The Daily Report Card

--- Friday --- May 30, 1997 --- Vol. 7 --- No. 44 ---

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THE NATIONAL UPDATE ON AMERICA'S EDUCATION REFORM EFFORTS

============== QUOTE OF THE DAY ==============
"We want to make sure kids are prepared to meet those higher
standards. Nobody wants to see mass failure. That would be
greatly demoralizing for everyone."
Virginia Board of Education Vice President Lillian Tuttle, on
delaying implementation of the state's new standards. (#2) _______________________________________________________________
| (c) by the Education Policy Network, Inc. |
| 1255 22nd Street NW; Washington, D.C. 20010; 202/632-0952 |
| EPN, Inc. hereby authorizes further reproduction and |
| distribution with proper acknowledgement. |
| Publisher: Barbara A. Pape |
|_______________________________________________________________|

============== TABLE OF CONTENTS ==============

GOAL FOUR: TEACHER EDUCATION/PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
DISMISSING TEACHERS: It may become a bit easier. (#1)

STANDARD BEARERS
APPLYING THE BRAKES: One-year delay on standards in Va.? (#2)

CHARTING A NEW COURSE
EVERYTHING YOU'VE WANTED TO KNOW: Charter school report. (#3)
PATAKI'S PLAN: "Wide latitude" for charters. (#4)

BYTES AND PIECES
"COMPUTERS AND CLASSROOMS:" ETS report sheds light on tech.(#5)

DAILY REPORT CARD
SUMMER SCHEDULE

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only for June, Wednesday only for July. We will not publish
during August, and will return three-days-a-week in September.

===== GOAL FOUR: TEACHER EDUCATION/PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT =====

*1 DISMISSING TEACHERS: IT MAY BECOME A BIT EASIER
Politicians, including President Clinton, are on record
supporting changes in law to make it easier to fire incompetent
teachers (Glastris with Toch/U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, 6/2).
Fla. is the ray of hope for anti-tenure advocates.
According to the magazine, Fla. is on the verge of adopting
legislation that would overhaul teacher tenure laws. The
original bill would have allowed school boards to fire teachers
at the end of their contracts without explanation, writes the
magazine. Under this bill, school districts would have the same
"fire-at-will" powers enjoyed by most private-sector employers.
However, teacher unions applied enough pressure on key moderate
Republicans to "abandon that sweeping approach," reports U.S.
NEWS.
The new bill also does not change the "tangle of dismissal
procedures" that makes firing incompetent teachers so costly.
According to the magazine, the average cost in Fla. for firing a
teacher is $60,000, which explains why only .05% of Fla. teachers
last year were fired from their jobs.
However, the new bill would reduce from two years to 90 days
the time teachers have to improve their performance before they
can be fired, "the shortest period in the nation," notes the
magazine. Earlier in the article, U.S. NEWS describes the case
of an incompetent kindergarten teacher who stayed in the
classroom a year and a half after evaluators documented her poor
work while she participated in an "improvement plan."
Reducing "improvement" time is supported by Fla.'s American
Federation of Teachers affiliate teacher union. The magazine
points out that last month the National Education Association
adopted a "stepped-up role for teachers in policing their own
ranks."
U.S. NEWS also points out that critics of tenure concede
that unions are right to fear capricious firings without some
form of tenure. One way to overcome this obstacle is to focus on
making teacher evaluations more rigorous and more fair, according
to some educators and policymakers. The magazine cites Ky. as an
example. Under Ky.'s education reform laws, some of the state's
worst schools have been "turned around" due to more careful
evaluations of teachers and schools, coupled with a stronger
threat of dismissal for poorly performing teachers and
administrators.
The magazine concludes: "If the evaluation process is
thorough and fair enough, even the most intransigent unions will
have trouble defending bad teachers."

