Business Resources for a College- and Career-Ready America

Posted on August 5, 2012 by coreeducation

Achieve has released new resources directed toward the business community, to inform and rally more advocates for education reform. The Business Resources for a College- and Career-Ready America include modular resources for business leaders to use as they engage their internal and external networks of colleagues, peers, employees, and employers around the college- and career-ready agenda.

The business community has a long history of supporting efforts to improve public education in America. Whether through public-private partnerships, direct engagement, or financial support, companies and organizations historically have made strategic investments in education because they know that the success of our nation’s economy in the global marketplace depends on a quality workforce.

The resources specifically include:

Case-making facts and data that outline the urgency for business engagement around education reform
Critical and relevant background on college- and career-ready reforms, including the Common Core State Standards and Next Generation Science Standards, and the U.S. education system
Actionable strategies for engaging with employees, peers, CEOs and corporate executives, business associations, elected officials and the media in support of education reform

Over time, Achieve will add to these resources, with additional cards, PPT slides, templates and data for developing organization-specific fact sheets and messages, and examples from the field of how business leaders are currently supporting the college- and career-ready agenda.

To access these resources, please visit http://achieve.org/business

American Youth Policy Forum Revamps Site

Posted on May 20, 2012 by coreeducation

The American Youth Policy Forum (AYPF), a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing professional learning opportunities for teachers, policymakers, and other education leaders, has revamped its website to be more user-friendly. The site is more interactive and has more functionality for users, who can now:

Perform a dynamic search of all resources for materials that fit specific PD needs;
Create a user log-in and password and register for AYPF events ONLINE;
Learn more about featured program areas, searchable by popularity and date of resource;
Stream videos and recordings of past AYPF forums and webinars;
Learn about upcoming events;
Read the latest e-bulletin and peruse the e-bulletin archives.

AYPF has several program areas that are closely tied to the Common Core. College and career readiness are tackled through two programs, the College and Career Readiness and Postsecondary Education and Workforce Success programs. These programs are targeted to ensure students are ready for what lies beyond high school. AYPF also offers materials on data systems and management, developmental education and remediation, STEM, career and technical education, and dual enrollment.

For more information on AYFP and its programs, visit their revamped site at http://www.aypf.org

Shut Up and Teach?

Posted on February 21, 2012 by coreeducation

In a recent article for The Hechinger Report, classroom teacher Eric Shieh reflects on his experiences working with his union to fight budget cuts in his district. As a music teacher in St. Louis, he was appalled by the district’s decision in 2007 to cut student time in the arts by 64% at the middle school level, in the hopes that more “academic” time would improve test scores.He immediately emailed fellow arts teachers across the district, but was answered with apathy—“there is nothing you can do; this has been happening for the past 20 years.” Dissatisfied, Shieh began circulating petitions, which dead-ended even after collecting hundreds of signatures. Frustrated, he called his union.

The union acted quickly, promising to mobilize teachers and parents against the cuts. In the end, though the union’s role in the conflict was “minimal,” Even so, its action did empower Shieh by “rejecting the powerlessness that my colleagues had articulated, and affirmed my professional convictions about the centrality of the arts in public education.” It also helped motivate previously downtrodden teachers to join with Shieh to fight the cuts, and, supported by a large group of vocal parents, convinced the administration in the district to reverse their decision.

Shieh is now teaching in New York City, but he still feels frustration with his colleagues across the profession and their perceptions of their own powerlessness. “Teachers across the nation have given up advocating for their students not because they don’t wish to, but because it seems an impossibility…Consider this past year. By all accounts, it should have been one of teacher outrage…cuts targeted students in poverty and students with special needs…they targeted arts and physical education programs, and they severely disrupted school processes as one seismic change after another was proposed…What interests me, too, is how the cuts to schools came and went so quietly while other education issues raged in the public eye.”

Shieh believes that the reason these cuts went largely unnoticed by the population at large is because they were “strategically, perversely” made to the populations “least likely to detect and fight against them.” Most teachers, Shieh believes, have simply learned to “shut up and teach.” Why is this? Shieh can only guess—perhaps it is the cycle of helplessness, perhaps teachers took what happened in Wisconsin to heart, or perhaps they feel the just can’t match “billionaire philanthropists who’ve been plowing policy changes that suit their business models through Congress for nearly a decade.”

