Tag Archives: Washington Post

New Denver KIPP School Performance Pay Plan Latest Charter Innovation

With a variety of programs and greater flexibility from state laws and district policies, public charter schools can provide a great alternative for parents and students looking for something different. Because of that same flexibility, charter schools can serve as great laboratories of innovation for different practices that work. A couple months ago, while school was still in session, my Education Policy Center friends visited KIPP-Sunshine Peak Academy, a charter middle school located in west Denver. The national KIPP network of 82 charter schools has been made famous recently by the book Work Hard Be Nice, written by Washington Post education reporter Jay Mathews.

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Joseph Lieberman Fights for D.C. Kids' Opportunity -vs.- NEA Lies

I’m back from the beach, and thankfully didn’t get sunburned too badly. A lot went on while I was gone. And though I sometimes have to pick and choose what to write about when I’m blogging almost every day, trying to catch up on a week’s worth of news is — well, it’s like trying to build a tall sand castle just a few feet from the water’s edge. You get the picture. What you really don’t want to miss though is a great op-ed written by U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman for yesterday’s Washington Post. The good senator from Connecticut notes that vouchers must remain part of the solution to help kids with educational needs in our nation’s capital: There are low-income children in the District [of Columbia] who can’t wait for their local schools to turn around. Without programs such as this one, their opportunity will be lost forever.

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Silly Little Me, Making a Big Deal Out of Those Poor D.C. Kids & Their Vouchers

Update: It looks like I have been out-sillied by Jay Greene, who has posted the original unedited draft of “too cool” Kevin Carey’s comments. I’m not very serious. Of course, you probably already knew that. Golly, I’m a little kid who writes about the world of education policy and occasionally cites Kermit the Frog and Cap’n Crunch. But I don’t think you quite get how un-serious I am. At least according to Kevin Carey from The Quick and The Ed blog:

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Jay Mathews Inspires My Radical Ideas to Spend $100 Billion on Education

In today’s Washington Post, education columnist Jay Mathews raises the question: If you had $100 billion to fix our schools, what would you do? Faithful readers know I was skeptical of the federal government’s “magical money tree” a few months ago. My sentiment hasn’t changed. Some ideas for spending 100 billion (that’s a 1 followed by 11 zeroes) new smackeroos in the education bureaucracy inevitably will be better than others, and some may end up yielding some positive results. In his column, Mathews grades five proposals for spending the money, realistically noting of those who submitted the proposals: Their goal is to get the biggest change by January 2012. I think they are dreaming. The federal stimulus is designed to save jobs, not raise student achievement. But some (not all) of the ideas are so good some states might (repeat, might) be tempted to try them. To rate the five proposals yourself, as well as five others Mathews invented, check out his blog post.

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There's No Evidence that Merit Pay Negatively Affects Teacher Teamwork

Washington Post education columnist Jay Mathews wrote a column earlier this week suggesting that “merit pay could ruin teacher teamwork” in Washington, DC. In response, Jeanne Allen from the Center for Education Reform wrote an open letter saying that merit pay is in fact the key to building a culture of teamwork inside the district schools of our nation’s capital. But there’s more to throw into the pot of this little debate. Findings from a study of a merit pay pilot program (PDF) in Little Rock, Arkansas, further questions the conventional wisdom in Mathews’ piece: The data do not indicate that ACPP teachers experience divisive competition, suffer from a negative work environment, or shy away from working with low-performing students – despite the fact that these are three oft-cited potential problems inherent in merit pay plans. More research is needed, but it looks like there’s reason to believe that the old teachers union saw about merit pay being divisive isn’t necessarily true. More teamwork, higher quality instruction, and ultimately, students learning more: I have a hard time seeing what’s not to like about paying teachers for performance. Several Colorado school districts and charter schools are leading the way in this […]

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Evidence from D.C. Shows Need to Improve Focus on School Accountability

