Election News: National and Local Developments

Note to Readers: Before I share any national or local news, I just want to say that I think that this (November) election is super important. [Don't forget, there is also an election August 2, 2016!] I'll be working on both national and local campaigns and I hope you will, too!

National News

It's no surprise that Hillary Clinton has picked Tim Kaine as her running mate, or that Donald Trump has picked Mike Pence.

Here is what Diane Ravitch has to say about Tim Kaine, in a post titled "Tim Kaine Loves Public Schools." By the way, his wife Anne is the Secretary of Education in Virginia, and by all accounts she is a friend to teachers and a foe to the education reform agenda. This sounds pretty good!

You can also read an op-ed he wrote a few years ago about what he learned as a parent in the Richmond Public Schools.

Here is what an Indiana teacher has to say about Mike Pence, in an article titled "A Negative Impact." For education, it's pretty bad.

In Indiana, small, rural schools are shutting down because funding has been cut, families are moving out of district, and whole communities are losing jobs where school corporations are the largest employers.
Inner-city schools, like Indianapolis Public Schools, are urban nightmares as charter schools take away public school funding, yet only meet the needs of a fraction of the population.

Local News

School board candidates need to turn in their petitions by Tuesday. In Ann Arbor, three school board positions are open. I believe current school board candidate Simone Lightfoot has already turned in her petition.

On Monday, at least one slate of candidates is turning in their petitions: Jeff Gaynor, Harmony Mitchell, and Hunter Van Valkenburgh.

You can read their full press release here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByviJiXLmGu6UnM2N0t4U056RGVjaWJELS1LYm04X3Vub0ow/view?usp=sharing

Their platform and principles:

All three candidates agree on the following principles: Our district should be focused on instructional opportunities in a broad variety of subjects, not just those emphasized in the standardized testing regime now in place. To the greatest extent possible, our Board should resist the push for school “reform” propounded by politicians whose real goal is to undermine public education and recapture education funds for private gain. Within the requirement to balance the district’s budget, the emphasis should be on lowering the student-teacher ratio to levels that maximize student-teacher interaction and allow teachers to reach all of their students effectively. Where adjustments to compensation must be made to balance the budget, we believe it should be done in an equitable and cooperative fashion rather than on the backs of the poorest-paid and least-powerful employee groups.
In addition to budgetary priorities, we want to emphasize the professional competence of our instructional staff in a number of ways. Teachers should be given academic freedom to design creative learning opportunities and not be shackled to the requirements of an externally-imposed standardized test and evaluation instruments. Students’ primary means of assessment should be teacher-generated, not imposed by for-profit testing companies. Teacher evaluation should be designed by a collaborative effort between teachers and administrators. Our current evaluation system wastes untold hours of teachers’ and administrators’ time in what amounts to a huge data-production effort, leaving little opportunity to actually address any needed areas of improvement.
We also want to improve the democratic process where Board decision-making is concerned. Too often, meetings extend past midnight, in violation of the Board’s own rules. This term, several controversial measures were voted in by unanimous votes, with little or no public discussion at the regular meeting. Public comment time is overly restrictive, and the lack of public dialogue on controversial issues is disturbing. We want to explore the possibility of setting aside meeting time to engage in public dialogue between Board members and representatives of community groups with a stake in major decisions.

Consider subscribing to Ann Arbor Schools Musings by Email!

July 2015 News and Notes

Congratulations to Two New Nonprofits!

First of all, let's give big congratulations to two important, new local groups that recently got their non-profit status.

1. The E4DS Foundation, Excellence for Dexter Schools, is focused on raising money for regular operating expenses in the Dexter school district. There is also an Educational Foundation for Dexter.

Question of the Day: Is E4DS Different than the Educational Foundation of Dexter?

Yes. E4DS is the only group whose mission involves funding normal operating expenses associated with regular programming in our schools. The Educational Foundation of Dexter (EFD) provides financial support for teacher grants for innovative and creative educational projects that cannot be funded through the school district. E4DS supports the EFD and shares some Board members between the two Foundations. It is our sincere hope that the information you learn about the limitations of available funding will also move you to contribute and support the great work of the EFD!

Find out more at www.E4DS.org or like them on Facebook.

2. The CivCity Initiative (headed by Mary Morgan, formerly of the Ann Arbor Chronicle) also got non-profit status recently. What do they do? "CivCity is working to crack the nut of civic apathy, increasing awareness of how local government works and how each of us can participate in civic life."

