Benjamin Schmookler, principal of Media Academy – a small school on East Oakland’s Fremont Federation campus — agreed to be dunked today during a celebration of the school’s improved test scores. Media Academy’s state test scores went up by 79 points to 600 (on a scale of 200 to 1,000), the biggest gain seen in all of the district’s high schools this year.

Oakland’s not alone in its upward trend. On the page 4 and 7 of this news release, you’ll see increases in English and math scores, statewide, especially in the early grades.

John Boivin, who administers the STAR Program Office at the California Department of Education, said there were no major changes this year in the test, itself, or in the scoring of it. He said his team hadn’t yet drawn any conclusions about why the scores went up.

Boivin did say, though, that the law only requires the state to change half of the questions on each test from one year to the next. In other words, experienced teachers have a pretty good idea of what’s going to be on it.

Terry Vendlinski, a senior researcher at UCLA’s National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST), said Bob Linn at the University of Colorado at Boulder has found that scores typically continue to rise steadily until a state changes its test.

“If the test doesn’t change substantially, year over year, the teachers begin to learn how to teach the material that’s tested,” said Vendlinski, a former teacher.

Nevertheless, some Oakland public schools outpaced the average improvements, statewide. Below is a list of most-improved schools and their percentage-point gains in proficiency, provided by the school district.

Translation: If 40 percent of students at a school scored “proficient” or better in 2008, and 50 percent did so in 2009, that would be an improvement of 10 percentage points.

MOST-IMPROVED ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS
Bridges at Melrose – an 11.1 percentage-point gain in Math, 11.4 in ELA
Burckhalter Elementary – 16.3 in Math, 19.5 in ELA
Community United – 12.2 in ELA
East Oakland Pride at Webster – 15.3 in Math, 15.6 in ELA
Emerson Elementary – 15.3 in Math
EnCompass Academy – 11.3 in Math, 17.0 in ELA
Fred T. Korematsu – 19.3 in Math
Futures – 15.5 in Math
Global Family School – 11.4 in Math
Greenleaf Elementary – 16.9 in Math, 13.9 in ELA
Hoover Elementary – 10.8 in Math
International Comm. Elementary – 12.6 in ELA
Laurel Elementary – 10.8 in ELA
Lazear Elementary – 11.5 in ELA
Learning Without Limits Elementary – 12.0 in ELA
Maxwell Park Elementary – 11.9 in Math, 10.8 in ELA
New Highland Academy – 13.6 in Math, 10.1 in ELA
Parker Elementary – 10.2 in ELA
Redwood Heights Elementary – 14.1 in ELA
Sankofa Academy – 13.7 in Math, 12.9 in ELA
SEED Elementary – 13.4 in Math, 21.6 in ELA
Sequoia Elementary – 11.0 in Math, 14.6 in ELA
Sobrante Park Elementary – 10.0 in Math, 12.1 in ELA
Think College Now – 17.6 in Math, 12.2 in ELA
Webster Academy – 11.7 in ELA
Whittier – 12.3 in Math

MOST-IMPROVED MIDDLE SCHOOLS
Claremont Middle School – 14.8 in Math, 10.2 in ELA
Cole Middle School – 24 in Math
Peralta Creek Middle School – 34.2 in Math
Urban Promise Academy – 11.1 in Math, 13.7 in ELA
West Oakland Middle School – 31.5 in Math, 17.0 in ELA

file photo by Cindi Christie/Contra Costa Times

If that’s the secret to improving public education, Oakland is really ahead of the curve. I wonder if the district is even eligible for these funds; it’s already closed and re-opened most of its lowest-performing schools and converted some to charters.

Duncan’s plan seems reminiscent of his strategy for Chicago Public Schools, called Renaissance 2010. The Catalyst, an independent magazine that focuses on school reform in Chicago, did an excellent, in-depth series on Duncan’s legacy as CEO of CPS.

What do you think this strategy will mean for public education and for the teaching profession? Is this the way to go about improving teacher quality?

