District Administration - March 2012 - (Page 14)

Letters Here is feedback from our February 2012 cover story, “What Can U.S. Schools Learn from Foreign Counterparts,” from some prominent K12 leaders: Kudos to Ed Finkel for his in-depth look at this issue. U.S. educators can learn a great deal from high-performing counterparts—and, for the first time, that is what we are doing. Last December, the OECD released a report entitled Strong Performers and Successful Reformers in Education: Lessons from PISA for the United States. I asked OECD to prepare that study because several nations are outeducating the United States, and I wanted to know what we could learn from them. We followed up on the OECD study with the first-ever International Summit on the Teaching Profession, co-sponsored last March with OECD and Education International. It was so successful that on March 14-15 we are holding it again, this time on the theme “Preparing Teachers and Developing School Leaders.” These top-performing nations not only are doing a better job of accelerating achievement and attainment nationwide than America, but they are also doing a better job of closing achievement gaps among minority and disadvantaged students. While there is much to learn from high-performing countries, there is no single recipe for building a strong teaching profession. And it is clear that some of the nationwide reforms adopted in high-performing education systems are not likely to be adopted here. Nearly all of the high-performing nations and regions in the OECD study have national standards, a national curriculum, a grade-by-grade curriculum framework and high-stakes national exams given to students at key gateways, such as when they exit secondary school. The tradition of local and state financing is much stronger here than in 14 March 2012 Looking Beyond Our Borders ation A D DistrictAdministr FIVE WAYS TO SOLUTIONS DISTRICT FOR SCHOOL MANAGEMEN NSFORM PERSONAL TRA TURN PD INTO ATION 72 T n Schools Lear What Can U.S.Counterparts? repore are from FoSingaign creating high-achieving students— 30 and take action China, Finland educators to ring American and finally inspi The Game Changer Reforming the fifth-largest district against tough odds 49 District Drive Mobile Devices ion ruct Creative Inst ulum, l curric Without a forma de outsi teachers think the box 59 CIO A New Prescription for Fighting Drug Abuse student Ways to raise awareness 41 cations of The Legal Impli ras Came Surveillance why 55 is right of the problem And a major source which means you can among teens today. your house, Educate abuse is a problem This may be happening in of the quantity. Prescription drug and keep track the medicine cabinet. your medications under your nose: to stop it. Safeguard can stop the dealer. definitely do something at theantidrug.com. You out more yourself. Find theantidrug.com Office of National Drug Control Policy / Partnership for a Drug-Free America ® What you need to know and Dollars to Refocusing Tax ation Enhance Educ could spark states Efforts by a few 69 a paradigm shift L S TA M P APPROVA Signature / Initials Date www.Distric CVR_DA0212_v2.indd 1 tAdministrat ion.com A AD ID #: ONDP_ADUL_M2818 ONDCP Client Folder: Product: Adul A Job #: ONDP_ADUL_M2818 File name: M2818A_Ad.qxp Headline: Campaign: 9 8 7 Proof #: 10 Date: 12/10/07 PREPARED THIS ADVERTISEMENT Newman x7773 M. BY DRAFTFCB February 2012 Fonts: Pubs.: Bill To: P2950 Production: Colors: 4C 8.75"w x 11.375"h Size: Bleed: x 10.5"h Trim: 7.875"w Live: 7"w x 9.75"h x2987 AD: S. Cohen x3456 AE: A. Orpello x3597 Traffic: J. Azor L. Powell VQC: M.Parrelli, Group A Project Mgr: dw, spl, jw, tl-c, eg, Artist(s): tl-c, eg Traffic Proofreader Art Director Copywriter Creative Dir. Acct. Exec. Acct. Dir. Mgt. Dir. Production Studio Studio QC M2818 000 C: 4C Break of PMS K:0 C:0 M:0 Y:0 Version A PM 1/11/12 12:09 most top-performing countries. The federal government does not set national standards. By law, we cannot prescribe a national curriculum. And we do not support high-stakes exams that effectively determine a student’s postsecondary educational options. What’s not only possible but critical is that we do more to hire and retain high-quality teachers. With more than a million teachers retiring by the end of the decade, we must attract top talent to America’s classrooms. Still, transforming education in America along the lines, say, of Finland’s example is more challenging here than in a small nation or province. Finland has eight university-based teacherpreparation programs. The United States has more than 1,400 education schools, regulated by 50 states and voluntary accreditation bodies. Less than 5 percent of children in Finland are poor; in the United States, more than 20 percent of children live in poverty, and the population is roughly 60 times as large. Some researchers, including Marc Tucker, who is quoted in the story, assert that leading education reforms undertaken in this nation are conspicuously absent from the best-performing countries. I respectfully disagree. For the first time, the United States is embracing a number of core elements of high-performing nations, marking a sea change from past practice. The first shift is the state-led design and adoption of higher, internationally benchmarked academic standards—and the development of a new generation of assessments that will test higher-order thinking skills, much like the high-quality assessments used overseas. The second development is the $4 billion Race to the Top competition. For the first time, states are deeply engaged in coherent, coordinated and comprehensive reform. Finally, the Obama administration’s $4 billion school turnaround program is an unprecedented effort to redirect resources to the neediest students and correct the imbalance that had made the United States one of only a handful of countries to not target greater resources toward the lowest-need students. Arne Duncan Secretary U.S. Department of Education Teaching to high stakes international tests and seeking our inspiration from other countries is not the answer. If we do so, it could dumb down our current educational system. It will cause the narrowing of what education is and ignore the talents and interests that the diverse students we educate possess. The problem is not our performance on international tests, the problem is we are using the wrong metrics to determine what a quality education is. We need to create the conditions in the classroom where students are doing original work in which the teacher does not know the answer, where District Administration

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - March 2012

District Administration - March 2012
Contents
From the Editor
Letters
News Update
Inside the Law
District Profile
Administrator Profile
Research Center
CIO News
Building an Ed Tech Dream Team
Are you Ready for Common Core Math?
A Crystal Ball for Student Achievement
The Single Largest Education Donor Comes With Controversy
Models of Education Reform
Noteworthy Books
New Products
Going Mobile
Professional Opinion

District Administration - March 2012

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