Entries by Jim Stergios

Proven Approaches to Dropout Prevention

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Tomorrow the state’s Joint Committee on Education will meet to discuss a raft of proposals to address Massachusetts’ inability to bring down its dropout rate. It’s about time. The problem is that few of the proposals actually do much more than beef up a cadre of coaches and support staff for at-risk kids. Perhaps that can help, but the data in reports like The Silent Epidemic are pretty clear in noting that kids drop out for two reasons: – Nearly half (47 percent) said a major reason for dropping out was that classes were not interesting. These young people reported being bored and disengaged from high school. Almost as many (42 percent) spent time with people who were not interested […]

If You Want to Run for Office…

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This is a good year to do so. The Gallup numbers are no surprise (been in this range for a while), but the dissatisfaction with incumbents is, if anything, deepening. As regards Congress and Washington’s ability to get things done, this and other polls do suggest that the view that states should have a larger role in decision-making is gaining steam on both sides of the aisle. The findings include – 82% of Americans disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job. – 69% say they have little or no confidence in the legislative branch of government, an all-time high and up from 63% in 2010. – 57% have little or no confidence in the federal government to solve […]

Parent Power

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(image from DropOutNation.net) Used to be that Massachusetts was the epicenter of most of the innovations occurring in education. We had the best standards in the nation. The best student tests, best teacher tests, a standout accountability office, the most advanced charter approval process and one of the most knowledgeable charter office staffs. We had a progressive funding formula that ensures a level of equity in what gets spent on children. As of 2014, we’ll have whittled that list down to the best teacher test in the nation (if it survives) and a progressive funding formula. Massachusetts is no longer mentioned, whispered or even thought of as a national leader for its recent laws and policies. Compare Massachusetts’ agenda of […]

What if Bill Gates rewarded results?

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Last winter, two things clarified my views on the utility of the Gates Foundation in education policy. One was an opportunity I had to spend time at the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, an Oklahoma-based foundation that focuses primarily on plant and seed sciences. Their campus was intensely focused on experimentation and rewarding results in the field. Its buildings were not ostentatious but rather highly focused on their mission. They were also interested in investing in high-value ROI obtained from places like the Jonas Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California. The other came in Sam Dillon’s December 2010 New York Times article on the Gates Foundation’s effort to scope out the perfect way to evaluate teachers. Using value-added statistical models, […]

Setting the Record Straight

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When blogging, sometimes you shorthand — summarize too quickly. In yesterday’s blog, I suggested that Rick Hess, American Enterprise Institute scholar and EdWeek blogger, has been straddling the fence on things like national standards and assessments, generally giving the US ED the benefit of the doubt on debates concerning whether the education department is overstepping its bounds, whether one-size-fits-all national education strategies actually work, whether the national standards were any good and whether the national assessments will be a qualitative step forward. That’s pretty accurate on the national standards and assessments, where Rick is sympathetic to the case for common standards, but wonders if it is going to get bungled. He’s in wait-and-see mode. It’s less accurate on the US […]

National standards’ process and substance abuse

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For a while it looked like all of thinking Washington was gaga over US Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s agenda. The only opposition that stirred was from the teachers unions which came out this summer with their shortlist of 13 things they hated about the US Education Secretary. While Secretary Duncan may have seen that as a badge of honor, but there were in fact several items the unions noted that were spot on criticisms—specifically related to intrusions into personnel decisions, forcing federal experiments on states, and the Secretary’s silver-bullet-osis. Then came Secretary Duncan’s announcement that he would circumvent the legislative process needed to get the No Child Left Behind Act reauthorized and instead would dole out “waivers” to states that […]

Arne Duncan gets sent to the principal’s office

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US Education Secretary Arne Duncan is losing his allies fast. As the Huffington Post noted in early July, At its annual meeting in Chicago, The National Education Association’s Representative Assembly passed Saturday New Business Item C., a strongly worded piece that comprehensively lists the NEA’s grievances with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan EdWeek’s Stephen Sawchuck summarized it this way: With a few minor amendments, the NEA’s Representative Assembly today passed New Business Item C, a.k.a. “13 Things We Hate About Arne Duncan.” One of its sponsors said that unions are tired of being attacked, and they are “especially upset that the U.S. Department of Education and Secretary Duncan are part of the problems we face every single day.” No one […]

