Exhibiting at the National Charter Schools Conference

The campaign staff is in New Orleans today for the kickoff of the National Charter Schools Conference. The conference is the only national gathering of the entire charter school community with about 3,000 participating teachers, principals, policymakers, state leaders, funders, advocates, and researchers. My staff tells me there will be over 100 breakout sessions, 50 peer-to-peer roundtable discussions, and an exhibition floor.

ED in '08 will have a presence at the event with a booth in the exhibit hall and Adam Thibault, our policy director, will be leading a breakout session including clips from the education documentary, Two Million Minutes.

The campaign understands the important role that charter schools play in education reform and, as a result, has created a new one-pager on how charter schools can be a pathway for innovation. Here's a short excerpt:

Our schools and students are in trouble; we can no longer wait for the changes that are needed in order to prepare our students for success in college, careers, and life.  Non-traditional public schools, such as charters and magnets, are laboratories for experimentation and innovation, and hold tremendous promise for American students. The successes of many of these innovative schools often rely on some combination of ED in 08’s three policy pillars.  Public school choice that is carefully designed and dutifully implemented can serve as a pathway to implement ED in 08’s three policy pillars:  Common and rigorous standards; effective teachers in every classroom; and more time and support for student learning.

By design, charter schools have control over their own schedules and can create and adjust the school day and year as they see fit.  This gives them a tremendous advantage over the vast majority of public schools that are governed by district schedules, transportation schedules, and labor agreements that stipulate start and end times. The additional time allows these schools to offer more remediation, more enrichment, and more opportunities to develop a culture of high expectations. 

Charter schools represent a pathway to innovation and they can produce some dramatic results through the use of extended learning time and the creation of higher expectations. I look forward to hearing some of the latest best practices from the conference and I'll be sure to upload some photos from the event later this week.

Time to Learn

Chris Gabrieli, of the National Center for Time and Learning recently keynoted our blogger summit and spoke about a topic that I'm passionate about – more time and support for learning. Along with his keynote address, Chris recently released a new book titled Time to Learn: How a New School Schedule Is Making Smarter Kids, Happier Parents, and Safer Neighborhoods. As I said when I endorsed his book, Time to Learn comes at a perfect moment when we need new ideas about how to move ahead. The book moves beyond the theory of an extended school day by highlighting real examples of where it has worked and flourished.

I thought I'd share with you one of my favorite passages from the book:

Achieving Progress in Rural Areas

The Center for American Progress has recently come out with a new report, Additional Learning Opportunities in Rural Areas. The report simply states, "Rural, low-income students are more at risk of becoming high school dropouts than their city and suburban peers."

That concerns me.

Coming from Colorado, I'm familiar with rural communities. However, for those of you who aren't – rural communities are determined by a number of characteristics including the size of the community, the population density, and local job availability.

I was pleased to read that the Center for American Progress cites extended learning time as a promising strategy as a way to improve the achievement of rural students.

For example, one school highlighted was KIPP Gaston in Gaston, N.C. They have already utilized extended learning time as a means for enhancing student achievement. All students are in class there from 8:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. every day and half a day every other Saturday. The students also attend a three-week, full day summer session.

In the latest KIPP Report Card, Kipp Gaston's 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th graders have ranked higher than their North Carolina counterparts in every category. Check out the breakdown after the jump:

We’re Still at Risk

This weekend marks the 25th anniversary of the landmark education report A Nation at Risk and education analysts are offering their own perspective on where America is in regards to education. I wrote about Secretary of Education Spellings yesterday and wanted to mention one other issue from her remarks today. 

She said:

Many of the actions that A Nation at Risk recommended in 1983 continue to be largely ignored: raising standards, making coursework more rigorous, and using classroom time more effectively. These proposals were not unreasonable then, and they’re not unreasonable now.

Our campaign has put together our own analysis of the last 25 years and we’ve concluded similar results with respect to common, rigorous standards, expanding time for learning, and teacher compensation.

The Christian Science Monitor and Seattle Times also agree.

Waiting another 25 years before we act to solve this crisis is unacceptable:

• We cannot afford to fail in our mission to provide students with a world-class education.
• We cannot afford to graduate millions of high school seniors who lack skills in reading and math that they should have learned in middle school.
• We especially cannot afford to continue slipping farther and farther behind the other nations of the world.

Our students deserve better, and our nation’s economic security is at greater risk now than ever before.

Reflections on Slate

This past Wednesday, I blogged about the importance of tackling dropout prevention in a comprehensive manner. While I was thinking about the new America’s Promise report and the new NAEP writing results, a colleague of mine gave me a copy of a recent article on educational reform from Slate magazine. From the looks of it, the writer and I have some things in common.

First, we both agree that we need to raise our education standards. By having rigorous common standards, we will be able to guarantee that our children are receiving a world-class education. Currently, students and their parents are being misled about the skills students will need after graduation, and they are being given a false sense of security about how well prepared they really are. For example, although every state requires high school students to take tests, only a handful make sure those tests measure readiness for college and work. With standards like that, it should come as no surprise that the United States is currently ranked 25th out of 30 industrialized nations in Math and 21st in Science.

More Time for More Subjects

It's a cold and wet morning today in Washington, DC and throughout much of the northeast. D.C. public schools are open today, but many surrounding districts have closed their schools against the icy weather. As a youth growing up in Colorado, I welcomed the occasional snowy day as much as any youngster, but now, as an educator and advocate, I understand the value of every moment our students spend in a classroom.