SC Montessori Programs: Where's the Beef?

Maria Montessori, a pioneer in childhood education, took children from the Italian equivalent of housing projects and showed that they were educable. Since the recognition of her success early in the twentieth century, her methods have spread in various incarnations around the world.

My own experience with "real" (not American) Montessori was my child's enrollment in a preschool that mixed children from 3 to 5 years old with highly-educated, wealthy parents in a private school with small classes. It was a good experience for my child, although I'm not sure that a more traditional atmosphere wouldn't have been the same.

Now the SC State Department of Education is touting Montessori programs as one of the ways to improve graduation rates. According to Monday's Post and Courier, the state's coordinator of Montessori education, Ginny Riga said, "Montessori isn't for everyone. Some students need more structure or learn better through lectures, but she contends that's a small percentage. 'There's so much emphasis on the love of learning and respect of learning, instead of push, push, push for skill and drill.'" Lectures? Please, stop the straw-man arguments.

You know, until she made that last crack about "push, push, push for skill and drill" as being antithetical to "the love of learning and respect of learning," I was ready to go along with Riga. Now I want the hard statistics on South Carolina's 33 Montessori schools, adjusted, of course, for the usual socio-economic factors.

According to the article, SC's Montessori schools have been around since the mid-1990s. That's long enough to gather preliminary statistics on whether they have produced more engaged and more prepared students. Has anyone been charged with finding out? And, by the way, how many of these programs go past the sixth grade? That might have some bearing on whether graduation rates would be improved.

As they say, "Where's the beef?"

Budget Storm?: CCSD Transparency Needed

A "Perfect Storm" of a budget process this year for the Charleston County School District, at least according to its superintendent? How about a Perfect Opportunity?

In coming weeks we will begin to hear about what must be cut from CCSD's operating budget. No one will like it. Superintendent McGinley has already prepared the way with her budget "forums" in various parts of the district.

Needless to say, this process has been long on promising an "excellent" education for every child in the district, and short on details of how this miracle will be accomplished next year for the first time ever! The video of McGinley and the Power Point presentation on the CCSD website have little detail beyond stating that we will have less to spend and more bills to pay in 2009. These public "forums" appear to have been designed to be as nonspecific as possible while meeting the minimum requirements for public hearings. Why hasn't the School Board pointed out to McGinley how misleading and ultimately undermining of public confidence such a process is?

No one in the community will trust the budget process until CCSD's expenditures are transparent. Here is CCSD's opportunity to begin regaining trust by starting, as a reader has suggested, with a truly independent forensic audit of the entire financial operation. Not only does the District have the need, it's the perfect time with a new Chief Financial Officer just come on board.

Several years ago the last one, limited just to cell-phone usage, saved about a million dollars in the first year by plugging the holes in the system allowing expensive and duplicate contracts while being unable to prevent abuse of the equipment by some CCSD employees.

Here's the opportunity to take the same approach with the bus system, food services, concessions, facilities management, copy equipment, etc. CCSD could save many times annually what it recovered on the cell-phone system.

A good forensic auditor wouldn't cost CCSD a dime. The auditor's work can be paid for by a reasonable and relatively small percentage of whatever money it actually recovers for CCSD and whatever is documented as saving the district in the first year after it identifies measurable waste and how to stop it.

Okay, so that won't solve this year's problems. It's a start.

SC Legislature: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

Do I often agree with the editorial staff of the P & C? What do you think? However, Thursday's editorial, A Way to Fund School Buses, hit a nerve.

Either the state legislature wants to update the ancient buses used statewide, or it doesn't. I bet if we try we can come up with a long list of expenditures in the new budget that should have much lower priority than protecting public school children with safe buses. Let's face it, due to the idiotic changes in funding of school operating costs and their inevitable downturn in revenue (if not this time, some time!), school districts will be focusing on keeping the lights on, not replacing buses.

If using the politicians' slush fund is the way to go, as the editorial suggests, so be it. If not, find the money somewhere else--maybe in that inflated matching of contributions to pension funds for state legislators.

Stop Stupid Testing

A series in Slate that is worth reading begins with an analysis of what needs to be fixed in education. Check out the article at Fixing It: Education by Jim Ryan.

Example: Don't stop testing; stop stupid testing. Good idea.

