In a sharp rebuke to the Obama administration, the Republican chairman of the House education committee on Thursday challenged plans by the education secretary to override provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind Law, and he said he would use a House rewrite of it this year to rein in the secretary’s influence on America’s schools.

Responding to Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s promise to grant states waivers to the education law’s most onerous provisions if Congress failed to rewrite it, the committee chairman, Representative John Kline of Minnesota, sent Mr. Duncan a letter on Thursday demanding that he explain by July 1 the legal authority that he believed he had to issue the waivers.

Mr. Kline went further in a conference call with reporters, criticizing the administration’s use of the $5 billion Race to the Top grant competition to get states to adopt its reform agenda.

“He’s not the nation’s superintendent,” Mr. Kline said of Mr. Duncan, who assumed powers greater than any of his predecessors when, in 2009, Congress voted $100 billion in economic stimulus money for the nation’s school systems and allowed the secretary to decide how much of it should be spent.

“Unquestionably, Congress gave the secretary way too much authority in the stimulus bill when it said, ‘Here’s $5 billion, go do good things for education,’ ” Mr. Kline said.

Also, Mr. Kline for the first time outlined publicly a timetable for rewriting the sprawling school accountability law, President George W. Bush’s signature education initiative, saying he would move five bills to the House floor by year’s end.

A bill stripping several dozen federal educational programs from the No Child law, and another tweaking its provisions on charter schools, moved out of the education committee recently. A third bill, which would allow school districts new flexibility in how they spend federal education dollars, could be approved by Mr. Kline’s committee before Congress’s summer break, he said.

The fourth and fifth bills — one outlining new federal teacher effectiveness requirements and another rewriting the law’s school accountability provisions — will dominate the committee’s fall agenda, Mr. Kline said.

The Senate, led by Democrats, is working to rewrite the law with a single comprehensive bill, and experts said profound partisan disagreements could make a single rewrite difficult.

Still, Mr. Kline defended his legislative timetable and sought to undercut the argument underpinning Mr. Duncan’s waiver plans: that Congressional inaction had forced the administration to give states immediate relief from provisions like its accountability system, which requires that all students be proficient in reading and math by 2014.

Mr. Duncan has predicted that unless the law is rewritten quickly, 80,000 of the nation’s 100,000 public schools could be declared failing this fall, demoralizing educators and paralyzing administrators with red tape. This month, Mr. Duncan said that if Congress failed to rewrite these and other provisions by September, he would use his executive powers to waive them — but only for states that agreed to embrace the administration’s education priorities. He used that formula in the Race to the Top grant competition, awarding money to states that opened new space for charter schools, for instance.

In his letter, Mr. Kline asked Mr. Duncan to explain how the Department of Education had the authority to grant waivers “in exchange for reforms not authorized by Congress.”

Justin Hamilton, a spokesman for Mr. Duncan, reiterated the administration’s plan to negotiate with states over waivers. “The best way to fix this broken law is for Congress to send a bipartisan bill for the president  to sign by the start of the school year,” Mr. Hamilton said. “As a Plan B, we’ll be prepared to use the authority Congress has given us to grant relief in exchange for reforms that boost student achievement.”

The law itself clearly empowers Mr. Duncan to grant states waivers, but several experts have challenged his plan to demand that states undertake policies he favors to get the waivers.

“If you read the waiver language in the law, the secretary absolutely does not have the right to arbitrarily think up good reform ideas and require that states do them in return for waivers,” said Frederick Hess, a director at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research group. “That’s a violation of constitutional design.”

Meanwhile, some states are taking matters into their own hands. On Tuesday, Idaho’s superintendent, Tom Luna, said his state would not lift its mandated testing targets this year, as required under the federal law. “If Congress and the administration will not act, states like Idaho will,” Mr. Luna wrote.

Source: NYtimes.com
Written by: Sam Dillon

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James Alexander, Ph.D., Professor - It seems as if Americans are constantly bombarded by reports of doom related to our educational system. A recent documentary, Waiting for Superman, has highlighted the disturbing and sad situations in our schools.

