Appreciate a teacher!

And I should note that this is Teacher Appreciation Week and tomorrow is National Teacher Appreciation Day.
If you appreciate a teacher--and you should--let that teacher know this week.

Robert Reich on bailing out schools

Watch Buffalo

Buffalo, New York goes to the poll tomorrow to elect a school board. The so-called "ed reform" crowd has gotten involved in this one:

Education Reform Now has identified three candidates it believes would support its agenda, which includes increasing the number of charter schools and linking teacher compensation to performance.

The group's financial support appears likely to eclipse the money spent by the other two key players in the race, the Buffalo Teachers Federation and the Buffalo Niagara Partnership. Each of those groups estimated they would be spending about $10,000 this year, although final tallies will not be publicly disclosed for several weeks...

"It's forcing a lot of reform issues," he said. "This is the time it's got to be a really robust discussion. This may be our last chance to save public education. This is an important opportunity to try to push a progressive education agenda."

The group, which is closely tied to Democrats for Education Reform, has a number of individual backers who have asked not to be named until the group is required to disclose the information to the Internal Revenue Service, Williams said. Education Reform Now also has been active recently in Colorado, Rhode Island, New Jersey and other states.

Williams said his group selected the Buffalo candidates based largely on Internet research and recommendations from people it has worked with locally. An attorney advised the group not to contact any of the candidates, to avoid jeopardizing the spending's categorization as independent expenditures, he said.

Progressive education agenda? From donors who refused to be identified until after the election? On an ideology that does not educate all children?

Watch Buffalo.

Duncan at the Mom Congress

I didn't even know this was happening, but apparently there is a Mom Congress at Georgetown University this week. Secretary Arne Duncan is giving the keynote there this morning.

Charter schools in the news

(and where in the news has been a hot topic: this was a front page story in the New York Times; it (or most of it) made A4 in the Worcester Telegram and Gazette, but apparently, the Boston Globe buried it on p.10. If you want to have that conversation, you can find it here. )

Front page story in the New York Times yesterday:

But for all their support and cultural cachet, the majority of the 5,000 or so charter schools nationwide appear to be no better, and in many cases worse, than local public schools when measured by achievement on standardized tests, according to experts citing years of research. Last year one of the most comprehensive studies, by researchers from Stanford University, found that fewer than one-fifth of charter schools nationally offered a better education than comparable local schools, almost half offered an equivalent education and more than a third, 37 percent, were “significantly worse.”

Is there any hope that this will mean we can all have a real conversation now about who is educating what kids using how much money?

And I should note that the New York state legislature is taking up debate on a lifting of the charter cap today, per a second round Race to the Top application.

Latino kindergarteners: strong social skills

...and ready to learn.

Mr. Fuller and Claudia Galindo, an assistant professor in language, literacy, and culture at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, drew on a database of 19,590 kindergartners, called the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, to compare the social skills of children from different ethnic and racial groups at the start of kindergarten. The researchers also looked at how having those social skills, which were rated by teachers, translated into kindergartners’ acquisition of mathematics knowledge.

The researchers found a strong correlation between their social competency when entering kindergarten and the gains they made in math skills during kindergarten. They looked at several social areas: self-control, interpersonal skills, approaches to learning, and internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors.

I was most pleased, 'though, that this article avoided the "Latino population is one group" trap:

...they are the first to draw on it to report differences among subgroups of Latino kindergartners, Mr. Fuller said. For example, the study found that children of Mexican heritage start kindergarten with social skills and task engagement very comparable to those of white children. But that’s not the case with Puerto Rican children, who, on average, enter school with significantly less social competence than white children.

You can find the full study here; it will be in the May issue of Development Psychology.

This week in WPS meetings

• The final two WPS reorg "Listening and Learning" sessions are this week. Monday at Clark Street--that would be Burncoat quadrant elementary--and Tuesday at Flagg Street--that's Doherty quadrant elementary. Please come!
  
• Tomorrow night is the Citywide Parent Planning and Advisory Council (CPPAC) at the library at 7pm. This week's presentation is by Brian Allen, CFOO of the Worcester Public Schools, on the FY11 budget. Here's your chance to ask questions!
• School Committee meets in regular session at 7pm on Thursday evening. The superintendent is doing her presentation on Level 4 schools that night, and I believe it may include information about next year's principals.