Local School Systems Research Articles

The Importance of Infrastructure Development to High-Quality Literacy Instruction

Although the education community has identified numerous effective interventions for improving the literacy of U.S. schoolchildren, little headway has been made in raising literacy capabilities. David K. Cohen and Monica P. Bhatt, of the University of Michigan, contend that a major obstacle is the organizational structure of the U.S. education system. Three features in particular--the lack of educational infrastructure, a decentralized governance system, and the organization of teaching as an occupation--stymie efforts to improve literacy instruction. The authors emphasize that the education system in the United States has always been a patchwork of local school systems that share no common curricula, student examinations, teacher education, or means of observing and improving instruction. Although localities have broad powers over education, few have built the capability to judge or support quality in educational programs. The quality criteria that have developed chiefly concern teachers, not teaching. The decentralization and weak governance of U.S. schooling also deprives teachers of opportunities to build the occupational knowledge and skill that can inform standards for the quality of work, in this case instruction. And, unlike practitioners in other professions teachers have little opportunity to try to strengthen teaching quality by setting standards for entry to the occupation. Cohen and Bhatt review six types of organizational reforms undertaken over the past several decades to improve literacy and other academic outcomes for U.S. students. After briefly describing accountability, comprehensive school reforms, knowledge diffusion, improvement of human capital, and market-based reforms, the authors turn to the Common Core State Standards, an effort initiated by state governors and school leaders to raise student achievement. The authors conclude that the fundamental question about the Common Core, as with the other reforms they discuss, is whether educators and policy makers can mobilize the capability to help states and localities invent, adapt, and implement reliable ways to improve instruction.

ASHA Develops Alternative to Teacher Assessment Systems

You have accessThe ASHA LeaderSchool Matters1 Jun 2012ASHA Develops Alternative to Teacher Assessment Systems Carol Polovoy Carol Polovoy Google Scholar More articles by this author https://doi.org/10.1044/leader.SCM2.17072012.7 SectionsAbout ToolsAdd to favorites ShareFacebookTwitterLinked In Should school districts assess speech-language pathologists using systems specifically designed for teachers? The answer from ASHA’s schools experts is, unequivocably, “no.” Recognizing that SLPs are likely to be included in value-added assessment (VAA) systems designed to measure individual teacher effectiveness, ASHA has designed an accountability system that accurately reflects the SLP’s unique role in a child’s academic success. The Performance Assessment of Contributions and Effectiveness of Speech-Language Pathologists (PACE) [PDF], includes a portfolio assessment, teacher self-report, and classroom observation tools (from ASHA’s Professional Performance Review Process for the School-Based Speech-Language Pathologist). The push to implement VAA comes from several federal initiatives—including the most recent reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (also known as No Child Left Behind) and the Race to the Top initiative—that emphasize placing highly qualified teachers in classrooms and ensuring that accountability systems evaluate teachers regularly. Local and statewide school systems are using VAA to measure the effectiveness of teachers—and are expanding the assessments to other professionals, including SLPs, as a means of associating teacher value with student outcomes. “The goal of a value-added assessment process for education professionals is to identify performance measures that accurately and fairly assess the professionals’ impact on student performance and overall success of the school community,” said Deborah Dixon, ASHA director of school services, co-leader of the ASHA team that developed PACE. “Much emphasis has been placed on evaluating the contributions of the classroom teacher, but very little attention has been paid to assessing contributions of other providers, including SLPs.” In addition to the assessment tool itself, PACE also includes background information on VAA, an extensive review of the research on VAA for teachers, a performance review process, and ways to advocate for the adoption of the PACE at the state and local levels. Advocacy tools include a step-by-step process for advocating for change, a sample PowerPoint presentation, and frequently asked questions. SLPs and state associations will need to push for states and districts to include PACE. “It is imperative that state associations and member SLPs be actively involved in the development or expansion of VAA systems that will include SLPs,” said Janet Deppe, ASHA director of state advocacy, who co-lead the PACE effort. “If state association representatives and SLPs in local districts are not ’at the table’ when value-added systems are discussed and created, it is unlikely that the system will be appropriate or effective for evaluating SLP performance,” Deppe said. Several states already have developed VAA systems for classroom teachers. “In fact, in some states, SLPs have been informed by local and state officials that they will be included in the VAA system for teachers,” Deppe said. “As a result of a 2010 law in Louisiana, the VAA system under development for teachers in that state is being expanded to include other professionals, including SLPs.” Even if a state isn’t implementing a VAA system for teachers, ASHA recommends advocating for PACE to be used by school districts, Dixon said. “PACE bypasses the statistical issues of using VAA with SLPs, it accurately reflects the unique roles and responsibilities of SLPs in schools, it focuses the evaluation on the important aspects of SLPs’ work in schools, and it includes multiple measures of accountability.” For more information, contact Janet Deppe, ASHA’s director of state advocacy, at [email protected], or Deborah Dixon, ASHA’s director of school services, at [email protected]. Author Notes Carol Polovoy, assistant managing editor of The ASHA Leader , can be reached at[email protected]. Advertising Disclaimer | Advertise With Us Advertising Disclaimer | Advertise With Us Additional Resources FiguresSourcesRelatedDetails Volume 17Issue 7June 2012 Get Permissions Add to your Mendeley library History Published in print: Jun 1, 2012 Metrics Downloaded 80 times Topicsasha-topicsleader_do_tagleader-topicsasha-article-typesCopyright & Permissions© 2012 American Speech-Language-Hearing AssociationLoading ...

