Rethinking retention

Charlotte-Mecklenburg's new preK-8 schools are less than three weeks old,  but Ashley Park Principal Tonya Kales reports one unexpected lesson:  She's rethinking the value of making children repeat a grade.

A longtime elementary school teacher and administrator,  Kales says she's been among those who think it can help to hold back a kindergartener who's struggling with basic skills or a third-grader who's far behind in reading and math.

Then her middle-schoolers reported,  and she realized some will celebrate their 16th birthdays in eighth grade.  They're physically and socially out of step with their younger classmates,  and they're frustrated at not being in high school.  Most,  Kales says,  were held back in early grades,  when it seemed like no big deal.  Now their parents and teachers are trying desperately to keep them from giving up on school.

Kales is getting a first-hand look at what the N.C. School Psychology Association has been saying for years:  "It turns out that retention is not a 'gift of time,'  as might be intended,  but a year-long sentence to be served,"  says a 2005 NCSPA position statement.

Research done at CMS found that children do perform better when they repeat a grade,  but in subsequent years they fall behind classmates who were weak on skills but were not held back.  By eighth grade,  the held-back students are far more likely to fail exams and get suspended,  the study found.

"Retention is the most powerful predictor of who will drop out,"  the position paper says.  "One retention increases the likelihood by 4 to 5 times;  two retentions increase the likelihood of dropping out to almost 100 percent."

The NCSPA doesn't advocate turning a blind eye and "socially promoting" students without addressing their failures.  Instead,  it urges schools to find ways to keep children with their peers while providing the extra help to catch up.

Update at 6:20 p.m.:  Just stumbled on a clip I'd been looking for this morning.  In 2010,  Superintendent Peter Gorman made it tougher for principals to retain students,  for pretty much the reasons cited above.  "We don't believe a student who is 17 and in their middle-school years is ever going to graduate, "  Gorman said.  "We've got to get them into an alternative high school setting."

CMS has created alternative settings,  such as the Transitional 9 Program at Hawthorne High.  But that doesn't help students who have already been held back;  they can't get into alternative high-school programs until they complete eighth grade.

CMS testing ramping up early

Fresh off summer vacation, many students in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools find themselves staring down another crop of district-wide tests. CMS calls the tests "formatives," which is to say they help formulate the rest of the semester's instruction by giving teachers an early read on students' aptitude. Some students took the tests on the very first day of classes, said Scott Muri, chief information officer for CMS.

The formatives, which are optional, aren't the same as the 50-plus mandatory new end-of-semester tests that sparked all the commotion last spring. Those are called "summatives," which aim to show what kids have learned at the end of a semester. Muri said the formatives were first used last year. (They included math and language arts tests in grades preK-8, as well as fifth and eighth grade science. In high schools: English I, Algebra I, biology, U.S. history and civics and economics).

CMS is expanding the number of formatives this year to fill in subject areas where no formatives were offered. Muri said CMS is adding science and social studies in grades preK-8, and high schools will add English II, III and IV, Algebra II, geometry, chemistry, world history and earth/environmental science. The existing tests were also updated, with input from teams of teachers who met over the summer. The obvious question: are the formatives expanding because of the controversial introduction of the summatives last spring? Muri said no -- at least not in a specific sense of one causing the other. The only connection, he said, lies in the general sense that CMS is expanding its overall testing program to give teachers more feedback on student performance. The goal of the tweaks with the formatives, he said, is "just to improve, to make sure what we're doing is as effective as it can be."

School board candidate filed on time

Hans Plotseneder, one of the many candidates running for the school board, takes issue with a story of ours from last week which identified him as one of several candidates who failed to file their financial disclosure reports on time. He said he sent his campaign finance disclosure report to election officials in Raleigh via e-mail before the July 29 deadline expired. A signed copy dated July 29 was sent by regular mail to the Mecklenburg elections board, he said. Mecklenburg officials said that is correct, though they stamped it as having been received on Aug. 2, which appears to be when the mailed copy arrived at their offices. A clerk at the office said Plotseneder was in compliance with disclosure rules.

GOP jostling and the Chamber "endorsement"

There may not be a school board primary,  but the GOP held a de facto selection process Thursday night to winnow four Republican candidates into a three-person slate.

