2012 Oakland County Robotics Championships is Competitive and Fun

     The Oakland County Robotics Championships were competitive, used state standards in building robots and most of all... fun. Here is the Oakland Press video story. Event Results will be available from Oakland Schools Shortly and story will appear in the online Oakland Press and News at Noon.

http://youtu.be/K2TywGbuWn0

High School Students Win Scholarships for Research: Will Complete Nationally

Troy students win $1,000 scholarships at math, science competition

By DIANA DILLABER MURRAY
diana.dillaber@oakpress.com; Twitter: @DDillybar

Click to enlarge

Two International Academy East students were presented with $1,000 scholarships at the recent national Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology held at Notre Dame University in South Bend, Ind.

The two teen researchers, Yu Tang and Guangning An, who competed as a team, were among only three regional finalists to represent Michigan and among 2,255 teens competing from around the nation in the Region 3 research competition.

Biology research on the genetic basis of cancer earned top honors and the $3,000 Individual scholarship for James Howe of Iowa City, Iowa at the Notre Dame competition.

 Mathematical analysis of genetic oscillatory networks won the $6,000 Team scholarship for Daniel Fu and Patrick Tan of Carmel, Ind.

They are among only six teams from Region 3 named National Finalists and will compete in Washington, D.C. in early December for the top award of a $100,000 scholarship.

“These students have invested time, energy and talent in tackling challenging scientific research at a young age,” said Jeniffer Harper-Taylor, president of the Siemens Foundation.

“The recognition they have won today demonstrates that engagement in STEM is an investment well worth making.”

 The other regional finalist from Michigan was Gregory Parker, Okemos.

  To keep up with the Siemens Competition, follow Twitter @SFoundation (#SiemensComp), Facebook at SiemensFoundation; and visit www.siemens-foundation.org at 9:30 a.m. EST on Dec. 4 for a live webcast of the National Finalist Awards Presentation.

If you think Teacher Reform is Tough...Principals, Your Next!

In my mind, teachers are pretty much on the receiving end of the blame game. The reasons are endless and will not be covered here. 

What’s next on the school-reform agenda

Michael J. Petrilli / October 4, 2012

  Last week, the Policy Innovators in Education (PIE) Network brought together its member organizations for its annual confab, this year in Minneapolis. State-based school-reform-advocacy groups gathered with five national policy partners (Fordham included) to talk shop about our work to improve America’s schools.
Among the discussions about policy, strategy, tactics, and lessons learned (especially from Chicago), the most fascinating—and perhaps significant—conversation was about the school-reform agenda itself. What’s currently consuming the education-reform movement? What’s next up on the to-do list? And what potentially game-changing item is on the horizon? Allow me to report.

What's on the horizon for education reform ? Photo by Thelonius58.

The first point (and perhaps an obvious one) is that reformers nationwide are deep in implementation mode. Thanks to huge state-level policy victories on common standards, teacher evaluations, school choice, and more (some of it inspired by the federal Race to the Top program), much focus has shifted to getting stuff done at the local level. That’s led some to call for a breather when it comes to new legislative activity. Like a snake that’s just swallowed a deer, most reformers (and the education system itself) simply can’t take anything else on right now.
But that’s not the case everywhere. In some states, the 2013 legislative session is likely to feature big fights around:

• Teacher preparation


• Principal licensure


• Pension reform


• Digital learning

Let’s take each in turn.

Teacher Preparation

This focus is a natural outgrowth of reformers’ obsession with teacher evaluations and with the demands of Common Core implementation. It’s also inspired by the National Council on Teacher Quality’s national review of education schools, due for release next spring. Simply put, now that serious efforts are underway to gauge teacher effectiveness and upgrade instructional skills to prepare for higher standards, doesn’t it make sense to improve teacher quality at the source? In a rational world, this battle would have been joined years ago. But the ed schools are famously resistant to change; NCTQ and many state organizations are hopeful that this time might be different. Reformers want states to raise standards for entry into teacher-prep programs; forcing them to educate in research-based methods for teaching reading; align their curriculum with the Common Core; develop data systems that can link student-achievement results to teachers’ preparation programs; and shut down the many mediocre (or worse) ed schools in operation today.

