Impact of cuts shown in district survey
A survey of school districts throughout the state showed that budget cuts were hitting home this year with 1,200 positions either remaining vacant or being eliminated this year.
The on line survey was conducted by the State Education Department to track “schools’ financial and staffing situations for the current school year.”
Of 532 districts in the state, 524 responded.
Perhaps most grim was the report that across the state 24 career teacher positions were eliminated in a year that the districts’ enrollment increased by 9,700 students.
Additionally given the current budget reduction, districts have cut 56 probationary teacher positions, seven counselor, 14 administrator and 235 support staff positions.
Administrative budgets are being cut across the state, and most districts cut somewhere between $1 and $20,000 from the budgets.
Ten schools have cut more than $100,000 from their administrative budgets.
Northeast High raising funds for Haiti
Students in the Northeast Health and Science Academy are attempting to raise $500 to donate to the American Red Cross for earthquake relief efforts in Haiti.
The campaign, “Hearts for Haiti,” has the high school students selling hearts for $1 at school and during home basketball games over the next two weeks, according to a media release from Oklahoma City Public Schools.
OKCPS special meeting on snow days
The Oklahoma City School Board has scheduled a special meeting Thursday, Feb. 4, to discuss ways to make up the six days missed so far this school year due to weather.
The meeting is at 5:30 p.m. and Board Chairwoman Angela Monson requested at the last meeting that no options “should be off the table right now.”
Options discussed at Monday’s board meeting included adding days to the end of the school year, Saturday school, shortening spring break, adding school days on holidays or teacher work days or adding time to the end of each school day.
District praises UCO urban teacher program
An Urban Teacher Preparation Academy will kick off this fall brining 11 student-teachers from the University of Central Oklahoma into three city schools for a full year.
“The potential here is phenomenal,” Oklahoma City Schools Superintendent Karl Springer said Monday night as the plan was presented to the School Board. “We can cause our education program here to take off.”
The program focuses on the challenges of teaching in urban schools and provides college students a full year of student teaching before they graduate and are placed in an Oklahoma City Public School.
Three schools – Linwood Elementary, Taft Middle and Capitol Hill – were selected as the test sites for this new program.
“My biggest apology to you is that we don’t have more than just 11 students,” College of Education associate dean Bill Pink said. “Our plan for cohort two is to have six sites and more students.”
Pink said that they are waiting to hear about a $2.3 million grant application from the U.S. Department of Education, but that even if the grant isn’t received the program will move forward.
Students in their third year in the College of Education applied for the program and after completing a year working in the classroom as paid teacher aids, the students will graduate.
Then students have pledged to remain in the Oklahoma City Public Schools for another two years with support and mentorship from UCO staff.
Capitol Hill robotics team seeks funding
Last year a group of Capitol Hill High School students and their robot “Pyro-Maniac” took second place in Dallas at the regional For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST).
This year the students are hoping to participate in two regional competitions one here and one in Kansas City, Mo., but students need help funding the project and trips, according to a media release from Oklahoma City Public Schools.
The group’s ultimate goal is to compete in the FIRST Robotics Competition in Atlanta this year, however, they must qualify at regional events. The competition has teams of 25 students developing a brand for their robot, soliciting funds to develop and build a robot that can perform a specific task.
Last February in Oklahoma City the schools built robots that could throw balls into trailers pulled by the robots of other teams.
Roger Jackson, coach of Robotics at Captiol Hill, said in a media release that the program is “as close to ‘real-world engineering’ as a student can get.”
“We want to spark our student’s interest in engineering,” he said.
People interested in donating to the program can call Rodney Emerson or Mathew Johnson at 616-1210.
National report lauds America’s Choice
The company that designed the school reform program being used in Oklahoma City public middle and high schools received accolades for its elementary school program in a 13-year-study.
“The study was probably the most ambitious longitudinal study ever done on elementary schools,” Judy Codding, President and CEO of the for-profit company America’s Choice said. “What it really attempted to do is say, ‘what is it going to take to improve student achievement across the board?’”
The study – conducted by the Consortium for Policy Research in Education – looked at three school reform programs used in elementary schools across the nation to garner a sense of how “school improvement by design” was working.
School improvement by design is a term that refers to the independent programs that popped up across the nation in the 60s working with school districts to reform the way teachers teach in the classroom.
“We argue that design based school improvement tends to work best – not when the process encourages local educators to invent instructional and organizational solutions to the practical problems of teaching and learning that they face – but rather when it helps teachers learn how to use a well specified set of practices through extensive supports,” wrote the authors of the study in an introduction to the findings.
Codding said that while the study focused on elementary schools, many of the applications overlap with what is being done in Oklahoma City Public Schools through the ACT America’s Choice Rigor and Readiness Program.
“We provide enormous professional development and ongoing support,” Codding said. “These things are enormously important to do.”
She compared the program to medicine, where doctors diagnose an illness but an entirely different set of trained professionals develop the treatment.
