Data WBEZ obtained through a Freedom of Information request shows that about 40 percent of teachers hired for CPS' new longer school day filled art, music, or physical education openings, but the hiring didn't benefit as many displaced tenured teachers as the CTU wanted.

IN THE NATION
Philadelphia schools are being earmarked for shuttering are based on their physical condition, usage, cost per student and academic record. And that's disturbing, writes Walt Gardner, because "the academic record is only one consideration, when it should be the only consideration." (Education Week)

Ten states are facing lawsuits over their funding of public education. (The Washington Post)

With these extra teachers and some scheduling changes, such as eliminating a morning prep time and putting lunch for teachers back into the middle of the day, the workday for elementary school teachers won’t be lengthened and will be only slightly longer for high school teachers.

While both sides declared victory, they also said numerous issues still need to be resolved and that a strike was still a possibility.

“We have a 98 percent strike authorization vote, and that has not changed,” CTU President Karen Lewis said. “We have a long way to go before the contract is settled, but this is a very good start.”

“We are still looking at healthcare, pay, evaluations, discipline, clinician staffing,” Lewis said, naming – in addition to raises – a litany of issues that CPS isn’t required to bargain about with the union.

Lewis would not say how this agreement impacts the union’s salary demands. Citing the longer workday among other things, CTU had asked for nearly a 30 percent pay increase. CPS had offered about 2 percent.

CPS officials did not say how they planned to pay for the additional teachers, which they estimate to cost $40 to $50 million. The proposed CPS budget empties the reserves and makes program cuts to fill a $665 million deficit. With no reserves, the budget leaves little wiggle room.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel shrugged off the question of how he can afford the additional teachers. “The question is how can we afford not to do it,” he said.

Board President David Vitale said it is now time for district leadership to “get to work” to find savings. There’s also a possibility that Emanuel and his team will have to make more costly concessions to the union.  

Still, Emanuel and his team declared victory. He said he was never prepared to compromise on the issue of the longer school day.

“A longer school day has been a goal and a topic of negotiations before,” he said. “But each time students took a back seat.”

Union leadership also saw the agreement as a win. Since the beginning of negotiations in November, CTU leaders said they wanted additional art, music and physical education teachers. They stressed that students shouldn’t only have a longer school day, but also a “better school day.”

With the additional teachers, each school should have at least 1.5 teachers providing art, music or other enrichment classes, Lewis said.

CPS officials said the details of how the teachers will be allocated have yet to be worked out and that principals will have the discretion to decide what type of teacher they need, whether it be a reading coach or a dance teacher.

Another victory for the union was the district’s agreement to give preference in hiring for these positions to displaced teachers. If three displaced teachers apply for one of the positions, then the principal will have no choice but to hire one of them, under the agreement, Vitale said.

The deal only applies to displaced teachers with satisfactory or better ratings. Also, the teacher will be on probation for a semester and the job is only guaranteed for a year.

With yearly school closings, the issue of displaced teachers is a big one. CTU fought a legal battle to ensure broader protections for them, but lost.

The announcement that the longer day was not in jeopardy as contract negotiations are ongoing brought statements from advocacy groups that support it. 

Stand for Children was planning to hold a press conference Wednesday morning to urge CPS and CTU not to forsake the longer school day. Now, they are partnering with Education Reform Now Advocacy to applaud the agreement.

“It’s time for both sides to finish the job and finalize a contract,” said Rebeca Nieves Huffman, Illinois State Director of Democrats for Education Reform, an affiliated group. “As we have always said, teachers have a difficult and critically important job and they deserve a raise, but it must be a compromise that taxpayers can afford.”

“As negotiations continue, we hope that both the CTU and CPS will continue to put students first and protect the critical investments our students need like the longer school day, funding for charter schools and maintaining class size.”

Only two of five schools that piloted a longer day starting last September posted increases in test scores. One school, already high-performing, remained about the same; another high-performing school posted a small dip in scores. Meanwhile, one low-achieving school posted a decrease in test scores.

Districtwide, the percentage of students meeting and exceeding standards increased by just 0.9 percentage points, to 74.2 percent, while the percentage of students exceeding standards grew by 0.7 points, to 17.8 percent.

