Welcome to the May 15, 2017, edition of the HML Post.  A service to the members of the Horace Mann League of the USA.   (Editorials and research articles are selected by  Jack McKay , Executive director of the HML. Topics are selected to provoke discussions about the importance of strong public schools. More articles of interest on the HML Flipboard site.

Donations to support the League's activities, like the HML Post, are always appreciated.
Click here for more information.

Corporate Sponsors

The Metaphor of the Week:  
The very essence of leadership is you have to have a vision.
It's got to be a vision you articulate clearly 
and forcefully on every occasion.  
You can't blow an uncertain trumpet.
- Theordore Hesburgh



The war on education as public good   by Wendy Lecker on the Stamford Advocate site.
Political theorist  Benjamin Barber, who died April 24, wrote about the importance of education as a public good. "Education not only speaks to the public, it is the means by which a public is forged."
As he noted, education transforms individuals into responsible community members, first in their classrooms and ultimately in our democracy. Local school districts are also the basic units of democratic government.
Michigan professor  Marina Whitman recently noted that the essence of a public good is that it is non-excludable; i.e. all can partake, and non-rivalrous; i.e. giving one person the good does not diminish its availability to another.
Some school reforms strengthen education as a public good; such as school finance reform, which seeks to ensure that all children have adequate educational resources.
Unfortunately, the reforms pushed in the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations attack education as a public good. For example, choice - charters and vouchers - is a favorite policy of all three administrations. Choice operates on the excludable premise of "saving a few."  ( Learn more.)


Surrounded by  voyeuristic screens and engulfed by never-ending stimulation, our brains are undergoing transformation. Modern life offers many advantages, not the least of which involves the technology that provides us with opportunities that our ancestors couldn't imagine. Unfortunately, the need to feel constantly connected to the digital realm negatively impacts several areas of our lives.
Unlike the older generations that had more peace and quiet,  we are always plugged in, and that makes our habits more important than ever. It's much easier to get lost in social comparisons and overindulge in eye candy on Instagram than it is to force yourself to do something uncomfortable that will ultimately add value to your life.  ( Learn more.)

Create a Culture of Communications in Your District by Rich Bagin on the Learning First Alliance site.
Recently, I spoke before a group of superintendents when I received an Outstanding Friend of Public Education Award from the Horace Mann League. I most appreciate that honor and I also used my acceptance to speech to share some messages with these leading superintendents who rally around public education.
One topic I covered was internal communication - one of the weaker components in schools that NSPRA often finds when we conduct communication audits around the U.S. and Canada. What follows is an excerpt from that speech on internal communication:
As we complete communication audits for school districts across the country, we see that by far the weakest component is internal communication.
Ideally, we want all staff to become ambassadors for their schools, to vote in finance elections where it applies, and to become advocates for their schools, their children, and their communities.
Unfortunately, this rarely happens.
Lots of lip service is given to having internal communication, but it often breaks down quickly as pockets of staff have little knowledge or a feeling that they know what is really going on.  ( Learn more.)

The United Nations has identified "free, equitable, and quality primary and secondary education" by 2030 as a  goal for sustainable development. This goal reaffirms the right to education guaranteed by countries in multiple U.N. declarations over the last half-century. Although these treaties reflect a general consensus that everyone has a right to education, most countries do not actually deliver on this promise. To address the issue, different countries are organizing their education systems based on contrasting values. Some countries have placed the responsibility for choosing schools on families, while others have delivered the right to education at a system-level, with the latter approach correlating with better national outcomes.
Instead of countries delivering on their U.N. treaty commitments to the right to education, some have proposed that parental choice should drive the education "marketplace." This approach varies across countries. In countries in the global south such as India and Uganda, families can "choose" to send their children to "low fee" private schools, or else their children will likely not receive an education. In countries in the global north like Sweden and the U.S., school "choice" usually happens when governments give parents the option to leave public schools. However, in both cases, governments place the responsibility on the family to figure out the best option for their child instead of fulfilling their child's right to a free, equitable, high quality education.   ( Learn more. )

