Board Bulletin - Educational Observations, Insights and Commentary for State Policymakers

The Topeka Capital-Journal editorial board thinks state mandated teacher background checks should be extended to student teachers.

Students planning careers in education today spend a lot of hours in the classroom before graduating from a university and receiving a teaching license. Their opportunity to do harm is just as real as that of a full-time teacher or other school employee, and their fitness for the job should be scrutinized just as closely before access to students is granted.

Washington, DC schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee has gone ahead and unilaterally imposed a new teacher accountability program that will allow her to fire teachers after a 90 day performance review.

Rhee had been negotiating with the union to give her that contractual authority in exchange for a new compensation plan that would have given effective teachers salaries of more than $100,000. No word on where the pay part of the plan stands now that the she has has stopped bargaining with the union on the dismissal part of the quid pro quo.

The Utah State Board of Education is collecting input on a statewide teacher merit pay plan.

The District of Columbia State Board of Education’s forward thinking reforms to teacher licensure are getting lost in the local chancellor’s fight with the teacher’s union over the authority to fire teachers at will and merit pay.

It is the first day of school in the Washington, DC suburbs, always a poignant milestone - especially for younger children. Here’s a letter that one of my child’s teachers gave to us to mark this special day, and which was accompanied by a cotton ball - of all things.

Dear Parents,

Thank you for entrusting your child to us. We promise to do our best everyday to be your child’s companion in learning. So sit down, relax, and have a cup of tea. Hold the cotton ball in your hand to remind you of the gentle spirit of your child. We know this will be a wonderful year as we learn and grow together.

Sincerely,

Mrs. P & Mrs. S.

All new teachers in Pennsylvania will have to have some training in special education as part of the Pennsylvania State Board of Education’s ongoing efforts to educate students with disabilities in the “least restrictive environment” (LRE)… in other words, mainstream classrooms.

Simple math problems undergird the looming teacher shortage in Kansas, says U. of Kansas Education Dean Rick Ginsberg.

The relevant numbers:

20 percent of new teaching hires in the U.S., often overwhelmed and underpaid, leave the classroom within two years.

Ginsberg said the real shortage starts in the math and science classrooms. The average starting annual salary for a teacher in Kansas is about $29,202, while the average salary for a chemical engineer in Kansas is around $80,000…

“There’s something like 75,000 licensed teachers in the state of Kansas,” Ginsberg said. “We only have around 33,000 actually teaching. That should tell you something.”

It was a couple of months ago that Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley signed a law that guaranteed disabled student-athletes the right to play sports alongside their able-bodied peers. The governor and students had a celebration of the law’s enactment the other day, and various adaptive events were played by disabled and able-bodied students alike.

While the law also has a proviso for inclusion except for when participation endangers students, it raises more lingering, practical issues for schools, and, maybe more importantly, for students. In an Annapolis Capitol article, a disabled student said he does not want any special treatment when they play a sport, but are concerned about equity among athletes, which raises some interesting questions.

At what point does an able-bodied athlete stop short in his/her aggression out of concern for a disabled competitor? Anyone who saw “Murderball” or followed the attempt by South African amputee Oscar Pistorius to make his country’s Olympic track team also knows that even though disabled athletes have some physical limitations, their desired to compete is every bit as intense as those of other athletes. So, then, how are these athletes supposed to react when an able-bodied competitor backs off out of concern?

The law does not address these issues, nor does it account for the rules of sport or adaptations schools and districts will have to make.

Ed reform darling Wendy Kopp was interviewed on the Charlie Rose show last week. Interestingly, there are lots of online references to her interview, but not so many links or mention of the CBS News investigative report about about Teach for America’s looming accounting scandal.

The Department of Education Inspector General examined a small slice of the group’s federal funding. What they found was shocking.

In all, Teach for America failed to account for half the money audited.

Time and time again the audit said there were no basic records or receipts: None for a $123,878 training expense; none for a $342,428 bill…

There was no agenda; no description of meals; no list of attendees…

They should have kept records on a tab for more than a quarter million dollars for food and lodging ($277,262) and $26,812 for teacher certification - but didn’t. Auditors say there was no documentation that any teachers actually attended and completed the class, or that there even was a class.

Of course, maybe the real scandal is the organization’s $75 million operating budget - to train 5,000 teachers.

The Utah State Board of Education voted 10-1 to approve performance-pay plans submitted by 87 local school districts.

Jean Lamar is the new “Macy’s/Florida Department of Education” teacher of the year, making her eligible to become the ING/National Teacher of the Year.

If Newt and Nancy and Al and Pat can agree on climate change, maybe it isn’t so surprising that former conservative House Speaker Newt Gingrich and activist leader Rev. Al Sharpton can get together to focus on changing public education. The unusual union was made orchestrated by Sharpton and NYC schools Chancellor Joel Klein, as detailed in this Rocky Mountain News article.

The number of alternatively certified teachers in Texas has doubled in the past five years and now make up 18.5% of all teachers.

A proposal in Texas to increase the standards for alternative certification teachers is running into opposition from for-profit alt. cert companies that don’t want to “limit their customer base.” Who would have thought increasing a prospective teacher’s GPA requirement to 2.5 and supervised student teaching would be so controversial?

Don’t you have to assume that the Maryland Teacher of the Year gets a free car?

George Leonard, principal of the Bedford Academy High School in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, profiled in this New York Times article, takes a no excuses approach to making sure every student succeeds. Even though 63% of the students qualify for free lunch, a majority are being raised by a single mother and another significant number are being raised by someone other than a parent, close to 95% of students graduate, and virtually every one of those goes on to college.

Mr. Leonard’s model obviously isn’t replicable everywhere, but it suggests that there is some formula that can take a school out of its history of academic failure: passionate leadership, parents who respect that, and long hours all around.

“I tell parents at orientation, just stay out of my way and let me create the scholar, because you’re usually the problem,” he said. “I’ll see you at graduation.”

When they do commit, he said, he can make it happen, and make his point — that every child has inherent teachability. He wants fellow educators to see he’s had remarkable success even though “this man is taking children who are not considered the elite,” he said. “He’s just taking humans.”

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At the University of Central Florida’s College of Education, future teachers hone their skills by teaching five computer-generated students inhabiting a high-tech virtual classroom. Using simulation technology developed for military training, teacher candidates able able to practice classroom management skills before they even step foot into a physical classroom.

Each virtual student is programmed with distinctive personalities. So they can choose to answer math questions posed by the teacher. They also can make snarky comments and funny noises and bang on their desks, behavior that can be ramped up to shouting level at the touch of a control pad operated by professors observing the student teacher. The teacher’s job is to wring calm from chaos while trying to teach math.

Read more and watch a video demonstration here.