Keeping An Eye On The Prize of Quality Legislation

The Missouri legislature has hit the ground running, as it always does this time of year, and is moving forward rapidly on a number of proposed bills.  Yesterday Senate Bill 706, which attempts to provide framework for fixing the problem associated with the unaccredited school districts transferring students to the adjoining accredited districts, got its first public hearing. The cyber world was abuzz with issues about it and several groups provided input through the public hearing process.  It should have been a time to admire the legislative process, where elected officials perform their duty to address issues that cannot be addressed solely by private citizens, and private citizens can provide input to their elected officials on the specific work they are doing.  But in the world of politics, it seems, it is very difficult to separate ego from process.

The way the process is supposed to work is that citizens can approach their legislator with issues that need some sort of legislative action. Those citizens, who may be businesses, individuals, associations, unions or lobbying groups can supply suggested legislative language or, they can leave it up to the legislator to write the draft legislative language. Once the draft bill has been assigned to committee and received initial committee review, it is typically opened up to public comment through the hearing process.  Here, the same citizens who asked for consideration in the first place, can comment on whether the proposed language meets their needs.  It is also where others affected by the proposed legislation can provide insight as to; where they find the language confusing or, how it might affect them and, show possible unintended consequences of the bill.

This is a critical step in the passage of quality legislation. The language must be clear and consistent. It should consider how the rules laid out in the bill will be applied in the future.  And consideration must be given to unintended consequences. When Missouri statute 167.131 of the Outstanding Schools Act was written in 1993,  allowing students in unaccredited districts to transfer to adjoining accredited districts, all the ramifications of that bill were not fully considered, and we are left, two decades later, to try to figure out exactly how to accomplish those transfers.  We cannot say, "Well, the great Senator X Intended for those kids to go to schools with already open slots"  because the intent of the authors is not noted nor binding several years later. The only thing we can rely on is the specific language of SB380.

Too often ego gets thrown into this step of the process. Some legislators don't like others critiquing their work and take such comments as personal attacks.  Lobbyists take it personally when a legislator says they cannot accommodate their request because it would not apply the rules uniformly. The worst is when lobbyists and legislators have so strong a personal relationship that they cannot see that, what they have both agreed to in discussion, is not actually included in the language.  Because they both understand what they were trying to say, it is hard for them to see what is actually on the page. The focus is rapidly thrown off the process of perfecting the bill (a term the legislature uses) and Jefferson City devolves into a sea of ad hominim attacks and useless argument whose only goal is to preserve ego.

We need to keep the focus on the process and the final goal: clear honest legislation. This should apply to everyone in the process, whether patriot or office holder, average citizen or paid lobbyist.

One more thought - If we are going to require high quality teachers in our schools, should we not require high quality legislators in our congress? If we are going to use the objective measurement of student test scores to define a quality teacher, couldn't we use objective measure of quality legislation as a yard stick for our legislators?

Should Parents be the Target Group for Polar Bracelets? Forget the Students, It's the Parents who Need to be Tracked.

Keep your eyes looking southward for educational reforms heading Missouri's way.  Many of the reforms being instituted in Florida are being brought up via bills in our legislature such as the expansion of charter schools, virtual schools, tax credits, etc.  

Will Missouri see a parental bill here that is being introduced in Florida grading parental accountability for their children in public schools?  Here's a recap of Florida HB543 relating to parental involvement and accountability in public schools:

HB 543: Parental Involvement and Accountability in the Public Schools

 GENERAL BILL by Stargel; (CO-INTRODUCER) Hager

Parental Involvement and Accountability in the Public Schools; Specifies purpose to provide information & tools to parents of preK-5 students & to set minimum standards for parental involvement; specifies causes for student underachievement; requires prek-5 teachers to evaluate parental involvement & send evaluation to parents under certain circumstances; requires dispute process; requires certain reporting. 

Here's a bit of history on this bill from a Florida educational activist who has been following Florida education for the last several years:

This bill was introduced last session and failed. The bill requires schools to provide a handbook, get a signature and receipt, issue grades on parents quarterly, and report the "evaluation data" to the FL DOE. The data will also go to the Governor and legislature.

The legislative analysis indicates that the cost impact on schools is "indeterminate." It states there will be costs to publish the handbook, grade, and collect/report data.

The legislative analysis says the "evaluation data" will become a part of the student's permanent record and be confidential following FERPA guidelines.

So now parents (move over, teachers) are held accountable via data for student achievement or lack thereof?  Parents who are utilizing a public service to benefit their children would now be mandated to participate in an accountability exercise themselves.   The data will be entered into the child's record and promised confidentiality even as these records are shared with various federal agencies and private research entities.