A Dream Deferred

Ten years later, the signing ceremony of the No Child Left Behind Act seems like a fantasy: President George W. Bush seated at a quaint wooden desk in the gymnasium of Hamilton High School in Ohio in early 2002, with liberal lawmakers Ted Kennedy and George Miller and conservatives Judd Gregg and John Boehner standing shoulder-to-shoulder behind him, smiling broadly. Today, Republicans and Democrats are at each other's throats in Washington. left and right deride NCLB as a federal power grab. How could the law have gone so wrong? NCLB's authors had two primary objectives: helping disadvantaged students achieve at higher levels by introducing universal minimum proficiency standards in every state and pressuring educators to meet the proficiency objectives. NCLB was a necessary if insufficient step toward the high common education standards of advanced industrialized nations that we've sought to reach. When today's school reform movement began three decades ago, schools' expectations for students aligned closely with students' race and class. nation's industrial economy had let many workers into the middle class without much of an education, and the civil rights movement had only recently won its demands for equal treatment for all races. But many public schools continued to track students into watered-down and deadend courses well after the reformers of the 1980s declared we needed an education system that delivered a rigorous education to all students. So, eventually, we got NCLB, with its demands that every state set high standards, measure student performance, and hold schools accountable for results. Too many local educators failed to lead, so they were forced to follow. Liberals, conservatives, and especially state leaders embarrassed by the large numbers of their schools labeled failures under NCLB have attacked the law for usurping state and local control of education and demanded that federal policy makers decrease Washington's demands on local public schools. But the problem with NCLB isn't that it requires states and local school systems to set standards. problem is that NCLB un-intentionally encourages states and districts to set low and, thus, not very meaningful standards. As Education Sector's policy director Kevin Carey chronicles in a report titled The Pangloss Index: How States Game the No Child Left Behind Act, states have adopted easier tests, lowered passing scores, shrunk the number of students schools must test, and used several statistical sleights-of-hand to artificially inflate school performance. As Carey writes, A law that has been widely denounced as unduly harsh [has been] transformed into a law that is often comically lenient. NCLB's hopeful but naive demands that every student be proficient by 2014, and that states judge schools on whether enough students hit testing targets and not on student progress have caused many states to ignore the law's calls for higher standards. NCLB puts schools with large numbers of impoverished, low-achieving students at a huge disadvantage. Even when such schools improve student performance significantly, NCLB labels them failures. If the law measured student progress, states could maintain high standards because schools would get credit for moving students up the academic ladder, regardless of the rung they started on. advocates of the law's pass-fail method of judging schools have argued that under a progress-based rating system students might never reach meaningful achievement levels. But a decade of experience shows that NCLB's pass-fail rating system itself has produced that result. At the same time, the law's tight timelines for reporting student results encourage states to use primarily multiple-choice tests of low-level skills, which also have undermined rather than advanced NCLB's efforts to raise standards. Because teachers tend to teach what's tested, such tests have lowered the expectations of students in many classrooms. …

