In an earlier post I mentioned that Davis Guggenheim, the Oscar-winning filmmaker who made An Inconvenient Truth and It Might Get Loud, is coming out with a new movie about the state of education in the U.S.  Waiting for Superman will be released in select theaters tomorrow, with more theaters to follow in the coming weeks.  So far I don’t know of any theaters that will carry the movie in Arkansas, but if the film does well it should come here eventually.

Early indications suggest that the movie is very well done.  And Guggenheim has been everywhere promoting the movie this week.  Here is an interview he did yesterday on NPR’s All Things Considered.

Guggenheim was also on Oprah Monday, and Oprah is dedicating her Friday show to the film as well.  And she is also promising a “major announcement.”  Here, as long as Harpo doesn’t remove them, are youtube vids of the entire Oprah episode.

It looks like the school millage has passed in Fayetteville but failed in Springdale. For full election results head over to Ozarks Unbound.

From Ozarks Unbound:

*Unofficial results from Tuesday’s Millage Elections

Fayetteville School District Millage
FOR tax .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  4,875   55.48%
AGAINST tax.  .  .  .  .  . 3,912   44.52%

Springdale School District Millage
FOR tax .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 3,173   43.77%
AGAINST tax.  .  .  .  . 4,077   56.23%

It is school election day here in Northwest Arkansas.  Fayetteville and Springdale have millage increases on the ballot and several school board seats are up for grabs across the area.  For a rundown of what will be on the ballot in your area check out the Washington County Courthouse site here see sample ballots here, and find out where to vote in Fayetteville here. If you live in Benton County, you can check out sample ballots here.

I live in Fayetteville and will be voting for the millage increase to renovate the high school. I encourage all of you who live in the ‘ville to do the same and here is why. First, while Fayetteville High School is not falling down, it is a crowded and outdated facility that lacks several of the amenities we desire. Second, after last year’s failed millage vote, the administration and school board responded to the voters concerns about cost by both scaling back the project and cutting their budget to fund a portion of the renovation. Third, at some point in the not too far off future we will need to renovate our high school facilities. This year we have the opportunity to finance that renovation with interest free (or close to) bonds, thereby saving the taxpayers a substantial sum.

Still not convinced a yes vote is the way to go, then check out this guest post by Jay Greene supporting the millage.

There was news a couple days ago that students at the University of Central Arkansas are now being offered free wake-up calls. 

While this is not as bad as other recent financial mismanagement problems at UCA, it is still bothersome that every student there, and every taxpayer in the state, now has to foot the bill for students who can’t manage to wake themselves up and get to class on time.  The Dem-Gaz story is here.  Here’s an excerpt:

The calls, which started this semester, are part of the UCA student center’s expanded concierge offerings.

Other services offered include reminder calls on anything from a math test to a doctor’s appointment.

Parents also can go to the UCA website and find out how to order balloon bouquets or birthday cakes and have them delivered to their child’s dormitory room.

Hank Phelps, student center director, said the expanded offerings are “a little bit like a concierge at a hotel,” but with a couple caveats.

“I’m not doing laundry. I don’t polish shoes,” he said.

Students wanting the wakeup and reminder calls to their cell phones must sign up for them. UCA does not charge for the calls, which are provided by Snoozester, a Maryland-based company, under a one-year, $11,000 contract with the university, Phelps said.”

The real cost is definitely more than $11,000.  I’m imagining that a number of UCA employees devoted time to coming up with this “concierge” plan. They held some meetings, formed some committees, drafted some memos, etc.  These things cost money and resources as well.

I also imagine that most UCA students aren’t huge fans of this new service.  By and large, the majority of young adults who get themselves into college are responsible and hardworking, and I’m sure there are plenty of responsible students at UCA.  Is it fair to require those responsible UCA students to pay for a wake-up service for their less than responsible classmates?

State taxpayers should be annoyed as well.  Hard-working families pay taxes (or, ahem, buy lottery tickets) which subsidize the education provided at the State’s colleges.  And while everyone pays taxes,  not everyone can make it to college.  On average, college students are more advantaged than typical Arkansans.  Somehow it doesn’t seem quite right to increasingly coddle these relatively privileged college students at taxpayer expense.  Why don’t we fund wake-up calls for young cashiers?  Or hairstylists?  Or mechanics?  Or firefighters?  There are plenty of hard-working young people in Arkansas trying to gain a footing in the world, and most are more disadvantaged than college students.  Shouldn’t state funds be used to help the least advantaged residents of our state succeed?

