Edu Commentary

Good letter to The Washington Post from Virginia State Representative Kaye Kory (D). She points out that older kids — who need more sleep and are more likely to get in trouble after school — are getting up the earliest and getting out of school first. Backwards? She thinks so. But she also points out the financial challenge of flipping school starts around.

Richard Colvin is smiling…If you only read one education news story today, make it this series from the Herald Trib in Florida looking at teacher quality there. The paper fought with the state to get the information about the extent of the teacher quality problem there and is now publishing it in grim stories like this:

More than half a million Florida students sat in classrooms last year in front of teachers who failed the state’s basic skills tests for teachers.

Many of those students got teachers who struggled to solve high school math problems or whose English skills were so poor, they flunked reading tests designed to measure the very same skills students must master before they can graduate.



These aren’t isolated instances of a few teachers whose test-taking skills don’t match their expertise and training. A Herald-Tribune investigation has found that fully a third of teachers, teachers’ aides and substitutes failed their certification tests at least once.



The Herald-Tribune found teachers who had failed in nearly every school in each of the state’s 67 counties.



But it is the neediest of children who most often get the least-prepared teachers.

More on the equity/distribution problem in Monday’s story:

Children from poor and minority neighborhoods are being shortchanged when it comes to getting top teachers, at least as measured by how their teachers perform on certification tests.



The Herald-Tribune analyzed more than 20 years of the exams, which ensure that Florida’s teachers have the minimum level of knowledge needed to teach.



The analysis showed that teachers at poor schools are 44 percent more likely than those at rich schools to have failed. The gap in teacher scores is even more pronounced for high-minority schools.



Colleges of education in FL are part of the problem, too:

At the largest schools, including the University of Florida, Florida State University and the University of South Florida, about one in four school of education graduates failed the test at least once.

The paper also compiled a database on the problem.

But what’s most exasperating is that — despite the throwing up of hands by the spokesperson for the Florida Education Association — it’s not as though there are not a lot of good ideas out there about how (pdf) to help address (pdf) this problem.

Via Educationnews.org

If Zippy Chippy were a school, his owners would be demanding growth models and value-added measurements!

Heading into the weekend, the holiday season, and the new year, Mr. Sun offers some very sound advice.

Here is a must-read on school improvement efforts at a CO school that unpacks a lot of the jargon and shows what can be done.

Some buzz about a letter the Department of Education sent to Illinois officials about supplemental services there. Read it for yourself here and then decide what you think, or continue with some of the wild speculation, your choice!

Reading this (pdf), Edu Commentary is baffled about why anyone would question the relevance of the work at colleges of education. Per the article, Edu Commentary can think of plenty of metaphors, and they all have something to do with things that failed to change with changing circumstances…

Check out this new report from Jobs For The Future about helping low-skill/low-literacy adults through community colleges. And, while you’re at it, check out this report on teacher quality from the Center For American Progress, some pretty good stuff in there. Finally, do not miss this study on the disconnect between the leadership of CBO’s and the constituencies they serve… Update: Alert reader JJ points out that there is a good hook for after-school programs buried in the CBO study…

NYT’s Winters writes up the latest Gates Foundation initiative, early-college high schools. Also in the NYT, another gem from Freedman.

From San Diego, don’t miss this deliciously ironic nugget: Incoming board member and anti-Alan Bersin water carrier Mitz Lee says that the board must shun “special interests whose agendas do not serve our children.” Ha! Ha! Ha! Oh wait, she wasn’t kidding…The local paper runs this straight, apparently missing the irony. But the editorial board comes down hard on all the shenanigans out there.

Stateline writes-on the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence and ABCTE’s Madigan takes exception to the report.

Punchline: The folks now saying that ABCTE is too costly because of its high up-front costs relative to the number of teachers certified (including two in this article both of whom should know better…) sure were not saying the same thing when that charge was being leveled against the National Board For Professional Teaching Standards a few years ago…

Madigan is also right on the GAO issue. But, as Edu Commentary has said before, the lack of execution from ABCTE is troubling as is the slow pace of state adoption; it can’t all be blamed on politics…

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