April 27, 2008 - May 3, 2008 Archives

Kids love the Internet.

It’s where they upload photos on Facebook, befriend people on MySpace, and illegally download music. But now, their favorite medium could soon become their worst enemy.

This week, the Schenectady City School District joined many districts across the country by giving parents online access to their student’s report cards, says the Times Union in Albany, N.Y.

The district went even further, giving parents the option of viewing discipline records and daily updates on classroom attendance.

Earlier this month, some Florida districts allowed online parental access to grades, attendance, and homework assignments, says >TCPalm. In Minnesota, districts that don’t have “parent portals” have fallen behind, says the Star Tribune.

Posting grades online not only keeps interested parents in the loop, it also saves teachers valuable time. Thanks to the Web, they no longer have to add up grades by hand or field calls from curious parents.

And knowing Mom and Dad are only a click away from seeing his or her D in chemistry could keep students from slacking.

Parents who feel like they need they need a crowbar to pry information from their kids will find the program most useful—and possibly thrilling.

Secretly glimpsing at grades could be just as exciting as downloading music for free.

Although some schools have experienced low registration numbers—at Albany High, only one-fourth of parents signed up to glance at students’ grades—the option promises make otherwise info-starved parents more involved in their child’s education.

Stacey Hollenbeck, spring intern

I learned the phrase “24-seven” from a gifted African American student in Prince Georges County, Md. It was 10 years ago, and I was there to do a story on the restructuring of Benjamin Stoddert Middle School, an underperforming school in one of the nation’s largest majority-black counties.

I wonder where he is now, especially after reading a disturbing -- but not altogether surprising -- article in Education Week saying research shows that the greatest widening of the black-white achievement gap occurs not among the general population, but among higher-performing students as they move from elementary school into middle and high school.

In truth, I can’t tell you for sure that he was gifted, just that he was obviously very, very bright. Yet the sad truth was that students like him in Stoddert’s gifted and talented classes would be merely performing on grade level if they moved across the Potomac River to the more affluent areas of Arlington or Fairfax County. That’s what happens, researchers note in the article, if the general population is doing poorly: Teachers tend to teach to the middle, and the middle at Stoddert, located near the distressed neighborhoods that border Washington, D.C., was lower.

After several years of being taught at a level lower than students at more affluent schools, it’s no wonder that the achievement gap tends to widen most noticeably at the top.

There are other possible reasons for this trend. Just as there can be disadvantages in attending a majority black school, some African Americans may feel out of place in an overwhelmingly white one -- and determined not to “act white” and do their best. Out-of-school disparities among families can exacerbate the achievement gap as well: think of the academic advantages provided by computer camps, piano lessons, and private tutoring.

Finally, add the influence of NCLB and its single-minded focus on raising the achievement of students who test below state standards. It’s a worthy goal, of course, but there are fewer of these students in the more affluent schools, and that encourages the teachers in these schools to adopt a more enriching curriculum across the board.

The high-end achievement gap is a serious challenge for board members, teachers, and administrators. But it’s not insurmountable. And educators, who tend to be optimists by nature, know that. The more we learn about the reasons for the achievement gap, the more effectively we can begin to reduce it and move toward a public education system that offers all students the chance to reach their potential. Education is not the only tool in the struggle for equal opportunity and social justice, but it is indispensible.

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor

Here’s an interesting statistic: Only about 20 to 30 percent of people who enter principal preparation programs intend to become K-12 school principals, according to the Wallace Foundation.

That’s troubling on many fronts, most obviously because of the looming shortage of school leaders and the importance of strong leadership to turn around struggling schools. And, “that’s a lot of wasted money,” says Jody Spiro, a senior program officer at Wallace.

The foundation is looking for innovative ways to not only ensure that most people who enter these higher education programs actually want to become K-12 principals, but also to find ways to better prepare those candidates. Currently, too many programs focus on managing budgets and administrative tasks, when principals really should be instructional leaders who spend much of their time in classrooms.

Wallace hosted a luncheon for state legislators at the National Conference for State Legislature’s annual federal relations meeting last week in Washington, D.C. Some of the best practices discussed included six-month principal internships, where a principal candidate not only shadowed an experienced principal but also was allowed to oversee programs and make decisions, as well as multi-year mentorships for new principals.

Several principal training programs, including one through Stanford University, have dramatically increased the numbers of graduates who become K-12 principals by more narrowly focusing their programs. Kentucky also has focused its principal training by creating other specialized programs for people who want additional training but don’t want to be principals, such as teacher leadership programs, according to one panelist.

So why do people enter principal training programs when they don’t want to be principals? Many of them want to go into different types of school administration or are merely looking for salary increases, Spiro says.

