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Fatal Blows to Public Education

Troubling news in the funding for public education debate of late--it seems that the Governor's budget cuts IPS's budget by almost $77 million by 2011.  Critiques of the Indianapolis urban school district are legion and should be talked about but a cut like this would certainly be a step backward and, of course, take even more from the students with the greatest needs.  Alternative & magnet programs, class size, English as New Language instruction, and professional development would all suffer (not to mention art & music which is always the first to go).  Another factor to consider to is that the children of Indiana are getting poorer (see Indiana Youth Institute) and the number of students served by IPS that meet the federal standard for homelessness is now over 1600!  As Sheila Kennedy states in her article, the time for leadership in relation to this city's children is now.

 

Avoid fatal blow to IPS by Sheila Seuss Kennedy

Posted: June 8, 2009

The legislative special session has an unenviable task. Times are tough, and we have long since stopped cutting government fat, and moved on to muscle and bone.

That said, one of the most monumental threats facing Indianapolis in this round of budget cuts is the potential to effectively destroy Indianapolis Public Schools -- and thus deliver a mortal wound to economic and community development in Indianapolis.

The House/Senate budget proposal that failed in April would have meant a $47 million loss to IPS over the next two years. After the last revenue forecast, Gov. Mitch Daniels told lawmakers to cut more; his numbers would mean an additional $11 million lost to IPS.  Read More at: http://www.indystar.com/article/20090608/OPINION12/906080310/1301/ARCHIVE/Avoid+fatal+blow+to+IPS

IPS & Funding Cuts

A letter to the editor from IPS Superintendent Eugene White on funding cuts, the state budget, and the "financial death spiral" of public education.  Great cause to be concerned here as, in effect, the district will almost certainly have to cut programs in addtition to firing teachers.  If you thought class size was a problem this year in the district...just wait till next.

 

Funding cuts create dire scenario for IPS
Eugene White 

This month, approximately 300 Indianapolis Public Schools teachers and 40 administrative staff received notice that their positions would be eliminated as IPS prepares to cut $25 million from our budget. At the end of this school year, IPS will close six additional schools on top of the eight schools that were closed last year. These cuts are the necessary but painful result of declining enrollment and the dollars-follow-the-child funding formula adopted by the legislature in recent years. IPS still is determined to become a model urban school district by 2010. To meet the diverse learning needs of our students -- many of whom live in extreme poverty -- IPS has established more magnet and option programs than any other Indiana district. We've put a number of creative initiatives in place to increase student achievement and graduation rates, including 21 alternative programs serving students who are disruptive or who cannot learn in a traditional school setting. These programs are working and, until recently, there was reason for optimism in IPS. What changed? Under the budget adopted by the Indiana Senate, state funding for students who attend IPS will be cut by 2.5 percent in 2010 and 4.2 percent in 2011, a $26.5 million loss over the biennium. This loss is on top of the $8 million in property tax revenue that IPS is projected to lose to the new property tax caps over the next two years. These reductions alone are enough to force hundreds of additional teacher layoffs, but when you add the Senate's plan to repeal a state law that allows school corporations to levy property taxes to pay for utilities and insurance, IPS will be forced to cut an additional $22 million from its general fund, which pays teachers, to pay
 for utility costs that were previously covered by property taxes.

The bottom line is that funding cuts of this magnitude will devastate IPS and severely disadvantage the children it serves. Even if the legislature ultimately rejects the Senate's plan to require schools to pay their utility bills with dollars that should be directed to the classroom, IPS would lose nearly $35 million over the next two years in state and local funding. If the Senate budget becomes law,
IPS will be forced to cut programs. Without the resources to compete with charter and neighboring school districts, IPS' enrollment will continue to drop and the district will be thrown into a financial death spiral that will make it difficult, if not impossible, to provide an adequate education for our students.

 Some policymakers believe the additional Title I funding that IPS is projected to receive through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will help offset steep cuts in state funding. However, its strict requirements include the general rule that Title I dollars may not be used to replace state funding. Also, the Senate funding formula appears to contravene the intent of Congress in providing stimulus funding to states to stabilize public education. While there's no consensus that more money will improve educational outcomes, I think it's safe to say that less money, especially $35 million less, certainly won't help improve student achievement in IPS.

Hope in the Classroom

Finally a positive story coming out of IPS!  I would question some of the assumptions here (i.e. charter schools & Teach for America) but it's good to see how a dedicated administrator can turn a school around.  Of course, the piece of this puzzle related to the firing of teachers in a beleagured district is troubling (wasn't the stimulus package supposed to stop that, Superintendent Bennet?) and I wonder how administrators can be supported to do this kind of work. 

Bringing hope into the classroom

by Mathew Tulley at Indy Star

For anyone who cares about urban education, these are, believe it or not, promising times.

