In Las Vegas, a Tough Lesson in the Science of Sportsmanship

That life isn’t fair shouldn’t be much of a surprise to anyone, even teenagers who might have comparatively less experience with the harsher sides of reality.

But what’s playing out in the Las Vegas desert, where the house nearly always wins, isn’t about the luck of the draw. It’s about how an unfortunate scoring error in a high school academic competition has been compounded by the sheer inability of a few adults to act like … well … adults.

The Las Vegas Sun has a thoughtful overview of the dilemma, which boils down to this: Centennial and Clark high schools faced off in the finals of the state’s Science Olympiad. Due to the error in tallying the points – which wasn’t discovered until 10 days after the event – Clark was mistakenly named champion for the third time in as many years.

Clark is home to one of the Clark County School District's premier magnet programs, attracting a diverse student body interested in math, science and technology. Centennial, which would have been making its first trip to the national tournament, is the scrappy underdog in this story.

When the scoring error was discovered, Clark’s team had already started planning to travel to the national competition in Florida later this spring. The coach of the Centennial team asked that Clark give up its title. The Clark team refused.

Nevada Education Department employee Richard Vineyard, who founded and coordinates the statewide Science Olympiad, told the Sun he unsuccessfully petitioned the national office to have both Centennial and Clark advance in the competition.

The controversy has cast a long shadow over what had been a source of enjoyment and pride, Vineyard told the Sun.

“We’re moving away from science and learning, to winning and competition,” he said. “If it’s more important to win than to learn, then it’s outlived its purpose.”

Clark’s Science Olympiad coach and the school’s principal both initially refused to comment. However, members of the Centennial team – who are as eloquent as they are apparently proficient in science – have been far from silent. 

According to the Sun, Josh Curtis, a Centennial senior and founding member of its Science Olympiad team, told the Clark County School Board at a recent meeting that the incident raises serious concerns about the judgment of the adults involved.

“Some have shirked their responsibility and passed on tough decisions that should have been made by them. Others have refused to make the correct decision in the face of what is fair and just,” Curtis said. “If Centennial is not recognized as the winner, Clark students will learn that if you refuse to acknowledge the rules and ignore the truth, you will get what you want. They will see that lying and cheating are acceptable actions.”

I shared the situation with Paula Mirk, education director of the Institute for Global Ethics in Camden, Maine., who is one of the panelists for the “Ethical Educator” column in School Administrator. Mirk, who doesn't take sides when evaluating such dilemmas, said applying some of the classic ethical paradigms could help resolve the conflict.

One of those key paradigms is "truth vs. loyalty." The actual facts might show that Centennial was the winner, but Clark’s leadership might be reluctant to take the championship title away from students who they worked with and know.

“What it comes down to is we’re all human, and we all make mistakes,” Mirk said.

Another ethical consideration is the "short term vs. the long term," Mirk said.  In the short-term Clark could hold on to its title so its students aren’t disappointed, but in the long term that could mean Nevada loses its staunchest supporter for the Science Olympiad.

Also at play is which course of action would yield the most good for the most people – that’s tough to apply in this situation, since there are many students on both sides, Mirk said.

And let’s not forget the perhaps best-known of the ethical paradigms: reciprocity. What would the Clark and Centennial teams want to happen if their positions were reversed?

“Putting yourself in the other person’s shoes is a very natural way to make these kinds of decisions,” Mirk said.

How the adults conduct themselves does matter, Mirk said. In “Schools on Integrity,” the ethics institute's researchers determined the behavior of adults in the school community had an effect on students.

“If we want students to be truly good people, the climate of their learning environment—the ’how we do things around here’ of their school’s organizational culture—must clearly stem from and telegraph a platform of shared ethical values,” the researchers concluded.

Schools and school systems can either turn situations like what’s happening in Las Vegas into opportunities to teach ethics proactively, or “you’re definitely going to do it by default,” Mirk said. “The kids are always watching.”

Have a question, comment or concern for the Educated Reporter? Email EWA Public Editor Emily Richmond at erichmond@ewa.org. She also tweets @EWAEmily. 

`Bully' Documentary Rating: What Happens in Schools Is Too Much for the Multiplex

A critically acclaimed new documentary about students struggling with bullying will likely see its audience curtailed after its producers decided to release the film unrated, rather than accept an R rating.

“Bully," which opens in select theaters Friday, earned the R rating from the Motion Picture Association of America for “offensive” language, rather than any scenes of violence or inappropriate behavior. Filmmaker Lee Hirsch told the Associated Press he opted not to sanitize the language because “it’s what the children who are victims of bullying face on most days.”

The documentary, which follows the lives of five students and their families impacted by bullying, has been described by film critics as “a call to action,”  “brave,” and "effective."

The Weinstein Co., which is distributing “Bully,” unsuccessfully appealed the R rating. Films without ratings typically have an uphill battle to get screen time in mainstream megaplexes. (You know -- where exactly the kind of audience who should see this film might actually get an opportunity to do so.)

That’s troubling to Valerie Strauss, who writes the Washington Post’s Answer Sheet education blog.

“The [R] rating is intended to send a message to parents that the film has strong content that they should review, but, as it turns out, it’s not really the violent and painful themes that are at issue,” Strauss wrote. “It’s ‘bad’ language — you know, a word that we can’t publish but that kids and their parents say every day.”

The conservative-leaning Parents Television Council had another view on the controversy, issuing a statement that “either ratings mean something, or they don’t. The MPAA’s job is not to make subjective judgments about the merit of a film or the importance of the film’s message. The MPAA’s sole task is to take an objective measure of the adult content in a film, and apply the appropriate rating.”

Without a kid-friendly rating, schools will be less eager to schedule field trips to see the documentary, and it will be more difficult to show it in classrooms once the DVD is released. Ironically, those are problems “The Hunger Games” has largely avoided with its PG-13 rating, despite relatively graphic depictions of children fighting to the death.

Two big-name theater chains are taking opposing tacks on the controversy. Underage viewers will be able to see “Bully” at their local AMC theater provided they are accompanied by an adult or bring along one of the company’s permission slips. However, Cinemark, which is the nation’s third largest theater chain with 239 locations in 39 states, has opted not to add the documentary to its lineup.