Joetta Sack-Min, Associate Editor

Educators and journalists love a good "war story," and Michelle Rhee, chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools, did not disappoint. She spoke with reporters and writers at the annual conference of the Education Writers Association in Chicago last week.

One war story involved the all-too-common failure of the D.C. schools to put textbooks in the hands of students at the beginning of the school year. Last fall, Rhee made headlines by touring the school system’s book warehouse with D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty and finding pallet after pallet of untouched textbooks waiting for delivery.

Highlighting the problem didn’t prevent some foul-ups last fall in getting books to kids, and Rhee shared one shared one little-known incident.

A parent complained by e-mail that high school textbooks had ended up at a nearby middle school. That was bad enough, of course, but making it worse was that the central office had rejected the offer of parents to load up the books in their cars and personally deliver them to where they belonged.

The reasoning of bureaucrats? District rules insist that the textbooks be delivered by the school system. So the textbooks had to sit at the middle school until district personnel picked them up. Then they’d be sent back to the warehouse, processed, and eventually delivered to the right school.

That mentality, Rhee said, revealed the dysfunction within the district bureaucracy. She told the parents "to go ahead, so that kids had their books on the first day of school."

The 38-year-old chancellor, who had never served as a school administrator before now, also shared a war story about one of her biggest political fights—closing 23 underutilized schools.

Rhee wasn’t surprised that school closings would be controversial. Nor did she doubt that the decision was correct. With nearly one-third of the city’s school-aged children in charter schools, the D.C. system had many schools filled to only half capacity—and they were wasting vast sums in salaries, energy costs, and security and maintenance resources.

What was interesting, though, was how strongly neighborhoods identified with their schools—without regard to their academic performance, she said.

During one school visit, Rhee said, she stopped to talk to residents on the street, and they all begged her to save their school building from closure. They loved the school, she said. They thought it was a great school.

The only problem, she noted, was that it was anything but a great school. "Only 9 percent of the kids were testing proficient." That compared to a charter school only a few blocks away—serving students from the same neighborhood—that boasted that 90 percent of its students were scoring proficient.

For all the controversy involved, closing those schools was an early success for Rhee. So much money will be saved that each city school next year will have an art teacher, a music teacher, and a physical education teacher.

That might not seem all that remarkable for educators in more affluent communities, she added, but in D.C., such staffing is "almost unheard of."

Finally, Rhee spoke a little about the City Council granting her unprecedented authority to terminate district employees, which she promptly used to cut 100 jobs in the central office. As it turned out, it wasn’t all that difficult to decide who should stay—and who should go.

For example, she recalled, she found a staff of nine serving teen mothers at a cost of $1 million annually. But the program only served about seven students each day, and it turned out that $700,000 of the program was spent on salaries.

That just didn’t cut it in Rhee’s judgment. "How do we make sure dollars actually have an impact on kids in the classrooms?" she asked. "We have to look at every program. Even if the people are nice people, if the program is not having a dollar-for-dollar real impact on kids, it has to be seriously looked at."

These are only a few of Rhee’s stories. But they all emphasize how the new chancellor is fighting "the good fight" on behalf of D.C. schoolchildren. Such a fight ensures that we can expect Rhee to share even more war stories to share in the years ahead.

Del Stover, Senior Editor

Even the brightest students can’t maintain good grades if their parents aren’t helping them with homework, making sure they stay on schedule, and—perhaps most importantly—providing them with a healthy home environment. That’s why many schools and districts have developed classes for Moms and Dads to help them learn valuable parenting skills.

Sandra Jimenez, principal of Langley Park-McCormick Elementary School in Langley Park, Md., has put similar classes in place for the mostly Spanish-speaking and low-income families in her neighborhood.

I spoke with Jimenez recently for an upcoming issue of ASBJ dealing with diversity.
The principal and community leader says instructing parents can help them be more organized, on schedule, and involved. In the near future, she hopes to help struggling families with another course on relationships.

Cultivating more adept parents could be a plus for students—especially poor performers—but are public schools the right places to put forth such efforts?
Stacey Camp, a mother from Plano, Texas, says “no.” She told The Dallas Morning News that she didn’t want her “hard-earned taxes” spent on the classes, which are also popping up in North Texas schools.

“I'm being penalized for working harder when others might not be working as hard as they need to,” she added.

The programs can be expensive. Plano will spend $250,000 on developing and implementing the lessons next year, says the Morning News.

The new Connecting Parents to Educational Opportunities program in Minneapolis, an initiative that has attracted over 400 families, comes with another added cost. Parents who participate can earn their child a future scholarship that would cover tuition at one of two Minnesota colleges, says the Star Tribune.
Despite controversy and costs, schools who see a need for coaching parents should consider such programs.

Without reinforcements at home, students can’t reach their full potential. But if parents align their goals with those of the school, both parties will benefit.

Stacey Hollenbeck, spring intern