The documentary and most other commentaries on schools and schooling—as well as laws and funding—are based on the notion that somehow teachers are the root cause of the problems facing U.S. schools. The idea seems to be that we need to get rid of a whole bunch of lazy, incompetent teachers.

I have a problem with that notion. I have trained pre-service teachers for nearly twenty years. When I look at my students and work with them as student teachers, they certainly do not strike me as incompetent or lazy. Instead, the entire standards/ testing/ accountability movement needs to be scraped. It doesn’t need to be tweaked; we’ve been tweaking for at least thirty-five years. We don’t need a different test to use with kids. We have plenty of those right now and already waste considerable instructional time in testing and test preparation. The whole approach has been weighed and measured and found wanting.

At best, student achievement is a mixed bag. It involves both home and school factors. Three variables: socioeconomic status, time spent on homework, and level of parental involvement deal with home variables and are essential variables in student achievement. An Educational Testing Service report stated that the home environment is as important in influencing what goes on in school as in-school factors. A study by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company found that 97% of students who earned mostly A’s and B’s on their report cards reported that their parents encouraged them to do well in school. Forty-nine percent of students earning “C’s” received little encouragement.

Nor can the impact of media on children be overlooked. Jane Healy has recounted how TV watching adversely impacts children in schools. This is especially true when it comes to a child’s ability to maintain attention—something school requires. A more modern critique related to computer usage, reading, and attention has been offered by Nicholas Carr with similar conclusions. Sherry Turkle addresses the ways that social networking has changed the culture of children and adults. Surely, a discussion of societal change must include the impact of technology.

Approximately 50 percent of our proclivities are genetic in nature. That is not so much of a concern to us—the remaining 50 percent is quite adequate to make a huge difference in student learning. About half of school-to-school variance in achievement relates to out-of-school factors. Dan Goldhaber, senior research associate at the Urban Institute, points out there has been a continuous stream of research indicating the socioeconomic background is the most important factor in student achievement.

The Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice is emphatic. Out-of-school factors related to poverty are the major cause of the achievement gap that exists between poor students and the rest of the student population. This contrasts with current educational/government opinions placing student failure squarely on the shoulders of schools and teachers.

It’s true that every child deserves an excellent teacher. Yet, Goldhaber and colleagues have discovered that around 9 percent of variation in student achievement is due to teacher characteristics. About 60 percent of variation is explainable by individual student characteristics, family characteristics, and such variables. All school input combined (teacher quality, class variables, etc.) account for approximately 21 percent of student outcomes.

Judith Harris convincingly demonstrates that a great deal of the outcomes of children’s lives come from the peer group and society. This theory is not without its distracters. It defies the conventional wisdom and annoys those who have long held to the prominence of parental nurture in determining outcomes for children. When it comes to school, in like manner, it is clear that out-of-school variables such as the percentage of children living with only one parent, the percentage of eighth graders absent from school at least three times a month, the percentage of children age 5 or younger whose caregivers fail to read to them daily and the percentage of eighth graders who watch five or more hours of television daily are at high risk of school failure.

I propose that the problems in our schools are not predominantly due to lazy, ineffective teachers. Much of what happens in terms of children’s achievement cannot be pinned on what happens in schools. Further, the idea of “cleaning up Dodge” is misguided and foolish. What is needed is a great discussion of where societal and cultural values have taken a wrong turn. In short, the accountability/testing/standards approach is irredeemable. It is broken beyond repair. Educational problems are largely societal in nature. Societies can assess themselves and they can change. Of that I am certain.

Diane Ravitch was long a favorite of the conservatives. She served in the Education Department of the George H. W. Bush administration. She was later a staunch supporter of No Child Left Behind. Recently, she has undergone a bit of a conversion as she has reviewed the data of reform. She points out that charter schools are often more hype than reality. Even when they do succeed (usually they do not), much success can be contributed to the dogged determination of students and parents.

