Everyday Race and Education

I am posting the following for a couple of reasons. First, Mica Pollock is a great up and coming professor at Harvard University who is doing some cool work from a cultural anthropologist's standpoint. So, the lecture at USC's School of Education is certainly worth your time, especially if you deal with race or affirmative action issues and you are concerned about how we "talk" about that in schools. She also spends a little time talking about her new book, Because of Race, which should be available in the summer and talks about her experiences when working for the Office of Civil Rights. Enjoy.

Second, I am posting this link because tomorrow I have to address the faculty within the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Indiana University. Mostly I am going to be speaking about our departmental website and ways to improve that. But, as part of my talk, I am going to be speaking a little about Web 2.0 and how to begin integrating that into our curriculum and our organizational structure. In the video above, you see an associate professor of education speaking passionately about an issue she has done a lot of research on. The video doesn't show the classroom, but let's assume there are 25 students in there. But, the video of the lecture was posted to You Tube. It was just posted so there have not been a lot of views yet, but over the course of a year, this lecture is likely to be viewed hundreds if not thousands of times (and linked to on blogs like this). 500 > 25. Sort of simple, right? If we are serious about getting our research out to the world (the whole world not just those that read academic journals) this is a no brainer. But, there are also latent benefits to this type of communication activity. If you happen to be the chair of the departments at either USC (where this lecture was given to an ordinary class, pretty cool) or at Harvard (where the lecturer teaches) does the advertising get much better than this? "What's it like to be in our program? Well, let me refer you to ..." There is a new world of communication not just on the horizon, but existing today. Some programs are ahead of the curve and are using this new media not only to the advantage of the department, but also for the betterment of the public. A nice win-win.

By the way, in the near future, be on the lookout for some videos that students of mine made in their undergraduate law class. I will post a few of them here.

Check out this Feel Good Story

For all the bad press that our schools get these days, it is nice when you come across a story that reminds you that we really do have great people in our schools. In Franklin, NH a principal is donating a kidney to one of his students. Here is the story. First, kudos to Jim Friel, the principal. This is well beyond what is asked of him and to give of yourself (literally) in this way is tremendous. So, thank you.

Secondly, I just want to take this opportunity to remind people just what special people we have leading our schools. They have one of the toughest jobs in the country (everyone thinks they can do their job better than them) and yet they remaining an overwhelmingly positive, committed and caring group. It really is amazing.

So bravo to Jim Friel and all the kindhearted school administrators out there.

Illinois Mandatory Moment of Silence Law

In Illinois, there has been an ongoing controversy over their mandatory moment of silence law. Well, now a judge has ruled that there is no punishment for districts that fail to comply:

A mandatory moment of silence foisted upon Illinois schoolchildren
by state lawmakers in October is somewhat less mandatory today.

United States District Judge Robert Gettleman said Thursday that the
state school superintendent can't punish districts that don't hold a
moment of silence. The office of Chris Koch, superintendent of the
state board of education, always contended there was no penalty in the
law to begin with.

Gettleman's ruling stems from a lawsuit filed by Rob Sherman, an
outspoken local atheist, and his daughter Dawn, a freshman at Buffalo
Grove High School. They say the moment of silence is akin to school
prayer and deprives Dawn of instructional time during the school day.

Continue Reading...

Here is a news report on the lawsuit that was filed to stop the mandatory moment of silence suit:

UCEA Liveblogging: Evaluating Educational Leadership

The Taskforce on Evaluating Educational Leadership meeting went well today. Dr. Robert Kottkamp, who was largely responsible for the formating of the taskforce, gave a compelling reflection on how much progress the educational leadership field has made in just a few years. Efforts to evaluate educational leadership are underway in several states. Some states, such as Utah, are now past the initial stages and are developing subsequent studies to gain even more detail into leadership outcomes. It is always nice to sort of look back on the amount of work that is done over time. We get caught up in the day to day battles and tend to lose sight of the bigger picture. That is not to say there is still not a lot of hard work ahead of us in evaluating educational leadership preparation. As much as I was struck by Dr. Kottkamp's presentation, I was more struck by the amount of work still to be done.

Live Blogging UCEA

Over the next few days I will be live blogging out of Alexandria, VA as I attend the University Council for Educational Administration conference. Scott McLeod from Iowa State is also live blogging at Dangerously Irrelevant.  UCEA is an educational leadership entity primarily, but because of the large presence of educational law in educational administration programs, there are a substantial number of educational law presentations and some of the best educational law researchers in the world attend the conference (of course, this year it conflicts with ELA, grrr). This year, Jesulon Gibbs and I will be presenting on the aftermath of the Morse Case. I will post tomorrow about the experience and the questions and reactions of the audience. Also, I will post today about my discussions in the Evaluating Educational Leadership Preparation Taskforce meeting. I wish I had better news to report to them this afternoon about the progress in evaluating Indiana's educational leadership programs, but I am afraid I don't.

