From the Washington Times Answer Sheet
By Marion Brady
Imagine the present corporately promoted education reform effort as a truck, its tires nearly flat from the weight of the many unexamined assumptions it carries.
On board: An assumption that punishment and rewards effectively motivate; that machines can measure the quality of human thought; that learning is hard, unpleasant work; that what the young need to know is some agreed-upon, standard body of knowledge; that doing more rigorously what we’ve always done will raise test scores; that teacher talk and textbook text can teach complex ideas; that ... well, you get the idea.
Misdiagnosing the Main Problem
Right now, the biggest, heaviest assumption on the reform truck has it that, when the Common Core State Standards Initiative is complete - when somebody has decided exactly what every kid in every state is supposed to know in every school subject at every grade level — the education reform truck will take off like gangbusters.
It won’t. If all the reformers’ flawed assumptions are corrected, but the traditional math-science-language-arts-social-studies “core curriculum” remains the main organizer of knowledge, the truck may creep forward a few inches, but it won’t take the young where they need to go if we care about societal survival. The mess from this generation’s political paralysis and refusal to address looming problems can’t be cleaned up using the same education that helped create it.
What’s wrong with “the core?” For its content to be processed, stored in memory, retrieved and combined in novel ways to create new knowledge, it would have to be well organized and integrated. It isn’t. It’s a confusing, random, overwhelming, intellectually unmanageable assortment of facts, specialized vocabularies, disconnected conceptual frameworks, and abstractions — the whole too far removed from life as the young live it for them to care about it.
So, they don’t. They’re being blasted with information at fire-hose velocity. The diligent and the fearful store as much as they can in short-term memory, and when testing is over, their brains delete what’s considered clutter because it’s not immediately useful. The non-diligent and the cynical guess and/or cheat on the answer sheets. The rest (and their numbers, understandably, are steadily increasing) opt out of the trivia game, or are opted out by thoughtful, caring parents.
A Different Organizer
There’s an alternative to the core as an organizer of information and knowledge. We use it from birth to death, and we didn’t learn it in school. It’s the key to an order-of-magnitude improvement in learner performance.
For firsthand evidence of that system’s potential, consider how much we learn and how fast we learn it long before we walk through school doors. Starting from scratch, we figure out how to meet personal needs; learn what’s acceptable and unacceptable behavior; construct explanatory theories; master one or more complex languages; adapt appropriately to many different personality types; absorb the foundational patterns of action and premises of one or more cultures; and much, much else.
Our “natural” knowledge-organizing and integrating system’s main components are those we use to create the most complete and sophisticated models of reality known - stories. To make sense of any and all reality, we seek answers to just five questions - Who? What? When? Where? Why? All knowledge is an elaboration of one or more of those five distinct kinds of information.
“We did something,” communicates.
“Because we were bored, Tanya and I went to the mall yesterday,” elaborates.
“Because Tanya Jones and I, Mary Smith, were bored, we went to Bath and Body Works in Eastland Mall in Columbus, Ohio, arriving in the parking lot a few minutes after three o’clock on the 13th of January,” elaborates further.
The exercise could continue, adding layers of increasing precision.
The more we know about a particular subject, situation or science, the more elaborations we have from which to choose. When Hippocrates wrote about cancer in 400 BC, he almost certainly didn’t see it as a group of diseases, each sufficiently different from the others to warrant the range of labels that help today’s researchers and doctors think and talk about cancer more productively. As cancer research advances, the elaborating process will continue.
We make sense by choosing from elaborating options for who, what, when, where and why, and weaving our choices together systemically. As options increase and potential systemic relationships multiply, ever-better sense is made, creativity is stimulated and knowledge expands.
An Unknown Known
Our sense-making system — like the concept of gravity before Sir Isaac Newton — is so familiar we don’t think of it as a system. And, when it’s pointed out, we tend to dismiss it as too simple and obvious to be important, much less the key to educational transformation. But made explicit and put to work, our implicitly known knowledge organizer moves learner performance to levels far beyond the reach of the measurement capabilities of standardized tests, including the ones on which international comparisons are based.
Skillful use of the system can’t be taught in the usual sense of the word — can’t, that is, be transferred in useable form from mind to mind by words on a page, images on a screen or lectures from a stage. Learners have to construct understanding for themselves.
To appreciate the teaching-learning challenge, imagine trying to explain water to a fish. Success requires that the utterly familiar be made “strange enough to see.” A five-hour lecture to a fish on the subject of water wouldn’t match the memorable experience of being lifted out of the water for a five-second exposure to air.
Experience is the best teacher, but attention must be paid. Adolescents, encouraged to look long and hard at particular, ordinary experiences — and to think and talk about what they’re doing — eventually discover their basic, five-element approach to sense-making. They’ve lived long enough to have experiences they can analyze, are mature enough to examine those experiences introspectively and haven’t yet been programmed by schooling to sort what they know into disconnected boxes with subject-matter labels.
Reasoning their way to those five distinct kinds of information, they “own” the foundation of their knowledge-categorizing and — manipulating system. No reading from a textbook, no listening to a lecture, no viewing of a video production, will ever match the level of understanding of ideas that emerge from firsthand experience refined by dialogue.
The Challenge of Change
Making deliberate use of our usual system for organizing knowledge doesn’t discard academic disciplines or the school subjects based on them. It elevates and enhances them; puts them in context; and makes them mutually supportive, systemically integrated parts of each learner’s seamless “model of reality” — the mental template laid down on particular experience to generate questions leading to the making of sense.
Ironically, it’s probable that use of the system would perpetuate the curse of standardized testing. When kids know how their mental “filing systems” work, and make use of them to retrieve trivia from memory, scores will go up. But the long-term positives of using familiar school subjects and procedures to smooth the change process cancel the negatives, primarily by allowing the process to be evolutionary rather than revolutionary.
Eventually, as making more sense of experience replaces the ubiquitous “preparing for college and career” as the working aim of schooling, broader change will follow. Coming (as it should) “bottom up,” from teachers and learners focused on improving sense-making rather than on raising test scores, the direction of change will always be appropriate.
There will be surprises, but they’ll be pleasant. A major one will be the discovery that kids are far smarter than they’re given credit for being. Another will be that adequately feeding the left, order-seeking side of the brain takes much less time than is currently being devoted to it. A third related surprise will be that the time thus released will make possible a world of useful educational activities - projects, apprenticeships, advanced studies, and so on. A fourth will be that a much better education can be had for considerably less money.
To begin to make use of our natural system for making sense, a little handholding should help. A rough, first-generation tool for that purpose titled Connections: Investigating Reality (think of it as a beta version) can be downloaded from the Internet. In the spirit of “open source,” and acknowledging a deep-seated American aversion to spending public money on educating, it’s free to individual educators for use with students.
Connections requires no special training, no additional materials and no new technology. It does, however, require teachers or mentors who are willing to play a non-traditional role. Present textbooks and teacher talk offer learners secondhand, supposedly expert knowledge about reality. Connections directs attention to reality itself in all its inherent complexity, and poses questions or problems. Particular realities may be as mundane as the arrangement of furniture in a classroom, a familiar television commercial, a popular children’s book, an obscure folk song. The young - less programmed by life experience - may see in them what the teacher does not. Sufficient humility to accept that fact and encourage its demonstration is appropriate.