Krugman, Comfy Pillows and Rick Perry

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Paul Krugman, economist polemicist extraordinaire, took out a very lightweight hammer and cushy tongs on Rick Perry’s job creation claims: Texas: It has, for many decades, had much faster population growth than the rest of America — about twice as fast since 1990. Several factors underlie this rapid population growth: a high birth rate, immigration from Mexico, and inward migration of Americans from other states, who are attracted to Texas by its warm weather and low cost of living, low housing costs in particular. And just to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with a low cost of living. In particular, there’s a good case to be made that zoning policies in many states unnecessarily restrict the supply of housing, and […]

Science for Consumers

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The Massachusetts department of education (DESE) is under way with a revision to the state’s science standards. Context here is that we have had strong science standards in place since 2006, which served as the basis for students preparing for 2010—the year in which the new MCAS Science test became a graduation requirement. There’s nothing wrong with a review—the state is supposed to update its standards every few years, and to improve them. I wish as it did, the state would also inch up the passing grade for the MCAS—deliberately but so that over a five-year window, the passing grade was more like 230 than 220. It would be more meaningful. And the kids can do it. But it’s time […]

False Alarm on Science

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In a nicely timed alarm, the state’s department of education is noting that kids aren’t learning science as well as they are learning reading and math. You can never rest on your laurels, but this strikes me as alarmism of the worst kind. An article in the MetroWest Daily News notes, On the 2010 MCAS, for example, 36 percent of 10th graders in the state scored below proficient on the science and technology exam, compared to only 24 percent on the math and 22 percent on English. The problem is that in the next breath, MWD’s Scott O’Connell suggests that those results on the first science MCAS that counts as a graduation requirement constitutes a crisis: Globally, American students are […]

Do exam schools add value?

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Historically, many of Massachusetts’ political and economic leaders have built their success on the education received at the city’s historic exam schools—Boston Latin School, Boston Latin Academy and the John D. O’Bryant High School of Mathematics and Science, which in total enroll about 5,300 grade 7-12 students. They have received accolades from the usual sources of school rankings, and led other states to follow our example, with New York City building on its own historic grade 9-12 exam schools (Stuyvesant High School, Bronx High School of Science, and Brooklyn Technical High School) by establishing in 2002, the High School for Math, Science and Engineering at City College, the High School of American Studies at Lehman College, and Queens High School […]

Watch Me Pull A Rabbit Out of My Hat

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Again? Ruffle up my sleeve. Presto. The Great and Good have done it again. The just-passed 2012 budget, it has been proclaimed, has “solved” the structural deficit, which just half a year ago was said to be in the $2 to $3 billion range. According to the State House News Service (sub. required): …The Patrick administration and lawmakers have also cheered what they have described as the elimination of a persistent structural deficit – caused largely by an annual reliance on onetime sources of revenue and an unchecked use of capital gains taxes – that has forced policymakers to close budget gaps each year with new revenues or revenue grabs, spending cuts or withdrawals from the rainy day fund. SHNS […]

Virtually There

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If Massachusetts has because of lack of leadership within the Board and the Department of Education, ground to a halt on digital learning, other states are moving fast. Let me give you two examples — one (Michigan) where the governor is particularly interested in digital learning and trying to make big changes fast; the other (Arizona) where “blended learning” is at the cutting edge. A month or so ago, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder laid out his education agenda. Admittedly, Gov. Snyder comes to his new gig with a strong background in computer technology, having in the past helmed Gateway Computers. Drawing off research from a local think tank, he saw how digital learning programs could save money and increase student […]

Virtually Worlds Apart

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Mirror-mirror on the wall, which states are pushing innovation most of all? Not Massachusetts. A number of other states are at this point moving faster than Massachusetts on key educational innovations. The good news for Massachusetts is that last January the state passed a law to double the number of charter schools. Further good news is that students in our charters consistently do better than their district peers; in other states that level of consistency is not always the rule. The bad news for Massachusetts is that states like Florida, Colorado, Michigan, Arizona and so many others are pushing forward with digital learning much faster than the Bay State is. In fact, the education bureaucracy is putting some of the […]

Tide turning on municipal health savings

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The Globe‘s editorial page came out with a very clear view on the House and Senate proposals on the issue of how to contain municipal health care costs. LAST-MINUTE provisions inserted in the Senate budget undermine much of the effort on Beacon Hill to give cities and towns the tools they need to control the rising health care costs of municipal workers. It’s a setback to the stellar work of the House, which earlier passed a plan to save an estimated $100 million annually by allowing municipalities to place their workers in the state’s less-costly Group Insurance Commission or a similar plan… Unions and special interests battered the House, seeking to weaken the municipal health reform effort. The House stood […]

