In his annual address to secondary school heads, John Dunford, the general secretary of the U.K.’s Association Of School and College Leaders, acknowledged yesterday that a culture of instant gratification has made the job of teaching today’s youth harder than its ever been.

“Success appears to come instantly and without any real effort,” Dunford told the conference audience. “It is difficult for teachers to compete. Success in learning just doesn’t come fast enough.” 

Well said, Mr. Dunford, but hardly revolutionary.

For years now, I’ve heard from teacher friends and seen from site visits how much teaching has become by necessity almost entertainment like; we must engage the students by making lessons fun and relevant.

One teacher told me recently that she has to convince high school students that learning basic math concepts like multiplication and  division are necessarily skills in life, even employing popular rap stars and their lyrics about money making within her arsenal.

That’s sad … but is it inevitable given how prolific and accessible technology and media are and make everything seem? Not only do we have 24/7 media, we have an endless supply of fame-seekers willing to broadcast their lives 24/7.
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The finalists in the second round of the Race to the Top program, the signature piece of the Obama administration’s education reform efforts, were announced Thursday, eliciting surprise and disappointment for the  16 who were picked and 24 who weren’t. Also this week, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation released one of the largest surveys of teacher attitudes, finding among other things, that effective principals and leadership were more important to teachers than salaries when choosing a place to work. For more of the latest in education news and insights, read this week’s Leading Source.

photo by stockvault

Should the Title I funds your school district receives be contingent on your state adopting college-ready math and reading standards?  That’s one proposal President Obama announced at a recent National Governors Association conference, and it’s the subject of a revealing discussion in this week’s National Journal.

Obama’s proposal would be a shift from the current policy of basing Title I money solely on the number of poor children in a district. But historically, it makes sense, writes Cheryl  L. Sattler, a senior partner at Ethica, LLC:  “Truth is, the feds have been linking money to state standards for years, in response to low or even nonexistent standards for poor minority students.”

True. But is this the right thing to do with Title I? Phil Quon, superintendent of the Cupertino Union School District in California, doesn’t think so: “Let’s commit to the targeted student population that Title I was created to serve. And while we’re at it, let’s also commit to fully funding all federal education mandates, in particular, IDEA. It just seems like another ‘great idea’ which diverts our attention away from the real issues of fully funding past, present, and future federally mandated programs.” (more…)

While 15 states and the District of Columbia received the good news that they were selected as finalists in the federal Race to the Top program, the other 25 states who applied in the first round of this competition for $4.35 billion in federal grants received the bad news, with some like Michigan wondering how they will be able to pay for expensive reforms without federal aid. Speaking of losing out, as California learned they were not on the shortlist for RTTT monies, thousands protested across the state yesterday against the severe cuts public schools have and will continue to sustain as lawmakers try to close another multi-million deficit. Read these stories and more in School Board News Today.

The U.S. Department of Education has chosen 16 states as finalists for the first round of Race to the Top funding—find the list on School Board News Today. In other news, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and House lawmakers agree that the Elementary and Secondary Education Act reauthorization is a top priority, but when will legislation move forward? And while talks between the superintendent and teachers union continue in the mass firing in Central Falls, R.I., some experts question whether replacing a school’s entire staff actually will do much to help turn around a failing school. Read these stories and more in School Board News Today.

Photo courtesy Gates Foundation

Want to hold onto your best teachers? Put good principals in your schools.

For years, teachers have been telling me that a good principal—someone who is supportive, focuses on improving instruction, and creates a healthy school climate—is the single most important factor in their choice of schools to work in.

Now a national survey of 40,000 teachers confirms my anecdotal-based opinion.

The survey, sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, found that 68 percent of teachers said  “supportive leadership” is essential for retaining good teachers, as opposed to only 45 percent who rated higher salaries as important.

That comes as no surprise to me. Without a good principal or an enlightened central office, a school can become a lousy place to work. No teacher is going to sit in a classroom every day if the principal won’t intervene against student misbehavior in hallways or classrooms—or can’t inspire a sense of meaning and progress to the work teachers do.

Conducted in conjunction with Scholastic Inc., the survey findings, Primary Sources: America’s Teachers on America’s Schools, offers some other insights into the minds of teachers:
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Tomorrow afternoon Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will announce the finalists for the first round of $4.35 billion in Race to the Top grants–and many states will be left out, according to the Wall Street Journal. Diane Ravitch (who’ll be speaking at NSBA’s annual conference in April) is in the news again to discuss her recent “u-turns” on issues such as charters, choice, and school governance. Read these stories and more in School Board News Today.

A few months ago, the Brookings Institute released a report that had a pretty obvious conclusion to those of us in education and journalism: “Invisible: 1.4 Percent Coverage for Education is not Enough.”

While the report’s main statistic—that education only gets 1.4 percent of coverage out of all the national and local newspapers the authors analyzed—has been questioned, some of its other conclusions are indisputable. One of those is that the depth of coverage is suffering as well.

In the March ASBJ, communications columnist Nora Carr shows why coverage matters. The U.S. population is aging, and about two-thirds of residents do not have school-aged children, and most of these have no connection to their local schools. Many of their beliefs center around their experiences with schools when they were students or their children attended. More news coverage is focused on policy (such as President Obama’s recent high school graduation events).

That’s why it’s so important to build relationships with reporters and find ways to get them tips about the good things—the heart and soul of education, as Carr says–that are happening each day in your schools. She points to Manuel High School in Indianapolis, where the superintendent let a local reporter have unfettered access. Some might call that a risky move, but it brought enormous rewards for the struggling school. Reporter Matthew Tully’s chronicle of the students and staff members stories has brought overwhelming community support for the school—more than 2,000 people attended its Christmas show, bringing $10,000 in donations.
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Ten years ago, Wake County, N.C., adopted a policy that assigned students to schools based on their socio-economic level, and after the 2007 Supreme Court ruling that limited the use of race in student assignments Wake County’s program became a national model. Today, the school board may scrap that plan due to parent protests, which would lead to more segregated schools in the district. In other news, NSBA testifies at a congressional hearing on the Child Nutrition Act and Bloomberg News reports on an increase in kids’ snacking habits and sugary, salty foods that often come from school vending machines. Read these stories and more in School Board News Today.

When Mary White was a little girl learning the rudiments of arithmetic, her teacher would ask her to answer a simple question – say, two plus three – and Mary would reply: “That depends.”

That depends, she would say, thinking of the numbers on a ruler, whether you’re looking at two where it borders one, or two where it borders three. Likewise for three.

She remembers her teacher becoming exasperated. “Just answer the question,” she seemed to be saying. “Like any normal kid.”

But Mary was not “normal” — in the “normal” sense of the word: She was extraordinary, and it took a prescient fourth grade teacher named Rich Weinfeld, to see that beneath her sloppy handwriting and run-on sentences, her misspellings and creative punctuation was an exceptional mind.

Twice Exceptional, to be precise. In this month’s ASBJ  l look at what some innovative districts are doing with these children, who have both extraordinary gifts and serious disabilities like ADHD, dyslexia, and Asperger Syndrome.
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