Democracy and governance in the local school system

The Labour government showed no interest in extending local democracy in the school system, in spite of a policy rhetoric of local democratic renewal. The Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government's localism agenda promotes the autonomy of schools from local authorities without proposing alternative forms of local democracy in the school system. The perspective of this paper is derived from a Gramscian Marxist critique of dominant discourses within the field of urban governance. From this vantage point it examines the research evidence regarding participation in governance within local school systems. It ends by offering an alternative approach towards more democratic participative governance in local school systems based on a recognition of conflicting class interests and the need to re-envision the role of local authorities.

The Fallacy of ‘Local Control’

The U.S. Department of Energy may have slipped his mind, but Texas Gov. Rick Perry remembered during his debate debacle last fall that he would close the U.S. Department of Education if elected president. He had some help. Every 2012 Republican presidential candidate has railed against federal influence in the nation's public schools, as have most other Republican presidential hopefuls since the department's founding in 1980. Given the nation's long tradition of local control of school policies, the department has been an easy target for Republican politicians playing to the anti-Washington inclinations of small-government conservatives. Ronald Reagan spent more than two years advocating the new department's abolition after he won the White House, even as a commission created by his education secretary was drafting a national school reform manifesto. But today's Republican critiques of the federal role in education are not merely the predictable by-products of a presidential campaign. They're part of a backlash from many points on the political spectrum against the emergence over the past three decades of national demands on local school systems. It would be unfortunate if these critics prevailed at this important juncture in American education history. With the nation's pursuit of equal educational opportunity far from fulfilled and workers increasingly facing global competition for their jobs, there's a compelling case for defining public education's aspirations nationally rather than locally. The tradition of local control runs deep. The U.S. Constitution left authority over education in the hands of the states under the 10th Amendment, and the states passed that power to local school boards. For much of the nation's history, local boards were solely responsible for school funding, standards, instruction, and results. They presided over an education enterprise that stressed low-level academics and vocational training for most students. But faith in local school boards began to erode when the Reagan Administration's reform commission and other influential voices in the early 1980s called on public schools to deliver a much more demanding education to a much wider range of students. Many local school systems failed to deliver, responding, for example, to calls for a stronger high school core curriculum with a myriad of watered-down courses like Fundamentals of General Science and Informal Geometry. Students earned science credits for classes in commercial food preparation and auto body repair. As a result, we've spent three decades shifting strategic decision making in public education from the local to the national levels. Organizations of governors and state education officials, Republican and Democrat presidents, members of Congress from both sides of the aisle, and a host of convening organizations replaced local hegemony with more centralized standards, assessments, and accountability requirements--an evolution chronicled by education writer Robert Rothman in a new book, Something in Common (Harvard Education Press, 2011). The logic of this transformation in American education is clear and compelling: National problems require national solutions. As commentator Matt Miller wrote in The Atlantic in 2008 about relying on local school boards to meet today's educational challenges: It's as if after Pearl Harbor, FDR had suggested we prepare for war through the uncoordinated efforts of thousands of small factories. Local control threatened There have been mistakes along the way. The federal No Child Left Behind Act required states to set high standards, measure student performance, and hold schools accountable for results. But NCLB unintentionally gave states a strong incentive to lower rather than raise standards--by demanding that they judge schools on the percentage of students who met the standards and demanding that all groups of students clear the state hurdles by 2014--and a number of states did just that. …

