Miami-Dade Superintendent on public schools, immigration, and the FCAT

It’s hard to imagine more than a handful of jobs more difficult than that of Superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the Huffington Post reports. The nation’s 4th-largest school system faces challenges far beyond the usual budget woes and teacher merit pay squabbles: students from 160 countries speak 56 different languages, the district is tasked with providing quality education for all in a city with jaw-dropping income disparity, there are 53,000 employees to manage, and Dade County’s history of managing anything effectively is, well, let’s just say it’s checkered. But Alberto Carvalho, who had worked his way through university after immigrating from Portugal, leapt at the chance in 2008 after the plagued district’s previous leader was ousted amid much controversy and financial drama. And though MDCPS still faces their fare share of battles — crumbling facilities, for one — the results have been impressive: 13 failing ‘F’ schools have been reduced to none, math and reading scores show MDCPS students rank above their peers in other large, urban districts, and the county just celebrated its highest graduation rate of all time

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School lunches get a 21st-century makeover

School cafeterias are using cutting-edge market research to help get kids to eat healthy.

“Woohoo! It’s tater tot day!” might be a phrase of the past, thanks to new updates in federal guidelines regulating school lunch programs—the first in 15 years.

With new limits on calories, sodium, and saturated fats, as well as increases in minimums for fruits and vegetables, schools are revisiting their nutrition management. Thankfully, there are software programs, apps, and websites available to help schools, parents, and students make the transition successfully.

The updated federal guidelines were devised by the Agriculture Department and spurred by celebrity campaigns such as Jamie Oliver’s “Food Revolution” to rethink school lunch components and Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” to fight childhood obesity. They aim to improve the National School Lunch program by combating obesity, nutrition deficits, and hunger.…Read More

Until we get rid of funding inequities, real education reform can’t happen

The sad reality is that the quality of our public schools has always been subject to the tax dollars that can be raised in the neighborhood they serve.

Learning Leadership column, Sept. 2012 edition of eSchool NewsEvery year at this time, I look forward to the release of the Phi Delta Kappa/ Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools. Given the apparent dissatisfaction that many Americans have toward public education, the poll results might shed some light on why—and what we as public educators might be able to do about it.

I am immediately drawn to the section that asks the public to grade the public schools. Over the last 20 years, the results have been very consistent on two levels. First, and very much to my liking, the percentage of respondents who have a child in school and give their school a grade of A or B continues to grow. This past year, the number was at 77 percent, significantly higher than it was 20 years ago when the number was 64 percent. What does that tell us? Our public schools are being pounded as being of low quality and dysfunctional and not as good as they used to be. Yet, for those who are direct consumers of what the schools have to offer, parents with children in the school, satisfaction with the public schools is at an all-time high.

Second, when the public at large is asked to grade the school in their community, whether they have children in attendance or not, the results are also consistent in that there has been a continuous increase in satisfaction over the past 20 years. Currently, 48 percent of the public gives the school in their community a grade of A or B. That’s certainly not as impressive as the 77-percent approval rating by parents, but 20 years ago the percentage was 40 percent and it has been increasing steadily over the years.…Read More

Anatomy of a school construction project

Glen Allen High School, Henrico County’s newest school building, opened in September 2010.

(Editor’s note: This article marks the debut of a new section in eSchool News, called Building Excellence, that will provide news and information to help school and district leaders as they plan, design, construct, and equip leading-edge facilities.)

Before a ribbon is sliced by comically oversized scissors, before a brick is laid or an architect is chosen, before voters approve funding for a sparkling new school building, there is only a plan.

The doors to a new school are thrown open by students, parents, and teachers many years after economic and population growth call for more classrooms in a city, town, or county. Researchers and planners use a district’s public relations apparatus to start talks with residents, myriad public forums are held, committees are formed, reports are issued, school boundaries are rearranged, architectural firms are interviewed, and finally, sometimes after five years, construction begins.…Read More

New online community shares ed-tech best practices

Project RED, an ed-tech research and advocacy group that has been studying how technology can help re-engineer the education system, has created a new online community for school technology decision makers that includes access to its research findings.

With funding from HP, Intel, the Pearson Foundation, and SMART Technologies, Project RED a few years ago launched a national research study of 2,000 schools, examining each school’s technology program. The group’s findings suggested that—when implemented effectively—technology can provide a significant return on investment (ROI) and help raise achievement. Project RED also defined what it meant by “effective” implementation: in other words, what the research suggested was the best way for using technology to get the maximum ROI in schools.

Now, Project RED has developed a methodology for effective ed-tech implementation, based on its findings. Tom Greaves, chairman of the Greaves Group and one of the creators of Project RED, said the methodology is available through the group’s new professional learning community that offers tools, resources, and opportunities for school and district leaders to collaborate.…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

Virtual foreign exchange program will give students global skills

A Michigan district’s virtual exchange program allows Chinese students to take American classes online, and vice versa.

Today’s students need to prepare for a globalized world, business leaders often say—but sending students abroad is usually too expensive for cash-strapped schools or parents. One Michigan school district is taking a unique approach to this challenge by establishing a virtual foreign exchange program so that students can take classes from teachers in other countries.

This fall, Oxford Community Schools will launch a virtual exchange program that allows American and Chinese students to take online classes taught by teachers on the other side of the globe.

The classes will be hosted by Oxford Virtual Academy, a school without walls within the district that already supports more than 500 full-time students and more than 250 part-time students.…Read More

Same-sex classes popular as more public schools split up boys and girls

An estimated 500 public schools across the country now offer some all-boy and all-girl classrooms.

Robin Gilbert didn’t set out to confront gender stereotypes when she split up the boys and girls at her elementary school in rural southwestern Idaho.

But that’s exactly what happened, with her Middleton Heights Elementary now among dozens of public schools nationwide being targeted by the American Civil Liberties Union in a bitter struggle over whether single-sex education should be continued. Under pressure, same-sex classes have been dropped at schools from Missouri to Louisiana.

“It doesn’t frustrate me,” Gilbert said of the criticism, “but it makes the work harder.”…Read More

District ‘Race to the Top’ rules spur mixed reaction

School groups criticized RTT-D for creating 'winners' and 'losers.'

Proposed guidelines for school districts to vie for $400 million in new federal grants have elicited mixed reaction from education groups—from concern among ed-tech groups over how “personalized learning” will be defined, to arguments that the grants will exclude smaller districts from competing.

With an eye toward expanding the Obama administration’s signature “Race to the Top” (RTT) competition to the district level, the federal Education Department (ED) recently issued a draft outlining competition guidelines and invited responses from stakeholders.

RTT, which previously targeted only states, has triggered a flurry of education reforms as states scrambled to win billions in funds. Now, the creation of the Race to the Top-District Program (RTT-D) gives individual school districts a shot at winning a slice of $400 million in grants.…Read More