The co-founders of BASIS Schools, Michael and Olga Block, aimed to offer the type of education students receive in the top performing education systems around the world, the type of education that would help American students compete in the global economy.

Ten years after BASIS Schools opened its first campus in Tucson, Arizona, the school topped the national rankings, earning the #1 spot on Newsweeks list of Americas Best High Schools, and was named a gold medal school by US News World Report. In addition to BASIS Tucson, today there are a total of 6 operating BASIS charter schools, including BASIS Scottsdale (2003), BASIS Oro Valley (2010), BASIS Chandler (2011), BASIS Peoria (2011), and BASIS Flagstaff (2011). There have been more awards and there are more schools on the way, including BASIS Phoenix (2012), BASIS Tucson North (2012), and BASIS DC (TBA).

What can the rest of the world learn from the BASIS Schools model?

I had the pleasure of chatting with Michael Block, Co-CEO of BASIS Educational Group. Dr. Block received his BA, MA, and PhD in Economics from Stanford University. Prior to BASIS, he was a Professor of Economics, Professor of Law and Director of the Office of Economic Education at the University of Arizona.

Can the BASIS Schools model be replicated across the nation?

We are expanding our model and opening BASIS schools in more locations. We have about 4,000 students attending six BASIS schools this year. Next year our programs may reach approximately 6,000 students. This is still very limited reach when considering the millions of students receiving mediocre education across the US. The bigger issue might be what is there to learn from the BASIS model? There are three points I think can be transferred in some manner.

First, we have implemented very high academic standards that are internationally competitive and higher than any American states requirements. We also require students to demonstrate mastery of those standards before they can progress to the next grade. In the US, not only are standards abysmally low, but the tests used to examine students mastery of the standards are often poorly designed and unrelated to the content taught in school. Systems used around the world, such as the Cambridge International Exams, the College Boards Advanced Placement exams, the Program for International Student Assessment, and others, can assess mastery of high-level content. That is something I think we do well at BASIS – we teach to very high standards and then assess our students progress toward reaching those standards using internationally recognized assessments.

The second point is much more controversial. At BASIS we focus first and foremost on recruiting, hiring, and retaining teachers who are experts in the subject they teach. Whether or not the individual is certified to teach by the government or graduated from a school of education – which, in the US, is not often the most distinguished academic institution – is of secondary importance. We believe it is critical that teachers possess a thorough knowledge of the material they present to their students and we believe it is more effective for subject experts to learn the craft of teaching than for pedagogical experts to learn the subject content they may be lacking. At BASIS, we have teachers in our classrooms starting in the Lower School grades that are subject experts; many possess masters and doctoral degrees.

Finally, Americans seem to have given up on teaching rigorous content in middle school. BASIS demonstrates that you can teach serious subject content in these grade levels. Let me give you an example. We visited one of the great schools in America, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in the suburbs of Virginia, and were incredibly impressed with the level of education the school imparts on its students. Thomas Jefferson utilizes a selective admissions process to enroll students who are prepared for their rigorous curriculum, but at BASIS we offer a similarly rigorous education to all students who wish to enroll. We are only able to do this because of our accelerated middle school curriculum. By starting at a modest 5th grade level and requiring students to learn more than a years worth of standards every year, we prepare students to take Honors and AP courses beginning in 9th grade and post-AP courses in 11th or 12th grade, just like their peers at Thomas Jefferson.

Are the BASIS schools for highly motivated students in certain subject areas only?

No, the BASIS education is not focused on certain subject areas. We offer an accelerated program in all core subjects; however, in contemporary America it seems schools that provide high-quality math and science education are pigeonholed. At BASIS, all students complete pre-calculus and take AP-level science courses in the 9th grade; as a result, BASIS is sometimes considered a math and science school. But while our students do outpace their peers in math and science, they also complete a minimum of one AP English and three AP history courses by the end of 11th grade, engage in six years of foreign language, take a college-level economics course in 8th grade, and participate in PE and fine arts classes throughout their academic careers. The BASIS education is much like the gymnasiums in central Europe; we offer a high quality education in all of the liberal arts.

Is the school only for highly motivated students?

Students dont have to be gifted to excel in the BASIS program, but they do have to put in effort. We work very hard to create a culture of academic excellence in our schools. We hire educators who can convey passion for their subject in a way that teaches students that learning is exciting. As older students build a sense of personal responsibility for their education, they become models for younger students and create a culture of positive peer pressure. This culture motivates students to excel in their academic exploration and teaches them that success is the function of hard work.