This year’s gains are the smallest in the last six years, and substantially smaller than those posted last year, when scores went up by 3.8 percentage points. And while 3^rd through 5^th graders made gains, fewer students in 6^th and 7^th grade met standards than last year.

Jennifer Cheatham, chief of instruction at CPS, acknowledged the gains were “incremental” and called them “a symptom of an approach that’s been in place for some time now in CPS.”

“Districts often try isolated strategies – something here, something there – and if they don’t get immediate results they drop those strategies in favor of something else,” which is particularly common among large urban districts, Cheatham said.

But she asserted that CEO Jean-Claude Brizard’s administration is going to be different. This year, she said, CPS has laid the foundation for approaches that she believes will lead to faster and more long-term gains, through programs like the longer day, new teacher evaluations, and new curricula based on the Common Core State Standards.

To some degree, ISAT have little significance anymore. Brizard has emphasized that state test standards are too low, pointing out that elementary students must score at the “exceeds standards” level in order to be well-positioned for high school success.

The ISAT is slated to be eventually phased out as the state launches a new state assessment, based on the Common Core Standards and developed by the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), in the 2014-15 school year.

Starting this fall, CPS will require students at all elementary schools, including charter schools, to take the more difficult NWEA test. Teachers will be evaluated on student performance, and the district’s performance policy may eventually incorporate it as well. This year’s NWEA and Scantron test results are not available yet.

Since last fall, the district has offered schools optional multiple-choice tests based on the Common Core, but officials say they have no plans to release data on how well students are doing on those tests

CAVEAT ON LONGER DAY

Officials touted the fact that overall, five schools that started a longer day last in September – Disney II Magnet, Fiske, Nash, Skinner North, and Brown – had average gains of 6.6 percentage points on the ISAT composite.

But on a school-by-school basis, two of the five saw their scores decrease.

Cheatham called the results “promising” but acknowledged that “we know that nothing can be attributed to any single strategy in isolation.”

All together, schools with longer days (including those that began in January) posted average gains of 2.5 percentage points, according to the district.

Turnaround schools managed by the Academy for Urban School Leadership (Sherman, Harvard, Howe, Morton, Dulles, Johnson, Bethune, Bradwell, Deneen, and Curtis) saw an increase of 2.5 percentage points in the number of students meeting state standards.

That’s higher than the district average, but also the smallest increase AUSL schools have posted since 2007. Last year, they posted nearly 10-point gains. Scores at Bethune, Howe, and Deneen slipped slightly.

Overall, just 64 percent of students at turnaround schools are meeting state standards, with fewer than 9 percent of students exceeding them.

Charter schools posted slightly higher gains than the district average, with a 1.2-point increase in the percentage of students meeting state standards, to 76.6 percent.

When asked whether that justified the district’s expanding investment in charters in this year’s budget, spokeswoman Becky Carroll said that “our job is to not only help build high-quality schools, but expand the number of choices.”

Starting in August, CPS will announce a new accountability system that applies to both charter schools and neighborhood schools. The accountability policy determines which schools are on probation, and which are eligible for closure or turnaround.

The achievement gap between African-American and Latino students and white students narrowed by fractions of a percentage point – insignificant when considering that close to 90 percent of white students meet or exceed state standards, compared to just 68 percent of African-American students and 75 percent of Latino students.

More alarmingly, the achievement gap widened by a larger margin--one and a half percentage points—among students exceeding state standards:  54 percent of white students exceed state standards, compared to 12 percent of African-American students and 16 percent of Latinos.

This article has been updated to correct the list of schools that started the longer day in September, and include information about those schools' gains.

Officials said that principals will be given an additional $130 million in discretionary money. More than half of that money will come from planned but still-undetermined cuts in district operations. In a budget presentation at the April Board of Education meeting on Wednesday, Chief Administrative Officer Tim Cawley said that he and his team are scrutinizing the procurement process to find these savings.

The rest of the new discretionary dollars—about $50 million--will come from shifting money from centrally-operated programs. But CPS officials declined to specify which programs will be eliminated and how much additional money each school will get.

As an example of programs that could be eliminated, Cawley pointed to college coaches, who are not certified counselors but are charged with taking students on college tours and helping them fill out financial aid forms.  Under former CEO Arne Duncan, these coaches were lauded for helping improve the district’s college-going rate.