Obama called for the support of successful charter schools, a new academic calendar that would add more instruction time, and better assessments of student achievement — and of teacher performance.

Here’s an excerpt from a detailed CBS/AP story:

He did not propose any specific legislative goals on education in his speech Tuesday at the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Instead, the president talked about how America must work much harder to keep pace with international competitors.

Part of the blame he put down to Washington bickering, “the same stale debates that have paralyzed progress and perpetuated our educational decline.” He rapped Democrats on the knuckles for resisting the idea of rewarding excellence in teaching with extra pay, and Republicans for opposing new investments in early education.

“It’s more money versus more reform; vouchers versus the status quo,” he said. “There has been partisanship and petty bickering, but little recognition that we need to move beyond the worn fights of the 20th century if we are going to succeed in the 21st Century.

You can find the full text of his speech here, on a Wall Street Journal blog.

Thoughts?

photo of Obama from jurvetson’s photostream at flickr.com/creativecommons

They will share $67,000 and $29,000, respectively, thanks to an award from the Effective Practice Incentive Community (rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?), a new initiative of New Leaders for New Schools. It amounts to roughly $3,500 per teacher.

The award money, itself, comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s Teacher Incentive Fund. That, if you recall, is the same source of cash bonus money that the Oakland teacher’s union rejected in 2007, on principle, because of the performance pay strings attached. (Specifically: The union didn’t sign onto the district’s $19 million grant proposal, and OUSD didn’t win the grant.)

You can find the news release here.

On a similar note: I hear that performance pay is a hot issue in preliminary parcel tax talks. You can probably imagine who’s fighting for it, and who’s fighting against it.

Where do you stand?

California schools don’t have enough funding and they provide “inadequate and unequal learning conditions and opportunities,” according to the latest annual report by UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education and Access.

The report is more of an advocacy piece than a research analysis, but it does raise (and answer, in no uncertain terms) important questions about the state of public education in California — its class sizes, course offerings, college-going rates, graduation rates, among other measures. 

Researchers compiled a fact sheet on Oakland Unified, as well (I found at least one typo — I’m sure there are more than 174 middle school students in the city).

Did any of the authors’ findings come as a surprise? Do you agree with their conclusions?

Recently, however, Sye became the subject of a central office investigation, and it remains to be seen how long he’ll stay at Skyline, or whether he’ll return for a second year. Chris Dobbins, a school board member who represents the high school, said Sye is off for two weeks, but didn’t say why.

What happened? According to unnamed sources cited in OakBook, an Oakland news Web site, four people anonymously accused Sye of making racially inappropriate comments and touching female colleagues in a way that made them feel uncomfortable.

Dobbins (who faced an inquiry of his own in 2007), told me last week that he supports the principal. He said he couldn’t comment on the details of the investigation, but that he hoped that Sye would remain at the helm of the school, which is undergoing a major academic overhaul under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

If Sye does leave as a result of this controversy, the school will have to hire its third principal in less than three years. Sye replaced Heidi Green, who left the district last June after being re-assigned to another Oakland school. Green’s predecessor, Amy Hansen, quit in August 2006, shortly before the start of the school year, leaving Skyline without a principal for weeks, if not months.

I used to get all kinds of complaints about the leadership (or the lack of a principal) at Skyline. This year, by contrast, it seems that Skyline’s African-American parent group, its PTSA, its teachers, its neighbors, and its students generally back the new principal and his vision for improving the school.

Wandra Boyd, of the group Concerned Parents of African American Students, says Skyline is not perfect, but it’s the first time in 14 years that she has experienced such unity of purpose there. Boyd told me she hoped the rumor — that Sye is being driven out of Skyline — was just that: a rumor.

What would happen to the school, and the students, if Skyline’s leadership were to change, yet again?

photo courtesy of The Skyline Oracle

Ali is vice president of Education Trust, a civil rights and education advocacy group. She also directs its Oakland-based partner, Education Trust-West, so she’s endured a number of interviews with me.