Across Indianapolis, charter schools are providing inspired choices for many families. In Washington, Education Secretary Arne Duncan is challenging harmful old-school policies and entrenched education interest groups. Groups such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, meanwhile, are aiming billions of dollars at innovative educational programs.

This is all just a start, of course. Few problems are more vexing and immense than the dire condition of urban schools. There are no easy fixes. But there are signs of hope.

That was the thought I had recently after visiting Gambold Middle School, a Westside school of about 400 students run by an energetic principal named Yvonne Rambo. An educator for 25 years, Rambo thinks the only way to improve city schools is to dramatically change the way they are run.

"We changed everything," Rambo said, recalling her 2006 arrival at the Indianapolis Public Schools middle school. "It was out of control. You'd drive up and see kids throwing things from the windows. Teachers couldn't clear the halls. There was graffiti, and gang issues."

Rambo didn't make excuses out of the high crime and poverty rates surrounding the school or the heartbreaking troubles many students carry with them each day like books in a backpack.

Befitting her last name, Rambo got tough, installing security cameras and a zero-tolerance policy that led to increases in suspensions and expulsions. She pushed teachers so hard that many quit. She also championed a program to tailor classes more closely to each student's skill level and built self-esteem by pushing top students to take high-school classes.

"The first couple of months were really rough," Rambo said. "We were trying to change a culture and change bad habits."

Three years later, ISTEP scores are still low, but they're up. Suspensions and expulsions are down. A hard push has cut the number of students not reading at grade level from 140 to 40. Walk the halls, and you'll see students move quietly from class to class. Rambo, meanwhile, is chock-full of innovative ideas, such as using iPods to improve the English skills of her many Spanish-speaking students.

"This is the age where you hook students in -- through sports or band or academic success -- or you lose them forever," she said of middle school.

Peek in classrooms at Gambold, and you'll find wonderful teachers such as April Partee, a dynamic educator who engaged her special-education class on a writing project by dancing around the classroom. Or Stephanie Parido, a recent college graduate who is spending this year at Gambold as part of the inventive Teach For America program.

Sadly, budget cuts could cost Rambo four of her 20 teachers next year. The problems at urban schools won't go away. Still, there are no excuses at Gambold.

"We have to be creative," Rambo said. "We have to see every challenge as an opportunity."

Students View of IPS

Some local kids talk to policy makers about the state of education in IPS in today's Indy Star.  Good to see someone thought to ask them.  Now a panel of teachers would be a nice touch.  I must say some of the comments posted are the most interesting as (finally) folks are becoming comfortable putting Dr. White under the microscope--he has a lot to answer for methinks.  Now don't misunderstand me here, IPS needs to supported and the challenges taken up; the solutions undoubtedly offered by Lubbers (charter schools, more scripted curriculum, more de-professionalizing teachers) are based more on ideology than research and ultimately.....can and often does hurt kids.

Students give lawmakers a bleak view of IPS

By Andy Gammil

Margrette Lowe wants state legislators to understand that they have given her a raw deal when it comes to her education.

She and a dozen other Tech High School students met with eight lawmakers Friday and painted a bleak portrait of their district: Many teachers don't care; the district doesn't offer the challenging classes commonly offered elsewhere; and some students receive such bad guidance that it can affect whether they graduate

READ MORE

Magnet Schools & Blaming Parents

I just can't keep quiet about the stories in the Star about Indianapolis Public Schools.  The audacity of the IPS administration to blame parents for low magnet enrollment and the failure of small schools is the epitome of spin.  Anybody who has spent any time at all in the IPS small school fiasco knows that they were never given a real chance and were "small schools" in name only.  To say that they're shifting back because of "research" on effectiveness is insulting.  The tone of today's article on magnet programs is even worse: the Superintendent telling parents to leave neighborhood schools for magnets?!  This is a complete reversal of the original intent of magnets--to bring high quality programs to struggling urban schools.  This is simply tracking the district (we used to at least pretend that we didn't do this), creating trophy schools and leaving vast numbers of kids, communities, and teachers behind--all for the sake of looking good for the paper. But, in the end, to blame parents is just too much--we need some public outrage, people.

Most of IPS' magnet high schools struggle to fill their seats

Shortridge High School is set to reopen next year as a magnet school with a focus on law and public policy, but so far there are few takers: only 235 students have signed up for 600 seats. 

To view the contents on www.indystar.com <http://www.indystar.com> , go to: http://www.indystar.com/article/20090222/LOCAL18/902220389

IN MEMORY OF Kincheloe

I hope Dr. Willinsky doesn't mind the reprint here.   I certainly know Joe Kincheloe's work in critical pedagogy, cultural studies, and urban education and had the chance to meet him once.  This brief but powerful essay speaks to a deep kindness that you felt when interacting with him balanced with such a passionate, critical eye. He will be missed.

