They leave no child behind (without NCLB)

The schools that innovate are going to be rewarded. You can feel like a victim in education. This is saying, "We're going to control our own destiny." —Principal Rob Metz, Saint Louis Park High School

Does it take a village to raise a child? To paraphrase Bill Clinton, it depends on what your definition of "a village" is. In her book It Takes A Village, Hillary Clinton says, "Every child needs a champion." For the last fourteen years at Saint Louis Park High School, every ninth grader has had multiple champions, even those whose home lives were less than ideal.

Almost half (and rising) of Saint Louis Park High School's ninth-graders were failing at least one class. Lacking the funding to simply throw money at the problem, counselor Angela Jerabek decided that a team of teachers, social workers, counselors, and administration would "have the back" of every ninth grader, meeting with and about each one continually, all year long. The result?

Since the program started in 1998, the number of students in advanced classes has skyrocketed. Then, 44 percent of ninth-graders were failing one or more classes; last year, that fell to 20 percent. Cigarette use was cut in half among ninth-grade boys...It's a simple premise: more adults reaching out to a student to prevent them from slipping into anonymity, failing class and dropping out. "No student will be able to get by unnoticed," Jerabek said. ("Intense focus on 9th-graders pays off big in St. Louis Park," Star Tribune, December 23, 2011)

The school is now closed to open enrollment and has a waiting list. The program is being piloted nationally by the Minneapolis-based Search Institute under the name Building Assets Reducing Risks (BARR).

When it comes to raising kids, no school or government program can replace the loving support from a team of parents, extended family, friends, a church home, and youth groups. Saint Louis Park High School's experience has confirmed that kids can overcome adversity with a group of caring adults in their corner.

The Dayton education agenda's pre-K obsession

"Instead of talking about how to spend more money and finding ways to spend more money, we ought to be talking about how to focus the resources we have on something we can measure." —Sen. David Hann (R-Eden Prairie), Star Tribune, February 5

Do you get the point that Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton really believes in early childhood education? The governor's seven-point education plan is not content with dedicating one or two of these points to early childhood education, he embeds "ready for K" goals into five of them:

• Invest in Early Childhood and All-Day Kindergarten
• Target All-Day Kindergarten
• Expand existing K-12 system into a comprehensive pre-K-12 system
• Adopt pre-K - 3 reading standards
• Support early childhood teacher observation and development
• Reauthorize Statewide Early Childhood Advisory Council and reestablish Children's Cabinet
• Charge Commissioner of Education with leadership of early childhood initiatives

Considering the state's barely ten-month old kindergarten-readiness study, this obsession with pre-K seems odd.

The Minnesota School Readiness Study found that between 91 percent and 97 percent of Minnesota five-year-olds were In Process or Proficient in five developmental areas necessary for school success: physical development, the arts, personal and social development, language and literacy, and mathematical thinking. This compares to last year’s study with numbers between 87 percent and 96 percent. The increases are within the margin of error between the two years.

When you couple these findings with national empirical studies on Head Start and other preschool programs that show little if any benefit to pre-K programs, you may wonder why Governor Dayton is so bent on a significant expansion of government pre-K and all-day kindergarten.

"There's nothing terribly new in here," said Rep. Mindy Greiling (DFL-Roseville) in the February 5 Star Tribune article, "Dayton renews pledge to raise school funding." "We're going to have more commissions and more advisory councils. I think we've been there and done that," remarked Rep. Sondra Erickson (R-Princeton), chair of the House Educationn Reform Committee in the February 5 Star Tribune article.

Dayton's myopic focus on pre-K and kindergarten to the exclusion of other education reforms such as streamlining the process for sponsors of successful charter schools to open new sites, and education tax credits is a missed opportunity for much-needed education reform for Minnesota students and families. Dayton's omissions provide an excellent opportunity for the Republican majorities in the Legislature to display some leadership in state education policy initiatives.

EdWatch (1998-2010)

EdWatch, Minnesota's best-known, powerful grassroots K-12 education advocacy organization is concluding operations at the end of this month, according to co-founder Renee Doyle, in an e-mail sent to supporters at the end of November.