Principal Licensure

One clever session at the PIE Network conference asked, “Are principals the new teachers?” Expect reformers to do to school leaders what they’ve done to teachers: Develop more rigorous evaluation systems; open up alternate routes into the profession; offer differential pay for tough assignments or exceptional performance; etc. f you think that reformers have been unkind to teachers — by, say, unfairly linking their evaluations and pay to test scores, or insisting that Teach For America corps members who have only five weeks of teacher training should be labeled “highly qualified teachers” — watch what they do with principals. He wrote:

One clever session at the PIE Network conference asked, “Are principals the new teachers?” Expect reformers to do to school leaders what they’ve done to teachers: Develop more rigorous evaluation systems; open up alternate routes into the profession; offer differential pay for tough assignments or exceptional performance; etc.

Pension Reform

States have already been busy on this front, but mostly with an eye toward closing big holes in their pension obligations, not in fundamentally reforming the system. In many cases, these changes have made problems worse from a teachers' labor-market perspective. In changing the system, state leaders have lowered new teachers’ take-home pay by mandating exorbitant contribution rates; they’ve refused to offer 401(k) style options because they need new teachers’ dollars to finance current obligations to retirees (see Webster’s definition of a Ponzi Scheme); and they’ve made teaching less attractive by reducing benefits in the long term. In other words, they’ve held today’s retirees (and older teachers) harmless while putting the burden of “reform” on new teachers and those still in ed school. (The Baby Boomers strike again.) Reformers will work for more fundamental, sustainable fixes.

Digital Learning

With the support of Digital Learning Now! and former governors Jeb Bush and Bob Wise, advocates in many states will be pushing to eliminate “seat time” requirements; create or expand online charter schools; and tweak teacher-evaluation systems to deal with the rise of hybrid learning environments (which often move away from the one “teacher of record” model).
Those issues aren’t exactly small potatoes; each could stake a claim to having “transformative” potential: Upgrading our teacher and leader pipelines could make American schools more like the best systems in the world; moving toward portable pension systems would make it vastly easier to terminate ineffective teachers (if hundreds of thousands of dollars of pension wealth is no longer at stake); digital learning is undoubtedly going to play a significant role in the schools of tomorrow.
But there’s an issue on the horizon that could potentially trump all of that, for it touches every piece of the education enterprise: school finance. While this item isn’t exactly “new,” a new approach could revolutionize our schools.
Arguably the last time a state upended its fundamental approach to school finance was Michigan in 1993, under the leadership of then-Governor John Engler. The legislature eliminated local property taxes as a source for school funding, voters approved an increase in the statewide sales tax, and the burden of education finance shifted significantly away from districts and to Lansing. This made education spending in Michigan much more equitable, and also set the stage for an explosion of public school choice—not just via charter schools but via the inter-district variety as well. Now 115,000 students in Michigan participate in public school choice through charter schools alone, facilitated by the state dollars that follow them to the venue of their choice.

How far are we from the Holy Grail of school-finance reform? Photo by Eddi van W..

Twenty years later, are we ready to take the next step? The Holy Grail, according to many reformers, is to shift school finance entirely to the state level. That may prove politically impossible (affluent districts are always going to want to retain the right to tax themselves at higher rates in order to exceed average spending). But one could imagine a savvy governor calling for significant property-tax relief at the local level, to be offset by new taxes at the state level. Then, funds would flow back to the schools (stress “schools”—not school districts) via student-based budgeting. In other words: in the kids’ “backpacks,” following them to the schools of their choice, with needy kids carrying more dollars than their peers.
Such changes would have a catalytic effect on the larger reform movement. Educational choice would thrive, with charter schools earning a fairer share of funding and course-level financing for digital learning becoming much more doable. (In states with school vouchers, private school choice would flourish too.) Equity would be promoted, with poor districts much more able to offer competitive salaries, extended learning time, and early interventions than they are today. School principals would be empowered to spend their dollars strategically, and to hire the best teachers they can afford. Districts would no longer be able to micromanage schools, as they wouldn’t control the purse strings. And the stranglehold of “local control” would be further diminished, as the state picks up the tab for an enterprise in which it increasingly calls the shots.
This brand of school-finance reform, some say, is political suicide. Perhaps. But if there’s a way to a “Grand Bargain” on education funding, the savvy advocacy groups of the PIE Network will find it. Stay tuned.