IN MEMORY OF

Joe L. Kincheloe, 1950-2008

Joe L. Kincheloe, a prolific scholar, tireless teacher and mentor, irrepressible musician, and leading figure in critical pedagogy, cultural studies, and curriculum theory died on December 19, 2008, after suffering a heart attack while on vacation in Jamaica.

Joe was the Canada Research Chair in Critical Pedagogy in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University. During his time at McGill, he and Shirley Steinberg founded the Paulo and Nita Freire International Project for Critical Pedagogy (http://freire.mcgill.ca/), which has established itself as a leading archival and coordinating centre for a global research initiative that works with teachers and students to improve the contribution that education makes to social justice and the democratic quality of people’s lives.

Joe played a formative role in the development of critical pedagogy, which is a fusion of Critical Theory, arising out of the Frankfurt School, Antonio Gramsci, and others, and the radical democratic pedagogy of the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire. Over the course of 50 books, including
his latest (with Shirley Steinberg), Christotainment:  Selling Jesus Through Popular Culture, Teachers as Researchers and Kinderculture:  The Corporate Construction of Childhood, and countless articles, Joe systematically uncovered the ways in which institutional influences in the construction and representation of knowledge, identity, and culture were  badly serving certain populations. By developing a politically sensitive approach to the cognitive sciences, he was able to adeptly demonstrate how a number of the leading ideas currently at play within education, such as
standards and intelligence, were being used unconsciously or knowingly to undermine basic democratic principles in ways that, he made clear, the schools could both study and address.

Such work was necessary in order, as Joe wrote at one point, “to build an ethical sense on which [people] can build humane and evolving institutions,” and in setting out the grounds for such reconstructive work, he was as likely to make use of the democratic philosophy of John Dewey, as the constructivist psychology of Lev Vygotsky. He drew on a vast range of figures and traditions, in a richly eclectic research methodology that he identified as bricolage, which was rooted in a self-reflective and self-critical grasp of “the relationship between a researcher’s ways of seeing and the social location of his or her personal history.” It was the rigor of critical vigilance that he brought to his writing, as well as to his teaching and his collaboration with educators in the schools.

Joe was born in what he described as “the mountains of East Tennessee… in a very poor area of Sullivan County.” Growing up among “grotesque forms of classism and racism in the South of the 1950s and 1960s,” he soon found a means, while still in high school, to bring people together and move them as a blues musician and songwriter. His song lyrics were to grow sharply satirical and political over the years –Jim Lehrer meets Phil Ochs and Greg Allman – finding their raspy soulful expression, most recently, with Tony and the Hegemones, which has been playing the North American educational conference circuit since 1998. It was in Tennessee that he also had his start as a teacher, sharing with middle-school students the quirky counterculture stories of Richard Brautigan and Tom Robbins, and with fellow teachers workshops on themes such as teaching “third-world”
geography.

Prior to coming to McGill in 2006, Joe had held positions at CUNY, including the Belle Zeller Chair of Public Policy and Administration, Pennsylvania State University, Florida International University, Louisiana State University at Shreveport, and, perhaps most influentially, an initial posting as Education Department Chair at Sinte Gleska College in the Rosebud Sioux Community of South Dakota. For all of the prodigious scale and scope of his own published work across each of these
institutions, his exemplary generosity as a scholar will long be remembered for the publishing guidance and opportunities that he provided for well over 600 books of colleagues through the many valuable books series that he edited, principally with Shirley Steinberg, his partner in
love, work, and family. For Joe was also father and grandfather, to be dearly missed by his
children Ian Steinberg and Christine Quail, and their children Luna and Hava; Chaim Steinberg and Marissa Fogel, and their child, Tobias; Meghann and Ryan Clements, and their children Maci, Cohen, and Seth; and Bronwyn Steinberg.

Yet what also needs to be said is that there was no occasion to which Joe Kincheloe could not add warmth and levity, no conversation which he could not indelibly enrich with a pointed story from his youth or the endless misadventures of his adulthood. “Stop me if you’ve heard me tell this…”
would often be his opener. (One would as soon want to stop Bob Dylan on launching into “Just Like Tom Thumb Blues.”) And yet he was as quick to laugh at another’s story; as interested to take note of others’ struggles; as soon to be overly polite to the rude and surly; and as certain to be patient with the inevitable frustrations of getting from A to B in today’s world. When you heard him gently say at the close of a meeting or phone call, “Peace be with you,” you knew that the peace that went with you was every bit Joe’s gift to you. Then and always.    

website: freire.mcgill.ca

John Willinsky, Stanford University 

Public Schools Work

An interesting foray into the PR world by Central Indiana Schools.  Clearly the intent is to counter some of the conventional wisdom out there about public education. I've often said that we do a really poor job of getting the word out regarding the successes of public schooling.  No one is saying that there isn't a lot of work to do but it is amazing how misinformed most Americans are about their public education system.  Take a look....

http://publicschoolswork.net/videogallery.htm

Millions of American children lack nutrition necessary to learn

 Millions of American children lack nutrition necessary to learn 

despite Congressional funds available!