Political newcomer Scott Babbidge eventually bowed out,  clearing the way for the party to endorse Tom Davis,  Tim Morgan and Ken Nelson for the three at-large seats on the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Board.  Parties aren't listed on the ballot,  and last time around, voters chose a Republican,  a Democrat and an independent.  But the GOP likes to have a slate to promote to voters.

This year's slate  is hardly united.

Morgan,  who now represents District 6,  says he's in it to ensure that the board's current reform plan continues,  even as CMS seeks a new superintendent.  The other Republicans are taking more of a "shake things up" tack.

In his withdrawal statement,  Babbidge took a shot at Morgan for "jeopardizing his current seat" ( actually, if Morgan loses the at-large race he keeps the seat)  and refusing to make way for three additional Republicans, "further solidifying that his motives are more about himself and his own political aspirations than serving our community."  He personally endorsed Davis,  Nelson and independent Keith Hurley.

Davis says the word went out in June, even before candidates began filing, that the Charlotte Chamber had announced endorsements for the board,  including Tim Morgan,  brother of Chamber President Bob Morgan. "It's not fair for the people that have got all the money in downtown Charlotte to say,  'These are the people we want on the board.' "

Davis's account is only partly correct,  says Natalie English,  the chamber's public policy executive.  As Davis reports,  chamber member Pat Riley did tell others on the chamber's June trip to Seattle that he thought Morgan and Elyse Dashew would represent the chamber's interests well.  Riley added that it would be good to have a "candidate of diversity" representing the county,  English said.

But that's not an official chamber endorsement,  she added.  The chamber hasn't had a PAC or made endorsements in years.  Individual members have thrown their weight behind candidates,  but they aren't unanimous, English said:  "If there were such a thing as a chamber slate, it would be more like five people."

No big bucks in CMS race

Despite all the buzz about the importance of this year's Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board race,  campaign finance reports indicate a big ho-hum from donors.

The 16 people seeking three at-large seats in November were supposed to file a mid-year report on donations and spending by July 29.  The reports on file with the Mecklenburg County Board of Elections show Elyse Dashew leading the pack with almost $12,000 raised (her biggest donations are from out-of-state family members).

Update 4 p.m.: Aaron Pomis's report shows him with almost $10,000. But as an alert caller suggested, those numbers were actually money that he raised and spent in his 2009 district campaign. Pomis says the Board of Elections instructed him to repeat those numbers; he's now trying to figure out if he got bad advice, and if so, correct his report.

Beyond that,  nobody reports more than $1,000 coming in,  and some haven't updated their reporting since the early months of the year.

Granted,  campaign energy tends to crank up about now.  But consider the contrast:  This time in 2009,  first-time candidate Eric Davis (now board chair) had filed a 57-page report detailing almost $28,000 in contributions.  He ended up raising and spending $58,000 to win the seat representing the compact District 5 in south/central Charlotte.

The current pack have to make their names and views known throughout this sprawling county.  With all three incumbents stepping aside,  there was talk early in the year that this would be a big-spending race, with newcomers having a real shot at leadership in public education.

So, what's up?  Is the lingering recession squelching big donations,  or will they just land later in the year?  Are candidates focusing more on social networking and public forums?  If the landscape of school-board campaigns has shifted,  who will win and lose?  Will CMS employees or any other interest group turn out in numbers large enough to tip what's usually a low-turnout off-year race?

I guess we'll find out this fall.

Director of Lake Norman Charter School resigns

We're a bit late on this one, but the Huntersville Herald and WFAE radio have reported that Tim Riemer, managing director of Lake Norman Charter School, resigned effective Aug. 16 -- the day before classes for the K-12 school began. Click here and here for stories with more details. A call to the school from the Observer on Tuesday wasn't immediately returned.

School board chair defends CMS reforms

I called school board chairman Eric Davis this morning to ask about the two workshops the board has scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday (both at 1 p.m. in Room 527 of the Government Center, 600 E. Fourth St.). The workshops center on the search for a new superintendent -- more particularly, finding the right search firm to lead the hunt for one. Makes for a busy week for the school board, which will also meet Tuesday evening (6 p.m. at the Government Center, Room 267) for one of its regular monthly meetings. It plans to talk then about redistricting, the opening of schools and the board's Strategic Plan 2014, among other issues.