What is your process for selecting a great teacher?

Finding talent is tough. We try to have a very broad base of candidates from which we select our teachers and often search worldwide to fill math and science positions. Our interviews are conducted first by veteran BASIS teachers and then by the Head of School. The candidates then participate in demonstration lessons – in which they teach current BASIS students for two class periods – which I think is unusual in public schools. This allows us to determine whether the candidate is capable of conveying advanced concepts to young students. We have the most senior staff members at BASIS do the final round of interviews before making a decision.

After our teachers are hired, we have a summer training session which all new teachers and many experienced teachers attend. The training session exposes new teachers to the BASIS philosophy and focuses on the teaching techniques used in many of our classrooms. Finally, we try to mentor teachers as they begin their careers at BASIS. We spend a good deal of time with them. The process of finding and developing teaching talent is difficult and of course we make our share of mistakes.

Why do we do so poorly in the PISA test?

PISA tests what an education system teaches its 15-year-old students, and in the United States we dont teach math and science well in middle and high school. Many 10th graders in the US have not been exposed to the concepts of an Algebra 2 course and in a many states students can graduate without taking Physics. I think that is inexcusable.

I also believe the US education system focuses too much attention on inputs like teacher certification, class size, student-teacher ratio, length of the school day and school year, the form of supplemental services, the physical plant, and technology in the classroom, and too little attention on outputs like how well students are able to master important academic content. Focusing on inputs is diversionary and means educators and school leaders have less time to assess and improve the quality of the education they provide.

Final thoughts on the education reform issues we face in the US today?

There is one more issue I want to mention that I think BASIS is designed to get at. There are two achievement gaps in the US. The achievement gap that receives almost all the attention in the media – which is real and shameful – is the achievement gap between rural areas and the poorer sections of major cities on one hand and the suburbs across the country on the other. Another much more hidden achievement gap is the international achievement gap. What US suburbanites consider a good education is actually mediocre by international standards. Thats an important aspect of the BASIS experiment – our academic program addresses the international achievement gap that exists between the United States and other industrialized countries.

(Photos courtesy of BASIS Schools, Inc.)

In The Global Search for Education, join me and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Michael Block (US), Dr. Leon Botstein (US), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (US), Dr. Madhav Chavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (US), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Jean Hendrickson (US), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Professor Ben Levin (Canada), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Dr. Denise Pope (US), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Dr. Diane Ravitch (US), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. Anthony Seldon, Dr. David Shaffer (US), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (US), Yves Theze (Lycee Francais US), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (US), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Dr. Mark Wormald (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today.
The Global Search for Education Community Page

C. M. Rubin is the author of the widely read online series, The Global Search for Education, and is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland.

The city school district is resurrecting an old idea to help solve its most challenging and persistent problem: student performance. More than 40 of the citys schools are on the State Education Departments list of public schools in need of academic improvement.

The school board and superintendent have drafted a policy to create of zone improvement teams. The teams would be charged with reviewing academic programs and student performance in every school, and making recommendations for improvement.

There will be one team for each of the districts three zones – northeast, northwest, and south. And the five- to seven-member teams will have a combination of teachers, parents, students, school administrators, and community members, says Interim Superintendent Bolgen Vargas.

The teams can recommend broad strategic changes, such as expanding a successful program in one school to other schools within a zone, to closing a low-performing school and creating a new school. The policy, which must be approved by the school board, calls for creating the teams next year, beginning with the northeast zone.

Creating zone improvement teams was an idea Vargas helped develop when he was on the school board in the late 1990s, though it was never implemented. It was a component of the districts school choice policy, which was intended to make all schools available to all students within certain guidelines. The competition was supposed to foster better-performing schools.

But the choice program, according to the districts research, still requires some level of management. For instance, schools where the student population is predominantly poor and minority can become what educators call socio-economically isolated. The test scores of average students in these schools tend to drop without additional support.

If we want to have an effective school choice program, weve got to get control of the quality of all schools, Vargas says. We have a tendency of putting students with low performance in schools that have low selection from parents.

The boards recent decision to close School 6 helped revive interest in the zone improvement teams. School 6, which is in the districts northeast zone, will be closed for at least a year. Vargas selected the school because it is an underperforming and under-selected school.