On its face, it sounds fabulous!  Get those parents involved!  Get them to CARE about their child's education.  Get parents to care by mandating parental behavior.  

Do you see the fallacy in that last sentence?  The government or anyone cannot mandate CARING for any human being.  Either a parent is going to be a committed parent, or not.  And whose definition of caring is the legislature going to ascribe to? 

• By signing forms?  
• By showing up to conferences?  
• By requiring reading to children at home?  
• By feeding them the right foods determined by the government?
• By volunteering in the schools? 
• By agreeing with all the teachings from the school, including a national sex ed curriculum? 

The bill is vague in setting specifications. This wording is particularly intriguing... specifies causes for student underachievement.  In theory, a kindergarten teacher can determine why a child is failing, and it may not be because of faulty teaching, or curriculum or that the school is not fulfilling the needs of the child; it could quite possibly be because the parents are not deemed to be appropriate for the child's achievement by the kindergarten teacher.

If this bill in Florida passes, not only will a public school have the access to you and your child's personal data to share with various federal agencies and private organizations without your active permission, you, as a parent will have to "pass the test" crafted by the state to determine if you are a "good" parent or a "bad" parent.


Watch for this bill to be introduced at some point in Missouri.  California and Alaska have laws fining parents if children are in gangs or have excessive absences.  There is a bill pending in South Carolina requiring parents to volunteer in their school.

Maybe the states and districts will jump on the bandwagon for the Polar monitors after all for the parents to wear. It would help if the polar bracelet had a webcam on it so you document what the parents are doing at home to ensure a child's success.  Think of it as reality television.  Now the school can document what a parent is providing the child...or not providing the child.  That could be rather subjective, right?  It is correct that much of the problem starts in the home, but there are other issues, like providing intact families....but the government can't mandate that either...yet. 

 

When Did Physical Education Become An Issue of Social Justice? Do School Districts Using Polar Bracelets Understand the Goals of Producing Fit Workers for the System?

The Suburban Journal  wrote about Polar bracelets in use at the Parkway School District (suburban St. Louis area) and questioning privacy issues involved in wearing them not only in PE classes, but also about the plan to have the students wear them 24/7 for one week and tracking activity from home.  We followed up on the story and included the video from the School Board meeting in December where the district representative said to the Board members:

We don't want to just assess fitness we want to assess behavioral change w/regard to physical activity patterns with our students and then we know we've done our job and this tool here will help us do that.


Other news services and bloggers wrote about Polar bracelets and their use became more widely known and researched.  As we wrote in the previous posting about the Polar bracelets, we wondered where the line was drawn between better health and surveillance.  Subsequent articles by the Revered Review included information about Polar's ability and data sets available to track health of students, including information about sexual history, diabetes and drug use. 


In one Iowa school district, apparently the use of data gathered from Polar bracelets echoes what the parkway District representative said in the Board meeting, except this behavioral change is not restricted to just Parkway or Iowa students, it is directed to all children on a global scale. As a result of a global forum held in Grundy and subsequent statement from the forum, schools should be:

“establishing physical education and health programs as models of social justice which foster a safe learning environment, promote the joyful participation of physical activity with appreciation of cultural, racial, ethnic and social and economic differences.”

So now physical education is to be looked upon as data driven and leveling the playing field (no pun intended) in terms of cultural, racial ethnic, social and economic differences.  The Revered Review ("TRR Investigates, Part 2: Rural Iowa-A Decade of Polar Monitor Use") has an excellent article on what it found in Grundy, Iowa and the research provided from its students for the last several years on a global scale:

The Grundy Center School District, located in the American Heartland, has 700 students who have been using Polar monitors for a decade. The small town of Grundy, Iowa, is where 2,700 residents call home and the county of Grundy has a total population of 12,500—a small rural community by any measurement.

However, its school district is on the leading edge of technology: All students have school-issued laptops, and its physical education department has used Polar monitors for years. In fact, Grundy is where Polar Electro researched its monitors in a school setting, according to Superintendent Cassandra Murra.

School Garners International Attention

This small school district has even garnered both national and international attention. Politicians and delegates from around the world have visited the school, many looking to the school as a possible role model for physical education, using the monitors, and the fight against childhood obesity........

Read more here from the Revered Review on the decade long use of Polar bracelets and how this research has attracted international attention and visits from researchers and educators.


Parkway School District agreed to pull the bracelets from their programs due to privacy concerns.  If the Parkway District or other school districts institute the Polar bracelet in the future, they might want to review the Grundy Iowa school district's use of data.  It has been used not only for individuals to track their physical progress, but its ultimate use points to providing data to achieve social justice via physical education programs. 