==== STANDARD BEARERS ====

*2 APPLYING THE BRAKES: ONE-YEAR DELAY ON STANDARDS IN VA.?
A consensus is emerging among Virginia Board of Education
members to delay implementation of the state's new standards
(Benning and Hsu, WASH POST, 5/29). Local educators around the
state, while embracing higher standards, had complained that the
board was moving too far too fast to improve student achievement.
"Change is always difficult, and turning a ship as large as
public education cannot be done overnight," explained board Vice
President Lillian Tuttle. "We want to make sure kids are
prepared to meet those higher standards. Nobody wants to see
mass failure. That would be greatly demoralizing for everyone."
State officials notes that the details of a delay have not
been worked out, but the paper reports that probably scores on
the new tests would not count until the spring of 1999, and the
first students required to pass the 11th-grade exams would be in
the class of 2002. So far, Gov. George Allen (R), whose plan to
raise requirements and implement testing are the cornerstone of
his education agenda, has not signaled his position on a delay.
Several state board members also are trying to add language
to the standards plan that would give local schools the
discretion to hire reading teachers in place of guidance
counselors, writes the paper. Current law requires that
elementary schools have guidance counselors. However,
conservative groups claim the counselors "infringe on parental
authority," according to the paper. Walter Barbee, president of
the Family Foundation: "There's no argument with career or
academic counselors. We're talking about developmental guidance
counselors who use elements of hypnotism, transcendental
meditation .. having kids talking to inanimate objects. That's
very dangerous ground."
The Northern Virginia Counselors Association is bracing for
the attack. According to the POST, they are encouraging each
schools' guidance counselors to collect at least 10 pro-
counseling letters to send to the state board. "We work together
with parents," said Carole Hoover, the group's president. "We
call parents on every single thing. ... I'm just not sure how
students would get along without us." Association officials also
denied that counselors practice therapy, including hypnotism.
A board vote on these issues is scheduled for 11 June.

===== CHARTING A NEW COURSE =====

*3 EVERYTHING YOU'VE WANTED TO KNOW: REPORT ON CHARTER SCHOOLS
The U.S. DoEd has embarked on a four-year study of charter
schools, releasing its first report yesterday. According to the
report, the charter school study will address research and policy
questions in three major areas: implementation, impact on
students and effect on public education.
Information will be obtained via phone surveys of all
charter schools, field visits, comparisons over time of student
assessment results between a sample of charter schools and
matched noncharter schools, and analyses across states of charter
laws, state agency rulings and procedures, court rulings and
education policy.
The first report, "A Study of Charter Schools," addresses
the implementation issue. However, the report notes that the
first step of "describing charter schools is not easy." From the
report: "General statements about charter schools must therefore
be drawn with care -- or substantial differences between charter
schools could be ignored an the comparison of charter schools
with other public schools could be misleading. ... Instead of
offering premature conclusions, this report seeks to portray
charter schools accurately and frame those research and policy
questions that a national study can -- and cannot -- address."
Chapters in the report cover the state role in the charter-
school movement, providing examples of ways that states approach
charter development," describe basic characteristicsof charters
that include school size, grade levels and student demographics
of currently operating charter schools, and a discussion of why
charter schools were founded and what barriers they encounter.
A caveat noted by the report: the data is preliminary and a
more complete picture will be sketched over time as charter
schools "evolve and stabilize."
Sandra Feldman, president of the American Federation of
Teachers, on the report: "The study, although preliminary, shows
that charter schools are not magic bullets. Good charter schools
need the same things that all public schools need to make a
difference, including adequate resources, a rigorous academic
curriculum, strict discipline policies, and accountablilty. ...
Merely setting people free to put together a school with few
rules won't get anyone any further down the road to improving
public education."
Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform:
"With a movement that is faster than a speeding bullet, it would
do the Department of Education well to step up its research
efforts and provide an accurate reflection of the work going on
among charter schools nationwide. Considering that since
January, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota and Texas have
all released demographic analyses demonstrating that their
charter schools well-serve a grater share of minorities, children
with special needs, and at-risk children than traditional public
schools, and have much higher levels of parental satisfaction.
These realities are not reflected completely in the Department's
first annual report."
Copies of the report, "A Study of Charter Schools: First-
Year Report" by the U.S.DoEd's Office of Educational Research and
Improvement, are available free-of-charge while supplies last by
calling the National Library of Education at 800/424-1616.