Video Camera Live Feed to Police Headquarters

The top story on the  Drudge Report yesterday was about a school in New Jersey that is sending live feeds from their 20 school cameras directly to the police. The Drudge Report is a conservative leaning news source, so it ran the story to decry the lack of privacy in the modern world.

DEMAREST, N.J. (CBS) ―
Surveillance cameras rolling inside our local schools is nothing new,
but what's taking place inside Demarest's public schools is truly
cutting edge: a live feed from more than two dozen cameras with a
direct connection to the police.

It's an expensive, but effective tool that could be a sign of the times with an increase in school shootings over the years.

The system, which cost about $28,000, can even track movement in a crowded room.

"When
they arrive, they can pull up the school's live feed and do a sweep
instantly," Demarest Police Chief James Powderley tells CBS 2.

Patrolling
officers have access to the video feed from headquarters and several
laptops. To address privacy concerns, all of the cameras are installed
in public areas and are not equipped to pick up audio.

The
video capabilities are extremely impressive. Each of the laptops can
pick up 16 different angles at one time, turning a single operator into
a mobile surveillance team.

The Video from WCBS, New York.

This represents the next step in school video surveillance. While I too am concerned about the lack of privacy, with the cameras only in public areas and given the current state of the law regarding privacy in schools, I see nothing clearly illegal under current law about this activity.

What I am concerned more about (although this story does concern me) is the increasing relationship between schools and the police. In cases such as this, it is almost as if the police are the school's private security firm. Because of the differences in the law regarding how police treat the public and how school authorities treat school children, mingling the two authorities in schools can be problematic. Police are trained for a different purpose than school authorities are trained and their responses to school disciplinary incidents are naturally going to be different. There is a certain degree of administrative discretion in school authorities (who are always former teachers) that police are not trained or qualified to enforce.

SREB Report: States need to take more active role in Principal Preparation

It has sort of been a slow news weekend regarding educational law, so I wanted to provide the link to this new report from the Southern Regional Education Board. As any regular reader of the blog knows I am involved in the educational leadership preparation community so when new reports come out calling for greater state intervention, I take notice. Here are a couple of quotes:

On Educational Leadership Preparation Programs:

    In an age of high-stakes accountability, too many university-based principal preparation programs still are offering a last-century curriculum overloaded with courses on management and administration. These programs do not spend enough time helping aspiring principals develop the competencies they need to lead a team of highly skilled and motivated teachers.

---

Most states do not have university-based principal preparation programs that help aspiring principals develop instructional leadership competencies. While there is a growing consensus about the best designs for these programs, many of today’s principals are ill-prepared to be instructional leaders because their graduate programs did not prepare them for the instructional and organizational changes their schools need to raise student performance.

On State Leadership Standards:

    Make sure your state’s leadership standards say exactly what you expect of a school leader. What are the principal’s responsibilities, and what must he or she know and be able to do to meet those responsibilities? These leadership standards not only lay the foundation for principal preparation programs and principal evaluations; they make a powerful statement about what we want our schools to be and what we expect our school systems and universities to accomplish.
    Do not be satisfied with simply adopting the Interstate School Leadership Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) Standards, as many states have. They place too little emphasis on the responsibilities today’s school leaders have for improving schools and student learning. They are vague about what principals must know and do to lead successful schools.

On Evaluation of Pre-Service Principals:

States lack criteria and consistent processes for evaluating principals’ performance on the leadership standards: After a state’s leadership standards are established and implemented, how can policy-makers know if an aspiring or practicing school leader meets the standards? States need specific criteria to measure each principal’s job performance and to distinguish levels of performance.

If you are employed in a university-based educational leadership preparation program, it is worth the read. If respected policy center like SREB begin to put the onus for regulation of educational leadership programs on the state, universities stand to lose much of the professional autonomy it presently enjoys.

Well, Its Official: No NCLB Reauthorization this Year

Not that it was any secret at this point, but the NCLB Reauthorization is now officially not going to happen in 2007. The key Senators that controlled the Education Committee have stated their plan to take up the law again early next year.

Andrew Rotherham at Eduwonk thinks there may be some activity after the primaries, but that it is still a long shot to be reauthorized before the election. I tend to agree, but I feel pretty confident that that Democratic Senate is not likely to move very quickly on this issue since the chances are high that the Democratic Nominee is likely to be an active Senator and that none of the leading Democratic candidates have particularly focused on education in their campaigns.

So, what does this mean? For now, the Congress on Nov. 1 passed a continuing resolution for 2008 funding for the Department of Education. This basically means that everything is going to stay the same at least for 2008 and the programs will still be funded. Probably we are looking at Summer or Fall 2009 as the next real opportunity to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. So, we will have to wait. 

Vouchers Fail in Utah Referendum

The sweeping Utah Voucher plan is no more ... well at least not for a while. The plan that made headlines when it was passed was rejected by the voters Tuesday by a wide margin.

    Voters decisively rejected
the will of the Utah Legislature and governor Tuesday, defeating what
would have been the nation's most comprehensive education voucher
program in a referendum blowout.