School Reform? Off with Their Heads

Interested in ways to shake up a school system that is failing? Wondering what recommendations for firing of administrators and teachers from failing schools in CCSD McGinley is contemplating?

You may wish to take a gander at another education blog's take on what's happening in Chicago. See Right on the Left Coast's Firing Teachers At Underperforming Schools
for an interesting discussion of accountability and musical chairs in a school system with problems.

Finally, Some Respect: Misleading Headline

"States Fight Teacher Abuse" announced the headline above the fold in Monday's P & C.

Most teachers reading that headline must have had the same reaction as my cohorts and I: thank goodness, someone has finally realized how abused many teachers are in this country and is prepared to address the verbal and physical abuse that makes the lives of some dedicated teachers miserable and causes many to leave the profession entirely.

How silly of us! It was about strengthening punishments for teacher-student sexual misconduct. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

SC Schools Are Second in Something

I'm not sure the SC Department of Education should be proud of this latest statistic. Doesn't it suggest that South Carolina's public school students are among the poorest in the nation?

South Carolina school breakfast participation rates rank second in the nation, state’s efforts commended

Participation by South Carolina students in the school breakfast program last year was 101 percent, and the ratio of serving free and reduced price students at lunch and breakfast was the second highest in the nation, according to a report by the Food Research and Action Center. The School Breakfast Scorecard 2007 gives data for all states and highlights successful strategies.

The rest of the press release can be found on the SC Department of Education website.

Idiocy of the Day: Riley to Head League's Youth Council

According to Thursday's P & C,

"The National League of Cities has announced that Charleston Mayor Joe Riley has been appointed to chair the league's 2008 Council on Youth, Education, and Families.

"The council works to assist municipal leaders in identifying and developing effective programs for strengthening families and improving outcomes for the children and youth.

Riley should really be helpful regarding programs to strengthen education. Look what's happened to the penninsula schools during his tenure.

Top 10 Education Problems: Sound Familiar?

Washington Post Education writer Jay Mathews was interviewed in Friday's paper. He was asked, "What do you see as the top ten concerns in education?"

Here is his response:

1. Low standards and expectations in low-income schools.
2. Very inadequate teacher training in our education schools.
3. Failure to challenge average students in nearly all high schools with AP and IB courses.
4. Corrupt and change-adverse bureaucracies in big city districts.
5. A tendency to judge schools by how many low income kids they have, the more there are the worse the school in the public mind.
6. A widespread feeling on the part of teachers, because of their inherent humanity, that it is wrong to put a child in a challenging situation where they may fail, when that risk of failure is just what they need to learn and grow.
7. The widespread belief among middle class parents that their child must get into a well known college or they won't be as successful in life.
8. A failure to realize that inner city and rural schools need to give students more time to learn, and should have longer school days and school years.
9. A failure to realize that the best schools--like the KIPP charter schools in the inner cities---are small and run by well-recruited and trained principals who have the power to hire all their teachers, and quickly fire the ones that do not work out.
10. The resistance to the expansion of charter schools in most school district offices.

Interesting list, isn't it?

Mission Statements Galore

A student-led revolt recently overhauled the mission statement of St. John's High School because it used the word "adequately" to describe the school's goals in preparing students for life. "Adequately," among other changes, has become "exceptionally." Kudos to students Shekinah Robinson, Rodney Burnell, and Meaghan Maxwell for having more common sense than the previous School Improvement Committee that originated that wording.

I'm guessing that mission statements came into common use in schools in the 1980s. Certainly prior to that decade everyone knew what the "mission" of a school was--education. Then the language of business crept in. Now education is a commodity or service in the same way as toothpaste or clothing. The school community no longer has teachers, students, parents, and administrators. It is made up of "stakeholders," as though it were some kind of joint stock company.

At St. John's "[the old] mission statement posters hung in every classroom, and officials read it aloud daily to students." Presumably the new posters will be hung soon. Maybe they will inspire, but maybe reading "it aloud daily" will also be mind-numbing.