Uncommon and common goals

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The dual mission of Phoenix Charter Academy—giving second chances to troubled youth and a relentless focus on academics—may seem a mission impossible. It isn’t, but the work to address systemic truancy and high dropout rates in our urban school districts presents numerous individual challenges—as many challenges as there are students. In fact, you can summarize the challenge of reclaiming opportunity for at-risk students as exactly that: It can only be done for a single student, and yet the only way to have real impact is to create some sort of scale. So, you have to engage each student toward individual goals, but you also have to manage the unique needs of very different students in a way that they are […]

Did the 2009 stimulus work?

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Economics21.org provides a graphical representation of the stimulus and reality. Certainly, this figure shows that the stimulus was not even close to successful according to the benchmarks set by the Administration. Back in January 2009, Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein produced a report estimating future unemployment rates with and without a stimulus plan. Their estimates, which were widely circulated, projected that unemployment would approach 9% without a stimulus, but would never exceed 8% with the plan. The estimates, along with real unemployment rates, are posted below: In May 2011, using the latest figures available from the BLS, the unemployment rate reached 9.1%. In contrast, the Romer and Bernstein projections estimated that the unemployment rate would be around 8.1% for this […]

Passion and Fellowship

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Massachusetts charter schools have a strong record in serving urban and suburban minorities. What about children who are clearly at-risk or have special needs? Chelsea-based Phoenix Charter Academy (PCA) serves at-risk students from Chelsea, Everett, Lynn, Revere, Winthrop, and Boston. The school’s mission is to give a caring but firm hand up with an eye toward not just keeping kids in school but also preparing them for rigorous academic work at college. PCA’s hybrid mission is the product of its founder, Beth Anderson, who comes to the school with long experience working with teen girls and at Boston’s standout MATCH School.

Squishy jobs

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What to make from the latest jobs report? After the April jobs report which showed an increase of around 250,000 jobs, and expectations that the non-farm payroll would increase around 150-175,000 jobs, the creation of only 54,000 jobs in May is a huge disappointment — especially coming a full year after the Summer of Recovery. Of course, there are snarky responses, and lots of people I’ve spoken to this morning have focused on the fact that the hiring announcement from McDonald’s nominally constituted May’s entire job growth number. The more meaningful response is what we gave to Mark Mardell of BBC TV: There is just a ton of uncertainty out there. The economy’s growth rate is slowing, and we know […]

Mother Courage

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Earlier this week, I shared a couple of videos introducing the Chelsea-based Phoenix Charter Academy (PCA). PCA is unique in that it focuses on getting at-risk students back working at school, but also insists on high-quality academic achievement. The academic culture at PCA is critical to the school’s success, and in order to establish a culture of learning, there has to be a foundational behavioral culture of order, respect and rules. In order to get to that point, PCA seeks to provide a base of support for its students that will give them room to focus on academics. The goal is not just to stay in school, but to meet and beating academic and behavioral expectations. PCA’s in-school support ranges […]

If walls could speak

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Walk into a building and you can already tell a lot about an institution. An excellent teacher can be found in a building that screams stasis, but a culture of excellence in a school will not over time abide such a feeling of immobility. That’s why you can feel the energy in a school that works–and most often you can see it upon coming to an entrance, walking the hallways, and viewing the classroom walls. And walking through the section of Our Lady of Grace in Chelsea, home to Phoenix Charter Academy, the walls of the classrooms show serious purpose. Sure, the school does not have the level of resources that district schools get for facilities; but that’s part of […]

Mend over matter

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For those of you who are inclined to think that Massachusetts is on the mend and on the move, perhaps some graphics will shake you from your dream-space. G. Scott Thomas of the Business Journals provides the goods: Texas has enjoyed an unequaled economic boom the past 10 years. The inventory of private-sector jobs in Texas increased by 732,800 between April 2001 and the same month this year, according to an On Numbers analysis of new federal employment data. Meanwhile, Massachusetts is 42nd in the nation for job creation oops, 8th in the nation for job loss since 2001. In the past year (April 2010 to April 2011), the state of TX has added 250,000 jobs. In the past year, […]

Phoenix Charter Academy’s Mission Impossible?

