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Spotlight Story: Study Shows Better Scores for Charter School Students By Jennifer Medina, The New York Times, September 22, 2009
Students who entered lotteries and won spots in New York City charter schools performed better on state exams than students who entered the same lotteries but did not secure charter school seats, according to a study by a Stanford University economist being released Tuesday.
Charter schools, which are privately run but publicly financed, have been faring well on standardized tests in recent years. But skeptics have discounted their success by accusing them of “creaming” the best students, saying that the most motivated students and engaged parents are the ones who apply for the spots.
The study’s methodology addresses that issue by comparing charter school students with students of traditional schools who applied for charter spots but did not get them. Most of the city’s 99 charter schools admit students by lottery.
The report is part of a multiyear study examining the performance of charter schools in New York City by Caroline M. Hoxby, a Stanford economist who has written extensively about her research on charter schools and vouchers.
Ms. Hoxby found that students who attended a charter school from kindergarten to eighth grade would nearly match the performance of their peers in affluent suburban communities on state math exams by the time they entered high school, a phenomenon she characterizes as closing the “Harlem-Scarsdale” achievement gap. The results are somewhat less striking in English, where students closed 66 percent of the gap, according to the study.
“I wanted to look at something that reflects the reality of what goes on in the New York area,” Ms. Hoxby said in an interview. “In terms of life outcomes, I think we just don’t know yet. This is not the silver bullet, but this is showing a major and lasting difference.”
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ConnCAN In the News: What Is The Solution To The High School Dropout Crisis? Eliza Krigman, National Journal Experts Blog, September 21, 2009
The nation's economy lost roughly $335 billion in additional income from high school students who should have graduated with the class of 2009 but dropped out, according to a brief that the Alliance for Excellent Education released last week. President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan often talk about the serious problem of high school "dropout factories" that graduate 60 percent or fewer of their students. But there is no broad consensus on how to address the issue.
Read the responses here, including one from ConnCAN's Alex Johnston... |
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ConnCAN In the News: Opening Doors Into World Of AP Classes Rick Green, Hartford Courant, September 18, 2009
Good old cash, it turns out, may not be such a bad incentive at all.
A privately funded program that encourages minority and low income students to take Advanced Placement classes — and that pays bonuses to high school teachers and students — appears to be making a difference.
Project Opening Doors, a $13.2 million initiative in Connecticut, reports that more students are enrolling and more are passing the challenging Advanced Placement exams.
With one of the most stubborn achievement gaps in the land, we have to be open to new solutions, even if at first the idea seems to be the opposite of what learning is all about.
Project Opening Doors is about far more than the cash payments for good work, although that's certainly part of the effort. It's about more training and classroom support for teachers. It's about working after school and on Saturdays for students.
More than anything, the program aims to bring minority, low income and female students into the privileged world of Advanced Placement. According to the school reform group ConnCan, the state's achievement gap "at all levels, in all subjects, for all disadvantaged groups, is among the largest in the nation."
While the statewide percentage of minority students passing the math, science and English AP exam edged up 2.3 percent this year, minority students in Project Opening Doors jumped by 26 percent. Students in the program made up the entire statewide increase.
After starting in nine schools, the program has expanded into a dozen more, including Hartford, this year. Unions have continued to fight it because of the bonuses linked to test scores. A decision in a lawsuit challenging the program, filed by the Stamford Education Association, is expected any day.
"We took nine schools with varying backgrounds and managed to significantly increase their enrollments in math, science and English," said Camille Vautour, president of Project Opening Doors.
The effort is part of a larger initiative, the National Math and Science Initiative, funded by ExxonMobil, in partnership with the Connecticut Business and Industry Association.
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Wanted: Great Teachers by Melissa Bailey, New Haven Independent, September 23, 2009
As school officials beef up teacher recruitment as part of a reform drive, they’re reaching out to Teach For America to lure young talent in the classroom.
Teach For America recruited 12 new teachers to work in New Haven classrooms this school year. Nine more TFA teachers are returning for a second year, said schools spokeswoman Michelle Wade.
The school board’s Administration and Finance Committee Monday night recommended approving a contract to pay Teach For America for its services.
If the contract’s approved, it will extend a partnership that began three years ago.
