Tag: EdNavigator

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Latest Edu-News

The edTPA is “a high-stakes assessment that’s expensive, discriminates against people of color, is vulnerable to cheating, and forces schools to teach to the test.” That’s Mike Antonucci summarizing this article by Madeline Will about new research on edTPA… Oh, and the edTPA is also not a great predictor of teacher effectiveness. But other than that…

Justin Trinidad interviews Felicia Butts, the Director of Teacher Residencies at Chicago Public Schools, about their bilingual teacher residency program.

When a traditional school district is losing the competition for students to… other traditional school districts. It’s weird how the word “charter” doesn’t appear in the piece at all!

“whether they’re GreatSchools’ ratings, state ratings, or anything else, let’s make them as accurate and nuanced as possible—but let’s also focus on ensuring they are truly useful and accessible to all families.” That’s David Keeling from EdNavigator about how the families they work with interact with school ratings.

Here’s your regular reminder that colleges determine what “college-ready” means.

A new study finds that housing vouchers boosted math and reading scores in New York City.

Billions of dollars are at stake. There will be only one champion. I’m talking, of course, about the FAFSA Fast Break challenge.

After multiple pauses, Congress has finally agreed to kill the “Cadillac Tax” on high-cost health care plans. This was one of the key funding provisions of the original Affordable Care Act. As I noted back in July, the Cadillac Tax was meant to address a particularly bad incentive baked into our tax policies:

I’d rather Americans didn’t have our health care benefits tied to our employers at all, but we’ve created a particularly weird incentive by not taxing employer spending on health care. That creates a system where the people using health care have little reason to help control health care costs. And, in the long run, employers spend more and more on benefits at the expense of salaries and wages. That’s bad for efficiency, bad for budgets, and, ultimately, bad for workers.

–Guest post by Chad Aldeman 

 

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Latest Edu-Reads

I missed it earlier, but this paper by E. Jason Baron is an important addition to the school funding debate. In Wisconsin, districts have to hold separate bond referenda if they want to raise operational spending (for things like instruction and supports) or capital spending (for school facilities). This allowed Baron to conclude that bond referenda focused on operational spending led to higher teacher pay and higher retention rates, not to mention increases in test scores and postsecondary enrollment. In contrast, however, the referenda focused on facilities were unrelated to changes in student outcomes. As I warned when the latest NAEP results came out, not all school spending is equal. And just because we’re spending more money on education in general, that doesn’t mean it’s going toward the things that actually produce gains for students.

Here’s a conversation between Bonnie O’Keefe, Brandon Lewis, and Jenn Schiess on school performance frameworks and the Chalkbeat story on GreatSchools’ ratings.

A report from Morgan Polikoff and Jennifer Dean finds that the materials on lesson-sharing websites Teachers Pay Teachers, ReadThinkWrite, and Share My Lesson are often weak and pitched below grade-level of the targeted students.

The WSJ reports on an open secret in the 403(b) world: Teachers are being targeted by predatory financial companies, and their school district employers are at best willing collaborators in these schemes.

Can we improve the standardized testing process by providing better, more tailored information to parents and teachers? EdNavigator tried a cool experiment of mailing “packets” of information (plus McDonald’s gift cards!) to high-performing Louisiana students. Read about their results here.

College graduation rates rose 6.6 percentage points from the entering class of 2006 to entrants in 2013, according to new data from the National Student Clearinghouse.

Speaking of boosting college completions, check out this story from Erica Bruenlin at the Colorado Sun. About 35 percent of Colorado’s public high school juniors and seniors were enrolled in college-level courses in 2017-18, up from 19 percent in 2012. Moreover, about 2,700 high school students completed some form of postsecondary credential in 2018, up 37 percent from the year prior.

–Guest post by Chad Aldeman

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Latest Edu-Reads

Max Marchitello finds that pension spending in Maryland is regressive. Accounting for pension spending amplifies the total spending gap between high- and low-poverty school districts by 34 percent.