Is this the main reason for this increased use of technology in PE classes and the tracking of data on students?  From a 1998 paper, Social Justice in Education in 'new times', delivered to the Australian Association for Research in Education:

What we see within schools is that most of what is done is drawn into the production of the 'flexible' worker. Parent participation is seen as good, not in relation to the happiness of the child but for the way it can improve a child's performance in school. Social skills are taught so the child will become a better worker. Physical Education is important as it will produce a fitter healthier worker. In such a curriculum all areas of school life are attuned to the 'production' of a 'flexible' worker who can stake a claim for the individual or corporation in the market place.


Parkway District may have just dodged a bullet in terms of providing sensitive physical information of their children to unknown research organizations in the quest for social justice.  When the Parkway District employee was explaining to the School Board about tracking students and effecting behavioral changes, did he know that these behavioral changes were to "produce a fitter, healthier worker"?  Did he think or know that most of what is done in schools is for the "production of the 'flexible' worker"?

Here are some agencies in Missouri for the years 2002-2010 receiving funding for physical education outreach from the Carol M. White Physical Education Fund via the Department of Education.  However, you might want to check with your district if it purchased (as my district did) Polar bracelets with funding from its regular budget:

2010:

About Our Kinds, Inc. (MO) – $750,000
Serving 1, 205 rural, high-need students, the mission of this project is to wrap students in a blanket of wellness strategies by integrating physical activity into a child’s day at school and in the community. WAVE’s philosophy is that physical education and activity is not just an event or a class that you attend but a cardinal part of a healthy, happy life. This approach not only assigns value to engaging in regular physical activity but also challenges students to “Catch the WAVE.” WAVE is designed to expand and improve PE programming to make progress toward meeting State PE standards by providing (1) equipment and support to enable students to participate actively in PE and physical activity and (2) funds for professional development. The collaboration joins a community-based organization, About Our Kinds( AOK), Inc with three schools, two local governments and nine community groups. AOK is an experienced federal grantee. Under this leadership, staff and coordination is in place.


Chilhowee R-IV School District (MO) - $202,561
The Commit to be Fit program will help the district and rural community develop a fitness-oriented PE programs for K-12 that meets PE state standards and improves the instructional skills of PE teachers, Specialists, classroom teachers and after-school program staff.  Additionally, this program will implement nutrition components of the Comprehensive School Health Plan and Wellness Policy to promote health eating habits and good nutrition.  Through the Commit to be Fit program, the district will integrate outdoor activities into the PE program that motivate students to increase the number of hours that they spend in physical activity out of school.

The schools listed below are previous PEP winners and the entire list including other states may be found here.

2009: 

MISSOURI

Q215F090560
Wentzville R-IV School District
P.O. Box 311
Wentzville, MO 63385
Contact: Gregg Klinginsmith

$484,105

2007:

MISSOURI

Q215F070072

Kansas City # 33                                                                              $459,868

1211 McGee Street

Kansas City, Missouri  64106

Contact:  Nancy Bailey

(816) 418-1272

Q215F070108

Ferguson-Florissant School District                                             $283,086

1005 Waterford Drive

Florissant, Missouri  63033

Contact:  Laura Beckmann

(314) 506-9052

2006:

St. Louis--Support a Child International  (no amount provided)

2005:

Young Women's Christian Association-St. Louis
Webb City R-7 Schools-Webb City
Dunklin R-5 School District-Herculanuem

(no amounts provided)


2004:

Excelsior Springs School District #40-Excelsior Springs
Cornerstones of Care-Kansas City
Maternal and Child health Coalition-Kansas City
Lamar Community Betterment-Lamar
Twin pike Family YMCA-Louisiana
Ozark R-VI School Distirct-Ozark
Pierce City R-VI School District-Pierce City

(no amounts provided)


2003:


Kansas City-Kansas City #33
Sullivan-Sullivan Public Schools
St Louis-St Louis Public Schools
St Joseph-St Joseph School District
Lamar-Lamar Community Betterment


(no amounts provided)

The Sunday Education Weekly Reader 01.29.2012

Welcome to the Sunday Education Weekly Reader for 01.29.2012.  

Interesting tweets of the week in education:

• Here's a way to solve the dilemma in paying for college....Obama tells University of Michigan rich should pay more http://dailycaller.com/2012/01/27/obama-tells-university-of-michigan-rich-should-pay-more/ Class warfare at its finest.