School Choice Proposal Rankles Dr. Vickie Markavitch, of Oakland Schools

     The article in the Detroit Free Press (November 18th,) which allows more school choice and online learning is not popular with some educators.  Govenor Rick Snyder is determined to remake education in the state of Michigan from specialized schools to schools without borders and the article below has both its supporters and its critics. Read the article and feel free to comment. Can you imagine paying students to go to school and finish early. Snyder would like to see this happen in the Michigan Public Education Finance Act.

Education funding proposal allows school choice, more online learning

November 18, 2012  

Gov. Rick Snyder hopes changing how schools are funded will improve how well they prepare kids for college.

By Paul Egan and Chastity Pratt Dawsey

Detroit Free Press Staff Writers

LANSING -- A draft bill prepared for Gov. Rick Snyder would fundamentally change K-12 education in Michigan, allowing students to choose school districts, make greater use of online learning and earn financial incentives of $2,500 per semester for completing high school early.
The proposed Michigan Public Education Finance Act would replace the School Aid Act of 1979, the law that governs education funding, and provide for learning at "any time, any place, any way and at any pace," said Richard McLellan, the Lansing attorney Snyder tapped to lead a rewrite of the law on how Michigan pays for education.
Snyder's advisers said the primary objective for overhauling the education funding law is to create "career-ready citizens," but educators who have waited for months to see the draft bill fear the worst: that the bill would destroy local control of schools, create a voucher system to benefit for-profit companies and worsen academic achievement.
The draft bill, expected to be introduced as part of Snyder's budget presentation in February, was made available to the Free Press on Friday. It would:
• Remove district ownership of students, who would be permitted to get all or part of their education from any public district in the state that accepts them. Districts would retain the right to decide whether to participate in open enrollment.
• Allow students to access online learning from across the state, with the cost paid by the state. Districts that provide online courses would receive public funding based on performance.
• Provide for per-pupil funding to follow students to whichever districts they use to learn, with one student's funding potentially split among multiple districts. To comply with the Michigan Constitution, public money would not follow students to private schools.
• Provide a framework for funding based on performance, once the proper assessment and testing mechanisms are in place.
• Give scholarships of $2,500 per semester, to a maximum of $10,000, to students who finish high school early.
• Encourage year-round schooling by having a 180-day school year spread over 12 months instead of nine, with a break of no more than two weeks.
A groundswell of opposition is rising from educators and school officials who have met with the drafters and seen summaries of the 302-page bill. The current funding law needs revision to address inadequacies and inequities in state aid and achievement, but the proposed changes lack quality controls, some school leaders said.
For instance, allowing parents to shop around and get different parts of their child's education from different districts or online providers is troublesome, said John Austin, president of the State Board of Education.
"This is a voucher system," he said. "It's absolutely destructive. It has nothing to do with improving quality. It's loaded with the ideology of creating a new for-profit system for learning that will dismantle the schools we have."
Don Wotruba, deputy director for the Michigan Association of School Boards, said that much of what the bill seeks to do -- such as having online classes and school choice -- is already under way.
"But it's monitored," he said. "The answer is not to say, 'Here's the money. Make your own choices.' "
McLellan, who was an adviser to former Republican Gov. John Engler, said the bill would not create a voucher system, by which public money could be used to pay for private education.
He said the bill is designed to help implement what Snyder called for when he delivered a message on education in April 2011.
McLellan said he expects that the changes could take five years to implement. They would result in shifts in education money but wouldn't require additional funds, he said.
The fact that so many students graduate without being ready for college shows that the present system is not working, he said.
Despite expanded opportunities for online learning, McLellan said he expects that 95% of students will continue to attend brick-and-mortar schools, which have social and educational benefits besides learning, such as athletic and other extracurricular activities.
The changes might result in school districts choosing to specialize in certain areas, such as science, he said.
"Right now, we require every school to do everything," said McLellan.
Vickie Markavitch, superintendent of Oakland Schools, that county's intermediate school district, said she is vehemently opposed to the proposal because it doesn't address education for all students, such as those who are poor or require special education.
"Transportation won't be mandated, so there are going to be a lot of kids who are not going to have a choice," Markavitch said. "This is so un-American."
Florida, Oregon, Minnesota and Utah are at the forefront of similar changes, but if this bill is implemented, along with other changes to education Snyder has championed, Michigan "would have the best framework for the kind of change we're going to need for the 21st Century to have globally competitive schools in the information age," McLellan said.
David Hecker, president of American Federation of Teachers-Michigan, said he feared the proposal would weaken local control of schools if students can come from all over and erode the teaching ranks if districts lose enrollment to one another and online services.
The Oxford Foundation has funded the research and development of the draft bill. The foundation focuses on projects that "lessen the burdens of government," according to its website.
Staton Berry, president of the Michigan Parent Teacher Association, said she hopes the governor and his advisers hold meetings "in every district in every city" to explain the proposed changes.
The draft bill is to be posted online Monday for public comment at http://oxfordfoundationmi.com , after which it will be revised and again presented to Snyder in mid-December, McLellan said.
Snyder spokeswoman Sara Wurfel said that "the governor is looking forward to reviewing the report and recommendations about how we can move Michigan into the 'any time, any place, any way, any pace' model that the new economy demands."
Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@freepress.com