I am hopeful that eventually they will take on some civic initiatives related to the schools--and considering that Linh Song of the Ann Arbor Education Foundation is on the CivCity board, I think that's a real possibility!

Find out more at www.civcity.org or like them on Facebook.

National News

The US Senate has passed a version of the Every Child Achieves Act (successor to No Child Left Behind). According to Barbara Madeloni, president of the Massachusetts Teacher Association, who is quoted in this piece on Diane Ravitch's blog:

“The bill continues yearly testing in grades three through eight and once in high school, but leaves it to states to determine how to use those tests for school accountability. It removes the authority of the federal government to demand that teacher evaluations be connected to student test scores and gives more authority to states to determine specific standards and curriculum.“ 

In giving more authority to states, the bill loosens constraints on how funds will be spent, though fortunately the Senate rejected a voucher amendment. The Senate measure now goes to a conference committee, where senators and members of the House will mesh their bills and develop a final piece of legislation. If approved, that bill will have to be signed or vetoed by President Barack Obama. If Obama vetoes it, Congress would have to override the veto for the bill to become law.

Per Madeloni,

“It is a bittersweet victory to applaud the power of school accountability going back to the states, should this bill become law. While it would allow us to organize locally and make the demands we want for our students and our schools, others have noted that it would mean we have 50 battles to fight instead of one – and that some states are especially weak in their readiness to fight.”  

And the House version [which is called the Student Success Act] is different, but it also provides a means for students who opt out to not count against the 95% rule for participation. In other words, based on federal law, parents opting out their children will not affect Title I funding (to be clear--currently this has not affected Title I funding anywhere in the country, but theoretically, it could).

Do you want the details about the differences between the two bills? This blog post, by Mercedes Schneider, does a good job of explaining the differences around testing. She's got other good stuff on her blog too!

I won't pretend to have read the bill, but at least about this piece of the bill--which gives the ability to parents to opt out--I am pretty happy.

Michigan News

We've got a new State Superintendent of Education, Brian Whiston. Read more about him in Lori Higgins' Detroit Free Press article.

The number of new charter school authorizations is going down. Maybe charter school authorizers are starting to realize they actually need to be accountable for the schools. [Hope springs eternal.]

We have yet another new state law that will negatively affect schools. According to this press release from Miller Canfield:

PA 109 of 2015 amends the Revised School Code to require any district without a positive general fund balance of at least 5% for the two most recent school fiscal years to report annually by July 7 the budgetary assumptions used when adopting its annual budget to the Center for Educational Performance and Information (CEPI). The budgetary assumptions must include the district’s projected foundation allowance, projected membership, estimated expenditures per pupil for the immediately preceding fiscal year and the projected expenditures per pupil for the current fiscal year. Based on the report, the State Treasurer may determine if the potential for fiscal stress exists within the district.

Local News

And that new state law (PA 109) is one of the reasons why the Ann Arbor superintendent and school board have been so focused on fund balance. Here is the list of local schools (including charters) that need to report. [Most of our local charters are for-profits, and their management companies could be manipulating their fund balances to take as much as they can--maybe they'll leave a little more in the bank now.] Ann Arbor was at 4.9% fund balance this past year, and are projecting to be higher in the coming year.

Ann Arbor has a third in-district transfer/schools of choice window. This might be good news for you if (as happened to a friend of mine) your landlord decided to sell the place you are renting and you might want to not be restricted to a single school area, but you want your kids in the same school as last year...

In the past several months, Ann Arbor has now hired four principals from other local school districts--two from Plymouth-Canton (Megan Fenech for Ann Arbor Open and Karen Siegel as assistant deanat Community High School), one from Northville (Alison Epler for Bach Elementary), and one from Farmington (Jerry Morrissey for Forsythe Middle School). I wish them all good luck! [Fenech and Siegel both live in Ann Arbor.] The Community High assistant dean position was filled in April, and is a new position that is being funded because Community High is adding students, and evening classes.

Ben Edmondson

Ypsilanti Community Schools hired Ben Edmondson as their new superintendent. (He is a former Ann Arbor principal, as well as candidate for Ann Arbor superintendent.) Read his 90-day plan here. (It looks ambitious to me, but it probably needs to be.)

Summer Fun: play.aadl.org

Are you playing the Ann Arbor summer library game? I am! If you are, I am going to give you five six! leads on ways to get some points and codes. [If you're not, it's not too late to start! Visit play.aadl.org, there are both traditional and online versions.]