I was also under the impression that cell phones had pretty much made wake-up calls obsolete.  I have a fairly basic cell phone, but I can easily program it to wake me up.  Sure,  I used to get wake-up calls every time I stayed in a hotel.  But that was a decade ago.

Washington DC Mayor Adrian Fenty is engaged at the tail end of a heated primary election in our nation’s capitol where the Democratic primary always decides the eventual mayor. This local election is important to education wonks across the country because of the aggressive school Rhee-form agenda pushed by Mayor Fenty and his Schools’ Chancellor, Michelle Rhee. To many, this election represents a referendum on the school Rhee-form strategies pushed by Rhee. (Fenty’s opponent is supported by the city’s teachers’ union.)

As of last week, polls showed Fenty trailing by anywhere from 7 to 17 percentage points. Unfortunately for the Mayor, while he could use the help of a friend and fellow school reformer in DC, President Obama has not stepped forward to come out strongly in support of Fenty.

In all likelihood, a Fenty loss would lead to a Rhee exodus from the nation’s most visible example of hard-nosed school Rhee-form, in which the needs of the students are now being placed ahead of the wants of the grown-ups in the system. If this were to occur, it would be quite a victory for defenders of ineffective educators and supporters of the status quo … for those who think the economically-disadvantaged kids in DC and other US big cities (with dropout rates hovering near 50%) are served well by our current system of schools.

On the flip side, a Fenty victory would be a win for hundreds of excellent teachers in the DC public schools and, more importantly, for the students attending these schools each and every day. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Last week, we were fortunate in the UA College of Education to host a lecture from Glenn Loury, the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences in the Department of Economics at Brown University. While he gave an interesting talk on the Economics of Affirmative Action Policy, he also made a quick reference to education policy when he alluded to his former student, Roland Fryer.

Dr. Fryer is now a Harvard Professor who is creating quite a buzz by evaluating an innovative educational program that pays kids for good grades in cities across the US. He is one of the very rare academics who both understands the academic lingo and can also translate it to the regular person, as is made clear by this interview on the Colbert Report …. this (along with his complete candor) is why he is such a joy to watch.

For a longer speech by Professor Fryer from 2009 advocating R&D in education, click below:

All of the important policy conversations about how to best evaluate teachers are getting lost in the arguments over whom to blame. And this blame game is clearly the wrong way to frame this discussion. The result is that educators become instantly defensive and it becomes impossible to collectively devise a better teacher evaluation tool than we have today (almost non-existent in most places).

This culture of blame and defense is evident in the brouhaha in Los Angeles over teacher ratings being shared with the public. Many are spending their time highlighting the teachers who received bad ratings or complaining about the rating system. While these cynics blame and complain, others are choosing a better route: many teachers are hitting the LA Times website to check their own ratings and consider ways to get even better. Wise observers are asking why the district didn’t do more with these data to highlight the best teachers and help all teachers get even better.

This is not … and should not be … about blame (despite what the normally right-on but in this case way-off Bill Maher says below). Of course children are far more influenced by their parents than they are by their teachers. If my kids fail, I am going to look in the mirror and blame myself rather than any teacher. However, unless I am mistaken (and I am not mistaken, this is just a rhetorical device), our lawmakers use our collective taxpayer dollars to provide education for all kids who enter our schools. It is most certainly the job of our policymakers to carefully evaluate the effectiveness of all civil servants, including teachers.

And the data are clear that quality teachers can make a real difference in student learning. Indeed, much of what we learn from teacher evaluations is how wonderfully effective many of our teachers are. As a result, our policymakers, as thoughtful stewards of our public funds, have an obligation to evaluate the effectiveness of our teachers and to make use of these evaluations to improve the education provided to our children. This is not blame; this is accountability.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan said as much in Little Rock last week. However, after he received a tepid response when calling for accountability from educators, he pandered to the audience by saying: “”If it was up to me and the law allowed it, I would put out student attendance data and hold parents accountable.” This, sadly, received great applause.

Of course parents should be responsible, but it is not the duty of the schools to hold us accountable. Who’s footing the bill here? Who’s paying whom? As long as we citizens are paying the salaries of our civil servants, we have a right and a duty to hold our civil servants accountable … not the other way around!