Certainly the mission statement for C.E. Williams [published in the P & C]should be read aloud every day as punishment until someone gets the idea that it is made up up VERBIAGE:

"The mission of CE Williams Middle School for Creative and Scientific Arts is to create a safe and nurturing learning environment and to provide students with an effective, relevant, and meaningful program of instruction integrating the creative arts and sciences. Within this environment, we believe that students can learn when provided with diverse and enriched opportunities and resources. We accept fully the responsibility to maximize these opportunities for academic achievement for students while embracing cultural identities and ethnicities. The CE Williams community will thereby prepare our students for both academic and personal success in global society. " Yikes!

Perhaps you detect that I think time might be better spent on improving the education itself--too many captive hours spent building mind-numbing mission statements, I'm afraid.

On the other hand, for fun, try the mission statement generator on the Dilbert Comic Strip Archive. Here's a sample: "It's our responsibility to professionally restore quality intellectual capital as well as to competently simplify long-term high-impact infrastructures because that is what the customer expects ."

Now you can try it too. http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/games/career/bin/ms.cgi

Gadsden Green's Heroes

Mention Gadsden Green to Charlestonians and you are likely to hear complaints about the latest shooting or drug-deal--not about positive developments in this city-owned public housing complex. In fact, this week's local TV filmed mothers of six teens arrested for armed robbery complaining that their families should not be forced out of the complex because the crimes were caused by "peer pressure."

TV 5 News also quoted James Heyward, of the Charleston Housing Authority, as saying "The parents need to be held accountable for their children where they are and what they're doing. . . .We as the Housing Authority in accordance with state and local laws, have a right to remove families who are involved in criminal activity on or away from the property."

Amen to that, and thank you, Mr. Heyward! Gadsden Green has its heroes too.

In fact, recently the P & C focused on the successes of the Charleston Development Academy Charter School and its principal, Cecelia Rogers:

• "founded in 2003 to serve economically and socially disadvantaged children who live in Gadsden Green, a city of Charleston Housing Authority project, and the surrounding area.
• About 75 percent of the 105 students live in that area, and many others are the children of professionals who work downtown.
• The school, in a retrofitted building at Gadsden Green, grew out of a tutoring project at Ebenezer [AME] that was designed to help parents learn to teach their children.
• It developed into a charter school, which is run by a governance board of parents, teachers and community leaders."
• Keith Waring, who is on the governance board, says that its principal, Cecelia Rogers 'has taken the vision, to raise the comprehension levels of the children and make sure they test above the Adequate Yearly Progress level under the federal No Child Left Behind initiative, and is succeeding,' he says.
• 'She's doing what you're not supposed to be able to do: to go into Gadsden Green and turn those children into exceptional students.'"

"Professionals that work downtown" are sending their children to a charter school located in Gadsden Green? Now THAT is news! And this school is meeting AYP while other downtown elementary schools are sinking? GOOD news! Funny, I haven't heard any complaints from the CCSD Board of Trustees about THIS charter school's draining students away from CCSD oversight.

I hope that others in District 20 are taking notes on how Ebenezer AME, Rogers, and the community have succeeded with this school. Visiting the school's website, I was struck by the following statement: " CDA incorporates, The Charleston Plan of Excellence, The Coherent Curriculum and The Core Knowledge Curriculum [italics mine] as the foundation teaching tools."

E.D. Hirsch, Jr.'s cultural literacy ideas have been controversial in educational circles for 20 years. I've always thought Hirsch makes sense, but I'm not an elementary school teacher. I do know that in San Antonio, Texas, several public elementary schools adopted this curriculum and met with success. Do any other elementary schools in CCSD use it?

You can check the curriculum out at http://www.coreknowledge.org/CK/index.htm .

The Anti-Homework Campaign Nonsense

Japanese parents are in revolt because their children get too much homework. Oh, yes. And in cities across China, too. Same goes for India, especially in the poorest suburbs.

Believe that? Of course not. Only affluent American parents would raise such a fuss. Actually, the "homework wars" debate, which recently hit the consciousness of the P & C [see "Homework: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" in last Tuesday's Family Life section], has enjoyed several years on the radar screens of the Junior League and in neighborhoods of half-a-million-dollar and more households.

