For better or worse, Al Sharpton has surely made a name for himself as an enfant terrible of the post-1960s Civil Rights Movement. But when he co-wrote an op-ed with New York City Chancellor Joel Klein advocating for ending restrictions on the expansion of the charter school movement, everyone has to take notice. His own conversion to the school reform movement offers one more reason why defenders of traditional public education such as the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers can no longer count on the Democratic Party for unquestioned support. It also shows to school reformers why they must reach out to grassroots activists and parents to further their goals.

Watch this excerpt of Sharpton’s 2008 speech before a conference held by Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions. Then give Sharpton’s words some thought and consider how you will build new alliances for solving the nation’s education crisis.

The senseless deaths of youth must stop. It's just that simple.

What is happening today in the dropout nation — or what has been happening while your editor has been on the road:

1. Amid last week’s woeful responses to the reading test results from the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress, Education Sector’s Chad Alderman offers a different perspective. He notes that if you break down the results — and realize that the underlying sampling now includes more blacks and Latinos (in order to better represent the nation), one will see some real progress. Black 4th-graders, for example, scored 23 points higher than fellow students in the same grade four years ago. This is all good. But a more-longitudinal assessment — showing progress among students between being in 4th and 8th grade — would certainly offer more perspective on the nation’s academic progress.
2. Meanwhile the Bluegrass Institute’s Richard Innes notes that Kentucky’s NAEP performance may seem better than that of California, but appearances are deceiving. Especially when Kentucky’s education officials suppresses 46 percent of its English Language Learners and special ed students. Declares Innes: “only two other states in the entire country played the exclusion game harder.”
3. Those two states, according to Dropout Nation‘s analysis: Maryland and Tennessee , which respectively excluded 57 percent and 55 percent of their ELL and Special Ed students. Which may explain why Maryland, in particular, is among the most-stubborn in resisting school reform efforts (and always seem to be the best-performing state in the union). New Jersey, which excludes 42 percent of ELL and Special Ed students, is no better, and neither is Delaware (it excludes 42 percent of ELL and Special Ed students); North Dakota excluded 44 percent of students while Ohio excluded 40 percent of its ELL and Special Ed students from NAEP. Certainly this dishonor role deserves much in the way of scorn; it also offers more ammunition to opponents of Common Core State Standards and other attempts at putting the nation under one national curricula standard.
4. Speaking of scorn, two more deserving of it are the American Federation of Teachers’ New York City local and the Big Apple branch of the NAACP. They succeeded in convincing one judge to halt the shutdown of 19 of the city’s worst-performing schools and their replacement with higher-quality options. As Chancellor Joel Klein rightly notes: ““My view is that you don’t send students to failing schools, schools that can’t provide them what they need. The sad thing is that the union would bring a lawsuit to resign kids to failing schools in order to save jobs. And ultimately, that is what this is about.” Exactly. Shame on the two groups and those who support their position.
5. Tom Vander Ark offers some thoughts on how to develop high-quality urban schools through a portfolio approach.
6. Meanwhile in Chicago, the Black Star Project is looking for 1,000 men to help mentor the city’s children and keep them out of violence. Given that 143 Chicago Public School students have been shot during the 2009-2010 school year (and 20 slain), the need for adults to take to the schools and take action is greater than ever. Do your part.

Check out this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast, this time a part two of my focus steps needed to improve teacher quality. More will be coming down the pipe later this week.

And finally, to start off your Monday, here’s a little Tower of Power. Enjoy.

On this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast, I look at the efforts by the Obama administration to bring districts into Race to the Top and offer some steps that could make the reform work even more effective. This includes turning school districts pioneering school reform efforts into enterprise zones of sorts, freeing them from restrictive state laws and collective bargaining rules.

You can listen to the Podcast at RiShawn Biddle’s radio page or download directly to your iPod or MP3 player. Also, subscribe to the podcast series. It is also available on iTunes, Blubrry, Podcast Alley, the Education Podcast Network and Zune Marketplace.