In this case, I am sad to say, my always-entertaining friend Bill gets it wrong .. but have a listen and judge for yourself ….

My headline is not intended to demean the LA Times. Indeed, many are praising the three reporters from the LA Times, who accessed student performance data (with a FOIA request) from the gigantic Los Angeles Unified School District and put together a comprehensive report on teacher effectiveness. While some of their conclusions may be obvious, the work the newspaper is doing so that average parent and taxpayer (and indeed teacher) can know more about teacher effectiveness is very important. In my view, this is an interesting story of enterprising reporting and the “publicness” of taxpayer-supported institutions.

Here is the first not-very-surprising takeaway message: When it comes to kids and learning, TEACHERS MATTER … A lot. (But, we all knew this anyway …)

And the second not-very-surprising takeaway message: Some teachers do a much better job, year-after-year, than others. And this matters a great deal for the students. (Most of us knew this also, but we are a bit more careful about saying this out loud …)

Back to the story … here is a quick overview:

In a new series in the Los Angeles Times entitled “Grading the Teachers: Who’s Teaching L.A.’s Kids?”, the authors evaluate the performance of more than 6,000 third- through fifth-grade teachers. The controversy is not focused around the concept of evaluating the performance of teachers. Many critics of the LA Times report are quick to share that they also support teacher evaluations, and that all teachers are evaluated annually. Unfortunately, however, most standard evaluations are criticized for being toothless. As US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan stated just yesterday in Arkansas, “In many districts, 99 percent of teachers are rated satisfactory, and most evaluations ignore the most important measure of a teacher’s success, which is how much their students have learned.”

With this as background, the three authors from the LA Times, Jason Felch, Jason Song and Doug Smith, use a statistical measure called value-added analysis to rate the teacher’s performance based on their students’ progress on standardized tests from year to year. As the authors write, this strategy helps the authors get around some of the common complaints about using student test scores to evaluate teachers. They say: “Each student’s performance is compared with his or her own in past years, which largely controls for outside influences often blamed for academic failure: poverty, prior learning and other factors.”

This story is interesting because researchers are just now beginning to use student test data more heavily in an attempt to rate the performance of schools and educators, but this report is likely the first in the country in which such ratings will be made public. While it is uncomfortable to imagine employee ratings being made public, it is even more uncomfortable to acknowledge that many of our students are in classes with teachers who are not enriching their learning. (Indeed, we at the UA understand that working in a public entity which appropriately demands that we be transparent and share our information and communication with the public can sometimes be uncomfortable!)

On the flip side, however, it is worth noting that the authors make no allegations that most teachers are not succeeding; in fact, they spend a great deal of time highlighting the work of the great teachers, according to the value-added analysis. They speak of Miguel Aguilar, who works with fifth-graders. On average, his students start the year in the 34th percentile in math in the district — when they leave his classroom at year-end, they walk out at the 61st percentile. The authors praised this teacher as nurturing outstanding learning gains. They walked through the classrooms of teachers throughout the district and claimed that teachers rated effective had a few common characteristics:

“On visits to the classrooms of more than 50 elementary school teachers in Los Angeles, Times reporters found that the most effective instructors differed widely in style and personality. Perhaps not surprisingly, they shared a tendency to be strict, maintain high standards and encourage critical thinking. But the surest sign of a teacher’s effectiveness was the engagement of his or her students — something that often was obvious from the expressions on their faces.”

In any event, it is certainly worth checking out this article. I also found an NPR interview by Robert Seigel with reporter Jason Felch to be quite interesting. The reporter very clearly describes the methods and ALSO very clearly describes its limitations. Among his interesting points were:

1. We all seem to know this, but it is worth reiterating — Individual teachers really matter; the differences between teachers can be enormous. differ in their effectiveness. It is obvious, but it still seems to make a huge and controversial splash each time it is documented! Perhaps we should stop brushing this fact under the rug and continuing to treat all teachers as if they were the same because they are doing the same job. Many teachers are really, really good and perhaps policymakers should be doing more to ensure we keep them.

2. Felch admitted they struggled with the decision to release individual teacher rankings. They decided, however, that the importance of sharing this information outweighed the negatives of the potential discomfort that would likely come along with the release. He said, and I paraphrase, “It would be difficult to have this information, on which teachers were effective and which were not and to not release it … ignoring the information is not the answer.”