How does Shieh suggest teachers begin to advocate for themselves and their students? First, he believes unions need to widen their discourse beyond HR issues and take on issues like teacher evaluation, curriculum development, and school equality. Second, leaders of teacher associations, particularly small, local associations, have to be able to better organize the teacher voice. They need to “build spaces for member action, and focus member discourse on innovative practices and policy.

Finally, teachers have to find a way to engage with education policy. This includes finding and creating spaces within professional associations to discuss issues that matter to teachers.

To read Shieh’s full commentary, please visit http://tinyurl.com/8xuh4hx

Seizing the Opportunity

Posted on February 19, 2012 by coreeducation

A new report from Education First and Policy Innovators in Education (PIE) details how state advocacy groups are working with state policymakers to advance education reforms. To compile the report, PIE and Education First worked closely with Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Texas to get greater insight into how advocacy groups and policymakers are trying to collaborate.

These states are at all levels of reform, and the study found that even in states “primed for reform,” there have been stumbling blocks and missed opportunities. However, several practices were identified for advocacy groups to adopt in order to be successful at navigating the confusing, chaotic, and complex policy environment:

1. Begin by building public will to solve some problem or concern.

2. Next, efforts must shift towards forging agreement among different stakeholders about potential solutions.

3. Then, proposed solutions must then be introduced as law, policy or regulation.

4. The legislation should create broad directives as well as delegate implementation details to the purview of state boards and education agencies. Strong reforms can easily be watered down in the implementation phase, which reduces the reform efforts to naught.

5. Once policies and implementation goes into effect, great advocates must continue their work by sustaining and defending the policies they’ve championed. They can manage expectations, highlight successes, and troubleshoot glitches to keep reforms on track, as well as continue to support policymakers and agency leaders against resistance to change.

Furthermore, great advocates are also adept at creating urgency for action, building and maintaining strong relationships with policy champions and leaders, negotiating, recruiting broad coalitions, agitating to keep the pressure on, and setting the stage for future successes. Each of these methods is discussed in detail in the report. Overall, the researchers found that education advocacy organizations are adept at both contributing to and capitalizing on favorable political conditions “by sticking to common, winning strategies.”

To read the full report, please visit http://www.pie-network.org/seizing-the-opportunity

TIME’s “12 Education Activists for 2012”

Posted on January 16, 2012 by coreeducation

Time Magazine has named its picks for the top education activists to watch in 2012. So who are some of these potential movers and shakers (in no particular order)?

1. Catharine Bellinger and Alexis Morin: Two students who founded Students for Education Reform (SFER) in 2009, with the goal of mobilizing college students around the country to advocate for reform via the ballot. There are currently 71 chapters in 28 states, and is growing so fast that both Bellinger and Morin have taken a hiatus from their own studies to manage the non-profit.

2. Matt Damon: The actor is using his fame to talk about education policy issues. This is no surprise, as his mother is a teacher. The actor participated in the Save Our Schools March last spring, and recently refused to accept an award from the National Education Association (NEA) because the president of the organization wrote an op-ed with the Teach for America founder about teacher quality.

3. John Danner: A successful entrepreneur in online advertising who became a middle school teacher in the Nashville public schools and activist for education reform. He co-founded Rocketship Learning, a network of California public charters that rely heavily on technology to customize each student’s education. There are currently 5 schools in the network, with approval to establish another 20 in the San Jose area.

4. Aimee Guidera: President of the national Data Quality Campaign, she is widely credited for playing a key role in pushing states to improve their data systems and publicly holding them accountable for doing so. Her task for 2012 will be to help states expand from collecting quality data to using that data to inform decision-making at all levels.

5. John Hunter: An elementary school teacher from Virginia, in 1978 he designed the World Peace Game that allows 4^th graders to play out various scenarios of global doom or cooperation, and has inspired both students and teachers. Likened to an “analog version of The Sims,” in terms of its physical design, a documentary, World Peace and Other Fourth-Grade Achievements, was created that charted the impact of the game. The movie has been screened at festivals across the country, as is projected to have wider distribution in 2012. Time blogger Andrew Rotherham notes that at a screening of the film he moderated last year, many in the audience were touched and “moved to tears.”