The Elizabeth Moffley quoted in former CCSD board member Fran Hawk's article receives credibility for her "anti-homework bullets" from identification as having run for state superintendent of education in 2006. Never mind that she lost the Republican primary (with a whopping 4.6% of the vote) and promptly endorsed Democrat Jim Rex, nor that various news sources can't decide how to spell her last name (Moffly?) or that, at least in 2006, two of her four children were in private schools. Her "arsenal" reads like the top 10 list of a late-night talk show host:

1. Parents are not qualified or certified get judged for monitoring their children's homework; never been true
2. Family values are compromised because children are too busy with homework to spend time with their families; or on other scheduled activities like football or soccer practice
3. Homework is not in the school's jurisdiction because it's assigned for after-school hours; please!
4. The schools that are charged with teaching democracy are acting as dictators. ah, yes, the democratic classroom!
5. Children have a right to their childhoods and should be allowed time to let their minds wander. or watch television or play mindless video games
6. As a compromise, Moffley suggests that homework be assigned as extra credit, with no penalty for the students who choose to ignore it. gee, I can think of penalties assigned by the real world

I don't know about you, but my favorite from the list is #5; or, maybe it should be #6--then with all that extra credit the child could pass on to the next grade.

Jay Mathews, a Washington Post staff writer, has researched the facts. Scholarly research from the University of Michigan "says the weekday average for 15- to 17-year-olds went from 33 minutes in 1981 to 50 minutes in 2003. Those teens, crushed by such punishing assignments, were recovering their sense of self and their need for play by spending on average two-and-a-half hours a weekday watching television or doing non-study-related computer activities [italics mine]." More likely in Moffley's neighborhood, playing video games or working after-school jobs to pay the insurance on their late-model cars. In a comparable report, the weekday average for grades 1 to 3 is 22 minutes, or as Mathews puts it, "less time than it takes to watch one episode of SpongeBob SquarePants."

Yes, students who take four or five AP classes may spend hours into the night on homework--or maybe not, depending on the student's ability and concentration. Kindergarten students can benefit by practicing their handwriting, and drill on multiplication facts can't be all bad for a third grader.

If a parent really believes that his or her child's homework load is problematic, that parent needs to sit down with the teacher or teachers involved to get to the bottom of the problem, not grouse with the neighbors nor spend time reading about the "homework debate."

The State of Education? Eloi Are Coming!

Food for thought from Intercepts of October 29 [see sidebar for link]:

"Dumber Than Dirt" and the Phenomenon of "The Guy." You don't see too many things go viral in the education corner of the blogosphere, but I'm surprised that last week's column from Mark Morford of the San Francisco Chronicle hasn't made a national splash.

The headline and subhead alone should warrant some attention: "American kids, dumber than dirt" and "Warning: The next generation might just be the biggest pile of idiots in U.S. history." But other than Northern California edu-bloggers Buckhorn Road and Right on the Left Coast, it doesn't seem to have caught on elsewhere, despite its status as the Chronicle's most e-mailed article and an incredible 517 reader comments, at last count.

It's hard to tell if Morford's article is a manifesto, a polemic, an
overreaction or a publicity stunt, but he cites the experiences of an Oakland high school teacher of his acquaintance. Here's a taste:

"But most of all, he simply observes his students, year to year,
noting all the obvious evidence of teens' decreasing abilities when confronted with even the most basic intellectual tasks, from understanding simple history to working through moderately complex ideas to even (in a couple recent examples that particularly distressed him) being able to define the words 'agriculture,' or even 'democracy.' Not a single student could do it.

"It gets worse. My friend cites the fact that, of the 6,000 high school
students he estimates he's taught over the span of his career, only a small fraction now make it to his grade with a functioning understanding of written English. They do not know how to form a sentence. They cannot write an intelligible paragraph. Recently,
after giving an assignment that required drawing lines, he realized that not a single student actually knew how to use a ruler."

Morford worries that the world's problems pale in comparison to that
of "a populace far too ignorant to know how to properly manage any of it, much less change it all for the better."

I, for one, think Morford is overstating the problem, mostly because he is extrapolating from the Oakland school system, which is the national poster child for education dysfunction. But he touches on something I think is very relevant. We are not a society of the haves and have nots, but one of the "knows" and "know nots."

Everyone has a horror story of clerks who can't make change, job applicants who can't fill out a form, and employees of all sorts who can't follow directions. But a new aspect of American life is even more troubling. I call it the phenomenon of The Guy.