3. Felch was VERY clear in stating that these ratings are not the sole measure of a teacher. That is, there are certainly other things that we would like our teachers to do (make children feel comfortable, help them learn to socialize with peers, enhance their self-esteem, etc.) and parents care about these as well. This measure only tells parents how effective teachers are at raising students’ performance on standardized assessments. Felch does reiterate, however, that this is an important part of a teacher’s job.

Finally, I think it is worth listening to this piece as Mr. Seigel and Mr. Felch do a nice job of exploring a controversial question, tackling complicated questions and discussing them in user-friendly ways, and they do so in only 5 minutes. Looks like this question of how to best measure teacher effectiveness is not going away ….

From the Arkansas Blog, here are two memos written by LRSD board member Baker Kurrus.  If you’ve been following the legal dispute between LRSD and the state, which has pitted  charter school supporters against charter opponents, then you know how contentious the debate has become.  Mr. Kurrus, however, makes a lot of sense in these memos.  I think students in LRSD would be better served if both sides took at what he has to say.  Thanks to Max Brantley for the memos.

MEMO FROM BAKER KURRUS TO SCHOOL BOARD

Thank you for this report [an earlier report by attorney Chris Heller on unsuccessful efforts by the district and state to settle legal differences]. I remain opposed to litigation as a way to address these issues.

There is no purpose served by recounting the reasons in detail. Suffice it to say that even winning such a long-shot, jackpot lawsuit, years down the road, will not correct the problems encountered by the thousands of our students who are presently failing to achieve at satisfactory levels.

If “cream skimming” is the issue, why did LRSD stand by silently for 35 years while upper income whites and blacks left our district in droves? Now we seek to blame the ADE for the things that have been happening steadily and unrelentingly for years. I am quite sure that the ADE did not properly approve and monitor a number of charter schools, but these acts have not been the cause of our problems. Our problems with cream skimming and flight have been around for three decades before charters existed. In order to win a lawsuit, the plaintiff must prove breach of duty or contract, and must prove that the breach caused the damages suffered by the plaintiff. If the allegations in the petition are all taken as true, these bad acts are unlikely to result in any recovery or remedy in favor of LRSD unless those acts caused damage to LRSD. This is a desegregation lawsuit. LRSD was, for all practical purposes, a one-race district with a declining white population before charter schools were conceived. Moreover, several of the local charter schools are desegregated or majority black. Our opponents in litigation will know this and will attempt to persuade the court that a unitary LRSD should simply receive the same funding as every other unitary school district in this state. Our argument is attenuated and vague. The state’s argument is simple and straight-forward.

LRSD simply does not want to face up to its problems squarely and address the root causes which have been around for so many years. There is no shortage of available white students in LRSD. They are not coming to our district because they don’t like what we offer. These people are willing to spend a lot of money in order to go elsewhere, and they were going elsewhere long before charters existed. Now some of them go to charter schools, too.

LRSD’s settlement proposal was doomed from the start, because it asked others to commit to vague obligations with no end date. If our litigation has taught the parties anything, it has taught them to promise only what can be delivered and measured. More “charter magnets,” more money, more lawyers and more wasted administrative time still miss the main point. We have poor kids who are failing. Bringing back kids who are not failing will not change the classroom experience for a single child marooned in a backwater school with poor instruction.

Every parent who put a child in a charter did so because they thought that charter was a better choice for their child. Every one of them will loathe this lawsuit. Every parent with a potential LRSD student will see the district as failing, because that is what LRSD must argue to get relief—LRSD will trumpet that it is failing because of charter schools. This is not true, but LRSD must argue this point to compel its case. If LRSD simply argues that charters are bad, but not damaging LRSD, there is no relief. Those who study our district will know that our failures, and our successes, are related to hard work, strong instruction, parental involvement and good leadership. The federal courts cannot provide any of these things, as districts all over this country have learned after years of litigation and billions of dollars wasted.

We asked to be unitary, and the court told us to move forward on our own, recognizing our constitutional obligations. Instead of going to work on the things it can change, LRSD launches another vague, complex, convoluted lawsuit which will divert it from our mission, and give those who seek excuses one more place to lay the blame.

This charter issue only got to be an issue when LRSD saw that its ability to continue to employ hundreds of non-productive people was imperiled.