The documentary’s production team launched an aggressive social media campaign to promote the film and respond to the ratings controversy, and the “Bully” Facebook page has over 56,000 fans. Katy Butler, a 17-year-old high school student from Ann Arbor, Mich. who says she was bullied in middle school for being openly gay, started an online campaign to get the R rating lifted. Her change.org petition has collected more than a half-million signatures.

“When I saw this movie I thought it had such a wonderful message and could be such a great tool to change the climate of bullying in the United States,” Butler said during an appearance on Anderson Cooper's daytime talk show.

The R rating is “horrible,” Butler said, “because it’s taking the movie away from the target audience, which is the middle and high school kids who hear this language and use this language every day.”

Elizabeth Englander, a psychology professor at Bridgewater State University and director of the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center, told me she doesn't believe "Bully" warrants a more restrictive rating.

“It’s true that as an unrated film, fewer people will see it, but having an R rating limits the audience as well,” said Englander, who coordinates bullying awareness and prevention training for educators, students and parents. “It's not a case of good and bad; it's a case of bad or worse. I think that children could benefit from the film and as a parent I wouldn't be particularly distressed by the language used – it is realistic, which is the point, after all.”

Have a question, comment or concern for the Educated Reporter? Email EWA Public Editor Emily Richmond at erichmond@ewa.org. She also tweets @EWAEmily.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution Says Suspicious Student Test Scores Found Nationwide

In the latest example of a newspaper challenging the education establishment on the issue of student achievement, an investigation by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reportedly found suspect test scores in public school districts across the country.

The AJC used open records requests to seek student test data from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The suspicious test score patterns  – which alone is not evidence of cheating –  were found in 196 of the nation’s 3,125 largest school districts.

The seven-month investigation, by the AJC and affiliated Cox newspapers, is already getting pushback from some researchers who question the methodology. But the reporters concluded the huge shifts in test scores in cities like Houston and Los Angeles mirror the patterns found in the Atlanta public schools where cheating was determined to have been widespread.

A Georgia investigation into those rapid gains in scores, triggered in large part by the AJC’s reporting in 2008 and 2009, found nearly 200 educators – teachers, principals and regional superintendents – colluded to falsify student achievement on statewide tests. The fallout has been significant, and led to the ouster of Atlanta Superintendent Beverly Hall.

The AJC’s latest findings “are concerning,” U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in an emailed statement to the newspaper. “States, districts, schools and testing companies should have sensible safeguards in place to ensure tests accurately reflect student learning.”

According to the AJC, “Overall, 196 of the nation’s 3,125 largest school districts had enough suspect tests that the odds of the results occurring by chance alone were worse than one in 1,000 … For 33 of those districts, the odds were worse than one in a million.”

But Gary Miron, an education professor and researcher at Western Michigan University, wrote in an opinion piece that the AJC’s methodology was flawed, and that “the resulting news story appears to be intended to be alarmist, implying that cheating is rampant in our schools.”

Among Miron’s concerns, published in the Washington Post's Answer Sheet education blog, was that the investigation did not take into account the impact of high rates of student transiency on achievement. Charter schools represented a high proportion of the schools with alleged test anomalies, and they also have a disproportionate number of students moving in and out over the course of an academic year, Miron said.

The data used for the AJC analysisis also stops at the school level, rather than going all the way down to the individual student level. That makes it impossible to know whether a suspicious results, such as a sudden increase in performance followed by a steep drop-off in scores the following year, actually involved the same group of students, Miron said. (The AJC has since responded to Miron's criticism, pointing out that many urban districts with high transiency rates did not also have testing anomalies.)

Gary Phillips, a vice president and chief scientist for the nonprofit American Institutes for Research and the newspaper’s advisor for its methodology, told the AJC that “extreme” changes in test scores are like medical tests: “When you find something, you’re supposed to go to the doctor and follow up with a more detailed diagnostic process.”

The next question is how individual districts will respond to the AJC’s investigation, and whether the newspaper’s findings will trigger closer examinations of potentially suspect test scores.

Several districts cited in the AJC report for having particularly high rates of test score anomalies have already spoken up. In the case of Houston’s public schools, the response included a promise a closer look at the findings. In Nashville, district officials said the test score anomalies showed steep declines in achievement, rather than suspicious gains, and were the result of the district’s high rate of student transiency, absenteeism and the large percentage of English language learners, the Tennessean reported. In a written statement, the district also challenged the AJC’s methodology, citing concerns raised by an education researcher at Vanderbilt University.

Los Angeles Unified also made the AJC’s list. That was probably not a surprise to the nation’s second-largest school district, where there have been ongoing issues in recent years related to cheating allegations. A district investigation in 2011 determined teachers were giving students improper access to test materials ahead of the exam, coaching them to provide the correct responses, and even changing answer sheets, according to the Los Angeles Times. Additionally, six charters schools were forced to close in 2010 amid allegations of cheating on statewide exams.

Educators and researchers have argued that the intense emphasis on student test scores, a mandate of the federal No Child Left Behind Law, put pressure on educators to show dramatic (and often unrealistic) gains in student achievement. As a result, they argue, cheating is much more likely to occur.

The LA Times had a story with a similar thesis a few months ago, in which teachers, speaking anonymously, said they would indeed cheat if their jobs were on the line.

That type of cheating  -- individual teachers taking action to save their own jobs -- is a far cry from the kind of high-level, orchestrated malfeasance that reportedly took place in Atlanta. But there is little doubt that public schools are facing significant expectations for student gains.

The AJC story “certainly raises red flags that should lead many individual districts to invest in independent investigations,” said Robert Schaeffer, public education director of Fair Test, an advocacy group that is critical of the overemphasis on standardized tests.

If nothing else, Schaeffer says, the recent cheating scandals "have again demonstrated that overreliance on standardized test scores is a flawed strategy for creating lasting educational reform."

Atlanta, for better or for worse, has become the reference point for stories about widespread cheating and schools, and it is likely that any gains by its students will be considered suspect for a long time to come. In addition to thousands of schoolchildren whose own learning has been potentially hurt in the process, the loss of the public's trust in its school system is perhaps one of the scandal's more disheartening legacies.

