In the News: August 19, 2013

In this edition of In the News:

  • Good News for New Orleans
  • Common Core Updates
  • National Headlines
  • News from BESE
  • Local Stories

Good News for New Orleans

New Orleans charter schools show progress with students, study finds
Times-Picayune – August 8, 2013
The latest CREDO study focused on Louisiana and found that New Orleans charter school students are learning faster than their peers at conventional schools and faster than their peers at charters elsewhere in Louisiana. Half of the city’s charter schools are performing significantly better than conventional public schools in reading, and 56% are performing higher in math. These gains equate to an extra 120 days of learning in reading and 150 days in math.

Writing a Love Story
NolaVie – August 6, 2013
A young New Orleanian has written a love letter to the city. “Sometimes she makes you happy. Sometimes she makes you sad. She challenges you. She’ll even make you a little uncomfortable. But she makes you feel alive.” New Orleans – There’s no one else like her!

What New Orleans Can Teach Us
Contexts – Summer 2013
Carl Bankston from Tulane’s Sociology Department is one of five national experts asked to write about the impact of charter schools for the American Sociological Association. Bankston argues that charters have been good for the mostly poor students of New Orleans, where charters are outperforming the traditional public schools they replaced post-Katrina, but he says districts with high-performing traditional public schools should be cautions of any radical overhaul.

New Orleans is America’s comeback city: Bobby Jindal
Times-Picayune – August 8, 2013
In this op-ed, Governor Jindal celebrates New Orleans’ recovery and the successes we have achieved in K-12 education, job creation, and economic growth.

By the Company It Keeps: Neerav Kingsland
Education Gadfly – August 7, 2013
Andy Smarick of the Fordham Institute interviews Neerav Kingsland, CEO of New Schools for New Orleans (NSNO), about his background, his work for NSNO, and the principles Kingsland believes should guide education reform. Smarick is impressed by Kingsland’s comprehensive understanding of the revolutionary ideas at play in New Orleans and his specific vision for actualizing them.

Common Core Updates

Stephanie Grace: Jindal’s position on Common Core bears watching
The Advocate – August 11, 2013
Governor Jindal is getting pushback from his conservative base regarding Common Core, but the Council for a Better Louisiana (CABL) is urging the Governor to block out the noise and stay the course. CABL hopes to counter “very misleading information,” particularly the idea that Common Core is a national curriculum when it is actually a set of standards more rigorous than Louisiana’s current ones.

New York fails Common Core tests
Politico – August 7, 2013
Less than 1/3 of students in New York public schools passed new reading and math tests based on the more rigorous Common Core standards. New York charters fared worse than traditional public schools in language arts, with just 23% scoring proficient compared with 31% in traditional public schools, and matched traditional public schools in math. Most states are expecting a drop in test scores as they roll out new tests aligned to Common Core. For more on the Common Core debate, read these articles in Education Week and Education Gadfly. Editor’s Note: In Louisiana, the LEAP essay writing prompts were aligned to Common Core this year, and the number of students scoring at grade level on this part of the test dropped by 10%.

National Headlines

A Double Dose of Algebra
Education Gadfly – August 1, 2013
A new study looks at the impact of Chicago’s “double-dose” of algebra program, which requires students who do poorly in eighth-grade math to take a double course load of algebra in ninth grade (with extra support and practice in the second period). The study followed over 11,000 students from 9th grade through college. Researchers found that those enrolled in the “double-dose” program as freshmen had higher GPAs overall, higher SAT and ACT scores, and were more likely to enroll in college than those who tested out of the requirement by a few points.

Charter School Networks Share Curricular Offerings Online
Education Week – August 7, 2013
Two California-based charter school networks are making their curricular materials available online for free and allowing teachers anywhere to browse, rate, and share the instructional resources. The charter networks hope to provide teachers with a professional community where they can easily find and share high-quality lessons.

ESEA Renewal: Exploring the Proposals
Education Week – August 13, 2013
Congress is working on competing proposals to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (No Child Left Behind). Use this interactive analysis from Education Week to explore the different proposals by issue (accountability, funding, teachers, etc.), by party, and by chamber (House or Senate).