Encouraging innovation

In another switch, the district will no longer provide money on a line-item basis for resources like supplies and textbooks. Instead, that money will be dumped into the discretionary pot.

“If a principal wants to, they can use their discretionary money for it,” Cawley said. “But this gives them flexibility to figure out the best way to spend it.”

CEO Jean-Claude Brizard said principals can be more innovative under this new approach. “As a principal, I wanted more flexibility so I could be creative,” he said.

Area network officers will help principals decide what to spend their money on.

The school-level budgets are always important because they tell principals how many students the district expects them to have, how many staff they will be given--and whether they should plan to lay off staff or post job ads.

But this year, the budgets will be even more telling. Mayor Rahm Emanuel and district leadership must do a balancing act: They are imposing a longer school day, while at the same time facing a budget deficit that they project at $600 million to $700 million. Critics of the longer day argue that schools need more money to fill the extra time with art and music class--and even staff to supervise recess.

“To simply add time will not benefit the children,” said Rebecca Malone, a mother who is part of a group called 19^th Ward Parents and who spoke at Wednesday’s meeting. “Do not ask schools to be creative to fill a longer day.”

Cawley told board members that he and his team have not figured out how they will balance the budget and did not specify whether there will be any extra money for a longer school day.  However, it is clear that district officials expect principals to use the increase in discretionary dollars to pay for additional programming—even though the increase is based on cuts elsewhere.

Principals have long complained that too much of their school budget is tied up with mandatory expenses. Yet if they end up with less money overall, they will forced to make tough decisions and take the blame for program cuts made by district leaders.

Cawley said CPS is behind other school districts in terms of giving principals more discretion over their budgets. Previous administrations unsuccessfully tried to move toward per-pupil budgeting, which would give principals total discretion.

CPS' longer school day debate gets national coverage on NPR, in a story focusing on on the mayor's push and those who oppose it and want more details before proceeding.

Ogden School to address controversial rooftop playground that some say almost looks like a prison yard. (Tribune)

Bus Tracker lets students in high-crime areas feel safer about after-school programs knowing that they didn’t have to wait at the bus stop for a long time. (Sun-Times)

IN THE NATION
A history teacher at KIPP San Franciso Bay Academy charter school has taken his classroom entirely paperless. The use donated Chromebooks, simple laptops developed by Google to run Web-based applications, read their lessons on the class website, and use Google software to turn in homework, create presentations, take quizzes and collaborate with each other on projects. (San Francisco Examiner)

If the Buffalo Public School District loses millions in state grants because its teachers union fails to ratify a proposed evaluation system, an influential state lawmaker says New York State should take over the district. (Buffalo News)

Another $60 million in grants for the Promise Neighborhoods program will be made available by the U.S. Department of Education, both for existing grantees and for a new round of grants, the department announced Friday. (Education Week)

New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced last week that the city would open 54 new schools in the fall, many of them in spaces vacated by schools being closed. (NYT)

That's the believe expressed by Don Moore, executive director of Designs for Change, which aims to improve urban public schools. But Mary Anderson, executive director of Illinois’ Stand for Children, thinks otherwise. She said extending the school day will provide more opportunities for teachers to prepare lesson plans and collaborate with other teachers, among more advantages. (Progress Illinois)

Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright, co-chair of the NATO host committee, announced this week that CPS students will get a specialized curriculum, complete with lesson plans, in the first week of May to correlate with the NATO summit May 20-21. Representatives from NATO and the State Department will also be visiting schools across the city and sharing insights and experiences. (Tribune)

IN THE STATE
Some part-time or non-tenured teachers will be given pink slips this spring following a Wednesday night vote by the Wheaton Warrenville District 200 school board. (Trib Local)

IN THE NATION
A pair of bills championed by Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, which he is expected to sign into law, will expand a state-run private-school-voucher program beyond New Orleans to other academically struggling schools around the state, give superintendents and principals direct control over personnel decisions, and set much higher standards for awarding teachers tenure. (Education Week)