Within a year, the team for that zone will make recommendations for the future use of the building. But the recommendations have to reflect the needs of the entire zone, which includes about 20 schools.

This will allow for a broader conversation about all of the schools, says board member Willa Powell. This way one school isnt being protected, and when you talk about closing a school, it isnt being discussed in isolation.

School 36 is on par with School 6 in terms of performance, she says. Without the recommendations of a zone improvement team, Powell says, the school choice policy can be abused.

It can be used like a blunt instrument to justify closing one school over another, she says.

In a recent speech, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg advanced the following solution to the problems of public education. It reveals, once more, how far from getting it public officials are in understanding what education is all about. According to the mayor:

Education is very much, Ive always thought, just like the real estate business: there are three things that matter: location, location, location is the old joke. Well in education, it is: quality of teacher, quality of teacher, quality of teacher. And I would — if I had the ability, which nobody does really, to just design a system and say, ex cathedra, this is what were going to do, you would cut the number of teachers in half, but you would double the compensation of them, and you would weed out all the bad ones and just have good teachers. And double the class size with a better teacher is a good deal for the students.

If he followed the analogy that education is just like the real estate business, then the mayor should consider just how successful the industry has been in the past few years: creating false wealth and then sticking the consumer with unmanageable debt. But Bloombergs error in using a fraudulent system of creating wealth as comparable to teaching goes much further. He assumes that the quality of a teacher is quantifiable, just as he assumes that standardized test scores are a measure of quality. But let us follow his line of reasoning further: Cut the number of teachers in half…[and] you would weed out all the bad ones and just have good teachers. This is truly the logic of the marketplace and the assumption that the good teachers and bad teachers are easily recognizable in the same way as a car dealer can measure the good from the bad salesmen by the number of units sold. Mr. mayor: children are not units.
There are a few effective ways to attract potentially good teachers into the profession — and many teachers are potentially good when starting out but there is no way of knowing how good they really are until theyve been teaching for about five years, which is the average length of service before they leave. What attracts good teachers into the profession is as true for me — a 45-plus-year veteran of college-level teaching — as it is for a newly graduated grade-school teacher.

1. A degree of classroom autonomy. Even young teachers who welcome guidance dont want to be micro-managed. Bloomberg is a micro-manager of the first order.

2. A need for helpful and positive guidance in teaching practices. Bloombergs echelon of new breed school administrators is wedded to the concept of micro-managing. Guidance is often presented in the form of threats to raise test scores or else.

3. The opportunity to use an enriched, multi-faceted curriculum to enable the teacher to reach, inspire and motivate young learners to want to learn. Bloombergs emphasis on standardized testing and test prep rob not only the students of the desire to learn, but the teachers with the opportunity to teach.

4. A positive attitude and appreciation of the difficult job that teachers have often in environments in which young learners have little motivation to want to learn. The rhetoric of politicians hurled at teachers and teaching has vilified them as lazy and irresponsible and has convinced a significant portion of the public that if only teachers were good, their children would learn. This is said without their showing the slightest awareness of the connection between good teachers and good students: good students make it possible to be a good teacher; the most important factor is the students zip codes.

5. Some sense of job security considering the social and economic conditions in the neighborhood in which the school is located. Poor location, location, location, Mr. mayor, makes it very difficult if not impossible for teachers to get students to read and calculate on grade, especially since the standardized tests are not primarily related to good teaching outcomes but test taking.

Although I wouldnt consider Bloomberg in the forefront of teacher-bashing, his apparent obliviousness to any substantial information that shows him that standardized testing does nothing positive for challenged learners reveals that he has no more concept of education than a motorist who believes that putting gas in the tank will get a car to run that doesnt have an engine.

Quality teachers are not easy to develop if they leave teaching after five years; quality teachers are not easy to keep in the education system if they are being fired or relocated when their school has failed because it didnt have the right zip code; potential quality teachers will not be attracted to a profession, no matter what the compensation, if they realize that they are being asked to waste their time and those of their students on a useless and harmful regimen of testing which robs all of them of any of the inherent motivations for learning: the joy of it.