One barrier to teacher retention is Connecticut’s “demanding certification process,” said Wade.
On the other hand, TFA benefits the city by bringing in young talent in areas where there’s a shortage of teachers, such as in science and math, said Chief Operating Officer Will Clark.
Teacher recruitment is one plank of a sweeping school reform initiative. The city has also hired New York experts The New Teacher Plan to attract and retain new teachers.
Renewing the contract with TFA “reflects one of the ways our reform is an evolution of existing work,” she argued.
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City hopes to increase pre-K access By Chris Marino, Yale Daily News, September 23, 2009
After a two-year review of the city’s schools, the New Haven Early Childhood Council — a New Haven based nonprofit committed to ensuring quality early education for all — released a report that aims to help measure year-to-year access to prekindergarten programs, outreach to families and expanded health care coverage for children through age 8.
The report, which was released this month after two years of research, recommends measuring progress by regularly considering five indicators: kindergartner proficiency on literacy assessments, third-grader proficiency on reading assessments, births to mothers without a high school or equivalent diploma, the rate of child neglect and abuse, and the percentage of children through age 8 who are enrolled in state health insurance with regular medical checkups.
Although she had kind words for the city’s current pre-K programs — including magnet preschools, the New Haven School Readiness program and the federal Head Start program — Evelyn Robles-Rivas, principal of Worthington Hooker School on Canner Street, stressed the importance of expanding them.
Indeed, the report highlights several issues facing early education in New Haven. For instance, according to the report, child abuse and neglect were three times higher in New Haven than in the rest of Connecticut. Additionally, 71 percent of third graders statewide achieved proficiency in reading, compared with only 38 percent of New Haven third graders, the report said.
But co-Chairwoman of the NHECC Jennifer Heath said she remains optimistic because funding for education has remained stable despite the difficult economic times. Heath explained that funds for the Early Childhood Plan came from a grant through the Graustein Memorial Fund, in addition to city and state sources. “There have been some cuts,” Heath explained, “but all things considered, we’ve been very fortunate.”
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Initiative Focuses on Early Learning Programs By Sam Dillon, The New York Times, September 19, 2009
Tucked away in an $87 billion higher education bill that passed the House last week was a broad new federal initiative aimed not at benefiting college students, but at raising quality in the early learning and care programs that serve children from birth through age 5.
The initiative, the Early Learning Challenge Fund, would channel $8 billion over eight years to states with plans to improve standards, training and oversight of programs serving infants, toddlers and preschoolers.
The Senate is expected to pass similar legislation this fall, giving President Obama, who proposed the Challenge Fund during the presidential campaign, a bill to sign in December.
Experts describe the current array of programs serving young children and their families nationwide as a hodgepodge of efforts with little coordination or coherence. Financing comes from a shifting mix of private, local, state and federal money. Programs are run out of storefronts and churches, homes and Head Start centers, public schools and other facilities. Quality is uneven, with some offering stimulating activities, play and instruction but others providing little more than a room and a television.
Oversight varies by state, but most lack any early childhood structure analogous to the state and local boards of education that govern public schools. A result is that poor children, even many who have access to government-financed early care or learning programs, tend to enter kindergarten less prepared for school than those with wealthier parents.
To qualify for grants, states would have to demonstrate that they have established or improved what the bill calls a “governance structure” for their networks of child care centers and prekindergarten programs.
The Department of Education is already administering a separate $4.3 billion competition among states to reward and encourage improvements to elementary and secondary schools. In August, scores of early learning groups and advocates wrote letters to the department criticizing proposed rules for that competition, known as Race to the Top, as largely ignoring early childhood education.
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Community weighs in on Stratford education By Meg Barone, CT Post, September 23, 2009
The Three R's -- reading, writing and 'rithmatic, are not enough to succeed in today's global marketplace, according to the town's education officials, who created a steering committee a year ago to help craft a five-year strategic plan to improve education for the district's 7,500-plus children.
The committee worked throughout the summer to come up with a draft, which will be revised to include the input of about 100 citizens, who met Tuesday at United Methodist Church. The gathering, billed as a Community Conversation on Education, was sponsored by the Board of Education, and funded through a grant from the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund.