An upfront bonus pays over the long term
Financial Times – August 5, 2013
A new study suggests that instead of rewarding teachers at the end of the year if they improve student test scores, it’s more effective to give incentive pay up front, with the understanding that teachers will have to return the bonus if they don’t succeed in raising scores. The idea of giving up money is a greater motivator than the idea of receiving it.

The Medium-Term Impacts of High-Achieving Charter Schools on Non-Test Score Outcomes
Education Gadfly – August 8, 2013
An in-depth look at Harlem Children Zone’s Promise Academy shows the middle school is having a positive effect on students long after they leave. Promise Academy graduates have higher high school graduation and college enrollment rates and lower teen pregnancy and incarceration rates than their peers who applied to Promise but did not win seats in the school’s lottery.

Best and brightest: Only a few countries are teaching children how to think
The Economist – August 17, 2013
A new book by Amanda Ripley asks the question, “What exactly is happening in classrooms in the countries that out-perform the U.S. academically?” The book follows three American teenagers who spend a year as foreign-exchange students in Finland, Poland, and South Korea, three countries that have shown rapid and steady gains in public education. A key finding: “Children succeed in classrooms where they are expected to succeed.” Schools work best when they operate with a clarity of mission, and, when teachers demand rigorous work, students often rise to the occasion.

News from BESE

A preview of Tuesday’s BESE charter school debate
Times-Picayune – August 12, 2013
Superintendent John White says the 2013 charter application process is much improved. New independent reviewer, SchoolWorks, is less expensive than the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA); charter applicants now have a chance to respond to feedback and make revisions; and the department’s internal reviewers and SchoolWorks have agreed on every application but one. However, NACSA, in an open letter to BESE, disagreed with how the Department characterized NACSA’s process and costs.

State school aid under scrutiny
The Advocate – August 14, 2013
BESE has put together a panel to study the Minimum Foundation Program (MFP) and determine if there is a way to simplify how public schools are funded and allocate state and local aid more fairly. The 21-member MFP Taskforce includes a broad range of stakeholders, including teachers, parents, and school superintendents, as well as members of the Louisiana School Boards Association, the Louisiana Federation of Teachers, the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, and the Council for a Better Louisiana.

Course Choice voucher program will serve all students who want it for 2013-14
Times-Picayune – August 15, 2013
The Department of Education announced that they have found enough funds to allow all of the 3,500 students interested in Course Choice to participate in the program. Supt. John White is pleased that his department found the $3 million they needed to keep Course Choice open after MFP funding for the program was ruled unconstitutional, but many Louisiana parents are upset that White kept Course Choice alive by transferring funds from the Louisiana Virtual School and closing it down.

Local Stories

Special education students still looking for fairness in New Orleans: Editorial
Times-Picayune – August 14, 2013
The Times-Picayune acknowledges that things have improved for special education students in New Orleans, with improved test scores, increased charter participation, and the centralized OneApp enrollment process, but says more needs to be done. Families are getting caught in “an interminable cycle” of evaluation, and the enrollment process will remain fractured until OPSB schools fully participate in OneApp.

New Orleans schools need to be more inclusive: Jarvis DeBerry
Times-Picayune – August 15, 2013
Jarvis DeBerry points to two recent legal actions – a lawsuit filed on behalf of special education students and a complaint filed on behalf of non-English speaking students – as signs that public schools in New Orleans must do a better job providing all students access to a quality education.

RSD goes it alone to buy BellSouth building in eastern New Orleans
Times-Picayune – August 15, 2013
The Recovery School District plans to buy its first ever building – the former BellSouth call center in eastern New Orleans – and renovate it into a school. This unexpected deviation from the $1.8 billion school building master plan has escalated tensions with the OPSB and within the New Orleans East community. The BellSouth building would accommodate as many as 1,900 extra students in the part of the city that has the most children, alleviating the long bus rides that are such a sore spot with families.

Charter leader employs six relatives; two may violate state ethics law
The Lens – August 9, 2013
The CEO of Friends of King charter schools, Doris Roché-Hicks, currently employs six of her relatives – her sister, daughter, son-in-law, grandson, great niece, and her son-in-law’s brother. Employment of at least two of the family members (her sister and son-in-law) appears to violate state ethics laws that ban nepotism. Friends of King oversees Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary and Joseph A. Craig Charter.