Making Summer Synonymous with Learning

Kids keeping cool on a hot day near Washington, D.C.
Source: Flickr/LollyKnit

From Gershwin to The Zombies to Will Smith, summertime has been portrayed as a rhapsodic good time.

But when the sunny season fades, are kids less ready to learn?

A trove of studies going back a century paints summer vacation as a time when insufficient access to learning opportunities can lead to significant gaps in student performance, most dramatically along socioeconomic lines.

But the quick fix — according to some experts — isn’t any summer school: Too often, these programs offer only remedial classes as a service to students who are behind in course credits after the regular academic year. So what are the possible solutions? EWA hosted a webinar this week on the problems surrounding the summer slide and possible story ideas that journalists can pursue while school is out.

“We want to set higher, more meaningful targets for all of our kids, expressed through the Common Core standards,” said Gary Huggins, CEO of the National Summer Learning Association. “We’ve got a long way to go to hit those targets.”

Some of the more sobering statistics regarding the summer learning slide according to Huggins:

• Most children are losing two to three months of instructional learning in mathematics during the summer;
• Low-income students in particular lose two to three months’ worth of instructional while middle-income peers are gaining knowledge;
•  The summer learning slide can account for up to two-thirds of the reading gap between poor and middle-class students by the time they hit the ninth grade;       
• A recent long-term study found that low-income and wealthier students learn at the same rate during the school year; 
• Only one-seventh of kids who are eligible for free breakfast and lunch during the school year take advantage of those meals during the summer. That is a “significant issue of food insecurity,” Huggins said.

Despite the drop-off in skill level during the summer, funding streams for summer programs have thinned. The stimulus act helped temporarily, but those dollars have come and gone. Meanwhile, as district officials continue to battle budget cuts due to dwindling state revenues, summer programs are getting the axe. The American Association of School Administrators polled district administrators on whether they’re shutting down their summer school classes and found that in the past three years between a quarter and a third have stated they will cut funding.

But advocates for summer programs argue that while money is tight today, the economic impact of a growing achievement gap could be more severe: a McKinsey & Co. 2009 report found that a dip in achievement levels is effectively equivalent to a permanent recession.

Regardless of the budget battles administrators ultimately are on the hook for improving learning results. “They need to be effective at not only the summer loss that’s taking place,” says Huggins. “But they’ve got to be effective at maximizing what summer has to offer in gains for all kids.”

For extra cash to fund summer school programs, Huggins told reporters to consider looking at Title I funds that schools can use to close achievement gaps. Grants from the i3 program also are available, but Huggins also said reporters should not overlook philanthropic sources. For example, his organization partnered with Walmart as part of a $4 million project to offer summer courses to 7,000 students.

During the webinar discussion, Katy Murphy, a reporter at the Oakland Tribune, said that when she began a summer learning story last year, not all summer programs looked alike. Many of the gifted and advanced courses the city previously provided had been discontinued. The courses that aren’t for students falling behind, meanwhile, are not easy to find for parents in search of an academic boost for their kids.

Murphy looked at several families from different economic backgrounds and noted that even though the students might be on equal academic footing, wealthier parents know where to look for to find grants, scholarships and other funding sources to enroll their kids in effective summer programs.

She advised other reporters to explore both traditional and nontraditional projects that keep students engaged and stimulated while school is out. Job internships are becoming popular, for example. Are they teaching students new skills, and do they pay or give academic credit? She also says it’s important to examine the year-to-year cuts to summer program budgets, because that gives a bigger picture of how much money was cut over time.

Chronic Absenteeism: What Do The Data Show?

EWA asked participants to contribute blog posts from some of the sessions at our 65th National Seminar, held May 17-19 at the University of Pennsylvania. This entry is from Seattle Times education reporter Linda Shaw.



Session: Story Lab on Chronic Absenteeism -- Focus On Data

Participants: 

Kavitha Cardoza, senior reporter, WAMU 88.5 (moderator)
Robert Balfanz, research scientist, Johns Hopkins University
James Vaznis, K-12 education reporter, The Boston Globe
Jason Wermers, editor, the Statesboro (Ga.) Herald

The attendance statistics for America’s public schools make it seem that nearly all students show up for class every day. That’s because most schools report an average daily attendance rate of 90-95 percent.

Yet two panelists who spoke Saturday morning at EWA’s annual conference said those high averages mask the fact that a significant number of students are missing a lot of school.

One of the panelists, Robert Balfanz, a research scientist at Johns Hopkins University, estimates that 5 to 7.5 million students in the United States miss a month or more of school each year. That’s
roughly as many students as attend public schools in the entire state of California.

But few states or school districts keep track of which students regularly miss school, said Balfanz and the other panelist, Hedy Nai-Lin Chang, who directs Attendance Works, an initiative aimed at
bringing more attention to absenteeism. Chronic absenteeism is a hidden problem, Balfanz and Chang said, that drives up the dropout rate, lowers test scores, and makes it hard for schools to tell if new
programs are working.

Balfanz shared the results from a new report he co-authored with Vaughan Byrnes, titled “The Importance of Being in School: A Report on Absenteeism in the Nation’s Public Schools.” In their research, Balfanz and Byrnes found just six states that track chronic absenteeism: Georgia, Florida, Maryland, Nebraska, Oregon and Rhode Island.

Even those states don’t use a common definition of what’s chronic, Balfanz said. Some count any student who misses 21 days or more. Others set the bar at 18 days. Some count just unexcused absences. Others count excused and unexcused absences, plus time missed due to
suspensions.

Oregon counts all of the above, which is probably the reason why its chronic absentee rate is 23 percent – the highest of the six states that Balfanz studied.

Some of the states also exclude students who move in the middle of the school year. For that reason, both Balfanz and Chang think that Balfanz’s estimate of the number of chronically absent students might be low.