More Details: More about the Michigan Public Education Finance Act

The Michigan Public Education Finance Act is one of three proposals that, when considered together, could significantly change education in Michigan by allowing parents to shop around and use their child’s per-pupil state aid at more and new kinds of public schools.
A bill introduced in the state House in September would create nine new kinds of public schools, such as residential public schools and corporation-run and municipality-run schools.
Another House bill — and its companion in the Senate — establish a statute to govern the statewide Education Achievement Authority
district.

Where to read the proposal

The proposed Michigan Public Education Finance Act would replace the School Aid Act of 1979, the law that governs public education funding.
The draft bill is expected to be introduced as part of Gov. Rick Snyder’s budget presentation in February. Starting Monday, the bill will be online for public comment at http://oxford foundationmi .com .

What the 'fiscal cliff' Means for Public Schools

     While I believe the federal government will come to some sort of agreement before January 1st,  of 2013,  Valerie Grimes of the Washington Post has given her opinion on the matter.

 

What the ‘fiscal cliff’ means for public schools

Posted by Valerie Strauss on November 16, 2012 at 5:00 am

(Dean Treml-AFP/Getty Images)

Here are some facts about how public schools across the country could be affected if President Obama and Congress don’t reach some agreement on solving the nation’s debt problem by Jan. 1 and the country goes over “the fiscal cliff” and “sequestration” takes effect.
What, exactly, does that mean? It means that in the absence of a timely compromise, automatic federal budget cuts totaling $1.2 trillion will start on Jan. 2, 2013, and end seven years later. The cuts will be divided evenly between defense spending (not including wars U.S. troops are fighting) and discretionary domestic spending, not including entitlements like Social Security and Medicaid, but affecting the Department of Education and other agencies. (If you want to know why this is happening, read this.)
Education programs now collectively make up less than 1 percent of the federal budget. Here are some things to know about how sequestration could affect public schools:

 * Federal cuts to education could amount to nearly $5 billion, according to an analysis by the American Association of School Administrators, which would cause class sizes to be increased, programs reduced, services eliminated and jobs lost.That’s an 8.2 percent cut, according to the National School Boards Association. ( Pages 60-64 of this Office of Management and Budget report details sequestration as it relates to the U.S. Education Department.)