Connections makes provision for user dialogue. If advantage is taken of the tool, the differing perspectives and collective wisdom of teachers and learners will allow the general education curriculum to continuously adapt to the needs and trends of the era.
On the Other Hand
When the CEOs and the politicians they’ve bought finish the simplistic “reform” they’ve started, when the claim that an order-of-magnitude improvement in learner intellectual performance has been dismissed as hyperbole, when all 50 states have been pressured to adopt the regressive Common Core Standards locking the knowledge-fragmenting 1893 curriculum in permanent place, when standardized subject-matter tests that can’t measure the qualities and quality of thought have been nationalized, when the “standards and testing police” are fully deployed and looking over every teacher’s shoulder, it’ll all be over. America and the nations that follow its lead in education will face a dynamic world equipped with a static curriculum.
Catastrophe will be inevitable.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/how-real-school-reform-should-look-or-explaining-water-to-a-fish/2012/02/04/gIQAHrQNpQ_blog.html
Monday, February 6, 2012
The State of Florida blames not helps schools
from the Miami Herald's Editorial Board
Any way you slice and dice the numbers, Florida’s new way of ranking its 67 school districts — based solely on FCAT results, a one-shot test — tells parents and taxpayers absolutely nothing about the quality of their public schools, be they traditional schools or charters.
Gov. Rick Scott and Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson say they aren’t trying to “stigmatize” districts that score near the bottom. Instead, Mr. Robinson says the new way of ranking districts — ignoring such things as poverty levels, the number of students learning English as a second language and year-over-year improvements among minorities — will “provide an opportunity for local community leaders to say ‘What can we do as a community?’”
After a decade of reforms and setting an ever-higher bar for students’ performance (a race to achieve that this editorial board supports), the state’s new measure is a simpleton’s way that ignores today’s complex reality. It does not take into account the size of a district, whether it’s rural, urban or suburban or schools’ progress or lack of it year after year on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. It ignores how many students are taking AP courses and passing, how many of them are minorities or poor and whether there’s improvement.
It’s all based on one score. Ridiculous.
Case in point: the St. Johns school district, which has the fewest number of poor children by population in the state, ranked at the top of the state’s simpleton gauge. By contrast, Miami-Dade’s school district — where seven in 10 students qualify for free or reduced lunch, an urban district with 350,000 students — ranked 37th among 67 districts.
Duh? Really?
The Tampa Bay (formerly St. Petersburg) Times did its own numbers crunching on school districts and discovered quite a different picture of progress. “No big district in Florida has done better in boosting the percentage of students passing the FCAT in reading and math from 2001 to 2010,” the Times reported on Jan. 23. “In reading progress, Miami-Dade ranked No. 2 among all districts, while St. Johns ranked No. 16.”
Why? Because the Times analysis included demographics and progress in student scores, along with a district’s size, in drilling down to capture the more complicated and nuanced picture of progress. That’s as it should be.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/05/2623725/floridas-simpleton-rankings.html#storylink=cpy
Any way you slice and dice the numbers, Florida’s new way of ranking its 67 school districts — based solely on FCAT results, a one-shot test — tells parents and taxpayers absolutely nothing about the quality of their public schools, be they traditional schools or charters.
Gov. Rick Scott and Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson say they aren’t trying to “stigmatize” districts that score near the bottom. Instead, Mr. Robinson says the new way of ranking districts — ignoring such things as poverty levels, the number of students learning English as a second language and year-over-year improvements among minorities — will “provide an opportunity for local community leaders to say ‘What can we do as a community?’”
After a decade of reforms and setting an ever-higher bar for students’ performance (a race to achieve that this editorial board supports), the state’s new measure is a simpleton’s way that ignores today’s complex reality. It does not take into account the size of a district, whether it’s rural, urban or suburban or schools’ progress or lack of it year after year on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. It ignores how many students are taking AP courses and passing, how many of them are minorities or poor and whether there’s improvement.
It’s all based on one score. Ridiculous.
Case in point: the St. Johns school district, which has the fewest number of poor children by population in the state, ranked at the top of the state’s simpleton gauge. By contrast, Miami-Dade’s school district — where seven in 10 students qualify for free or reduced lunch, an urban district with 350,000 students — ranked 37th among 67 districts.
Duh? Really?
The Tampa Bay (formerly St. Petersburg) Times did its own numbers crunching on school districts and discovered quite a different picture of progress. “No big district in Florida has done better in boosting the percentage of students passing the FCAT in reading and math from 2001 to 2010,” the Times reported on Jan. 23. “In reading progress, Miami-Dade ranked No. 2 among all districts, while St. Johns ranked No. 16.”
Why? Because the Times analysis included demographics and progress in student scores, along with a district’s size, in drilling down to capture the more complicated and nuanced picture of progress. That’s as it should be.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/05/2623725/floridas-simpleton-rankings.html#storylink=cpy
Districts eliminating bus rids to save money
If you are familiar with Education Matters you know how important we think after school busses are. -cpg
From the Palm Beach Post
by Jason Schultz
The high cost of carrying students on buses has Palm Beach County School District transportation officials and board members pondering some possible changes, such as cutting back on after-school activity buses and charging some parents to send their kids on buses to magnet schools.
At a board workshop on transportation last week, School Board Member Jenny Prior Brown suggested looking into charging some parents to recover the district's cost of transporting their child to choice magnet programs far away from their homes.
Brown and School Board Vice Chairwoman Debra Robinson both said they were interested in the idea, but only for parents whose children do not qualify for free- and reduced-price lunch. Typically low-income families qualify for reduced-price lunch, so the parents who do not qualify would make enough to pay the cost of busing their children across the county to magnet schools, Brown said.
"I'm not looking to make money off rich parents," Brown said. "We ought to at least explore the possibility of recovering our out-of-pocket costs."
Chief of Support Operations Joe Sanches said the school district is required to provide some forms of bus transportation, such as busing kids to their neighborhood schools if they live more than 2 miles from the school and busing children who change schools through the federal No Child Left Behind law. But Sanches said the district is not required to provide transportation to children who live outside a school's attendance boundary but want to ride a bus to attend that school's choice programs.
Transportation General Manager Pete DiDonato said legally the district could tell parents of children attending magnet programs such as the Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts that they will have to take their own children to school. He estimated that as much as $4 million of the district's estimated $45 million transportation budget will go to busing kids to choice programs.
DiDonato said he would look into whether it was legal in Florida for the school district to charge some parents for the cost of non-required school transportation services. State Department of Education spokeswoman Jamie Mongiovi said state policy does not address the issue of charging for magnet school transportation .
Sanches suggested the board also consider saving money by eliminating after-school activity buses on Fridays when very few students ride. DiDonato said schools typically have at least two activity buses that take children home from things such as sports and band practice and after-school tutoring, a service the district is also not required by law to provide to students.
The district is already made a number of changes such as moving to a centralized routing system to cut costs. One change parents will see next year is that they will be asked to register that their child will need bus service and what bus stop they are likely to use before the start of school. Before, the district had to guess how many buses were needed at what stops based on how many students were attending a school and then adjusted based on head counts during the first few weeks, DiDonato said.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/schools/palm-beach-county-school-district-mulls-cutting-back-2148889.html
From the Palm Beach Post
by Jason Schultz
The high cost of carrying students on buses has Palm Beach County School District transportation officials and board members pondering some possible changes, such as cutting back on after-school activity buses and charging some parents to send their kids on buses to magnet schools.