“Chicago has the most pension debt of any major U.S. city, a shrinking population and an $838 million budget gap—and the city’s teachers have been striking since Thursday.” That sentence pretty well sums up this WSJ article on the many challenges facing Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

Here’s a longer deep dive into the structural issues and the tough trade-offs pensions are forcing on state and local budgets.

In her 2003 book, Elizabeth Warren proposed an open enrollment system for schools. After reading her recent education platform, Andrew Ujifusa is asking, “why didn’t Warren propose open enrollment for public schools in her platform? Does she no longer support such a system? If not, why?”

Why do we assign new teachers to the hardest jobs? Although they can’t answer that question, a new study by Paul Bruno, Sarah Rabovsky, and Katharine Strunk documents the extent of the problem.

Speaking of new teachers, this is a great new ECS resource on what states are doing to support teacher recruitment and retention.

This is a cool piece from EdNavigator on how they think about building a language-inclusive culture and how it relates to their work with parents.

Mike Goldstein, the founder of Match Education in Boston (and a frequent Eduwonk commenter!), has a great entry in Fordham’s Wonkathon about why struggling students remain below grade level, and how to help them.

And here’s an update on the school that LeBron James supported in Akron.

–Guest post by Chad Aldeman  

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Bellwether has a cool new micro-site on rural charter schools. It profiles four successful rural charter schools that are outperforming state and local averages while serving students who are economically diverse. Check out RuralCharterSchools.org and then read Kelly Robson on what drives their success.

These are some impressive growth trends in AP Computer Science test-taking among females and underrepresented minorities.

EdNavigator reminds us that school closures can be disruptive, but there are also things schools and districts can do to make that transition as successful as possible. With supports in place in New Orleans, “93 percent of students from closing schools with D-F letter grades landed in a new school that was at least one letter grade better, and 66 percent gained seats in a school two letter grades better.”

The Washington Post has a big new piece out today about how our schools are diversifying. Yes, diversifying, you read that correctly. I think this runs counter to the conventional narrative, but they find that, “In 2017, 10.8 million children attended highly integrated public schools, up from 5.9 million in 1995, an 83 percent increase that stems largely from rising diversity outside metropolitan areas.” This over a period when total student enrollment rose just 6 percent. The WaPo also created a handy tool to look up your district.

This new study on Chicago’s selective high schools may surprise some people, particularly the finding that winning a spot at a selective high school may harm disadvantaged students, because it means those students won’t go to a charter school run by the Noble network. The “control” group attending the open-enrollment Noble charters outperformed the “treatment” of going to the selective exam schools.

The latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) data from the BLS are out. The topline finding is that job openings and quit rates are rising across the entire American economy. This is true for education as well, but keep in mind that public K-12 education consistently has lower turnover rates than other sectors in our economy. I’ve circled and added an arrow to the light blue line in the BLS graph comparing industries over time (click on the image to see it larger): 

Tucked into this Washington Post piece on the changing demographics of new hires is an interesting stat on apprenticeships: “Companies and labor unions have also stepped up their outreach to minorities and have their own training programs. Labor Department figures show employers started 3,229 new apprenticeship programs last year — almost double the rate in 2016. Part of the jump may be due to companies feeling the need to grow talent from within and the Trump administration’s push to formally register apprenticeship programs.”

Sue Dynarski argues that taking out a student loan is better than dropping out of college. She writes, “Fully half of community colleges never offer loans…apparently because the schools are concerned that students will get themselves into financial trouble…. But the new evidence strongly suggests that such policies are harming students. Loans provide critical funds for paying tuition, meeting living expenses and buying school supplies. Discouraging students from taking out loans — without providing financial alternatives — harms their ability to progress through college.”

Don’t miss Kris Amundson on how Virginia can support first-generation students applying to college.

A randomized control trial of early college high schools found strong results, according to a new AIR study. Participating students had college completion rates about 12 percent points higher than the control group and, critically, they also earned those credentials earlier, giving participants a headstart into the workforce.

Who knew there was an actual scientific why reason school buses are yellow?

Agnes Callard writes a defense of playing the devil’s advocate… and when and how to do it well.

–Guest post by Chad Aldeman