A policy paper released Tuesday discusses how Illinois changed its laws in 2008 to provide its state-funded preschoolers with English-Language learner services, leading to new rules concerning teacher preparation and classroom instruction that are to be implemented by 2014, according to the report. The report describes Illinois' approach as "cutting edge," noting that "no other state has gone this far in implementing a comprehensive plan for educating English-Language learners in state-funded pre-K." (Education Week)

A grand jury on Thursday indicted the founder and chief executive of a troubled network of charter high schools in Brooklyn on 11 felony counts, including tax fraud, grand larceny and falsifying business records. (The New York Times)

D.C. Public Schools central office gets low grades for work environment, job satisfaction. (The Washington Post)

Sixty-seven educators accused of cheating in Atlanta Public Schools lost their certification to work in a classroom Thursday. (Atlantic Journal Constitution)

"So their workday is absolutely not five hours and 45 minutes but almost twice that – and that’s not even including weekends.” The study profiles a teacher’s standard school-day workload and the time they devote to the job. Click here read other findings in the survey.

Groups opposing Mayor Rahm Emanuel's original plan for a 7.5-hour school day continue to call for a 6.5-hour day, and with another round of budget cuts looming, some question whether CPS has the money to support a seven-hour day. (Tribune)

Student and parents descended on Oak Park and River Forest High School on Wednesday evening to express their frustration over the dismissal of non-tenured teachers during a special meeting called after an uproar over the firings. (Tribune)

IN THE STATE
At a time when suburban school districts are pushing back hard against taking over the state’s share of teacher retirement costs, many are paying thousands of dollars — sometimes hundreds of thousands — in penalties for giving big raises to administrators and teachers and driving up pensions. (Daily Herald)

IN THE NATION
Racial minorities and students with disabilities are suspended at substantially higher rates than their white and non-disabled peers, according to an analysis of discipline data from nearly 500 California school districts. Researchers said the disparities are a civil rights issue and cause for alarm. (California Watch)

New York City Schools Chancellor Dennis M. Walcott said on Wednesday that the city will close and reopen 26 schools this summer, regardless of whether New York State’s education commissioner approves the plans. (NYT)

Teachers, students, parents rally for education funding in Colorado. (The Denver Post)

A study of charter school spending in Michigan indicates elevated spending on administrative costs in charter schools. Charter schools spend more per-pupil on administration and less on instruction than traditional public schools, even when controlling for enrollment, student populations served, and other factors, the study by the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education found.

High school students will have the 7.5 hour day four days a week, but will be released 75 minutes early once a week.

Emanuel said he never contended that 7.5 hours was a magical number, but that CPS’ current 5 hours and 45 minutes was short-changing children. He refused to acknowledge that he gave in a little to pressure, but insisted that with a 7-hour day he will reach still reach his goal of more classroom time.

Emanuel also pointed out that the new school calendar, passed at March’s Board of Education meeting, adds 10 more days to the year by eliminating some holidays and days when students are not in school because of professional development and report card pickup.

CEO Jean-Claude Brizard said the decision was made after meeting with more than 60 groups of parents.

“We want them to know that we didn’t just listen, we took action,” he said.

The decision comes amid mounting opposition to extending the school day to 7.5 hours. Different groups had slightly different reasons for their opposition, but had a unifying concern that the district doesn’t have enough money to fill the day with high-quality, engaging activities.

CPS officials announced in March that the district is facing a budget deficit in the range of $700 million this year. Soon, principals will receive their school-level budgets.

Given the projected deficit, it is difficult to see how the school budgets could include much extra money for activities in a longer day. Officials have alluded to the fact that they plan to give principals more discretion.

Emanuel said that the emphasis has been getting money out of central office and into schools. “It is about prioritizing,” he said.

Costs still in question

Jonathan Goldman, a member of Raise Your Hand, said that he thinks that Emanuel’s announcement is “a step in the right direction.” “At least CPS is recognizing that parents want to be at the table,” he said.

But he and his fellow group members still have reservations about how the district plans to pay for the longer day. In meetings, CPS officials have acknowledged that extra time will not automatically result in better learning, but that the additional time must be coupled with quality classes.

Maureen Cullnan, who is part of a group of parents from the 19^th Ward on the far South Side, said that when Emanuel talks about having time for every subject, including science, it is disingenuous if no money is attached.

