A bi-monthly e-newsletter, Volume 3, Number 4, April/May/June 2005
This edition's topic: New Beginnings
Contents:
COMMENCEMENT (Commentary)
May and June are the most celebrated months of the school year as high school and college seniors become graduates and transition to the next stage of their lives in education, employment, or both. Part of this process is the obligatory commencement address where a number of accomplished speakers look back on their experiences or the nation’s history and offer lessons learned to the next generation—and to those of us who are still works in progress. A sampling of the wise counsel this year:
Steven Jobs, CEO of Apple Computers and Pixar Animation Studios, at Stanford University: "You've got to find what you love…If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on." http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html
Senator Barack Obama at Knox College: "Will you occasionally fail when you embark on your own American journey? You surely will. But the test is not perfection. The true test of the American ideal is whether we’re able to recognize our failings and then rise together to meet the challenges of our time." http://www.knox.edu/x9803.xml
Alan Greenspan, chairman of The Federal Reserve Board, at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania: "Rules exist to govern behavior, but rules cannot substitute for character. In the years going forward, it will be your reputation—for integrity, judgment, and other qualities of character—that will determine your success in life and in business." http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/2005/20050515/default.htm
It is also the time of the year when we stop to thank those who helped us along the way: The English teacher who drove us crazy with her daily 125-word essay (and who is the only reason we know the difference between "perquisite" and "prerequisite" today.) The special education teacher or school counselor who saw something in us that no one else did and refused to let us give up. The community service project leader who pushed us way out of our comfort zone to make a real impact on the quality of life in our neighborhood. The mentor who was always there for us, especially when our family couldn’t be.
We also thank the school leaders who worked long hours, took the heat when the news was bad, and passed on the credit when the scores were good; the researchers and other educational professionals who toiled behind the scenes to develop rubrics, assessments, frameworks, curricula, materials, and supplemental services; and the parents who made the hard choices, kept the lines of communications open, and never gave up on their children—or the school system--all had a part to play, however distant from the action, in the success of this new generation of graduates.
But our work is not over, particularly in helping the students who have dropped out or those who are still in the pipeline, especially those facing the most obstacles in the struggle to achieve. In this regard, we note the June announcement from the U.S. Department of Education about its "commencement" (or rather, rebirth) of the new "Comprehensive Centers" that DOE will establish and begin operating in the fall of 2005 under Title II of the Educational Technical Assistance Act of 2002 (TA Act). The Comprehensive Centers Program announced by the Secretary was based in part on a "going to school" process—i.e., outreach efforts conducted during the winter by the Ten Regional Advisory Committees (RACs) appointed by DOE to get input and feedback from regional representatives regarding the technical assistance they need to implement the goals of NCLB. (See the Nov/Dec ‘04 IELC issue for more information about the process.)
Based on the RAC feedback, the Secretary of Education has identified 16 "Regional Centers" that will provide frontline assistance to States to help them assist their districts and schools with the continued implementation of NCLB and five (5) "Content Centers" that will cover a spectrum of school improvement and technical assistance areas: Accountability and Assessment, Teacher Quality, Instruction, Innovation and Improvement, and High Schools. (While we felt that Leadership Development and Support was a glaring hole in the plan, we imagine we might have a biased opinion.) Awards to the new Centers will be made by September 30, 2005, so stay tuned for those selections. (For more information on the plans for the new Centers, visit the Department’s site at http://www.ed.gov/programs/newccp/index.html, and you can take a look at the RAC’s regional summaries that informed the process at http://www.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/rac/index.html#resources).
NEWS FROM THE FIELD
An example of the behind-the-scenes work that is going on to ensure that all children achieve their goals was the "2005 National Leadership Summit on Improving Results: Policy and Practice Implications for Secondary and Postsecondary Education, Transition, and Workforce Development for Youth with Disabilities," June 14-15, 2005. Teams from 45 states, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the Pacific Rim entities—over 400 people from special education, general education, higher education, vocational rehabilitation, workforce development, mayors’ and governors’ offices, families, youth, and more—assembled in Washington, DC. Besides meeting with content experts, the teams worked together to develop strategic action plans and identify technical assistance for research, outreach, policy, funding, data collection and reporting, product and information development and dissemination, and training. You may view the materials used at the Summit, available at the National Center on Secondary Education and Transition’s (NCSET) Web site, http://www.ncset.org/summit05/index.htm. We also recommend you take a look at the Guideposts for Success for all students at http://www.ncwd-youth.info/resources_&_Publications/guideposts/index.html, the Web site of the National Collaborative on Workforce and Disability for Youth (NCWD/Y), an NCSET partner housed at IEL.
