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If only if this was the Redskins instead of the Jets. Photo courtesy of ESPN.

What’s happening in the dropout nation that doesn’t involve pigskin:

1. In New York, Randi Weingarten’s successor as head of the American Federation of Teachers’ New York City local is using the language of Gary Orfield and Richard Kahlenberg in his opposition to the lifting of New York State’s charter school cap. In the Daily News , United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew declares that “charter schools are actually becoming a separate and unequal branch of public education”, citing the low levels of ELL students in some charters. Could it be that the parents of these students, mostly immigrants themselves, don’t have the sophistication or access to information about charters to make a different choice than send their kids to traditional public schools? Or could it be that, like parents of special ed students, ELL parents tend to think that traditional public schools can handle those children better than charters, even though the evidence of this is sparse (and often, would lean against that conclusion)? Mulgrew doesn’t ponder either of these matters. But certainly he wouldn’t. Mulgrew isn’t thinking about equality or integration. Or even about the kids under the care of his rank-and-file.  He’s thinking about the best interests of his union.
2. Meanwhile in Albany, the notoriously dysfunctional state legislature is looking to strip the State University of New York of its power to authorize charters, according to Cara Matthews. This is the price Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (and his ally, the AFT’s New York State affiliate, which opposes charters altogether) hope to extract in exchange for lifting the cap on charters. As you would expect, Gov. David Paterson and charter school advocates oppose this exercise in school reform futility. This isn’t exactly New York’s Race to the Top.
3. Even worse, as the New York Times reports, the New York City Department of Education, one of the most-aggressive charter authorizers, would also lose the authorizing role under the plan. Apparently, Silver and the AFT’s New York State local wants to make sure that either New York State is out of Race to the Top or that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his schools chief, Joel Klein, lose as much as possible under the plan. Although I am generally against allowing school districts to have authorizing power (mostly because they tend to never use it and keep out charters), New York City has been the exception and should keep the authorizing ability. As usual, this is typical teachers union/Sheldon Silver politics. Neither are worthy of respect.
4. Meanwhile Paterson proposes to give SUNY and the City University of New York freedom from state budgeting, reports the Press & Sun-Bulletin. This includes allowing the universities to raise tuition without legislative approval. As I’ve noted in a 2008 Hechinger Institute report, such freedom tends to not work out well for college affordability or for expanding access to higher ed among poor students.
5. As for higher ed, InsideHigherEd reports that public funding for state universities is on a “historic” decline. Now this depends on what you mean by decline. As their chart notes, higher ed funding has still increased by more than 19 percent (and a 29 percent increase, if you add federal stimulus funds into the equation). Cry me a river.
6. San Diego Union-Tribune writer Dean Calbreath looks at the recent Alliance for Excellent Education, EdWeek and Bureau of Labor Statistics data and concludes that dropping out equals fewer job opportunities.
7. The L.A. Times opines about the Matthew Kim teacher termination saga and concludes that the entire system of teacher hiring and compensation needs an overhaul.
8. Speaking of teacher compensation: Battles over teachers pensions and retirement benefits are starting to heat up. Vermont is the battleground this time around. The NEA’s Vermont affiliate is already on the warpath.
9. John Fensterwald reports on the growing opposition to Common Core Standards, especially among mathematicians. This battling over the value of a national curriculum — some would say it already exists — is going to be an undercurrent in the battle over the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act.
10. Entrepreneur Sramana Mitra takes a look at how technology can be deployed to improve education.
11. EducationNews‘ Michael Shaughnessy interviews Anthony Rao, who looks at how schools teach boys and girls and how it may contribute to the former’s achievement gap issues.
12. Jay Mathews thinks the Brookings Institution’s recent study on education news coverage overstates the problem of mainstream reporting on ed news.
13. Don’t forget to check out this week’s Dropout Nation podcast. The commentary focuses on the need to improve leadership throughout school districts. Sure, teachers unions are part of the problem. But leadership at the district and school levels are also the reasons why so many school districts are in academic and bureaucratic freefall.
14. And given this is Martin Luther King day (and courtesy of Eduflack), don’t forget to listen to the famed ” Have a Dream” speech today. And remember, when it comes to education, we are far away from fulfilling either the dream and even further from the Promised Land. But we will get there soon.

More opportunities to learn. Photo of St. Anthony Catholic School, Washington, DC

What’s happening in the dropout nation:

- The Foundry takes aim at the opposition among some D.C. politicos to reviving the soon-to-be-shuttered D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program. Harry Jaffe of the Washington Examiner offered his own thoughts — and gave one of the District’s city councilmen the business earlier this week. Jaffe thinks vouchers “will get funded for another five-year program.”