 

Remember that many public school districts have already been dealing with cuts in local and state resources for several years. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, elementary and high schools are receiving less state funding in the current school year than they did last year in 26 states — and in 35 states school funding now stands below 2008 levels.

 

* An analysis by the National Education Association says that education funding would drop to pre-2003 levels — even though 5.4 million more students have enrolled in public schools and K-12 education costs have increased 25 percent.

 

* Some schools and some of the country’s neediest children would be affected immediately, meaning Jan. 2, 2013.They are in the Impact Aid program, which helps about 1,200 school districts, most of which have a good number of Native American students as well as children of parents who work on military bases. (The program helps districts located on federal government land or lands that were removed from local tax rolls by the U.S. government, such as Indian lands, which don’t have the same local revenue as other school districts.)

 * Federal programs including Head Start and Title 1 — which provides aid to schools and districts with high percentages of children from disadvantaged families — will be affected immediately. Other programs are exempt from sequestration, such as federal Pell grants, which provide need-based funds to low-income families to pay college tuition, and child nutrition programs, including school lunch, school breakfast, child and adult care food and others. You can see other programs exempted from sequestration in this Congressional Research Service report.
 * Most schools will really start to feel the cuts in 2013-14.

 * More than 200 school districts have passed resolutions urging Congress to spare education programs. The National PTA has been also pushing its members to lobby their elected officials to reach a deal and avoid sequestration.

Holly Middle School Students Learn about Bullying from Theatre Group

Holly Middle School students get the “Word” on bullying

Written by Janet Leslie

Thursday, November 15 2012

Linda Skrzynski HOLLY, Michigan – During a school-wide assembly this week, Holly Middle School students got a lesson on bullying, and more importantly, the school district’s zero tolerance policy for anyone caught in the act. The bullying program, entitled “Word,” is a production of the Jewish Ensemble Theatre (JET) of West Bloomfield, the nation’s longest-running Jewish theater group. The program dramatizes an incident of bullying from the perspective of three students: the bully, the victim, and a witness, as they relate their individual stories to a school counselor. HMS principal Linda Skrzynski said she selected the program based on its reputation for quality and ability to engage students with relatable scenarios. Tuesday’s presentation, however, presented an unusual dilemma when one of the scheduled actors failed to arrive on time. And though Skrzynski planned every detail of the assembly, including instructing the students on proper audience etiquette immediately before the show, there were no contingency plans for a missing actor. Due to a very full school calendar, Skrzynski quickly dismissed the idea of rescheduling the show and instead began to name off several teachers who might easily step into a role for which they had not prepared. Within minutes, language arts teacher Tracey Pinch strolled into the auditorium and onto the stage to take the role of the bullying bystander. Students ask questions followi... After the presentation, students were invited to discuss what they had seen with the actors themselves. Some challenged the troupe’s choices, asking, “Why was it a football player that was portrayed as a bully?” and, “Would you ever rewrite the play so that the kid stands up to the bully?” After returning to their classrooms students signed an anti-bullying pledge and each received a card with the pledge printed on it to wear on their lanyards with their student identification cards. The pledge is as follows: “I pledge to think more about the words I use. I will try to be aware of how my words can hurt people – even myself. I will try to replace words that hurt with words that encourage. I will not become discouraged when I am unable to choose words perfectly because making the world a better place is hard work. I am pledging to do that, one word at at time.” Tuesday’s program is part of a larger Holly Middle School initiative in response to the district’s new bullying policy, put into effect by action of the Board of Education earlier this year. Other activities have included a cyber-bullying presentation held at the middle school’s Open House, and in-service education for teachers and support staff alike. “We believe in educating before issuing consequences,” Skrzynski said.

Parents in All districts Should Stay Informed on Education Legislation

Many parents are not involved in the pipeline of bills in the Michigan Legislature and this includes the topic of legislation. In Farmington Public Schools, the status quo is not being accepted and for them, it is a lesson for parents in all districts to take heed. The story below talks about some key issues and a video for finding out more in specifics.