If Mayor Bloomberg were really serious about getting quality teachers into the classroom, he would abolish standardized tests, limit charter schools, give more material support to struggling public schools, and, by the way, raise the minimum wage in the city of New York to $20/hour so that children in poor neighborhoods might have a chance to actually want to learn rather than worry about where they are going to sleep at night and when they will be getting another decent meal. You cant have quality teachers without a quality economic and social system. If Bloomberg were to focus on those problems, many of the quality teachers he hopes for will suddenly appear.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt / Excuse Me, I’m Writing / Dec. 5, 2011

We are so frequently exposed to violence in the United States, most of us probably figure that, like pornography, we know violence when we see it. Enemies go to war, and we watch the carnage live on TV’s 24-hour news cycle. People physically harm each other on our streets and in our homes, and we tally their numbers with the rest of the tidy crime statistics. We replicate violent imagery in film and television, in music and video games, and eagerly consume it as entertainment. Yes, violence is pervasive, and most of us probably figure we have it pegged. But we’d be wrong.

Violence is not solely a physical act committed by one person on another, by one group on another, by one armed force on another. Violence ranges from the “Well, duh!” of, say, campus police brutality to the “WTF’s violent about that?” of, say, public budget cutting that abandons marginalized people to destitution. But we’d be wrong not to see the latter as violence. And if you have any affinity for the Occupy movement, a quick lesson in violence might be worth your while — a lesson set in the context of California’s two public university systems, Cal State University (CSU) and University of California (UC).

Let’s start with something relatively easy. This is the now infamous 18 November 2011 video shot at UC Davis, when a small group of students was pepper-sprayed directly in the face as the students were attempting to peacefully “occupy” the campus quad in solidarity with the Occupy movement and in protest of tuition fee increases.

Although the video reveals that no one struck a blow, students and their families, faculty, staff, journalists, the broader community, and even the university’s chancellor, Linda PB Katehi, recognized the situation as a violent scene. It was also an unsettling one, because the perpetrators of the violence were agents of the state: two campus police officers who did their dirty deed with disturbing nonchalance, a nonchalance that indicated their actions were anticipated and approved by a higher authority, at least in general terms if not specifically for this event. In fact, someone in the university administration thought it was appropriate to send police to a nonviolent political protest armored and armed with paramilitary gear and weapons, including the canisters of pepper spray. Come to think of it, someone in the university administration thought the purchase of paramilitary gear and weapons was an appropriate expenditure for a public university, a public university that has increased student fees by more than 50% percent in the last three years. And it was, again, increased fees that in part motivated the students to assemble and seek redress of their grievances to begin with.

The UC Davis police action is a typical example of state violence, violence that is perpetrated by the state, or an institution or some other social structure, against the people the state serves. To help explain this concept, there is a handy sociological definition of state violence, originated by Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung, that lends some meaning to the Davis scene. He defined violence as the cause of the difference between a person’s potential state of being and a person’s actual state of being. For example, Somalis have the potential to be well fed; instead, due primarily to failed national and global governance (the state) and secondarily to global climate change (arguably the result of the same failed governance), the actual condition for many Somalis at the moment is starvation. State violence creates that difference, it can increase the difference, and it can prevent the difference from decreasing. State violence, then, encompasses the ways that the state prevents people from achieving their potential.

If you apply this to the UC Davis scenario, you’ll find that, in the short term, the students’ potential to exercise their First Amendment rights to peaceably assemble and to petition the government for redress of their grievances was not realized: Police violence prevented them from achieving that potential. And the pepper spray (a nasty form of nonlethal crowd control that forcibly silences free speech until the symptoms wear off), increased the difference between the students’ potential state of comfortably enjoying a moment of peaceful protest and their actual state of temporary blindness, searing pain in their ears, eyes, noses, mouths, and airways, inflamed tissue, gagging and coughing, and difficulty breathing. This is state violence.

In the long term, all but the privileged elite among the students will inevitably be harmed by the student fee increases, the issue that was lost in the pepper spray debacle and an issue that brings us to something that might be less recognizable as violence: economics.

In this case, the rapid, repeated increase of public university tuition fees at CSU and UC is harming some students and risking harm to others — particularly those who are low-income, working-class and middleclass — by postponing and, in some cases, preventing them from achieving their academic potential and, consequently, their professional and personal development potential.