What’s happening this weekend in the dropout nation:

1. New York City Department of Education Chancellor Joel Klein has instructed principals to use student test score data in evaluating probationary teachers on their fitness for tenure, reports the New York Post. The AFT’s New York City local is, as you would expect, displeased. Given the past battles — including the move by the AFT to outright ban the use of test data in evaluations two years ago — expect this battle to get nasty. And, just as likely, Randi Weingarten to back further away from her announcement last month that she would back the use of tests in evaluations. But, as Gotham Schools points out, most of the 7,000 teachers being evaluated for tenure won’t be affected by the move because they teach subjects not covered on state assessments.
2. The bigger uproar is in Houston, where the school district’s board unanimously enacted a measure under which test scores would be used in teacher evaluations. Weingarten has already offered her support for the local’s opposition to the plan, according to the Houston Chronicle. Stephen Sawchuck notes that the AFT may now find itself on a losing end of a battle to control the level to which test scores are used. I’d say the AFT and the NEA are already losing. The traditional teachers compensation system could exist unchanged so long as there was no objective data for measuring performance and the system wasn’t too costly to maintain. Neither of which is the case anymore.
3. On the matter of teachers, read Kevin Carey’s 2004 report for the Education Trust on the importance of using data in evaluating and ultimately, finding, high quality teachers. Also, Martin Haberman offered thoughts on how better teacher preparation can help address achievement gaps. And Chad Ratliff notes his 2009 post on the need to revamp teacher compensation in Virginia (and taking advantage of federal Race to the Top and i3 dollars to do so).
4. Also, the Wallace Foundation releases a brief on how states and districts can work together on improving school leadership. In particular, the report notes that strong political backing for school administrators and superintendents — along with keeping those folks in the job for a long time — can help improve the quality of administration and sustaining reforms.
5. Kevin Carey, by the way, also looks at Trinity Washington University, which gets dinged by U.S. News & World Report‘s annual survey because it serves poor minority women and charges modest tuition to boot. Which could explain why so many state universities give merit scholarships to wealthier families (and devote less aid to their poorest students). Maybe Neal McCluskey has a point after all (of course he does).
6. In City Limits, Geoffrey Canada offers his thoughts on why the Harlem Children’s Zone is succeeding and whether its model — now embraced by the Obama administration through its proposed Promise Neighborhoods — may succeed outside of New York City (and the financial and talent resources Canada can tap). Sample quote: “can put together a team down here and we can do it. That is not a huge lift. And that’s one of the most exciting but little-understood aspects of this.…. That’s mostly what this problem looks like across America. It’s not Chicago or Detroit or New York. Mostly it’s the [smaller towns]: You’ve got 1,500 kids in trouble and nobody with a strategy for how to save them. Now, you don’t need 50 people from elite colleges to do that.”

Check out the Dropout Nation Podcast on civil rights activists and school reform. The next podcast, on the need for school reformers to build bridges to parents and grassroots activists, will be available on Sunday.