- Meanwhile, in The Catholic World Report, I take a look at one of the key alternatives to D.C. Public Schools: The Archdiocese of Washington’s Catholic schools. Two years after Archbishop Donald Wuerhl decided to spin off several of its financially-lagging schools and convert them into charters, the proverbial Mother Church is working hard to ensure educational opportunities for its poorest families while fostering additional funding and support from the flock.

- One of the three School Reform Andys (Rotherham, in this case) and Education News Colorado take aim at the Denver school district’s decision to hire a counselor to help school board members with their marriage problems (among other personal issues). Why should the kids — half of whom are likely to never graduate – count for anything? Well, at least it isn’t all going into administrators’ salaries, as it seems to be happening in the case of Indianapolis Public Schools.

- Will the AFT embrace school reform? Based on its New York City affiliate’s response to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Race to the Top efforts, keep the money off the betting line.

- In California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger prods the Democrat-controlled legislature to take further steps in competing for federal Race to the To funds. The president of the state’s AFT affiliate isn’t thrilled with any of it.

- In research: The Center on Education Policy surveys state government uses of federal stimulus funds for education. The conclusions are mixed.

- Joanne Jacobs takes a look at the Deloitte study on the disconnect between the expectations of high school from parents and children, and the expectations of those who teach the latter. My thoughts will come later.

- In Charleston, S.C., one school superintendent is lambasted for winning an award, one that doesn’t have to do with improving the education of the children in the district’s care.

More news coming the rest of the weekend. Meanwhile, follow Dropout Nation on Twitter for continuous news and updates.

- Parent Revolution’s Ben Austin offers his own reasons why California needs to reform public education and prepare for Race to the Top.

Caring, highly-qualified teachers are important in keeping children in school. So the nation must improve the way it recruits, trains and retains instructors. The status quo just won't do. (Illustration courtesy of PBS.)

What’s inside — and outside — the dropout nation (updates and new articles marked with an *):

• It’s about the teachers: Jay Mathews hits on this point in this latest Washington Post column. Although parents and even administrators spend much time on the less-than-ideal conditions of the buildings in which children learn, Mathews notes that the highest-quality learning occurs in buildings in which boilers are broken down and dilapidated churches…
• And keeping the at-risk students in school: Mathews also rehashes an earlier debate he had with a California vocational school teacher, who argues that not every child wants to go to college and therefore, should be given a strong shop-and-technical school education. My view: The emphasis on college isn’t a bad thing at all, especially in light of the reality that college coursework is becoming an increasingly important qualification in getting blue-collar jobs; the same math skills (algebra and trigonometry) still apply in both cases. Besides, why shouldn’t a plumber also know about Chaucer? The real issue isn’t a need for vocational education — which public schools do an even worse job of providing — but engaging the minds and souls of children in the first place.
• Bad teacher policymaking, Volume M: California’s legislature is looking to shut down a loophole that allows teachers who plead ‘no contest’ to sex offense charges to continue teaching until their case is heard before the state teacher certification commission. As Joanne Jacobs and Darren Miller of Right on the Left Coast notes, the California Teachers Association — well-known for throwing its heft around in that statehouse — opposes closing the loophole. And given the union’s influence on the legislature, the bill may well fail to pass.
• A time for innovation in education: Newark Mayor Cory Booker hooks up with venture capitalist John Doerr (a longtime sponsor of school choice efforts) and California Board of Education President Ted Mitchell to argue for a school innovation venture fund in the Los Angeles Times. The goal: Pour more money into vouchers and other innovations to improve the performance of the nation’s public education system.
• The value of school choice: David W. Kirkpatrick uses his weekly EducationNews.org column as a Q-and-A on the value of vouchers, public charter schools and other choice plans. Reader Bill O’Dea responds with a Q-and-A of his own.
• Keeping mayoral control of schools: Michael Bloomberg’s fairly successful effort to reform what was one of the nation’s most dysfunctional school systems has been highly lauded nationally. As the New York Times points out today, this doesn’t mean that the powers that be in Albany will extend mayoral control beyond 2009. Bloomberg has long had support from the state Senate Republicans who run the upper house, but Sheldon Silver (who helped orchestrate the end of tenure reform earlier this year) and his Assembly Democrats are notorious for cowtowing to the New York State United Teachers and the United Federation of Teachers, United’s largest affiliate and the key union in New York City schools. As usual, all of this will not come down to the best interest of the city’s children.