The fee increases also reflect a related type of economic violence: inequity in the distribution of public education funds, which compounds the existing inequitable access to public higher education and all the ramifications thereof. Students who suffer from the inequity and subsequent lack of education are more likely to experience greater degrees of under- and unemployment, lower quality housing and community amenities, and less access to the public and private social, economic, political and cultural benefits of US residency and citizenship. Hence, these students are disproportionately hindered or prevented by CSU and UC from reaching their potential, compared to privileged students.

We could chalk this up to the troubling economic times, but we’d be wrong.

While CSU and UC leaderships have raised student fees by more than 50% in the last three years, they have also seen fit — in just the last year — to jack up management costs. Cal State San Marcos created four brand spanking new administrative positions. The UC system increased some administrative salaries by as much as 23%. And CSU voted to increase the San Diego State president’s salary by more than $100,000 at the same meeting during which they voted in a 12% tuition increase for students. All of this is growing the systems’ non-teaching management at the expense — literally — of the students it is the universities’ mission to serve. This is state violence.

And those are only two examples in higher education, two among countless examples. With the amount of violence we consume on a daily basis, we should be connoisseurs, but we are not, and this void in our understanding contributes to the state’s ability to perpetrate violence against us because we too often fail to recognize it as such; hence, we do not challenge it. But gradually people are gaining awareness. The Occupy movement is testament to this. The movement is helping turn the baffled “WTF?” into a declarative “OMG — that’s, like, violence!” People are beginning to see that the state is a ready and eager perpetrator: burdening the people with debt to fund unwarranted wars and rescue multinational corporations; failing to effectively muster emergency services to rescue low-income urban residents from natural disasters; pricing public education out of reach of the non-privileged public; and assaulting those who peacefully protest such state violence.

We might imagine that the state will never abandon using violence against the people it is intended to serve — and we can hope that we’d be wrong.

Tagged as: occupy

Education, democracy and human rights

Speech delivered in Parliament by MP
Mohanlal Grero on the occasion of the debate on education

The Chinese Philosopher, Confucius, once said, “If your strategy for
the future is for one year then cultivate paddy. If your strategy is for
ten years then grow trees. If your future strategy is for 100 years then
what you must invest in is education”.

Therefore, in a budget for a country’s future economic improvement
and development, the most important and long term investment is the
expenditure on education.

So when the president met Monday with leaders of prominent universities at the White House, he spoke with some authority about the high cost of tuition as well as a need for better teaching by faculty to ensure American workers stay competitive.

RELATED: How the tea party can agree with Occupy movements demands

Mr. Obama’s own education paid off. Just look where he sits. But for many in college today, dropping out is all too common when money dries up. And too many graduates fail to land jobs in their chosen fields or they don’t meet the hiring standards of employers because faculty aren’t held accountable for what students actually learn.

Obama has a tool to help fix all that. He plans to tie federal aid to how well schools perform.

His education secretary, Arne Duncan, proposes that Pell Grants and other government money for higher education be based on how well such institutions reform, such as in holding down tuition, accelerating the time to earn a degree, boosting completion rates, and closing gaps in student achievement.

Too many colleges prefer the status quo, says Mr. Duncan. He quotes President Woodrow Wilson, who once led Princeton University, as saying that “changing a curriculum is like moving a graveyard – you never know how many friends the dead have until you try to move them.”

Can federal incentives really break through the resistance of faculty to adopting new ideas?

Duncan already has shown success by using the lure of money to get many states to enact reforms for K-12 schools. Those reforms are one of the administration’s successes that even brings praise from Republicans.

Now Obama and Duncan are turning their attention to higher education, using proven models of reform to entice others to do the same.

“Dozens of colleges and universities have either cut or frozen tuition, or provide a four-year graduation guarantee, where the college agrees to cover the cost of the extra time it takes a full-time student to graduate,” Duncan said in a speech last month. He cited many examples of innovation, such as performance-based scholarships, that can help ensure students graduate with “demonstrated competence.”

The White House meeting also included discussion of what to do with some 37 million adults who have had some college education but didn’t graduate. They can be drawn back to school if new technologies for e-learning become more widely used, lowering costs and allowing easier measurement of what students have mastered in a subject.

RELATED: The worlds top universities in 2011

Many reforms today are directed at holding schools accountable for student success. But a federal push is only one way to do that.

Prospective students can also select schools that are transparent about the real costs, that push faculty to teach freshmen courses (and teach in innovative ways), and that ensure “learning outcomes.”