In his research, Balfanz also found that chronic absenteeism is high in kindergarten and first grade, not just middle and high school. And he found that the absenteeism varies widely among schools, with higher rates in high-poverty neighborhoods. Chang added that her organization looked at six schools in Oakland, California, each of which report an average daily attendance rate of 95 percent. Yet the percent of students who were chronically absent in those schools, she said, ranged from 5.8 percent to 17 percent.

The problem also accumulates over time. In Florida, Balfanz tracked the attendance of a group of sixth-graders from the time they entered nmiddle school through the end of high school. The 20 percent who missed the most school averaged 171 absences over those seven years – nearly a full school year. Another twenty percent missed an average of 90 days, or a half of a year.

Balfanz said a number of studies make it very clear that missing even a few days of school each month affects how much students learn. In Florida, for example, he found that, on average, ninth-graders’ scores on their state’s test went down by a point for each day they missed.

The first step toward reducing absenteeism is to measure it, Balfanz and Chang said. Schools need to know which students are missing a lot of school before they can figure out what to do about it. Are students suffering from health problems such as asthma? Is transportation a challenge? Chang said one school raised its attendance rate after it realized that many of its parents worked graveyard shifts and if it opened its doors a little earlier, the parents could drop off their kids before the parents dropped off to sleep.

“This is a completely solvable problem,” Chang said. “But because we’re not looking at the data, we’re not taking action.”

Balfanz called on reporters to help figure out why so many students miss so much school.

“We still need to know more about the why,” he said.

How Much Should Student Loans Cost?

Flickr/Christopher S. Penn

Are student loans moneymakers for the federal government? 

The debate whether the federal government should keep its interest rate for student loans at 3.4 percent rather than let it double to 6.8 percent on July 1 has focused almost exclusively on what the rate change might cost students. But while the impact on borrowers can be calculated, how does the potential rate change affect the government?

There is no quick take on the matter, though, because an old law makes reporting the cost of issuing a loan more of a legislative art than a fiscal fact.

Jason Delisle, a federal education spending expert at New America Foundation, a D.C.-based think–tank, says the answer depends on how Congress reports the cost of issuing federal student loans. Following the Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990, the accounting rules on reporting federal expenses for education loans changed, allowing the government to calculate the cost of these loans differently than private financial institutions do. Mainly, the government can report that the financial risk of borrowers defaulting on their loans costs less than it would for private lenders.

Because the government issues loans based on U.S. Treasury rates, which are cheaper than market rates, the risk of lending costs appears less for the government.

In policy circles, the rate at which private lenders have to set these loans—including the risks—is called “fair value.”

To some, that privilege means the government effectively makes a profit off of education loans; to others, it’s bad accounting that hides the real costs that result from lending based solely on need, not whether borrowers are credit-worthy enough to pay back these debts. If the budgeting understates the cost of the loan program, other subsidies are less likely to be affected as well.

“Congress has a budgetary incentive to expand loan programs rather than create grant programs or tax programs because the loan programs are treated so favorably by these budget rules,” says Delisle.

Indeed, in the Department of Education’s 2013 budget request to Congress, officials write the Direct Loan Program—which includes subsidized and unsubsidized Stafford Loans—was estimated in fiscal year 2011 to earn 13.91 percent on every dollar in loans issued, “thereby providing savings to the Federal Government.”

Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office, the fiscal scorekeeper for all federal bills, released an issue brief earlier this year advocating for a change in how it determines the deficit impact of federal loan programs, preferring to report the costs using the “fair value” model. It warned defaults on loans are paid for by issuing more Treasury notes, tax increases, or spending cuts. In 2010, the CBO calculated that using the “fair value” model, the government actually loses 13 percent on every Direct Loan dollar spent.

Mike Konczal, a fellow at the left-leaning Roosevelt Institute who specializes in finance, wrote in February the government can afford to undercut fair value loans because it has a very aggressive collections arm in the event loan holders default. Paying additional penalties, garnished wages, and loss of tax refunds are all ways the government can get its money back. For its 2013 budget request, the Department of Education calculated it will make money off of defaulted loans.

It’s not as if the government is being accused of poorly assessing risk, but some say its not fairly weighing the hit to the deficit bad loans might cause. For example Deborah Lucas and Marvin Phaup, researchers at Northwestern University and George Washington University who study loan costs, argue for the fair value estimate of issuing loans. Under their system, the government would calculate an extra cost to loans issued that would function as a safety net for the taxpayer. The Center for Budget Policy Priorities, a left-leaning policy group, criticizes the Lucas and Phaub argument because it believes they are asking the government to account for expenses it will never have to pay anyone.

Delisle, the New America Foundation analyst, notes there are a handful of caps on federal student loans that limit the government’s exposure to risk. For example, students can take out no more than $31,000 before they graduate, and there are limits on how much a student can take out in a single year.

Nor does he feel the government should start charging fair value prices, because the point of having a government program is to offer a subsidy.   Of course, the actual value of that subsidy—for students and the government—will likely always be a matter of debate.

Charter Schools: Should Funding and Facilities Follow The Student?

EWA asked participants to contribute blog posts from some of the sessions at our 65th National Seminar, held May 17-19 at the University of Pennsylvania. This entry is from Miami Herald education reporter Laura Isensee.


Session: Should Funding and Facilities Follow the Child?

Participants:

Dale Mezzacappa, contributing editor, Philadelphia Public School Notebook  (moderator)
Bryan Hassel, co-director Public Impact
Gary Miron, professor, Western Michigan University
Pedro Ramos, chairman, Philadelphia School Reform Board
Joe Williams, executive director, Democrats for Education Reform

How should funding be divvied up between traditional public schools and charter schools? It’s hot topic as charter schools grow and push for more funding and more access to facilities while traditional public have their own money problems, including budget cuts, even bankruptcy and losing students and money to charter schools. The group experts pointed out problems they saw and pitched some solutions to the equation of who gets how much public money to teach kids.