At a board workshop on transportation last week, School Board Member Jenny Prior Brown suggested looking into charging some parents to recover the district's cost of transporting their child to choice magnet programs far away from their homes.
Brown and School Board Vice Chairwoman Debra Robinson both said they were interested in the idea, but only for parents whose children do not qualify for free- and reduced-price lunch. Typically low-income families qualify for reduced-price lunch, so the parents who do not qualify would make enough to pay the cost of busing their children across the county to magnet schools, Brown said.
"I'm not looking to make money off rich parents," Brown said. "We ought to at least explore the possibility of recovering our out-of-pocket costs."
Chief of Support Operations Joe Sanches said the school district is required to provide some forms of bus transportation, such as busing kids to their neighborhood schools if they live more than 2 miles from the school and busing children who change schools through the federal No Child Left Behind law. But Sanches said the district is not required to provide transportation to children who live outside a school's attendance boundary but want to ride a bus to attend that school's choice programs.
Transportation General Manager Pete DiDonato said legally the district could tell parents of children attending magnet programs such as the Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts that they will have to take their own children to school. He estimated that as much as $4 million of the district's estimated $45 million transportation budget will go to busing kids to choice programs.
DiDonato said he would look into whether it was legal in Florida for the school district to charge some parents for the cost of non-required school transportation services. State Department of Education spokeswoman Jamie Mongiovi said state policy does not address the issue of charging for magnet school transportation .
Sanches suggested the board also consider saving money by eliminating after-school activity buses on Fridays when very few students ride. DiDonato said schools typically have at least two activity buses that take children home from things such as sports and band practice and after-school tutoring, a service the district is also not required by law to provide to students.
The district is already made a number of changes such as moving to a centralized routing system to cut costs. One change parents will see next year is that they will be asked to register that their child will need bus service and what bus stop they are likely to use before the start of school. Before, the district had to guess how many buses were needed at what stops based on how many students were attending a school and then adjusted based on head counts during the first few weeks, DiDonato said.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/schools/palm-beach-county-school-district-mulls-cutting-back-2148889.html
Sunday, February 5, 2012
The Florid Education Model is Failing
From the Independent Source PAC
By Diane Ravitch
Dear State Legislators:
Friends in New Mexico have told me that your governor wants to import the so-called "Florida model" of education to New Mexico.
I urge you to oppose this effort.
Florida is not a good model for the nation. It is not even good for Florida.
The Florida model rests on two pillars: One is privatization, the other is incessant testing. Neither is good for children or for the future well-being of your state.
Privatization in the Florida model proceeds through privately-managed charter schools and vouchers. Neither of them improves education.
Florida has authorized many charters. Charters are not the answer to educational needs of children for the following reasons, as demonstrated in Florida:
1. Charters don't get better results than regular public schools. Half the F-rated schools in Florida are charters, even though charters are a small proportion of schools in Florida. Many of Florida's charters are simply bad schools run by incompetent managers. Even the KIPP school in Jacksonville--a chain that usually shows high scores--was rated F by the state.
2. Charters in Florida are often for-profit and many have enriched their sponsors without helping students or providing a sound education. The Miami Herald ran a series exposing the charter school scams in Dade County (http://www.miamiherald.com/charterschools/index.html.)
3. Many charters get high test scores by excluding the students with the greatest needs--especially those with disabilities and those who are English language learners. This leaves the regular public schools with unusual numbers of the most challenging and most expensive students. Charters are also known for pushing out low-performing students. These actions give the false appearance of charter "success."
Under Jeb Bush, Florida created two voucher programs. One, for students in "failing" schools, was declared unconstitutional by state courts. The other, for disabled students, remains in place. Vouchers are not the answer to the educational needs of students.
1. A recent expose of the McKay scholarship program for disabled students revealed that many of the voucher schools were operating in substandard spaces, with students watching television or filling out worksheets and doing nothing of educational value. These are sham schools.(http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2011-06-23/news/mckay-scholarship-program-sparks-a-cottage-industry-of-fraud-and-chaos/)
2. Milwaukee has had vouchers for low-income students for 21 years. The Milwaukee schools are today one of the nation's lowest performing districts, and the black students in Milwaukee perform on the same level as black students in the Deep South. Students in voucher schools in Milwaukee perform no better than students in regular public schools, and both sectors are doing terribly. The state has poured $1 billion into voucher schools over the past 21 years.
Constant testing, as in the Florida model, does not improve schools. Instead, it creates a pressure-cooker atmosphere in which test preparation becomes obsessive because the stakes are so high. Some districts in Florida suspend instruction for weeks in advance of the FCAT because the educators are so concerned about their school's letter grade. This is NOT good education. This is test mania.
Florida saw improvement on the national tests but many outsiders attribute that improvement to the mandated class size reduction, brought about against Governor Jeb Bush's wishes by referendum of the voters.
We know from research and experience what children and schools need, and it will not be found in the Florida model.
Children need high-quality early childhood education, so that they arrive in school ready to learn. The achievement gap begins before the first day of kindergarten.
Children need to be healthy and well-nourished or they won't attend school regularly or be able to attend to their lessons.
Children need a full and balanced curriculum that includes the arts, the sciences, mathematics, history, civics, physical education, foreign languages, and time for play.
Children need to be assessed by writing and showing what they know, not just by marking a bubble on a multiple-choice test.
Children need experienced teachers who are with them for the long haul, not inexperienced college graduates who commit to teach for only two years.
Children and their schools need the support of their families and their communities.
Collaboration and concern and love build great schools--not testing and punishment and privatization.
Diane Ravitch
Research Professor of Education, New York University.
http://independentsourcepac.org/diane-ravitch-letter.html
By Diane Ravitch
Dear State Legislators:
Friends in New Mexico have told me that your governor wants to import the so-called "Florida model" of education to New Mexico.
I urge you to oppose this effort.
Florida is not a good model for the nation. It is not even good for Florida.
The Florida model rests on two pillars: One is privatization, the other is incessant testing. Neither is good for children or for the future well-being of your state.
Privatization in the Florida model proceeds through privately-managed charter schools and vouchers. Neither of them improves education.
Florida has authorized many charters. Charters are not the answer to educational needs of children for the following reasons, as demonstrated in Florida:
1. Charters don't get better results than regular public schools. Half the F-rated schools in Florida are charters, even though charters are a small proportion of schools in Florida. Many of Florida's charters are simply bad schools run by incompetent managers. Even the KIPP school in Jacksonville--a chain that usually shows high scores--was rated F by the state.
2. Charters in Florida are often for-profit and many have enriched their sponsors without helping students or providing a sound education. The Miami Herald ran a series exposing the charter school scams in Dade County (http://www.miamiherald.com/charterschools/index.html.)
3. Many charters get high test scores by excluding the students with the greatest needs--especially those with disabilities and those who are English language learners. This leaves the regular public schools with unusual numbers of the most challenging and most expensive students. Charters are also known for pushing out low-performing students. These actions give the false appearance of charter "success."
