter to President Obama, pointing out how parents had been left out of the education discussion at the national level. From the administration’s “Race to the Top” proposals to their proposed “Blueprint” for revising NCLB, parent input has been either dismissed or ignored.

We wrote an article for Education Week, called Shutting Out Parents, about how this conscious disregard of the parent perspective was unacceptable, and must be reversed.

We explained how we wanted to see a quite different set of reforms, focusing on strengthening neighborhood schools rather than closing them down, by providing smaller classes, more parent involvement, and a well-rounded curriculum. Moreover, we pointed out how these reforms are research-based, rather than the highly experimental policies of privatization and test-based accountability currently promoted by this administration.

Why do we reject the administration’s priorities? Many parents have already seen the devastating effects of such top-down policies in our children’s schools, massively increasing the amount of test prep, narrowing the curriculum, sacrificing art, music and science, and degrading the quality of education in numerous ways.

The President responded in a speech by mischaracterizing his critics as supporters of the status quo, which could not be further from the truth. As public school parents, no one understands better than we there needs to be positive, meaningful reforms in our schools.

We wrote a follow up letter to the President, recently published in the Washington Post’s Answer Sheet. In it, we asked him to insist that parent input in decision-making at the national level be instituted at the U.S. Department of Education.

We also focused on the problems inherent in the euphemistically called “School Improvement Grants,” a federal program that is forcing districts across the country with large numbers of poor children to close down their neighborhood schools, convert them to charters, or fire half their teaching staffs.

Like the misconceived “urban renewal” concepts in vogue in the 1950′s and 1960′s , we have seen how these sorts of policies have ripped apart communities and hurt our most vulnerable children.

At the same time, schools across the country are experiencing huge budget cuts, causing the loss of thousands of teaching positions, and even larger class sizes. This is not change we can believe in.

Since our letter was published, we have received enthusiastic response from parents across the country, who are understandably distressed about how their ideas for positive change are being dismissed or ignored.

And we are not alone. See the responses to the recent 2010 PDK/Gallup Poll, “A Time for a Change,” in which only 34% of Americans gave Obama an “A” or a “B” on his education policies. The poll showed especially low support for the administration’s insistence that public schools be closed down or privatized rather than helped to improve.

More recently, Arne Duncan has gone on a tour of the country, in an attempt to show that he is responsive to the concerns of students, parents and teachers, but has shown no signs of changing his policies.

Our letter to Obama is below. If you agree with our views, leave a comment below, join our Facebook page and/or email us at parentsacrossamerica@gmail.com.

__
Dear President Obama:

Several weeks ago, we wrote to you about our concern that your proposed “Blueprint for Reform” did not acknowledge the critical role parents must play in any meaningful school improvement process. We also expressed our serious reservations about some of the Blueprint’s strategies.

Our goal is simple – to ensure that our children receive the best possible education. As parents, we are the first to see the positive effects of good programs, and the first line of defense when our children’s well-being is threatened. Our input is unique and essential.

Recently, Secretary Duncan announced that he would require districts that receive federal school improvement grants (SIG) to involve parents and the community in planning for schools identified for intervention. We appreciate this response as a first step; however, more needs to be done.

First, leadership must come from the top. We would like to see meaningful, broad-based parent participation not just in our local districts, but at the U.S. Department of Education, where critical decisions are being made about our children’s education.

Second, we need more than rhetoric to feel confident that only educationally sound strategies will be used in our children’s schools. The current emphasis on more charter schools, high-stakes testing, and privatization is simply not supported by research. Disagreement on these matters is not a result of parents clinging to the “status quo,” as you have recently asserted. No one has more at stake in better schools than we do – but we disagree with you and Secretary Duncan about how to get them.

We need effective, proven, common-sense practices that will strengthen our existing schools, rather than undermine them. These include parent input into teacher evaluation systems, fairly-funded schools, smaller class sizes and experienced teachers who are respected as professionals, not seen as interchangeable cogs in a machine. We want our children to be treated as individuals, not data points. And we want a real, substantial role in all decisions that affect our children’s schools.

More specifically, and urgently, we insist on being active partners in the formulation of federal school improvement policies. The models proposed by the U.S. Department of Education are rigid and punitive, involving either closure, conversion to charters, or the firing of large portions of the teaching staff. All of these strategies disrupt children’s education and destabilize communities; none adequately addresses the challenges these schools face.

We also insist on being active partners in reforms at the school level, with the power to devise our own local solutions, using research-based methods, after a collaborative needs assessment at each individual school.