Joe Williams, who left a journalism career to start an advocacy group, said educators and administrators need to think differently about the tension for money between charter groups and traditional schools in places like Newark. For example, Williams said groups should think about what they do best, and try to do that better, even if it’s keeping the floors clean. (Williams worked as a school custodian in summer in high school.) “The fiscal realities are in front of folks,” he said. In how to fix the funding system, Williams said there are deals to be made.

Gary Miron, a professor at Western Michigan University, has looked at charter school funding around the country. Bottom line: it’s very complicated and formulas vary widely by state. (For a detailed study, check out Miron’s 2010 report, “Equal or Fair? A Study of Revenues and Expenditures in American Charter Schools.” To really track it, Miron said you have to look at special categories of funding, like special education, and private revenue that some charter groups raise. One of the biggest unknowns in the funding is money for facilities, since some charter schools have no capital funding and others teach in architectural gems. “The picture is very complex,” Miron said.

Bryan Hassel said charter schools are not getting the same revenue for students that traditional public schools receive. He said the funding should follow individual students, including their specific needs. Hassel said Rhode Island has followed that approach.

He also suggested that funding formulas includes incentives. For example, give districts transition money as charter school open in their areas, to reward them for being “good players” and helping charters find facilities. On the charter side, Hassel said charters could receive full and equal funding, but make it partly based on their performance. “If you do really well as a charter school, you can earn more. If you do really poorly, you can earn less.”

In Philadelphia, about 50,000 students are enrolled in charter schools and the waiting list is huge, said Pedro Ramos, who chairs the Philadelphia School Reform Board. Meanwhile, the traditional public schools have space for another 70,000 students and the district spends about $33 million a year to maintain heat and cool the unused space. Ramos said the district wants to an 85-percent occupancy rate in its buildings, meaning eventually 40 to 50 schools will have to close. To fix the funding system, Ramos said there needs to be a focus on building trust.

Work Permits Yes, Federal Benefits No, in New White House Immigration Policy

White House (Source: Flickr/Seansie)

Effective immediately, the Obama administration is opening a process for eligible undocumented residents to apply for work permits and put off threats of deportation for two years.

Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano told reporters the decision, which she said falls within the scope of powers given to the White House, is to help individuals who came to this country through “no fault of their own.”

Senior administration officials said the new enforcement policy would affect roughly 800,000 people, though they cautioned that is a rough estimate since the onus is on individuals to come forward and make the case they are qualified for the “deferred action.”

Despite the new protections, the new set of rules does not grant federal benefits to eligible individuals, which include federal education loans and grants that help pay for college.

The new rules, which partly resemble the failed DREAM Act legislation that has come before Congress several times in the past few years, apply to individuals above the age of 16 but below 30. To be eligible, they would also have had to been present in the U.S. for five consecutive years, currently live in the U.S., lack a felony or multiple small misdemeanors, and do not “otherwise pose a threat to national security or public safety,” according to a DHS memo. Eligible persons would also have to have earned a high school degree or an equivalent certificate, or served in the coast guard or U.S. military.

Napolitano stressed this new set of rules are not immunity or amnesty, and she called on Congress to pass the DREAM Act.

Already, the details coming out from the administration suggest the process for individuals to secure “deferred action” will require a lot of legwork. For example, simply applying for the status does not guarantee a work permit, and all applications for the right to work will be assessed “case by case”—as senior administration officials put it—by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). After two years, individuals would have to reapply.

Also check out Katherine Unmuth's post on Latino Ed Beat about how this announcement falls on a key anniversary.

Are Colleges Failing To Challenge And Educate Students?

 EWA asked participants to contribute blog posts from some of the sessions at our 65th National Seminar, held May 17-19 at the University of Pennsylvania. This entry is from higher education reporter Wade Malcolm of the (Wilmington, Del.) News-Journal.


Session: Losing Our Minds - Authors Richard Keeling and Richard Hersh

In their new book -- and elsewhere -- higher education consultants Richard Keeling and Richard Hersh have been making the case that today’s colleges fail to truly challenge and educate students.

Keeling is a former administrator and tenured faculty member at the University of Virginia and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Hersh served as president of two different institutions -- Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, N.Y., and Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.

In their appearance at the 2012 Education Writers Association National Seminar Saturday morning, the authors of “We’re Losing Our Minds — Rethinking American Higher Education” made it clear the higher education doesn’t do enough to instill a love of learning and necessity of hard work.

Support for the value of practice and challenging oneself outweighing pure talent has been gaining steam recently, and Hersh and Keeling appear to support that notion.

Keeling, who is also a medical doctor, used neurology to make this point. He displayed pictures of brain scans showing how mental activity changes as learning takes place.

When a non-artist is asked to draw a picture brain activity is concentrated around areas controlling motor skills. When an artist draws, activity shifts to the frontal regions of the mind, where higher-level thinking occurs.

The artist doesn’t have to think about how to draw the picture because he’s done it so many times before, Keeling said. This tells us something about how higher education should work. The important skills college should develop -- reading, writing, critical thinking skills -- needs to be a building process, connecting the curriculum of different types of courses. In other words … practice, practice, practice.

“Learning should be achieved across whole college experience,” Hersh said.

Keeling and Hersh also raised the argument that the almighty rankings are at the root of many problem in higher education, and you’d have no trouble finding plenty of people who agree with him there. Colleges and universities spend a lot of time and energy thinking about their standing on these lists, particular U.S. News and World Report.

Most components of the rankings “have nothing to do with learning,” Hersh said. None of it measures output. For example, retention rates attract the attention of prospective students -- and get plenty of weight in the rankings -- but those number tend to say more about the quality of the students at an institution than the quality of the education they are receiving.

