President Obama's unusual education summit

By Valerie Strauss
Posted at 03:41 PM ET, 07/18/2011

President Obama hosted an education roundtable at the White House on Monday and I’ll give you one chance to guess who wasn’t high on the guest list.

Educators.

Below is a list of people who were invited to the event, which was described on the president’s schedule this way:

“The President hosts an education roundtable with business leaders, Secretary Duncan, Melody Barnes, and America’s Promise Alliance Chair Alma Powell and Founding Chair General Colin Powell.”

The invitees, according to a news release from the White House, include:

· Marguerite Kondracke, president & CEO, America’s Promise

· Alma Powell, chairwoman, America’s Promise

· General Colin Powell, founding chairman, America’s Promise

· Craig Barrett, former president & CEO, Intel

· Glenn Britt, CEO, Time Warner Cable

Education Summit: Sacramento

Education Summit
Monday, March 9. Sacramento. Summit to be held at the California Museum of History, Women and the Arts.
Major Speakers at the summit have not improved the schools.

Sponsored by Mayor Kevin Johnson. The Rev. Al Sharpton will give the opening talk. The Rev. Sharpton has founded a group, Education Equity Project.
Followed by Chancellor Joel Klein, of the NYC Education Dept. and Michelle Rhee, Chancellor of the Washington D.C. Schools. And Newark Mayor Cory Booker.

These speakers will congratulate each other and praise each other for getting tough on schools. This is school reform by press release rather than improving schools.

What do these speakers have in common?
They each direct major school systems where the Mayor is in charge. They are in strong mayor cities.
In the case of Joel Klein, if I were asked, I would work at improving the quality of schools in my own city prior to traveling around the country giving advice to other cities.

A brief on Joel Klein.
The administration of Joel Klein as Chancellor of New York City Schools is representative of a particular rigid approach to school change promoted by NCLB which we oppose. Rather than take the advice of educators, Chancellor Klein repeatedly championed and implemented policies that support corporate interests as opposed to children. The NY City Department of Education under Joel Klein has been run like a ruthless dictatorship – with no input from parents or educators. Teachers have not been respected, consulted, nor listened to. And little thought has been devoted to how the policies he has imposed on our schools have been destructive to the children and their futures. 
To lay at the door of schools the many problems the of society—and particularly those that afflict people of color and low income—as does Joel Klein, is a transparent media manipulation of complex issues. While focusing on test scores, he has consistently ignored the crisis of overcrowding in New York schools. Thousands of children are being given special services in hallways or in closets. 
Rather than face the complex nature of student achievement and to work for substantive school improvement, Chancellor Joel Klein has joined with others to blame teachers unions and to bash teachers. 
He has, at the same time, refused to reduce class size, despite repeated audits and reports from the New York State Comptroller’s office and the State Education Department . 
Joel Klein has repeatedly demonstrated that his primary goal is improving test scores even when these policies produce cheating and a focus on test preparation. The rise in state test scores that has resulted is not matched by improvements in the more reliable national assessments called the NAEPs. In fact, NYC was 11th out of 12 urban school districts in New York in terms of its gains in the NAEPs over the course of his administration, and there has been no closing of the achievement gap in any subject tested. The available data New York City does not support the claims of improved school achievement under this administration.

Michele Rhee
Michele Rhee serves California schools and Sacramento schools well. She directs the Washington D.C. schools and provides one of the few districts, along with Mississippi and Louisiana, where students consistently score below those of California. If Washington D.C. were not there, California and Sacramento would have the worst reading scores and among the worst drop out rates in the nation.
Michele Rhee has served as a part of the faculty recruitment team for Sacramento High- a Charter School. You can judge her success by looking at the turnover of faculty and administrators at Sac High and the significant decline in enrollment of students and see below on funding of Washington D.C. schools.

Stimulus to Help Retool Education, Duncan Says
By Bill Turque and Maria Glod
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 5, 2009; "D.C. has had more money than God for a long time, but the outcomes are still disastrous," Duncan said in an interview with Washington Post editors and reporters. He said the unprecedented influx of cash, which will begin to flow in the next 30 to 45 days, would target states, local school systems and nonprofit organizations willing to adopt policies that have been proven to work.” Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
The stimulus law, which will channel about $100 billion to public schools, universities and early childhood education programs nationwide, will help prevent teacher layoffs, overhaul aging schools and educate low-income children. But it also gives Duncan unusual power to shape change.

