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Relationships and rigor
In an op-ed in The New York Times, David Brooks writes that a well-known anecdote from President Obama's childhood -- his mother waking him at 4:30 each morning to tutor him before school -- perfectly encapsulates what's required to reform American education. When young Barry complained, his mother responded, "This is no picnic for me either, Buster." That exchange contains what Brooks feels are the crucial traits for academic success: rigor and relationships. Mr. Obama had an adult passionately invested in his future, but also, in Brooks's words, one "disinclined to put up with any crap." "We've spent years working on ways to restructure schools, but what matters most is the relationship between one student and one teacher. You ask a kid who has graduated from high school to list the teachers who mattered in his life, and he will reel off names. You ask a kid who dropped out, and he will not even understand the question." No Child Left Behind has ushered in the ability to measure student progress and predict success, but Brooks feels we're faltering where the other ingredient is concerned. We need to foster relationships, in his view through reforms like merit pay for teachers and school vouchers. Despite this, he is hopeful: President Obama "has broken with liberal orthodoxy on school reform more than any other policy. He's naturally inclined to be data driven. There's reason to think that this week's impressive speech will be followed by real and potentially historic action."


School foundations feel pinch of sagging economy
As the shaky economy and tightening state aid have forced school districts to trim their budgets, private foundations have sprung up in the last decade to pay for a wide range of equipment, artists-in-residence, and amenities that are outside the districts' spending plans. Now they, too, are feeling the pinch, reports The Philadelphia Inquirer. If the trend continues, the foundations say, students may have to do without chamber music coaches, Arabic teachers, smartboards, and other educational goodies the foundations provide. "I don't know of a local education fund right now that is not either projecting a fiscal crisis down the line or is in the middle of one right now," said Arnold Fege, director of public engagement and advocacy at the Public Education Network, which represents 82 local education funds in low-income districts. Even deep-pocketed districts are feeling the strain. Radnor Township's education foundation stopped awarding teacher grants for the remainder of the school year after its annual gala, a casino night, raised 30 percent less than the year before.

Is it possible to satisfy teachers and reformers at the same time?
In The New Republic, Andrew Rotherham and Richard Whitmire look at challenges facing American Federation of Teachers (AFT) president Randi Weingarten as she tries to burnish her reformist credentials while accommodating her constituency. How events play out in the fight over tenure and pay in D.C., the authors write, will have ramifications for reform in the rest of the country. On one side is D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, whose get-tough stance has won her praise, attention, and vilification. On the other side is the AFT-affiliate Washington Teacher Union (WTU). Weingarten has stepped in with a counter-offer to Rhee that has both reformers and union members ambivalent. On the one hand, it "[wraps] teachers even more tightly in tenure protections and [extends] the termination process"; on the other hand, its language signals to Rhee that Weingarten will move in Rhee's direction if she gets political cover. Rotherham and Whitmire propose that Weingarten should realize, as her legendary predecessor Al Shanker would have, that Rhee is not the enemy. "Rhee faces an array of independent charter schools that now educate more than a third of the District's public school students. If Rhee can't compete with charter operators who can fire incompetent teachers, the local teachers' union will become irrelevant, because there will be few unionized public schools left in the district." In other words, they say, Weingarten must save the UFT from itself. 

Less politics required to spearhead successful education reform
"If education reform is flush with ideas," asks Clay Risen in the spring 2009 issue of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, "why does so little get done?" The obstacle is not policy, he writes, but politics. He cites dismal statistics: The 2006 national graduation rate was 69 percent; 75 percent of high school graduates attend college, but 28 percent of freshman require remedial education; among the 30 most-industrialized countries, American students rank 15th in reading, 19th in math, and 14th in science. In Risen's view, education reform has two entrenched camps: "One holds that educational progress will only move forward after changes are made in inner-city students' family and extracurricular life; the other holds that reform must focus with laser-like intensity on teacher quality and accountability." The first camp supports more funding for existing programs and is centered around unions and teacher colleges; the second wants more choice for parents, including charter schools and vouchers, and centers around nonprofit institutions and "civilian" reformers. How will they reconcile? Risen seeks a politics that would "require all sides to recognize the validity of each other's thinking and appreciate the goals they are seeking to achieve," conceding certain policy principles in the process. Teachers are workers, parents, and taxpayers, Risen says, who can't be expected to sacrifice everything to student achievement. But neither are they just another class of workers who can "always make the same demands that, say, the Teamsters do."

Music instruction helps children read
Children exposed to a multi-year program of music involving increasingly complex rhythmic, tonal, and practical skills display superior cognitive performance in reading skills compared with their non-musically trained peers, according to a study published in the Psychology of Music journal. According to authors Joseph M. Piro and Camilo Ortiz from Long Island University, data from this study will help to clarify the role of music study on cognition and shed light on the question of the potential of music to enhance school performance in language and literacy.


Systematically analyzing the impacts of charters
A new study by the RAND Corporation looks at charter schools in Chicago, San Diego, Philadelphia, Denver, Milwaukee, and the states of Ohio, Texas, and Florida, using longitudinal, student-level data across multiple communities and varied charter laws. The study finds scant evidence that charters produce achievement substantially different than those of traditional public schools. It cautions, however, that the evidence is incomplete: Elementary schools -- a substantial proportion of all charters -- aren't easily assessed. Two groups of charters, those in the first year of operation and those serving students remotely through technology, prompt concern over low performance. The most promising results from charters are long-term outcomes of high school graduation and college entry. In the two locations with available data on attainment outcomes (Chicago and Florida), charter high schools appear to increase the probability of graduating by 7 to 15 percentage points, and increase the probability of enrolling in college by 8 to 10 percentage points. The study refutes the idea that charters are "skimming the cream" of the student population: Students entering charter schools have prior achievement levels comparable to their peers in traditional public schools. Nor do charters produce effects that substantially help or harm student achievement in nearby traditional public schools.

'Vivid Laboratory' sheds light on immigrant education
In an extended article that profiles one suburban high school in Virginia, The New York Times weighs the pros and cons of contemporary methods for educating immigrants in America. Hylton High is distinguished by high test scores and graduation rates, but these come "at considerable cost" to its English language learners, who are separated from other students and given intensive support in what amounts to modern-day segregation. The last decade has seen a huge influx of immigrants, legal and illegal, leading to the greatest expansion in public schools since the baby boom. According to officials, one in 10 of all public school students are now English language learners, a 60 percent increase from 1995 to 2005. This places schools on the "front lines of America's battles over whether and how to assimilate the newcomers and their children," The Times writes. Schools are required to enroll students regardless of immigration status, and are prohibited from even asking about it. The extra attention these students need has strained budgets and resources, and prompted resentment. At the same time, to meet rising academic standards, English language learners at Hylton are "relentlessly drilled and tutored on material that appears on state tests, but get rare exposure to the kinds of courses, demands or experiences that might better prepare them to move up in American society." The issue, according to teacher Peter B. Bedford, who supports Hylton's program, boils down to a pragmatic choice: "Are you going to focus on educating [these students]," he asks, "or socially integrating them?"