Photo courtesy of AP

What’s happening in the dropout nation:

1. As readers know, I reported two years ago on the reality that high school exit exams are being watered down or basically rendered useless by so-called alternative methods that allow children to graduate despite being unable to pass the tests. Now the New York Times offers its own story on the same issue. Worth reading.
2. John Fensterwald notes that more districts in California signed on to the state’s ambitious Race to the Top agenda. Still, only eight of the top 10 districts (and 10 of the top 30) signed on, defying pressure from state NEA and AFT locals. Fensterwald also reports that the U.S. Department of Education official in charge of Race to the Top told a Northern California audience that she was pleasantly “stunned” by the response.
3. Speaking of districts, here’s my latest report in The American Spectator, this time on Arne Duncan, the bad news out of the Windy City about the district’s issues, and why reforming school districts (especially big urban districts) is so difficult to do.
4. And as for more Race to the Top news: Editorial pages in Boston and Buffalo advocate for their respective states to get off the wall and embrace reform. Meanwhile the AFT’s New York State affiliate is bringing out the proverbial shock troops to battle against the upcoming reform proposals, especially the lifting of the cap on charter schools. No shocker. (Thanks to Tom Carroll’s crew for the news).
5. Tom Vander Ark shakes his head at all the negative responses to California’s parent trigger law and other opposition to parental choice. Sadly, such elitism and expertist thinking is typical in education circles. And one wonders why parents struggle to be involved?
6. Graduation rate data is now streaming out of Indiana, D.C., and other states. In Milwaukee, there’s talk about forming a research and accountability group to observe the city’s woeful school system similar to the famed Consortium on Chicago School Research.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the Dropout Nation Podcast. You can listen to the new one, on looking beyond Race to the Top, today.

Photo courtesy of Jose Vilson

What the dropout nation is reading this Monday morning:after the NFL playoffs:

1. John Fensterwald notes Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s effort to revamp the state’s teacher seniority rules, which force districts to lay off their younger teachers first without regard to their performance. Fensterwald notes that if Schwarzenegger succeeds, districts will have to step up to the plate and conduct strong rigorous evaluations of teacher performance. Fensterwald also reports that some school districts are getting cold feet about Race to the Top participation.
2. In the Daily News, Tom Carroll takes to task Randi Weingarten’s replacement as head of New York City’s AFT local. Sample quote: “Mulgrew’s point is not actually the advancement of any specific proposal, but rather to throw out there as much mischief as possible to gum up charter schools”.
3. In Dropout Nation comments for Friday’s Read. Southern Education Foundation’s Steve Suitts, who co-wrote the recently-released A New Diverse Majority report, responds to Monise Seward’s criticisms of the study (and of education think tankers in general). He makes some important points about the study and its overall focus. I’m reading the report now for an upcoming Spectator report.
4. Virginia’s Democratic House leader argues that support for charter schools shouldn’t be a “partisan” issue.
5. School administrator Deron Durflinger offers a voucher-like kind of school reform: Give vouchers to parents, who can then directly select the teachers they want to teach their children. Intriguing idea. It could actually lead to greater parental engagement, improve student achievement and make teachers true professionals the way lawyers usually are.
6. Alan Bonsteel of California Parents for Educational Choice offers historical perspective on school choice and the Golden State’s recent school reform efforts.
7. Julia Steiny focuses on a union-sponsored charter school. A school not sponsored by either the NEA or AFT.
8. Kevin Carey observes the financial havoc within California’s university system and takes shots at the University of California’s leaders and wealthy students for their “faux solidarity” with poor collegians.

What the dropout nation is reading about:

1. John Fensterwald notes some new teachers union antics on the Race to the Top front. The NEA’s California affiliate and its locals are intoning to districts that they shouldn’t sign the memorandums of understanding required to receive Race funds. Other NEA and AFT affiliates will likely take similar steps — or even offer their own alternate visions (as seen in Pennsylvania) as other state legislatures ignore their lobbying and entreaties.
2. Meanwhile in Tennessee, outgoing Gov. Phil Bredeson is pushing to use student test score data in evaluating teacher performance in a special session. The state’s largest teachers union has its own thoughts. Of course.
3. By the way, my American Spectator colleague, Joseph Lawler, offers his own skeptical thoughts about Race to the Top, looking at Massachusett’s reform efforts (which may soon sit on Gov. Deval Patrick’s desk).  In Kentucky, the Bluegrass Policy Institute takes aim at state legislators for offering a Trojan Horse version of Race reforms (HT to EducationNews). And Jamie Davis O’Leary looks at what he describes as Ohio’s embarrasing Race reform plans.
4. James Guthrie takes some time at Education Next to assess whether school reform is actually happening. He has his answer. I would say that it is happening, but still incomplete.
5. Monise Seward is none too pleased with the results from the Southern Education Foundation’s report on public education in the southern states. Her biggest issue: “the correlation between minority status and/or poverty with low academic expectations by the ‘experts’ and public education institutions.” The lack of discussion about over-diagnosis of black and Latino males (along with white males) is particularly jarring to her.
6. At the New York Review of Books, David Kaiser and Lovisa Stannow read over the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics’ report on sex abuse in juvenile prisons and jails. Let’s just say that they are more shocked by the evidence than yours truly. If anything, America’s juvenile justice system is sometimes even more shameful in the pervasive neglect, abuse and denial of due process rights to children than the woeful public schools this publication covers.
7. EdTrust releases their report on addressing achievement gaps in the age of Race to the Top and No Child. From its perspective, it isn’t enough to just close the gap. More thoughts from yours truly this weekend.
8. Mike Antonucci notes that the president of the AFT’s California affiliate has some choice thoughts about parents who support the newly-enacted “parent trigger” in the state’s Race to the Top-driven school reforms passed yesterday. No comment.
9. This headshaker of the week comes from the News Leader in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. And the lack of thought starts at the headline: “We can’t let charter schools steal funds from public education.” Pardon me, but public charter schools are part of the public education system, right? Or am I — and virtually everyone else covering education — just dreaming?
10. While Michigan politicians aren’t even considering handing over control of Detroit’s traditional district to Mayor Dave Bing, Wisconsin is still picking over whether Milwaukee’s mayor will gain control over that city’s public schools. As reported in the Journal-Sentinel, one parent opposed to mayoral control asks: “How in the world does excluding parents from selecting their school leadership encourage them to participate in the education of their children?” Everyone in the hearing savvy about the politics of school boards elections likely laughed under their breath and paid him no more mind.
11. And finally, the debate between education civil rights activists such as Gary Orfield and the charter school movement over diversity in charters is the subject of my latest National Review report. As I hinted at in the piece, it’s easy for those in the ivory tower to go on and on about diversity when they have the choice to not send their children to the nation’s worst dropout factories and academic failure mills. Integration only works if the schools are of the kind that all children can achieve their respective educational destinies.

Readers of today’s report on Detroit Public Schools certainly didn’t lack for their own thoughts. Two of them, however, stood out in different ways.

The aptly-named MI Man devoted eight paragraphs to discussing his wife’s experiences teaching in the Detroit system. While rightly noting that some of the district’s problems would be fixed if conservatives, liberals and communities would encourage the revival of “two-parent families” in the city’s worst neighborhoods, he fails to note the role of either the district’s AFT local or the low quality of instruction in fostering the city’s urban decay.

Roy, on the other hand, caught one of my moments of understatement, this related to the 3-minute reduction in teacher instructional days that the union won in the new contract. As he points out, the 3-minute a day reduction equals to slightly more than a full day of vacation time. Which does little for students who need as much instruction as possible. On the other hand, of course, given the condition of education in Detroit, are the kids really ill-served?

Those who want to see what the rest of Detroit looks like can check out this photo essay by Yves Marchand and Romain Meiffre. The photography is breathtaking. The city’s decay? Not so much. But it’s a reminder of what happens when cities forget to take care of the proverbial broken windows and fail to foster economic, social and educational growth. Decline is inevitable.

The dilapidated school book depository isn't the only thing falling apart within Detroit Public Schools.