The Guy doesn't have to be male. I only use it as shorthand for a phrase we use whenever we encounter people who are clearly out of their intellectual depth. When your friends complain about spending an hour on the phone with a dense tech support operator, or a bureaucrat with a public agency, or an airline ticket agent, you are likely to tell them, "You didn't talk to The Guy."

The Guy is one of the few people (maybe the only one) in any specified location who can solve problems that aren't in the technical manual, the agency guideline, or the computer instructions. He or she may or may not be the manager. It's unrelated. The Guy quickly corrects your double-billing, replaces a washer instead of tearing out your bathroom sink, prescribes the perfect medication, or immediately gets you a new desk after your principal says it will take three months. You all know The Guy, even though it's getting harder and harder to find him or her.

The gap between The Guy and everyone else is growing. Morford blames it on lots of things. Kids lack intellectual acumen. They're lazy slackers. They're overprotected and wussified. They're overexposed to and overstimulated by television, video games and the Internet. And yes, he even blames standardized tests.

At the same time, he admits, there are many, many brilliant young minds out there. Were they lucky? Private-schooled? Affluent? (I don't think so. Affluent schools aren't immune.)

No. They're self-motivated. They're The Guy. They learn even if the school is bad. They learn even if their teachers are bad. They learn even if their textbooks are out-of-date. They are increasingly becoming the linchpins of the American economy. And so, contrary to Morford's fears, we are not doomed to a new Dark Age. But we are dooming an entire generation to a world of cultural, social and economic upheaval where a handful of people can do almost anything, and the rest can do almost nothing. Maybe H.G. Wells wasn't so far off, after all.

I must admit at times the analogy with Wells's The Time Machine has crossed my mind. That would be the Eloi, not the Morlocks. Hmm. Well, not quite analogous.

What Ever Happened to--LaRon Dendy?

What happens to talented athletes who get caught up in diploma mills? Last year the NCAA investigated a "school" in Pickens that was attended by several top basketball prospects. In Monday's P & C, we have a further installment of the story.

"Former Clemson commitment 6'10" LaRon Dendy of Greer will try to resurrect his career at Indian Hills JC, Iowa. 'We're hoping in two years he'll be ready for major college,' said Dendy's former AAU coach Frank Ballenger. Dendy played last season at Hope Christian Academy in Kings Mountain, NC, where he averaged 23 points and 12 rebounds per game, but did not have the grades to be able to accept a major college offer. Clemson and South Carolina will monitor his progress while Dendy has also heard from Kansas State, Texas and LSU according to Ballenger."

For background on this academic situation, see my posts of last year in June and December, Forward to Pickens! and Updating the Old as the New Year Approaches, Part 1 . When last heard of, Dendy was back at Greer High School. Apparently by basketball season he had enrolled in yet another school for academically struggling athletes (as noted above). What the P & C reporter doesn't clarify is that his ineligibility for a "major" college was caused by a combination of grades and SAT scores. Also not clarified is where the tuition money comes from for these private schools.

Maybe in Iowa he'll get the academic background he needs to succeed. As I've said before, too many LaRon Dendys are out there, prepping for athletics instead of getting a decent education. What happens to them when they get injured and can't play? Not every talented athlete makes it to the NBA.

Once-A-Year Madness Not the Answer to Financing College Education

Playing into parental fears about the rising cost of a college education, the P & C has again published this week the educational establishment's fictitous "scholarship money earned" press releases. According to reporters Courrege and Hagen (who as usual report without analyzing), "Charleston students earned more this past year than each of the four previous years, and more than half of the district's 2007 graduates will have scholarship money as they head to post-secondary education this fall."

This "news" is a tactic of the educational establishment to make itself look good. It has virtually nothing to do with "scholarship" and precious little to do with parental worries over how to pay for college. For an analysis of how these "funny" numbers work, see my posting of last August: Oh, No! Not in South Carolina Too!

The good news that can be gleaned from this year's obfuscations is that Burke High School (whose numbers have risen) finally has a guidance counselor attuned to the college applications game "as she is played." No school deserves it more!

Allendale-Fairfax: Declare Victory and Get Out?

"Little more than superficial graffiti" is the phrased contempt shown by one reader of this blog for last Sunday's P & C report on a rural school district's return to local control after eight years of direct management by the State Department of Education.