There’s a great story in the Washington Post today about the positive impacts of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) accountability on poor and needy students in and around our nation’s capital (H/T Joanne Jacobs): Since enactment of the No Child Left Behind law, students from poor families in the Washington area have made major gains on reading and math tests and are starting to catch up with those from middle-class and affluent backgrounds, a Washington Post analysis shows. The achievement gap between economic groups, long a major frustration for educators, has narrowed in the region’s suburban schools since President Bush signed the law in 2002, according to Maryland and Virginia test data. In Montgomery County, for instance, students in poverty have earned better scores on Maryland’s reading test in each of the past five years, slicing in half the 28 percentage-point gulf that separated their pass rate from the county average. They also have made a major dent in the math gap. In Fairfax County, another suburban academic powerhouse, such students have slashed the achievement gaps on Virginia tests. Now, my friends in the Education Policy Center tell me that NCLB has some problems and flaws that need to be […]

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Are Kids Too Busy? School Choice Isn't the Only Important Parental Decision

I’m having my friends write in a hurry today, so forgive the short post this time. There’s a great article from Sunday’s Washington Post that raises the question again, Are today’s kids too busy with activities? The Post talks about new research that shows the super-busy kids are happier and have less stress (H/T Joanne Jacobs): A new wave of research into the lives of middle-class children bucks conventional wisdom and concludes they are not the overscheduled, frazzled generation that many believe them to be. It might be only that their parents are on overload, one researcher suggests. Sorry, mom and dad. And sorry to all of you, because I have to run to soccer practice, piano lessons, then Cub Scouts. (Maybe I need to do some activities but not quite so many. Choosing the best school isn’t the only important decision parents have to make for their children.)

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Challenge Grows for Michelle Rhee's Washington DC Teacher Innovations

Washington, DC, schools chancellor Michelle Rhee is fast approaching a critical crossroads that will put her bold leadership to the test, as her showdown with the teachers union reaches the moment of truth. The Washington Post reports that union leaders are giving in to cries from older tenured teachers insecure about their professional abilities: [Union president George] Parker said many older teachers believe that they have been targeted for dismissal by Rhee, who has proposed a two-tiered salary plan that would pay many instructors more than $100,000 annually in pay and performance bonuses. Those choosing the “green tier” would be required to spend a year on probation, risking termination. Teachers have the option of selecting a “red tier” that would allow them to keep tenure and accept lower raises. Union leaders can’t only be concerned about the promising young teachers in their midst. They have to fight for the interests of mediocre and overpaid teachers, too. It’s the nature of the beast. Michelle Rhee is going to need a lot of focus, resolve, and determination to bring major innovation to one of the nation’s poorest school districts: promoting high-quality instruction as a priority for the district’s neediest and most disadvantaged […]

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Momentous Showdown between Michelle Rhee and D.C. Teachers Union

I earlier told you about the tough teacher union negotiations here in Denver that got resolved at the last minute. But there’s even more momentous negotiations going on in Washington, D.C. – a school district that has earned a poor reputation for wasteful and corrupt bureaucracy and dismal academic performance. New D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee (of Teach For America fame) is trying to clean house, though, as the Washington Post‘s Steven Pearlstein notes: Negotiations are stalled over Rhee’s proposal to give teachers the option of earning up to $131,000 during the 10-month school year in exchange for giving up absolute job security and a personnel-and-pay system based almost exclusively on years served. If Rhee succeeds in ending tenure and seniority as we know them while introducing merit pay into one of the country’s most expensive and underperforming school systems, it would be a watershed event in U.S. labor history, on a par with President Ronald Reagan’s firing of striking air traffic controllers in 1981. It would trigger a national debate on why public employees continue to enjoy what amounts to ironclad job security without accountability while the taxpayers who fund their salaries have long since been forced to accept […]

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Education Secretary Pleads for More D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Support

A few weeks ago I told you about the D.C. voucher program that was threatened by Congress. Well, the 1,900 kids who have found hope and educational opportunity through the publicly-funded scholarships to attend private schools were relieved to learn that Congress decided to continue funding for at least one more year. In today’s Washington Post, U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings makes the case that the program’s success calls for more than just putting it on temporary maintenance. The kids benefiting from the program have found their way out of a bad situation: Whether the children were failing school or the schools were failing the children, the District of Columbia’s leaders finally became fed up with institutionalized failure. They designed a unique “three-sector” strategy that provided new funding for public schools and public charter schools and new educational options for needy children. Working with the District, Congress and the Bush administration then implemented the D.C. School Choice Incentive Act in 2004, giving birth to D.C. opportunity scholarships. The program has clearly filled a need. Evidence does not just appear on a chart. It is visible in the long lines of parents waiting to participate. More than 7,000 students have […]

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