Happy New Year!. Here’s what’s happening in the dropout nation:

1. Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter declines to run for another term, according to the Washington Post and the Denver Post. How does this affect the state’s school reform efforts — especially its petition for some of the $4.3 billion Race to the Top dollars? Depending on the strength of the other players in the state legislature — and whether Democrats fear they will lose control of two of the three branches of government — it may affect little in the short run. But don’t think the state’s teachers unions and suburban school districts — who oppose strong school reform — aren’t pleased by this event.
2. With Ritter’s resignation, along with the decisions by U.S. Senators Bryan Dorgan and Chris Dodd to not run for re-election this year, Republicans can capture a number of seats in statehouses and in Congress. But don’t forget that in Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal may step into the Democratic nomination for Senate in place of Dodd — and he’s a heavyweight. And in any case, Republicans have been as divided over school reform (if not more so) as Democrats have been. For example, many congressional Republicans — whose districts lie in suburban areas — aren’t supporting the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act.
3. Speaking of Colorado, more woeful suspension and expulsion data, courtesy of the Denver Post. Given my own reports on the subject, none of this is surprising.
4. At EducationNews.org, former Michigan schools superintendent Tom Watkins gives his former home state the business for poor academic performance and wasteful education spending.
5. Speaking of the Wolverine State, I review the performance — academic and otherwise — of its largest school system in The American Spectator. Calling Detroit the nation’s worst urban school system is merely understatement.
6. At Educated Guest, John Fensterwald observes California’s efforts to pass reforms aimed at winning Race to the Top funding. The state assembly finally managed to pass some form of the parent power provisions that can really ensure long-term change. He also notes some of the possible action at the state and federal level this year, including the proposed $23 billion in new subsidies to save teacher jobs that may be contained in the proposed second round of stimulus spending.
7. In Cleveland, the school district’s superintendent proposes to close 18 schools deemed academically failing. Opposition? Of course. But the package, contained in 113 PowerPoint slides deserves scrutiny. It is a grab-bag which includes embracing the small high schools concept all but abandoned by the Gates Foundation and the creation of K-8 schools that harkens back to the old common school. Not much there.
8. Contrary to popular beliefs, traditional public schools are as much a preserve of affluent, but not extraordinarily wealthy, parents as they are a waystation for the urban poor and middle class. As Greg Toppo reports, the recession is making this more common — and bringing the typical complications that comes with a system in which politics is as much a driving force as the pursuit of academic rigor.
9. In research and reports: The Afterschool Alliance just released a compendium of its series on the use of afterschool programs for older children. Interesting read.
10. At Flypaper, Katherine Porter-Magee tosses proverbial cold water on the theory that technology means moving away from the use of rote memorization in teaching students. Google and Wikipedia, in short, is only useful if you have a solid base of knowledge on which to use them.

What’s happening inside the dropout nation:

1. The Detroit News takes Michigan’s public education leadership to task for subjecting kids to woeful standardized tests that don’t meet the National Assessment of Educational Progress’ much higher standards — and damning the children to low expectations. Declares the paper: “e standards for passing the exam — called the cut scores — have been lowered so much, a student who tests well on the Michigan assessment would not score nearly as well on the NAEP or even the national ACT test.” As Dropout Nation readers already know, this, unfortunately, isn’t an isolated occurrence.
2. Clarence Fanto argues in The Boston Globe that charter schools are a problem in school reform. Why? He uses the long-refuted position that charters take money from traditional public school districts. Actually, the fact that states don’t divert funding from traditional districts — and, in fact, offset enrollment losses with additional funding — is the very reason why there isn’t true competition within education. If traditional public schools truly had to compete with charters for funding — and in the suburbs, compete for students in the first place — school reform wouldn’t be such a hot topic in the first place.
3. On Red State, Vladimir asks why can’t Republicans make the expansion of charter schools a winning platform in their 2010 election campaigns. My response: Republicans first have to embrace school reform; and save for centrists and conservative elements in the party, many in the GOP are either uncomfortable with a form of school choice that still involves government funding, or represent suburban areas, whose school districts are aggressively opposed to charter schools.
4. The Washington Post details efforts by the U.S. Department of Education to focus states on turning around laggard public schools. Whether it will work or not? Andy Smarick doubts it, as everyone already knows.
5. Venture capitalist Fred Wilson thinks schools should add computer science and programming to their curricula. Meanwhile, programs are sprouting up encouraging more children and teens to take up computer science. This is fine, but schools need to focus mostly on the things they are struggling to do. Like teaching reading and math.
6. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation streams a video of New York City school czar Joel Klein discussing his own background growing up in the projects and his efforts in education reform. Interesting and worth watching. By the way, you may also read my Foundation Watch report on the Gates Foundation’s efforts in the education reform arena.
7. And speaking of Klein, Dropout Nation thoughts: In the comments of Thursday’s edition of Read, Kathy offers a rebuttal to his decision to close Jamaica High School.

Finally, subscribe to the Dropout Nation Podcast. This week, the focus is on giving parents power in school reform. Enjoy.