On the ongoing question over Interm Superintendent Loughlin's qualifications: the section of the report to the School Committee two weeks ago dealing with those working under waivers, reported on last week in Worcester Magazine, is 143 pages long. Page 60 is clearly labelled as Dr. Loughlin's resume, which runs for a full page and includes her education and her experience.
Her certifications are not on the page.
The following page of the report, page 61, begins with the heading "Certifications." It leads off with Superintendent, and moves down through various other certifications. It is not otherwise labeled, and it's in a different font than the preceding page (p. 60 is sans serifs; 61 has serifs).
Is that page from a different resume?
I've heard from some in the city that they think it is, that the second page got stuck in behind the first page of Dr. Loughlin's resume, and it was photocopied in error.
If that's true, what we have is not an official lying about her certifications, but a Human Resources department that erred in its reporting in a huge and horrid way. Moreover, we have an administration so tone deaf as not to demand a retraction from Worcester Magazine or send out a clarification of the report.
Can someone over there please explain just what the heck is going on with the resumes in that report?
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Human Resources Task Force appointed
At an 11:30 press conference this afternoon, interm superintendent Loughlin appointed the Human Resources task force. The members are:
Superintendent Loughlin introduced the group, then turned the floor over to Mayor Lukes, who commented that the city has "suffered a black eye" from the current and ongoing flap around the schools' Human Resources department. The task force will conduct an "in-depth investigation" and report back to the Superintendent. She commented also that this is a "very professional and qualified group."
Mr. Bogigian and Mr. Monfredo were the other School Committee members there, and both briefly commented. Councilor Rosen also attended, as did several parents of special needs children, who spoke with both the press and the officials after the meeting.
- Tracy Hassett, Chair: Vice-President, Human Resources, WPI
- Nicole Brown: Assistant Dean, Worcester State College
- Russell Vanderbaan: Vice-President, Human Resources, Morgan Construction
- Jose Vieira: Assistant Superintendent, Milford Public Schools
- Patricia Webb: Senior Vice-President, Human Resources, UMass-Memorial Healthcare
Superintendent Loughlin introduced the group, then turned the floor over to Mayor Lukes, who commented that the city has "suffered a black eye" from the current and ongoing flap around the schools' Human Resources department. The task force will conduct an "in-depth investigation" and report back to the Superintendent. She commented also that this is a "very professional and qualified group."
Mr. Bogigian and Mr. Monfredo were the other School Committee members there, and both briefly commented. Councilor Rosen also attended, as did several parents of special needs children, who spoke with both the press and the officials after the meeting.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
National Assessement of Educational Progress: not much progress under NCLB
The National Assessement of Educational Progress long-term trend data was released yesterday, and the news is not good for how things have been heading since NCLB.
In sum: we were doing better before it.
While math and reading scores have improved for 9 and 13 year olds, the improvement has significantly slowed. Also troubling is the lack of movement in the achievement gap between minority and white students:
You can find more at:
USA Today , The Christian Science Monitor , and U.S. News and World Report's (4/29) On Education blog
In sum: we were doing better before it.
While math and reading scores have improved for 9 and 13 year olds, the improvement has significantly slowed. Also troubling is the lack of movement in the achievement gap between minority and white students:
Between 2004 and last year, scores for young minority students increased, but so did those of white students, leaving the achievement gap stubbornly wide, despite President George W. Bush’s frequent assertions that the No Child law was having a dramatic effect.
Although Black and Hispanic elementary, middle and high school students all scored much higher on the federal test than they did three decades ago, most of those gains were not made in recent years, but during the desegregation efforts of the 1970s and 1980s. That was well before the 2001 passage of the No Child law, the official description of which is “An Act to Close the Achievement Gap.”
“There’s not much indication that N.C.L.B. is causing the kind of change we were all hoping for,” said G. Gage Kingsbury, a testing expert who is a director at the Northwest Evaluation Association in Portland. “Trends after the law took effect mimic trends we were seeing before. But in terms of watershed change, that doesn’t seem to be happening.”
You can find more at:
USA Today , The Christian Science Monitor , and U.S. News and World Report's (4/29) On Education blog
Press conference tomorrow
According to the T&G, the task force charged with looking at WPS hiring practices will be named tomorrow at a press conference at the Driscoll Administration Building.
11:30 am, 20 Irving Street
No word on if the scrutiny will include the superintendent herself.