"We came into being in 1998 over the statewide outrage about Minnesota's radical new education system, the Profile of Learning," said Doyle in the e-mail. "Colleen Wogen, Julie Quist and I called the first meeting to order and elected each other officers. We had no idea that our newly established educational non-profit would not only go state-wide, but that five years later, under the name EdWatch, it would go national. EdWatch has stood as an advocate for children, parents and teachers and always has been on the cutting edge of educational research and information."

It amazes me to look back over the last twelve years and realize what an education we gave each other, legislators, school boards, parents, and the public. Doyle said, "We boldly challenged the conventional wisdom regarding No Child Left Behind, International Baccalaureate, Early Childhood Education, School-to-Work, the federal curriculum, international education standards, education for world citizenship, earth-worshiping environmentalism, school mental screening and drugging, 'comprehensive' sex education, Outcome Based Education, and a centralized federal workforce system.  We reminded parents, teachers, and students that good education understands that truth exists and should first of all be about acquiring knowledge and understanding, not about inculcating government-approved values and beliefs."

I cut my political teeth during the Profile of Learning repeal battles. A friend of mine and fellow parent alerted me to the process-based Profile, which was enacted in administrative rule during the Jesse Ventura administration by the then-Department of Children, Families and Learning under its commissioner, Christine Jax. By establishing statewide academic requirements in rule rather than through legislation, the Ventura administration avoided all of those bothersome public hearings and legislative oversight. Complaints to my then-state senator yielded polite letters full of edubabble and reassurances that parents should pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, after all, the state of Minnesota knows best (summed up in the nanny state admonishment, "Just breed 'em and feed 'em").

My most memorable experiences as a member of EdWatch include:

• Organizing and conducting an EdWatch education workshop in 2001 (just after 9/11)
• Celebrating the repeal of The Profile of Learning
• Having my picture taken with Michele Bachmann at her desk on the floor of the Minnesota Senate, on the first day of her first term
• Visiting Bachmann months later in her freshman office, with the window facing into the parking garage, and seeing that photo on her bulletin board
• Visiting Republican legislators, meeting legislative staff, and learning the secret routes around the Capitol and State Office Building
• Being appointed by Governor Tim Pawlenty to serve on the Academic Standards Committee to help draft new academic standards with the renamed Department of Education under commissioner Cheri Pierson Yecke
• Helping to create an early version of the EdWatch web site, as well as my own web site (Minnesota Education Reform News) and blogs
• Being inspired by some amazing conservative activists and conservative Republican legislators and candidates

The EdWatch principles of parental control of their children's education, knowledge-based curricula, and individual liberty will be promoted by a successor organization led by EdWatch board member Karen Effrem. The new organization, Education Liberty Watch, is currently being formed.

Wayzata candidate forum avoids debate

On Monday night, the candidates running to represent residents of the Wayzata Public Schools district at the state legislature met in a forum sponsored by the school district's Legislative Action Committee. The district overlaps Minnesota Senate Districts 32, 33, and 43.

I attended the session for SD43, which had about two dozen in the audience. All of the endorsed legislative candidates in SD43 were present: the incumbent Sen. Terri Bonoff (DFL-Minnetonka) and Republican challenger Norann Dillon (Twitter: @dillon4senate); HD43A incumbent Rep. Sarah Anderson (R-Plymouth) and DFL challenger Audrey Britton; and HD43B incumbent Rep. John Benson and Republican challenger Brian Grogan (Twitter: @bwgrogan).

A forum like this is not a debate. The moderator read questions and allowed all candidates to respond in turn. Afterwords, the audience was invited to ask questions, to which each candidate had a set amount of time to respond. The format seems designed to avoid confrontation, which is probably appropriate for the venue. Still, there were insights if you knew how to listen for them.

Bonoff said early in the forum that education is her top priority. This was an interesting statement in light of Bonoff's response in a recent debate:

"While I speak a lot about education because I serve on the Education Committee and I serve on the Transportation Committee, I think the environment is first and foremost."