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The month of May opened with the official granting of 16 charters. That’s a great start by the Patrick administration on implementing the charter provision of the January 2010 education law. Full implementation of the law will double the number of students (reaching perhaps 55-60,000 students) and will likely double the number of charter schools operating in the Bay State. With the announcement of the Boston Compact, charters are working hard to identify and secure locations for the new schools. And with charters moving from a focus on poor, minority students to attracting higher percentages of special needs students and English language learners, many operators are looking for models that successfully drive high academic achievement for these populations. In the […]

School dollars and health reform

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Calls for more funding for education are common. Policy organizations may have played a significant role in the ideas included in the framework for Massachusetts’ nation-leading education reform, but teachers unions played the big role in pushing for more dollars into schools and insisting on more equity in school funding. The push for more school dollars by no means excuses the quality of education we are getting in some urban areas. And by no means absolves teachers unions for seeking monopoly status in opposing the expansion of private school options, like parochial schools, for urban students. (The parochial schools largely do a better job at a much lower cost.) But money is important. And that’s what budget season is all […]

King of New York

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Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times If the weekend sweep of the Yankees was not enough for you, here is a story of a great Boston reformer who has made good in the Big Apple. John B. King Jr., who credits teachers for helping him surmount an isolated childhood as an orphan in Brooklyn and who ran celebrated charter schools in New York and Massachusetts, was named Monday as the state’s next education commissioner, with a unanimous vote of the Board of Regents. At 36, Dr. King, who previously served as deputy commissioner, will be among the nation’s youngest educational leaders… After losing both of his parents to illness by age 12, Dr. King earned an undergraduate degree from […]

4 lessons from vocational-technical schools

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Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve shared a number of videos on the way in which regional vocational-technical schools have made impressive progress on key metrics of academic learning, leveraged parental involvement and the business community, and provided lessons for all schools on how to support special needs students and lower dropout rates. With such success in the 26 regional vocational-technical schools, which function as standalone schools, two questions arise: How do we show the same level of success in Massachusetts’ other vocational-technical schools that operate within larger districts and do not have the same level of autonomy seen in the regionals? What are the lessons for the rest of the schools or for specific student populations? Here are […]

An education in history

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On Monday, a Globe editorial noted that THE STATE’S new education reform law has been, by some measures, a highly utilized weapon. Turnaround efforts for the lowest-performing schools are proceeding apace, and the charter school community has responded eagerly to the challenge of expansion. But not every provision of the new law, approved in January of last year, has been fully utilized: Hopes that innovative school-transformation plans would bubble up from the community level have yet to be realized. The 35 Turnaround efforts and the robust response from charter school operators have, in fact, led to big steps forward, even though success is by no means assured. Turnaround efforts around the country have had disappointingly low rates of success. And […]

Voc-tech schools lowering the dropout rate

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This is the fifth and final leg of my series on the tremendous progress being made in our regional vocational-technical (VTE) schools in Massachusetts. These schools have changed markedly in the past ten years, as they moved from a stance of opposition to the major pillars of Massachusetts’ landmark education reform law of 1993. By embracing accountability and the high-quality academic standards the state developed in the late 1990s, the regional VTEs were able to nurture students in an individual way that made sense given their interest in academics as well as career preparation. The unique vocational-technical education attributes of close adult relationship, individualized instruction to recognized benchmarks, and student choice and commitment to programs studied have combined to great […]

Voc-tech success with special needs students

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Whenever I talk to education experts and people interested in education about the impressive improvements in academic performance and the low dropout rates at the state’s regional vocational-technical schools (VTEs), they often react by leaning on easy explanations such as the self-selection because they are schools of choice. The problem with that argument is that 26 stand-along regional VTEs can boast of providing an education to double the percentage of special needs students found in schools across the state. What makes the voice of experts from the regional VTE world important is that fact that the graduation rate for special needs students in regional VTEs is almost 20 percent higher than the statewide average for that category of students. Again, […]

Cracks in the national standards consensus

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Back in the fall, I mentioned that I thought that after the election we were going to see a lot of cracks in the façade of unity on national standards, and perhaps a separate group coalescing around Texas, as the point in opposing national standards. Last month, I was in Texas as the Lone Star state’s commissioner of education Robert Scott advanced with State Representative Daniel Huberty a bill that would prohibit Texas from adopting the national standards or national assessments. That same day, they rolled out the most ambitious set of math standards in the country—standards that surpassed even the quality of the once-nation-leading Massachusetts and California math standards. Now Texas has the best academic K-12 standards in the […]