Public-Private Partnerships, Civic Engagement, and School Reform

What we know to do far exceeds what we are free to do. --James Moffett (1994, p. 589) The number of partnerships between public schools and private organizations increased dramatically after the National Commission on Excellence in Education (1983) issued its report, A Nation at Risk. Prior to 1983, only 17% of the elementary and secondary schools in the United States had been engaged in these collaborative ventures. By 1989, the figure had increased to 40% (Marenda, 1989); by 1991, businesses alone were engaged in more than 140,000 partnerships with schools (Rigden, 1991); and by 2000, it was estimated that several hundred thousand businesses were collaborating with schools (Partners in Education, 2000). Moreover, The Council for School & Corporate Partnerships (n.d.) reports that collaborating businesses have contributed an estimated $2.4 billion to aid schools. These statistics are undeniably impressive and suggest that alliances between public schools and private organizations have been highly productive. In truth, however, there is little empirical evidence supporting the contention that public-private partnerships have improved student learning; and at the same time, these ventures have sparked consequential questions about the critical nature of democratic localism and civic volunteerism in school reform. In this essay, I propose an uncommon perspective of public-private partnerships in the United States--one that calls for direct citizen involvement to ensure that collaboration is linked to and compatible with reform efforts carried out at the local (school district) level. The need for a new conceptualization is framed by three convictions: public-private partnerships have been largely ineffective in terms of improving instruction and student learning; democratic deficits in these ventures are incompatible with the concept of local control and potentially detrimental to school reform; and, civic engagement should become a normative standard for shaping, implementing, and evaluating school-improvement initiatives. In building a case for direct citizen involvement, I first examine partnerships in terms of motives, outcomes, and factors influencing success. Then civic engagement is defined and discussed in relation to public-private partnerships operating in the prevailing political environment found in most local school systems. Lastly, recommendations are made for addressing objectionable aspects of public-private partnerships. Motives and Outcomes in Public-Private Collaboration Conventionally, a partnership is a formal arrangement involving two or more parties intended to benefit all collaborators. Public-private partnerships specifically include associations between a governmental agency and either a private profit-seeking or private non-profit organization. Though public schools have been engaged in a variety of collaborative efforts with most being in the public-private class, the word, partnership, has not been defined precisely. As a result, it has been used indiscriminately to describe different levels of associations (Kowalski, 2008). Because of this indistinctiveness, generalizations about education partnerships have had limited value. Nevertheless, it is advantageous to understand why collaborators have been drawn to these projects, the extent to which the projects have achieved their goals, and the conditions that have affected goal achievement. Motives Many reasons underlie the popularity of public-private partnerships. From a societal perspective, citizens support these initiatives because they believe that an infusion of private capital into public education is socially and personally beneficial (Crow, 1998). Furthermore, they believe that corporate executives and school administrators have a positive influence on each other. This latter conviction is supported by policy literature suggesting that public institutions do some things better than private organizations and vice versa (Ghere, 1996). …

Psychiatrist's Frequent Flying Brings Rewards, Not Points

Psychiatrist's Frequent Flying Brings Rewards, Not Points

WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT IN NURSING: Priming the Pipeline

Abstract The current nursing shortage is predicted to be longer term and more protracted than previous shortages. It is therefore essential that schools of nursing develop new ways of preparing the nursing workforce and attracting potential nursing students. This article describes efforts by the University of Maryland School of Nursing to address the nursing shortage by developing public and private partnerships and building alliances with the health care industry. The school employs a variety of strategies, including increasing public awareness through marketing and the media, supporting legislation, utilizing technology, expanding articulation agreements, and working with local secondary school systems.