Mention of that last topic prompted Davis to offer a brief but impassioned defense of the educational reforms driving the 2014 plan, the board's roadmap for improving local schools. As much as former Superintendent Peter Gorman was vilified for the dozens of controversial new tests CMS rolled out this spring, the impetus behind those tests came more from the board's 2014 plan than from Gorman. Gorman was carrying out the board's orders. Interim Superintendent Hugh Hattabaugh says he'll do the same. Davis said that, as the board begins looking for a new superintendent, he feels it's doubly important for the community to understand the 2014 plan. He said Hattabaugh and other staff members will take time during Tuesday night's meeting to spell out what the plan is, what it does, and the rationale behind it.



Davis called the plan "fundamental" to the selection of a new superintendent. He noted that about five or six years ago, the school board shifted its overarching philosophy of reform from a focus on "managed instruction" (i.e., a regimented system centered on making sure all kids were getting lessons) to "managing performance" and "empowerment" (that is, not just making sure lessons get delivered, but making sure the lessons are delivering results and that the educators delivering the lessons are held accountable). Thus, you get the current drive for dozens of new tests, and the push toward performance pay for teachers. "It's about the end result, whether the child's learning or not," Davis said. "So much of that gets lost in the individual tactics, what it means to me as an employee, or the impact on my child's school." He wants people to look not just at the new tests, but at the 2014 plan overall. He seems to believe if they do, they'll see the validity.



Obviously, critics of CMS' reform program see things differently. They want the board to rethink its direction -- or, more accurately, they want to elect three new board members this November who will force a move away from the test-heavy approach CMS is employing. Davis doesn't sound like a man who's thinking the school board needs to change course. He said: "When there's criticism about the direction we're going in, I think a valid question is, 'What's the alternative?'"



It will be interesting to see how the tensions play out in the upcoming school board race, and in the selection of a new superintendent.

No after-practice bus rides for preK-8 student-athletes

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools officials this morning clarified a point they made last week about transportation at the eight new preK-8 campuses: student athletes at those schools will get bus rides to the middle schools where they will play sports, but they won't get transportation back to their home school. The new preK-8 schools won't have athletics on their own campuses, but parents at the new schools made it clear they want their middle schoolers to have the same sports opportunities as kids at "regular" middle schools. So CMS has paired the preK-8 schools with "regular" middle schools for athletics, allowing middle schoolers from the new campuses to participate in sports at their paired schools.



At last week's press briefing, transportation director Carol Stamper pointed out that the district will give preK-8 athletes bus rides to their paired middle school for tryouts, practices and games, but CMS won't give them bus rides back to their home campus. (A handout CMS provided reporters at the meeting said transportation back to the home schools would be provided, but CMS officials today say that was in error).



The paired schools look like this:



Ashley Park and Bruns Avenue -- Sedgefield

Berryhill and Reid Park -- Kennedy

Druid Hills and Byers -- Eastway

Thomasboro and Westerly Hills -- Coulwood

Back to school for CMS teachers

CMS teachers are back on the job today. They'll be getting their classrooms ready, even as a blur of other getting-ready activities are going on around them. At the district's back-to-school press briefing yesterday, Associate Superintendent Guy Chamberlain said the district still has about 57 mobile classrooms that need to be put in place as CMS scrambles to increase its number of teachers and class space in accordance with late-arriving state and local budget dollars. (Another 80 that weren't previously being used are being put back into commission on the campuses where they were sitting).



When I asked which schools have the greatest need for extra teachers and/or class space, CMS human resources chief Dan Habrat said elementary schools in the central zone (near the uptown area) have the greatest need. Chamberlain this morning e-mailed me the following list, which shows that Mallard Creek Elementary, which officials said was still trying to hire 13 teachers, also needs another six mobiles in place. Sounds like lots of work still to be done on that campus. Here's the list of schools and mobiles needed (they're almost all elementary schools).



Anybody notice any other items/patterns of note?



