Friday Report – December 2, 2016

Excerpt from:

Helms, A. “Project LIFT report to CMS: Solid steps but miles to go in west Charlotte schools.” The Charlotte Observer. 11/22/16.

Few people running the nation’s school systems look like Sharon Contreras—black, Latino, and female.

In fact, only 2.6 percent of superintendents identify as Hispanic women, according to a 2015 national survey of district leaders. Contreras was 41 when she was appointed in 2011 to be the first woman to run the 21,000-student Syracuse, N.Y., district, a position she held for 5½ years before she was recruited this past summer to run North Carolina’s third-largest school system, the 72,000-student Guilford County district.

In her first week on the job in Syracuse, a reporter called Contreras asking to see her superintendent’s license. A rumor had been circulating that Contreras, who by then had been a top administrator for a decade, was not licensed to hold the district’s top executive position.

“I remember one of the first comments written about me was that I was a triple-affirmative-action threat—a woman, black, and Latino,” says Contreras, who is raising her 8-year-old great-nephew, told Education Week in a recent interview. “The way I addressed the issue was by doing a good job, by being a strong superintendent. You don’t keep throwing in someone’s face, ‘I am equally qualified, it doesn’t matter that I am a person of color, it doesn’t matter that I am a woman.’ You don’t need to say that. You just do the work, and people will see that you are qualified.”

To read the complete interview, click here.

President-elect Donald Trump has picked billionaire Betsy DeVos, a Michigan Republican activist and philanthropist who is a strong supporter of school choice but has limited experience with public education, as his secretary of education.

DeVos, 58, is a former chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party and helped push a failed 2000 ballot proposal to amend the Michigan state Constitution to create a voucher system for students to attend nonpublic schools.

DeVos is chairman of The Windquest Group, a Michigan-based investment management company. She is married to billionaire Richard DeVos Jr., the son of Richard DeVos, who co-founded the home care products company Amway.

Trump, in a statement, called DeVos “a brilliant and passionate education advocate.” He added that she would have the leadership ability to “break the bureaucracy that is holding our children back.”

Largely unknown outside of Michigan political and philanthropic circles, her appointment signals that Trump intends to make school choice and a voucher plan for low-income families a centerpiece of his education agenda.

School choice plans are controversial because in some cases they can allow families to use public funding for private schools. Critics say choice plans undermine public education, are often underregulated and can amount to profiteering.

Not surprisingly, Trump’s selection of DeVos as his education secretary drew swift reaction from the head of the nation’s largest teachers union.

Lily Eskelsen García, the president of the National Education Association, slammed the choice, saying it would undermine public education. DeVos “has consistently pushed a corporate agenda to privatize, de-professionalize and impose cookie-cutter solutions to public education,” Eskelsen Garcia said in a statement. “By nominating Betsy DeVos, the Trump administration has demonstrated just how out of touch it is with what works best for students, parents, educators and communities.”

Rabbi Jack Moline, president of the Interfaith Alliance, called the pick “deeply disappointing. It suggests that he has little regard for our nation’s public schools or the constitutional principle of separation of church and state.”

DeVos currently chairs the board of the American Federation for Children, a group that according to its website works to provide families “with access to great schools through private school choice.” Her children attended private Christian schools. She also sits on the board of the Great Lakes Education Project, a pro-charter school lobbying group in Michigan.

DeVos has helped make Michigan’s charter schools among the least regulated in the nation. Some 80 percent of the state’s charters are run by private companies.

U.S. students are generally improving in math and science, along with their peers around the globe, but the latest Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study results—including a longitudinal look for the 20th anniversary of the tests—show more of a slow uphill slog than a breakout performance.

“The [United States] is a large and diverse country, so it’s difficult to see a large increase over a short time,” said Michael O. Martin, a co-executive director of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement’s TIMSS and PIRLS International Study Center at Boston College. The center has conducted the TIMSS in the United States, with the National Center on Education Statistics, every four years since 1995.

The TIMSS is based on specific content areas, and NCES Acting Commissioner Peggy Carr noted that U.S. students’ performance in different math topics varied significantly on the test over time. While 8th graders’ performance in geometry and algebra improved significantly from 2007 to 2015, their scores flatlined on number theory and actually declined significantly on problems of data and chance. Similarly, U.S. students improved significantly in their performance on life science and biology topics, but their scores in physics and earth sciences stagnated.

By and large, though, countries participating in TIMSS have increased the depth and rigor of their math and science curricula over time, according to Ina V.S. Mullis, co-executive director of IEA’s TIMSS and PIRLS International Study Center. “When we started [conducting TIMSS] in 1995, our math was all content—algebra, geometry—and in science, chemistry, physics,” Mullis said, “but now we also include cognitive demands, thinking skills … school is getting to have a broader dimension that is quite different than it was 20 years ago.”

To continue reading the complete article, click here.

Excerpt from: 

Sparks, S. “International Tests Show Rising, But Mixed, Math and Science Performance.” Education Week. 11/29/16.