• Michael Shaughnessy interviews Learning Point’s Paul Kimmelman: http://bit.ly/cqIMsW #edreform #edpolicy #NoChild #
• In Pa, Inquirer reports proposed law would allow dropout factories/failure mills convert into charters: http://bit.ly/bg9L8e #edreform #
• Michael Rebell argues #education budget cuts are unconstitutional, fails to consider size of ed budgets: http://bit.ly/bQp0Cd #headshaker #
• If the largest portion of state and local budgets go to education, then education can’t avoid being cut as well… #
• Given that the nation spends $528 billion on ed every year — and does it inefficiently (and given low graduation rates, attrociously)… #
• It is critical to consider how ed budgets should be spent — including reforming teachers compensation — in order to improve ed quality. #
• RT @huffingtonpost: The New Jim Crow: More African Americans in prison than were enslaved before Civil War http://bit.ly/doHIHG #edreform #
• A few thoughts for today: No matter their race, color or economic class, children just aren’t “theirs” or “ours”… #
• To paraphrase Wilt Chamberlain, they are all our children and we should do the best possible for them… #
• The easiest way to stave off an eye for an eye is to follow the Golden Rule. #
• One Malachi Walker and one Phillip Jackson is equal to 100 Beltway #edreform wonks. Policy w/o grassroots is worthless. And vice versa. #
• Education isn’t about fostering creativity. It is about giving each child the tools they need in order to improve their lives. #
• RT @tfanews: A key value for charter schools: No empty promises made to kids. http://bit.ly/cYBVFG #edreform #education #
• RT @CohenD: Why are teachers skeptical? @KennethLibby FL #RttT app. includes >$400M in contracts for “consultants”: http://j.mp/dAyMU2 #
• @EnglandinVa: Creativity, in and of itself, can exist without an education (at least the formal kind). But, bringing it back to the… in reply to EnglandinVa #
• @EnglandinVa classroom, the problem with combining creativity and academic learning is that, more often than not, one the former ends up… in reply to EnglandinVa #
• @EnglandinVa crowding out the other to the detriment of a student being able to actually master a subject. If a kid can’t master the basics in reply to EnglandinVa #
• @EnglandinVa he won’t have the skills needed to be creative in ways that are actually productive for sustaining his life. This is especially in reply to EnglandinVa #
• @EnglandinVa true for poor children, who are coming from bkgds with little academic preparation. As seen in the battle over the use of… in reply to EnglandinVa #
• @EnglandinVa Discovery math (and in the converse, the basics-focused Singapore math), “creativity” at expense of “learning” can = trouble. in reply to EnglandinVa #
• @EnglandinVa That said, it’s ultimately, the choice of parents (and children) which road to pick. But policymakers should focus on learning. in reply to EnglandinVa #
• In NYC, #JoelKlein would be lauded for opening schools during ‘blizzard’. In, DC, #MichelleRhee is pilloried for just thinking about it. #
• RT @janarausch @EdEquality: #MichelleRhee with piece on ending poverty via #education http://bit.ly/9fVmwX (Tx @HSequity) #edreform #edgap #
• New Jersey Left Behind offers some advice to the Garden State’s #NEA affiliate on #teacherpensions http://bit.ly/bCCTw0 #edreform #
• Dropout Nation Podcast: Now available on Zune marketplace: http://bit.ly/aLFmEz This week’: civil rights/#edreform: http://bit.ly/9dwkhS #

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On this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast, I explain why the NAACP, the Civil Rights Project at UCLA and New Jersey’s Education Law Center should abandon their tried and truly counterproductive approaches to improving equity and equality for the nation’s poor black and Latino children and embrace approaches offered by the school reform movement.

You can listen to the Podcast at RiShawn Biddle’s radio page or download directly to your iPod or MP3 player. Also, subscribe to get the podcasts every week. It is also available on iTunes, Blubrry, Podcast Alley and the Education Podcast Network.

Update: You can now download the Podcast from Zune Marketplace.

Certainly, much of what Mulgrew is doing is mere posturing. The reality is that New York City taxpayers, long-tired of woeful public schools, are satisfied that schools chieftain Joel Klein and his boss, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, are on the right track. The growing pension burdens, along with the federal push for increasing charters and reforming the teaching profession, means that Mulgrew will eventually give in. If Klein can throw in another 43 percent increase in teachers salaries over time (as he did in the past decade), Mulgrew will cave in even more quickly.

At least one can say Mulgrew is thoughtful about the role of technology in education. In this clip, he says that testing and technology is as important in improving how teachers instruct their students as it is for holding schools (and teachers — though he won’t say this) accountable. He also briefly notes that middle schools must be as much a focus of the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act as high school reform.

During his speech yesterday at the Alliance for Excellent Education’s luncheon on how New York City’s overhaul in the context of federal school reform activity, Klein said he wants the particular elements of Race to the Top — including the emphasis on increasing the number of charter schools available to parents, improving teacher quality and accountability — to be reflected in the next version of No Child. He wants the law to emphasize states and school districts to focus on what New York City focused on in its reform — the creation of  “a system of great schools” and the willingness to shutter schools in which pervasive academic failure has become too stubbornly entrenched.