One of the elements of success identified in both NCSET’s National Standards and NCWD/Y’s Guideposts (and the supporting research) is high expectations for youth. However, a new public opinion survey from ETS, Ready for the Real World? Americans Speak on High School Reform, found that only 9% of the Americans surveyed thought that today’s high school graduates have experienced high expectations. In spite of No Child Left Behind, there was no change since 2001 in the number who think that public schools are working well (11%), and most people gave the public schools a passing grade of "C." The majority also said that high schools need reform but that many of the problems are outside the control of the schools, such as funding and societal issues. To read the executive summary and the press release, go to http://www.ets.org/aboutets/americaspeaks/survey2005.html.
One reason that the President’s own plan for improving high schools received a less than warm response in Congress may be because the data on high school graduations rates and requirements show conflicting trends and practices, which unfortunately is nothing new. The Education Trust’s report, Getting Honest About Graduation Rates: How States Play the Numbers and Students Lose, takes states to task for the way they calculate and report graduation rates—and the U.S. Department of Education for not challenging them on it. Go to http://www2.edtrust.org/edtrust/ to read the full report and the press release.
In an historic response, the National Governors Association, under the leadership of NGA Chairman Mark Warner, Governor of Virginia, announced that 46 states and 12 national organizations have signed onto "Graduation Counts: A Compact on State High School Graduation Data." This compact sets a common definition for the high school graduation rate and is based on the NGA’s own study, Graduation Counts: A Report of the NGA Task Force on State High School Graduation Data. To read the NGA press release, with links to the compact and the report, go to http://www.nga.org/portal/site/nga/menuitem.6c9a8a9ebc6ae07eee28aca9501010a0/?vgnextoid=f599184d94525010VgnVCM1000001a01010aRCRD.
More and more states and communities are indeed responding to A Call to Action: Transforming High School for All Youth, a framework of six core principles and recommended strategies for preparing all of our nation's youth for college, careers, and active civic participation. Officially released in April 2005 by the National High School Alliance, a partnership of over 40 member organizations built on a shared vision, A Call To Action provides leaders at the national, state, district, school, and community levels with a common framework for building public will, developing supportive policies, and actually implementing the practices needed to radically change the traditional, factory-model high school that tracks and sorts students. With a clever centerfold illustrating the Alliance’s design for change, the framework can be downloaded from http://www.hsalliance.org.
A number of reports related to teachers were released in the past few months, beginning with The MetLife Annual Survey of the American Teacher: Transitions and the Role of Supportive Relationships 2004-2005. The report focused on new teachers, students, and principals as well as parental involvement. Major findings emphasized the importance of mentoring new teachers, the need for more preparation in managing teacher-parent relationships, the difficulty of the transition to high school for many students, and the fact that 95% of the students surveyed had a positive relationship with at least one teacher who made a difference in their lives! One panelist observed that the study identified the "basic human need for relationships," that both the quantitative and qualitative are essential to the goals of NCLB, and that mentoring (for students, teachers, and principals) is an essential ingredient for our schools. To download the 2004-2005 and previous reports, go to http://www.metlife.com.
Also published, this time by the American Educational Research Association, was Studying Teacher Education: The Report of the AERA Panel on Research and Teacher Education. This massive report (672 pages in hardcover or 816 pages in soft cover) examines research on teacher demographics and a number of aspects of teacher education programs that are known to produce successful teachers. A new agenda of research priorities is also presented. To download the press kit containing a news release, fact sheets, the book’s table of contents, and ordering information, go to http://www.aera.net/newsmedia/?id=763.
The Impact of the No Child Left Behind Act on Student Achievement and Growth: 2005 Edition, a study from the Northwest Evaluation Association, examines student achievement levels (scores at a given point in time) and achievement growth (the difference in scores for individual students over a specific period). The findings indicate that although math and reading scores have improved somewhat under NCLB, schools will not meet the 100% proficiency level by 2014 if the achievement continues at the current projected rate. Also of concern are the slower growth rates of minority groups, which have serious equity implications, but the NWEA readily admits their numbers are skewed due to limited minority populations in most of their survey communities. To read the executive summary and register to view the full study, go to http://www.nwea.org/research/nclbstudy.asp.
The benefits of a shared vision in confronting challenges is to be found in a new report by the Learning First Alliance (LFA)—a permanent partnership of 12 national education associations—that offers a framework for ensuring the nation’s neediest students access to effective teachers and school leaders. A Shared Responsibility: Staffing All High-Poverty, Low-Performing Schools with Effective Teachers and Administrators documents serious school staffing inequities and lays out a comprehensive set of actions to solve the staffing problem. The result of intensive collaboration among LFA’s partners, the framework represents unprecedented agreement regarding the causes and potential solutions of the staffing problem. Over the coming year, the Alliance will use the framework to promote substantive collaboration among national education associations, their state and local affiliates, and individual members to address the underlying causes of school staffing inequities. The Framework can be downloaded at no charge from www.learningfirst.org/publications/staffing/.