In case you were wondering, Ed Trust supports the “results-based accountability” of No Child Left Behind as a way to narrow the racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps.

You can read the Mercury News story here.

Here is Ed Trust’s take on NCLB, in a nutshell:

“Some would say that the current law asks too much of schools. We think it asks too
little. Our recommendations ask states to raise the bar for students, so that students
meeting state standards will be well prepared to meet the real-life challenges of college
and careers. But we don’t want states to just raise the bar; we want them to get students
over it. Our recommendations would provide states, districts, schools, teachers, and
parents with important new tools and resources to help them get students to higher levels
of academic achievement so that success in school can serve as the foundation for
success beyond school.”—Kati Haycock, president of the Education Trust.

With the presidential election behind us, efforts to reauthorize and re-shape the landmark education law might start up again in earnest.

Many of you have watched public education transform because of NCLB. What’s different, and what has stayed the same? What in the act, if anything, would you keep in place, and what would you pitch? 

If nothing else, hasn’t NCLB focused more attention on children who have historically been failed by the system? I guess the real question is whether that attention has helped those kids and the schools they attend, and how progress should be measured.

Here’s what American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten had to say:

WASHINGTON—The seven-year anniversary of No Child Left Behind is no cause for celebration. For the past seven years, NCLB has become a stand-in for real discussions about a robust education policy that prepares children for the 21st century.

The AFT wholeheartedly agrees with what President-elect Obama has said repeatedly about this law: that its goals—high standards, an excellent teacher for every child, and closing the achievement gap—are the right ones, but that schools need to be supported in order to make this happen.

The AFT looks forward to working with a new Congress and administration to ensure that this law is retooled and reauthorized to provide real solutions for closing the achievement gap. Focusing on collaboration with teachers, parents and community partners; building capacity; and creating community schools—i.e., schools that offer a variety of wraparound services, including tutoring, recreational and social service programs—are three great ways to start. If the law can reflect these ideas, then we can truly help all schools offer every child a rigorous, well-rounded education that prepares him or her for college, work and life.

image by fraley_tera from flickr.com/creativecommons

You don’t need to have served on a board of education to know this: Closing schools is a political nightmare. Imagine hundreds of impassioned teenagers marching eight miles from their school in East Oakland’s King Estates neighborhood to protest its fate. I don’t need to describe the indignation, the tears, the news trucks and cameras everywhere.

But phasing schools out, one grade at a time? Allowing them to die a slow death, without forcing out any existing students? Families and kids who don’t yet attend a school are much less likely to rally around it.

I have a feeling that’s the wave of the future here in Oakland.

Tonight, the state administrator is set to approve plans to phase out BEST High School, one of two small schools remaining at West Oakland’s McClymonds campus, by 2011, and to close the nearly phased-out only Peralta Creek Middle School (Calvin Simmons) after its last group of eighth-graders is promoted to high school.

Fremont Federation’s Paul Robeson School of Visual and Performing Arts has suddenly become a phase-out candidate as well. Last week, board members asked district staff to make a recommendation on the future of the small school — a performing arts school without a drama teacher. A staff report suggests that the district not admit any ninth-graders to Robeson this coming fall.

This spring, we’ll see intensive meetings about the future of a number of other Oakland schools struggling with low enrollment and/or low test scores, including: Claremont Middle School in Rockridge; Castlemont’s small high schools; Sankofa Academy in North Oakland; Explore Middle School, in East Oakland; Far West, an alternative school in North Oakland; Madison Middle School, in Sobrante Park; and Brookfield Elementary School.

Gradual closures might be more politically palatable, but they’re still closures, all the same. Robeson, BEST and Peralta Creek are all fairly new, small schools that share campuses with other small schools, and I wonder how an influx of new students next fall would affect them.

Do you think it makes sense, from an educational standpoint, to phase out struggling schools and focus district resources elsewhere? How would this affect students and teachers and neighborhoods? How should these de-facto closures be handled?

You can find tonight’s full board agenda here.