Under Jeb Bush, Florida created two voucher programs. One, for students in "failing" schools, was declared unconstitutional by state courts. The other, for disabled students, remains in place. Vouchers are not the answer to the educational needs of students.
1. A recent expose of the McKay scholarship program for disabled students revealed that many of the voucher schools were operating in substandard spaces, with students watching television or filling out worksheets and doing nothing of educational value. These are sham schools.(http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2011-06-23/news/mckay-scholarship-program-sparks-a-cottage-industry-of-fraud-and-chaos/)
2. Milwaukee has had vouchers for low-income students for 21 years. The Milwaukee schools are today one of the nation's lowest performing districts, and the black students in Milwaukee perform on the same level as black students in the Deep South. Students in voucher schools in Milwaukee perform no better than students in regular public schools, and both sectors are doing terribly. The state has poured $1 billion into voucher schools over the past 21 years.
Constant testing, as in the Florida model, does not improve schools. Instead, it creates a pressure-cooker atmosphere in which test preparation becomes obsessive because the stakes are so high. Some districts in Florida suspend instruction for weeks in advance of the FCAT because the educators are so concerned about their school's letter grade. This is NOT good education. This is test mania.
Florida saw improvement on the national tests but many outsiders attribute that improvement to the mandated class size reduction, brought about against Governor Jeb Bush's wishes by referendum of the voters.
We know from research and experience what children and schools need, and it will not be found in the Florida model.
Children need high-quality early childhood education, so that they arrive in school ready to learn. The achievement gap begins before the first day of kindergarten.
Children need to be healthy and well-nourished or they won't attend school regularly or be able to attend to their lessons.
Children need a full and balanced curriculum that includes the arts, the sciences, mathematics, history, civics, physical education, foreign languages, and time for play.
Children need to be assessed by writing and showing what they know, not just by marking a bubble on a multiple-choice test.
Children need experienced teachers who are with them for the long haul, not inexperienced college graduates who commit to teach for only two years.
Children and their schools need the support of their families and their communities.
Collaboration and concern and love build great schools--not testing and punishment and privatization.
Diane Ravitch
Research Professor of Education, New York University.
http://independentsourcepac.org/diane-ravitch-letter.html
The epic failure of leadership in Duval County
I was at happy hour with a couple teachers and one told me her admin told her she was setting her kids up for failure by assigning home work. Since they aren’t going to do it, why bother.
Another said her admin told her to stop giving current event assignments. When she asked why she was told, because stuff like that isn’t on the FCAT.
Teachers hear it all the time, if a certain percentage of kids fail look out your job will be in trouble, write to many referrals and your job will be in trouble, question and your job will be in trouble.
Don’t be loud teachers are told.
Our leadership has lost its way; it’s failing our kids, our teachers and our schools: it no longer is concerned with doing what’s right. They are setting up the district for failure.
Another said her admin told her to stop giving current event assignments. When she asked why she was told, because stuff like that isn’t on the FCAT.
Teachers hear it all the time, if a certain percentage of kids fail look out your job will be in trouble, write to many referrals and your job will be in trouble, question and your job will be in trouble.
Don’t be loud teachers are told.
Our leadership has lost its way; it’s failing our kids, our teachers and our schools: it no longer is concerned with doing what’s right. They are setting up the district for failure.
Soon Venture Capitalists Will be Running our Schools
From Education Week
By Katie Ash
The flow of venture capital into the K-12 education market has exploded over the past year, reaching its highest transaction values in a decade in 2011, industry observers say.
They attribute that rise to such factors as a heightened interest in educational technology; the decreasing cost of electronic devices such as tablet computers, laptops, netbooks, and mobile devices; and the movement toward standardization of curriculum through the Common Core State Standards.
"Having been in this space, covering it for more than a decade, I've not seen this level of interest or supply of early-stage K-12 businesses in the last decade by any stretch of the imagination," said Adam J. Newman, a founding and managing partner of Education Growth Advisors, an education business advisory firm in Stamford, Conn.
"What you have right now in K-12 education is an ecosystem of really dynamic entrepreneurs and emergent companies and a very diverse set of organizations that have become interested in the education space," he said.
Betting on Education
The flow of venture capital funds into the K-12 market dropped precipitously in 2001, following two years of huge investments of about $500 million annually before the dot-com bubble burst. Investments leveled off between 2001 and 2006, before rising again, and taking off last year, surpassing venture capital investments in higher education for the first time since 2006.
Venture capital transaction values in the K-12 field, which include both public and private schools, increased from roughly $130 million in 2010 to $334 million last year, according to data from the Chicago-based GSV Advisors.
Precollegiate education historically has not been an easy market for venture capitalists to break into, analysts say, but certain factors are contributing to a higher awareness of this market for investors.
Venture capitalists generally look for "high-growth opportunities" and rely on the ability to scale up new enterprises quickly, said Mr. Newman. So the common standards in English/language arts and math, for instance, which have been adopted by all but four states, are contributing to companies' perception of a potential for fast growth in standards-related ventures across a larger market, he said.
"[The common core] is breaking down some of those state-level barriers that made it challenging for folks [to achieve scale]," said Mr. Newman. (His firm's other founding and managing partner, Christopher L. Curran, is a trustee of Editorial Projects in Education, the nonprofit publisher of Education Week.)
For instance, MasteryConnect is an educational technology startup that aims to help teachers transition to the common-core standards. The platform allows teachers to find, administer, score, and track student data through formative assessments.
Limiting the Risks
At the same time, educators are becoming more open to technology in classrooms, said Tom Vander Ark, a managing partner of Learn-Capital, a San Mateo, Calif.-based venture capital firm focused on funding entrepreneurs working in education. "Now you have digital natives teaching digital natives," he said.
Jennifer Carolan, an associate partner for the San Francisco-based NewSchools Venture Fund, a nonprofit venture-philanthropy firm working in education, said that teachers are not only more open to technology, they are also beginning to expect the same technology tools in schools that they use everywhere else.
"There's an increased demand for the latest technology tools because the teachers are younger, the demographics have shifted, and there's an even greater chasm between what educators are using in their everyday lives and the tools they have available to do their work," Ms. Carolan said. "Technology is an attractive venture deal because it tends to yield a higher profit margin, so it's a natural place for venture capital to play a role in."
In fact, the last large influx of venture capital into K-12 education coincided with the dot-com boom of 1999 and 2000, spiking at $497 million and $521 million, respectively, further establishing the strong link between technology and venture capital. (Numbers have not been adjusted for inflation.)
The NewSchools Venture Fund typically invests in promising for-profit education startups in their early stages, when it may be too much of a risk for venture capitalists, said Ms. Carolan. In fact, the organization recently announced the creation of an educational technology seed fund that will help ed-tech startups find early-stage funding.
"[We] play the role of taking out the risk early on," she said, "and helping these companies until they get to the point where venture capitalists will take a look at them and invest."
For example, three years ago, NewSchools invested in BetterLesson, a company that allows educators to use the Web to share and catalog lesson plans, after recognizing the need for such a tool in the education community. BetterLesson now generates about 120,000 unique hits a month on its site and 250 sign-ups a day, said Ms. Carolan. And although NewSchools continues to contribute funding to BetterLesson, in its latest round of funding in August of 2011, the majority of the funding was from other organizations, including traditional venture capital firms, said Ms. Carolan.