Ending on another positive note, something that is not usually associated with district contract negotiations, the May issue of District Administration magazine reports that "interest-based bargaining (IBB)," a collaborative approach to collective bargaining, is gaining traction in some districts. IBB is based on mutual respect, trust, open communications, and a non-adversarial approach to decision-making that includes interspersed seating rather than separate sides of the table for management and union representatives. (Could it be people are more likely to get along if there are less clear lines of demarcation, such as your side/my side?) To read the full article, "A (Not So) Hard Bargain," go to http://districtadministration.com/pageprint.cfm?p=1073 .
RESOURCES TO EXPLORE
IEL is a centerfold! Well, at least the role of leadership (under constant scrutiny at IEL, you can imagine) is exposed and explored in the Summer 2005 issue of Threshold, a quarterly journal for district, state, and national education leaders. This issue’s theme is "Innovation and Leadership" and was produced in collaboration with IEL and Cable in the Classroom, the cable industry’s education foundation. Read the issue for some bold, provocative ideas—such as what kinds of leadership is needed from all educational stakeholders in order to create and benefit from improved conditions for learning. The special "Leadership for Student Learning" graphic that IEL helped design is a valuable training tool with distinct steps and strategies to help support the development of the conditions necessary to learning in every community. View on-line at http://www.ciconline.org/threshold--or send requests for a hard copy of Threshold to slaughterd@iel.org.
NCWD/Y has produced much-needed resources for youth and people working with youth with disabilities since it began four years ago. The 411 on Disability Disclosure: A Workbook for Youth with Disabilities is now available. The 411 Workbook will help young people—and the adults working with them—1) make informed decisions about whether or not to disclose their disability and 2) understand how that decision may impact their education, employment, and social lives. Based on the premise that disclosure is a very personal decision, the 411 Workbook will help young people think about and practice disclosing their disability. Complete or unit-by-unit PDF and Word versions can be downloaded at http://www.ncwd-youth.info/resources_&_Publications/411.html.
Two new education databases are now available on-line. Education Week launched its new "Education Counts" database last fall containing over 250 state education indicators in categories such as assessment, demographics, school choice, special education, and student achievement. You can create your own reports or read a number of research reports on-line. For more information, go to the Research Center at http://www.edweek.org/rc/edcounts/.
Meanwhile, the Education Data Partnership (the Council of Chief State School Officers, Standard & Poor’s School Evaluation Services, Achieve, Inc., and the CELT Corporation) unveiled School Matters, an interactive Web source of student performance data. Parents, educators, and district and state users can find information and data on grade level tests, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, ACT and SAT scores, Adequate Yearly Progress calculations, and more at http://www.schoolmatters.com/.
Also new this summer is a re-designed and easier-to-use e-Lead Web site, http://www.e-Lead.org, featuring the debut of e-Lead’s new blog, LeaderShipShape. What’s a blog? It’s an on-line journal in which the author(s) comments on virtually anything—in this case, articles, research, conversations, newspaper stories—and invites comments from readers. Visit LeaderShipShape often for a dose of the most current and relevant news and opportunities in the field of school leadership.
IELC has been tracking the progress of the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), which recently announced that its content database has been updated to include journal articles and other documents published in 2004 and 2005. Additional titles will be added on an on-going basis. ERIC has also added a new section, "Journals Indexed in ERIC" (accessed via the "About ERIC" tab), that allows readers to view information on the journals that are included in the database. To visit the site, go to http://www.eric.ed.gov.
IELC will take a break in the months of July and August and will return to its bi-monthly schedule with the September 2005 issue. Submission deadline for the next issue: August 14, 2005
The Education Policy Fellowship Program Seeks Applicants.
Deadline August 2005
IEL’s flagship program is the Education Policy Fellowship Program, a ten-month in-service professional development program now in its 41st year! It is designed to prepare mid-level leaders in public and private organizations to exercise greater responsibility in creating and implementing sound public policy in education and related fields. EPFP™ participants hold full-time positions in diverse organizations at the local, state, and national levels. The program currently operates in sites in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Washington, DC. For more information on the program and applying, please visit http://www.iel.org/programs/epfp.html or contact the program associate at tylert@iel.org.
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ABOUT IEL
For forty years, the Institute for Educational Leadership (IEL) - a non-profit, nonpartisan organization based in Washington, DC - has worked to achieve better results for children and youth. At the heart of IEL's effectiveness is a unique ability to bring people together to identify and resolve issues across policy, program, and sector boundaries. As a natural outgrowth of IEL's work, diverse networks have been created and nurtured. Today, IEL is working to help individuals and institutions increase their capacity to work together to improve outcomes for children and young people. We are building and supporting a cadre of diverse leaders, strengthening the capacity of education and related systems, and informing the development and implementation of policies. IEL supports a national network of over 15,000 policymakers and practitioners, publishes books and reports, facilitates meetings, produces seminars and conferences, and disseminates ideas that have an impact on policy at all governance levels. Please visit our Web site at www.iel.org to learn more about IEL.
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