All will agree that the P & C consistently misses important details in its coverage. For example, reporters frequently ask Jon Butzon to comment on education but don't say who Butzon is or why his comments would be of interest, let alone establish their context.

Yet another example of shallow reporting occurs with the economically stressed community of Allendale. Its rural location, economic conditions, and local politics all relate to the topic, but the central issue of this article should have been the specific progress made by the Allendale schools since the state takeover in 1999.

The piece provides limited information about power struggles and individual egos along with a really lame photo of a junk yard near the Allendale town limits. The unrelated photo serves as only one of many cheap shots taken by the P&C at this rural community. Don't photos need to illustrate the story they accompany? Otherwise, why not show a photo of the Bayside Manor housing project on Charleston’s East Side or an unkempt industrial lot in the Neck when doing an article on Burke's near takeover?

Once caught by this condescending photo, readers quickly realize the article has no substance. The P & C’s hook irresponsibly plays to a stereotype and arguably damages its subject. But that’s just about a poor choice of photos.

The Allendale School District takeover interests Lowcountry readers, but the most important issue disappears from this end-of-the-takeover article. What initiated the state takeover of the Allendale schools in the first place? The reporter doesn’t address that at all. Was the state takeover a success for the schools or not? Did the schools improve? Courrege starts to go there when she reports that that takeover “did damage” and “left unpleasant memories,” but then she drops the ball. What about the state report card for Allendale? That’s left to readers to find out on their own.

In either case, this article shows no depth of understanding for the story or its context. This lack is what's wrong with the P & C today. Its reporting generally fails to focus on the specific issue while maintaining an eye on the context. Quotes from major players, if indeed they are major players (the jury’s still out on Jon Butzon’s credentials), are fine, but without data and analysis of the facts, the article fails in its purpose.

One point worthy of news is buried deep in the story: Jim Rex announces that "No one can predict whether the state again would chose the daunting task of taking over a school or district, but . . . that remains a possibility if the safety of students is at risk [italics mine]. Decisions will be made on a case-by-case basis, but that option should be available for schools in crisis situations, he said."

In other words, the State Department of Education will not intervene for academic sinkholes or corrupt finances--intervention will occur only if students are "in crisis" for "safety." Now, that's news!

Why tout an eight-year takeover without data to support (or belie) its effectiveness? Rex has taken a page from the late Vermont Senator George Aiken--"Declare victory and get out." The P & C hasn't the moxie or the interest to find out the conditions.

Because of statewide concerns about measuring effective public education, the Allendale School District takeover deserves more analysis than what appears here--and the Allendale garden club may be owed an apology for the photo.

Principal Teachers Needed; Pendulum Swinging Back

Did you ever wonder how the "principal" got to be your "pal," as the spelling trick goes? A synonym for it is "head teacher." There, that should help.

Once upon a time in American public (and private) schools, perhaps a century or so ago, the principal was the first among teachers, the principal teacher. This person earned the position through (usually) his facility in classroom teaching. Then times changed, and so did principals--into disciplinarians, managers, executives, and businessmen. We had reached the full arc of the pendulum when No Child Left Behind Act became law. Even according to S.C. Deputy Superintendent Mark Bounds, "In the last decade, the job of principal has really shifted away from simply being a building manager." Well.

Evidence of yet another effect of NCLB is the finding reported in last Tuesday's P & C of the Southern Regional Education Board. The SREB reviewed South Carolina's present education of principals and found it lacking in progress toward "changing principal training programs to highlight classroom instruction" in comparison to 15 other southern states. The study calls for major "revamping" of the State's curriculum.

Emphasis is shifting to effective classroom teaching. What will they think of next?

P & C Discovers the Broad Foundation!

Only three months after my posting on the Eli Broad Education Foundation and its production of urban superintendents Abelardo Saavedra (for Corpus Christi), Maria Goodloe-Johnson (for Corpus Christi and then Charleston), and Nancy McGinley [see my post of April 5 on "Roving Opportunists"], the P & C broke the news last Monday that the foundation has provided "substantial" resources to CCSD!

Clearly the editors need to pay more attention to this blog. Perhaps their attention was raised when CCSD appointed its THIRD graduate of the Broad Foundation's fellows program for urban educators, Randy Bynum, Sr., who was in its Class of 2007.