“Do you know how expensive science labs are?” she said.

Steven Guy, a member of the Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization whose grandson attends Fuller Elementary, questioned whether even the 7-hour day would be an improvement.

“How is it going to make a difference if you add an hour to something when you’re not financing what the kids need [now]?” he said. “How are they going to pay for it?”

Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis reiterated the union’s call for more money in its report “The Schools Chicago’s Students Deserve.”

“Today, the mayor moved his toe half an inch from the starting line,” she said. “The mayor still needs to tell us how he intends to pay for this.”

Parents on both sides

At the press conference announcing the change, Emanuel and Brizard were flanked by politicians and principals and parents from schools that had pioneered a 7.5-hour day. Thirteen schools were given grants of between $75,000 and $150,000 to go to the extended schedule this year, before the pilot program screeched to a halt when a judge ruled that the district’s program violated fair labor practices.

Disney II Magnet Elementary teacher Adrienne Garrison said the extra time gives her space to differentiate instruction. She uses some of the time to allow her 3^rd-graders to do independent research. They ask question and find the answer and put the results on the “wonder wall.”

Schools that adopted the extra time, like Disney II, must alter the schedule so it fits within the 7- hour time frame. Principal Bogdana Chkoumbova said she isn’t sure what the school will cut back on next year, though she suspects it will be “specials,” and not core subject instruction.

“It is to be determined,” she said.

Skinner North parent Chris Gladfelter, whose school also was part of the pilot program, said that many parents at his school will be relieved by the decision. A survey of parents at the school found that less than half liked the 7.5-hour day.  Those who didn’t like it were divided among wanting to move to a 6.5-hour day and a 7-hour day.

Gladfelter said he took his 2^nd-grader out of some afterschool activities so that she would have time to come home, do homework and play. “We get to 7:30 at night and we have done nothing all day but school,” she said.

Gladfelter, however, admits Skinner North may not be a great barometer for whether the longer day is needed or successful. The students arrive at the school already achieving at high levels.(Skinner North is a classical school.)

Mary Anderson, executive director of the Chicago chapter of Stand for Children, said she thinks the vocal opposition is not representative of most parents. Anderson said her group still wants to see a 7.5-hour day implemented.  

“We are going to hold them accountable to their original proposal, she said.

Anderson said her group represents the silent majority. This weekend, the Chicago chapter will have a kick-off event and Anderson said 200 parents from all over the city will attend.

“We are concerned about the 120,000 students in failing schools that need the extra time,” she said.

Guidelines recently published show extended reading and math blocks, along with more time for science instruction—but only an additional 50 minutes per week for physical education, library time, technology and the arts combined.

Indeed, at one such neighborhood get-together, part of the Cultural Plan’s gestation, a CPS arts specialist revealed that her cumulative instructional time had been cut by 25% for next year and that she is burdened by teaching duties outside her instructional domain--and that half her salary had to come from sources other than CPS. Further, in keeping with each principal’s use of discretionary funds, building administrators will have wide latitude on allocation of the additional time.  So it seems that arts education will be embraced only by the pre-disposed – a diminishing cohort of educators. In fact, the continuing downward spiral I had predicted in my earlier comments published by Catalyst Chicago last August.

 But there are two elements that illustrate the arts education paradox – Common Core State Standards and the 21st Century economy.  CPS policy-makers are assiduously engaged in developing fresh curricula aligned with the new standards being adopted by all but three states. The interesting aspect of Common Core is the mindset revealed by looking at the “anchor” standards, for example, in reading.  While the assessments for Common Core have yet to be finalized, we can get clues as to what their foundation will be.

If you scan the first introductory page for the reading standards portion of the Common Core, you will come across such terms as “analyze, evaluate, interpret, interact, use, develop, compare, comprehend, and demonstrate understanding.” What do these terms reveal?  That kids will be required to think more than to know, to understand more than to recall, to transfer knowledge into unfamiliar contexts, and to create more than follow directions.  Future assessments will determine to what degree students acquire these capabilities. Remembering things will no longer be adequate for success as capable adults. Why? As quoted in John Kendall’s book Understanding Common Core State Standards, so that “our communities will be best positioned to compete successfully in the global economy.”