Bonoff promoted the idea of "regionalizing the business" of school districts and touted her "shared services" bill. Dillon stated pointed out that while some economies of scale could be had by pooling purchasing for example, districts should be aware of whether such arrangements are voluntary or mandated by the state.

The audience question about early childhood education prompted the most controversy of the evening. While most of the candidates expressed support for early childhood education, it was Grogan and Dillon who had the courage to say that the emperor has no clothes (Dillon's aphorism was, "This dog don't hunt"). Grogan pointed to research revealed by Karen Effrem, governmental relations director for EdWatch, that demonstrates the same or lower academic achievement level for children who enroll in early childhood programs, compared to children who do not. Dillon said that the return on investment must be considered when allocating scarce state revenues to any program, including early childhood education, and questioned the overwhelming ROI cited by Bonoff. Dillon wondered with all of the dollars spent since the 1960s on Head Start and similar programs, why is there still such a large achievement gap?

Although "local control" was a safe point of consensus among the candidates, Bonoff said that there must be some set of uniform academic standards, otherwise there would be a patchwork of curricula in which there could conceivably be schools that teach their students to deny the Holocaust, for example. If you have been reading this blog since its beginning, you probably know that the rub is in who determines the standards (anyone remember Christine Jax?). That is why state academic standards, like state funding, are so politicized. For example, who should decide whether viewpoints critical of evolution or global warming theory should be heard in the schools: the state or local school boards?

Speaking of local control, all of the candidates agreed that unfunded mandates are a problem, but Benson basically said that fully-funded mandates are the solution (example: the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act or "special ed") , while Grogan called Benson for removing mandate relief from a bill. The DFL must think that mandates are a problem only until they are fully funded.

I did not have a chance to ask any provocative questions before the forum adjourned, but I had two ready:

• K-12 education funding consumes nearly 50% of the state general fund budget, yet almost no one understands in toto the Minnesota Nightmare of per-pupil formulae, categorical aids, and other minutia that determines the amount of state aid that each local school district receives. What reforms to the funding formula would you support to increase the transparency and fairness of K-12 funding?
• Homeschool and private school parents pay double for education. Would you support tax credits or funding that follows the child to level the playing field for these double-taxed taxpayers, and raise Minnesota's quality of education by increasing competition among education providers?

After the forum adjourned, Grogan commented to me that of the various education forums he participated in, this forum had the best moderator questions and most engaged audience. Effrem, who was also in the audience, shared with me EdWatch's concerns about whether Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer is in agreement with its positions on academic freedom reforms.

Alternative licensure need not mean "lower standards"

Education Minnesota teachers union president Tom Dooher is speaking out in television ads against an alternative licensure proposal for teachers now before the Minnesota Legislature. Dooher says that the proposals would "lower standards to become a teacher in Minnesota." While alternative licensure would certainly challenge the status quo, "alternative" need not mean "lower" standards.

The bill, SF 2757, "Alternative Pathways for Teacher Licensure," would provide qualified, trained reinforcements to existing teachers, from the ranks of recent college graduates and experienced workforce veterans. Nonprofit efforts like Teach for America have proved that this can reap significantly improved educational outcomes for students in even the toughest environments. According to its web site, "We believe that the best hope for ending educational inequity is to build a massive force of leaders in all fields who have the perspective and conviction that come from teaching successfully in low-income communities."

Alternative licensure is supported by Republicans and DFLers in Minnesota and the Obama administration.

While such a system would release new energy and expertise to struggling schools, it could also dilute Education Minnesota's influence over all things K-12 in the state, including teacher training and compensation, tenure, and statewide education policy. Lawmakers and voters do have a choice to make: doing what's best for our children, or continuing to do what's best for the teachers union.

How west metro schools stack up

Now that the Minnesota Department of Education has released the 2009 Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments II results, I pored over the high school data to compare the test results among west metro school districts. I added per-pupil spending and enrollment data from School Data Direct to see if I could find any relationships among test data, spending, and district size (the latter two are the most recent published data).