Parents urged to keep informed on proposed school legislation

Nov. 11, 2012 

Susan Steinmueller-Observer Staff Writer

Priscilla O'Neill says she's surprised and concerned about proposed legislation that could put even more funding for K-12 education into private hands and change who regulates schools.

“The fact that for profit schools are receiving and have the capability of receiving funds that should go to public schools, I'm very concerned about that,” said O'Neill of Farmington Hills, and a parent of a 10th-grader at Harrison High School.

O'Neill said she's also concerned about legislation that would give “the opportunity for others to take over schools, and the people don't have to be regulated.

“There should be more regulation for those people because they are dealing with children, the most vulnerable elements of our society,” she said. “We need to protect our children.”

Keeping informed

O'Neill was one of the parents who attended “School Funding: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” at Harrison High School in Farmington Hills Thursday evening.

The free forum was sponsored by the Farmington PTA Council and Farmington Public Schools and hosted by Farmington, Livonia, and Walled Lake PTA Councils. It was designed to keep parents informed about the current and future state of critical funding for public schools.

Debbie Squires, associate director, Michigan Elementary/Middle School Principals Association, and past Michigan PTA president, was the speaker. She noted that she's also an alum of Harrison.

Squires talked about the many ways that the school aid fund is being impacted.

She said legislation that may not have anything to do with schools can impact it.

But so can the voice of people, she said.

For instance, Lansing is currently trying to get rid of the personal property tax.

“The only thing that has stopped it is that people like you have said ... no more taking money out of the general fund without funding a replacement for it,” she said.

She said there are three bills concerning schools that are currently of concern. They are coming up in the “lame duck” session, when “deals that get made that would never get made in a regular session.” The bills are:

SB620: It would allow a failing school to be converted to a charter school if a petition is submitted by at least 60 percent of parents or 51 percent of parents and 60 percent of teachers. It disenfranchises voters, she said.

“If parents or teachers decide to take over Harrison High School, it doesn't say that they have to be residents,” she said. “Those that paid to have it built have no voice. That's a problem as we see it.”

SB1358: This bill would give the Education Achievement Authority, which oversees Detroit's lowest performing schools and will expand statewide, broad powers to authorize charter schools. HB5923 allows for several new forms of charter and online schools, “so a company down the street could decide to start a school and be totally funded by school fund dollars.”

It allows for selective enrollment admission policies.

“This is a scary bill,” she said.

Another concern in public education is that the nonprofit Oxford Foundation of Michigan, founded in 1991 by former governor John Engler, has been charged with rewriting the state's education funding law.

The group is not required to hold open meetings.

The project is based on Gov. Rick Snyder's Education Message Proposals that include: a new — any time, any place, any way, any pace public school learning model; performance-based funding rather than seat time requirements; and that the state foundation allowance should not be exclusively tied to the school district a child attends. Instead, funding needs to follow the student.

Stay informed

Squires urged people to stay informed and voice their concerns to legislators.

“It's up to you to make a difference in the process as it moves forward,” she said.

She said that legislators do listen, whether a concern is voiced in person, or by call, letter or e-mail.

She said that it can be scary to call a legislator, but most of the time they'll be talking to a staff member.

“If by some chance you get to talk to the legislator they don't expect you to be an expert,” she said.

“Please say informed,” said Farmington Superintendent Sue Zurvalec in her remarks. “Let your voices be heard. We absolutely need you. The schools need you. Thanks for caring.”

The presentation can be seen at:

http://www.farmington.k12.mi.us/pta/Education_Funding_in_Michigan_11-12.pdf

The forum was taped and can be seen online at: http://tv-10.pegcentral.com/player.php?video=43c26597cdaf0bb74260e367d6d6e028

The forum will also be aired at 5 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 13, and 4 and 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 17, on TV 10.

ssteinmueller@hometownlife.com (313)222-2241