Informing a paradigm shift

And what will that economy look like?  A driving force behind today’s economy is the Internet – itself a visual and aural artistic medium that compels us to interact with cultures different from our own whether we want to or not.  As proposed by Daniel Pink in his book Drive, 70% of tomorrow’s employment opportunities will require that employees be self-directed, creative, collaborative, media-literate, and culturally sensitive.  These capacities are collectively identified as 21st Century skills.  It is instructive that the action words cited in the previous paragraph about anchor standards also conform to these skill sets.  However, the singular challenge in teaching them is that they are not oriented towards pre-determined outcomes.  In other words, innovation, creativity, collaboration, etc. pre-suppose unexpected results that require imagination, adaptation, and flexibility in response. CPS will have to do a major overall in how teachers teach, how they are evaluated and how students learn in order to achieve success.

So, how can the city’s cultural plan and CPS’ upcoming paradigm shift inform each other?  Participants involved in the cultural plan’s activities overwhelmingly endorsed the need to ensure K-12 arts education.  Will the city’s policy makers, in particular the mayor, address this deep yearning on the part of their constituents?  The mayor of this city has his hands on the levers of power and influence for both the school system and the cultural future of Chicago. Without robust arts education, the city’s cultural future will be drained of promise.  Without the skills acquired through artistic habits of mind, our children will be ill-equipped to compete in a global economy.

In spite of their year-to-year fiscal struggles, CPS and city agencies need to work in concert over the long term, to try new ways in which the arts can contribute to residents’ quality of life and enable their children to accomplish things that matter to others.  Together, everyone who cares about the city, about kids, and about the arts needs to embrace the proposition that, in the words of David Engleman in his book Incognito, The Secret Lives of the Brain, “Ideas always need to be proposed and nurtured as possibilities until evidence weighs in one way or the other.”  To this I would add that such risks must be taken because the “quo” of the status no longer exists.

Bruce Taylor is a consultant and the author of "The Arts Equation" published by Watson-Guptil. He has served as a cultural envoy for the U.S. State Department and as the director of education for Washington National Opera.

RELATED LINKS

Principal’s guidelines for longer day

Chicago Public Schools resource page on longer day

National Center on Time & Learning

Catalyst In Depth, Summer 2010: Time in School

CPS officials are expected to announce the district's new teacher evaluation system Friday, including a plan for incorporating test scores as part of evaluations, Chicago Teachers Union negotiators said Thursday night. (Catalyst)

For the third year in a row, every senior at Urban Prep Academy, the only all-African-American, all-male charter high school in Chicago, has been accepted to college, the school's leaders said. The academy also said that 83 percent of its first graduating class in 2010 has re-enrolled in a second year of college, a rebuttal to critics of the school who have charged that students aren't always ready for college. (Tribune)

A new coalition of parents says it’ll be pushing for an elected school board in Chicago, which is the only school district in the state without an elected school board. (WBEZ)

IN THE NATION
Supporters of tying teacher evaluations to student performance differ over whether individuals' results should be made public. (Education Week)

The federal school turnaround program is mostly failing in Washington state, even though teachers and administrators are trying their best to make a difference for kids, according to a report issued Thursday by education researchers at the University of Washington. (The Seattle Times)

Louisiana State Rep. Joe Harrison introduced a bill that provides for a program to grade parents on their required participation in the educational progress of their children. The bill is awaiting a hearing.  (Education Week)

As the complaints from the public and especially parents get louder over CPS' longer school day plan, a Sun-Times editorial says the plan "has too many holes."

Members of the Advance Illinois Educator Advisory Council met with a federal “teacher ambassador” on Tuesday to give feedback on a 12-page draft proposal for the RESPECT Project, a proposed $5 billion grant program for states and districts that aims to sever the links between teacher pay and years of service and broadly restructure the teaching profession. (Catalyst)

NBA great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is pushing students on Chicago's South Side to become scientists and engineers while perfecting their jump shots. Abdul-Jabbar joined Gov. Pat Quinn at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. College Preparatory High School on Sunday to encourage more students to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. (WBEZ)

IN THE STATE
The Elgin Area School District U-46 board on Monday approved layoffs of 178 employees, including 77 teachers. (Daily Herald)