    "Tonight, with the eyes of the nation upon us, Utah has
rejected this flawed voucher law," said Kim Campbell, president of the
Utah Education Association. "We believe this sends a clear message. It
sends a message that Utahns believe in, and support, public schools."

    More than 60 percent of voters were rejecting vouchers, with
about 95 percent of the precincts reporting, according to unofficial
results. The referendum failed in every county, including the
conservative bastion of Utah County.

Continue Reading ...

I will have to say I was a little surprised at the vote. It says a lot about the power that remains in the teachers unions, who were the chief opponents of the law. The Utah Education Association not only gathered the necessary signatures to force the referendum, but also took the lead in campaign advertising which totaled over 4 million, supplemented by teachers unions from other states. The result was a near landslide in the polls against the voucher law. Pretty impressive, and surprising, stuff.

Brave, But Not Crazy: A Lesson in Teacher Activism and the Power of the State over Curriculum

By now, you are probably aware of the David Wasserman story our of Madison, WI. In protest over the state mandated testing required by the No Child Left Behind Act, David chose to protest the administration of the test. He sat in the teachers' lounge while a colleague was in the classroom giving the test. This triggered a reprimand from the school and a threat of losing his job if he again failed to give the test. The next day, he did administer the test in an effort to keep his job. Here is local TV coverage of the incident (press play).

There are a couple of lessons we can take away from this incident.

1. The power of the state over local curriculum is absolute. If a state legislature chooses to mandate standardized testing, there will be standardized testing, whether or not the personnel administering the test agree. This is the same for all curricular matters. If the state does not mandate specific curriculum requirements, then it falls to the Board of Education to make curricular decisions. These decisions rarely, if ever, fall to teachers. The most that teachers can hope to influence is the manner of delivery of the state and board of education mandated curriculum. Certainly teachers can sit on planning committees and make recommendations to the board of education, but they cannot unilaterally decide to change the curriculum or fail to implement it. Thus, the action of this teacher in Wisconsin amounted to insubordination, an offense for which he could rightfully be fired.

2. In the end, he was not fired (at least it does not appear he will be) and he is still earning his $45,000 + health insurance.  But, he drew national attention to the fact that some teachers' are so upset with the No Child Left Behind testing provisions that they are willing to violate school rules. Given that NCLB is up for reauthorization and on the mind of presidential candidates, it was an especially potent statement. David Hoff at Education Week noted how much traction this story was getting and David Wasserman has quickly become beloved in the blogosphere. And just the other day, I saw Newsweek did a Q&A of this jeans and beads wearing guy (probably didn't hurt he taught in Madison - might have bought him that day whereas he might have been fired immediately in other districts). The point is that teachers can still have a voice in educational policy. Most of the time I recommend working within the system to make your voice is heard, but occasionally a teacher can even work outside the system to get a point across. Just remember, however, that in today's post Garcetti world, working outside the system and making public comments or engaging in public actions in opposition to a school's official position is increasingly dangerous to your continuing employment. 

The Cost of Educational Finance Suits

At any one time across the U.S. there are around 10 educational finance lawsuits at play. These lawsuits typically involve an entity attempting to sue the state to provide more adequate or equitable funding of the public education system. While I try to keep up with many of them, I don't note all of them on the blog. To see what is going on in your state, you can check this site maintained by Columbia University.

Anyway, I was reading about the ongoing Missouri litigation this morning and I came across a striking number. Here is the quote from the Columbia Tribune:

"We continue to believe the current school funding system and level of
funding deprives children of their fundamental right to a quality
education," CEE Chairman Jeff Lindsey, superintendent of Van Buren
schools, said in a prepared statement.

Lindsey told the Tribune that the CEE board vote was unanimous. The
board includes Columbia Public Schools Superintendent Phyllis Chase.

The Columbia district is a plaintiff in the lawsuit and has spent more
than $81,000 on the litigation to date. Board members are expected to
decide at the Nov. 12 meeting whether the district will remain part of
the suit. The court battle has cost taxpayers statewide more than $4.6
million so far.

Columbia Board of Education Vice President Darin Preis said this morning he supports being part of the appeal.

"We haven’t talked about this as a board, but, personally, I think it’s
a good idea to continue," he said. "We need to be part of the solution."

A more equitable funding system would not hurt Columbia if overall
education funding were increased, Preis said. "If we try to spread the
current pot, it could be damaging. But I would say there’s not enough
money in the pot right now," he said.

"I’m concerned about" the expense of the suit, Preis said, "but I think sometimes it costs to do the right thing."

Continue Reading ...

The cost of the lawsuit so far has been 4.6 million dollars? Compared to the roughly 2.7 billion that Missouri is spending on public schools, this number is quite small. But, it does still stand out to the general public and some in Missouri are calling on the districts to stop the lawsuit because of the high cost. I am not going to address the merits of the case, but consider the amount of money that could be saved if the schools and the legislature simply worked together more.