1. Visit http://www.healthcarecounts.org, which is the Washtenaw Health Plan's site about health care coverage. Specifically, visit this blog post for a code, and a clue for another code.

2. Help out with Arborwiki, our local wikipedia. There's lots of work to be done, and lots of points to be gotten. And I registered and updated a page--it really was pretty easy! (On the page, it explains how to get the points.)

3. CivCity is "sponsoring" a bunch of badges. I think you have to go to meetings to get them... Go to http://play.aadl.org/badgelist and scroll down to CivCity.

4. Go into any local branch, walk around and look for the different codes. That's what I did today at West Branch, and here's a clue to one of the spots.

5. Read. Yup. Whatever you want. You can also get points for commenting on the books, rating them, and tagging them.
The last four books I read? (Which is probably more than I read January through April!)
1. Paper Love: Searching for the Girl My Grandfather Left Behind by Sarah Wildman (non-fiction/memoir/genealogy search)
2. A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
3. Battle Magic by Tamora Pierce (young adult fantasy)--I liked some of her others' more
4. I'm in the middle of The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict by Trenton Lee Stewart (kids' book, part of the Mysterious Benedict Society series)

6. Staff codes--some of the library staff have special codes they can give you. Ask them!


Consider subscribing to Ann Arbor Schools Musings by Email!

Need New Reading Material? Take a Look at My Blogroll, Part I

Today, I'm posting about the education blogs on my blogroll. Next Sunday, look for all of the assorted other blogs on my blogroll. Note: these are not in any particular order.

National Education Blogs

• Diane Ravitch--she posts a lot of information about public education around the country. There is a lot of good stuff but it can be hard to keep up.
• @ The Chalk Face Knows Schools Matter--this is two blogs merged into one. I used to really like Schools Matter. I don't like the format of this "wedded" blog as much but there is a lot of good information. But I love their mission: to defend public education and oppose the so-called "reform" movement.
• Modern School: A public school teacher blogs about education, science, youth, and labor. Lately this blog has had a lot of information about labor. If you're interested in teachers' and administrators' unions, this is a good place for you to look.
• Assorted Stuff: This blog is written by an east coast educator/technology person. After I read a post of his, I often wish I'd thought to write about it first. He also has a nice education blogroll (even though I'm not on it :)
• Eduwonk: Some might find this education policy blog slightly too conservative (I think the author would describe it as centrist). However, he writes short pieces that point to interesting policy discussions at the national level. Mostly, the author links rather than editorializes.
• Title IX blog: Honestly, this is one of my favorite blogs. Title IX had a major impact on my life, and probably yours as well, and if you are interested in gender equality issues in schools at all levels, this is worth your time. The authors track stories from across the country. (Go ahead, do a search on the Title IX blog for Ann Arbor. We're in there.)
• Electric Educator: John Sowash posts from Oakland County, MI so I guess I could count him as a "local" educator--but the topic he blogs about is technology, particularly using Google programs, in the classroom. That information is useful no matter where you are in the country. He teaches at a private Christian school in Oakland County.
• School Finance 101: A thoughtful blog from Bruce Baker on school finance issues across the country.
• Honestly, I think this overview post on school funding is a must read.
• A "Fuller" Look at Education Issues: Dr. Ed Fuller looks at K-12 and higher education issues. The blog is rather data heavy, and often focuses on Texas, but it offers a good template for some ways data could be used to investigate "education reform."
• Scrap the MAP: Solidarity with teachers opposing the NWEA MAP test. Ann Arbor could learn a lot from them.
• Students Last: I just discovered this blog. It is kind of like the Onion for educators. If you like satire, if you liked Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal, this blog is for you. Just look at its tagline: "If you care about education, we would like to encourage you to stop." You would laugh, except it's a truth that hurts.

Local Education Blogs

• k12christinestead.com: Kudos to AAPS School Board member Christine Stead for blogging regularly. Christine follows state education policy closely and is a good source for that information.
• Saline Superintendent's Blog: Scot Graden posts fairly regularly (and I think there are some related blogs from some other Saline administrators that are not on the blog roll). Scot's posts are generally fairly positive and short--if you live in Saline you definitely should be reading him!
• Okemos Parents for Schools: This group is loosely affiliated with Michigan Parents for Schools and I like their web page. 
• Oakland Schools: Lead blogger is Jean McLeod, and I think this group is also loosely affiliated with Michigan Parents for Schools.
• Education Matters: I just discovered this blog by a Van Buren Schools school board trustee. Martha Toth doesn't blog all that often, but this post about charter schools is quite good.