Lower costs and higher productivity in higher education would mean many students won’t be saddled with $120,000 in student loans, as the Obamas were.

Schools Chancellor Dennis M. Walcott was preparing to meet with the chancellor of the State Board of Regents, Merryl H. Tisch, when a reporter called.

News, data and conversation about education in New York.

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Dr. Tisch had just told the Daily News editorial board that she was frustrated with how New York City had been using millions of dollars from the federal government to fix failing schools, which she said had become “warehouses” for struggling students. What, the reporter wanted to know, did Mr. Walcott think of her assessment?

He was stung. At the meeting, according to Dr. Tisch and the state education commissioner, John B. King Jr., who accompanied her, Mr. Walcott confronted her about what exactly she had said and why she did not bring her complaints to him privately.

“If you don’t want me to tell the truth,” Dr. Tisch said in a recent interview, “you have the wrong person on this job.”

The confrontation was just another marker in the increasingly testy relationship between the educational leadership in Albany and City Hall. While Dr. Tisch has frequently showered praise on Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg — in the interview, she extolled his “selfless” commitment to the city and said, “I don’t like people trashing the mayor” — she just as frequently seems to go out of her way to qualify his successes in transforming the schools.

Dr. Tisch has questioned the value of a high school diploma from the city and the reliability of test-score increases among students in grades three through eight, telling the audience at a forum in August, “I think the city has an obligation to show the public that what they’ve done here is real.”

She has accused the city of making it too easy for students who fail a course to make up the credits. And she has undercut the city’s leadership — for example, months before the city was to release its measures on how well high schools were preparing students for higher education, the state put out its own report that said three out of four students who finished high school in four years needed extra help once they got to college.

“When you have 75 percent of the youngsters graduating high schools who are going to two-year colleges needing to be remediated,” Dr. Tisch said at the forum, “are you kidding me?”

For Mr. Bloomberg, who has sought to build his legacy on education, her criticism or comments — what they are depends on whom you ask — have become a nagging headache. As the mayor nears the end of his tenure, Dr. Tisch’s counterpoint to his administration’s views has helped embolden an opposition of parents, union leaders, political adversaries and others who do not support his policies.

Rumors floating her name as a potential candidate for mayor in 2013, which Dr. Tisch has yet to put to rest definitively, have offered a measure of explanation to those in Mr. Bloomberg’s inner circle, or at least some consolation. In private, one of them characterized her remarks as an effort to “pull the rug from under our feet.” Even publicly, the mayor and his aides have been surprisingly blunt about Dr. Tisch.

Mr. Bloomberg called her “totally wrong” and “obviously misinformed” when asked about her comments about the warehousing of students.

Asked about the relationship, Howard Wolfson, the deputy mayor for government affairs, said: “We have worked productively with the chancellor in the past, but a lot of this criticism seemed to start around the same time as the rumors of a mayoral run. I hope mayoral politics wouldn’t influence the Regents’ decision-making.”

The Regents, who regulate all education institutions, have often had an adversarial relationship with New York City, home to roughly half of the state’s students. But Dr. Tisch’s connections, credentials and cachet have made the chancellor’s post, which she has held since 2009, particularly influential and decidedly more high profile.

Like Mr. Bloomberg, she is a member of the city’s ruling elite: her husband, James S. Tisch, is the chief executive of the Loews Corporation, a conglomerate that includes hotels, insurance and oil-drilling operations. She is also a close friend of the State Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver; they grew up together on the Lower East Side.

“Merryl has a first-name relationship with the mayor and all of the principal actors on the political stage,” said Carl T. Hayden, a lawyer from Elmira, who served as the Regents’ chancellor from 1995 to 2002. “So she can have, and will have, frank conversations with them whenever she feels like it, and whether they like it or not.”

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Schools are more likely to offer students 150 minutes of physical education per week if located in a state or district that mandates that level of PE, according to a study published online today in the Archives of Pediatrics Adolescent Medicine.

The studys authors, based out of the University of Illinois at Chicago, worked off the National Association of Sport and Physical Educations recommendation that elementary students should be offered at least 150 minutes of phys. ed. each week. According to the study, less than 20 percent of 3rd graders were offered that level of phys. ed. in the 2007-08 school year.