Development of a pharmacist-managed latent tuberculosis clinic

Latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) remains a significant health issue worldwide. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an individual with LTBI has dormant Mycobacterium tuberculosis organisms but a negative chest radiograph and no signs or symptoms of the active disease.1 Nonadherence to LTBI therapy is as high as 50%, especially in urban areas with low-income residents.2,3 Patients who do not complete appropriate antiinfective therapy have an increased risk of developing active tuberculosis, thereby increasing the risk of spreading the disease to the general public. In Connecticut, there is a mandatory reporting structure for all LTBI cases. The Hospital of Saint Raphael is a 511-bed urban medical center. The financial department at our facility used International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision, codes to identify patients with a positive purified protein derivative (PPD) skin test and negative chest radiograph in the adult and pediatric primary care clinics for calendar years 2004 and 2005. The pediatric population was screened for LTBI through the local school systems and referred to our hospital for pharmacotherapy management, while the adult population was screened by primary care physicians. During 2004, 69 patients (32 adults, 37 children) met the above criteria. Chart review revealed that only 16 patients (2 adults, 14 children) completed therapy. Data for 2005 were similar, with a total of 66 patients (27 adults, 39 children) identified. Of these patients, 19 (5 adults, 14 children) completed treatment. Although completion rates were low, they were still considerably better in the pediatric population due to additional follow-up by the school nurse.

The Response of Local School Systems in Georgia to Fiscal and Economic Conditions

The 2001 recession had a major effect on Georgia's fiscal condition. We explore how economic conditions affected state and local financing of K-12 education in Georgia. We find that the magnitude of postrecession cuts in state real revenue per student varied widely across the local school systems in Georgia. We then examine whether and how cuts in real revenue per student at the state level affected local real revenue per student, and we find weak evidence that local real revenue per student is lower when state real revenue per student is higher-that is, local school systems in Georgia seemed to respond to changes in economic conditions and changes in state real revenue per student by increasing local real revenue per student in order to offset decreases in state real revenue per student. We also find no support for the position that the reaction of school systems in Georgia to changes in state revenue was more pronounced in the years immediately following the 2001 recession. We discuss the implications of our findings for the current economic environment.

Collective Leadership of Local School Systems

The rhetoric of `partnership' is ubiquitous in UK policy at national, regional, local and organizational levels. Self-styled partnership activity is espoused by most schools in England and Wales. This article considers the implications of the growth of partnership for conceptualizing leadership. It draws on evidence of interviews with young people, parents, teachers/trainers and support services staff in relation to the upper high school phase (14—19-year-olds) in two local education authorities in England and one in Wales. It uses the data as a vehicle to consider how leadership of a school might be conceived, given that what is increasingly demanded by policy is corporate leadership of a local system, rather than leadership of an individual organization. The adoption of collective aims to raise achievement for all within a local area, rather than just those in one's own school, poses radical challenges to the autonomy and culture of schools and their leaders. The article suggests that there are implications for research and theory, and particularly distributed leadership theory, if the situation within which leadership is constructed is taken to be the multiple players and organizations involved in a partnership, rather than only those of one school.

Maryland Statewide PBIS Initiative

There is growing interest in positive behavior supports among state departments of education and local school systems as an efficient and effective strategy for addressing students' increasing and intensifying discipline needs. Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is one whole-school prevention strategy that alters the school environment by creating improved systems (e.g., discipline, reinforcement, and data management) and procedures (e.g., collection of office referral data, training, team-based decision making) to promote positive changes in student and teacher behaviors. This article describes a statewide systems approach to the implementation of PBIS. An overview of the PBIS Maryland multilevel implementation model is presented with a focus on school- and district-level structures that support implementation. Preliminary results are presented from the state's summative and formative evaluation being conducted in 467 schools trained in PBIS. The evaluation findings suggest that the state has developed an efficient statewide structure for promoting high-fidelity implementation of PBIS.

The New Educational Privatization: Educational Contracting and High Stakes Accountability

The institutional landscape of K-12 educational contracting is fundamentally changing. Based on industry and district data, this study identifies three distinct shifts in the content and structure of interactions between suppliers of instructional goods and local school systems. These shifts include 1) elevation of test-related services and products, 2) increasing emphases on technology-based solutions. and 3) an expanding role for the state in spurring market activity. Drawing on a case study of district practice, the study provides evidence of how broader changes are influencing local contracting activities, and the dilemmas and responses generated by these pressures. The study suggests the need for new conceptual approaches to studying educational privatization that draw on the institutional analysis of organizations and also identifies critical questions for future research.