District	Math (11)	Reading (10)	Science (HS)	Per Pupil Spending 05-06	Enrollment 07-08
Hopkins	66.0	84.7	48.1	$10,253.00	7,672
Minnetonka	64.4	92.5	76.0	$8,311.00	7,974
Orono	60.8	92.1	73.9	$7,850.00	2,662
Osseo	41.8	75.9	50.5	$9,287.00	21,859
Robbinsdale	41.7	69.0	43.1	$9,126.00	12,891
Wayzata	71.5	90.5	72.7	$8,189.00	9,990
Minnesota	41.6	74.2	50.0	$9,159.00	840,565

MCA-II scores are not the only indicator of school performance, but they are one way that you can compare all districts in the state. Another is composite ACT scores: students in all of these districts are performing comparably well.

Although Minnetonka, Orono, and Wayzata score above state averages on the MCA-II standardized tests, contrary to what you might expect, they spend significantly less per pupil than the state average. Part of this is due to the fact that these districts receive less money from the state due to, well, politics. One glance at Minnesota School Finance, a primer for legislators on K-12 education finance, confirms this. The funding formula and plethora of categorical aids are ostensibly in place to ensure equal outcomes for all students, but is there a direct link between spending and performance?

It used to be that our independent school districts (and local governments) were funded by local property taxes, until the so-called "Minnesota Miracle" largely shifted these burdens to the state, which collects sales and income taxes. Because sales and income taxes are more sensitive to economic conditions than property taxes, they are subject to wildly varying levels of collection. The system also relocates much accountability from the school district and city hall to the corridors of power at the state capitol.

Although the Minnesota Miracle of wealth redistribution supposedly jibes with Minnesotans' sense of fairness (any law that robs Peter to pay Paul will always have the support of Paul), it has the effect of making government less transparent and responsive to taxpayers.

John McCain on school choice

Education is the civil rights issue of this century. Equal access to public education has been gained. But what is the value of access to a failing school? We need to shake up failed school bureaucracies with competition, empower parents with choice, remove barriers to qualified instructors, attract and reward good teachers, and help bad teachers find another line of work.

When a public school fails to meet its obligations to students, parents deserve a choice in the education of their children. And I intend to give it to them. Some may choose a better public school. Some may choose a private one. Many will choose a charter school. But they will have that choice and their children will have that opportunity.

Senator Obama wants our schools to answer to unions and entrenched bureaucracies. I want schools to answer to parents and students. And when I’m President, they will.

—John McCain, acceptance speech for the Republican nomination for President, September 4, 2008

Radical Math: like "integrated math" on, well, we're not sure what they're smoking

At last, truth in advertising from the integrated math crowd.

According to the movement's web site, "Radical Math Teachers was launched in April 2006 by Jonathan Osler who teaches Math and Community Organizing at El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice (www.elpuente.us), a public high school in Brooklyn, NY.

"Radical Math Teachers are educators who work to integrate issues of political, economic, and social justice into our math classes, and we seek to inspire and support other educators to do the same."

Fox News reported:

DAVID MILLER, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: ...Sample lessons posted on a Radical Math Website for teachers suggests the following assignments: Calculating the average number of casualties in Iraq, computing baseball stats to determine if all star voting is tainted by racism, and exploring how much tax money is spent on government agencies, including 30 percent for the military. Seattle high school teacher Larry Steele says "Radical Math" is an effective way to teach kids not only arithmetic but also how to make important decisions in their lives.

LARRY STEELE, HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER: We look at both sides. I mean, how do you feel about wearing shoes that were probably made by a person who makes a dollar a day? Do you feel OK about that?

MILLER: Critics of "Radical math" say the program unfairly imposes left-wing values on students.

SOL STERN, MANHATTAN INSTITUTE: A social justice agenda, meaning a conclusion that America is a racist country, America is an exploitative country, America is an imperialist country, and that our capitalist system is per se unjust.

I don't imagine you'd complain about Radical Math much if you were already sending your child to an Academy of Peace and Justice and enrolling her in Community Organizing classes. You probably think that mathematics is nothing more than a social construct meant to perpetuate the economic and social differences in our society.