Our voices must count. If you listen, you will make real changes in your School Improvement Grant proposals as well as your “Blueprint” for education reform.

We look forward to your response and a brighter future for our children and our nation.

Sincerely, Parents Across America

Natalie Beyer, Durham Allies for Responsive Education (DARE), NC

Caroline Grannan, San Francisco public school parent, volunteer and advocate, CA

Pamela Grundy, Mecklenburg Area Coming Together for Schools, NC

Leonie Haimson, Class Size Matters, New York, NY

Sharon Higgins, public school parent, Oakland, CA

Susan Magers, Parent Advocate, FL

Karen Miller, Public education advocate, Houston TX

Mark Mishler, active public school parent, former president, Albany City PTA*, NY

Sue Peters, public school parent and co-editor, Seattle Education 2010

Bill Ring, TransParent®, Los Angeles, CA

Lisa Schiff, board member of Parents for Public Schools*, member of Parents for Public Schools of San Francisco*, “School Beat” columnist for BeyondChron, CA

Rita M. Solnet, President, CDS, Inc.; Director, Testing is Not Teaching, FL

Dora Taylor, Parent and co-editor of Seattle Education 2010, WA

Later school start times and Zzzs to A’s: I bet this would cost less than an extra $700,000 and may dramatically assist Glasgow and Howard in the PZ….

Later school start times and Zzzs to A’s

A growing body of evidence demonstrates that growing bodies benefit from more sleep. When districts push back the start of the school day, good things happen.

By Emily Sohn, Special to the Los Angeles Times

August 23, 2010

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As summer winds down, another new school year brings fresh notebooks, sharp pencils and — for many kids — a new cycle of sleep deprivation.

With classes that start as early as 7 a.m. and buses that pull up long before sunrise, some 80% of American kids in grades 6 through 12 are falling short of sleep recommendations during the school year, according to research by the National Sleep Foundation, a sleep advocacy group.

Overtired kids, studies suggest, struggle with depression. They gain weight and get in more car accidents. Their grades suffer. And many turn to caffeine, with questionable results for productivity and unknown effects on the development of young brains.

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Now, fueled by accumulating research showing that adolescent bodies are designed to sleep late and that delaying school start times — even by just 30 minutes — makes a huge difference in how well teens feel and perform, an increasing number of schools around the country are ringing morning bells later than they used to. Many more are thinking about it.

At the same time, however, there are strong pockets of resistance to change from administrators and parents who think that bus schedules will get too complicated, that starting later will interfere with after-school programs or that kids simply will stay up later if they know they can sleep in a little more.

Despite the inconveniences involved in district-wide changes, sleep researchers emphasize the need to view sleep, like food and exercise, as a pillar of health.

“There are all these other things we do to ensure success for our kids, and getting them to have adequate sleep is probably one of the most important things you can do,” says Judith Owens, a sleep researcher at Brown Medical School in Providence, R.I. “Parents need to take this as seriously as eating right, using seatbelts and putting on sunscreen.”

Minnesota study

One of the first, longest-lasting and most influential teen sleep experiments started in Minnesota in the mid-1990s. Around that time, Minneapolis high schools shifted start times from 7:15 to 8:40. The nearby suburb of Edina shifted from 7:25 to 8:30.

Even though the two districts couldn’t be more different on scales of race, socioeconomics and other factors, results in both places appeared immediately, says Kyla Wahlstrom, director of the Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

Students were noticeably more alert in the first two periods of the day. The cafeteria was calmer. There were fewer fights in the halls. Students, who were now getting nearly an hour more sleep each night, said they felt less depressed. They were raising their hands instead of falling asleep at their desks. Even parents thought their kids were easier to live with.

Over time, Wahlstrom and colleagues documented, students started getting better grades on homework and quizzes. Schools reported lower tardiness rates. Attendance rates went up. Graduation rates improved.

“We found clear evidence of more kids staying in school and not dropping out,” Wahlstrom says. “Every group — principals, teachers, parents and kids — had something to say about it.”

Since then, reports from places such as Brazil, Israel and Rhode Island have turned up similar trends. Even small changes in school start times appear to make big differences.

In one of the most recent studies, published last month in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine, Owens and colleagues found that, after a change in start time from 8 to 8:30 a.m., students at a small, private New England high school reported fewer depressed feelings (a shift from 65.8% to 45%), better moods (from 84% reporting irritated and annoyed feelings to 62.6%); and less sleepiness during the day. (Before the shift, 69.1% of students said they rarely or never got a good night’s sleep compared with 33.7% after the shift, for example.)