Barringer 4

Briarwood 2

Cotswold 2

Crown Point 1

Elon Park 1

Hidden Valley 4

Highland Creek 2

Huntingtowne Farms 4

Washam 2

Landsdowne 1

Lebanon Road 3

Mallard Creek 6

Merry Oaks 2

Montclaire 3

Pineville 2

Polo Ridge 2

Reid Park 1

Sharon 3

Sterling 2

Stoney Creek 4

Whitewater Middle 2

Westerly Hills 3

School board candidate headed to White House

Aaron Pomis, one of 16 candidates vying for three at-large seats on the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board, is joining other former members of the Teach for America program at the White House today, where they are slated to meet with U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and other senior policy advisors.



According to a press release from Pomis, the event is organized by Leadership for Educational Equity, a nonprofit group that supports Teach for America alumni as they engage in civic activism and public leadership roles. The group will visit the White House, then have meetings at the education department with Duncan and other officials.

CMS reform: Thumbs up or down?

I recently reported on the results of the first three years of strategic staffing,  former Superintendent Peter Gorman's quest to let top principals and proven teachers turn around struggling schools.  It's tough to render a verdict, given that promising gains are mixed with widely varied results.

That's disappointing.  Three years feels like a very long time in a world where urban superintendents seldom last much longer.  It's a safe bet that whoever gets Gorman's job will come in with new strategies  --  nobody gets hired saying "Things are pretty decent here;  I think I'll maintain the status quo"  --  and we'll have to start the clock again to see if anything really works.

Folks who study such things say there's seldom a simple answer.  Sometimes you just end up with new and better questions.

Cheryl Pulliam,  research director of the Public Education Research Institute at Queens University,  has worked with CMS on evaluating strategic staffing.  She and the CMS crew have done some smart comparisons of the gains at strategic staffing schools compared with those at other CMS schools serving disadvantaged kids;  the results have been inconclusive.  She's familiar with the tension between the approach of principals such as Sterling's Nancy Guzman,  who swooped in demanding change and got quick results,  and those such as Reid Park's Mary Sturge,  who thinks slow and steady is the way to build lasting change.

Pulliam's questions, as the effort moves forward:

• Can principals like Mary Sturge keep teachers there long enough  (that is , reduce turnover to practically zero)  so she can build that capacity and buy-in she needs to build the culture she needs,  or will it be a continually rebuilding? 


• Have Devonshire and Sterling  (the highest-performing strategic staffing schools)  reached a plateau so that it makes it even more difficult to raise the scores even higher?  If so,  what’s next to get them up and over any plateaus?


• Has CMS developed that succession plan needed for all these schools so that progress isn’t lost when the principal moves/retires/is transferred?

Ross Wiener of The Aspen Institute's Education and Society Program gathered superintendents from around the nation last year to learn more about strategic staffing in CMS.  When I emailed asking for his take on the three-year results,  he,  too,  replied with more questions,  and some interesting thoughts:

You're asking an important question that will come up more and more often:  What is success in a turnaround school?  What is success for a district that is managing multiple schools?  Is it success if performance is better than trends would have suggested without the intervention? Being among the fastest gaining/progressing schools?


The sector has a pretty bad track record with sustained turnarounds,  but nothing compares with the scale of efforts over the last few years  --  so we'll have a lot more data points and more info on which to answer the question of what constitutes success.

I still think there are important innovations in the Strategic Staffing model and that others will continue to look to it for guidance.  There are few other places I know of where the district put together such a comprehensive change package.  Two particular aspects seem promising:  CMS was able to give high status and prestige to working in a turnaround school,  and managed some of the most sensitive parts of the process at the district level  (e.g.,  staffing,  including removing teachers the principal didn't think were a good fit;  assigning accomplished central office administrators to support roles).  In most other places,  each school has operated as a "one-off" and had to solve lots of issues on their own,  while SSI took the step of making the turnaround a district responsibility.

None of that is to diminish the focus on results.  I'm not in a good position to do comparative analytics from here,  but if the results aren't what was anticipated,  then CMS needs to dig in and understand what distinguishes the most successful from the least successful and average.  Were any of the hypotheses for improvement implemented with rounds 2+3?  What can be learned from other turnaround efforts in NC and other states?

Others will still seek to learn from SSI because it is at the vanguard of what are still-nascent efforts to turn around the lowest-performing schools at scale.  Unfortunately,  there are not models that have worked consistently and at scale.  So we have to pay attention to serious efforts and modify based on results and on local context.  Better alternatives have to be created, they can't merely be chosen from among existing alternatives.