A sixth-grade social science and language arts teacher at Naperville’s Lincoln Junior High School was named the Illinois Education Association’s Teacher of the Year this week in Chicago. Josh Stumpenhorst already had been named the Illinois State Board of Education’s Teacher of the Year last fall. (Daily Herald)

IN THE NATION
According to a study released Monday, 1 in 4 Americans don't complete high school. The national graduation rate increased by 3.5 percentage points between 2001 and 2009, the report found. Only one state, Wisconsin, has reached the 90 percent plateau. If every state had a graduation rate of 90 percent or better, 580,000 additional students would have graduated in the class of 2011, increasing the gross domestic product by $6.6 billion and generating $1.8 billion in additional revenue as a result of increased economic activity, the report estimates. (Tribune)

A bill passed by the Wisconsin Legislature would require the state Department of Public Instruction to make “teacher performance and the evaluation of teacher education programs” available to the public beginning in the 2013-14 school year. And for 2014-15, teacher and principal evaluations would be based 50 percent on student performance and 50 percent on standards in areas like planning and classroom environment. (Journal Times)

AT&T announced Monday it will pour $250 million into programs to promote high school graduation and career readiness over the next five years. (Education Week)

The nation’s security and economic prosperity are at risk if schools do not improve, warns a report by a panel led by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Joel I. Klein, a former chancellor of New York City’s school system. The report also recommends more charter schools, something Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers and a member of the panel, said have not proved to be sustainable or to improve schools. (The New York Times)

Students will be dismissed from school three hours early on those report card pickup days, which means parents will have a shorter window of opportunity to pick up their children's report cards and talk with teachers.

The Chicago Teachers Union on Friday evening issued a press release in response to CPS' 2012-13 calendar. The statement said the calendar “will produce student burnout and lacks appropriate professional development time for staff.” The union also cited several problems with the new calendar. Among them:
·  Report card pickups will now conflict with work hours for parents and will leave only three hours for teachers to meet with up to 200 sets of parents.
·  The calendar provides for no Professional Development days between the first day of student attendance in September and the last day on June 17. This is particularly egregious at a time when new district initiatives including the Common Core State Standards, a new evaluation system and a longer day will require planning and collaboration.
·  By eliminating the federal holiday, Columbus Day, the school year begins with nine uninterrupted weeks of school.
·  Track E-comprised of at least 240 schools-will lose a week of spring break and still gets no relief from sweltering school conditions in August.
The union said the “calendar represents an example of what the Chicago school board will do when it doesn't listen to the voices of the teachers, parents, and others who will be directly affected by their policies.”

Polish and Italian civic leaders say the proposed change in the CPS school calendar to end Columbus and Pulaski holidays, which is backed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, is “a slap in the face.” (Sun-Times)

Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Public Schools chief Jean-Claude Brizard are calling for the school district's food services director to be fired, after an inspector general's report last week accused Louise Esaian of accepting thousands of dollars in improper gifts from CPS' two largest food vendors. (Tribune)

Also: Esaian and two members of her staff are accused of accepting at least $86,000 in gifts from Chartwells and another vendor, Preferred Meals Systems, that have combined food contracts at CPS in excess of $75 million, the Tribune reported.

IN THE NATION
Education historian Diane Ravitch calls the phrase "parent trigger," which allows 51 percent of parents in any school to close it or hand it over to private management, "inherently menacing." She says parents in Florida got it right earlier this month by organizing to defeat a parent trigger bill.

The D.C. Public Education Finance Reform Commission says charter school enrollment, already 41 percent of the public school population, is expected to increase by 10 percent in 2013. Beyond that, it will likely slow to about six percent annually through 2015 then drop to two percent gains in 2016 and 2017. (The Washington Post)

Teach for America has announced a new partnership with the Imagine charter school network, the country’s largest for-profit charter chain, which has been controversial for several reasons, The Washington Post's Valerie Strauss reports. The for-profit charter operator has been investigated in some states for the way it exercises control over the schools it manages, essentially ignoring the boards of trustees that are supposed to really run the schools.