“High retention is just a function of high selectivity,” Hersh said. “If I want to increase retention, that’s easy. I just change admissions and make them more selective.”

Hersh said colleges and would be better served to develop systems to assess whether their students are learning.

The two said they hope the book will ultimately “re-frame” the national conversation around higher ed.

“We don’t think this problem is produced because that course or this course doesn’t work or this professor or that professor isn’t a good teacher,” Keeling said. “The current culture in our colleges and university does not foster does not reward what we think of as higher education.”

Mainstream Higher Ed Feels Ripple of Open Source College Courses

EWA asked participants to contribute blog posts from some of the sessions at our 65th National Seminar, held May 17-19 at the University of Pennsylvania. This entry is from columnist David McKay Wilson of the (White Plains, N.Y.) Journal News.

Session: Will Open Source College Courses Roil the Waters?
Participants:
Jeff Young, Chronicle of Higher Education (moderator)
Kevin Carey, Education Sector*
Joel Thierstein, Rice University

The proliferation of free non-credit online courses from the nation’s top universities has invigorated instruction, as Ivy League professors develop new ways of presenting information typically shared in the classroom.

The professors told their stories at the panel discussion, Will Open Source Courses Roil The Waters? The panelists included Jeffrey Himpele, associate director of Princeton’s Center for Teaching and Learning; Joshua Kim, director of learning and technology at Dartmouth’s Master of Health Care Delivery Science program; Peter Struck, associate professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania; and Kevin Carey, Education Sector’s policy director.

The discussion comes as Harvard joined MIT, Yale, and Stanford in providing a broad range of courses online. Princeton and Penn are developing free online resources as well.

Struck, who teaches Greek mythology, said he was “thrilled” that 9,000 online students had already signed up for his class that will debut in September. He said the online format, which features 15-minute lectures, has caused him to rethink the traditional one-hour lecture. He predicted it would like to pedagogical advances as he reconfigures his approach.

But he warned that the online courses would not remake higher education.

“It won’t replace the high-touch environment of the classroom,” he said. “It’s like a difference between television and a play. It won’t end lectures as we know it.”

But it has gotten the attention of professors who for decades have embraced the hour-long lecture, a staple of the academic arena. Himpele said the shorter format of the online classes – videos that are 12 minutes in length – has sparked conversations throughout the Princeton campus.

Many of the online courses have mini-quizzes every 12 minutes, to make sure the students understood the material.

“We are having conversations we were only dreaming of years ago,” he said. “And these conversations are revitalizing and enhancing teaching on campus. It makes you focus on what you want the student to know at the end of a segment, a lecture and a course.”

Carey says top-flight institutions of higher education are making their courses public so they don’t fall behind in the digital revolution, wherever it may lead.

“Harvard cares about not being left behind,” said Carey. “Fear can motivate. Fear gets you out of bed. Fear can change the world. It can get institutions to do things.”

Kim, however, was skeptical that the free online courses would have much of an impact on society at large.

“It’s fun, but fundamentally won’t change things,” he said.

One journalist in the audience said he was struck by the lack of a business plan by the universities that were offering the free courses. Carey said that plan could develop as the audience grows. Stanford’s pilot program in 2012 drew more than 300,000 participants.

“They figure, if we get big enough, it will work out,” Carey said.


*Kevin Carey is now director of the New America Foundation's Education Policy Program.

Boosting Access to High-Quality Care for Disadvantaged Kids

EWA asked participants to contribute blog posts from some of the sessions at our 65th National Seminar, held May 17-19 at the University of Pennsylvania. This entry is from education reporter Kevin Hardy of the (Chattanooga, Tenn.) Times Free Press.

Session: Access to High-Quality Care for Disadvantaged Kids

Participants:
Liz Willen, Hechinger Report (moderator)
Harriet Dichter, vice president, national policy, Ounce of Prevention Fund
Will Kinder, education policy associate, Children’s Defense Fund

Education reporters who overlook opportunities to cover pre-K or early childhood issues may be missing out, as many states struggle to keep such programs afloat.

Advocates at EWA’s National Seminar urged reporters to dig into the dwindling federal and state resources dedicated to early education and what impact that has on children — both immediately and later on in life — in closing the achievement gap.

Fourteen of the 17 states where the Ounce of Prevention Fund works are unable to sustain current funding levels of early education programs, said Vice President of National Policy Harriet Dichter. States such as Arizona and California have proposed some of the deepest cuts in budgets for the 2013 fiscal year.

That means states will see longer waiting lists, families will be told they’re no longer eligible, states’ will ask families to pay more and classrooms will close.

Dichter noted it’s often easier to receive funding for pre-K Head Start than it is for child care[CH1] programs.

Even in states that are largely sustaining funding, such as Florida, Oregon and Nebraska, programs don’t go far enough, advocates say. Only a fraction of eligible children are able to enter early education programs. Of eligible children:

- 17 percent receive child care
- 25 percent participate in Head Start
- 3 percent participate in Early Head Start
- 3 percent receive home visits

Reporters can help the general public understand the value of such programs, speakers at the session stressed. While they may look like day care[CH2] , the programs use intentional instruction aimed at ultimately producing students better prepared for K-12 schooling.

”This is learning. It isn’t play,” Dichter said.

To measure the effectiveness of those programs and the overall readiness of students, many states are adopting kindergarten assessments, an effort in which Maryland is leading the pack.

Dichter cautioned against using such assessments to determine the placement of individual students or to evaluate individual programs. Rather, they should be used to judge the overall picture of child health and readiness, she said.

Will Kinder, education policy associate at the Children’s Defense Fund, urged reporters to check out what their states and districts are offering for kindergarten students.