The New Educational Privatization: Educational Contracting and High Stakes Accountability

The institutional landscape of K-12 educational contracting is fundamentally changing. Based on industry and district data, this study identifies three distinct shifts in the content and structure of interactions between suppliers of instructional goods and local school systems. These shifts include 1) elevation of test-related services and products, 2) increasing emphases on technology-based solutions. and 3) an expanding role for the state in spurring market activity. Drawing on a case study of district practice, the study provides evidence of how broader changes are influencing local contracting activities, and the dilemmas and responses generated by these pressures. The study suggests the need for new conceptual approaches to studying educational privatization that draw on the institutional analysis of organizations and also identifies critical questions for future research.

The New Landscape of Educational Privatization in the Era of NCLB

PRIVATIZATION is a buzz word in education circles. It covers a broad range of activities, initiatives, programs, and policies, including charter schools, vouchers, and the contracting out of services and management. Educational privatization has a long history in the United States. (1) In the past two decades, much media and scholarly attention has been devoted to the educational management industry. Educational management organizations (EMOs) are comprehensive in nature and include companies that manage entire school systems or entire schools. These firms typically assume full responsibility for all aspects of school operations, including administration, teacher training, and such noninstructional functions as building maintenance, food service, and clerical support. Edison Schools, the brainchild of entrepreneur Chris Whittle, is perhaps the best known of the EMOs. However, educational privatization has implications for public schooling far beyond what is evident in the efforts of today's EMOs. The next chapter of educational privatization is being written by firms of a different kind, which have tended to receive much less attention from researchers and the press but cannot be ignored. These are the specialty-service providers. (2) Specialty-service providers contract to fulfill specific educational functions. Their products and services range from software for tabulating and reporting test scores to the design of instructional materials. In contrast to other forms of privatization, such as vouchers, school districts maintain direct control over funds paid to specialty-service providers and, in theory, control the use of those funds through the design of requests for proposals and the establishment of contracts. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is just the most recent effort in a decades-long national movement to give the private sector a larger role in school reform. However, NCLB is distinctive in that it requires, not simply permits, some local school systems to contract with private providers for services. Across the U.S., test publishers, software companies, and research firms are swarming to take advantage of the revenues made available by NCLB. Such well-established firms as ETS have been joined by a newer breed of providers whose product design and marketing strategies have been informed by the Internet. These later firms have names such as PowerSchool, Brainade, and Orion's Mind. Many begin as start-ups and then, once they demonstrate their profitability, are acquired by conglomerates such as publishing houses. Like their counterparts among the EMOs, the firms gaining prominence under the new educational privatization are drawing on political networks, new technologies, venture capital, and government revenues to become major suppliers of services to school systems. Among the accountability measures faced by schools that fail to meet NCLB's specified goals is the requirement that they offer students the chance to receive after-school remedial instruction from private service providers. It is more than a little ironic that, while NCLB puts real teeth into its accountability policies for schools and districts, it offers little guidance or meaningful sanctions for strengthening the accountability of private firms that are increasingly responsible for providing such tutoring. To analyze the role of NCLB as a driver of current developments in the K-12 education market, we examined market-trend data from the education industry and from annual reports (1997-2004) filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission by publicly traded key suppliers. (3) We identified four dominant domains of contracting with specialty-service providers in the K-12 education sector: test development and preparation, data management and reporting, remedial services, and content-specific programming. In investigating these four domains, we collected data on the roles of both governmental and nongovernmental organizations. …