Have a question, comment or concern for the Educated Reporter? Email EWA Public Editor Emily Richmond at erichmond@ewa.org. She also tweets @EWAEmily.

Hunger Games Field Trip Gives Parents Indigestion

“The Hunger Games” might be the most widely anticipated film based on a young-adult novel series since “Harry Potter,” but does that make it an appropriate field trip for sixth graders?

The bestselling trilogy explores life in a futuristic totalitarian regime, where children – armed with arrows, swords, knives and mutant killer bees -- are forced to fight to the death in public spectacles.

Students at Hamilton International Middle School in Wallingford, Wash. read author Suzanne Collins' book in class, and had been planning to see the film. That’s until parents called administrators to complain, according to the Seattle Times.

Principal Christopher Carter told the reporter the film was appropriate because it related to content areas the students were studying, but he decided to cancel the outing after hearing from concerned families. Carter said the trip that “has become a distraction in our school community.”

Schools in Washington State are hardly the only ones dealing with “Hunger Games” mania. In New York City this week, hundreds of students cut class to stay out all night and win a chance to attend a public appearance of its stars.

Parents and educators contemplating the relative value of the book trilogy need to weigh its literary and educational merits against the risks that come with exposing a youthful audience to potentially graphic depictions of kids killing kids. However, there is anecdotal evidence from at least two states – Texas and Michigan – that the trilogy isn’t just getting students to read, it’s also getting them to write.

As the Amarillo Globe-News reported, an eighth grade reading teacher in Wolfforth, Texas assigned the book to her 134 students in late 2010, and also had them write letters to the film’s director – Gary Ross –and suggest what key plot points they wanted to see preserved when the book jumped to the big screen. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly in January 2011, Ross made a point of praising the quality of the students' insights.

In Michigan, students at Gobles Middle School recently wrote letters to the editor of the Grand Rapids Press to counter comments by a parent who said the books were too violent for younger readers. The students disagreed, arguing the video games they play contain much more gore (which might actually be a whole other problem) and that the trilogy's underlying messages were valuable.

“"The Hunger Games" to me, is teaching us a lesson, and that lesson is to be active learners about politics because we will be voting in the next four years, and we would not want a government that becomes too powerful,” wrote student Brooke Hurley.

While the film is rated PG-13, the books are particularly popular among preteens. But there’s a difference between reading a book that describes violence, and seeing the images on film, especially when the audience is children.

“It’s a gut experience as opposed to a head experience,’’ Michael Rich, director of Children’s Hospital Boston’s Center on Media and Child Health, told the Boston Globe. “A movie is very direct. You are seeing it, you are hearing it, as compared with translating it from black ink on a page into something in your own mind.’’

A bazillion years ago, my sixth-grade teacher sent a letter home to parents warning them that a controversial mini-series was set to air on television, and that they should carefully consider whether to let their children watch it. The miniseries was “The Day After," depicting the fallout of a nuclear war with Russia.

I wanted to see it, and after some negotiations (including that they might revoke their permission mid-viewing if they felt the material was too intense) my parents agreed to let me watch with them. The televised images of mushroom clouds, firestorms, death and destruction were indeed scary, but I didn’t have nightmares. However, I had more than a few bad dreams over “Lord of the Flies,” which we were reading in class that same year.

Perhaps, then, the answer is that while some students in a particular grade might be ready for the“Hunger Games” megaplex experience, others are not.

Similarly, it’s possible even the books are too much for some young readers,  Dr. Eric Rossen, director of standards for the National Association of School Psychologists, told me in an interview Thursday.

Films can be easier to evaluate for appropriateness in the classroom than books, Rossen said. Educators must consider factors such as whether the text relates to the curriculum, whether the content has strong language, violence or sexual content or potentially controversial religious themes, Rossen said. School guidelines typically require parents be notified if the subject matter is potentially upsetting, and educators need to stick to those rules, Rossen said.

“With movies there’s an applied ratings scale which can help teachers make their decisions,” Rossen said. “Books don’t necessarily come with that, so it might take a little more oversight.”



Have a question, comment or concern for the Educated Reporter? Email EWA Public Editor Emily Richmond at erichmond@ewa.org. She also tweets @EWAEmily.

School Improvement Grants: Is the Federal Initiative Working?

The federal School Improvement Grant program is one of the most aggressive – and, at $4.6 billion and counting, arguably one of the most expensive – investments ever made toward fixing the nation’s most struggling schools. But is it working?

The existing grant program had been modestly funded until 2009, when it was revamped as a centerpiece of President Obama's education reform initiative. The overhauled program received an unprecedented $3 billion infusion in stimulus dollars through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Another $1.6 billion has since followed. SIG money is now earmarked for schools with the weakest student achievement, with the funding prioritized by both need and a willingness to implement reforms.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced earlier this week that the first-year data suggest student achievement is on an upswing at campuses that have received a slice of the SIG pie. He reported that at nearly 60 percent of SIG schools, more students are demonstrating proficiency in reading and math. At nearly a quarter of those schools, the improvement in math is in the double digits, and close to 20 percent of schools saw double-digit gains in reading.

At the same time, state officials -- surveyed by the Center on Education Policy for two new reports -- say they believe the federal initiative is helping schools improve the quality of instruction for students. However, those same officials also have concerns that because not every eligible school ultimately received a grant, many campuses are unable to provide more intensive services and programs for their equally needy students.

As Duncan pointed out at Monday’s Build A Grad Nation Summit in Washington, D.C., more data and more time are necessary before the SIG effort can be evaluated fully. However, “At the heart of all these successes are teachers and school leaders who are excited about the prospect of change,” Duncan said.

The new CEP reports were based on interviews with Title I directors (the state education officials responsible for overseeing the implementation of the federal grants) in 46 states, rather than quantitative data such as state report cards or student test results. CEP researchers also focused closely on SIG efforts in Idaho, Maryland and Michigan for a separate report.

“These are the people following the individual schools, looking at the test results, and making a judgment about whether or not they’re seeing progress in the implementation of the (SIG) models,” said Diane Rentner, CEP’s deputy director. “Yes, we are talking about people’s perceptions, but they are highly informed perceptions.”