I cry.

Baker

KURRUS MEMO IN RESPONSE TO HELLER’S NOTICE THAT HE’D FILE THE MOTION ON CHARTERS

The process which has resulted in the filing of this motion was, at best, unpredictable and flawed, and at worst, a dereliction of duty by the board.

The board voted by a narrow margin to authorize the filing of the suit if the attorney decided to do so, after negotiating with the state. The parameters of the negotiation were loose and undefined. The attorney then made a proposal to the state that had no chance of even drawing a counter-proposal. The negotiations never got started because LRSD made a completely unreasonable and incomprehensible demand at the outset. Now we are back in federal court, distracted from the pressing business of turning our district around. We are engrossed in another messy, expensive legal entanglement which quite well could result in the prompt and complete termination of the state assistance upon which we have come to depend. The court has already determined that LRSD is unitary. Prior to the initiation of any charter school, LRSD was by all practical measures either a one race district, or rapidly becoming one. For us to complain at this time, regardless of the state’s mistakes, is preposterous. It will become even more preposterous and damaging as droves of parents come forward and testify that the charter alternative has been the best thing that ever happened to their children. A very large number of these witnesses will be minorities. The rest will be parents who said they were leaving after the Brooks debacle, regardless of whether they went to a charter, to a private school, or to another central Arkansas community.

The other major problem with this distraction is that the financial impact of a lost high achiever is not crystal clear. Our state equalization aid is reduced slightly, but we also continue to receive all of the tax revenue generated by our large millage and large tax base. Even if the equalization is removed entirely, we still have, on a per pupil basis, a lot more money that is deemed necessary under Lakeview to provide an adequate education to an Arkansas student.

Our problems are of our own making. This is the point that must be addressed, both in the context of this losing lawsuit and in the overall context of making this school district attractive to people who have choices.

The motion is fatally flawed.

The Arkansas Blog is reporting that Gov. Beebe will make more money available for scholarships:

“After receiving previously unreleased figures from the Arkansas Lottery Commission about available scholarship monies, Governor Mike Beebe has asked the Arkansas Department of Higher Education to fund an additional $5.9 million in lottery scholarships….

The additional funding will provide scholarships for the approximately 400 students remaining on the two-year institution waiting list, and for nearly 1,000 students on the four-year institution waiting list.”

This is good news for some.  And Beebe should be commended for acting swiftly.

But thousands of people in the non-traditional category still won’t get scholarships.  And, unfortunately, it seems like the poorly constructed decision-rules for allocating scholarships had the effect of denying funds to thousands of students who were academically deserving.  Simply by looking at the numbers (30,000-ish non-traditional students denied for lack of funds in their category) anyone can discern that the bar had to be set extremely high for “non-traditional” students, while students in the other two categories were completely funded.

In the end, sitting out a semester, or simply taking classes part-time for a single semester, was enough to deny scholarships to A students while doling them out to C students.  Someone ought to be held accountable for that blunder.

The numbers are still unclear.  I think that, based upon the numbers cited in the original press release (see my earlier post here) and the numbers cited in the Dem-Gaz (article here), it sounds like around 30,000 students who qualified in the non-traditional category were not initially funded.   Max Brantley (informed by Beebe spokesman Matt DeCample) thinks this number is much lower, because many of the 30,000 weren’t eligible anyway.   He thinks only around 4,000 who qualified were left unfunded.

I hope he’s right, but I’m skeptical.

You would think the ADHE could manage a straightforward press release.  If only 4,000 qualified applicants were denied (as opposed to 30,000!), doesn’t it seem like that’s a bit of information they would want to disseminate sooner than later?

Again, here is how they put it:

State Triples Academic Challenge Scholarships We had 54,533 applications

A total of 25,445 students will receive the Academic Challenge scholarships next year…

There are 4 types of student receiving funding:
4,906 are students who were awarded the Academic challenge in previous years.
12,389 traditional students have been offered the award

Of the 36,697 nontraditional students:
4,550 met the Current achiever definition and were offered the scholarship

3,600 will be offered the Nontraditional scholarship.

About 30,000 students will not be funded”

The Dem -Gaz said:

“The “nontraditional” category is for students who have not been in college continuously or are starting college some years after graduating from high school. About 36,000 applied in that category, but only 3,600 were offered scholarships.”

I expect someone will get it figured out eventually.