*4 PATAKI'S PLAN: "WIDE LATITUDE" FOR CHARTERS
N.Y. Gov. George Pataki (R) this week announced his charter-
school plan, which would provide "wide latitude" to create an
unlimited number of charter schools throughout the state (CENTER
FOR EDUCATION REFORM press release, 5/28). "If it becomes law as
it has been proposed, this bill would be the strongest in the
land," said Jeanne Allen, president of The Center for Education
Reform.
Under Pataki's plan, charters could be issued by the state
Board of Regents, any local board of education beyond New York
City, the New York City Chancellor, the state and city university
board of trustees, individual state and city universities and a
newly created state charter board. Typical of charter schools,
the governor's proposal would free charters from all regulations
that govern public schools except for rules dealing with health,
safety, discrimination and testing. Each school would receive
the average per pupil expenditure as the school district within
which the school resides, reports the release.
The CER reports that there is a "tremendous amount of grass
roots activity that has percolated in support of charters" in
N.Y. According to the release, three communities already boast
parent- and teacher-led charter groups, and "thousands of people
are represented by a bi-partisan committee of the Coalition for
Independent Public Charter Schools." The group was formed to
advocate for charter schools and it includes representatives from
The Empire Foundation, Mid-Hudson Advocates for Charter Schools,
the Center for Education Innovation and many more.
Visit The Center for Education's Web site at
http://www.edreform.com

===== BYTES AND PIECES =====

*5 "COMPUTERS AND CLASSROOMS:" ETS REPORT SHEDS LIGHT ON TECH
The nation's schools are widely diverse in their access to
educational technology, according to a new study by Educational
Testing Service. "Students in schools with the largest
percentage of poor and minority students have less access to most
types of classroom technology," said researcher Richard Coley of
ETS's Policy Information Center and co-author of the report
"Computers and Classrooms: The Status of Technology in U.S.
Schools."
According to the report, the current national student-to-
computer ratio is 10 to 1. Fla., Wy., Alaska., and N.D. have the
best ratio of students to computers, about 6 to 1. Mass., Miss.,
Del., and La. have the highest student-to-computer ratios,
ranging from 14 to 1 to 16 to 1. The U.S. DoEd recommends the
ratio be 5 to 1.
The report also found that most teachers have not had enough
training to use technology in their teaching. Only 15% of U.S.
teachers reported having at least nine hours of training in
education technology and 18 states do not even require technology
courses for teacher licensing.
Other findings: among 11th-graders, writing stories and
papers was the most frequently rated computer use at home and
school, playing games was the primary computer use by fourth- and
eighth-grade students; about half of the nation's 13- and 17-
year-olds had access to a computer to learn math; about 40% of
fourth-grade teachers used computers to teach reading, U.S.
history/social studies and geography; research "generally agrees
that drill-and-practice forms of computer-assisted instruction
are effective in producing achievement gains in students;" and
the cost of technology currently in our schools is about $3B, or
$70 per pupil, which represents about 1% of total education
spending.
From an ETS press release: "Computers and Classrooms"
points out the need for the development of software and
instructional resources that exploit the potential of technology
as a tool for teaching and learning. The challenge is to develop
products that extend learning opportunities beyond what can be
offered by traditional instructional approaches and that will
allow students to meet high standards of achievement."
Copies of "Computers and Classrooms" is available at $9.50 a
copy from the Policy Information Center; Mail Stop 04-R;
Educational Testing Service; Rosedale Road; Princeton, N.J.
08541-0001; e-mail: pic@ets.org.
Visit the ETS web site at: www.ets.org

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John Kurilecjmk@ofcn.org