So, I repeat, the entire enterprise is flawed. No one can fault standards as the basis of a curriculum guide. Beyond that standards, testing, and accountability form a devastating trio. It simply cannot be decreed that all students will be on grade level by a certain date (2014). It doesn’t work that way. It leaves teachers anxious and demoralized. It does the same for kids. What we need is not more tests and standards and accountability but, rather, a great societal turning.

James Alexander, Ph.D., Professor Kentucky Wesleyan College
Source: educationnews.org

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An Education Department official said Sunday that the department is "concerned" about the wave of investigations and allegations regarding cheating on standardized tests in several school systems, but stressed that most schools are "doing the right thing."

The latest development is in Washington, D.C., where the Education Department's inspector general joined the city's investigation into possible cheating following a newspaper report claiming more than 100 city schools had unusually high rates of erasures on exams between 2008 and 2010. The Washington Post first reported on the federal involvement.

The news came after a yearlong investigation in Atlanta showed 178 educators were involved in a scandal in which they changed answers or helped students on tests used to meet federal benchmarks.

Education Department spokesman Justin Hamilton, while declining to comment specifically on the D.C. probe, said Sunday that it's important investigators get "to the bottom" of the cheating claims.

"People want to have confidence in that process," he told FoxNews.com. "It's clear that the real crime here is that these kids are being cheated out of the world-class education they deserve."

Still, Hamilton said the remaining investigations have to be allowed to run their course.

"We feel that a vast majority of schools and school districts across the country are doing the right thing," he said.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan had already warned state school officials across the country last month to shape up as cheating allegations were on the rise. In a letter first reported by The Baltimore Sun and confirmed by FoxNews.com, Duncan urged the officials to do "everything you can to ensure the integrity" of standardized tests.

"State and local officials share responsibility for defending against security breaches and threats to data quality," Duncan wrote. He urged them to review "assessment security" and improve that security if necessary. He suggested officials make "unannounced, on-site visits" when tests are being administered, among other changes.

The letter came as Baltimore officials announced that two more elementary schools, in addition to one last year, had cheated on standardized tests.

The Georgia investigation was possibly the most extensive. It involved two former district attorneys with subpoena power, 2,100 interviews and up to 60 agents from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. The probe found the former Atlanta schools superintendent knew about cheating allegations and may have tried to hide them. Investigators found a "culture of fear" in the school system that led to educators lying.

In Washington, Mayor Vincent Gray said he would ask that more city investigators be devoted to the probe after a reporter told him Friday only one was assigned.

"We continue to pay close attention to the integrity of the testing process," said Gray, who oversees the city schools. "We don't want questions raised about gains ... we want the gains to be the result of children who have learned."

In May, city officials said test results for three D.C. classrooms were invalidated because of proven cases of cheating. Wayne Ryan, a school official promoted after test scores at Noyes Education Campus rose dramatically while he was principal there, resigned in June after the school was flagged for high erasure rates.

Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson said Friday that one teacher had been fired in the past year.

"Any place that we've had a confirmation for a testing impropriety, we have moved quickly to invalidate the scores and remove the teacher," she said.

Source: Foxnews.com

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by Education.com

For teens, life is not a playground, it's a jungle. And, being the parent of a teenager isn't any walk in the park, either. In his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens, author Sean Covey attempts to provide "a compass to help teens and their parents navigate the problems they encounter daily."

How will they deal with peer pressure? Motivation? Success or lack thereof? The life of a teenager is full of tough issues and life-changing decisions. As a parent, you are responsible to help them learn the principles and ethics that will help them to reach their goals and live a successful life.

While it's all well and good to tell kids how to live their lives, "teens watch what you do more than they listen to what you say," Covey says. So practice what you preach. Your example can be very influential.