Only 10 states and the District of Columbia require districts to provide and fund full-day kindergarten programs. Half-day kindergarten must be offered in 34 states, while six states don’t require kindergarten at all.

Kinder said research shows significantly higher gains for students who attend full-day programs versus half-day programs. Budget cuts are the most common reason for cutting or not implementing full-day programs, he said.

“It seems absurd to cut half a day from 12th grade or fifth grade. But that’s what we do in kindergarten,” he said.

Those districts with only half-day programs might struggle in implementing the more rigorous Common Core standards. Kinder says it will be difficult to fully implement the new standards without full-day kindergarten, because full-day kindergarten was assumed in the creation of Common Core.

How To Observe Classrooms: Top Tips For Reporters

EWA asked participants to contribute blog posts from some of the sessions at our 65th National Seminar, held May 17-19 at the University of Pennsylvania. This entry is from Dave Murray, statewide education and politics reporter for the MLive Media group, covering Michigan and national issues in K-12 and higher education.

Session: Learning from experts on how to observe classrooms

Participants:

Lisa Guernsey, director of the Early Education Initiative at the New America Foundation

Bridget Hamre, associate director of University of Virginia’s Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning.

Teachers need to know that the move toward increased observation and evaluation is intended to help, not be used as a ‘gotcha,’ a panel of two experts said.

Lisa Guernsey, director of the Early Education Initiative of the New America Foundation, said educators are now grappling with student test scores to tell what they can reveal about teachers’ abilities.

But she said until recently, observations “weren’t even part of the conversation.” Teachers, usually the newest ones, would typically get a brief visit from an administrator.

But the trend is to have trained observers sitting in a classroom for long periods, from 40 minutes to 90 minutes – or even an entire day. They are looking for specific, easy-to-measure things.

Also, teachers are more frequently being filmed as they work, so they can watch what transpired and so educators can learn from the best colleagues.

Guernsey said teachers in the early grades have been the pioneers, picked because there are few standardized exams that can be used to measure performance among the youngest students. Also, one-day snapshots are less reliable for that age group.

Plus, it’s tough to measure developmental skills for younger students, such as the ability to listen and pay attention.

Bridget Hamre, associate director of University of Virginia’s Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning, said a quality observation will include multiple visits for a variety of lessons.

Harme said a big fear is what could happen if the observations are used incorrectly, or even the perception of that happening. She said districts are bracing for lawsuits from teachers fired for being deemed ineffective after the observations and evaluations.

She said teachers are worried that the observations will not be used as tools for improvement, but as ways to catch teachers doing something wrong so they can be fired.

Teachers also have concerns about the observers, whether they have any idea what educators are dealing with in the classroom.

Harme said reporters should ask how the evaluation tools are being used, and how people doing the work are trained.

Also, reporters should asked whether the highest-scoring teachers actually having a positive impact on students.

Guernsey said observers should look for some things that can’t be measured, such as whether teachers are enjoying what they are doing and whether students look like they enjoy being in the class.

Reporters should match principals’ answers to what experts for that grade consider to be to be the scores and qualities of a good teacher.

Black Male College Outcomes: Focus On Success, Not Failure

EWA asked participants to contribute blog posts from some of the sessions at our 65th National Seminar, held May 17-19 at the University of Pennsylvania. This entry is from education reporter Scott Travis of the Sun Sentinel. 

Session: Looking At Success Patterns, Not Deficits

Participants:

Katherine Unmuth, Latino EdBeat (moderator)

Shaun Harper, University of Pennsylvania

Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed

Shaun Harper gets frustrated when he reads education stories about black men.

Most focus on why black men were failing, the University of Pennsylvania associate professor told journalists at EWA's National Seminar. Harper had read question why too few black men were graduating from high school and going to college, and why so many get suspended or expelled from school.

But what about the successful black male students, wondered Harper. The ones with high GPAs, leadership roles in campus organizations and good relationships with faculty and administrators.

“Even though I’d never read anything about them in any newspaper, magazine or journal article, I was convinced they existed. They were my friends when I was an undergraduate,” said Harper, who graduated from the University of Indiana at Bloomington.

So he sought them out. During a five-year period, he interviewed 219 black undergraduate students on 42 campuses, from Ivy League schools to big state universities to historically black colleges. He learned what factors led to success, such as strong parental involvement and inspiring teachers or mentors. His published his findings this spring in a report called the National Black College Achievement. https://www.gse.upenn.edu/equity/content/center-publications

Now, the successes of black men are starting to get some attention, he said. The news website Inside Higher Ed wrote a story in April highlighting the findings. (http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/02/06/study-aims-learn-why-some-black-men-succeed-college) And with the help of social media, the story became of the website’s most viewed and shared stories, said editor Doug Lederman, who wrote the piece.

“Middle class professionals like Shaun saw themselves in the research. They were really eager to see a report like this,” Lederman said.

Harper encouraged journalists to think about telling more complete stories when they write about minority issues. The stories that only focus on the problems “unintentionally reinforce deficit perceptions of black men.”

He cited a story about that about how only one in 40 black men attend college. A photo shows a lone black male student in a desk, surrounded by 39 empty desks. The story explored the issues that caused black students to drop out, such as poverty and a lack of male role models.

But the story didn’t explore how the one black student who bucked the trend. It’s a story that might help others to succeed, he said.

“It might be helpful for policy makers, school leaders and even the American public you write for if you wrote less about the doom and gloom and more about the pockets of progress and success within communities of color,” he said.

He also encouraged journalism schools to integrate coverage of diverse communities into their curriculum.

The Public-Private Partnership: Helping Schools Succeed

EWA asked participants to contribute blog posts from some of the sessions at our 65th National Seminar, held May 17-19 at the University of Pennsylvania. This entry is from education reporter Diana Lambert of the Sacramento Bee.