The researchers collected data through surveys between the 2006-07 and 2008-09 school years, with a sample size of 1,761 public elementary schools in 47 states. Out of those 47 states, 39 did not have a daily-recess law, and 24 had no state law requiring physical education in schools.

From their data, they discovered that if a school was located in a state or district that mandated 150 minutes of physical education per week, that school was more than twice as likely to offer that level of PE Of the 1,761 schools in the study, 17.9 percent of them offered the recommended minimum of 150 minutes of physical education per week.

The researchers also found that when state laws suggest 20 minutes of recess for students on a daily basis, schools were nearly twice as likely to follow along; however, district policies werent found to have any significant impact. Roughly 70 percent of the schools in the study offered students recess for at least 20 minutes per day.

That said, the authors did discover an inverse effect between the amount of physical education time and recess time offered per day in schools. More specifically: Schools that achieved the recommended 150 minutes of phys. ed. per week were less likely to offer 20 minutes a day of recess and vice versa.

Schools and/or districts appear to compensate for any increased physical activity in one area by decreasing other physical-activity opportunities, the authors conclude.

In all, 32 states permit schools or districts to allow students to substitute other activities for the required physical education credit, according to NASPEs 2010 Shape of the Nation report.

We found that mandates for both physical education and recess are needed to help elementary school students meet the national recommendations for physical activity, said lead researcher Sandy J. Slater in a statement.

The authors surmised that schools may be cutting physical-activity time to add instructional time, to the potential detriment of their students.

Given the positive correlation between students fitness and academic success, the researchers believe that schools need more education about the cognitive benefits of physical activity for students.

Want all the latest K-12 sports news? Follow @SchooledinSport on Twitter.

THE debate over renewing No Child Left Behind, the education reform act that will be 10 years old in January, has fallen along partisan lines even though school improvement is one of the few examples of bipartisan cooperation over the last decade.

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Though the law was initiated and signed by a Republican president, presidential candidates like Mitt Romney and Rick Perry, who once supported it, now talk about getting the federal government out of education, echoing Tea Party members who deem federal involvement a constitutional travesty. Democratic reformers, meanwhile, insist that the federal government has a role in telling states how to identify, punish and fix low-performing schools — despite little evidence that Washington has been good at any of these tasks. To existing mandates, they would add heavy-handed, unproven teacher-evaluation requirements that could stifle innovative teaching and school design. 

We sorely need a smarter, more coherent vision of the federal role in K-12 education. Yet both parties find themselves hemmed in. Republicans are stuck debating whether, rather than how, the federal government ought to be involved in education, while Democrats are squeezed between superintendents, school boards and teachers’ unions that want money with no strings, and activists with little patience for concerns about federal overreach.

When it comes to education policy, the two of us represent different schools of thought. One of us, Linda Darling-Hammond, is an education school professor who advised the Obama administration’s transition team; the other, Rick Hess, has been a critic of school districts and schools of education. We disagree on much, including big issues like merit pay for teachers and the best strategies for school choice.

We agree, though, on what the federal government can do well. It should not micromanage schools, but should focus on the four functions it alone can perform.

First is encouraging transparency for school performance and spending. For all its flaws, No Child Left Behind’s main contribution is that it pushed states to measure and report achievement for all students annually. Without transparency, it’s tough for parents, voters and taxpayers to hold schools and public officials accountable. However, No Child Left Behind also let states use statistical gimmicks to report performance. Instead of the vague mandate of “adequate yearly progress,” federal financing should be conditioned on truth in advertising — on reliably describing achievement (or lack thereof) and spending. To track achievement, states should be required to link their assessments to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (or to adopt a similar multistate assessment). To shed light on equity and cost-effectiveness, states should be required to report school- and district-level spending; the resources students receive should be disclosed, not only their achievement.

Second is ensuring that basic constitutional protections are respected.  No Child Left Behind required states to “disaggregate” assessment results to illuminate how disadvantaged or vulnerable populations — like black and Hispanic students and children from poor families — were doing.  Enforcing civil rights laws and ensuring that dollars intended for low-income students and students with disabilities are spent accordingly have been parts of the Education Department’s mandate since its creation in 1979. But efforts to reduce inequities have too often led to onerous and counterproductive micromanagement.

Third is supporting basic research. While the private market can produce applied research that can be put to profitable use, it tends to underinvest in research that asks fundamental questions. When it comes to brain science, language acquisition or the impact of computer-assisted tutoring, federal financing for reliable research is essential. 