Voucher proposals expose rift in school choice movement  by Geoff Mulvihill on the Washington Post site.
For two decades, a loose-knit group that includes some of the country's wealthiest people has underwritten the political push for school choice, promoting ballot initiatives and candidates who favor competition for traditional public schools.
But when a member of this elite group was elevated to education secretary, the appointment opened a philosophical schism that now threatens to shatter the alliance, turn billionaires against each other and possibly lead some school-choice advocates to join with teachers' unions, their archenemies.
Fueling the split is the anticipation of a plan from President Donald Trump's administration that could offer parents federal dollars to send their children to private schools, including religious and for-profit institutions.  ( Learn more.)

How Google Took Over the Classroom  by Natasha Singer on the New York Times site.
The tech giant is transforming public education with low-cost laptops and free apps. But schools may be giving Google more than they are getting.
In the space of just five years, Google has helped upend the sales methods companies use to place their products in classrooms. It has enlisted teachers and administrators to promote Google's products to other schools. It has directly reached out to educators to test its products - effectively bypassing senior district officials. And it has outmaneuvered Apple and Microsoft with a powerful combination of low-cost laptops, called Chromebooks, and free classroom apps.
Today, more than half the nation's primary- and secondary-school students - more than 30 million children - use Google education apps like Gmail and Docs, the company said. And Chromebooks, Google-powered laptops that initially struggled to find a purpose, are now a powerhouse in America's schools. Today they account for more than half the mobile devices shipped to schools.  ( Learn more.) 

This paper considers the tensions with democratic education inherent in the federal SIG program's market-based school reforms. It examines the evolution of and intent behind the 2009 federal SIG program. From there, it considers the lessons of forty years of research on educational effectiveness and high-stakes accountability. The paper culminates in a set of recommendations that are intended to re-center the purposes of public education for low-income students, students of color, and local communities in developing more equitable, democratic school turnarounds.
We propose five steps that federal, state, and local policymakers can take toward fostering more equitable, democratic turnaround processes. 
First, increase current federal and state spending for public education, particularly as it is allocated for more democratic turnarounds. 
Second, focus turnaround policies on improving the quality of teaching and learning rather than on technical-structural changes. 
Third, engage a broad cross-section of schools' communities-teachers, students, parents, and community organizations-in planning and implementing turnaround strategies that are tailored to each school and district context. 
Fourth, incorporate multiple indicators of effectiveness-apart from test scores-that reflect the range of purposes for schools. 
Fifth, support ongoing, systematic research, evaluation, and dissemination examining all aspects of turnaround processes in schools and districts.  (Learn more.)

The U.S. Department of Education released a  study showing that students in the Washington, D.C., private school voucher program perform worse academically than students who are not in the program. Yet, just four days later, Congress released its  budget deal, which includes language to renew the program through 2019. Congress is expected to pass the budget agreement later  this week in order to avoid a government shutdown.  
The findings in the latest report are in line with recent studies of the Louisiana, Indiana and Ohio voucher programs - all of which also found that vouchers have negative impacts on academic achievement.
Rather than heed the clear evidence from these studies and move to end the D.C. voucher program, though, Congress instead has decided to renew it. And in an effort to avoid negative results in the future, Congress is actually barring the Department of Education from performing any future studies like this one. The new law will prohibit the Department from using the "gold standard" in scientific research to examine the D.C. voucher program - which it used when performing the recent D.C. voucher study - and will require it instead to use a "quasi-experimental research design.
 
Charter School Spending, Insufficient Authorizer Oversight, and Poor State & Local Oversight Leads to Growing Fraud Problems in Charter Schools Center for Popular Democracy.
This report offers further evidence that the money we know has been misused is just the tip of the iceberg. With the new alleged and confirmed cases reported here, the financial impact of fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement in charter schools has reached over $223 million since our first report. Public funding for charter schools (including local, state, and federal expenditures) has reached over $40 billion annually.2 Yet despite this tremendous ongoing investment of public dollars in charter schools, all levels of government have failed to implement systems to proactively monitor charter schools for fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement (Learn more.)