Session: Covering ‘Collective Impact’ and its Link to Education

Moderator: Diette Courrege, the Post and Courier, Charleston, S.C.
Participants:
Jeff Edmondson, managing director, Strive Partnership
John Kania, managing director FSG, a social impact consulting group
Mary Anne Schmitt-Carey, president, Say Yes to Education
John Shelton, assistant deputy secretary for innovation and improvement, U.S. Department of Education

Schools can’t do it alone. This is becoming even more apparent as states continue to cut education budgets, leaving schools with fewer teachers and less resources.

Non-profits have helped for years – offering after-school programs, summer school or health services, for example – but usually worked individually and without collaboration.

Organizations like Strive Partnership and Say Yes to Education have emerged to help neighborhoods organize non-profits, school, state and federal resources to collectively work on a single goal like closing the achievement gap or improving reading scores. The effort – called Collective Impact - is a “strategy to address a large-scale problem and to make consistent progress, so numerous organizations can systematically align goals to come to a common goal,” Kania said.

There are five characteristics of "Collective Impact," according to the speakers:

*A cross-section of organizations coming together with a common agenda

*Shared measurements

*Mutually reinforcing activities

*Continuous communication

*A backbone organization with collaboration as its sole focus

Math and English scores have skyrocketed upward since Strive has been working in Cincinnati and northern Kentucky to improve student achievement. The communities have been trying to reach this goal for decades, but “felt that there wasn’t enough return on their dollar,” Edmondson said. He said the school system was program rich and system poor. “They would spray resources and pray it worked.”

He said the organizations involved in the collective effort agreed on 10 outcomes. Now that the effort has shown success the focus is on spreading the practices “that are doing the most for kids,” he said.

Say Yes to Education is working with urban schools on the East Coast to offer services for youth that include academic, health, social and legal supports. The organization’s goal is to form public –private partnerships to increase the number of low-income students who graduate from high school and college. The organization offers a unique promise: scholarships for all students.

Say Yes to Education – which began 25 years ago – has been successful. Over 75 percent of all participating students in Say Yes Chapters have graduated from High School; 50 percent have achieved a postsecondary degree.

The federal government has started a similar program. Its Promise Neighborhoods organizes communities for a common goal – to provide cradle to career services to improve the academic achievement and health of children.

“You can see results in a fairly short period of time,” said Schmitt-Carey, of the efforts.

Covering the EWA 2012 National Seminar

Quite a few journalists – and a couple of speakers – wrote thoughtful stories and blogs inspired by EWA's National Seminar "Learning From Leaders: What Works for Stories and Schools" May 17-19 at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Here is a roundup of the stories so far. If there are others we missed, please let us know and provide the links. We also welcome stories that incorporate interviews with sources you acquired from the conference.

June 25, 2012

• Battling Summer Learning Loss, Erin Kourkounis, Pensacola News Journal, June 25, 2012

June 21, 2012

• Summer Learning Slide, Amy Scott, American Public Media Marketplace, June 21, 2012 

June 20, 2012

• Rebranding Summer School, Amy Scott, American Public Media Marketplace, June 20, 2012 

June 11, 2012

• Modesto Students Find Fun, Escape in Books, Nan Austin, Modesto Bee, June 11, 2012

June 10, 2012

• Philadelphia Mastery charter school initiative takes on troubled schools, Mary Niederberger, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 10, 2012

June 7, 2012

• Community College: How to Avoid Dropout Factories, Kim Clark, Money Magazine, June 7

June 6, 2012

• In Miami-Dade, School's Out but Summer Learning is About to Start, Laura Isensee, The Miami Herald, June 6, 2012

June 5, 2012

• Schools, Community Groups Partner for Summer Programs, Diana Lambert, Sacramento Bee, June 5, 2012
• School Visit Showcases Reading Program, Lydia X. McCoy, The Knoxville News Sentinel, June 5 2012

June 1, 2012

• Chronic Absenteeism: Public School's Forgotten Problem? Kavitha Cardoza, WAMU, June 1, 2012
• School Choice Prominent in Philly Area, Rebecca Nuttall, New Pittsburgh Courier, June 1, 2012

May 31, 2012

• School Leadership: Effective Principal Training, Annie Gilbertson, Southern Education Desk, May 31, 2012

May 30, 2012

• Children's Literacy Initiative Podcast, Ted Bauer, Learning Matters, May 30, 2012
• Mayor's Bid for Local Control of Charter Schools Fits National Push for Accountability, Patrick O'Donnell, Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 30, 2012

May 29, 2012

• Panelists Debate the ‘Right’ Answer to Charter School Authorizers, Angie Mason, York Blog, May 29, 2012
• Wausau School District to End Reading Recovery, Keith Uhlig, Wausau Daily Herald, May 29, 2012

May 28, 2012

• Parenting, School Violence, and the Deciding Moment, Carol Lloyd, GreatSchools.net, May 28, 2012

May 25, 2012

• How to Turn Around a Failing School, Maybe, Annie Gilbertson, Southern Education Desk, May 21, 2012

May 24, 2012

• How Summer Increases the Achievement Gap, Sarah Garland, The Hechinger Report, May 24, 2012
• Professor: The Teaching Profession is Changing in Dramatic Ways, Angie Mason, York Blog, May 24, 2012

May 23, 2012

• Philadelphia Charter Schools Get Results, Sharon Broussard, Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 23, 2012
• Transforming the Teaching Profession in 12 Minutes, Elena Silva, Education Sector, May 23, 2012
• Who's an Education Entrepreneur?, Jonathan Schorr, Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Education, May 23, 2012