Class attendance improved: Teacher-reported first-class absence and tardiness rates dropped by 45%. Fewer students visited the health center (from 15.3% of students to 4.6% of students).

“Virtually every single parameter we looked at changed in the positive direction,” Owens says. “We still saw substantial percentages of students reporting daytime sleepiness and depression. It wasn’t a panacea. But there was a really dramatic improvement in everything.”

Sleep seems to beget sleep, the study suggested. Even though the new schedule started just 30 minutes later, students actually went to bed 15 minutes earlier and got 45 more minutes of sleep each day. When interviewed, kids said they felt so much better from even a little bit of extra sleep that they were motivated to go to bed sooner and sleep even more. Owens suspects that the extra sleep also helped them get their homework done more efficiently, affording them extra time in the evening to wind down and get to bed.

“These kids get into a vicious cycle of being exhausted, taking five hours to do three hours of homework and having to stay up later to get it done,” she says. “As they’re getting less sleep, they have to stay up later and they get even more tired.”

The melatonin shift

Blame biology — not laziness — for making teens push the snooze button over and over again. As kids approach puberty, scientists now know, there is a two-hour shift in when their bodies release melatonin, the hormone that causes sleepiness. As a result, teens and preteens find it impossible to fall asleep until about 11 p.m., even if they try to go to bed earlier. Yet teenagers still need an average of 9.25 hours of slumber each night.

On top of the shift in natural sleeping and waking times, Owens says, there is also a delay in when a severe dip in alertness occurs during the early morning hours. In adults, this low point hits between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m.; in adolescents, it falls between about 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. That means that, while their alarm clocks are telling teens to get out of bed and demanding that their brains perform, their bodies are screaming at them to keep sleeping.

“There’s no doubt that schools starting before 8 or 8:15 are too early if you just do the simple math,” says Amy Wolfson, who studies adolescent sleep at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. “You’re not going to speak to anyone in my field who is going to say they think starting at 7:15 makes any sense at all.”

And it’s not just high school students who suffer from alarm clocks that blare at what feel like ungodly hours, Wolfson says. The melatonin shift may happen as early as age 10 or 11.

In a 2007 study in the journal Behavioral Sleep Medicine, Wolfson and colleagues found that middle school students in urban New England whose schools started at 7:15 were getting much less sleep, exhibiting more behavior problems and were tardy four times as often as kids who started school at 8:37. The eighth-graders at the earlier-starting school also got worse grades than their peers who slept more. (In this study, and others like it, researchers make sure that comparison schools are similar in size, socioeconomics, race and other factors that could affect outcomes.)

On average, sixth-graders get 8.4 hours of sleep on school nights, according to the 2006 report on adolescent sleep habits by the National Sleep Foundation. High school seniors get just 6.9 hours.

In addition to the mood, behavior and learning issues, scientists are starting to uncover more subtle ways that such chronic sleep loss can hurt kids. Some studies, for example, show that sleep deprivation compromises the immune system. Others suggest that, with too little sleep, the body releases higher levels of hormones that induce hunger, possibly contributing to growing rates of obesity.

Tired teens may also be more vulnerable to falling asleep at the wheel. In two studies — one out of Kentucky published in 2008 and one done in Virginia that was presented at a sleep meeting earlier this year — scientists linked early high school start times with higher rates of car accidents. (In the Virginia study, there were 65.4 car crashes for every 1,000 teen drivers in the city with an early start time and 46.2 per 1,000 in a neighboring city with a later start time — a difference of 40%.)

To stay awake, young people often turn to coffee, soda, energy drinks and other caffeinated beverages. In a public high school in Massachusetts, 95% of polled students reported drinking caffeine in the prior two weeks, mostly in the form of soda and most often in the afternoon and evening, Wolfson and a colleague reported in June in the journal Health Education and Behavior.

There are no published guidelines for how much caffeine is too much for adolescents, Wolfson says, but the substance stays in the body for up to five hours. Even if caffeinated kids manage to fall asleep, caffeine worsens the quality of their sleep. Finally, no one knows how caffeine might affect developing brains — although plenty of experts are concerned about the link between sugar in soda and weight gain.

