Tag Archive for ‘U.S. Dept. of Education’ at The Core Knowledge Blog

Tag Archive for 'U.S. Dept. of Education'

Marching Orders for the Next Ed Secretary

Published by Robert Pondiscio on September 3, 2008 in Assessment and Testing and Educational Policy. 0 Comments

If we want to spur innovation in education, the Department of Education should act more like the National Institutes of Health. So say Newark Mayor Cory Booker, venture capitalist John Doerr, and Ted Mitchell, chief executive of NewSchools Venture Fund in a Los Angeles Times opinion piece.

“We need a new, results-driven mind-set at the Department of Education that will drive pure educational innovation and ’scale up’ proven experiments and novel ideas that work, the trio write. ”The federal government stands in a unique position to meet these needs.”

The evidence for making a national commitment to innovation in education is compelling. Today, many of the most promising solutions are emerging from entrepreneurial organizations that embrace freedom and accountability. Indeed, such social entrepreneurs represent a growing force. They have started nimble, typically nonprofit organizations that work in partnership with creative mayors and school superintendents.

They cite the examples of KIPP, Uncommon Schools, Green Dot and others as worthy of federal support. Booker, Doerr and Mitchell want the next president to create a “Grow What Works” fund and a second fund to provide research and development money for promising early stage initiatives. They also favor eliminating caps on the number of public charter schools allowed and “excessive restrictions on how teachers are trained and credentialed.” They also call for national standards and tests — without actually using the words, prefering instead “a common set of standards” and “a national data infrastructure.”

Editorial: A Beacon in the Bronx

Published by CKF on October 8, 2007 in Opinion. 0 Comments

This article first appeared in the New York Observer on Oct. 8, 2007. It is reprinted in full, by permission.

Six years ago, in a poor, ill-served neighborhood in the South Bronx, the Carl C. Icahn Charter School opened its doors for the first time. The school, named for its founder and chief funder, is part of a nationwide attempt to create a new kind of public school, freer to innovate and experiment but with a strong sense of mission.

Fifty-nine percent of the school’s 278 students are African-American; 41 percent are Hispanic. Eighty-nine percent are eligible for free or reduced-price school lunches, meaning that they come from poor families, many of whom live in high-rise apartment buildings near the school.

The U.S. Department of Education recently discovered that those children and their teachers are working miracles in the South Bronx. Every student — every one of them — met state standards in language arts and mathematics in the 2004-05 school year. In 2005-06, 100 percent of the school’s third and fourth graders — 100 percent! — were judged proficient or better on state math tests.

Those results led the Department of Education to designate the school as one of only seven charter schools nationwide, and the only one in New York City, to receive the agency’s “Closing the Gap” award. The reference is to the stubborn achievement gap between white students and minority students on standardized tests.

At the Icahn school, the so-called achievement gap hasn’t simply been closed. It has been obliterated. No child is being left behind; indeed, the children at this charter school are surging ahead of their peers.

All credit goes to the school’s students, their families, their teachers and principal, and to Mr. Icahn, whose generosity and vision made so much of this success possible. Also deserving of congratulations are the school’s board members, including legendary school innovator Seymour Fliegel, who heads the Center for Educational Innovation and who has been a strong advocate for public school reform.

The charter school is one of many that have sprung up around the city. It is located in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, in an area, the South Bronx, that remains associated with all of the ills that add to the burdens of poverty. And yet, despite the formidable obstacles placed in the way of the school’s students, they are flourishing.

So what, exactly, is going on here?

It starts with leadership. The school’s principal, Jeffrey Litt, is a fixture in the community and a tireless advocate for his students. But he is more than an administrator: He is an educator. The school’s curriculum is based on author E.D. Hirsch’s concept of core knowledge, which identifies content in the humanities and the sciences that every American child ought to know.

Teachers are expected to hold their students to high standards, and are accountable if their students fall behind. Apparently, the students — who are chosen by lottery, except for those who have a sibling in the school — love the challenge. Many of them attend special classes on Saturday mornings to work on the skills they learn during the week.

That hard work is paying off and creating a model of achievement in the South Bronx. The Department of Education’s award is a fitting tribute to the students, faculty, staff and board members of the Carl C. Icahn Charter School.

Innovations in Education Guide: K-8 Charter Schools: Closing the Achievement Gap

Published by CKF on September 27, 2007 in No category. 0 Comments

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said in her introduction to the guide that, “the seven schools profiled in the guide are dispelling the myth that some students cannot achieve to high standards.” The schools are “acting as laboratories for innovative education practices.”

… The schools profiled in K-8 Charter Schools are both rural and urban, but whatever the community they serve, they share a commitment to teaching for mastery. For example, two of the schools — the Carl C. Icahn Charter School in the Bronx, NY, and the Cesar Chavez Academy (CCA) in Pueblo, Colo. — have found engaging ways to teach rigorous content, based on state standards, through the use of Core Knowledge, a curriculum focusing on the key concepts of western civilizations in mathematics, language, science, the arts, and the humanities.

The challenging curriculum — developed by E.D. Hirsch — was chosen by Icahn’s founding principal, Jeffrey Litt, despite his colleagues’ admonitions that it would not work in the Bronx where “the kids were too poor.” Rather than lower the school’s expectations, Litt adapted Core Knowledge to make it more accessible to his inner-city students. In doing so, his students realized success in spite of the perceived odds. Such rich content is often combined with atypical school schedules to ensure that students can master important concepts that stay with them for a lifetime, not just until the end of a semester.

At CCA, Core Knowledge is combined with the principles of hard work, responsibility, resourcefulness, and loyalty to the golden rule. In addition, the curriculum emphasizes Hispanic history, culture and the native languages of Latinos. The bottom line, according to CCA principal Lawrence Hernandez, is “all students succeed because we don’t allow them to fail.” At CCA, student success is not left to chance. As a result, the school has a 3,000-student waiting list and students consistently outperform not only the neighborhood schools serving similar populations, but also those schools with students from higher-income families.

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