11:30 am, 20 Irving Street
No word on if the scrutiny will include the superintendent herself.
Certifiable?
I should point out that fellow blogger Brendan Melican has an active conversation (with minimal amounts of name calling) going on over at radioball.net on the Superintendent's lying on her resume about her certification.
This is a really clear distinction: you either have certification or you don't. You either applied for and received the acknowledgment of the state that you are qualified, or you haven't.
Saying that you have when you haven't is lying.
This is a really clear distinction: you either have certification or you don't. You either applied for and received the acknowledgment of the state that you are qualified, or you haven't.
Saying that you have when you haven't is lying.
State education funding wrap-up
If you're looking for a good walk-through of state education funding since the Ed Reform Act of 1993, the Mass Budget and Policy Center has done a nice job. This walks you not only through ideas like the foundation formula, but also goes through the alterations made in the funding formula in the past few years, and brings us right up through the Governor and the House budget proposals.
It also points out what we've done before, that the proposed budget breaks the law:
Together these districts would have received $168 million less than the amount they would need to meet the minimum requirements of the Foundation Budget formula. This would likely constitute a violation of the state’s constitutional obligation to ensure that every school district has the resources needed to provide access to an adequate education. While the state could adjust local and state contributions in several different ways to ensure that every district will spend the Foundation Budget amount, it can not, constitutionally, fail to ensure that every district can spend at the Foundation Budget level that is the minimum needed to provide an adequate education to the students in that district.
Both the House and the Governor use federal stimulus dollars to make up the lack, but remember: that isn't Chapter 70 money; it's a federal grant.
It also points out what we've done before, that the proposed budget breaks the law:
Together these districts would have received $168 million less than the amount they would need to meet the minimum requirements of the Foundation Budget formula. This would likely constitute a violation of the state’s constitutional obligation to ensure that every school district has the resources needed to provide access to an adequate education. While the state could adjust local and state contributions in several different ways to ensure that every district will spend the Foundation Budget amount, it can not, constitutionally, fail to ensure that every district can spend at the Foundation Budget level that is the minimum needed to provide an adequate education to the students in that district.
Both the House and the Governor use federal stimulus dollars to make up the lack, but remember: that isn't Chapter 70 money; it's a federal grant.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Friedman Voucher study not quite what it seems
Well, if you took a statistics class, you probably heard something along the lines of: "Don't go into a study with your conclusions already drawn."
Not a big surprise that an institution which calls itself the "Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice" might sponsor a study showing that vouchers improve schools, therefore. They do have a conclusion right there in their name! The study, released in February and covered fairly extensively at the time, was presented as a comprehensive study of previous research on the effect of vouchers on public schools, and concluded that they do the public schools only good. The foundation said that this study proved that vouchers do not, as previously presented, cream the good students off of public schools, and that they only improve public schools.
A closer look at the Friedman Foundation's report by the Think Tank Review Project by Professor Christopher Lubienski of the University of Illinois has found the Foundation's study has some important holes; to wit:
Not a big surprise that an institution which calls itself the "Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice" might sponsor a study showing that vouchers improve schools, therefore. They do have a conclusion right there in their name! The study, released in February and covered fairly extensively at the time, was presented as a comprehensive study of previous research on the effect of vouchers on public schools, and concluded that they do the public schools only good. The foundation said that this study proved that vouchers do not, as previously presented, cream the good students off of public schools, and that they only improve public schools.
A closer look at the Friedman Foundation's report by the Think Tank Review Project by Professor Christopher Lubienski of the University of Illinois has found the Foundation's study has some important holes; to wit:
- a.. While it claims to reflect "all available empirical studies on how vouchers affect academic achievement in public schools," the majority of the studies cited in the report were produced by explicitly pro-voucher advocacy organizations, and almost all did not undergo peer review.
- b.. Lubienski describes a study that was misrepresented in the report. The report summarizes only the first part of the study, which merely replicated other research. But it was in the second part that the researchers explained why a different approach would be more rigorous. That more rigorous approach found no improvement in public schools from voucher programs; it was dismissed by the Friedman report as "unnecessary."
- c.. The report makes no serious attempt, where vouchers are found to be associated with improved public school performance, to test for alternative explanations, as would be required in credible research. Instead, it relies on a "black box" analysis that blindly attributes improved achievement to the presence of a voucher policy.
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