May 22, 2012

• Adding Up the Cost of Florida’s Absenteeism, John O’Connor, State Impact, May 22, 2012
• Four Surprising Trends Shaping the Teacher Workforce -- and What They Mean, William McKenzie, Dallas Morning News, May 22, 2012
• The Myth of the Super Teacher, Jessica Kelmon, GreatSchools.net, May 22, 2012
• Newark Weighs Options to Cut Bloated Teacher Ranks, Samantha Henry, The Associated Press, May 22, 2012
• Thoughts From a Weekend Among Education Writers and Experts, Nichole Dobo, Delaware News Journal, May 22. 2012

May 21, 2012

• Explaining the Creeping Cost of Missing School, John O’Connor, State Impact, May 21, 2012
• Firing Teachers Not the Key to Success, William McKenzie, Dallas Morning News, May 21, 2012
• For Common Core Standards, Implementation is Key, Angie Mason, York Blog, May 21, 2012
• Key to Charter School Quality is Keeping Pressure on Authorizers, Dave Murray, MLive, May 21, 2012
• Playing the Role of MOOC Skeptic: 7 Concerns, Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed, May 21, 2012
• What Parents Need to Know, Kay Luna, Quad City Times, May 21, 2012

May 20, 2012

• Cory Booker: Great American Crisis of Our Generation is Education, Dave Murray, MLive, May 20, 2012
• Schools Relying on Testing, Data to Identify and Help Struggling Students, Rena Havner Phillips, Mobile Press Register, May 20, 2012
• U.S. Colleges Put Low Priority on Student Learning, Say Authors, Julie Mack, Kalamazoo Gazette, May 20, 2012

May 18, 2012

• Common Core Curriculum: Setting Standards is Easy;Implementation is the Challenge, Julie Mack, Kalamazoo Gazette, May 18, 2012
• Charter School Finds Success Based on Intensive Teacher Training, College Focus, Dave Murray, MLive, May 18, 2012
• Delaware Governor Defends Common Core, Ben Wieder, Stateline, May 18, 2012
• Here’s One Myth About the Tuition Wars, William McKenzie, Dallas Morning News, May 18, 2012
• Newark Mulls Teacher Buyouts, Lisa Fleisher, Wall Street Journal, May 18
• Steve Brill's Irresponsible Advice to Education Writers, David McKay Wilson, The Journal News, May 18
• There are More Teachers in America, but Can They All Be ‘Super?’, Dave Murray, MLive, May 18, 2012
• University of Michigan Strives to Lead the Way in Rethinking Colleges of Education, Julie Mack, Kalamazoo Gazette, May 18, 2012
• Cory ‘Superman’ Booker: Fix Urban Schools Now, Gary Stern, The Journal News, May 18, 2012
• Will MOOC s Promote Superstar Teaching over Superstar Research at Princeton and Other Ivies?, Paul Glader, WiredAcademic, May 18, 2012
• Teaching: Where It Is Right Now; Where It’s Going; Where It Needs to Be, Gary Stern, The Journal News, May 18, 2012

May 17, 2012

• Common Core Standards Can’t Do It Alone, Gary Stern, The Journal News, May 17, 2012
• Teachers Need to Know That Classroom Observations Will be Used to Help Them, Dave Murray, MLive.com, May 17, 2012

Digging For Data: Cutting Edge Web Tools For Journalists

EWA asked participants to contribute blog posts from some of the sessions at our 65th National Seminar, held May 17-19 at the University of Pennsylvania. This entry is from Francisco Vara-Orta, a K-12 education reporter for the San Antonio Express-News.

Session: Cutting Edge Web Tools for Journalists
Participants:
Joshua Benton, director, Nieman Journalism Lab (moderator)
Tracy Loew, database/projects reporter, Salem Statesman Journal, Salem, Ore.
Matt Stiles, database reporting coordinator, NPR’s State Impact

Reporters have to start embracing more data tools available online and thinking about how to incorporate them in packaging their stories as the industry moves further away from print, according to a panel of journalists at EWA’s National Seminar.

Even though data reporting sounds sexy to many editors, panelists also stressed that reporters and line editors must remember that there are many preliminary steps needed to know where and how to look that often doesn’t beat-pounding-the-pavement reporting on the ground in schools and colleges.

“I never post any of my own data visualizations without running the experimentation by experts to make sure it makes sense,” said Matt Stiles, database reporting coordinator, NPR’s State Impact.

Stiles kicked off the panel talking about a tool he said all journalist should be using called DocumentCloud. The program designed for journalists runs every document uploaded through a function that allows people to search for specific terms and organize them by date or topic, as well as share it with other reporters.

“It’s a great tool for reporters trying to help the public get information they may not be able to get that usually would just sit as a printout in a reporter’s desk,” Stiles said.

While investigative journalists mostly at larger media outlets such as the New York Times and Los Angeles Times have uploaded over a million documents to the site, Stiles said he worked with an Ohio paper on a story about teacher contracts. He added that the reporter said it went well and they have used the feature for other stories.

Stiles, who posted his presentation at Bit.ly/ewatools, also said to not attempt to use some web tools that are data driven on deadline but rather to familiarize oneself with how the program works and then march ahead.

Loew, who worked on a project using DocumentCloud about corruption in schools in Oregon after studying the information for 16 months, (link here: http://www.statesmanjournal.com/section/wesd) agreed. She added that using these cutting edge tools also requires reporters to first come up with a proposal that details why they will need the time to use the tools, as they can be time consuming to setup and organize.

“You have to know that there is something there worth looking into and convince your editors to buy into that, but these tools can show them and later on the public, the proof of what you’re uncovering,” Loew said.

Benton, who previously worked for the Dallas Morning News, said that Nieman had found a way to harness what is trending on Twitter on a platform called Fuego.

Every hour Fuego searches through Twitter and finds the top 10 links people are tweeting and posts them on its main page. Fuego looks for three factors: how recently a link was first tweeted, how many times it’s been tweeted, and the authority of those who tweeted it.