But for the rest of us, if a group of Radical Math Teachers attempts to bring this far-left brand of integrated math to your school district, be prepared to loudly resist any attempts to steer math education any farther away from math than it already is. As the Radical Math Teachers already know, the way math is taught — or not taught — today will change the future of our country for years to come.

Was choice of Everyday Math predetermined?

The St. Michael-Albertville Schools (STMA) are currently in Year 1 of a several-year long curriculum review cycle for their math curriculum. As in many school districts, the process attempts to bring the various stakeholders together (teachers, the curriculum director, parents) to look at the current curriculum, assess needs, and select a new curriculum (often the latest edition of the current product).

So are these curriculum reviews merely an exercise to endorse a predetermined outcome? Or is there genuine openness to new ideas?

While we all assume that everyone has the best interests of education and the community at heart, once you get involved in one of these processes as a parent or community member outside the "educracy," you may wonder if your voice is making a difference. I think it all depends on who's at the top. When I sat on the Minnesota Academic Standards Committee for Social Studies, I knew that then-Education Commissioner Cheri Pierson Yecke did her best to ensure that all stakeholders, the entire state actually, had a say in our work. No one claimed that our final product was perfect, but a continual review cycle at least provides the opportunity for continual improvements.

A Scholar's Notebook reader on the STMA math curriculum review committee, Jill Schwarz, shared her impressions of the process in a letter to the editor of her local newspaper, the Crow River News:

A few things regarding the choosing of Everyday Math have not been addressed in any official documents for the public, including school board minutes, committee meeting minutes, etc. I will try to address some of them, and give you the parent view. There were two parents — I am one of them — who dedicated a great deal of volunteer time to attending meetings and pouring over information and materials in hopes of having an impact on what math is chosen for the elementary students at STMA.

After all of the many vendor presentations and additional meetings following these presentations in the spring, comments were make that convinced us both that most if not all of the teachers on the committee were never intending to consider any other curriculum and that the much celebrated "parent involvement" in curriculum choosing was convenient window dressing.

The other parent wisely formally resigned, and I foolishly stayed on. I had already compromised, as I am a strong supporter of traditional math, Saxon Math in particular. There was a compromise curriculum, called SRA Real Math, that the other parent and I mistakenly believed would bridge the gap between what the parents and teachers/administrators wanted. SRA blends the reform math (lots of real world word problems, for instance) and parent friendly aspects like using common math language and problem solving techniques that all parents had to learn in school themselves. There are many more problems to work towards mastery, the basic facts are integrated instead of how we have to add that in with Everyday Math, calculator use is much less, and estimating is not overdone. Basically SRA seems to understand that some kids do learn by being creative and discovering, and group work is sometimes ok, without taking these ideas to the far extreme and forgetting that repetition and drilling and basic facts are just as important to reach all of the kids.

I was thrilled to discover a program that used only one method for solving long division for instance, and that it's the method we all already know and can teach our kids if they need help. I was thinking "hooray — no more parent workshop meetings in the evenings to teach us how to help our kids with their homework!" However, this hope was soon dashed. All of the arguing and suggesting and discussing brought us right back where we started — with the choice that was already made. The new edition of Everyday Math has become more teacher friendly but sadly we are all going to be getting parent letters to read and save so we have a clue as to what our K-5th grade kids are doing in math. It will inform us as to why in the world our kids are running around the house counting clocks (so they can discover that clocks are in the real world) and cutting and gluing pictures of foods (to realize that prices are in the real world)...these are not real math activities.

The irony is, the MCAs are written according to the state standards, which are rumored to be moving away from this reform math and more to the middle...like SRA Real Math. So get that tutor company phone number handy, it's going to be another booming 7 years for them. Or choose to homeschool like I plan to do. Better yet, make a fuss with the school board, send them your stories and evidences you can find. Perhaps for probably the first time ever the pilot year for EM can be it's last year in a district.

I will never know if it would have made a difference to attend the school board meeting where this decision was accepted by the board. I felt is was more important to get my son to the doctor and on meds for possible pneumonia right away, and I could not do both that night. He is now well, but the state of math in our district is far from it.