Changing the Nature of Parent Involvement

THERE'S parent involvement and then there's parent involvement. There's the kind that has parents volunteering their time in schools, making costumes, or organizing and staffing the school carnival fund-raiser. This is helpful activity by any measure -- helpful in the service of kids and not to be minimized. But there are other levels of involvement at which parents might have more significant impact than just giving of their time and money. For example, Maryland's Parent Advisory Council has a vision of involvement in which parents, families, educators, and community members work together as real partners, hold themselves mutually accountable, and have the knowledge, skills, and confidence to succeed at improving the achievement of all Volunteering at their child's school might be the first step on a ladder of multiple levels of parental influence. The second level might be faithful attendance at school conferences and school activities. Up from there could be serving as a parent representative on school improvement committees and spending time in classrooms, tutoring or reading one-on- one with students. Next on a scale of increasing importance might come parents holding up their end of the bargain by making sure their children do their homework, have a quiet place to study and materials at hand, and attend school on time, every day. And yet even this important level of involvement might not have as much impact as having high expectations for their children's effort and behavior -- which, to continue with this rough metaphor, would be my pick for the top rung. Too frequently, however, parent involvement is defined as those activities that are easiest to measure. Currently, 17 states have grant or award programs that encourage schools or districts to involve parents in their children's education or recognize those that do so already. But are these programs based too conveniently on hours volunteered, money raised, conferences attended? And 15 states have policies that encourage, urge, expect, or direct employers to enable parents to attend school activities such as parent/teacher conferences. Though these activities are important, it's often easier for educators to talk to parents about what they can do for the school than it is to listen to parents about what they know their kids need to be successful. Unfortunately, sometimes when parents appear not to care, it's because they know that what they have to say won't be heard. Statewide Parent Advisory Council When state superintendent Nancy Grasmick appointed parents from across the state to the Maryland Parent Advisory Council, her goal was to generate big-picture ideas on how to improve working relationships between parents and school personnel. In February, the council released nearly two dozen recommendations addressing the five themes of accountability, training, leadership, partnership, and communication. The recommendations, which call for action mainly at the state level, include the following. Accountability. Require each local school system, along with representatives from advocacy and community groups, to assess regularly the effectiveness of parent and community involvement policies and practices and, based on the results, to develop improvement plans that will be incorporated into the systems' master plans. Provide support to local school systems in creating a family involvement satisfaction survey and administering it annually to parents. The results of the survey would be factored into the annual performance evaluations of administrators and other staff members. Create incentives for the state department, districts, and schools to develop more effective communication and partnerships with parents and the community, including businesses. Training. The state education department should assess the training needs of local school systems with regard to parent and community involvement and then provide appropriate technical assistance, resources, and mentoring. …

A Community of First-Year Teachers: Collaboration Between Higher Education and Public Schools to Improve Teacher Retention

Teacher retention is a critical problem in public education (Ingersoll, 2002), demanding collaboration between universities and local public school systems. Using veteran teacher mentors employed in a public school system to facilitate ongoing monthly support groups, communities of beginning teachers were formed, embedded within the public schools and drawing upon a university professional development center for resources and administrative management of the program. A complete program description is provided, offering the criteria for selecting mentors, an overview of content and format, and an understanding of the beginning teachers’ needs as expressed through their self-initiated curricular development. The advantages and disadvantages of this particular retention model are discussed, demonstrating the strength of fostering partnerships between higher education and public school personnel.

Where Standards Come From

The standards movement arose from the struggle for equal educational opportunity in American public education. Beginning with the seemingly simple task of defining an adequate education in student content standards, reform graduated to setting professional requirements for teachers and paraprofessionals and for professional inservice training. Overcoming the racial and economic inequities embedded in the structure of public schools has resulted in shifting the locus of control and funding from local school systems to states. Federal involvement in standards-based reform has, in some cases, pushed states even further to include once-excluded disabled and limited-English proficient students and to set achievement targets in reading and mathematics. Standards-based reform has brought some coherence to education at the elementary and middle school grades. Systemic reform really hasn't taken hold at the high school level.