BetterLesson's success is in part a shift toward more social learning, a market within educational technology that is experiencing much growth, Ms. Carolan said. Companies such as Grockit, a test-prep social-networking website based in San Francisco, and the education-focused social-networking site Edmodo, based in San Mateo, Calif., are other examples of successful social-learning startups, she said.
'Moving Target'
The K-12 market has not been the typical destination, however, for traditional venture capitalists, Ms. Carolan said.
"Venture capitalists always look for huge markets, and education is a massive market, but there's been a lot of friction in the past with getting for-profit companies to find profits in schools," she said.
Kim Smith, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Bellwether Education Partners, a nonprofit organization based in Washington that works to improve educational outcomes for low-income students, noted that for-profit companies face opposition in trying to play a significant role in public schools.
"There's never been a huge resistance to the technology," said Ms. Smith, who also co-founded the NewSchools Venture Fund, "but the closer you come to running schools, the more you encounter a very strong ideological aversion to for-profit [companies]."
What's more, Ms. Smith said, the K-12 market is heavily regulated on such matters as what schools can spend money on and how they spend it, rules that can change based on a variety of conditions, including who is occupying the White House.
"If you want to invest, you're being told, 'Here are the rules of the road right now, but in four years, it could be completely different,' " which is not a climate that fosters confidence among venture capitalists, she said.
"There's a constantly moving target for what you should be doing, which is different than most other fields, where there's a little bit more of a consistent knowledge base," Ms. Smith said.
To make matters more complicated, the purchasing decisions of schools do not follow the typical model of most markets, making it hard to predict sales cycles, she said.
"Often, the decisions that are being made about buying things aren't rational," she said. "In education, because there's so much disagreement about what quality looks like and how you can measure it, you can be successful in one place but not necessarily successful in another."
Marguerite Roza, a senior scholar at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, at the University of Washington in Seattle, said another factor that makes the market complex is that the audience for the products companies are marketing—mainly teachers—often doesn't have purchasing power in districts.
"There is no head honcho in education," said Ms. Roza. "The person [who has spending power] are the 60,000 school board members."
Of course, superintendents and other administrators also make purchasing decisions in a district, but regardless, the fragmentation of the market makes it difficult for education companies to achieve efficiencies of scale, she said.
Meanwhile, as education draws renewed interest from venture capitalists, a new breed of investors is emerging, said Ms. Smith of Bellwether Education.
"There's a small, emerging niche of 'impact' investors," she said, who typically made their money in the corporate sector and now want to reinvest in a good company that will provide profitable returns, but will also have a positive social impact.
"Education is a complicated business, but it hasn't made huge productivity gains, ever, so that's clearly an area ripe for innovation," Ms. Smith said. The productivity gains that technology could achieve in the education market are attracting attention from impact investors as well as traditional venture capitalists, she said.
Robert Lytle, a head of the Boston-based Parthenon Group's Education Center of Excellence, which focuses on for-profit global markets, agreed that impact investing has become a recent trend.
"There are areas of the economy [such as K-12 education] that will not attract venture capital because the business dynamics aren't good enough, but I can invest my money there with a different return profile," he said, keeping in mind that the return will be partly the social impact and partly financial. "It's become more of a movement around the world."
Roy Gilbert, the CEO of Grockit, the website that links social networking with studying, explained the key role of venture capital in building successful startup companies such as his.
Startups often have high initial costs because of the design, development, and engineering it takes to launch a website or product, he said, before a firm can launch the idea and begin to turn a profit.
"There's a significant lag before you're making a ton of revenue," Mr. Gilbert said, and that's where venture capital comes in. Raising seed money is essential to the success of those startups, he said.
"The profile for venture investing is high-risk, big industries where you can take advantage of scale," he said. And while K-12 education has always been a big industry, the opportunity to scale has held back investors, said Mr. Gilbert. However, because of shifting dynamics in the market, that is beginning to change, he said.
"It's a pretty vibrant time," Mr. Newman from Education Growth Advisors said of the current climate for K-12 investment.
"On the flip side is that a lot of these folks won't make it to the other side," he said. "The nature of early-stage investing is that you have a lot of failures along with a number of successes."
With the renewed interest in the K-12 market, Mr. Newman said, "you could run the risk of a lot of these businesses' getting some traction, but not enough" to make a large impact on the industry.
"It will be interesting to see if winners and losers emerge," he said, "and whether we'll have a universe of really interesting, thoughtful ideas."
Coverage of the education industry and K-12 innovation is supported in part by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/02/01/19venture_ep.h31.html?cmp=SOC-SHR-TW
By Katie Ash
The flow of venture capital into the K-12 education market has exploded over the past year, reaching its highest transaction values in a decade in 2011, industry observers say.
They attribute that rise to such factors as a heightened interest in educational technology; the decreasing cost of electronic devices such as tablet computers, laptops, netbooks, and mobile devices; and the movement toward standardization of curriculum through the Common Core State Standards.
"Having been in this space, covering it for more than a decade, I've not seen this level of interest or supply of early-stage K-12 businesses in the last decade by any stretch of the imagination," said Adam J. Newman, a founding and managing partner of Education Growth Advisors, an education business advisory firm in Stamford, Conn.
"What you have right now in K-12 education is an ecosystem of really dynamic entrepreneurs and emergent companies and a very diverse set of organizations that have become interested in the education space," he said.
Betting on Education
The flow of venture capital funds into the K-12 market dropped precipitously in 2001, following two years of huge investments of about $500 million annually before the dot-com bubble burst. Investments leveled off between 2001 and 2006, before rising again, and taking off last year, surpassing venture capital investments in higher education for the first time since 2006.
Venture capital transaction values in the K-12 field, which include both public and private schools, increased from roughly $130 million in 2010 to $334 million last year, according to data from the Chicago-based GSV Advisors.
Precollegiate education historically has not been an easy market for venture capitalists to break into, analysts say, but certain factors are contributing to a higher awareness of this market for investors.
Venture capitalists generally look for "high-growth opportunities" and rely on the ability to scale up new enterprises quickly, said Mr. Newman. So the common standards in English/language arts and math, for instance, which have been adopted by all but four states, are contributing to companies' perception of a potential for fast growth in standards-related ventures across a larger market, he said.
"[The common core] is breaking down some of those state-level barriers that made it challenging for folks [to achieve scale]," said Mr. Newman. (His firm's other founding and managing partner, Christopher L. Curran, is a trustee of Editorial Projects in Education, the nonprofit publisher of Education Week.)
For instance, MasteryConnect is an educational technology startup that aims to help teachers transition to the common-core standards. The platform allows teachers to find, administer, score, and track student data through formative assessments.
Limiting the Risks
At the same time, educators are becoming more open to technology in classrooms, said Tom Vander Ark, a managing partner of Learn-Capital, a San Mateo, Calif.-based venture capital firm focused on funding entrepreneurs working in education. "Now you have digital natives teaching digital natives," he said.