New solutions must be undertaken if we want high-quality teachers in the classroom, especially in order to turn around the nation's dropout factories.

The dropout nation at a glance. Updated continuously throughout the day (new stories and updates marked with an *):

• Time for alternatives to teacher licensing? So suggests the San Francisco Chronicle, which peers into the licensing and test requirements for becoming a teacher in California and find it a tad onerous. The paper’s solution: Audition each teacher to see if they are qualified, something similar to the method teaching guru Martin Haberman uses to determine whether a teacher should be a candidate for his Star Teacher program.
• Although I agree with the Chron that the licensing requirements are a little much, the test-taking makes sense; you want teachers who have the subject-level competency needed in order to assure that every child gets a high-quality education. The real issue is that so much of teacher recruiting, training, licensing and recertifying in many states (actually, in all states to one degree or another) has little to do with actual instruction and subject-competency in the first place. Fifty-four percent of America’s teachers are trained in schools of education that are generally of low quality, according to former Teachers College president Arthur Levine in a 2006 report; the SAT score requirements are low as are other admission requirements, so the aspiring teachers (and the schools of education) are basically not ready for prime time. And most states don’t require teachers to actually take a subject-competency test before entering a teaching program; this means that many teaching students are coming in without having a strong knowledge base from which to educate students.
• Then there are the license renewal requirements: Thirty states require teachers to gain a master’s degree in order to have their licenses renewed; this, despite there being no research showing that earning an advance degree improves academic instruction or student academic performance, according to the most recent report by the National Council on Teacher Quality (disclosure, I am a co-author of the report). Eighteen states require districts to give raises to teachers based on additional graduate work, even though, again, there is no proof that such busywork will improve student learning. So teachers spend less time on improving their instructional skills and knowledge base and more time on gaining paper that will yield them better salaries and keep them employed. And you wonder why the quality of K-12 instruction is not where it should be.
• Teacher licensing should be focused on assuring that people with strong subject knowledge, polished in instruction and caring about children should be in the classroom. But this means restructuring schools of education, licensing renewal requirements and salary structures in order to make this happen. If you want more math and science teachers — both of which are in short supply — states must structure compensation to include salary differentials that can lure at least some aspiring math and science students into the field. At the same time, alternative teacher training programs that target baby boomer professionals looking for a second career after retirement, must also be part of the teacher supply landscape.
• *At the same time, the teacher compensation system — which rewards seniority and degree-accumulation over improving instructional method, subject-level competency and willingness to work with the hardest-to-teach students — must also be restructured. Simply raising salaries, as DC schools chieftain Michelle Rhee is attempting to do (in exchange for the elimination of tenure) isn’t enough. The problem isn’t simply a matter of money: There are shortages of teachers in math, science and special education positions; paying more for an indiscriminate number of teachers no matter their subject doesn’t solve the problem. Higher salaries need to be paid in high shortage positions while the entire compensation structure must be aimed towards improving instruction and knowledge base. Until those things are done, students will never get the kind of high-skilled teachers they need.
• *Speaking of Rhee: Fast Company has a profile of Rhee and her efforts to turn around the nation’s most pervasive academic failure complex. Thanks to Erin O’Connor and Critical Mass for the tip.
• Adding options for New York children: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg polishes up an otherwise mediocre legacy as mayor with his pioneering work on education; this time, he is expanding the range of school choices for the city’s students and parents. Eighteen new charter schools will open this year, reports the New York Times, adding to the 50 schools currently open for business; 51 charters have been started since Bloomberg took office seven years ago.
• Who should prevail in accountability: Since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act seven years ago, California has insisted on operating two different accountability systems — the federal AYP mandates and the state’s own Academic Performance Index — that don’t fully match up with one another in terms of expectations and performance indicators. The state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office takes a look at both AYP and API and find them wanting. It, instead, wants an accountability system that focuses on how school districts actually get the schools they oversee — especially those that are dropout factories and academic failure mills — up to speed. [Update: Link fixed per Jacqui Guzman. Thanks Jacqui.]
• Why running a school district ain’t easy, Volume 500: The Monitor in the Mexican border town of McAllen, Tx., takes a look at the tenure of outgoing district superintendent Yolanda Chapa. From accusations of forcing out a predecessor to complaints about her not having a doctorate (as if having a graduate degree results in tip-top school leadership) to the programs she started, one gets the sense that Chapa will be happy to get out of dodge and let someone else handle the mess.