The group included a diverse cross section of the town -- parents, students, senior citizens, educators and business people -- who contemplated the importance of quality education, the purpose of education and how they would define success for Stratford school children.
They broke into five discussion groups, each coming up with their own answers before reuniting as a whole. There was much overlap in their responses. All the groups agreed a school district has the responsibility to keep up to date with technological advances and to educate children beyond academics, preparing them not only for college, but for life in general.
Others added that sports, the arts and community service should all be part of a successful educational experience, which will lead to well-rounded, productive members of society.
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16-Year-Olds Will Fare Better In Juvenile System Editorial, Toni Harp and Toni Walker, Hartford Courant, September 23, 2009
Being a legislator means watching a lot of good ideas go to an untimely grave for lack of funding, especially this year. What we cannot afford to watch is a good idea going to an untimely grave because it has had misinformation heaped upon it. That's why we have a couple of long days ahead of us to protect the Raise the Age reform from attempts to scuttle it at the eleventh hour.
Connecticut is one of only three states that prosecutes all 16-year-olds as adults, even for the most minor offenses. Most states set the age of adulthood higher, recognizing that young people are unsafe in adult prisons and that the services offered by the juvenile system lead to much lower recidivism rates. It's humane and it's smart. That's why Raise the Age, which will place nonviolent 16-year-olds under juvenile jurisdiction effective Jan. 1, received such widespread support.
Youths placed in the juvenile system get access to counseling, education and other services that make them less likely to commit future crimes and more likely to become law-abiding citizens contributing to our economy. It's not only wrong to throw away children; it's something that an aging population in difficult economic times can ill afford. Connecticut currently spends more on corrections than we do on the state's higher education system. We're paying for failure instead of investing in success.
But now this common-sense reform is the target of a well-funded campaign that exploits the economic crisis. Perhaps you've heard the radio ads calling the change an "unfunded mandate." We understand the fiscal pressures on Connecticut communities and would be very sympathetic to that argument, if it were true.
Clearly no town should need to change its police facilities when 16-year-olds are moved to the juvenile jurisdiction. But some things will change — and change in a positive way. That's why we are so committed to this reform.
The funds to ready the state for Raise the Age are already in the budget passed by the General Assembly. The cost to towns is little to nothing. People who are philosophically opposed to Raise the Age had ample chance to make their point before the legislature passed the measure in 2007. They were ready to abandon our children's future to a punitive system. The majority of us thought instead that young people deserve a second chance to be productive citizens.
•Sen. Toni N. Harp, D-New Haven, is co-chairwoman of the General Assembly's appropriations committee. Rep. Toni E. Walker, D-New Haven, is co-chairwoman of the human services committee.
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Revoking unfunded mandates? Just do it Editorial, The Waterbury Republican-American, September 22, 2009
If your public schools could immediately cut expenses by at least 5 percent and cut staff hours by 11 percent while doing a better job of educating your children, what would you say?
If your town government could cut expenses by 16 percent and staff hours by 6 percent while doing a better job of servicing the community, what would you say?
If these savings could be realized by eliminating unfunded mandates from the state at little or no cost to the state, what would you say?
If their elimination would also return some balance of control to local government and education, what would you say?
For heaven's sake, do it. What else would you say?
But, despite decades of complaints, including from our governor, almost nothing has been done. The reasons for this failure are many, but it brings back an age-old truth: It is easier to pass laws than to unpass them.
Gov. M. Jodi Rell, proclaiming unfunded state mandates a primary cause of out-of-control property taxes, tried to do something about this four years ago. She created a commission of leading citizens and officials to identify, study and make recommendations that the legislature could act upon. After a year of work, the Governor's Commission on Un-Funded Mandates returned a report to change or revise 188 laws.
"The (General Assembly's) Planning and Development Committee considered their recommendations, but none really came to fruition," state Rep. Brian J. O'Connor, D-Clinton, who served on the governor's commission, said in a phone interview last week. "We got caught up in the budget crisis. Hopefully, we can fight another day."
Today's financial crisis puts unfunded mandates into stark relief: On one hand, towns and school systems could use the time and money now mobilized to comply with state demands for serving the community and educating children. On the other hand, the fund-strapped state is less equipped than before to enforce its top-down directives.
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