To see who else is on the list, please visit http://ideas.time.com/2012/01/13/school-of-thought-12-education-activists-for-2012/

Teachers of the Year Discuss Public Perception of Teachers

Posted on October 25, 2011 by coreeducation

We have all heard the polls—while most people think their local/neighborhood school is great, they have a poor opinion of other schools across their states and the nation. Recently, a group of past and present state Teachers of the Year took part in a three-day intensive discussion about the public perception of the teaching profession and how teachers can change the rhetoric. The discussion, held on the NTOY Network, and online community of the Teacher Leaders Network, offered several suggestions for what teachers can do to change the public perception of teaching:

Teach. Great teachers are constantly challenging their students to dig deeper to come to well-informed conclusions. This skill must be turned upon the community. “We must become public engagement experts, advocating for our schools, students and profession. Rather than talking ‘at’ the public, we must actively involve community members in honest discussions…and let them help shape the educational landscape as partners.”

Open our classroom doors. Web 2.0 technologies have significant power to let the “outside” into our classrooms. Social media, blogs, and live classroom feeds can help transparency, while responding to comments and messages can help “begin authentic discussions.” Face-to-face interactions, through service learning projects, community and family partnerships and events, are also extremely important for forwarding the community involvement process.

Help reporters to identify great stories—and why these stories are significant. We must partner with the media to help us reach and teach a larger audience. “We teachers have long been accustomed to an egalitarian culture in our profession where no one teacher stands out too much. For this reason, we rarely highlight what our most effective colleagues are doing in the classroom—and we certainly don’t want to appear to brag about our own efforts…it’s time to get over that.” The news need not be earth-shattering, but should be framed in a way that explains why the story matters in a local and national context.

Advocate for improved accountability systems. The taxpaying public has a right to hold us accountable for our work. Why? “Because, regardless of their field, professionals strive to improve the outcomes for those they serve.” Also, by being part of the conversation of how best to evaluate teachers, we can advocate for methods that are research- and best practices-based, and grounded in classroom realities.

The discussion wrapped up with a call to action to take on the tough tasks that are facing the teaching profession:

We hope you—our fellow teachers—are willing to take on the tough tasks. To build relationships with community members and the media. To tell engaging stories and explain why they matter. To gather and share evidence of the work you do, and advocate for changes to transform your (our!) profession. These tasks define the profession of teaching, so in other words, we hope that you teach. Kick open your classroom doors and teach.

To read the full summary of the discussion, please visit http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2011/10/18/tln_classroom_doors.html?tkn=MPXFUtDB6r3VNT9oa8ySVDvaoBUpoCpD0tXO&cmp=clp-edweek

Education Advocates Release “Statement of Principles” on ESEA Reauthorization

Posted on October 23, 2011 by coreeducation

This month, twenty-five education advocacy organizations released a “statement of principles” addressed to Sens. Harkin and Enzi and Reps. Kline and Miller. The statement focused on the role of teacher quality in the reauthorization of ESEA and urged the congressmen to “make every effort possible to spur states and school districts to advance new policies that help ensure every child has a skilled, knowledgeable, and effective teacher and every school has an effective leader.”

The authors claim that research overwhelmingly shows that the only way to close achievement gaps and transform public education is to focus on building and retaining a high-quality teaching and school administrator force. They lament that “all too often, these [school] systems accept mediocrity as the fullest extent of a teacher’s potential.”

The principles laid out in the document are:

1. All states and districts should begin moving immediately to create teacher evaluation systems comprised of multiple measures that are part of a single statewide assessment of teacher effectiveness. The most “predominant” factor should be a value-added model of student growth.

2. States should only have five years to develop these systems.

3. Once the systems are implemented, they should be used to tailor professional development and other supports and serve as the basis for “human resources decisions.”

4. States must monitor and publicly report within-district and between-district inequities by patterns of access to teachers with high evaluations.

5. States and school districts should develop and implement plans to ensure all high-needs schools have their fair share of highly effective teachers, and principals should have autonomy in all hiring decisions.

In the meantime, the authors suggest several steps for equalizing the distribution of high-quality teachers. States and districts should use the information available to them now to start determining the equity of distribution, including information such as the percentage of certified teachers, percentage of teachers beyond their first year of teaching, and percentage of high school classes being taught by an in-field teacher.

To read the statement and view the list of signatories, please visit http://www.edweek.org/media/finaleseaprioritiesteacherquality-blog.pdf

The Center for Education Reform Launches New Hub

Posted on October 4, 2011 by coreeducation

The Center for Education Reform (CER) recently launched their new, interactive website, which they hope will become the central hub for all things related to education reform. The CER, founded in 1993 to help bridge the gap between education policy and practice, says that it re-designed their site in order to “serve [the public’s] daily information needs and provide ready access to opportunities to become more engaged.”