When things go well in turnaround schools,  it's always because educators on the front lines responded to thousands of unexpected challenges with the right mix of sensitivity,  tenacity,  and flexibility  --  each in just the right measure at just the right time.  There is no formula for doing that well,  but CMS has made some smart bets in creating the conditions where this work can flourish.  We need to learn from these efforts and keep getting better.

Who should handle CMS supe search?

Choosing a superintendent for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools is a big deal.  It will shape educational opportunities,  teacher morale,  public spending,  local confidence in CMS and the nation's image of Charlotte.

But the process can be a bit of a snooze.  The school board has had two special meetings,  focused mostly on finding a search firm.  HR Chief Daniel Habrat said about a dozen have already approached CMS,  including the five or six national companies that tend to place superintendents in large districts.

"The minute Pete announced what he was doing,  (companies) were sending us their dossiers,"  Habrat said,  referring to the June resignation of Peter Gorman,  who built a high national profile in his five years with CMS.

The board agreed Tuesday to allow local firms to have a crack at the job,  even if they aren't experts in superintendent hiring.  Details were a bit fuzzy;  the plan seems to be that local firms will learn from the media that they can apply.

Board member Trent Merchant,  a headhunter with Coleman Lew & Associates,  has been advising his colleagues about search tactics.  He said today that the president of his firm has expertise in education;  when Gorman resigned,  Merchant said, he and the president agreed not to talk about the CMS opening.  If Coleman Lew were to land in consideration for the CMS search,  Merchant says he'd probably recuse himself from voting.

Board member Richard McElrath said a local firm could help increase trust in CMS.  And former board member James Ross (he served an appointed term from 2008-2009) was sitting in Tuesday,  hoping his firm might get the business.  Ross said he thinks he could find a leader who's less bureaucratic and better able to connect with Charlotteans than the last few.

Current board members have also talked about how to make sure that the three at-large members chosen in November will be ready to dive in the minute they take office in December.  The departure of Merchant,  Kaye McGarry and Joe White,  who aren't seeking re-election,  means everyone but District 5 Representative Tom Tate will be doing their first search.  Even Habrat,  hired in March from Wells Fargo/Wachovia,  is exploring new territory.

So far, the 16 people seeking the at-large seats haven't been flocking to the search meetings,  a point that has raised criticism from some current members.  (Tim Morgan, a district representative seeking an at-large seat, has been at the sessions.)   After a reporter tweeted White's jibes about absent candidates in July,  Elyse Dashew and Ericka Ellis-Stewart dashed to the meeting and began tweeting. On Tuesday,  Jeff Wise and Hans Plotseneder attended part of the search meeting. (I admit, even I haven't been sitting through the whole meetings, which tend to last hours.  Bloggers Bolyn McClung and Susan Spaulding seem to be the most devoted followers of the early process.)

Tuesday night,  Ellis-Stewart asked the board to consider holding search meetings in the evening "so that working parents and working adults can attend."

p.s. Sorry we haven't been feeding the blog much lately. When one reporter is covering CMS, it's hard to keep up. As a makeup, here's a little blog humor: Paul Simms in the New Yorker on what commenters would have said if God blogged the creation.

Civil rights lawyers joining anti-testing forces in CMS

Add the Advancement Project, a national civil rights group, to the list of organizations pushing back against the expansion of high-stakes testing in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. The Washington, D.C.-based project, which bills itself as a civil rights "action tank," has been in Charlotte this week interviewing parents at the local NAACP office. Jasmine Harris, a staff attorney with the project, said the group believes high-stakes tests like North Carolina's end-of-grade and end-of-course exams are narrowing the curriculum, squeezing out creativity and frustrating minority students.

Harris said the new 50-plus local tests CMS rolled out this spring to help evaluate teacher performance won't help matters. She said parents from all backgrounds and colors told the project about their frustrations with the new testing regime, which sparked protests from teachers and parents who called the new exams too ill-prepared, costly, time-consuming and unnecessary. Harris said the Advancement Project plans to produce a report by year's end summarizing its findings, and hopes to help push for alternative ways of judging student and teacher performance. She mentioned portfolio-style assessments as one. Asked if the Advancement Project might file some sort of lawsuit against CMS, she suggested that was unlikely, or at least a last resort. She voiced hopes that Superior Court Judge Howard Manning, who presides over the long-running Leandro school-quality lawsuit, will hold a hearing on high-stakes testing and allow the group to present its findings.