Accommodating Students with Disabilities in Soil Science Activities

Soil science education is lacking in terms of accommodations for persons with disabilities. Individuals with disabilities are often excluded from soil science activities in school, and from soil science careers. GLOBE (Global Learning Observations to Benefit the Environment) is a worldwide, hands-on primary and secondary school-based education and science program led in the USA by a federal interagency program supported by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), National Science Foundation (NSF), and the U.S. State Department, in partnership with colleges and universities, state and local school systems, and nongovernment organizations. GLOBE encourages and promotes science in the classroom by providing students with the opportunity to collect scientifically valid data in the fields of atmosphere, hydrology, soils, and land cover/phenology and report it through the Internet. NASA collects and compiles data from GLOBE students around the world. This project in soil science at the University of Southern Maine originated as a result of the need to make soil science education accessible to individuals with disabilities. The GLOBE protocols were not originally developed using the concept of universal design, so the existing soils protocols were reworked, taking into account students with mobility, visual, hearing, and learning disabilities. A series of accommodations and suggestions were created to assist students with varying abilities, and their teachers. These new protocols were placed in easy-to-follow flowcharts with pictures and illustrations. The hope is that these model procedures will open the doors to soil science for all persons, including those with disabilities.

Book Review: The Role of the Community College in Teacher Education (New Directions for Community Colleges Series No. 121)

The Role of the Community College in Teacher Education (New Directions/or Community Colleges Series No. 121) by Barbara K. Townsend and Jan M. Ignash. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA, 2003, 113 pages, $28, softcover, ISBN 0194-3081. Reviewed by Audrey J. Jaeger.Teacher shortages across the nation have renewed interest in involving community college systems in the efforts to expand the teacher pipeline. Many states are recognizing that community colleges, with their tradition of responding quickly and flexibly to community needs, are a logical solution to unprecedented teacher shortages. In The Role of the Community College in Teacher Education, editors Barbara Townsend and Jan Ignash have compiled case studies from six states, reviewed national standards for teacher programs, and provided additional resources to guide community college leaders, state higher agencies, legislators, and others interested in improving and expanding the community college role in teacher education (p. 3).This volume offers practical information on program structures, factors, and stakeholders that can affect community college decisions to participate in teacher preparation programs. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the traditional and non-traditional ways that community colleges are involved in teacher education. This chapter concisely addresses the multitude of issues surrounding teacher and offers illustrative examples from the case studies (Missouri, California, Maryland, Arizona, Florida, and Texas) presented later in the volume. The case studies show both the unique and similar ways states have approached the community college role in teacher education.Throughout the text, the pros and cons of community college involvement in teacher are discussed. From the viewpoint of proponents, community colleges serve a high number of minority students, and for that reason they have the potential to increase the diversity of classroom teachers. The community college can serve as an important resource for increasing and maintaining the teacher pool. Community colleges often develop strong partnerships with local entities. Students in teacher programs can benefit from these partnerships through job placements in local school systems. Finally, community colleges offer a more affordable option for many students. From the viewpoint of opponents to community college involvement in expanding the teacher pipeline, the addition of teacher programs, especially those leading to a baccalaureate degree, may serve further to muddy the waters of the community college mission. These efforts could increase feelings of competition or distrust between community colleges and four-year institutions, causing other articulation and transfer programs to suffer. Another possible repercussion of adding baccalaureate programs is the creation of a two-tier faculty system within the community college. Unlike the majority of their colleagues, most faculty in a teacher preparation program would need to hold doctorates for program accreditation purposes.The case studies within the volume offer details on a variety of program structures for teacher preparation across the United States. One issue at the center of teacher discussions is articulation. These agreements bring their own set of challenges, as seen in Missouri's case in Chapter 2. Before the state began to respond to the national standards movement for approval of four-year teacher programs, community college students in Missouri were already experiencing problems transferring to four-year college teacher programs. The case reviews how community colleges were strategically brought into the conversation in a proactive attempt to ease some of the tensions of student transfer. A more seamless articulation agreement between a community college and a particular four-year college is described in Chapter 3. This program, Teacher Training Academy at Cerritos Community College in California, has been in existence for five years and is one of the oldest described in this volume. …