The latest from The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com
- Tom Vander Ark: Turning around bad schools with blended restarts
- Andrea Chalupa: At Bette's Hulaween: Mayor Bloomberg "dressed" as Matt Damon
- Waylon Lewis: Playboy Yoga?! Now we've seen everything.
| Tom Vander Ark: Turning around bad schools with blended restarts | Top |
| There are about 10,000 really bad schools in America (about 10%). The majority are elementary schools. We know how to make them better, but it takes political will and capacity to improve them . We know less about turning around bad secondary schools. The one thing wrong with them is everything. That makes fixing them really hard. Here's the best three school turnaround strategies: 1. Trade bad seats for good seats: closing bad schools and opening good schools in roughly the same proportion and location. This approach give lots of flexibility to new school developers like KIPP or Achievement First to open where, how, when is best for them. The bad news is that strategy is disruptive to families because it's hard to coordinate openings and closings and it requires changing schools. New York City is the best example of closing bad schools and opening good schools; it is difficult and contentious but it helps that there is good public transit and full choice. 2. Close & replace failing schools: The second best strategy is to close bad schools and replace them with good schools (same kids, same building). Green Dot's takeover at Locke High School in LA is the most visible example, but this has been happening successfully in New York since Julia Richmond High School was replaced by four new schools in 1993. However, there are as many weak examples as moderately good example. I don't think any replacement examples are as good a new schools by a quality provider. 3. Turnarounds: The third best strategy is to try to turn around bad schools. This is really hard especially at the high school level--there is so much to fix in a big bad school. A couple providers have tried (e.g., IRRE, Talent Development, America's Choice) with modest success. MLA Partner Schools took over Manuel Arts and is building a Promise Neighborhood in west LA--it will get better but it will take time. Unless there is the opportunity to change fundamental conditions (structure, staffing, schedule, and leadership) there's little hope of more than incremental improvement. Secretary Duncan's big federal grant programs (more than $5b for fixing schools between Race to the Top and School Improvement) don't give much credence to a systemic reform strategy like trading bad seats for good seats. The grant programs are specific about actions at individual schools. That will force a lot of close/replace (called 'restarts' in the SIG grants) and turnaround attempts. If restarts are the best grant supported option, the next problem we need to deal with is capacity. There are about 80 charter school developers that can open 200 schools per year. Even if they could open 300 schools a year that's hundreds short of what's needed to replace the thousands of failing schools. And most of charter operators focus on urban center, what do we do about failing rural schools? The answer to the turnaround capacity and rural question is blended restart charter management organizations (BRCMO) that combine the best of online and onsite learning. Most of these blended schools would use an online curriculum as core and would supplement with projects, community connections, tutoring, guidance and extra-curricular activities. Here's five reasons that BRCMOs makes sense: 1. Capacity. The big virtual providers (K12, Connections, Insight, KCDL, Apex, Kaplan) offer comprehensive curriculum and have lots of instructional capacity. Add about 30 state virtual schools and dozens of virtual district, contract and charter schools and you get enough capacity to teach about 3 million kids (they collectively serve about 2 million kids full and part time today). 2. Interest. Most of the big guys see learning at home capping out at less than 10% and know the bulk of the market will be blended. Some of them will open online/onsite hybrids next fall. 3. Less dependent on local teacher. In rural settings it will be very difficult to comply with the Department's guidelines for replacing half of the turnaround school staff. A blended restart would complement some the existing staff with effective online teachers and quality curriculum. 4. Easier to open. Blended schools are easier to open and can be more flexible in schedule. Mavericks in Education just opened four blended charters in Florida in their first year in operation. AdvancePath can open a school in 45 days when necessary and do it midyear where desirable. 5. Scale. BRCMOs would create statewide networks of turnaround schools that in big states could easily include dozens of schools with a common support system. None of the school improvement providers could scale as fast or as large. State charter school authorization processes are not well suited to BRCMOs. Other than Arizona, they don't allow private providers to apply. Most discourage multiple applications. All require a drawn out application process (like 18 months). For the purposes of RttT and SIG supported efforts, states will need a streamlined restart process. Despite all of these challenges, BRCMOs could open 100 schools in September 2010 and more than 200 in September 2011. BRCMOs will be a big part of the turnaround solution if states make it happen. | |
| Andrea Chalupa: At Bette's Hulaween: Mayor Bloomberg "dressed" as Matt Damon | Top |