Covey himself has done well by following a parent's example. His dad, Stephen Covey, wrote the book The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, which sold over 15 million copies. Sean's a chip off the old block, and no slacker. His own book has rung in a more than respectable 2 million copies sold. Here are his seven habits, and some ideas for helping your teen understand and apply them:

Be Proactive

Being proactive is the key to unlocking the other habits. Help your teen take control and responsibility for her life. Proactive people understand that they are responsible for their own happiness or unhappiness. They don't blame others for their own actions or feelings.

Begin With the End in Mind

If teens aren't clear about where they want to end up in life, about their values, goals, and what they stand for, they will wander, waste time, and be tossed to and fro by the opinions of others. Help your teen create a personal mission statement which will act as a road map and direct and guide his decision-making process.

Put First Things First

This habit helps teens prioritize and manage their time so that they focus on and complete the most important things in their lives. Putting first things first also means learning to overcome fears and being strong during difficult times. It's living life according to what matters most.

Think Win-Win

Teens can learn to foster the belief that it is possible to create an atmosphere of win-win in every relationship. This habit encourages the idea that in any given discussion or situation both parties can arrive at a mutually beneficial solution. Your teen will learn to celebrate the accomplishments of others instead of being threatened by them.

Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood

Because most people don't listen very well, one of the great frustrations in life is that many don't feel understood. This habit will ensure your teen learns the most important communication skill there is: active listening.

Synergize

Synergy is achieved when two or more people work together to create something better than either could alone. Through this habit, teens learn it doesn't have to be "your way" or "my way" but rather a better way, a higher way. Synergy allows teens to value differences and better appreciate others.

Sharpen the Saw

Teens should never get too busy living to take time to renew themselves. When a teen "sharpens the saw" she is keeping her personal self sharp so that she can better deal with life. It means regularly renewing and strengthening the four key dimensions of life – body, brain, heart, and soul.

Source: Education.com

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By Jacque Wilson

Six-year-old Karina Ricci doesn't ever have a typical day. She has no schedule to follow, no lessons to complete.

She spends her time watching TV, doing arts and crafts or practicing the piano. She learned to spell by e-mailing with friends; she uses math concepts while cooking dinner.

Everything she knows has been absorbed "organically," according to her dad, Dr. Carlo Ricci. She's not just on summer break -- this is her life year round as an at-home unschooler.

"It's incredible how capable she is," Ricci said in a phone interview from his home in Toronto, Ontario. "And I think that all young people are that capable ... if you don't tell them they can't or they're not allowed, they surprise us in a lot of ways."

Ricci is professor of alternative learning at Nipissing University and an advocate of unschooling, a concept that's gaining popularity in both Canada and the United States thanks to frustration with the current public education system. In unschooling the child is in control of his/her learning. They are free to decide what they want to study, when they want to study it.

Experts say there are about 2 million home-educated students in the U.S., and Ricci estimates 10% adhere to unschooling ideals. In addition, there are more than 20 Sudbury schools -- private institutions that follow the same philosophy -- in North America. A new one is set to open in Toronto next fall.

The unschooling philosophy is based on education pioneer John Holt's 1964 book "How Children Fail." Put simply, Holt wrote that living is learning. He believed children should follow their innate curiosity and passions rather than being forced to learn hordes of information they will never use.

"I think our education system as a whole is, to me, in a very delicate and precarious place," Sudbury Valley staff member Mimsy Sadofsky said. "It keeps trying to do what it can't do, which is make every child learn everything in the whole wide world. It's like heading toward a cliff."

Sadofsky remembers the terror she and her husband felt after deciding to enroll their children in the Sudbury Valley School in Framingham, Massachusetts. It was 1968 and her son was unhappy with the rules in his first grade class. But could they entrust a 6-year-old with his education?

"Our education system as a whole is, to me, in a very delicate and precarious place.
--Mimsy Sadofsky

"What an enormous risk we were taking with our children's lives," Sadofsky said, thinking back. "You're told to take care of your children and that schools will give them a good education. Suddenly, you're turning it around."

But Sadofsky's kids flourished and are an example of unschooling's success: one is a mathematician, one is a software coordinator-turned-jam entrepreneur and the third is a geologist.