I  don't want my daughters to learn to code .
This is heresy to some. I live in San Francisco, and part of my professional life involves counseling tech startup founders about their company messaging. I repeatedly hear that these leaders are desperate for engineering talent. They preach that the avenues of opportunity broaden for the kids (girls in particular) who learn computer programming in childhood. Pointing to job growth projections, they announce that there's nothing but blue skies for computer science graduates. They believe they can solve the gender and diversity gap in tech if young kids are encouraged to learn code. Take advantage of their sponge-like brains and start early, they say.

Varying Degrees: New America's Annual Survey on Higher Education   by Rachel Fishman and Manuela Ekowo  on the New America site. 
Americans believe in the tremendous potential of higher education-but they also feel that higher education is falling short of that promise. New America's inaugural survey reveals a stark expectations gap between what higher education could-and should-be and what higher education currently is.
Varying Degrees: New America's Annual Survey on Higher Education surveys 1,600 Americans ages 18 and older to better understand their perceptions of and knowledge about higher education and economic mobility. The survey shows both unifying themes as well as differences across age, gender, generation, region, and socioeconomic status when it comes to the value of a college education, who is responsible for student success, the ideal role of government, and the goal of higher education.
Our top findings include:
1. Americans are split about whether there are lots of well-paying jobs that do not require a college degree. Slightly over half (51 percent) agree that there are lots of well-paying jobs that do not require college attendance.
2. There is wide agreement (75 percent), however, that it is easier to be successful with a degree than without. 
3. Only a quarter of Americans agree that our higher education system is functioning fine just the way it is. 
4. Over half (57 percent) of Americans believe that colleges and universities should help their students succeed.   ( Learn more. )

4. The estimates derived via teachers' students' large-scale standardized test scores are also invalid. 
5. Large-scale standardized tests are often biased when used to measure teachers' purported effects over time. 
6. Related, large-scale standardized tests estimates are fraught with measurement errors that negate their usefulness. 
7. Using large-scale standardized tests to evaluate teachers is unfair. 
8. Large-scale standardized test-based estimates are typically of very little formative or instructional value. 
9. Large-scale standardized test scores are being used inappropriately to make consequential decisions, although they do not have the reliability, validity, fairness, etc. to satisfy that for which they are increasingly being used, especially at the teacher-level. 
10. The unintended consequences of such test score use for teacher evaluation purposes are continuously going unrecognized, given research has evidenced, for example, that teachers are choosing not to teach certain types of students whom they deem as the most likely to hinder their potentials positive effects. ( Learn more. )

 
What Is The Purpose Of School Choice?  by Jeff Bryant on the Education Opportunity Network.
Another week, another round of evidence that providing parents with more "school choice," especially the kind that lets them opt out of public schools, is not a very effective vehicle for ensuring students improve academically or that taxpayer dollars are spent more wisely.
The latest evidence comes from a study of the voucher program in Washington, DC that allows parents to transfer their children from public to private schools at taxpayer expense. The study found that students "who attended a private school through the program performed worse on standardized tests than their public school counterparts who did not use the vouchers," reports the  New York Times.
This study adds to others - from  Ohio,  Indiana, and  Louisiana - finding that school vouchers have negative impacts on students.
Despite these results, many proponents of school choice contend the purpose of school choice was never about generating better results. It's about choice for choice's sake.  ( Learn more. )

Follow concussion guidelines, but keep children active by the Editorial Board of the Seattle Times.
New research on how young athletes should be treated for concussions on and off the field is welcome news for both parents and coaches.
Dr. Stanley Herring, director of the University of Washington Sports Health and Safety Institute, says exercise is essential to a child's long-term health. The concussion protocols published last month in the British Journal of Sports Medicine are designed to keep athletes as safe as possible and all youth sports programs should adopt them. But parents also need to keep their kids active.
Physical illness related to inactivity is more likely to result in premature death than sports-related concussions. About 10 percent of deaths worldwide are related to physical inactivity, including heart disease, diabetes and some cancers, according to Harvard researchers. Physical activity also combats depression and enhances psychological well-being and may improve academic performance, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  ( Learn more.)