| Friday night, in the razzling-dazzling Waldorf-Astoria, Bette Midler entertained a packed ballroom of ghostly and goofy guests, raising over a million dollars, and counting, for the New York Restoration Project. Dressed as a Moulin Rouge madame, Midler and comedienne/gay rights activist, Judy Gold--a theater-joke crackin' Abe Lincoln--worked the crowd, shaking people for $2,500 a tree. "Everywhere I turn I see hippy bags and beads; it's fantastic!" said Midler, as she cruised by the table of designer Michael Kors, dressed as a musician hitchhiking to Woodstock, 1969. Peace signs, protesting hippies ("No Nukes!") were in abundance, possibly a nod to our growing quagmire in Afghanistan and God knows where else, or the night's special performance by Crosby, Stills, and Nash, dressed as themselves, save for Nash's Guru-gettup, which could be how he normally goes about town. Other notable costumes included NYRP's executive director, Drew Becher, as a renassiance lord, tights and all, Katie Couric as Kate Gosselin (hilario), Martha Stewart as...a root? (still not quite sure) , adorable, soulful Australian singer Sia as a bunny or back-up dancer for the Flaming Lips, Gloria Gaynor as a pirate, and The B52's Kate Pierson went as Annie Oakley. (Speaking of Woodstock, Pierson runs a 9-acre retreat, Kate's Lazy Meadow , in the Catskills. From the website it looks rustic retro chic--very "Love Shack." ) Whoopi Goldberg, wearing black fairy wings, gave opening remarks, "I love me some Mayor Bloomberg, but Bette is cleaning the city." (NYRP has turned 55 vacant lots into community gardens and planted over 250,000 trees on its way to a million by 2017). "Who would have thought one tree could make such a difference...I have a cat so I don't f--- with trees," said Goldberg. Commenting on Midler's fearlessness in building the first boathouse in Harlem in over 150 years, Goldberg cracked, "'I'm Jewish, I go where I want!'" Later in the evening, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, dressed in orange slacks and a black sweater, received Midler's "Wings Beneath My Wings Award," for his support in teaming up with NYRP to green New York. Midler presented him with two tickets to her Las Vegas show and a signed CD. Bloomberg looked down at the tickets and read off a nose-bleed seat number. He gave brief remarks, that running for re-election is "easier than saying 'no' to Bette Midler" and claimed to be dressed as Matt Damon for Halloween. His hardy sign-off of "Let's go NY Yankees!" got the ballroom chanting,"Let's go Yankees!" Costume winners of the annual Hulaween Ball, judged by Kors, included half-a-dozen people as genormous potted flowers and a group of dudes dressed as a stocked liquor cabinet--Jose Cuervo carried a sparkling giant slice of lime--very economically appropriate. Also in that category was a woman donning chains, cobwebs, clutching an assortment of shopping bags, including a white crisp one from Chanel, and wrapped presents, and a book with the big, bold title: "Dow 36,000." With a resigned smirk, she said that she was the ghost of Christmas past, "when we all had money." Luckily, there are so many insane prizes to choose from on the NYRP online auction , making it affordable. Prizes include a bike ride through Brooklyn with rapper Matisyahu, meeting Whitney Houston and 2 VIP tickets to her concert, a customized outfit by Christian Siriano, a walk-on role and lunch on the set of "It's Always Sunny in Phildelpiha," a day in the studio with Jackson Browne, and if you want to keep the spooky spirit of Halloween going strong, you can bid on lunch with Jann Wenner or tennis lessons with John McEnroe. Now, for the moment you've all been waiting for, mermaid me for Halloween! Cute clutch by Italian designer Stefano Marcantonio and vintage hairpin is IGO by April Torres. Photo by Stephen Kosloff More pictures, courtesy of the iPhone! Sia and Kate Pierson enjoying Whoopi's stand-up dessert! Crosby, Stills, and Nash take the stage More on Katie Couric | |
| Waylon Lewis: Playboy Yoga?! Now we've seen everything. | Top |
| ~ Yoga Gone Wild. ~ Now we've seen it all: Playboy Yoga videos with Sara Jean Underwood. ~ It was only a matter of time...the ultimate challenge to those "Yobo " fans who say that Yoga for Weight Loss , Disco Yoga, Bikram, Adidas Yoga with (my friend) Rainbeau Mars and Yoga without all that annoying Granola, Chanting or Sanskrit may not be "traditional yoga" (a moving target in and of itself)...but nevertheless may help open the door to those who might not ordinarily be interested in pure yoga , true yoga , quality yoga . Well, Sara Jean Underwood, a young lady who won the 2007 Playmate of the Year award, has inaugurated a new series of yoga videos that are all over the Playboy.com site. Yup, there's a new url in town: http://www.playboy.com/yoga Just the url itself is enough to provoke convulsions, grimaces, grins, vomiting and/or ogling. Beauty--or otherwise--is in the eye of the beholder. This is provocative stuff--it raises some tough questions about the Future of Yoga (some of which are addressed by elephant, yogadork, itsallyogababy, joellhahn and, in comments, by our readers in the links above). In any case, as the Buddhists say, it's our obstacles or enemies that are our best friends, provoking self-examination, questioning and growing pains. Now we've seen everything.* *Actually, no we haven't. If you like what you see, you can become a member and watch all her instructional videos in the nude (I mean her, not you, you can naked yoga it up--in the privacy of your own home, please--any old time you like). (SFW) Videos: "Playboy's 2007 Playmate of the Year Sara Jean Underwood is a dedicated yoga enthusiast. She demonstrates some of the yoga poses that keep her body in such good shape. For more poses visit www.playboy.com/yoga" More on Playboy | |
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