Jennifer Carolan, an associate partner for the San Francisco-based NewSchools Venture Fund, a nonprofit venture-philanthropy firm working in education, said that teachers are not only more open to technology, they are also beginning to expect the same technology tools in schools that they use everywhere else.
"There's an increased demand for the latest technology tools because the teachers are younger, the demographics have shifted, and there's an even greater chasm between what educators are using in their everyday lives and the tools they have available to do their work," Ms. Carolan said. "Technology is an attractive venture deal because it tends to yield a higher profit margin, so it's a natural place for venture capital to play a role in."
In fact, the last large influx of venture capital into K-12 education coincided with the dot-com boom of 1999 and 2000, spiking at $497 million and $521 million, respectively, further establishing the strong link between technology and venture capital. (Numbers have not been adjusted for inflation.)
The NewSchools Venture Fund typically invests in promising for-profit education startups in their early stages, when it may be too much of a risk for venture capitalists, said Ms. Carolan. In fact, the organization recently announced the creation of an educational technology seed fund that will help ed-tech startups find early-stage funding.
"[We] play the role of taking out the risk early on," she said, "and helping these companies until they get to the point where venture capitalists will take a look at them and invest."
For example, three years ago, NewSchools invested in BetterLesson, a company that allows educators to use the Web to share and catalog lesson plans, after recognizing the need for such a tool in the education community. BetterLesson now generates about 120,000 unique hits a month on its site and 250 sign-ups a day, said Ms. Carolan. And although NewSchools continues to contribute funding to BetterLesson, in its latest round of funding in August of 2011, the majority of the funding was from other organizations, including traditional venture capital firms, said Ms. Carolan.
BetterLesson's success is in part a shift toward more social learning, a market within educational technology that is experiencing much growth, Ms. Carolan said. Companies such as Grockit, a test-prep social-networking website based in San Francisco, and the education-focused social-networking site Edmodo, based in San Mateo, Calif., are other examples of successful social-learning startups, she said.
'Moving Target'
The K-12 market has not been the typical destination, however, for traditional venture capitalists, Ms. Carolan said.
"Venture capitalists always look for huge markets, and education is a massive market, but there's been a lot of friction in the past with getting for-profit companies to find profits in schools," she said.
Kim Smith, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Bellwether Education Partners, a nonprofit organization based in Washington that works to improve educational outcomes for low-income students, noted that for-profit companies face opposition in trying to play a significant role in public schools.
"There's never been a huge resistance to the technology," said Ms. Smith, who also co-founded the NewSchools Venture Fund, "but the closer you come to running schools, the more you encounter a very strong ideological aversion to for-profit [companies]."
What's more, Ms. Smith said, the K-12 market is heavily regulated on such matters as what schools can spend money on and how they spend it, rules that can change based on a variety of conditions, including who is occupying the White House.
"If you want to invest, you're being told, 'Here are the rules of the road right now, but in four years, it could be completely different,' " which is not a climate that fosters confidence among venture capitalists, she said.
"There's a constantly moving target for what you should be doing, which is different than most other fields, where there's a little bit more of a consistent knowledge base," Ms. Smith said.
To make matters more complicated, the purchasing decisions of schools do not follow the typical model of most markets, making it hard to predict sales cycles, she said.
"Often, the decisions that are being made about buying things aren't rational," she said. "In education, because there's so much disagreement about what quality looks like and how you can measure it, you can be successful in one place but not necessarily successful in another."
Marguerite Roza, a senior scholar at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, at the University of Washington in Seattle, said another factor that makes the market complex is that the audience for the products companies are marketing—mainly teachers—often doesn't have purchasing power in districts.
"There is no head honcho in education," said Ms. Roza. "The person [who has spending power] are the 60,000 school board members."
Of course, superintendents and other administrators also make purchasing decisions in a district, but regardless, the fragmentation of the market makes it difficult for education companies to achieve efficiencies of scale, she said.
Meanwhile, as education draws renewed interest from venture capitalists, a new breed of investors is emerging, said Ms. Smith of Bellwether Education.
"There's a small, emerging niche of 'impact' investors," she said, who typically made their money in the corporate sector and now want to reinvest in a good company that will provide profitable returns, but will also have a positive social impact.
"Education is a complicated business, but it hasn't made huge productivity gains, ever, so that's clearly an area ripe for innovation," Ms. Smith said. The productivity gains that technology could achieve in the education market are attracting attention from impact investors as well as traditional venture capitalists, she said.
Robert Lytle, a head of the Boston-based Parthenon Group's Education Center of Excellence, which focuses on for-profit global markets, agreed that impact investing has become a recent trend.
"There are areas of the economy [such as K-12 education] that will not attract venture capital because the business dynamics aren't good enough, but I can invest my money there with a different return profile," he said, keeping in mind that the return will be partly the social impact and partly financial. "It's become more of a movement around the world."
Roy Gilbert, the CEO of Grockit, the website that links social networking with studying, explained the key role of venture capital in building successful startup companies such as his.
Startups often have high initial costs because of the design, development, and engineering it takes to launch a website or product, he said, before a firm can launch the idea and begin to turn a profit.
"There's a significant lag before you're making a ton of revenue," Mr. Gilbert said, and that's where venture capital comes in. Raising seed money is essential to the success of those startups, he said.
"The profile for venture investing is high-risk, big industries where you can take advantage of scale," he said. And while K-12 education has always been a big industry, the opportunity to scale has held back investors, said Mr. Gilbert. However, because of shifting dynamics in the market, that is beginning to change, he said.
"It's a pretty vibrant time," Mr. Newman from Education Growth Advisors said of the current climate for K-12 investment.
"On the flip side is that a lot of these folks won't make it to the other side," he said. "The nature of early-stage investing is that you have a lot of failures along with a number of successes."
With the renewed interest in the K-12 market, Mr. Newman said, "you could run the risk of a lot of these businesses' getting some traction, but not enough" to make a large impact on the industry.
"It will be interesting to see if winners and losers emerge," he said, "and whether we'll have a universe of really interesting, thoughtful ideas."
Coverage of the education industry and K-12 innovation is supported in part by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/02/01/19venture_ep.h31.html?cmp=SOC-SHR-TW
ALEC buying Florida's schools
From Scathing Purple Musings
by Bob Sykes
When Orlando Sentinel reporter Leslie Postal used a release from the Democrat Progressive Caucus to report that ALEC was sponsoring another education privatization indoctrination session for state legislators this weekend, a firestorm of coverage erupted. The Koch brothers-funded group doesn’t operate in the open as evidenced by this from Postal:
ALEC has been criticized for proposing “model” legislation — on lots of topics — and then pushing state lawmakers to file bills that closely follow the association’s blueprint.
And that’s what the Democratic caucus doesn’t like, calling ”this interference by outside interests” a “threat to our democracy” in a press release today.
“The secretive process of allowing corporate lobbyists and billionaires to write legislation, which they then pass off to Florida legislators, is a betrayal of the intent of representative government. The closed-door gathering of legislators is not government in the sunshine,” said Susan Smith, the caucus president.
An ALEC spokesman has not yet responded to a request for comment. There is no information that I could find about an Amelia Island event on its website.