The site is packed with content, but some of the most notable and interesting are:

1. An interactive state map that includes rankings for governors, media reliability, charter school law, and teacher quality; rankings for digital learning and what they call the “parent power index” will be available soon.

2. A section devoted to issues such as teacher quality, federal policy, the “unions and establishment,” and online learning.

3. A “Take Action” section that breaks down ideas for becoming involved into categories like “10 minute ideas” up to “1 day per week ideas.” They also provide resources for bigger ideas, such as a starter kit for starting a charter school.

4. The “Media Bullpen,” a news section devoted to “bringing accountability to education reporting.” This section features national stories, analysis, and data from across the country, and also a specific focus on education news from towns and individual districts.

To explore the site, please visit http://www.edreform.com/

“Insurgents” Take on Teachers’ Union

Posted on August 16, 2011 by coreeducation

Last week, Time’s Andrew Rotherham addressed a growing movement led by young teachers: taking action against traditional teachers’ unions. “These renegade groups…are trying to accomplish what a generation of education reformers, activists and think tanks have not: forcing the unions to genuinely mend their ways.”

Rotherham nicknames the three most-talked about “insurgent groups” as “The Takeover Artists,” “The Outsiders,” and “The Hybrid.” The Takeover Artists are represented by the NewTLA, a dissident faction of the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA). NewTLA was established last year by Jordan Henry, a veteran teacher of 12 years. In the short time NewTLA has been organized, Henry has managed to raise enough dissention among teachers that 90 NewTLA adherents were elected to UTLA’s house of representatives. This is impressive, given how difficult it is for nonmainstream candidates to get much traction within teachers’ unions. Henry is trying to change UTLA from within, but has not shied away from public criticism of the union either and has been taking on tough issues like seniority and changing the focus of the union from teachers’ contracts to school improvement.

“The Outsiders” are Educators for Excellence (E4E), a group of 3,500-plus New York City teachers who are trying to change laws and policies by going straight to policymakers. When the NYC teachers’ union balked at Mayor Bloomberg’s proposal of doing away with the current practice of laying off the most recent hires first (thus allowing principals to have free reign over who stays and who goes), E4E “forced its way into the conversation and sought a middle ground.” Though a deal was later reached on layoffs between the government and the union, it gave E4E some name recognition. The goal of the group is not to create an antithesis to unions, but rather “to generate an elevated profession of teachers who want to be accountable,” says Sydney Morris, one of the two NYC teachers who founded the group last year. Though E4E is now established as a voice in education policymaking, it is likely they will remain “outsiders” for a while.

Finally, “The Hybrid” is Teach Plus, a network of teachers with chapters in several major cities. The group focuses on recruiting accomplished teachers who want leadership roles within their schools or to advocate for reform, but don’t want to leave their classrooms. More than 4,500 teachers are involved so far, and 250 have gone through the selective 12- and 18-month fellowships. Teach Plus wants to partner with unions, but admittedly wants to “support and reward the best rather than focus on defending the worst.” So far, several Teach Plus members have been elected to leadership roles within the Boston Teachers Union.

Rotherham admits that it is too early to tell whether any of these groups will succeed in changing the teachers’ unions. However, the three groups share striking similarities, the most notable being a frustration with the education conversation today and a desire for actual change. The response from the unions so far has been to “co-opt or marginalize” them. And the essence of the conflict is also a convoluted one: unions exist to protect workers’ rights, which in the case of education creates immense friction between this function and reforms that individualize the worker: differentiation based on performance and real individual accountability for results.

To read the full article, please visit http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2087980,00.html?artId=2087980?contType=article?chn=us

11 Education Activists for 2011

Posted on January 7, 2011 by coreeducation

Time Magazine’s Andrew Rotherham has compiled a list of the top 11 education activists to watch in 2011. Follow the links below for more on these influential individuals.

Michael Bennet: The Senator

Steven Brill: The Writer

Jeb Bush: The Adviser

David Coleman: The Architect

John Deasy: The Superintendent

Jonah Edelman: The Activist

Kristin Richmond and Kirsten Tobey: The Foodies

Wendy Kopp: The Teacher Trainer

Diane Ravitch: The Convert

Michelle Rhee: The Radical

The "Core" of Education

Tag Archives: advocacy