Some speakers at the summit, such as Mike Feinberg of Knowledge is Power Program ( KIPP) have improved school achievement.

Institute for Democracy and Education – SACRAMENTO.
http://sites.google.com/site/democracyandeducationorg/
Dr. Duane E. Campbell. Available for commentary.
Author: Choosing Democracy: a practical guide to multicultural education.
4th. edition. 2010. Allyn and Bacon.
916- 361-9072

Achievement Gap Summit: more limits

The California Department of Education and Superintendent Jack O’Connell organized a Achievement Gap Summit in Sacramento on November 13 and 14, drawing over 4000 educators and policy advocates for a two day conference. The presentations began with some basic facts; California student achievement is among the lowest in the nation and it is not improving. The California drop out rate is horrible. Any reasonable look at the evidence reveals this.
For over a decade, California and the nation have used one strategy for school reform; standards and test based accountability. The evidence is in. There has been little or no progress on reading scores and only limited progress in math. The summit focused on the gap in scores between White students, Black students and Latino students.
Here is a part of the problem. This summit was plush with consultants and policy advocates and very light on teachers as presenters and people who do the work in schools. You can not reform schools without bringing teachers along in the reform. Teachers make up the largest resource in the school. California has 14 years of standards based reform and 14 years of test based reform.
Remember the definition of insanity:
Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

That is not to say that the $1 million expense was wasted. There were some definite positives. A a wide variety of educational professionals recognize the crisis of public schools in California. The CDE provided a diverse group of presenters, so teachers and others looking for solutions were often able to find worthwhile presentations. There was recognition of some of the basic needs to resolve the achievement gap; multicultural education, language support for English language learners, and the approaches now termed culturally appropriate or culturally responsive pedagogy.
There were also some of the chronic problems revealed. If you want to improve the schools you really are going to have to spend some real money. California ranks about 37 in per pupil expenditures, and about 47 in reading. School reform will cost money. The governor and the legislature continue to avoid this reality. Although a real start was made last year in Quality Education Investment Act sponsored by CTA , the current budget situation for next year makes getting desperately needed funds to urban failing schools unlikely. Richard Rothstein spoke to the resources failure in schools. Lack of resources is a political failure.
A second problem dominant at the summit was the large number of policy advocates who each have an answer without first defining what is the problem. There are a number of salesmen of ideas, consulting services, testing packages, and curriculum packages, with little or no comprehension of the working realities of teachers.
It was more than a little interesting to hear that Superintendent O’Connell and his staff are taking a seminar on race and privilege from featured speaker Glenn Singleton. That may be beneficial. Certainly a major part of the problem lies with leadership – or lack of leadership- from elected and appointed officials.
One of the puzzling issues; policy advocates and conferences frequently debate whether the school issues are issues of race or class. What a strange debate.
They are – of course- both race and class.

Teachers, particularly new teachers in difficult schools, need support in creating a positive productive classroom environment. This requires resources, time, support networks, and sufficient counselors in the schools. (California ranks 49 out of the 50 states in counselors per student) And, they need coaches who are successful teachers and experts in helping kids such as English Language learners. New teachers have few of these. Instead they enter a failing system, try to do well, get frustrated, fail more, and become less effective and more defensive. Teachers need a positive work environment to produce a positive learning environment for kids. Few teachers in urban schools have a positive work environment.
The Achievement Gap Summit has spurred some blog commentary on the problems of the schools. The letters to the Sacramento Bee were mostly people responding with their solutions to the school crisis without listening to the problems.
I have a solution, now where is the problem? It is interesting how many people who do not work in schools know precisely what is needed to improve them; or you just need high expectations, or phonics, or English immersion, and on and on. I wish that these folks would go work in a school for a couple of weeks.
I am certainly pleased that the Superintendent hosted the event and that I attended. Now comes the hard part. Making something positive happen for kids in schools. I have written an entire book on this; Choosing Democracy: a practical guide to multicultural education. ( Merrill/Prentice Hall. 2004)
Duane Campbell