I posted on the Amelia Island event in this January 24th post which featured the email that ALEC was sending out to state legislators. Events indicate that ALEC moved up their meeting this weekend as the email had the event scheduled for the 24th of February. The email was likely written last year as the person who sent the email left ALEC at the beginning of this year. Writes Dennis Bielke for PR Watch:
There will be no students or teachers. Instead, legislators, representatives from right-wing think tanks and for-profit education corporations will meet behind closed doors to channel their inner Milton Friedman and promote the radical transformation of the American education system into a private, for-profit enterprise.
Karen Francisco is the Indiana Journal Gazzette writes that ALEC’s first agenda is to eliminate teacher unions. Its how ALEC gauges success:
Because its meetings are secret and its agenda unknown, the best clue to ALEC’s education focus is its Report Card on American Education, released last week for national school choice week.
States are graded on the curve, to put it politely. Never mind those pesky achievement figures; states that engaged in union-busting excelled while the others lagged behind.
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels wrote the report’s introduction, which should offer a clue as to how the Hoosier state fared:
Daniels wrote the report card’s forward, lamenting how the unions in his state once had a voice in issues such as the length of the school day, academic freedom and, generally, the content of their work, says his state has turned the corner. “Collective bargaining will now be limited to wages and benefits and will no longer stand in the way of effective school leadership or student progress,” Daniels writes.
Indiana’s ALEC grade improved to a B from a C+ in 2010 even though its NAEP scores declined from 13th to 17th. Indiana did, however, pass several pieces of legislation in the last year that were influenced by ALEC model bills, including the creation of a statewide voucher school program, merit pay and restricted collective bargaining rights for teachers, and deep budget cuts.
There’s no word as yet as to whether or not any Florida legislators are attending the Amelia Island conference. But its clear that some republican legislators are still submitting ALEC written bills. In November, Rep. Rachel Burgin of Riverview had to quickly withdraw a bill which still had ALEC’s introductory clause in it. ALEC is also involved in advancing the privatization of state prison systems. A republican Florida state senator Mike Fasano who opposed prison privatization was removed from his committee chairmanship for being against the effort.
The breathtakingly bold ouster of Fasano was so out in the open that it reveals just how empowered the state’s republican leadership feels they are right now. Has ALEC helped promote such brazenness? The group’s history of promoting coercive legislation intended to eliminate opponents such as last session’s Paycheck Protection Act or this session’s demonstrably misleading Teacher Protection Act is well documented. Some Florida republican senators are even econsidering a secret path to privatization.
When does it get to the point when Florida’s republican’s are finally seen as tyrannical? And that ALEC is seen as the instrument of their tyranny?
http://bobsidlethoughtsandmusings.wordpress.com/2012/02/04/how-deep-is-alecs-reach-into-driving-florida-legislation/
by Bob Sykes
When Orlando Sentinel reporter Leslie Postal used a release from the Democrat Progressive Caucus to report that ALEC was sponsoring another education privatization indoctrination session for state legislators this weekend, a firestorm of coverage erupted. The Koch brothers-funded group doesn’t operate in the open as evidenced by this from Postal:
ALEC has been criticized for proposing “model” legislation — on lots of topics — and then pushing state lawmakers to file bills that closely follow the association’s blueprint.
And that’s what the Democratic caucus doesn’t like, calling ”this interference by outside interests” a “threat to our democracy” in a press release today.
“The secretive process of allowing corporate lobbyists and billionaires to write legislation, which they then pass off to Florida legislators, is a betrayal of the intent of representative government. The closed-door gathering of legislators is not government in the sunshine,” said Susan Smith, the caucus president.
An ALEC spokesman has not yet responded to a request for comment. There is no information that I could find about an Amelia Island event on its website.
I posted on the Amelia Island event in this January 24th post which featured the email that ALEC was sending out to state legislators. Events indicate that ALEC moved up their meeting this weekend as the email had the event scheduled for the 24th of February. The email was likely written last year as the person who sent the email left ALEC at the beginning of this year. Writes Dennis Bielke for PR Watch:
There will be no students or teachers. Instead, legislators, representatives from right-wing think tanks and for-profit education corporations will meet behind closed doors to channel their inner Milton Friedman and promote the radical transformation of the American education system into a private, for-profit enterprise.
Karen Francisco is the Indiana Journal Gazzette writes that ALEC’s first agenda is to eliminate teacher unions. Its how ALEC gauges success:
Because its meetings are secret and its agenda unknown, the best clue to ALEC’s education focus is its Report Card on American Education, released last week for national school choice week.
States are graded on the curve, to put it politely. Never mind those pesky achievement figures; states that engaged in union-busting excelled while the others lagged behind.
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels wrote the report’s introduction, which should offer a clue as to how the Hoosier state fared:
Daniels wrote the report card’s forward, lamenting how the unions in his state once had a voice in issues such as the length of the school day, academic freedom and, generally, the content of their work, says his state has turned the corner. “Collective bargaining will now be limited to wages and benefits and will no longer stand in the way of effective school leadership or student progress,” Daniels writes.
Indiana’s ALEC grade improved to a B from a C+ in 2010 even though its NAEP scores declined from 13th to 17th. Indiana did, however, pass several pieces of legislation in the last year that were influenced by ALEC model bills, including the creation of a statewide voucher school program, merit pay and restricted collective bargaining rights for teachers, and deep budget cuts.
There’s no word as yet as to whether or not any Florida legislators are attending the Amelia Island conference. But its clear that some republican legislators are still submitting ALEC written bills. In November, Rep. Rachel Burgin of Riverview had to quickly withdraw a bill which still had ALEC’s introductory clause in it. ALEC is also involved in advancing the privatization of state prison systems. A republican Florida state senator Mike Fasano who opposed prison privatization was removed from his committee chairmanship for being against the effort.
The breathtakingly bold ouster of Fasano was so out in the open that it reveals just how empowered the state’s republican leadership feels they are right now. Has ALEC helped promote such brazenness? The group’s history of promoting coercive legislation intended to eliminate opponents such as last session’s Paycheck Protection Act or this session’s demonstrably misleading Teacher Protection Act is well documented. Some Florida republican senators are even econsidering a secret path to privatization.
When does it get to the point when Florida’s republican’s are finally seen as tyrannical? And that ALEC is seen as the instrument of their tyranny?
http://bobsidlethoughtsandmusings.wordpress.com/2012/02/04/how-deep-is-alecs-reach-into-driving-florida-legislation/
Saturday, February 4, 2012
It is about to get tougher for Florida's special education students
From the Miami Herald
by Christoper O'Donnell
Hundreds of special education students in Florida could miss out on the chance to earn a special high school diploma if state officials move ahead with plans to raise the academic requirements to graduate from a work experience program.
The program, called Option II, is aimed at special education students who struggle in traditional classes. It allows them to swap school for a full-time job where they earn high school credits based on assessments by employers.
But tougher new graduation requirements, which include a 2.0 GPA and eight high school credits including two in math and two in reading or language arts, could be beyond the capabilities of many students with learning disabilities. If adopted, the new rules would apply to incoming ninth-graders beginning in the next school year.
Officials in Manatee say some students will miss out on a program that prevents teenagers from dropping out and instead gives them job skills, independence and a leg up into the workplace.
"For some, it's a last chance," said Roy Nelles, Manatee Option II coordinator. "Are we going to prevent these kids getting a special diploma just because they can't do academics? Some of them are great workers."