“Teachers’ expertise is working with kids. It’s not in designing programs and designing curriculum,” Codding said. “We’ve spent the time and money and resources to figure out what is it going to take and what kid of support to get kids ready for college.”
The Oklahoma City School Board voted to test ACT America’s Choice in a select number of sixth and ninth grade classes across the district. The initial cost was $2.7 million and the board approved an additional $500,000 to go toward more coaching, materials and assessments.
If the program is approved by the board again it will cost an additional $2.7 million a year for the next two years.
Oklahoma’s Race to the Top explained
Having a tough time understanding what Oklahoma is pitching to the national government to win the state $175 million in grants? You’re likely not alone.
Race to the Top is a massive application that calls for a number of reforms in education and will likely reward states willing to make the largest strides when it comes to issues like paying teachers based on their performance or allowing charter schools to open.
Two stories over the past two weeks have helped explain what Oklahoma has in mind: Oklahoma Races to Finish Grant Request and TPS plan stars in Race to the Top plan.
Or you can view the full 244 page application here.
The US Department of Education announced Tuesday that 40 states and the District of Columbia had met the deadline for the first phase of Race to the Top. That means Oklahoma is facing tough competition in the first round to get a portion of $4.35 million.
However, President Barack Obama announced Tuesday that he will seek an additional $1.3 billion that will be available to states competing in the second round.
Education laws proposed for the next session
In the list of bills filed last week for the 2010 Legislative session, The Oklahoman highlighted a few that had to do with education, including several that might make the state more competitive in the second round of applications for the federal grant program Race to the Top.
Pay for performance: One tenant of the Race to the Top application is establishing a way to reward teacher’s financially for their performance. Now, Rep. Earl Sears, R-Barlesville, has introduced HB 2836 that would create a teacher performance-based pay pilot program. It would instruct the Education Department to award six grants, subject to funding availability, for the 2010-11 school year.
Charter school law revamp: Also in the spirit of reforms highlighted in Race for the Top, Rep. Lee Denney, R-Cushing has introduced HB 2753 that would remove enrollment and population restrictions on school districts, technology centers and regional institutions allowed to sponsor charter schools and would remove restrictions on the number of charter schools that can be established in a year.
Stretching the budget thin: HB 2546 would allow school districts that have faced reductions in their total budeget of 10 percent or more to delay purchasing textbooks. The funds allocated for textbook purchases could then be used in the support and maintenance of the district. Rep. John Wright, R-Broken Arrow introduced this bill.
Old enough to go to class?: Rep. Dan Sullivan, R-Tulsa, introduced a bill that would change the date that children must reach cut off ages to enter a grade to June 1. The change would apply to age 6 to attend first grade, 5 to attend kindergarten and 4 to attend pre-kindergarten or early childhood programs.
A private school for OKC’s poorest
Oklahoma holds the unfortunate statistic of having one of the poorest demographics of students in the nation.
That is certainly a daunting task when data shows socio-economic status is linked directly to student performance.
This morning I toured a non-profit Oklahoma City school that has a student body likely among the district’s poorest.
Positive Tomorrows serves up to 45 students a year who are homeless or defined as homeless because they live in a shelter or the home of another family.
The students who arrived to the school just before 9 a.m. Thursday appeared well clothed and ready to enjoy a hot breakfast.
April Doshier, who schedules the weekday morning school tours that are by appointment open to members of the public, said that incoming students receive a set of new clothes. She said the standard for clothing is whether it’s something that the staff would dress their own children in.
The school operates entirely on donations, Susan Agel, executive director of Positive Tomorrows said.
Other’s in the small tour were looking for a way to volunteer or checking out what recent donations are being used for.
Doshier said students often come to the school through shelters and are usually behind their grade level. The school works to catch the students up academically, but also has case managers that work with the families to provide a more stable environment at home.
For more information about Positive Tomorrows or to schedule a tour, call 405-556-5082.
Schools in south are now minority majority
For the first time ever schools in the south have enrolled more minority students than white students, according to a report from the Southern Education Foundation.
Oklahoma schools are not quite minority majority yet. According to the report, 43. 8 percent of students enrolled in public schools were minorities, which means any race other than white.
The report also noted that “in Oklahoma one in five students is Native American – the third highest percentage among states.”
“This transformation establishes an important landmark in American diversity and a historic milestone for the only section of the United States where racial slavery, White supremacy and racial segregation of schools were enforced through law and social custom for more than two thirds of the nation’s history,” said Lynn Huntley, president of the Southern Education Foundation in a media release.
The report calls for “fundamental changes” in education to better serve all students regardless of income status or race.
White students are still the largest demographic of students accounting for 49 percent of those enrolled in Southern schools, while black students account for 27 percent and Hispanic students 20 percent, according to the report. Asian Pacific students and Native Americans account for the other 4 percent.
Oklahoma was noted in the report for having a high level of poverty among students with more than 55 percent of students reported as low-income students.
In 2007 the Southern Education Foundation reported that a majority of students in the South were eligible for free and reduced lunches – an indicator of poverty.