To qualify for the funds, districts must follow one of the approved blueprints: “turnaround,” which requires replacing the principal and at least 50 percent of the staff and starting over with a new philosophy; “transformation,” in which significant changes are made to instructional programs and professional development; “restart,” in which the school’s management is turned over to an outside operator such as a charter school; and closure, with students provided transfers to more successful schools.

School closures account for just 2 percent of SIG grants, according to the U.S. Department of Education, and only 4 percent of campuses opted for the restart model. Another 20 percent of schools went with the turnaround model.

The most popular option – accounting for nearly 75 percent of SIG schools – has been the transformation model, which is hardly surprising, given that it offers the most leeway in terms of staffing and programs.

Replacing key staff and teachers has been a struggle for many schools across the country, the CEP researchers say. But some rural schools, like those in Idaho which were the focus of the CEP case study, have found their staffing options to be even more limited than their urban counterparts. Rural districts have also had difficulty finding providers to deliver supplemental programs and services. 

The CEP report included an opportunity for state education officials to share – anonymously – their concerns about the SIG program. One state official expressed frustration with the closure model, because it didn’t include a provision that the SIG dollars would follow the students. That seems like a fair point; the needs of the students don’t change just because they get assigned to a new school, one that might not even be adequately prepared to serve them.

One of the SIG programs more vocal critics has been Mike Petrilli, vice president of the Fordham Institute, a conservative education policy think tank in Washington, D.C. Petrilli said he’s not surprised by the CEP study findings. “It’s not exactly shocking that educators are glad to see the federal government spending a lot of money on low-performing schools,” Petrilli said. “But that’s a very different question of whether this is a cost-effective investment.”

When asked what the threshold should be for the SIG program to be considered a success, Petrilli said that might be hard to qualify.

“In all fairness, nobody should expect all of these school turnarounds to be successful; we know in the business world that turnarounds most often fail,” Petrilli said. “If half the schools improve, is that a success? If there’s mild improvement at a handful of schools, is that enough? Is the only alternative turning a blind eye or closing them all down? This is where you’re going to have a lot of debate.”

If SIG turns out to be a tool for fixing chronically failing schools, “that’s wonderful, because that’s a nut we haven’t been able to crack before,” Petrilli said. “I’ll be happy to say this was worth every penny. However, until that data comes out, I remain somewhat skeptical.”

CEP researchers are also eager for there to be more data to evaluate SIG. That’s going to require looking at student achievement, staffing and instructional trends over a minimum of three to five years, at both SIG schools and comparable campuses that didn’t receive the extra funding. (For a summary of what the studies currently say about school turnarounds, check out EWA's research brief.)

There’s another concern on the horizon, said Rentner, CEP’s deputy director: What happens when the third year of funding runs out?

“The fear is the school is going to slide back on any progress that is made,” Rentner said. “There has to be some thought about how the progress can be sustained. I don’t think you can pull out this support all at once and expect the schools to succeed.”

Have a question, comment or concern for the Educated Reporter? Email EWA Public Editor Emily Richmond at erichmond@ewa.org. She also tweets @EWAEmily.

When Mayors Take Over, Do Schools Get Better?

The success or failure of a community often rests heavily on the strength of its public education system.

So, when schools fail, should the mayor take over?

This question is playing out in several cities right now, including Bridgeport, Conn., and Kansas City, Mo., where mayoral takeovers have been proposed as a means of turning around failing public schools.

There's some evidence that in major urban districts, including New York City, Boston and Chicago, mayoral takeovers have improved student achievement, and led to better relations between teachers and management. But such drastic measures are far from a silver bullet and come with significant risks – both for the mayor who seizes the reins, and the communities that might find themselves disenfranchised from the school management process.

Kansas City’s public school system had its accreditation yanked by the state on Jan. 1. Mayor Sly James proposed taking over the schools, an overture that has been met with skepticism from lawmakers and educators, as the Kansas City Star reported.

But some parents see a takeover as a chance to remake a flailing system  that is falling short on its obligations to students -- and the city.

In an interview with NPR's "All Things Considered," Fred Hudgins, whose three children have attended Kansas City's public schools, suggested that the loss of accreditation could serve as a "wrecking ball" that would let the city start on fresh ground.

"You have civic leaders, you have politicians, the mayor even came in and gave a plan, which has never happened that I'm aware of [in] over 40 years," Hudgins said. "And I think we're starting to look at how ... we fix our city because, truly, this is a citywide problem. It's not just in the school district."

Reporter Sylvia Maria Gross, with the Kansas City NPR affiliate KCUR, looked into the pros and cons of a mayoral takeover. In an interview with Gross, Brooklyn College education professor David Bloomfield warned that "Mayoral control isn't a panacea. Local people should depend on local circumstances for their decision."

The mayor's plan is based on the research of Brown University Professor Kenneth Wong, who found potential benefits to school district takeovers. Districts that have been taken over show greater growth in student achievement when compared with similar urban districts.

"Most of these systems under mayoral control have improved in terms of management - financial management as well as administrative management," Wong said in the KCUR interview. "Mayoral leadership is able to leverage a lot of resources both inside and outside of the public school system to work together to address more holistically some of the neighborhood challenges: social isolation, jobs, crime, gang violence.”

Not everyone is as certain as Wong.

Brent Gahn, spokesman for the Missouri School Boards Association, told me his organization believes a mayoral takeover in Kansas City would be a mistake.

Replacing the elected board would disconnect the public from “direct input in the policies and direction of the school district,” Gahn said. “If ever there was a time when the community needed to be engaged in the future of the school district, this is it. A mayoral takeover would be moving in the opposite direction.”

Gahn said he believes a more likely scenario for Kansas City would be to break up the district into four regions, an idea that’s gaining traction among the state’s lawmakers.
 
Mayoral control can be a double-edged sword, said Rick Hess, resident scholar and director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank.

“If you’re talking about dysfunctional urban systems that are caught up in micro-politics, and you need clear direction, coherent leadership and more heft in the statehouse and business community, then mayoral control can make good sense,” Hess said. “But mayoral control doesn’t guarantee that there will be energetic and influential leadership using it in thoughtful ways.”


Hess acknowledged that local school board races typically draw abysmally low voter turnout (a phenomenon I certainly witnessed while covering Clark County, the nation’s fifth-largest district). School boards also tend to be dominated by special interests, “hardly the recipe for strong governance,” Hess said.