• Note to Benjamin Braddock in "The Graduate".  It's not "plastics".  It's "education"....
  Education industry accounted for an estimated $10 billion in mergers & acquisitions last year: bit.ly/xFSrFs 

• Oops...Potty-mouthed science teacher resigns after allegedly having raunchy convos with kids http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/potty-mouthed-science-teacher-resigns-allegedly-raunchy-convos-kids-article-1.1013341

• This might be difficult given our $16 Trillion national debt and states facing budget shortfalls....Obama Education Secretary: Teachers Should Be Paid Six-Figure Salaries http://bit.ly/yIPyEm

• The Department of Education employees need to take accounting and citizenship courses to become good role models instead of following Timothy Giethner's example...Dept of Education and Housing/Urban Development employees OWE MOST BACK TAXES! http://is.gd/puNmMP 

Educational thought for the week:

The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it's the same problem you had last year. --John Foster Dulles

Do Facebook Posts Illustrate the State of American Education?

It's been an interesting few days in education in St. Louis.  We listened to a School Choice Week panel discussion about closing traditional public schools in favor of opening alternative public schools (charters) with just a passing mention of the federal takeover of education by Arne Duncan.  We listened to a legislative panel presentation about a court decision or legislative "fix" that will allow students from unaccredited districts to attend schools in accredited districts at a projected tremendous financial cost to both the sending and receiving districts.

What's rarely asked in these discussions is why the schools are bad.  It seems to be an unspoken assumption that:

• it's the teacher's fault
• it's the administration's fault
• there's not enough money
• it's the union's fault

What I didn't hear from these panels on educational failures are these premises:

• some children can't/won't learn
• some parents can't/won't support their children
• federal mandates take time away from actual teaching in the classroom
• federal mandates smother innovation and creates teaching to the test 
• parents that DO support children often are dismissed by teachers and administrators if parental vision differs from the school vision

What seems to be missing is a true sense of community.  Education reform has morphed into a war between parents, taxpayers, schools, administrators, teachers, unions, corporate interests, Federal agencies, politicians and students.  When education becomes so centralized and top down driven, the stakeholders become estranged from each other.  When students are moved around like pawns on a huge chess board so the interests of adults are reached (unions, charter school venture capitalists, data set completion, etc), it's the students caught in the crossfire of agendas. 


To close out this wild week in Missouri education, we are offering a bit of dark humor from various Facebook postings.  Do these postings represent the current crop of students from American educational institutions?  Is this what NCLB has wrought?  If it is, why are we subscribing to Race to the Top mandates (NCLB on steroids) which demand even more centralized control, standardized testing and less critical thinking skills?


From "Unforgivable Facebook Posts": (warning some strong language)

.

.

  

You can read the other "unforgivable Facebook posts" here.  These aren't all from young people.  There is a post from a dad apparently flummoxed by the internet and his son rescuing him from the avalanche of technology available.     

Senator Chappelle Nadal Struggles with the Right to an Education

Last night, the Washington University Brown School Policy Forum and Teach For America held a public forum to discuss St Louis Public Education. On the panel were: Senator Chappelle-Nadal (District 14), Senator Cunningham (District 7), Representative Dieckhaus (District 109), Representative Jones (District 63), Dr. Nicastro (Commissioner of Ed), and Dr. Senti (Cooperating School Districts of Greater St. Louis.) The discussion focused on the Turner Decision, the previous legislative stalemate on a solution, and the current legislative "fix" proposals. 

Quick review of the facts: In Missouri, according to the constitution, you have a right to a free public education.  Additionally, you have a right to go to school in a neighboring accredited school district if your district loses its accreditation. St. Louis City school district lost their accreditation last year. Families attempting to transfer into neighboring districts were denied entrance because the districts claimed they did not have the space to accommodate them. The Turner family sued to claim their right to attend the neighboring district and won. The fix that is needed must recognize the both rights of the unaccredited district students to an education, and the rights of the neighboring districts not to be overrun and undercompensated for all the students transferring in.

Senator Chappelle-Nadal, through her statements, made it clear that she struggles with this right guaranteed in the MO Constitution. It seemed as if she were confusing it with one's Miranda Rights which say, if you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided to you by the state. Notice the MO Constitution does not say, if you cannot afford to pay for your own education, the state will provide one for you. Senator Chappelle-Nadal seems to think that those families who are currently finding a way to pay for private education in the city, because the public education provided by the city was substandard, should not be afforded the right to a free education like everyone else.

