Teachers must make the grade under new guidelines

When Ohio’s new teacher evaluation system kicks in starting next year, teacher Tammy Schmidt may be joining her third-grade students in preparing scrapbooks of their classroom accomplishments, the Associated Press reports. Teacher portfolios, which could include lesson plans, student work, photographs — even videos— are among the tools that states are considering as a way to better rate educators and to meet the conditions for federal funding. Other approaches being developed and tested across the nation may include parent reviews, student surveys, classroom observations and student growth measures including standardized test scores. Teachers with consecutive poor ratings will first get help and then could lose their tenure. Teachers who consistently excel would be evaluated less frequently…

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New ISTE CEO: It’s time to partner up

Part of ISTE’s future, Lewis said, involves finding other organizations with similar mission objectives.

Strong leadership to guide policy, and a voice to speak for education stakeholders nationwide, are essential to discussions about school reform, according to the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE)—and this fall, ISTE will turn to a new leader for these in Brian Lewis.

Lewis, who will take over as CEO of the ed-tech advocacy group for long-time CEO Don Knezek in September, has a 25-year career in both the public and private sectors as an association leader for a number of nonprofit organizations, an education advocate and reformer, and an elected school board member.

“[ISTE’s] unique work spans the entire education landscape, touching everyone who cares about, works in, or volunteers in education,” said Lewis in an interview with eSchool News. “Most importantly, ISTE is focused on the right thing: serving students. Because of all this, ISTE is well poised for its next chapter. That’s very attractive to a lifelong education advocate like me.”…Read More

To increase learning time, some schools add days to academic year

It was the last Sunday in July, and Bethany and Garvin Phillips were pulling price tags off brand-new backpacks and stuffing them with binders and pencils. While other children around the country readied for beach vacations or the last weeks of summer camp, Bethany, 11, and Garvin, 9, were preparing for the first day of the new school year at Griffith Elementary, just six weeks after the start of their summer vacation, the New York Times reports. Griffith, one of five schools in the Balsz Elementary School District here, is one of a handful of public schools across the country that has lengthened the school year in an effort to increase learning time. A typical public school calendar is 180 days, but the Balsz district, where 90 percent of the students qualify for free or reduced lunch, is in session for 200 days, adding about a month to the academic year. According to the National Center on Time and Learning, a nonprofit research group in Boston, about 170 schools — more than 140 of them charter schools — across the country have extended their calendars in recent years to 190 days or longer…

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Duncan discusses education reform, back-to-school changes

Duncan said making sure children in disadvantaged communities have access to technology will be critical. (Albert H. Teich / Shutterstock.com)

A more well-rounded curriculum with less focus on a single test. Higher academic standards and more difficult classwork. Continued cuts to extracurricular and other activities because of the tough economy: Education Secretary Arne Duncan says these are some of the changes and challenges that children could notice as they start the new school year.

Several significant reforms have taken place over the past three years. Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia have adopted the Common Core standards, a set of uniform benchmarks for math and reading. Thirty-two states and D.C. have been granted waivers from important parts of the Bush-era No Child Left Behind law. Billions in federal dollars have gone out to improve low-performing schools, tie teacher evaluations to student growth, and encourage states to expand the number of charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Duncan said he believes students will see the concrete effects of those changes when they head back to class this school year.…Read More

Teacher union boss bends to school reform winds

In the maelstrom of criticism surrounding America’s unionized public teachers, the woman running the second-largest educator union says time has come to collaborate on public school reform rather than resist, Reuters reports. Randi Weingarten, re-elected this week for a third term as president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) with 98 percent of the vote, wants her 1.5 million members to be open to changes that might improve public schools. That willingness to engage, she says, could win over parents, taxpayers, voters, well-funded pressure groups and cash-strapped cities that have blamed unionized teachers for high costs and poor performing schools.

“We have to unite those we serve and those we represent,” Weingarten said in an interview with Reuters at the AFT convention in Detroit. “And we have to think … what’s good for kids and what’s fair for teachers?”

Weingarten rebuffed her critics in the union for mistaking collaboration with surrender and said her overwhelming victory in the election showed rank-and-file members supported the move……Read More

Veteran superintendent brings turnaround model to schools nationwide

Under the new program, consultants help district staff who often “know what they need to do, but don’t know how to do it,” said Judy Zimny, vice president of Voyager Education Services.

Can turnaround results in one troubled school district be replicated in another? A new partnership between an education intervention provider and veteran superintendent Paul Vallas aims to find out by bringing Vallas’ proven reform model to more schools.

Through the Vallas Turnaround System, teams of educational consultants provide staff training and planning support to chronically underperforming schools. The program launched this summer in Indianapolis Public Schools.

Voyager Education Services, a division of Cambium Learning Group that focuses on academic interventions, announced in June an exclusive partnership with The Vallas Group Inc.…Read More

Mass. high school may change start time so teens can sleep

Teenagers in Weston may be able to score a little extra shut-eye each morning starting in the 2013-2014 school year, depending on the findings of a local committee set up to study changing the high school’s start time, Boston.com reports.

“Teenagers need a lot, a lot of sleep,” said Weston schools Superintendent Cheryl Maloney, a member of the committee looking into changing the start time. “They’re exhausted, and they’re growing. Their body needs that rest in order to support this phenomenal physical, emotional, intellectual growth that’s happening.”

The school day at Weston High School runs from 7:30 a.m. to 2:50 p.m., making it one of the longer school days in the state, Maloney said. The schedule was adopted in order to allow for students to have some free periods during the day, and Maloney said some of those free periods might have to be dropped if the school starts later……Read More

Pennsylvania ready to put scholarship program for failing schools to test

Families and students throughout Pennsylvania got their first glimpse of the news list of failing schools in the Keystone State, Yahoo! News reports. The Pennsylvania Department of Education published the list of the bottom 15 percent of schools based on combined scores in reading and math from the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) test. This year’s list is significant because an additional $50 million will be available to students that reside in a failing school’s geographical boundary for a scholarship to another public school or a private school, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Where are the majority of the failing schools and how many are on the list? This year’s list includes 414 schools throughout 74 Pennsylvania school districts, and according to the Associated Press, nearly 40 percent of the schools were in the Philadelphia City School District, which is the largest district in Pennsylvania. However, schools from several counties populate the list…

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CPS, CTU agree to hire more teachers for longer school day

According to the Chicago Sun-Times , the city of Chicago and the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) have reached an agreement that will put more teachers in the classroom in order to work the 20 percent longer school day. The agreement between the two parties comes in light of the threat of a CTU strike loomed on the horizon, specifically a 90 percent strike authorization vote and months of discussion on how the lengthened school day would be staffed and funded…

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