"They have, and I think this is true of [Sudbury] alumni in general, an incredible sense of who they are and how they work, and confidence in their abilities," Sadofsky said. "Not that they know everything, but they know how to find what they need."

Sudbury schools are democratically run, meaning every student and employee has one vote, whatever their age. The only rules are set by the student body and can be changed by a majority. The overlying theme -- respect for yourself, others and the property -- is taken more seriously, students say, because you're judged by your peers instead of an authority figure.

Classes are offered but not mandatory -- "certifications" are required to use equipment such as sharp cooking utensils. There are no grades. Staff members often do not have a teaching background; they are there simply to guide students in their individual pursuits.

It's this lack of structure that has child psychiatrist and Harvard Medical professor Steven Schlozman concerned.

"Teaching is really hard. It's really hard. I don't think that just anybody can sit down and help a child achieve their educational goals and needs.

A student draws in the art room at Sudbury Valley School.

"There's something wonderful about the idea of just letting kids be kids... focusing just on what they like, can do or are passionate about," Schlozman continued. "The only thing is, they also live in the world and the world is going to need things from them."

Schlozman said students need trained adults to help them make that leap from what's wired in our lower brain functions (walking, talking, eating) to higher brain functions (understanding why "To Kill A Mockingbird" is a good book) because pre-adolescent brains lack the capacity for abstraction.

"I would say we could stand, and would probably do better, with less structure in education... the flip side of that though is that there has to be a middle ground," Schlozman said. "Otherwise you end up with a potential chaos taking the place of maximum learning."

Calls to the National Education Association for comment on unschooling were not returned.

Ben Locke, 21, says there's no reason to worry. Locke entered Sudbury Valley as a teen, feeling isolated and unhappy in his public high school.

"It was a radical idea... I'm certain at the time when I made the transition none of us knew exactly what I was getting into."

Locke spent most of his first year at Sudbury Valley playing video games. Then he discovered the music room across the hall. Eventually he became comfortable enough to spend hours chatting with other students in the common room.

"The conversation in SVS is radically different than in public schools," Locke said. "There's no age segregation, no time limit. We would have a wide variety of topics, some of them totally lewd and some of them more deep and philosophical."

"It's more about taking charge of your time rather than choosing to do nothing.
--Molly Morningstar

Unschooling advocate and former SVS student Freya Sargent said that even seemingly aimless activities like this have a purpose -- they lead kids to discover new interests.

"A lot of parents express concern that 'my kid is going to end up doing nothing,'" Sargent said. "And that may be true for a certain amount of time, but we as a species are very curious and we have this innate need to learn... People may sit around for a while, but then they get bored and they want to be involved."

Locke is now studying neuroscience at Harvard University -- a passion he developed after wondering how music translates across cultures (remember the Mario Bros. theme song?).

Approximately 90% of Sudbury Valley's graduates go on to college (compared with 69% of graduates from the public education system). Those opposed to unschooling often say students will have trouble adapting to the real world when confronted with grades, tests or working 9 to 5 under an authority figure.

Molly Morningstar isn't worried. The 19-year-old pre-med student at Hapmshire College in Massachusetts said the freedom she found at SVS didn't teach her to avoid work -- it taught her to work hard at whatever she enjoyed.

"Freedom is a funny word," she said. "[The] structure of being a doctor is freedom in a sense because it's what you chose to do with your life. I feel like I'm a very free person right now -- but I still work as a barista at a café 30 hours a week. It's more about taking charge of your time rather than choosing to do nothing."

Source: cnn.com

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Summer is here! Time for bathing suits, beaches, and banana splits. Summer can also be a time to recoup from the previous school year if some of the statements listed below ring true for your kid. Sure, a child needs time to breathe – there's no need to haul your kid to a summer tutoring center the week after school gets out. But it is a good idea to research the summer tutoring possibilities before your little angel decides that school isn't worth the extra effort.