As a result, school boards are often divided by competing priorities, and that can lead to mismanagement, Hess said. But there's a potential silver lining to that kind of contentious governance.

"Because boards disagree, the information gets out there to the public," Hess said. "There are concerns that more mayoral control leads to less transparency about what's really happening in the school system."

With careful strategic planning and the right priorities in place, it can make sense for public schools to cede authority to an outside leader, Hess said.

“But anyone who is suggesting mayoral control is a fix or always a better option is engaging in hyperbole,” Hess said. “For some districts mayoral control makes a lot of sense but you need to do it smart, and you need to do it with your eyes open.”

Have a question, comment or concern for the Educated Reporter? Email EWA Public Editor Emily Richmond at erichmond@ewa.org. She also tweets @EWAEmily. 

Utah Governor Tweets Veto of Sex Ed Bill, Rutgers Student Who Spied on Roommate Guilty of Hate Crime

Utah Gov. Gary Hebert has vetoed a controversial bill  that would have made teaching sex education optional in his state's public schools, and also limited the curriculum to "abstinence-only" instruction.

In addition to the estimated 8,000 letters which flooded the governor's office, more than 40,000 people signed an online petition opposing the bill, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.

Herbert announced his decision via his Twitter account: "I just vetoed HB363," he wrote. "I cannot sign a bill that deprives parents of their choice."

The language of the bill made Utah look out of touch with what youth and health advocates say is the clear evidence of more than 30 years of research: Students who receive "age-appropriate" sex education that includes discussion of both abstinence and contraception are more likely to wait to have intercourse, and are also more likely to protect themselves when they do have sex.

(As the Salt Lake Tribune reported, to many Utahans the bill was also out of touch with what many parents said they wanted for their own children.)

**

Dharun Ravi, a former Rutgers University student who used a web cam to spy on his roommate while he was engaged in an intimate moment with another man, faces a lengthy prison sentence after being convicted of multiple charges.

The incident attracted the national spotlight after the suicide of Rutgers student Tyler Clementi, which occurred just days after Ravi had spied on him in their dorm room. While Ravi was not charged in Clementi's death, he was convicted of invasion of privacy and bias-intimidation charges, the Associated Press reported.

The case also triggered a new law in New Jersey aimed at curbing bullying.

In a statement following Ravi's conviction, Rutgers officials said "This sad incident should make us all pause to recognize the importance of civility and mutual respect in the way we live, work and communicate with others."

Ravi faces up to 10 years in prison, and could be deported to his native India (although he has reportedly lived in the United States with his family since he was a young boy).

For more on the risk Ravi took by passing up what now looks like a generous plea deal -- it guaranteed no prison time and avoided deportation -- read Emily Bazelon's take  on Slate.

Have a question, comment or concern for the Educated Reporter? Email EWA Public Editor Emily Richmond at erichmond@ewa.org. She also tweets @EWAEmily.

One Teacher Feels Impact of 'Value-Added' Evaluations

Despite being described as “creative” and “motivating” by her supervisor, fifth-grade teacher Sarah Wysocki found herself out of a job when her students’ test scores didn’t improve as much as required by the District of Columbia Public Schools’ complex formula for evaluating her performance.

As the Washington Post’s Bill Turque reports, Wysocki had even been urged by her school's assistant principal to share her classroom techniques with other teachers. Just a few months later, when her students' test scores missed the mark, Wysocki was fired. Positive classroom evaluations weren’t enough to override the district’s “value-added” formula, which is supposed to quantify the effect Wysocki had on her students’ learning.

Such formulas are not fool-proof, as researchers themselves are quick to warn. Dale Ballou, a professor of education and public policy at Vanderbilt University, said he’s concerned that the current evaluation models are being oversold “as if they represent the answer to all kinds of problems, and that they give you the truth.”

What the formulas do offer are estimates, Ballou said – and ones that are subject to error.

"You’ve got to recognize these are not flawless instruments,” Ballou said. “Anytime you try to evaluate an individual based on this kind of data, there’s a possibility you’re going to make a mistake.”

(If D.C. Public Schools made a mistake by firing Wysocki, it’s probably too late to correct it. She was quickly snatched up by a public elementary campus in Fairfax County, Va., according to the Washington Post.)

Few issues in the education arena are getting more attention these days than teacher evaluations. Dozens of states are grappling with the question of how to measure educator job performance and whether to tie student achievement data to those reviews.

To be sure, good teaching is hard to quantify. Value-added formulas have been touted by the Obama administration as a more equitable way of measuring performance.

Wysocki, who is settling in to her work in Virginia, makes it clear that she knows she has much to learn, and she isn’t afraid to ask for help.“Teaching is an art,” she said in the Washington Post story. “There are so many things to improve on.”

But is Wysocki right? Is teaching an art that requires a degree of talent that simply can’t be quantified? Or is it a craft – a profession -- that with proper methodology can be taught?

The answer to the question of art or craft is, like most education issues, more complicated than it first appears. While there certainly may be a degree of magic to great teaching, that doesn't mean it's impossible to identify the backbone of solid instructional techniques and then replicate them.

Teaching "is not common sense, and it takes a high level of skill that most people have to learn in order to do well," said Deborah Ball, dean of the University of Michigan School of Education, which was recently praised by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan as one of the nation’s standout teacher preparation programs.

“There are people who have a gift for teaching, but they are in the minority,” Ball told me. “Most of what goes into teaching are highly learnable, technical skills. You don’t go out and pick a surgeon who hasn’t had careful training, so why would a teacher be any different?”

Have a question, comment or concern for the Educated Reporter? Email EWA Public Editor Emily Richmond at erichmond@ewa.org. She also tweets @EWAEmily.

Restraining Students Debated, Virginia Kills the Tebow Bill

There have been some developments on education stories I have recently written about, so it seems like a good time for updates:

*Following news reports that students in Middletown, Conn. were isolated in so-called "scream rooms" during emotional outbursts, the state's lawmakers are considering legislation that would require schools to track and report how often the controversial technique is used on special education students. A recently released federal report found that special education students accounted for 70 percent of the reported instances when educators used physical restraints, including isolation and seclusion.