The manufactured crisis in kindergarten readiness

The good news is that the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) evaluated a random sample of children entering kindergarten in the fall of 2006, and found that only 3-10% of this cohort had not acquired a skill, knowledge, or behavior in a selected "developmental domain."

The bad news is that the kindergarten readiness industry, led by the powerful Ready4K lobby, is still pushing its aggressive, "it takes the government to raise a child" takeover of parenting.

Ready4K's mantra is "Only 50% of Minnesota’s children are fully prepared for kindergarten." It is based on a glass-is-half-empty view of the 2002 counterpart to the aforementioned Minnesota School Readiness Study: Developmental Assessment at Kindergarten Entrance Fall 2006. If you count only the "Proficient" group, then yes, about half are in this group (in 2006, between 52% and 71% in the five domains studied), but if you count the "In Process" group, then you could also say that "between 90%-97% of Minnesota's children are fully prepared or almost fully prepared for kindergarten."

You won't find the following table on the Ready4K web site or in its TV advertising, even though it is the foundation for its entire legislative agenda. Look for yourself and see if you can find the kindergarten readiness crisis:

Domain	"Not Yet"	"In Progress"	"Proficient"
Physical Development	3%	26%	71%
The Arts	6%	36%	58%
Personal & Social Development	8%	35%	57%
Language & Literacy	10%	36%	54%
Mathematical Thinking	9%	39%	52%

Ready4K also doesn't show you this statement from the MDE study:

Because children develop and grow along a continuum with great variability, the goal of these studies is to assess children’s proficiency within and across these developmental domains and not establish whether or not children are ready for school with the use of a composite "ready" or "not ready" score. [Emphasis added.]

What you will find featured quite prominently by Ready4K is its legislative agenda, i.e., government funding wish list, which in its original form in 2007 totaled an even $300 million.

While state spending targeted to at-risk populations makes sense (for example, the $6 million signed into law this year for Governor Tim Pawlenty’s early childhood scholarship program for families of at-risk pre-kindergarteners), Baby Ed programs like universal preschool or all-day kindergarten aimed at all Minnesotans are at best an unnecessary expansion of the nanny state.

Pawently's education agenda preview

Our approach when it comes to early childhood will be to focus on kids who are at risk and disadvantaged. —Gov. Tim Pawlenty

Governor Tim Pawlenty gave a preview of his education agenda to Star Tribune columnist Lori Sturdevant in yesterday's Strib. Presumably, Pawlenty will give a more detailed overview in his upcoming State of the State address.

About the best way to improve education: "We'll have a robust set of offerings in education. It will certainly include high school redesign and reform.

"The data are pretty compelling. School performance on average chugs along pretty well in grade school and middle school, and then with the exception of the high performers, it tanks in high school. We're putting a lot of money into a four-year experience that is not producing much academic ROI. We have to find ways for children in the middle, and certainly those who are at risk, to be engaged, passionate, on task, and advancing well in high school. We'll have a significant proposal when it comes to that."

What happened to putting 70 percent of school funds in the classroom? "We are going to do 70 percent whether the Legislature passes it or not. We'll make sure the department [of education] makes sure there's a rigorous, uniform measurement of where the resources go, and make that available to the public in a user-friendly form."

The stakeholders to whom Scholar has spoken say that these "x% of funding to the classroom" proposals sound good, but it is largely an accounting gimmick: like when you go to the doctor's office, whether insurance pays for it depends on what code they assign to the procedure. A more meaningful reform in this area would be to scrap the UFARS accounting system for a more straightforward, transparent system. Paging Pat Anderson!!

And early education? "There's an endless number of things that are good ideas in education. You could construct a list of 75 things that would be really good to do. But it has to be prioritized, in the context of the resources that we have available.

"For example, all-day kindergarten. It's a nice idea, and something we are open to. But if you do it full-blown, it's $320 million a biennium. The data says it helps, but in an era of limited resources, doesn't it make more sense to dial in resources to disadvantaged kids? Our approach when it comes to early childhood will be to focus on kids who are at risk and disadvantaged."

Perhaps the state of Minnesota's slide into cradle-to-grave, nanny state socialism at least won't accelerate during the second Pawlenty administration (statewide smoking ban aside).