Why we must reboot our schools  b y Anthony Kim on the San Francisco Chronicle site.
Baby Boomers were raised in an analog world and experienced the dawn of a digital domain. We Boomers grew up with limited access to information, and a greater appreciation for hierarchy and long-term career planning. Millennials and Generation Xers grew up with immediate access to information, with connections and comfort engaging online with people across the world. It's the difference akin to watching a movie on VHS versus streaming it on Netflix.
If we can reorganize our schools to better mirror our day-to-day lives, formal learning will become more relevant and desirable to our students, and the school environment as a workplace will become more appealing to our teachers.
To respond to the changing expectations of the young digitally native workforce, many companies have shifted to flat organizations, flexible hours and work locations, and integrated work-life environments. Public schools, however, have not. That is hurting both teachers and learners.  ( Learn more.)
 
Equity barriers in rural schools   by  Marcia Powell on the Smart Brief site.
When conversations  about   equity or  trauma come up, people often assume teachers are referring to inner-city, urban environments, which they may associate with food deserts, undocumented students, or violence. But barriers to equity can be found in multiple regions across the country: dilapidated suburbs far removed from strip malls and shopping convenience, abandoned regions of the country that once boasted American jobs and industry lost to globalization, towns with no viable small businesses, and rural country houses with few nearby neighbors. Disparities in  property taxes cause district-to-district inequality issues.
I teach in a rural Iowa school district, in an area with greater than 60 percent poverty. There are a few ELL students, but less than the  nine percent  national average. Parents often  shop resale  or depend on community clothing closets, and further stretch budgets at the  local dented canned food stores  that have flourished in the last five years. It's common for people to move home to help aging parents or raise kids. For some,  underemployment  is a concern. Researchers have studied the effects of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) on students in urban environments, but rural students report similar levels of exposure to ACEs. This can transfer trauma and dysfunction to the next generation.
(Learn more.)
 

 
So far this month in education news, a California court has  decimatedrigid job protections for teachers, and Oklahoma's governor has  abolished the most rigorous learning standards that state has ever had. Back and forth we go in America's exhausting tug-of-war over schools-local versus federal control, union versus management, us versus them.
But something else is happening, too. Something that hasn't made many headlines but has the potential to finally revolutionize education in ways these nasty feuds never will.  ( Learn more.)

Since 2005,  College Spark Washington (CSW) has awarded more than $50 million to college readiness and degree completion programs. Like Lumina, KnowledgeWorks and Nellie Mae, CSW was funded with the proceeds from student loan sales. In partnership with Washington State, CSW invested $9.5 million in 2006 to fund a nine-year  College Readiness Initiative (CRI).
The results were promising and informative: course taking patterns and achievement improved, and high school graduation and college enrollment rates improved.
Ranging from urban to rural, the 39 low-income grantee schools (16 high schools, 19 middle schools and 4 combination schools) from 13 districts received funding to implement a career readiness initiative, which includes advisory curriculum, student-led conferences and personal learning plans, a program called Navigation 101 (now Career Guidance Washington or CGW) and AVID. Schools could also apply for additional funds to increase dual credit access and success through programs such as Advanced Placement, Project Lead the Way and College in the Schools.   ( Learn more.)