 _________________________________________________________

 A new study conducted by three Harvard researchers and sponsored by the Sodexo Foundation discovered that millions of American children may be attending school without the nutrition necessary to learn despite the fact that Congress has made the funds available.  The Sodexo Foundation is now calling for more school districts to participate in the federally funded School Breakfast Program as one of the ways to help solve the problem.

 

Local school districts who offer the school breakfast program receive reimbursement from Congress, making the program fully funded.  However, nearly $10 billion of the estimated $90 billion America pays annually due to hunger are due to the costs of poorer education-related outcomes such as greater absenteeism and more grade retention related to hunger.  

 

Dr. J. Larry Brown, senior author of the new report, Visiting Scholar at Harvard School of Public Health and founding director, Center on Hunger and Poverty is available for interviews to discuss the new report.  Dr. Brown can discuss all aspects of the report: Congressional funding, children’s nutrition and the overall findings of the report.

 

The new report is a summary of more than 100 published research articles cited as the most authoritative on this topic and provides the scientific basis for the researchers’ conclusion that the School Breakfast Program is highly effective in terms of providing children with a stronger basis to learn in school, eat more nutritious diets, and lead more healthy lives both emotionally and physically.

 

Over 85 percent of individual schools across the country offer a school lunch, one in seven - more than 15,000 of them - still do not make breakfast available to children who are in need.  In some states, only 50 to 60 percent of the schools serving students lunch also provide children with a breakfast to enable them to learn.

 

The report concludes that one of the more cost-efficient things the nation can do to reduce hunger among children and to better their health and educational success, is to fully utilize the National School Breakfast Program in districts across the country. The full report can be accessed at www.SodexoFoundation.org.

Small Schools in LA or..."Class of '09, Baby!"

An interesting online report about the power of small schools, an international focus, and the power of determined kids--even more so as IPS seems to be on the verge of backing away from the small school model.  I wonder if folks have thoughts to share.....please post a comment if so!

West Adams High, A Model For The Future?

by Karen Grigsby Bates: LINK to listen

Many seniors at L.A.'s West Adams Preparatory High School are actually looking forward to returning to school. The brand new institution is based on a mission to help students realize their dreams in a multicultural world.

Indiana & ESL

Important work being done on addressing the needs of ESL learners in Indiana...

Indiana schools should reevaluate ESL, educators say

Evansville Courier Press by John Martin July 20, 2008

Schoolchildren with limited English skills need to be kept in traditional classrooms rather than pulled out and taught separately, two university educators said recently.  The Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp. is one of many public school systems with half-day academy programs for some of its English as a Second Language (ESL) students.

Teachers in all subject areas need more training in working with those students, said Annela Teemant and Farida Pawan, who are education faculty members at IUPUI and Indiana University, respectively. They spoke recently to education writers from Indiana newspapers attending a seminar at IUPUI.

Teemant called ESL pull-out programs "the least effective" method for helping students.It works better, Teemant said, to reorganize traditional classrooms "so teachers can work with small groups of students with homogenous needs, work with all populations." Students miss valuable time in traditional classrooms when they are pulled out, Teemant said, adding that pull-out ESL classes often "wind up focusing on social language and basic vocabulary, not academic language."

EVSC officials are aware of the recent research on ESL instruction, said Sandra Madriaga, who oversees the local school system's program.  EVSC operates an ESL academy for middle school students that lasts for three class periods a day. Participants are bused to Washington Middle School from around the city.  Some elementary schools also have pull-out programs.  Madriaga said EVSC gradually is moving from a pull-out to a "push-in" model, citing programs put in place during the last school year at Caze, Culver and Scott elementary schools.

During the coming year in the middle school academy, EVSC will begin a science vocabulary curriculum lasting for about one hour of the three-period class, Madriaga said.  EVSC also has collaborated with the University of Evansville to offer all teachers an online course about assisting students with limited English skills, she said.  Statewide, there's a growing need for such instruction, according to the two university instructors.

A survey of Indiana teachers showed that 42 percent of teachers work with limited English students daily, but only 12 percent reported having had any training in the field. The number of ESL teaching specialists isn't keeping up with student growth. Pawan said the current ratio is one teacher per 80 students, underscoring her call for more ESL training among all teachers.  Pawan said that roughly 80 percent of ESL students in the state are United States citizens, and the growth of ESL students in Indiana is greater than any other state in the Midwest.  It's a situation that school systems must address, said Indiana University School of Education Dean Gerardo Gonzalez.  "The growth in this area is dramatic in every area of the state and every area nationally."