As Maureen Fitzgerald, an advocate for individuals with disabilities told the Middletown Press, school staff use improper techniques because they are "put in situations where they're not trained, they don't have the support they need and things get out of control because they don't know how to manage the kids, and they do whatever they can to keep everybody calm and safe ... and that's when people start getting hurt."

Related federal legislation is also pending in both houses of Congress.

*A Virginia bill that would have made it easier for homeschooled students to play sports for their neighborhood school teams died in the state's Senate Education Committee. Nicknamed the "Tebow Bill" for the Denver Broncos quarterback who was homeschooled but still played varsity football at his local high school, the legislation had drawn strong criticism from public school advocates who argued homeschooled students forfeited their athletic privileges.

*The long-stalled federal DREAM Act, a controversial proposal to help open the door to higher education for undocumented students, got a shout-out from U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan during his visit to Texas. Duncan also sat down with Gov. Rick Perry and discussed the possibility of the Lone Star State applying for a waiver from the most onerous elements of No Child Left Behind. So far 49 states have applied, and 11 waivers have been granted.

As the Houston Chronicle reports, Perry's vocal early support of the DREAM Act was blamed for eroding his support among the Republican base, although the governor later backed away from his statements as being "over-passionate."

Have a question, comment or concern  for the Educated Reporter? Email EWA Public Editor Emily Richmond at erichmond@ewa.org. She also tweets @EWAEmily.

Education Takes Flight: Required Reading at 35,000 Feet

I never sleep on planes.

I've noticed that few people seem to share my problem. Even on a midday flight, when you might assume people would be at their most alert, my seatmates drop off to dreamland within minutes of when the seatbelt sign goes "ding."

There have been quite a few plane rides lately, to Los Angeles, St. Louis, Detroit, Indianapolis, Chicago, Las Vegas and Phoenix, to name just a handful. Now I'm off to Denver for a three-day EWA boot camp for journalists on using education research data in their reporting.

I like to use these trips to catch up on my reading. My New Year's resolution in 2011 was to expand my library of the classics, and it's one of the few such pledges I've been able to keep. I've recently finished "An American Tragedy" (Why did schools stop teaching Theodore Dreiser in literature class?) and "Tender Is the Night." I know "The Great Gatsby" is on the short list for the Great American Novel, and I'm probably treading close to literary heresy, but I still think F. Scott Fitzgerald is overrated. You are free to disagree. I'm looking for suggestions of titles to tackle next, if you have a favorite.

But this is an education blog, so I would be remiss if I didn't point to some of the related reading material that's also stood out in the past few months. Here are a couple of ambitious stories that have made those long airborne minutes fly by:

*Paul Tough's examination of the question: What if the secret to success is failure? in the New York Times Magazine, questions the responsibility of educators to help students develop broader character traits rather than focus on more narrow academic goals.

As one of the story's lead characters (the upstart headmaster of New York City's prestigious Riverdale Country School) explains to Tough: "This push on tests ... is missing out on some serious parts of what it means to be a successful human."

Tough's first book was the remarkable inside view of the Harlem Children's Zone, and its founder Geoffrey Canada.  I'm looking forward to the September release of his new book ( "How Children Succeed: Rethinking Character and Intelligence")  which tackles many of the themes covered in the magazine piece.

*Ian Parker's remarkable New Yorker piece examining of the suicide of Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi, and the criminal charges against his roommate Dharun Ravi. Given that Ravi's trial is underway in New Jersey, it's particularly timely reading.

As Parker makes clear, many of the widely held perceptions of the story -- including that Ravi "outed" Clementi after setting up a web cam to secretly watch him in an intimate encounter  -- are not supported by the evidence. The truth, not surprisingly, is more complicated. Given that New Jersey changed its state laws related to school bullying in the wake of Clementi's suicide and that many other states are considering similar legislation, it's worth understanding more about this complicated story.

Have a question, comment or concern for the Educated Reporter? Email EWA Public Editor Emily Richmond at erichmond@ewa.org. She also tweets @EWAEmily.

Teacher Job Satisfaction Takes Huge Drop, According to Survey

The fact that there’s been a record decline in the percentage of teachers who say they are satisfied with their jobs is worrisome -- but perhaps not surprising.

The new MetLife Survey of the American Teacher – the result of telephone interviews with over a thousand teachers across the country  – found just 44 percent of them were satisfied with their jobs, compared with 59 percent in 2009. That 15-percentage slide represents a record drop and takes teacher satisfaction to its lowest level in 20 years.

At the same time, the percentage of teachers who said they were likely to leave their jobs in the next five years jumped to 29 percent from 17 percent just two years ago.

The survey offers a profile of the American public school teacher, as well as how parents and students feel about educators and schools.

The findings are also a reminder not to make assumptions about who are the unhappiest educators. It’s not necessarily the burned-out veteran, or those working with the most challenging student populations. In reality, when comparing teachers with higher and lower job satisfaction, the survey shows no real difference in their years of experience, the grades they taught or the proportions of their students from low-income households.

However, there were real differences in the day-to-day experiences of the less satisified and the more satisified teachers. The unhappier teachers were more likely to have had increase in average class sizes, and to have experienced layoffs in their district. They also had more students coming to class hungry, and had more families needing help with basic social services. There was also a marked gap among the teachers when it came to how much they believed they were viewed as professionals by their peers. Among the unsatisfied teachers that rate was 68 percent, compared with nearly 90 percent of the satisfied teachers.

The survey also found a connection between the satisfied teachers and their relationships with their students’ families. Happier teachers work at schools where they say there’s a better plan in place for engaging parents in their children’s learning.

This year’s results represent a significant setback on teacher satisfaction, which had been on a stable positive trend, said Dana Markow, vice president of youth and education research at Harris Interactive, which conducted the survey. Markow, who has been working on the survey since 1999, said she was most surprised by just how steep the drop actually was. She had expected a dip, but nothing as severe at what was reported.

To be sure, the survey’s results make it clear that public education has been significantly affected by the recession. More than a third of the surveyed teachers reported cuts to fine arts, language and/or physical education programs. For 60 percent of the teachers, the average class sizes had increased at their campus.