This attitude may stem from frustration over what has been a bungled system for many years.  Students in private schools are not counted in the public funding formula. For those families to now have an avenue to exercise their right to a free public education means an increase in the number of students who have to be added to the funding calculation.  Missouri has not met its full education funding requirements for years and this just exacerbates the problem.  With the massive budget deficit the state is facing now, this just makes the legislature's job that much more difficult.  It is however, a reality, and the legislature cannot just ignore the rights of some families because it makes their job more difficult.  That was basically the decision in the Turner case.

The proposed solutions in the legislature now include: 

• Providing a business tax credit, as is done with the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program (FTCSP), which allows businesses that contribute money to nonprofit Scholarship-Funding Organizations (SFOs) to receive an income tax credit. SFO's award scholarships to students from families with limited financial resources. This fix is being considered because the St Louis Catholic Schools have already told the legislature they have 8,000 seats waiting in their schools and would love to take in  students from the unaccredited district. This gets around the Missouri Constitution's  Blaine amendment which prohibits funds from the public treasury to be used to fund schools with religious affiliations. So long as the money does not go through the state's hands, it is not in conflict with the Constitution.

• Another option being considered is a clearing house where districts can list the seats they have available which can then be matched with students looking to transfer.  This option provides some stability for the receiving districts.  The biggest obstacle here is the issue of funding. There is no consensus yet on how much these transfers will cost the receiving districts.

And of course the state cannot just abandon the St Louis district. They have been making improvements and it is hoped that they can regain accreditation. That will take a minimum of five years so they don't have, as Senator Cunningham called it, the yo yo problem with district falling into and out of compliance every other year.  She assured parents that students taken into the transfer program would be allowed to stay for the duration of their k-12 education. That made sense.  Her next comment, not so much.

There is a true concern of a slippery slope with the failing school district. Families transfer out or move out of such districts which means there is less money still in the district to try to fix it. Once you get below a certain level, the district faces bankruptcy.  No family wants to move into an area without a school so there is tremendous pressure to fix the St Louis schools.  If not, you end up with the Detroit public schools, where urban flight has resulted in consolidation and class sizes up to 60 students. Senator Cunningham saw a silver lining in the St Louis situation and the Turner Decision.  She predicted that open enrollment would actually draw good families INTO St Louis, knowing they would have their pick of schools. The air must be getting pretty thin up there in the clouds to think that a lot of families would want to move to an economically depressed region where their children were guaranteed a long commute to school every day, twice a day, where something as simple as being a cheerleader would require tremendous family coordination to accommodate practice schedules and where there was no guarantee they could get into the specific district that they wanted. What exactly would the chamber of commerce put on its billboard? "Come to St Louis - where your child can go somewhere else to school!"

Senator Cunningham noted last night that the Kansas City schools, who as of January 3rd this year faced a similar dilemma due to the loss of their accreditation, have already solved their problem by having "collar districts", those surrounding the city district who may also be within the city's boundaries, annex the city schools and assume governance for them.  The Catholic schools have similarly offered their services there. The panelists blamed those supporting the status quo in St Louis for blocking progress on a fix here. Specifically they were referring to the Cooperating School Districts,  MO Association of School Board Superintendents,  and the Association of School Board Members.

Frederick Mann set us up for a whole host of problems back in the early 1800's when he pushed for free public education. It sets up a line item on state budgets that never goes away and is under constant pressure to grow. Free things are rarely appreciated. Frequently they are tossed away because their value is perceived to be very low. We know education isn't free, but when you're not specifically paying for it out of your pocket and it is described as free in the constitution it is easy for people to think of it as free of cost. And once you make it mandatory you take away a very useful tool, the threat of removing the item or service, which could be used to motivate those who are not putting any effort into their education.  It is a recipe for failure.

Representative Dieckhaus also struggled with the concept of a guaranteed right to an education, confusing it with a societal moral obligation to provide this service. That kind of language plays well on a campaign trail, but actually makes the legislature's job even more difficult because it enflames discussions like this and makes providing solutions far more tricky.

No one on these panels ever comments on why these public schools are failing. They also don't make specific proposals on how to change them.  But the audiences at these types of events are not staying quiet on the topic anymore. You can hear them begin to address this issue in their questions.  Eventually the politicians are going to have to name the problems because that is the first necessary step to fixing them.

Dick Morris and School Choice Week Presentation in St. Louis. Beam Me Up, Scotty

Americans For Prosperity hosted a panel discussion on School Choice last night at Loyola Academy, a private Jesuit school for inner city young men. School Choice is blitzing the nation with the message "shining a spotlight on effective education options for every child."  The St. Louis panel touched on those options.