Klein offers his reasons why the traditional education establishment, school choice advocates and even parents should embrace school reform in this clip. You can also check out the Alliance’s own report on New York City’s efforts. And come back later to watch Klein’s sparring partner in school reform, United Federation of Teachers President (and Randi Weingarten successor) Michael Mulgrew offer thoughts on how No Child reauthorization should emphasize things other than testing.

Not the way to treat a Ranger. Photo courtesy of Sports Illustrated.

While your editor makes a rare indulgence into his  fascination with all things hockey (and joins others in wishing a legendary rink rat a speedy recovery), read what’s going on in the dropout nation:

1. While Race to the Top has captured the headlines everywhere, it is especially becoming a point of discussion in the city of Blue Suede Shoes, where at least eight schools will likely be seized from the control of Memphis Public Schools and put into turnaround. Tennessee State Sen. Reginald Tates provides some insight on how the city’s school district (and its children) will benefit from this effort in the Tri-State Defender.
2. Meanwhile there is more going on in Memphis, from battles over school funding to questions as to whether the school district will be allowed to form its own police force. All this, along with the Gates-funded teacher quality effort under way, may make Memphis an interesting place to watch among school reformers.
3. At Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s black studies blog, Professor Howard Ramsby writes about the need to mold young black men into strong, learned role models. Ta-Nehisi Coates notes that parents have to often find themselves disliking their parents (in that selfish-child-way) as part of the process of becoming a moral adult who can stand on his own two feet.
4. The headshaker of the week appeared earlier this month, but it’s still a headshaker: Some Harvard ed school grads wrote an “open letter” to its administrators. They are demanding that the ed school speak out “against the unprecedented attack on public education.” What, dare say, is this attack? Start with “the over-testing of students” to their contention that performance pay plans “deny and undermine the essentially collaborative nature of teaching.” As if teachers spend all that much time teaching joint classes with their colleagues. Sure, I understand what they mean by this. But honestly, the current system of rewarding all teachers, regardless of the quality of their work, with tenure and raises based on little more than seniority and number of degrees awarded does little to improve the quality of education for the children in their care. Dear letter-writers: The grade for this letter is an “incomplete.” Try again.
5. Another headshaker: This time, it’s a Web site: Stop Homework. No comment.
6. In his Centraljersey.com piece, Hank Kalet makes clear that he is apparently afraid that new New Jersey education chief Brett Schundler will make his advocacy for school vouchers a centerpiece of his reform. Given the low quality of so many of the Garden State’s urban and suburban districts, are vouchers and charters still such an anathema?
7. Yes, according to a recent poll by Quinnipac University’s pollsters. Given that New Jersey is that rare instance of a mostly-suburban state with powerful unions and parents loyal to traditional public school districts, this isn’t so surprising.
8. In South Carolina, a state where arguments over the state’s abysmal graduation rate is just beginning to reach the levels seen in Indiana four years ago, a school choice supporter is entering the race for the education superintendent’s post, according to WACH-TV. Meanwhile Palmetto State school districts are still struggling to make Adequate Yearly Progress, reports the Sun News.
9. In Maryland, the state schools superintendent wants to actually subject teachers to performance management, according to WBAL-TV. By using student test scores no less. And, by the way, wants to make probationary teachers wait four years before gaining tenure. Sure, not all that radical compared to what Jason Kamras and Michelle Rhee are trying to do in D.C. But this is Maryland, not exactly friendly territory for school reform.
10. Speaking of Kamras: Yesterday’s video report has garnered some strong responses. Feel free to read and join in.
11. Meanwhile, in New York, the state education department has named 34 New York City schools that should either be overhauled, shut down or doe-see-doed, according to Gotham Schools. Joel Klein and company already has most of that handled. Of course.
12. When she was Indiana’s state schools superintendent, Suellen Reed was, well, underwhelming. Or as I put it back in 2004, she needed to hand in her walking papers. So Reed must be a tad saddened that her successor, Tony Bennett, seems to have gotten more done in less than one year in office that she did in 16.