The group's presence comes as the NAACP plans what it calls a "March Against Educational Genocide" on Saturday Aug. 13 at Marshall Park. The NAACP says it is calling the march to bring attention to the "grave inequities" in CMS concerning effective teachers, fair discipline, equitable resources and challenging curriculum. N.C. NAACP President William Barber will speak. CMS has won praise nationally in recent years for narrowing the achievement gap, but judging from the title of the march, the civil rights group isn't impressed.

Mecklenburg commissioner defends CMS

It seems much of Charlotte is suffering from whiplash this week, courtesy of the CMS budget. All the months of talk of layoffs and budget cuts turned on Tuesday into a final 2011-12 spending plan that includes enough money to add nearly 500 new school-based positions.

Mecklenburg commissioner Jim Pendergraph, who voted against giving CMS the additional $26 million it eventually got from the county, said in today's paper that the county was "snookered." This morning, his fellow commissioner, Democrat Dumont Clarke, e-mailed me to take issue with that assessment.

"I, for one, don't feel snookered at all, and I don't think I'm alone in that belief," he wrote. "I recognize how difficult it was for CMS to predict what a new (Republican) majority in the State House and Senate bent on making significant cuts to the State budget would do."

He suggested an alternative headline: "Republican County Commissioners Seize Opportunity to Take a 'Cheap Shot' at CMS"

And in other news from the week, the budget news and other developments from Tuesday's meeting overshadowed the fact that Kaye McGarry took one more swing at trying to stop House Bill 546, the performance-pay legislation that has riled teachers this year. Motions to ask the legislature to drop the bill have already been voted down several times, other board members noted. Several were visibly annoyed by McGarry's move to put it on the agenda again. They voted to remove it from the meeting agenda. The vote was 6-3, with McGarry, Richard McElrath and Joyce Waddell in the minority.

Gates Foundation launching new CMS PR blitz

To those of you concerned about big-money foundations and their influence on local schools, hold onto your hats: the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation today is announcing a new public relations campaign on behalf of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. Given all the uproar over expanded testing, performance-pay and other initiatives critics see as being driven by foundations like Gates and Broad, this one is sure to attract a lot of attention. You can read some of what we've written about the influence of foundations on school reform here.

The news release that landed in my in-box says the effort's called "Educating Change," and aims to teach the general public about the broad palette of reforms CMS has launched within Strategic Plan 2014, the school system's overall school reform blueprint. There will be TV, radio and internet ads, printed and digital materials, and a web site at http://www.educatingchangenow.org/. You can get a sense of what the TV stuff will look like here:



It's all funded by a grant from the Gates Foundation, and will be overseen by the Charlotte Chamber and a local committee of parents, business owners, clergy and civic leaders, the news release says. A local PR firm, Carolina PR, is on the case, and the campaign is to be completed this fall. The timing raises some obvious questions: Will the campaign impact the school board elections and the hunt for a new superintendent? Is it aimed at countering the groundswell of opposition that cropped up this spring in reaction against the reform-related expansion of testing?

I'll be seeking answers to those and other questions during a conference call with the organizers this afternoon. I'll update you with what I find out.

UPDATE: The Chamber folks say the PR campaign costs $200,000, but no money will go toward the school board election campaigns. They say it's not specifically aimed at countering the groundswell against expanded testing, but rather is aimed at getting people educated about school reform generally in Charlotte. Natalie English, an official with the chamber, said she wrote the grant for it after Gates folks called her asking how the chamber's managed to be so successful at helping get bond campaigns passed. She said the PR campaign will teach people the various components of Strategic Plan 2014.

School board chair Eric Davis told me the school system's PR staff has been decimated by cuts, and CMS needs the kind of help Gates is offering: "This is nothing more than trying to get factual information out to the community about our efforts to try to improve student learning."

More join crowded school board race

After a tumultous year filled with budget cuts, school closings, teacher layoffs and the superintendent's resignation, you might think one of the hardest political jobs in Charlotte right now would be serving as a school board member.