There's another indicator of the effect of the economic downtown on teachers, said Markow. In 2006, just 8 percent of teachers said they didn’t feel their jobs were secure. On this year’s survey, that percentage had jumped more than four-fold to 34 percent.

Need more evidence of a public school system in crisis? Consider this: The majority of the surveyed teachers said they had more students and families that needed social support services, including health care. Supporting that contention are the survey results for the other two groups. Close to three-quarters of parents and two-thirds of students say they are worried about having enough money to meet basic needs.

“I don’t think people will necessarily be surprised that the survey results confirm there have been deep cuts within education budgets,” Markow said. “But when you see how many teachers and schools have been affected, when you hear it in the context at the local level – whether they’re having layoffs or discussions with their unions about changes to their salaries and benefits – you start to build a national picture.“

However, there’s more to the teacher satisfaction formula than just the state of the economy.

In 2006, the MetLife survey dug deeper into the question and looked for predictors of teacher job satisfaction. The teachers who were happiest with their jobs also reported they were assigned to classes they felt qualified to teach, had enough time to prepare for their classes, and felt like there were opportunities to be involved in team building and problem solving.

The survey also included parents and students (over a thousand individual telephone interviews were conducted nationally for each group) and found some interesting trends. Parents who said there was a high level of engagement at their school were more likely to be optimistic that student achievement will improve over the next five years – 73 percent compared with 43 percent. There was also some good news when it came to family involvement. Of the students surveyed, 64 percent said they talked to parents about school on a daily basis, compared with 40 percent in 1988.

Given the tidal wave of reform enveloping public education, it will be interesting to see what happens to the teacher job satisfaction numbers in the coming years. There’s a national conversation underway about teacher tenure, and nearly half the states and the District of Columbia are already overhauling their teacher evaluation processes so that they are tied more directly to student testing data. Those changes aren’t likely to boost the percentage of teachers who say they feel secure about their jobs.

“We’re in the midst of a real culture shift in the teaching profession as we move to emphasize teacher effectiveness,” said Sandi Jacobs, vice president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, a  advocacy organization. “Change is hard, and it can really make teachers uncomfortable.”

She suggested future MetLife educator surveys include questions about current reform measures, such as district and state-level changes to evaluation models and policies. To not go there next, Jacobs said, "would really seem like a missed opportunity."

Have a question, comment or concern for the Educated Reporter? Email EWA Public Editor Emily Richmond at erichmond@ewa.org. She also tweets @EWAEmily.

Did University Professor's Lesson in Public Records Cross the Line?

A DePauw University journalism professor turned a student’s underage drinking arrest into a teachable moment about public records that his class – and the rest of the campus in Indiana – isn’t likely to forget any time soon.

The student, a sophomore and varsity athlete, was arrested in January for public intoxication, as well as drinking underage, criminal mischief and running away from police, according to news accounts. Mark Tatge, an award-winning journalist who is a visiting professor at DePauw, gave his investigative reporting class 17-page packets of publicly available information on the student including court records related to her arrest, and content from her personal Twitter and Facebook accounts.

The student had friends in Tatge's class, who informed her of the exercise. She -- along with her parents -- complained to DePauw administrators.

When I called to ask him about the controversy, Tatge said he thought by choosing to focus on a recent arrest it would make the lesson more relevant to his students, especially since many of them had expressed an interest in writing about documented problems with drinking and disorderly conduct on campus.

“My goal isn’t to humiliate someone or call them out in front of their peers,” Tatge said. “But just the fact that some people in the class knew the individual didn’t outweigh the benefits of the exercise.”

Not everyone agrees with Tatge. The singled-out student's parents conveyed their dismay to the university’s president, and campus officials have been attempting to collect the packets Tatge handed out. That seems like a largely symbolic maneuver, given that the original sources remain readily available.

Tatge said he conducted a similar class activity without incident when he taught previously at Ohio University. He also told me he probably won’t do it again.

“If people are going to be this upset and spend this much time on it, it isn’t worth it,” Tatge said.

Tatge -- who spent 30 years working in newsrooms including as a senior editor at Forbes magazine, a staff reporter at the Wall Street Journal and an investigative reporter at Cleveland’s Plain Dealer -- said he hadn't been informed of any disciplinary action by the administration. The most pressing questions for him relate to academic freedom, and the university’s response.

He said his fellow faculty members have been supportive but he “has not received any concern or support from the administration about this. What that signals to me is that the student is paramount here, even at the expense of learning.”

Christopher Wells, DePauw’s vice president of communications, told me the university is talking with students from Tatge’s class about the incident, as well as the faculty government. He had no comment on Tatge's status, or on whether there would be action taken against him.

“There is no inconsistency in supporting the learning of our students and protecting the academic freedom of our faculty,” Wells said in a phone interview. “In every situation the university is going to work to serve both of those goals.”

Chase Hall, editor in chief of The DePauw, the student-run newspaper at the private university, said part of the tension over the incident stems from the insular climate of the relatively small campus of 2,300 students.

“We’re a close-knit community,” said Hall, a junior who was not in Tatge’s class. “I think there is an instinctive reaction to want to protect each other.”

While the student’s arrest appeared in the local newspaper’s police blotter, The Depauw did not initially report it. Hall said that was due to an editorial oversight, rather than a willful omission. The student paper has since published a full account of the arrest, in conjunction with its reporting on Tatge.

Having journalism students conduct background checks isn’t unusual, and asking a class to consider a fellow student’s arrest isn’t inappropriate given that it’s a matter of public record, said Mark Horvit, executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors at the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

Horvit does a similar, although arguably more evenhanded, exercise with his own classes. He has his students conduct background checks on themselves, but they have leeway in how much they share. He also demonstrates a background check on public officials -- and himself.

Kelly McBride, a senior faculty member at the Poynter Institute and one of the nation’s leading experts in media ethics, said she saw three central issues to the DePauw incident: how responsible journalism is being taught, whether embarrassing an individual student was necessary to the day’s lesson, and the importance of preserving academic freedom.

McBride said it’s appropriate to encourage journalism students to consider events happening around them, and to teach them that public records can be an invaluable resource. At most colleges, the arrest of an athlete on drinking-related charges would trigger frank conversations about how the campus administration was responding to both the specific incident and the underlying issues, McBride said.