Some reporters and editors continue to stay away from Twitter but Benton said that it’s become a helpful tool in breaking news that doesn’t appear to be going away for now.

“It takes time to build these platforms and reporters don’t need to know code, but how to use it and help develop it,” Benton said.

Stiles also made the point that reporters also need to look at publishing documents online with stories and creating databases should also be a part of the story-planning process as he believes that people will spend time on the website.

For example, Benton praised Texas Tribune for posting superintendent salary and school demographic info in searchable databases that surpass the user-unfriendly site of the Texas Education Agency, the state entity that collects much school data.

And in the world of corporate leaders wanting more clicks to attract revenue, it appears to be an ethical compromise for many reporters trying to walk the new digital tightrope of in-depth, contextual reporting.

Are School Vouchers Making a Comeback?

EWA asked participants to contribute blog posts from some of the sessions at our 65th National Seminar, held May 17-19 at the University of Pennsylvania. This entry is from blogger Alexander Russo of This Week in Education.

Session: Are Vouchers Making a Comeback?

Participants: Scott Elliot, Indianapolis Star (moderator)
Robert Enlow, Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice
Thomas Genzel, Pennsylvania School Board Association


What the two main combatants in the voucher session didn’t know during their feisty but unsurprising encounter at EWA’s 65th National Seminar was that the issue they were discussing would be one of the highlights of a Q and A session the next day with Newark mayor Cory Booker.

During the session, Friedman Foundation chief executive officer Robert Enlow made the case that there had been a “national explosion” in voucher proposals and new laws, the most notable being the new law in Indiana and an even more recent one in Louisiana, and that vouchers provided choice, accountability, and excellence.

His opponent, Pennsylvania School Board Association executive director Tom Gentzel, fought back with calm rather than heat, arguing that there wasn’t much need, or compelling evidence of worth in the voucher concept. There was already more than enough choice, according to Gentzel, and the possibility that vouchers could quickly turn into a new entitlement program was one of the many reasons that a Republican-controlled Pennsylvania legislature hadn’t passed a voucher law during the session that just ended.

The moderator, EWA board member and Indianapolis Star education reform reporter Scott Elliot, pushed back doggedly at both sides, pointing out among other things that vouchers had the potential to give low-income kids an option that they otherwise didn’t have. Gentzel responded was that there were already nearly 75 charters in his state and that it made no sense to create and pay for a second system.

The research is inconclusive, the new voucher programs haven’t yet been evaluated, and each state’s charter environment and funding system is different. Enlow and Gentzler went back and forth, articulating arguments that were familiar to many but steering clear of any real possibility of convincing each other.

Then, a few hours later, Mayor Booker exploded any remaining notion that only Republicans support vouchers by noting that he was OK with them too – that he “didn’t care” what kind of school it was, as long as it was a good one, and that he couldn’t tell parents and students to wait while the system improved itself.

According to the Friedman Foundation, other current Democratic mayors who support vouchers include Antonio Villaraigosa (from Los Angeles), Greg Stanton (from Phoenix), and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, who stumbled his way through a voucher question at a recent conference in San Francisco essentially admitting he wasn’t opposed despite the difficult politics. Former Democratic mayors who supported them include Baltimore’s Kurt Schmoke, DC’s Adrien Fenty, and Atlanta’s Andrew Young.

Private school vouchers may indeed be making a comeback – with Democratic lawmakers as well as Republican controlled state legislatures.

Stephen Brill: Media Should Publish Individual Teacher Evaluation Data

EWA asked participants to contribute blog posts from some of the sessions at our 65th National Seminar, held May 17-19 at the University of Pennsylvania. This entry is from Kayla Webley of Time Magazine.


Steven Brill spoke his mind during his keynote address at the Education Writers Association’s 65th National Seminar, and his remarks provoked a spirited response from some reporters in the audience.

Brill spent the first few minutes of his speech hewing closely to the expected topic – education stories he would like to read – suggesting reporters look into the usefulness of graduate schools of education and who is making money off the new Common Core State Standards. He then quickly turned to his own tales of investigative journalism (a term he said was redundant as all reporters should complete investigations) while working as an editor at American Lawyer and reporting his 2011 book, Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America's Schools.

He encouraged reporters to read teachers’ union contracts (“you shouldn’t come to work in the morning if you haven’t read that stuff,” he said) and leave their offices in order to find story ideas.

"What I would do is get up and walk into schools," said Brill, who spent two years reporting on education for his book. "What are you afraid of?"

As some of the seminar attendees have subsequently noted, acting on Brill’s advice can be difficult given the strict school security in the post-Columbine era.

But beyond the feasibility of Brill’s suggestions, his tips didn’t resonate with some reporters in the room. One veteran reporter, Dorie Turner of the Associated Press, produced one of the evening’s more popular tweets: “So far Brill has recommended we visit schools and read documents. #notrocketscience.”

One of Brill’s more provocative remarks came during the question-and-answer portion of the event when he was asked whether he was for or against publishing the New York City Department of Education data on individual performance rankings of 18,000 public school teachers earlier this year.

When the data were released, after the United Federation of Teachers lost a battle to keep the data private, New York City Department of Education tried to dissuade journalists from publicizing the information because of concerns about its accuracy.

Brill said he was “adamant” that the data should have been published, even if the information was flawed.

“It isn’t private data if it is collected with my tax dollars,” he said, adding that it was not the job of journalists to hide information just because “the public is too stupid to understand” the problems with it.

Brill said that instead of not publishing the data, reporters should do some follow-up reporting after publication to show why and how the data are flawed. Such reporting is one way to prompt improvements in the data, he argued.

Brill ended his talk on a conciliatory note, telling the reporters “It’s easy for me to say this is what you should do, because I don’t do it.”