If that's the case, it's certainly not scaring people away from the race for three at-large seats up for grabs on this November's ballot. Today, Ericka Ellis-Stewart, a Harding University High parent leader and a leader in the MeckFUTURE parents' group, is filing to run. That makes her the second MeckFUTURE member to file, joining group co-founder Elyse Dashew. Ellis-Stewart said in a press release that she plans to bring "thoughtful and practical leadership" to the board, with an emphasis on greater openness in decision-making, effective use of resources, and rigorous coursework.

Lloyd Scher, the outspoken former Mecklenburg commissioner, told me yesterday that he's about to jump into the race, too. He said he plans to file on Friday morning at about 10:30 a.m., which would put him at the board of elections right before incumbent Kaye McGarry plans to appear and announce her plans.

Scher, who served on the commission from 1992 to 2000, didn't have kind words for former Superintendent Peter Gorman. He said Gorman misled the public and the school board this year when he said schools were struggling with a $100 million budget gap. CMS officials have said that gap only disappeared after the state and the county came in with better-than-expected budget support for local schools, but Scher doesn't buy it. Gorman, he said, was too far out in front of the school board on the budget and on pay-for-performance plans for teachers.

Darrin Rankin, a Huntersville insurance agent who ran at-large for city council in 2009, told me he's also announcing at 11 a.m. Friday. Rankin, who ran for city council as a Democratic candidate, said at the time that he hadn't tried for office previously and was running as a concerned citizen and businessman.

Ellis-Stewart brings the number of officially filed candidates to nine. With McGarry, Scher, Rankin and former teacher's union leader Mary McCray voicing plans to join them, it appears there will be at least 13 candidates vying for three seats.

A crowded field, indeed.

CMS testing violations update

This weekend I reported on the Atlanta testing scandal and how some folks fear the advent of hundreds of new high-stakes tests in CMS might leave local schools vulnerable to similar improprieties. CMS testing chief Chris Cobitz told me then that the school system investigated 11 alleged violations of its testing code of ethics this spring, and substantiated six cases. When I asked for the names of the schools involved, he cited employee confidentiality rules and said he didn't want to give out too many specifics for fear of identifying particular staff members.

But it turns out at least one case (and the name of the school) has already been in the paper. An irate father from James Martin Middle school called me back during end-of-grade testing season to tell me his son had passed his EOG, only to be told he'd have to take it over because the school didn't have enough proctors present. Hundreds of other children had to retake as well. Now, WBTV is reporting that a second of the 11 cases involves Vance High. CMS spokeswoman Kasia Thompson says it stemmed from a problem with the administration of Vance's 10th grade writing test. All Vance 10th graders had to re-take the test. She said Vance and James Martin accounted for the vast majority of the 1,000 or so CMS kids who had to re-take tests this spring because of irregularities.

The Observer and other news outlets have asked for more details on the other alleged testing improprieties from this spring. Interim Superintendent Hugh Hattabaugh has made clear the rollout of the new summative tests will continue, with an aim toward providing a better gauge of teacher effectiveness. With teacher pay at issue as well, the stakes couldn't be higher. Needless to say, it's a subject we'll be keeping a close eye on.

Broad and the media

The influence of the Broad Foundation on public education is a hot topic in Charlotte,  and may draw even more debate as the superintendent search gears up.  So it seems like a good time to visit a question that bubbled up  in the spring:  Does the foundation that's striving to reshape urban education also influence the way reporters cover education?

A "Broad virus" blog that's gone viral in education circles suggests that one sign of "infection" is local newspapers and public radio stations short-changing controversy about Broad-endorsed reforms.  When I was on vacation in May,  "Joe Teacher" emailed to say he'd heard an announcement that Charlotte's WFAE  is sponsored by the Broad Superintendents Academy,  which trains candidates to lead urban districts.  "Is there any way to tell if Mr. Broad is donating to other local radio?"  he asked.

I heard the announcement shortly afterward,  and the academy actually sponsors NPR,  not the local station. WFAE News Director Greg Collard confirmed that,  but said the NPR sponsorship announcement once landed right after a story about teacher performance pay by WFAE reporter Lisa Miller.  "Bad timing," Collard said.