Across the states that have adopted the Common Core State standards, 78 percent of public school teachers say they've heard about the standards, based on the results of a survey conducted last summer. Only 22 percent of teachers said they were "very prepared" to teach the new standards, while 51 percent said they were "somewhat prepared," and 27 percent were "somewhat/very unprepared."(Education Week)

Some parents and school staff are not sure their children need the extra time. At a January 25th Board of Education meeting, parents from 6.5 to Thrive, an advocacy group that endorses a 6-1/2 hour school day, voiced concerns. In the public participation section of the meeting, 6.5 to Thrive parent Tracy Baldwin advocated for a shorter school day. Baldwin said her organization had collected more than 900 petition signatures asking CPS to aim for 6-1/2 hours, not 7-1/2 hours.

Later at that meeting, after presenting the plan for what the district is calling the “Full School Day,” Chief Instruction Officer Jennifer Cheatham addressed the concerns parents raised. “We worked hard around designing the 7-1/2 hour day parameters around best practices,” she said. “We are thinking seriously about it.”

Jacquelyn Sticca, a 1st-grade teacher at Fiske, says it works for her. On January 18th, Catalyst visited Sticca’s classroom to see the longer day in action.

"I think as a community we're a bit too obsessed with selective enrollment," Brizard said during the expo, where he nonetheless praised selective enrollment schools such as Whitney Young Magnet High School. (Tribune)

A minister in the eye of the “rent-a-protester” storm has offered to open the books of his non-profit agency to prove it spent taxpayer money appropriately — and not on packing school closing hearings with paid protesters, the Sun-Times reports.

Chicago Public Schools' plan to build an elementary school on polluted property in the shadow of the Chicago Skyway and an expiring coal-fired power plant near the Indiana border is raising the ire of parents in the neighborhood. CPS already has paid more than $3 million for about two acres near 104th Street and South Indianapolis Avenue. CPS bought an acre from a relative of Ed Vrdolyak, aka "Fast Eddie," the former Southeast Side longtime alderman who  was released from prison in November after serving 10 months for his role in a $1.5 million Gold Coast real estate scheme. (Tribune)

Soon-to-be-released survey results from January show that more parents at Skinner North, a selective enrollment school, support the school's extended day than do not. Only about 6 percent of those who took the survey said they were not happy with the longer day. (Tribune)

While violence on Chicago high school campuses seems to be a growing problem, one inner-city school, Rauner College Prep, a charter high school, has never had an arrest or a gang fight, CBS2’s Mike Parker reports. Rauner is privately run by the Noble Street group and funded by Chicago Public Schools as an experiment.

IN THE NATION
Los Angeles public school teachers weigh in on evaluations in two op-eds: "How to grade a teacher" and "An L.A. teacher reviews her review."

A new study commissioned by D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray recommends that the city turn around or close more than three dozen traditional public schools in its poorest neighborhoods and expand the number of high-performing charter schools. (The Washington Post)

President Barack Obama's plans include a new $1 billion version of his signature Race to the Top competition for states to make their higher education systems cheaper and better. (Education Week)

Several Chicago-area high schools have dialed back the term paper's length requirements and instead emphasize the research process and weighing of sources, a critical skill in the digital era, teachers say, the Tribune's Tara Malone reports.

Just 28 term papers written by Illinois high school students have been published in The Concord Review since its inaugural issue in 1988.

The art of the term paper lives at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. (Tribune)

IN THE STATE
School Superintendent Les Huddle is leaving the Jacksonville School District at the end of the school year to take the top administrative job in Lafayette, Ind. (State Journal-Register)

Schaumburg-Palatine High School District 211 students will have to pay 10 cents more for a full-price standard lunch next school year. (Daily Herald)

IN THE NATION
An Indianapolis-based nonprofit organization has crafted a sweeping plan for reworking the 33,000-student Indianapolis school system that would place the district under the control of the city's mayor, pare down the money spent in central administration, and give principals broad authority to hire and fire teachers. (EducationWeek)

City controller says Philadephia School District must cut $400,000 per day between now and June 30 just to erase a projected deficit of at least $61 million as it wrestles with continuing problems in matching expenses to declining revenues. (Philadelphia Inquirer)

President Obama’s call for every state to require students to stay in school until they turn 18 is Washington’s first direct involvement in an issue that many states have found tough to address. (The New York Times)