The panel consisted of Dick Morris (political strategist and commentator), Dana Loesch (Radio host and CNN commentator), Mike Podgursky (Professor of Economics University of Missouri) and Robbyn Wahby (Executive Assistant to STL Mayor Francis Slay).  The panel discussed educational topics such as:

• charter schools
• vouchers to private/parochial schools
• the effect of teacher unions on public education
• the rising cost of funding to schools with negligible rise in test scores
• the reasons schools are failing
• data to determine failing schools
• the falling population in the city residential areas and how it affects the STL city public schools 

Podursky nailed it when he gave some of the reasons public schools are failing:

• there is a lot of regulatory crust
• no innovations and no free market
• different kids have different needs and one specific school cannot meet all the needs of all the kids
• schools are tied too heavily to standardized testing

As he was talking, I thought, "How is sending students to charter schools (schools supported by taxpayers dollars and under the same government mandates) freeing them from the regulations, lack of innovation, teaching to a student's need vs the system, and reducing the testing?"

THAT question was NEVER answered.  This is the problem with the School Choice movement in general and in Missouri with the funding of charter schools.  It never addresses the underlying fact that the government is still providing the blueprint and the rules and regulations for what the children are learning.  The money is being transferred to "free markets" (which conservatives love) but the system is still controlled by the government.  That's not really free market, is it?  That's not really an authentic choice for parents, is it?

Dick Morris stated, "Choice is where you send your child to school and the money follows the child." He outlined why this is a revolution in education and gave his reasons why this choice movement is needed:

• In the 1960's and 70's the "Rankings of the States" was released by the NEA.  The states began to fund education more heavily: test scores did not change
• In the 1980's, states were pushed to upgrade the curriculum and standards and demand better testing: results did not change
• In the 1990's, NCLB was instituted focusing on which schools were failing and concentrating efforts to increase testing scores: no uptake occurred

Based on this dismal track record, Morris believes we need to be creative and provide options for education: school choice.

This really was an alternate universe I found myself in last night in St. Louis.  Morris stated, and apparently believes, education needs to be creative and innovative and released from NCLB type mandates. Amazingly, the subject of Race to the Top mandates (and those "mandates formerly known as RTTT" implemented in states which didn't receive RTTT money) and Common Core standards was never mentioned by Morris.  What the school choice advocates are advocating just doesn't make sense.  State educational providers are operating under NCLB on steroids and Morris is stating that you can choose your publicly funded school and it's a true choice in education?  How are more federal governmental mandates allowing more local control?  Is it that these folks just don't get it, or is it they just don't care?  Is the idea of "we have to do SOMETHING overrides a thoughtful approach to educational problems?"

Morris may have answered my last question.  He said, "We will never have the political will to close the failing schools.  We're just going to close the empty ones".  There it is.  Through choice, most parents will take their kids out of traditional public schools. The remaining public  schools are going to be populated with the kids who aren't motivated or who have undiagnosed disabilities, whose parents are disengaged from the education process and for whom an alternative school has not yet been opened.  Morris believes, in a free market, some group will step forward and bring those kids into their alternative school, and the now empty public school will be closed.

Morris may be correct, that we are seeing an education revolution, but it is on the delivery of education, not the education itself.  What kind of choice is this being foisted on and paid for by taxpayers?  Free Market or more of the same governmental control?  

What IS the magic bullet and allure of charter schools that allegedly makes them so much better in terms of education in the eyes of School Choice advocates?  Is it the delivery and school expectations from the charters that apparently doesn't exist in the traditional public schools? If it is, why aren't we pushing for those things from our public schools now?  It's not true free market competition since standards and assessments are still controlled by government regulations.  So what is it?

Can You Choose a Good School If You Don't Know What One Looks Like?

This is National School Choice week and the major players are striking hard to move this ball down the field in SOME direction.  School choice is a hotter topic than the republican field of presidential candidates for most because, education affects everyone; from the parents, to students, to teachers, to state budgets, to businesses who supply goods and services to education, to the regular childless taxpayer. We all are impacted by America's public education system. Education reform is no doubt needed, but a vision of it is still as clear as mud some 80+ years after it was first talked about.

The Atlantic wrote a good piece about School Choice, which covers the history of this piece of education reform.  Here is the first part of that article:

How School Choice Became an Explosive Issue

By Kevin Carey

Conservatives champion it. Liberals loathe it. But both sides have distorted the cause, and students are paying the price.

Bill Cosby and Dick Morris presumably disagree about most things, so it's instructive to note that both have officially endorsed "School Choice Week," which began yesterday with a series of rallies and events around the country celebrating the idea of parents being able to decide where their children go to school. Indeed, school choice seems like such an obviously good idea that the most interesting thing about School Choice Week is why it exists at all.

