Not a great start for the new Dunbar

By selliott | Wednesday, January 7, 2009, 11:22 PM

Wow, it’s been a tough week for the new Dunbar High School, which opened adjacent to the old school building just after the start of the new year.

Just days after the first basketball game in the new school gym was cut short at halftime because of a brawl, a female student reported she was assualted in a restroom.

A large group action like a brawl at a sporting event is not always easy to prevent or contain with security. There haven’t been a lot of specifics yet about how it started and then got out of control.

But the new school’s security features, including cameras, should aid in preventing incidents like the alleged bathroom assault, which reportedly involved multiple unsupervised students in the restroom. It seems like there should be have been better supervision in that instance and the cameras, which of course are not inside the bathrooms but usually are placed with a view of the door in the hallway, ought to be able help identify those involved (there have been no arrests as of yet).

Dunbar teachers, what can you tell us about these incidents?

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The SAT: A force for good or evil?

By selliott | Monday, January 5, 2009, 01:25 PM

There have been two interesting Op-ed pieces in the NY Times over the past few weeks on standardized testing, specifically college entrance exams, with very different views of their value.

Peter Salins, a professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, takes on one big assertion of the anti-SAT crowd — that standardized entrance exams do a poor job of filling their primary mission of predicting which high school students will succeed in college.

Salins found a strong correlation between the average SAT score and the graduation rate at schools in the New York state university system. As average SAT scores went up, so did graduation rate. For schools that saw SAT scores decline, graduation rate also went down.

Meanwhile, Times editorial writer Brent Staples argues that pressure colleges feel to achieve high rankings from publications like U.S. News and World Report (rankings that place great value on high average SAT scores) causes them to overvalue test scores.

Interestingly, Staples points to report that argues that colleges have a financial incentive to overrate high SAT scorers over other high quality but more well rounded students because bond rating companies pay attention to SAT averages when assessing a school’s creditworthiness.

My problem with the SAT is that it is, by design, neither a measure of intelligence nor is it a reliable gauge of whether a student has learned material he or she was taught in grades K-12. And when it comes to differentiating good students, these degree of difference between a student who scores 600 in math and one who scores 650 is largely decided by test-taking skills.

In some cases, the best scoring kids also are the smartest and those with the highest success potential. In other cases, top scorers are one-dimensional and less deserving of access to top-flight educations than students further down the list.

So even if it’s true that higher SAT averages mean more students graduating, is that a good enough argument for colleges to rely heavily on test scores in admissions decisions? I’m not convinced. What do you think?

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Should we be bailing out schools?

By selliott | Wednesday, December 3, 2008, 11:28 PM

That’s what former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich says. Here’s his argument. In an economic downturn, local and state revenues get hit hard. And it’s those very tax dollars that primarily support schools.

As state revenues decline right here in Ohio it is likely the state will, as it has in the past, soon curtail education spending. That will force local districts to make corresponding cuts.

Reich argues that when we bailout banks, the money can move easily oversees. It may help the U.S. economy, or it may not. He says if we were to make a similar investment in schools the result could only be good for our country, as it will contribute to improving the “human capital” of our country — that is the smarts and innovative brain power that can fuel the U.S. going forward.

What do you think of Reich’s argument?

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So who’s it going to be for Ed Secy, Obama?

By selliott | Monday, December 1, 2008, 11:57 PM

President-elect Obama has named a lot of cabinet folks lately, but there hasn’t been a name leaked yet for education secretary. Arne Duncan (superintendent of Chicago schools), Richard Dailey (Chicago mayor), Joel Klein (chancellor of New York schools) and Linda Darling-Hammond (Stanford professor) are getting some buzz but nothing official yet. It’s probably not a good sign for education as a priority in the new administration.

Newsweek has a good update on the two education camps and what they want (and fear) in an education secretary.

Hopefully, we’ll get some news soon.

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This is a beautiful story

By selliott | Friday, November 14, 2008, 11:39 AM

Alexander Russo at This Week in Education points us to a wonderfully written example of narrative journalism called Zach and the reading thrones by Cindy Lange-Kubick at the Lincoln (Neb.) Journal-Star. I just had to pass it on.

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Alarms ringing: Will Obama back-burner education?

By selliott | Thursday, November 13, 2008, 11:03 AM

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof today picked up on some nervous buzz out there that education is going on the back burner for the upcoming Obama administration. This is in light of education coming in fifth on a list of Obama priorities.

Panic may be a little premature, but I am on board with the general sentiment of Kristof’s column — that the U.S. must take steps to improve its low performing mostly urban schools if it wants to improve the nation’s economic future fortunes.

I don’t agree that Kristof’s favored policy approaches — killing teacher certification and eliminating tenure — would do much to help. But I agree with him that education must be a key component to whatever comprehensive national reform Obama may be planning.

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Who should (and shouldn’t) be education secretary

By selliott | Wednesday, November 12, 2008, 01:20 PM

There’s a lot of rumors and very little concrete information out there about who is being considered for U.S. Secretary of Education in the Obama Administration.

The sexiest name batted about is former Secretary of State and ex-general Colin Powell. The other names getting the most buzz are Arne Duncan, who heads Chicago Public Schools, and Jim Hunt, the education-minded former North Carolina governor.

Personally, I don’t think Powell is the right choice. But Hunt might me.

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