At the same time, McBride said she had “great compassion” for the DePauw student who was singled out.

Tatge “had alternatives that could have minimized the harm to this particular student,” McBride said, such as pulling records for a larger group, instead of “putting an incredible spotlight” on that individual.

“My fear is a lot of people think journalism is about publicly humiliating people and invading their privacy, and it would be reasonable for people who look at this from the outside to think that's what this professor was trying to teach them to do,” McBride said. “I can’t possibly believe that’s what he intended, but because he didn’t search for alternatives, people might draw that conclusion.”

While Tatge’s methods probably could have been better constructed, it's possible to still see value in the lesson. For the aspiring journalists in his class, it demonstrates that reporting on a difficult situation, even when it is public information, is not an abstract exercise. What they report will affect real people.

For the rest of DePauw's students -- and indeed, their peers elsewhere -- this experience could also serve as a reminder that their personal actions have consequences. They are creating paper and digital trails that will follow them long after they leave the relatively sheltered enclave of higher education.

Have a question, comment or concern for the Educated Reporter? Email EWA Public Editor Emily Richmond at erichmond@ewa.org. She also tweets @EWAEmily.

When States Cut Education Funding, Parents Pay the Price

The Occupy Education movement is in full swing across the country, with protestors holding walkouts and sit-ins at public colleges and universities, and demanding funding be restored from preschool through graduate school.

The budget cuts have been particularly deep in California, where students are worried about the potential long-term damage to the extensive network of public colleges and universities, as well as the short-term effect on their own opportunities. While  higher education is taking center stage in the protests, there's little question that California's budget crisis has had a brutal impact on school funding at all levels.

My sister's family lives in a bucolic Northern California neighborhood, replete with biking trails and an extensive network of parks and public libraries. Despite such evidence of a relatively solvent and engaged community, the local schools are struggling.

Last year, my niece’s public elementary school held a fundraiser where parents could pre-order the full list of school supplies–including binders, markers and hand sanitizer--for the bargain price of $57. This year's fundraising committee is asking for $125. Additionally, a second committee asks parents for a one-time donation by the first day of school of $365, or, as they put it, “just a dollar per day!” The money is intended to pay for a variety of programs and services, including front office support, classroom aides, enrichment programs, extended library hours and teacher stipends.

In Nevada, where I spent nine years, public schools are prohibited from fundraising for direct instruction. That always made a degree of sense to me: Who wants the wealthiest school in town to hire a pricey football coach? The prohibition encourages a degree of supposed equity in access to classroom teachers and programs. In my sister’s case, though, she would have less of an issue chipping in if the extra dollars meant keeping class sizes down. Instead, my younger niece will share her second-grade teacher with 25 other students, an increase from last year’s class sizes at the school.

“Considering how high our taxes are, it’s unnerving,” my sister said. “The state of California isn’t giving our kids what they need. Teachers are stressed out–you can see it on their faces. Adding six kids to the room is overwhelming.”

When my older niece was in the second grade six years ago (oh, those halcyon pre-recession days!), California’s class size limits were still in force. There were just 20 students per teacher in grades 1-3. The smaller class size made a difference in my older niece’s academic growth, particularly when it came to reading.

 “The teacher had more time to spend with her,” my sister said. “You just can’t expect a teacher to give the same amount of individual attention to 26 kids that she gave to 20.”

Even though I know my sister and her husband are fully participating in their daughters’ learning, I still worry about my nieces. I actually worry even more about the students who don’t have similarly available advocates in their own homes.

This is a challenging time for educators like my niece’s second-grade teacher, who will need significant support if their students are going to have the best chance at learning. And that’s going to take more than a case of copier paper and a jumbo bottle of Purell.

*Portions of this blog were previously published.  

Have a question, comment or confidential concern for the Educated Reporter? Drop me a line at erichmond@ewa.org. I’m also on Twitter @EWAEmily.

Occupy Education, NCLB and Community Colleges

 The Occupy Education movement is calling for a national day of action today, aimed at "turning back the tide of austerity" through coordinated large-scale public action.

"We refuse to accept the dismantling of our schools and universities, while the banks and corporations make record profits," according to a statement on the organization's Web site. "We refuse to accept educational re-segregation, massive tuition increases, outrageous student debt, and increasing privatization and corporatization."

San Francisco students and educators are planning to mark the occasion with walkouts and teach-ins at the area's public colleges and universities.The walkout will be followed Friday by a rally at the state's Capitol in Sacramento.

"The 99% have already paid a high price as a result of the global financial crisis. Now we are demanding that those who caused the crisis through their greed and recklessness pay," Terence Yancey, a student at SF State and active occupier, wrote to SF Weekly.

**
Twenty-six states are seeking waivers to escape the most onerous elements of the federal No Child Left Behind law. Any relief would be a temporary measure until Congress acts on reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which has been up for renewal since 2007. So far 11 states have already received waivers from the U.S. Department of Education. Lawmakers this week are wrangling over the scope and reach of federal authority in public schools.

In her "Answer Sheet" column, the Washington Post's Valerie Strauss argues that "Obama's NCLB are waivers aren't what he says they are." Instead of freeing states from the yoke of unreasonable expectations -- such as having 100 percent of students proficient in reading math by the 2013-14 academic year -- the waivers will make things worse, Strauss says.

States are only eligible for waivers if they implement the administration's preferred school reforms, Strauss says, adding that "the Education Department’s reforms have done nothing to limit damaging high-stakes standardized testing, but instead exacerbated the problem by encouraging states to evaluate teachers in part by student test scores, a scheme assessment experts say is invalid."

**
More than one in four community college students who might have been able to handle entry level coursework were instead placed in remedial classes that cost them money but earned them no credit toward a degree, according to two new studies by the Community College Research Center at Columbia University.

As Inside Higher Ed reports, students were placed in the remedial classes on the basis of their college entrance exams, but the study found that using their high school grade-point averages would have been just as accurate.

“Information on a student’s high school transcript could complement or substitute for that student’s placement test scores,” according to the report. “This would lead to a faster and more successful progression through college.”

Have a question, comment or concern for the Educated Reporter? Email EWA public editor Emily Richmond at erichmond@ewa.org. She also tweets @EWAEmily.