Schools respond

As the sleep research piles up, a growing number of schools are moving toward later start times. No one has kept track of how many schools have made the change. But experts say they are fielding a growing number of calls from districts around the country asking for advice about whether and how to switch to later start times. And this spring, Wolfson says, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hosted a meeting of interdisciplinary sleep researchers to talk about school start times and teen sleep deprivation as national health issues.

Since the discussion on school start times began more than a decade ago, not a singe district that has made the change has decided to change back. But even as awareness grows, the issue remains volatile in many school districts, where administrators and parents are resistant to changing established schedules .

We are here! We are here! We are here! A Partnership Zone Production. #RTTT @GovernorMarkell

Today, the Delaware Department of Education named 4 schools to its much ballyhooed Partnership Zone (herein referred to as: the PZ). The Christina School District has two of the schools named to this zone: Glasgow High School and Stubbs Elementary School. Neither is a shocking surprise, but the motivations to include each is somewhat murky when compared to some others. For example, Stubbs is only two years removed from being a 4-5-6 school into a K-5 school, so the comparatives on testing are odd.  Anyway, there we are with 2 schools in the PZ.

The DOE began a PR campaign today with this gem:

Why are we calling the deployment of untested reforms an opportunity? Taking risks? Our children deserve to have more teachers and smaller class sizes, not plans that feed adult egos and lure people into a false sense of efficacy. Here’s a risk: take the 119 million and just hire educators in quantity to get our kids in smaller classes. Change the unit count rules and let us enter the hiring marketplace for educators in May, not July……

Where to begin…. A true partnership? Dr. Lowery, if this bypasses the local school board AGAIN, just like the entire RTTT process usurped our authority, this statement will confirm that the myths listed here ARE realities while your Realities are Fantasies. Evidence based? (I can’t wait!) Innovative? (means nothing if it doesn’t work) Rigorous? (Doing things longer and harder does not yield in education Dr. Lowery, it is about smarter)

Moving along we get more cool propaganda:

This one is very deceptive as the whole process has been very gotcha driven from a local control perspective. Parents have been completely marginalized by the Markell administration on the entire RTTT process, plan and implementation. With more artificial deadlines, this trend is set to continue….

That Respect arrow….WOW, can’t wait to see that one happen! I hereby pledge my complete openness and honesty and respect right now: RTTT is respectfully very flawed.

For those wondering about the models, here is a quick pic:

So after we go into our rooms and plan and plan and plan…here’s the handy dandy Secretary of Education holds ALL the cards flow chart:

I’m squinting….are school boards mentioned? Nope, shucks missed out again….guess local control is a fallacy in Delaware. The First State is the first state to tell elected school board members to go pound sand, once again I may add.

This may be my favorite slide….for once we get to the state of need a “Lead Partner” to run our PZ schools…check out the rules…..or lack thereof:

Under

Experience: working in a school turnaround environment and working in high schools….whew, with a bar that high we are going to get AWESOME results!

Willingness: Operate under some but NOT most LEA procedures and regulations (so I can throw my board and district policy manuals in the trash Dr. Lowery?) Use some but not all LEA central office services (only the expensive ones? What are the rules here?)

Readiness: Ramp up quickly? (Define please!) Have excess cash or ability to raise capital quickly (going to give them taxing authority Jack?)

Check out the killer competencies: Execute a full community engagement plan (goals? Measurements? Scope?)  Transform the existing culture to create positive learning environment (DOE has plenty of experience transforming cultures and as we all know this one is a simple as a finger snap!)

Of course we end any quality PPT with the obligatory:

I have tons. Let’s see if the DOE if going to listen.

We are here! We are here! We are here!

They are free…..um unless you consider selling out public education to reforms who use unproven strategies free….

Delaware committed to the Common Core Standards as a major component of RTTT Grant Application. In fact, the DEDOE has held up disbursement of RTTT $$ pending the State Board of Education adopting the Common Core per RTTT application….. so the maps are free, but the price to pay is immense in my estimation…..

Common Core’s Curriculum Maps in English Language Arts were written by public school teachers for public school teachers. The maps translate the new Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for Kindergarten through 12th grade into unit maps that teachers can use to plan their year, craft their own more detailed curriculum, and create lesson plans. The maps are flexible and adaptable, yet they address every standard in the CCSS.  Any teacher, school, or district that chooses to follow the Common Core maps can be confident that they are adhering to the standards. Even the topics the maps introduce grow out of and expand upon the “exemplar” texts recommended in the CCSS.  And because they are free, the maps will save school districts millions in curriculum development costs. The draft maps are available for public comment until September 17. Please tell us what you think!

THE ELA MAPS!