That school choice is valuable is beyond dispute. That's why there's a multi-billion dollar private school industry serving millions of students. And it's why there is a much larger system of school choice embedded in the American real estate market. While some parents pay school tuition directly, many more pay it through their monthly mortgage and property tax bills. Anyone who has deliberately purchased a home in a "good" school district is, by definition, a beneficiary and supporter of school choice...

A key concern that Carey brings up is the idea that, while many parents would like to be able to choose a different school for their child other than the public one they are geographically districted for, they often lack the skills necessary to make a good decision about which school that is. 

Choice requires both information and consumers who are well equipped
to use it. Schools are highly complex organizations whose workings aren't
always apparent at first glance. It's very difficult for parents who have no
personal experience of having attended a good school to pick and choose among
school choice options for their children. Looks can be deceiving--shiny new
facilities and well-organized classrooms can mask poor teaching and incoherent
curricula. Schools vying for students in the market tend, like any competitor,
to present a self-interested view of themselves. Parents need much better
information about school performance, and education in its interpretation, in
order to make good choices on behalf of their children.

Reputation takes a while to build and many charter schools do not survive long enough to develop a good reputation.  We know that 37% of charter students perform below their public school peers on standardized assessment.

Opening up K-12 education to the free market does not magically conjure from the air organizations that know how to educate children.

What is guaranteed to fail is any program in which parents have not taken an active role.  In Californi,a where parents have the "trigger option", which essentially allows them to fire what they deem a failing school, public schools are rapidly being turned into charter schools.  Many look at this as the way for parents to finally have a say in how their child is educated. Another way to look at it, however, is parents continuing to shuck their responsibility for their child's education by firing one nanny and hiring another.   Expecting any outside organization to magically transform a neighborhood of serially disengaged children into both enthusiastic and successful learners is like expecting a one time visit from a professional organizer to cure the chronic hoarder.

One school in California that was recently turned into a charter, previously had mice in the cafeteria, clogged drinking fountains and urine puddles in the bathrooms. Now, unless you have the world's hardest water, drinking fountains only get clogged by people putting gum, paper and other objects into them.  Human waste that does not make it into the waste removal system only occurs if you have: a) students with palsy or, b) lie on a constantly active fault line or, c) students who don't care to aim. If the janitor weren't constantly having to clean out the drinking fountains, he might get to those messes. Exterminators would be called if budgets weren't spent on security measures to scan the kids as they enter school and on a security force to deal with the violence children choose to bring into a school. In other words, if the students and their parents actually took ownership of and responsibility for their school many of these problems would go away. But the parents of this school simply voted to give someone else a shot at civilizing their children.

If they, as the Atlantic author suggested, don't even know what a good school looks like, then maybe the first effort of school reformers and choice advocates should be to start educating the parents about how a school is supposed to work and what the expectations are for them and their children once in it. Otherwise school reform will be a never ending cycle of replacement babysitters for schools in the worst neighborhoods.

Thoughts on the Costs of the New Apple Education Revolution. Who Pays for it? Who Can Afford it?

This is an article on Apple's wonderful new revolution in the delivery of education in terms of how much money this will cost individuals and/or taxpayers.  It will be quite a bit.  Where will the money come from?  Tax increases?  Have the taxpayers had any say in any such tax increase to cover new educational deliveries and technology which create substantial financial return for private companies?

Apple may have an innovative product that makes learning faster and easier for students.  The question is can districts/taxpayers afford such costs in our present economy? How many trillions of dollars of debt is the United States in currently?  $16 Trillion?

I can't wait for the numbers to come out on how much the underfunded mandated Common Core standards will cost the taxpayers.  I expect we can't afford the Federal Government's or the consortias' Education Revolution costs either. 
 
From Gizmodo:

You Can’t Afford Apple’s Education Revolution

What Apple showed us today was nothing less than the future of education. The future we'd all been imagining for decades, no less. Harry Potter stuff. It's going to change the way we learn, the way we think, the way we live.

But let's remember that right now, today? It's entirely out of reach for all but a few of us.


Let's start with the good. There's a lot of it. Fifteen bucks for an interactive textbook is an amazing price; they'd normally cost a hundred new, about half that gently used. The features that Apple's introducing—particularly those instant flash cards that might have gotten me through Chemistry unscathed—are indisputably an improvement over stale highlighters and multi-colored Post-Its.