Landscape in Teacher Preparation: Undergraduate Secondary Education on the National Council on Teacher Quality site.
High school represents an amazing opportunity for students and their teachers. For most Americans, the high school years played a pivotal role in shaping what they know about subjects such as U.S. history, world history, literature, geometry and biology. For many, the high school years provide one of the last opportunities to gain valuable life-enhancing insights, for example, reading a classic novel such as To Kill a Mockingbird; discovering what happened during historical events such as the French Revolution and the transformation of African nations through colonization and decolonization; learning about scientific theories that go beyond the students' own experience, ranging from nanotechnology to relativity; and understanding how numbers interact to form the backbone of the universe.
Even Americans who continue on to college will focus their coursework on one or two majors, and therefore, as adults, they will rely on their high school education for knowledge about most other academic subjects.    ( Learn more. )

The Differences Between the last Four Generations?  author unknown  (Editor's note:  This chart of generational differences is well done!)
Name Traditionalists
 Baby Boomers
 Generation X
 Millennials
Birth Years 1900-1945 1946-1964 1965-1980 1981-2000
Current Age 63-86 years 44-62 years 23-43 years 8-27 years
Education  A dream  
  A birthright 
 A way to get there  
 An incredible expense   
Entitlement
 Seniority   
 Experience Merit Contribution

 And 43 more areas to compare. Download the PDF. (Click here.)

------------------------------------------
The Education Cartoon of the Week.

 
  

The Superintendent's Special topics:
(Please share your ideas.  Contact Jack McKay )


The Better Interview Questions and Possible Responses  (From the HML Post, published on March 21, 2016.)
  
Sponsor a Professional Colleague for membership
in the Horace Mann League.   Click here to download the "Sponsor a Colleague" form.

On the Art of Teaching by Horace Mann.
The book, On The Art of Teaching by Horace Mann has been presented to new teachers as a welcome gift by a number of schools district .  For orders of 50 or more, the district's name is printed on the front cover.

Ordering Information
Cost per copy: $12.50
Orders of 50 to 99: $11.00
Orders of 100 or more: $10.00
Send orders to:  (include name of district, P.O. #, and address)
The Horace Mann League of the USA
560 Rainier Lane
Port Ludlow, WA 98365
or    email:  Jack McKay
FAX (866) 389 0740
 








About Us
The Horace Mann League of the USA is an honorary society that promotes the ideals of Horace Mann by advocating for public education as the cornerstone of our democracy.

Officers:
President:  Dr. Martha Bruckner, Superintendent, Council Bluffs Comm. Schools, IA 
President-elect:  Dr. Eric King, Superintendent, (ret.) Muncie Public Schools, IN 
Vice President: Dr. Laurie Barron, Superintendent, Evergreen School District, Kalispell, MT.
Past President:  Dr. Christine  Johns-Haines, Superintendent, Utica Community Schools, MI

Directors:
Dr. Ruben Alejandro, Supt. of Schools, (ret.) Weslaco, TX
Dr. David Berliner, Professor Emeritus, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ
Dr. Evelyn Blose-Holman, (ret.) Superintendent, Bay Shore Schools, NY
Mr. Jeffery Charbonneau, Science Coordinator, ESD 105 and Zillah HS, WA
Dr. Carol Choye , Instructor, (ret.) Superintendent, Scotch Plains Schools, NJ
Dr. Brent Clark, Executive Director, Illinois Assoc. of School Admin. IL
Dr. Ember Conley, Supt. of Schools, Park City, UT
Dr. Linda Darling Hammond, Professor of Education, Stanford U. CA
Dr. James Harvey, Exec. Dir ., Superintendents Roundtable, WA
Dr. Steven Ladd, Superintendent, (ret.) Elk Grove USD, Elk Grove, CA
Dr. Stan Olson, President, Silverback Learning, (former supt. of Boise Schools, ID)
Dr. Lisa Parady, Executive Director, Alaska Association of School Administrators
Dr. Kevin Riley, Superintendent, Gretna Community Schools, NE

Executive Director:
Dr. Jack McKay, Professor Emeritus, University of Nebraska at Omaha,
560 Rainier Lane, Port Ludlow, WA 98365 (360) 821 9877
 
To become a member of the HML, click here to download an application.