Major Domo: This week, the Governor signed the WaKids bill. SB 5427 will support school readiness for roughly 70,000 kids. This glimmer of light in an otherwise dark and stormy session went almost unnoticed by the media. Google it. I dare you.
The House Ways and Means Committee passed HB2078 out of committee last week. The bill sponsored by Laurie Jinkins closes tax loopholes for certain banks and dedicates the funds to k-3. Prospects on a floor vote in the House look good, but the Senate is less clear. Given the dearth of new funding ideas and the severe cuts to education this one deserves to move forward for consideration. The bill could put as much as $115 million back into schools.
In case you missed it, Zombies flash mobbed the capitol this week. Some said they were looking for signs of life, others were pretty sure they were protesting the budget. Whatever it was, it wasn’t Thriller.
The House Education Committee voted to delay the science exam requirement for graduation until the class of 2017. HB 1410 eliminates the end of course exam for science, opting instead to require a comprehensive science exam – but pushes the graduation requirements back until 2017. You know to things that don’t get measured, right? They don’t get done.
With the legislature debating the budget, it’s unclear where the teacher layoff issue will go from here. Nonetheless, the Seattle Times offers its support for those decisions to be based on effectiveness – not seniority.
Sadly, our favorite high school, Bridgeport, did not win the Race to the Top Commencement Challenge. Booker T. Washington High School won the honor of having the President speak at their graduation ceremonies. Bridgeport will get Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis. Congratulations to Bridgeport on all they accomplished along the way to get to this point – 100% high school graduation and 100% college acceptance. Great work!
Anywhere but Here: Meanwhile in Illinois, the legislature has passed a sweeping reform bill that ties teacher tenure and layoff decisions to effectiveness, gives the mayor the right to extend the school day and raises the threshold for teachers to strike from a vote of 51% to 75%. Like Washington, both Illinois legislative chambers are controlled by democrats.
The Houston Independent School District is adopting changes to its teacher evaluation system. Under the plan, teachers will be evaluated on multiple measures of student growth, increased principal observations and 20 other factors related to teachers’ professionalism and effectiveness.
Speaking of teacher evaluations, the Brookings Institute reminds us that the responsibility to design and implement new evaluations – driven by policy makers – falls to the school districts. Where, wait for it…. Expertise on new designs is “variable.” Ideas are one thing. Implementation is another. Change is needed, no doubt, but done poorly, reform gets set back about 15 years.
Austin schools are investing in extra time and mentoring as lynchpins in their turnaround strategies. Modeling changes after strategies used by KIPP schools, some middle and high schools are moving to extended year, longer days and intensive counseling for kids in ”transition” years (3rd, sixth and 9th grades). What does Texas have that we don’t have? Well, it’s not money.
In their report, “The Rise of K-12 Blended Learning” writers Michael Horn and Heather Staker admonish policy makers that they ignore on-line learning at their (and students’) peril. “What was originally a distance learning phenomenon no longer is. Most of the growth is occurring in blended-learning environments, in which students learn online in an adult-supervised environment at least part of the time. As this happens, online learning has the potential to transform America’s education system by serving as the backbone of a system that offers more personalized learning approaches for all students”
To learn more about blended learning, be sure to RSVP for our next Voices from the Revolution Speaker Series event; Innovations in Learning: Technology in (and out of) the Classroom.
That’s it for this soggy Sunday edition. Have a great week.
Chris,
I’m just as disappointed that HB 1410 which passed out of the House Education Committee delays the Science graduation requirement until 2017; however, it did not eliminate the End of Course Assessment. The attempt to eliminate the Science End of Course assessment was done by an amendment to HB 1443 which is now dead.
HB 1410 clearly states that the science assessment will be the Biology End of Course assessment. HB 1410 even goes so far as to forbid SPI to create other Science End of Course assessments that could be used for graduation except in the case of Common Core.
Rep Dammeier has an amendment that would move the graduation requirement to 2015. I hope he keeps trying to get this amendment passed and I hope LEV will also support it.
Thanks,
Anne Moore