All of this represents the best kind of progress, a paradigm shift in education. That is, if you can afford it.
I've argued before that iPads are cheap for what they are. And that's true, assuming that what they are is a secondary device on which people with healthy disposable income can watch their YouTubes and send some emails and play Sword and Sworcery for hours and hours. But while iBooks are very affordable textbooks, the iPad makes for one insanely expensive backpack.

Under the best case scenario, you're a teenager in a district that has bought iPads for every single student. It's free for you, which is great! But even with a healthy discount, all those tablets carve a multi-million dollar, taxpayer-funded chunk out of the education budget. Money that could be going to dozens of other in-classroom aids, teacher salaries, healthy lunches, etc. They'll come from somewhere, at the expense of something else.

Which would be fine if that iPad were a standalone device that could accommodate four years of curricula. It's not. Not even close.

Standalone? Try writing a 20-page term paper on an iPad. Or better yet, try telling every student they need to buy a $70 wireless keyboard. Oh, and it's going to be spending a lot of time in your backpack, so better tack on a $40 Smart Cover. The reality is that no matter how far Apple has pushed into the cloud, iPads still need laptops to complement them. And those accessories, those laptops? Whether it's the student or the schools, someone's paying for them.

Which might even be worth it if the iPad could disappear textbooks from your life altogether. But it can't, not remotely. While Apple's got three major textbook partners lined up, at the moment the selection is treacherously limited. Which means that for now, and potentially for a long time, backpacks across the country are going to be loaded down with hefty Pre-Calculus and AP Physics tomes no matter how many iPads schools buy.

And even the ones that exist have their pitfalls. You can argue that they only cost $15 a pop—money that under Apple's plan can also come from schools, not individual students—and that those savings alone make them worth it. Which would be true, if publishers hated money. But publishers are businesses, and the business model in this place is clear: instead of selling an updated textbook every 5-10 years for $100, update and sell every year for $15. And it'll work; it's not like you can hand down an iBook from year to year. In fact, you expressly can't.

And then consider this: these iPad textbooks are every bit as big as their dead tree counterparts, and you need a lot of digital storage to lug them around. The eight books on display in the App Store today average out to about 1.5GB each; a full year's course load would quickly fill up a 16GB iPad, which means either schools/students will have to shell out for the more expensive 32GB version, or students are responsible for their own external storage options. My wallet hurts.

What all this adds up to is a education revolution for the landed gentry. Or even worse, schools that can't afford it chasing a wave that's years away from cresting. Millions of dollars spent on a supplementary learning tool. A distant horizon mistaken for the here and now.

Let's be clear; this is indisputably the future. What we saw today is what our classrooms will look like once iPads are far cheaper, once digital textbooks can be handed down as easily as physical ones, once teachers of every subject have several educational material options to choose among. For now though, it's important to remember that "new" and "different" always come at a premium. One that the vast majority of us can't afford.

Polar Monitors Used to Track Student Depression, Suicide, Cancer, Alcohol/Drug Use, Sexual Activity? Public Student Data Stored on polargofit.com website

Polar Monitors may not only measure and provided data to schools about physical activity and heart rates in PE classes, there may also be assessments relating to student suicide, depression, cancer and diabetes risk.  It can even track student sexual activity, drug and alcohol use.  The company states this these invasive assessments are only suggested for those students 18 years or older, but is this the type of information that should be gathered by educational institutions on students of any age?  

The circumvention of FERPA law will allow this information to be disseminated on your student to various federal agencies and private companies.  The article contains a nifty link so you can see how this information will be gathered and how with the click of a mouse, broadcast to the cloud(s).


You can also read how school districts are funding these expensive monitors while cutting teachers and support staff.  We'll be writing more about this in the future and provide links so you can determine if your school district is signing onto this program providing your student's data and personal information to entities, probably without your knowledge or active permission.

This is from "Is the Privacy of the American Student at Risk" at The Revered Review:

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School:  A place where children learn to read and write. A place where they learn mathematics, science and history. Moreover, a place, away from home, where children are supposed to be safe.

Yet now it’s a place, across the country, where children’s hearts are being monitored, their activities are being tracked, and it’s being determined if students are obese or overweight. In addition, health risk assessments are being made on students and the information can be stored or saved as a PDF file.

In this physical education class, students are training using spin bicycles. However, in many schools, students are using Polar monitors in physical education classes. (Photo Credit: MJMonty)

Some students across the country, including in many small towns—are now wearing heart rate monitors and activity monitors—sometimes, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week—as part of their schools’ phys ed programs. The New York Post reported that three schools were using these monitors and some, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and parents, questioned the possible intrusion into students’ privacy.

(Link here to continue reading the rest of the article from Revered Review)