The Broad Foundation is active in many other cities, too, including Portland, Oregon. An on-line weekly newspaper, wweek.com, identifies its goals: "to create competition by starting publicly funded, privately run charter schools, to enforce accountability by linking teacher pay to student test scores, and to limit teachers' say in curriculum and transfer decisions." Whether true or not, this list sets up some interesting queries for CCSD. Portland parents are mainly unhappy about the closing of neighborhood schools in the name of progress.

Googling into the efforts of Broad-trained personnel will certainly turn up some disgruntled, in fact, ranting, opponents of the foundation, especially after it joined forces with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. No doubt many, if not all, of these unhappy districts (such as the one in Christina, Delaware), like CCSD, had many problems waiting to be solved when these supers arrived. But Broad's philosophy (and follow-through) should raise some yellow flags (notice I didn't say "red").

To assist them in succeeding, Broad-trained fellows have resources available to them that support their training, and Goodloe-Johnson took full advantage of them. According to Courrege's article, the "foundation has spent more than $100,000 in the district." Thus,

"--The foundation will provide McGinley with a strategic support team of superintendents and leaders who will come to Charleston periodically and work with her on any issue she picks.
"--The foundation paid for an outside expert to come in and look at the district's communications department to see what could be better, and it will do the same for the district's information technology department.
"--The foundation has paid for Jim Huger, an independent consultant, to lead school board workshops.
"--The foundation covered expenses associated with executive coaches for Goodloe-Johnson in her first years as superintendent and McGinley, just beginning her tenure.
"--Brenda Nelson, the school district's new director of community outreach, will apply for the Broad Residency in Urban Education program, which involves two years of management training.
"--The foundation, with the Council of the Great City Schools, gave an $18,500 grant to the district to review operational or instructional processes and capacities for change."

Board members Hillery Douglas and Nancy Cook and training-participant board member Ray Toler are quite satisfied that the foundation's support "has done a good job" in helping schools.

But I'm wondering about the outside consultants. One aspect of Broad Education Foundation training encourages participants to explore the expertise of other national organizations to address specific problems in a district--for example, the New Teacher Project (or Teach Charleston) to recruit teachers for hard-to-fill positions and Community Education Partners to run Murray Hill Academy. No doubt there are other nonprofits either under consideration or in effect. So far the jury is out on whether the money spent on these consultants will reap rewards.

In addition, what are the qualifications of Randy Bynum, Sr., to be chief academic officer, other than being a Broad Fellow?

Try Googling "Randy Bynum."

CCSD: Special Needs Catching Up on Mandates

Now showing signs of progress, CCSD is publicizing the phasing in of a five-year plan to redistribute special needs children to their "home" schools. However, according to a recent P & C article, "The law doesn't require students with disabilities to be educated at their home school, but district officials are going beyond what's mandated to try to make that happen."

In fact, district officials are carefully phasing in mandates required by IDEA 2004--that's the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1997 as amended in 2004.

What the Act actually mandates is the following:

"The Department [of Education] has consistently maintained that a child with a disability should be educated in a school as close to the child's home as possible, unless the services identified in the child's IEP require a different location. Even though the Act does not mandate that a child with a disability be educated in the school he or she would normally attend if not disabled, section 612(a)(5)(A) of the Act presumes that the first placement option considered for each child with a disability is the regular classroom in the school that the child would attend if not disabled, with appropriate supplementary aids and services to facilitate such placement. Thus, before a child with a disability can be placed outside of the regular educational environment, the full range of supplementary aids and services that could be provided to facilitate the child's placement in the regular classroom setting must be considered. Following that consideration, if a determination is made that a particular child with a disability cannot be educated satisfactorily in the regular educational environment, even with the provision of appropriate supplementary aids and services, that child could be placed in a setting other than the regular classroom.