That got me thinking about a comment Broad's Erica Lepping had made during a Charlotte visit,  mentioning earlier grants to the Education Writers Association and the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media.  I asked her for more information and she said yes,  in past years the foundation has given  "small grants" to both EWA (which I'm a member of) and Hechinger ("we used to fund a few Hechinger workshops for journalists, at least one of which I believe you attended").

Says Lepping:   Each of these organizations sends us proposals every year, as do many other media outlets (e.g. radio stations) that we have not funded to date.  Our foundation rarely funds these types of efforts –  we typically stick to investing directly in efforts to dramatically improve public schools.  During the recession when our endowment decreased,  we stopped doing any media grants, in order to focus all dollars directly to school districts and ed orgs.


As you may know,  Hechinger,  Ed Week and EWA are now all much more reliant on philanthropic funding than they were in the past,  given changes in business plan models and newsrooms under the recession,  so I expect they will continue to seek funding from all the foundations going forward.

However,  in any case where we have funded media orgs,  we have never required particular content/messages to be adopted as a result.  So,  for example,  when we funded an Ed Week series 8 years ago on Leadership,  decisions regarding what leaders to write about,  sources,  story angles et al were entirely up to Ed Week (same with the old Hechinger workshops).  In other words,  we do not get involved in editorial decisions.  When we have made a grant for ed journalism,  we trusted that those particular grantee orgs and their leaders would (given their strong reputations and track records) deliver high quality journalism that helps readers critically think,  provides facts and multiple perspectives and make up their own minds.

Interesting!  I can attest that when I've gone to education-reporting workshops,  there are panels of speakers representing various views,  with an audience of journalists who are quick to pick apart spin and question the diversity on panels.  I've never been sent home with a "write about this" mandate,  though organizers sometimes ask us to report back on what we learned and send links to articles where we've used the info.

It's smart to keep an eye on how the financial picture affects reporting.  It's no secret that money is tight these days,  and if reporters go to conferences,  it's often because someone else is footing the bill.  Journalists' organizations also feel the pinch.  And, yes, newspapers are certainly looking for ways to raise revenue in an extraordinarily challenging business environment (see Editor Rick Thames' column on one such avenue).

My take:  The best defense against anyone "selling out" is the vigilance and openness of those who care about journalistic integrity.

Testing wars: The national scene

The battle over testing in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools is a microcosm of what education reporter John Merrow dubs "the education wars" being fought among the nation's top educators, policy-makers and journalists.

Here at home, interim Superintendent Hugh Hattabaugh has just invited more teachers to weigh in on the controversial testing program CMS launched during the past school year. And last weekend the Observer ran New York Times columnist David Brooks' piece on why he thinks Diane Ravitch is wrong about testing.

Now Merrow, whose readers recently chose Ravitch as the most influential educator in America, fires back at Brooks and others. His blog post offers a summary of the issues and players, contending that "at stake in this struggle is nothing less than the direction of public education," and that today's public schools are the equivalent of yesterday's pony express.

It's probably worth noting, as journalists such as Merrow, Brooks and NBC's Brian Williams join the fray, that Eric Frazier and I are not opinion writers, even in the blog. Some posters have asked us to take a stand or voice more outrage. That's not what we do; we'll stick to providing readers the chance to explore various views and air their own.

Election filing season opens

Filing for three at-large seats on the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board opened at noon today. As of 1:30 p.m., five candidates had put their paperwork in: Elyse Dashew, Keith Hurley, DeShauna McLamb, District 6 school board member Tim Morgan and Hans Plotseneder.

They were joined by Cornelius Mayor Jeff Tarte and most of the Cornelius commissioners in being some of the first folks to file. (That's them in the picture above, bracketing Dashew, who's second from left). In addition to the school board seats, offices in Cornelius, Davidson, Huntersville, Matthews and Mint Hill are also open for filing now through July 15. There was no sign in the initial hour of at-large school board member Kaye McGarry, who holds one of the school board seats on the ballot in the November elections. She has said she's still weighing her options.

The board race shapes up as a crucial one, with a new superintendent to choose and with the departure of two members of the five-vote majority that usually holds sway on crucial policy questions. The three new members could completely change the direction of the school system. Many of the challengers said that's exactly why they're running.

"The cards are going to be dealt a different way" after the election, McLamb said.