Only two of Florida's 67 school districts do not offer the program. The rule change will have little effect in some districts, including Sarasota County, that already have similar or more stringent entry requirements, state officials said.
In an email, Cathy Bishop, interim chief of the state Bureau of Exceptional Education and Student Services, said the new rules will result in "students being better prepared to attain their post-secondary goals."
But preventing students from dropping out is more of a challenge for Manatee County schools.
The district is the only one in Florida required by law to keep students in school up to the age of 18, the result of a pilot program that was never extended to other districts but remains in effect in Manatee.
In other school districts, students can drop out from the age of 16. Manatee students younger than 18 who drop out of school wind up in truancy court.
Although not as valued as a high-school diploma, the special diploma offered through the program is recognized by some employers, community colleges and other training programs and gives students a sense of accomplishment, Nelles said.
Students in the program are required to find their own job. The companies must pay minimum wage or higher and employ students for at least 30 hours per week.
Osprey Biotechnics in Sarasota hired one Manatee County Option II student this school year.
The student, who has a learning disability, learned how to produce one of the company's products, a bacteria that eats grease.
"You couldn't ask for a better worker," said Tom Baldeschwieler, production manager.
Baldeschwieler said the company plans to help the student if he wants to continue his education and would consider hiring more students through the program.
"They learn a lot about math and science and production," he said.
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20120202/ARTICLE/120209893?p=2&tc=pg
by Christoper O'Donnell
Hundreds of special education students in Florida could miss out on the chance to earn a special high school diploma if state officials move ahead with plans to raise the academic requirements to graduate from a work experience program.
The program, called Option II, is aimed at special education students who struggle in traditional classes. It allows them to swap school for a full-time job where they earn high school credits based on assessments by employers.
But tougher new graduation requirements, which include a 2.0 GPA and eight high school credits including two in math and two in reading or language arts, could be beyond the capabilities of many students with learning disabilities. If adopted, the new rules would apply to incoming ninth-graders beginning in the next school year.
Officials in Manatee say some students will miss out on a program that prevents teenagers from dropping out and instead gives them job skills, independence and a leg up into the workplace.
"For some, it's a last chance," said Roy Nelles, Manatee Option II coordinator. "Are we going to prevent these kids getting a special diploma just because they can't do academics? Some of them are great workers."
Only two of Florida's 67 school districts do not offer the program. The rule change will have little effect in some districts, including Sarasota County, that already have similar or more stringent entry requirements, state officials said.
In an email, Cathy Bishop, interim chief of the state Bureau of Exceptional Education and Student Services, said the new rules will result in "students being better prepared to attain their post-secondary goals."
But preventing students from dropping out is more of a challenge for Manatee County schools.
The district is the only one in Florida required by law to keep students in school up to the age of 18, the result of a pilot program that was never extended to other districts but remains in effect in Manatee.
In other school districts, students can drop out from the age of 16. Manatee students younger than 18 who drop out of school wind up in truancy court.
Although not as valued as a high-school diploma, the special diploma offered through the program is recognized by some employers, community colleges and other training programs and gives students a sense of accomplishment, Nelles said.
Students in the program are required to find their own job. The companies must pay minimum wage or higher and employ students for at least 30 hours per week.
Osprey Biotechnics in Sarasota hired one Manatee County Option II student this school year.
The student, who has a learning disability, learned how to produce one of the company's products, a bacteria that eats grease.
"You couldn't ask for a better worker," said Tom Baldeschwieler, production manager.
Baldeschwieler said the company plans to help the student if he wants to continue his education and would consider hiring more students through the program.
"They learn a lot about math and science and production," he said.
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20120202/ARTICLE/120209893?p=2&tc=pg
Does Rick Santorum secretly hate kids?
He has also bashed pre-school and kids on food stamps while campaigning.
-cpg
From Think Progress
By Marie Diamond
While campaigning yesterday in Woodland Park, Colorado, GOP contender Rick Santorum told a sick child and his mother that they shouldn’t complain about the exorbitant cost of his medication because some people spend $900 on iPads. He appeared unmoved by the plight of the family, staunchly defending drug companies’ right to charge whatever they want.
The candidate also said that the parent and child unjustly felt entitled to get life-saving care at an affordable rate:
GOP contender Rick Santorum had a heated exchange with a mother and her sick young son Wednesday, arguing that drug companies were entitled to charge whatever the market demanded for life-saving therapies.[...]
“People have no problem paying $900 for an iPad,” Santorum said, “but paying $900 for a drug they have a problem with — it keeps you alive. Why? Because you’ve been conditioned to think health care is something you can get without having to pay for it.”
The mother said the boy was on the drug Abilify, used to treat schizophrenia, and that, on paper, its costs would exceed $1 million each year.
Santorum said drugs take years to develop and cost millions of dollars to produce, and manufacturers need to turn a profit or they would stop developing new drugs.
Santorum proceeded to lecture the mother and suggest she should be grateful to the drug companies for saving her son’s life. “He’s alive today because drug companies provide care,” Santorum said. “And if they didn’t think they could make money providing that drug, that drug wouldn’t be here.” He also claimed it would “freeze innovation” if pharmaceutical companies were required to offer their drugs at a reasonable price.
Although Santorum has been a vocal opponent of health care reform, his callous reaction is somewhat surprising given that he himself is the father of a daughter with a rare genetic disorder. But if the Colorado mother thought Santorum might be sympathetic to families in similar situations who happen to be less wealthy, she was sadly mistaken.
-cpg
From Think Progress
By Marie Diamond
While campaigning yesterday in Woodland Park, Colorado, GOP contender Rick Santorum told a sick child and his mother that they shouldn’t complain about the exorbitant cost of his medication because some people spend $900 on iPads. He appeared unmoved by the plight of the family, staunchly defending drug companies’ right to charge whatever they want.
The candidate also said that the parent and child unjustly felt entitled to get life-saving care at an affordable rate:
GOP contender Rick Santorum had a heated exchange with a mother and her sick young son Wednesday, arguing that drug companies were entitled to charge whatever the market demanded for life-saving therapies.[...]
“People have no problem paying $900 for an iPad,” Santorum said, “but paying $900 for a drug they have a problem with — it keeps you alive. Why? Because you’ve been conditioned to think health care is something you can get without having to pay for it.”
The mother said the boy was on the drug Abilify, used to treat schizophrenia, and that, on paper, its costs would exceed $1 million each year.
Santorum said drugs take years to develop and cost millions of dollars to produce, and manufacturers need to turn a profit or they would stop developing new drugs.
Santorum proceeded to lecture the mother and suggest she should be grateful to the drug companies for saving her son’s life. “He’s alive today because drug companies provide care,” Santorum said. “And if they didn’t think they could make money providing that drug, that drug wouldn’t be here.” He also claimed it would “freeze innovation” if pharmaceutical companies were required to offer their drugs at a reasonable price.
Although Santorum has been a vocal opponent of health care reform, his callous reaction is somewhat surprising given that he himself is the father of a daughter with a rare genetic disorder. But if the Colorado mother thought Santorum might be sympathetic to families in similar situations who happen to be less wealthy, she was sadly mistaken.
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