Finally, there is value in voluntary, competitive federal grants that support innovation while providing political cover for school boards, union leaders and others to throw off anachronistic routines. The Obama administration’s $4.35 billion Race to the Top competition tried to do some of this, but it ended up demanding that winning states hire consultants to comply with a 19-point federal agenda, rather than truly innovate.

Beyond this list, the federal government is simply not well situated to make schools and teachers improve — no matter how much ambitious reformers wish it were otherwise. Under our system, dictates from Congress turn into gobbledygook as they travel from the Education Department to state education agencies and then to local school districts. Educators end up caught in a morass of prescriptions and prohibitions, bled of the initiative and energy that characterize effective schools.

The federal government can make states, localities and schools do things — but not necessarily do them well. Since decades of research make it clear that what matters for evaluating employees or turning around schools is how well you do it — rather than whether you do it a certain way — it’s not surprising that well-intentioned demands for “bold” federal action on school improvement have a history of misfiring. They stifle problem-solving, encourage bureaucratic blame avoidance and often do more harm than good.

Perhaps No Child Left Behind’s most enduring lesson is the value of humility — a virtue that must be taken to heart in crafting a smarter, more coherent federal role in schooling.

Frederick M. Hess is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Linda Darling-Hammond is a professor of education at Stanford.

Basil Abuisba says the gifted education programs in Rockwood
School District have changed his life.

Basil, a sixth-grader at Rockwood South Middle School, has been
in gifted education since first grade — first for a day a week at
the districts Center for Creative Learning for elementary students
and now in academic stretch programs for middle school
students.

If I had not had gifted education, I would have been bored
because my classwork was too easy, said Basil, 11, a Fenton
resident.

Through gifted education, for instance, Basil learned binary
code in second grade.

Thats why Rockwood should continue the CCL, he told the Board
of Education at its meeting on Dec. 1.

The district is looking at the future of its gifted education
program.

A consultant, Carolyn Callahan from the University of Virginia,
recently performed an independent evaluation of those programs and
services.

She reported on some preliminary options for improvement.
However, a district design team is now reviewing those options.

The district plans to get parent, student and staff feedback at
meetings in January and February.

The Board of Education would vote on accepting a final plan as
early as March.

About 16 percent of Rockwoods total enrollment of 22,201
students is taking part in gifted programs. That comes to about
1,400 at the elementary level, 966 in middle school, and 1,290 in
high school.

District officials said the evaluation isnt meant to raise
questions about the need for gifted education in Rockwood, but to
understand the quality and effectiveness of current programs and
determine what the nature, size and structure of that program
should be in the future.

Cherry Ohms, a Chesterfield mother of two elementary-aged
daughters, told the board that part of the reasons gifted students
are often bored in their home schools is because they are not being
challenged enough in their critical thinking and problem-solving
skills.

She advocated keeping smaller class sizes in the Center for
Creative Learning.

Danielle Pedersen of Ballwin agreed.

I have a son in gifted education, and you shouldnt consider
increasing class sizes at CCL because students need individual
attention, she said. Like many CCL parents, Im worried about the
future and fear this evaluation could be twisted to meet an
agenda.

She challenged the district to incorporate even more district
students into gifted programs in their home schools.

Sara Bollinger, a 2003 graduate of Eureka High School, told the
board shed gone through gifted programs.

During my cherished days at CCL, my teachers inspired us to
change the world, and I learned being gifted was a great thing,
she said. The biggest limitation was that I went to CCL for only
one day a week.

Board president Steve Smith told those at the board meeting
gifted programs arent in jeopardy.

The evaluation validated our programs, and they need to
continue, he said.

Recommendations in Callahans 525-page report include:

o Students need to be identified who dont fit the traditional
high IQ/high achievement definition of being gifted, but who would
benefit from more services.

o The district needs to ratchet up curriculum standards and
instruction in general education classrooms. o The district needs
better and more frequent communication with staff and parents about
the gifted programs.

o More collaboration is needed between gifted teachers and other
teachers.

o The district should develop a program for four days a week
instead of one day.

o Enrichment cluster should be developed to provide special
projects to gifted students in their home schools.

o The district should identify students needing specific gifted
services rather than identifying students as gifted.

o More professional development on gifted programming should be
offered to teachers and administrators.