1. Your kid's grades were less than ideal on the last report card

Maybe you're not raising Einstein, but you know he or she can do better than the grades they brought home to you on their last report card or progress report. Even if the grades weren't in the failing range, they were enough of a drop from the norm to get you worried.

2. You've noticed negative changes in behavior during the school year

It could be as simple as an increased moodiness when you talk to your kid about school. Or you're getting calls from teachers, complaining of excessive talking or disruption. You could even see signs of inexplicable negative behavior outside the arena of school – when he or she should be having fun at home, with friends or hanging out with family.

3. Your kid has an increased lack of motivation

He or she is making excuses for not doing projects, completing homework, or studying for quizzes and tests. You've tried bribery, begging, punishment, and reason to get your kid to care about school, but nothing seems to help. When your kid brings home a poor grade, he or she demonstrates a complete lack of concern.

4. Your kid's teacher recommended summer tutoring or other help for your kid

Your kid's teacher or teachers called you and asked you specifically to come to conference night. They emailed you about your child's grades. They've recommended the school's after-school tutoring sessions. They've sent you emails or letters regarding your child's conduct in class.

5. Your kid's confidence and self-esteem are waning

Your kid berates himself after getting a poor grade and complains that school is "just too hard," or he or she "can't do it." Your child compares himself/herself to others in the class and finds flaws. Your child is scared of being ridiculed by friends and classmates or refuses to give the class presentation.

6. No matter how long your kid spends on homework, it's not finished nor accurate

Even getting your child to sit down to complete homework is becoming a huge burden, and when he or she finally tries, homework stretches into hours-long sessions with poor results. You end up helping your child through much of the work, or find that he or she completes the work inaccurately most of the time.

7. Your kid doesn't want to go to school anymore

Not only is your child tired in the morning, it's a chore to get them to go to school at all. He or she refuses to get up, complains of being sick, or makes up excuses about friends to avoid going to school.

8. Your kid has an increased lack of attention

You've noticed that when you're talking to your son or daughter, his or her mind wanders off frequently or more than normal. He or she gets in trouble in class for doodling, reading other materials, talking or sleeping. No matter what you do, you can't teach your child how to focus when studying.

9. Your kid has test anxiety

He or she has been talking about that big Science test all week. You notice a rise of upset stomach complaints or bitten nails as test day approaches. He or she doesn't want to eat breakfast before school on test day. Despite your attempts to relieve his or her stress, nothing helps.

10. Your kid is preparing to take a college entrance exam like the SAT or ACT

Your child wants to get into a great university, and you're not sure how he or she will score on a standardized test. He or she is also anxious about taking the SAT or ACT.

Source: http://testprep.about.com/b/2011/06/09/top-10-signs-your-kid-needs-summer-tutoring.htm

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She may be a superstar, but just like any mother, Angelina Jolie is concerned about the state of schools today.

"I wish there was a book every parent could read that tells you how to navigate through the school system, and how to tailor the education system for your children and their interests," the mom of six tells the Independent.

"I'm personally getting a lot more involved with their different tutors and teachers." Jolie's children are enrolled in the Lycée programme French schooling system in several different countries, including New York, Prague and Venice. "But we have different teachers from different cultures in our house, who travel with us. Not only nannies but teachers," she says. "To us it's about building a team around us where we can all be enhanced culturally and they can help with following a curriculum legally."

The "Kung Fu Panda 2" star adds that she believes there's a lot to be learned outside the classroom. "I do think we live in a different age and the education system hasn't caught up with our children and our way of life," she says. "But we travel and I'm the first person to say, 'Get the schoolwork done as quickly as possible because let's go out and explore.' I'd rather them go to a museum and learn to play guitar and read and pick a book they love.

"I feel that there's got to be a new way to tailor things more directly to our children," she explains. "Considering the amount of information we have today, the internet and online books... We as parents need to think about how we can shake it up and make it better."

Source:http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/03/angelina-jolie-our-education-system-needs-improvement/?iref=allsearch

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