"Although the Act does not require that each school building in an LEA be able to provide all the special education and related services for all types and severities of disabilities, the LEA has an obligation to make available a full continuum of alternative placement options that maximize opportunities for its children with disabilities to be educated with nondisabled peers to the extent appropriate. In all cases, placement decisions must be individually determined on the basis of each child's abilities and needs and each child's IEP, and not solely on factors such as category of disability, severity of disability, availability of special education and related services, configuration of the service delivery system, availability of space, or administrative convenience. "

Now, this law requires major reconfiguration of CCSD's special education programs--and who would complain about that? Judging from the statements by Connie Mathis, CCSD's executive director of special education, the District is edging carefully into compliance, with the first 100 students placed in home schools to be those with the least disabilities. However, nothing in the article indicates that CCSD is "going beyond what's mandated," and I suspect Mathis did not say that it is.

It would be nice to think that CCSD would go beyond mandates out of the goodness of its heart, but such isn't the case. Instead, let's commend it on its careful plan to make sure that the inclusion of these special students in the general classroom works to the benefit of all.

I'll now horrify some of you by quoting President Bush, whose No Child Left Behind Act is also impacting special education:

"America's schools educate over 6 million children with disabilities. In the past, those students were too often just shuffled through the system with little expectation that they could make significant progress or succeed like their fellow classmates. Children with disabilities deserve high hopes, high expectations, and extra help. . . . We're applying the reforms of the No Child Left Behind Act to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act so schools are accountable for teaching every single child."

It's not only students with disabilities who have been "just shuffled through the system with little expectation." Let's hope this new attitude carries over to other aspects of CCSD.

Do the Math: New Teacher Project Doesn't Add Up

What if you got paid to fail? And the S.C. legislature helps to pay you? Sounds like Alice in Wonderland, doesn't it? Well, how about the New Teacher Project (NTP), contracted by CCSD to provide about 100 teachers per year for two years for the sum of $1.1 million.

Okay, that's $1.1 million divided by 200, which equals approximately $5500 per teacher.

Now, if the organization finds and trains teachers for failing schools that have difficulty recruiting and, especially, retaining teachers, and those recruits effectively teach for, say, at least five years each, that works out as a pretty good, if somewhat expensive, deal for students in failing schools.

But, what if NTP doesn't reach its target? Why, the NTP must pay CCSD $1500 for each position it falls short of the minimum of 90 per year that the contract requires. That means the NTP earns $4000 for each teacher IT DOESN'T FIND!

Right now, according to today's P & C, the project has signed nine teachers, "only 10 percent of the goal," and has 14 "potential hires" more in the works, for a potential total of 23. School begins in about six weeks. The seven middle and high schools in question have about 50 vacancies. The article does not clarify if 50 is the norm for them.

While the site manager for NTP says that she "believes Teach Charleston will meet its goal," let's assume just for argument's sake that instead of signing 90 it signs 50. NTP will then pay CCSD $60,000 for the shortfall, but NTP will have received $550,000 as the contract requires, for a cost to the district of $11,000 per teacher. A bit stiff, don't you think? What if NTP signs only 25?

One would hope that these teachers not only must sign but also must teach for a minimum number of months in order to count as fulfilling the obligation. Who knows?

And where does the state legislature come into play, you ask? In order to pay for Teach Charleston, CCSD "wanted to" pay half and get the community to pay the other half. Right now the community has contributed $27,600, or about 10 percent of its share.

BUT WAIT!

"The community" apparently includes the state legislature, which in its wisdom has granted $100,000 to the Coastal Community Foundation to give to Teach Charleston as part of the pork [read "earmarks"] doled out from its Competitive Grants Committee made up of former state legislators. So in effect the state legislature has given CCSD another $100,000.

No, don't get me wrong. I hope NTP succeeds with these schools that desperately need effective and stable teaching staffs. There are other ways in which the legislature could help, however--even if the State Department of Education, Jim Rex, and the education lobby would blow a collective gasket if it did:

• South Carolina should accept out-of-state certificates in good standing as qualifying those who hold them to teach in SC public schools, and those attempting to change careers through alternative certification should have their process smoothed and made less expensive.


• A hefty proportion of non-need-based lottery scholarships should be awarded to those pledging to teach for at least three years.


• Teachers who take advantage of state funding to get National Board Certification should be required to teach and/or mentor for at least three years in failing schools in order to get the salary bonus.

And individual school districts, such as CCSD, must revamp their support of "newbies" by mentors and principals as well as their discipline programs to prevent the huge percentage of certified teachers who leave the profession prematurely. Stop blaming that drain on low salaries alone.