SAN FRANCISCO – U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee visited a middle school in the Mission District this morning to call attention to the improvements made in the wake of federal funding to the city’s school district.

Duncan, Lee and other top school officials held a roundtable discussion during a visit to Everett Middle School, one of nine schools in San Francisco that was awarded federal School Improvement Grants in 2011 and current California GEAR UP School.

The historically low-performing schools in the city’s Mission and Bayview districts were given $45 million over a three-year period that went toward professional development and coaching for school staff, among other improvements, according to school district officials.

Since 2008, those nine schools have had an 18.4 percent gain in English language arts proficiency and a 26.9 percent gain in math proficiency, district officials said.

Duncan said he was “absolutely inspired” by the improvements made at Everett.

He said during today’s visit, he talked to an eighth-grader there who “said she was terrified to come to this school as a sixth grader, and now this school has a wait list.”

Lee said the federal funding has helped reduce barriers for low-income students and those who speak English as a second language.

“Once we get rid of those barriers, our kids who come from all over the world will compete on an international basis,” he said.

Duncan said he is working to get more federal funding from Congress, but “they look at education as an expense instead of an investment.”

He said in the meantime, San Francisco can come up with creative ways to maintain funding for the schools, noting that the mayor has sought help from the private and nonprofit sectors.

“People want to be part of a winner,” Duncan said. “We’ve gotten something started and he’s got a heck of a story to tell.”

(excerpts reposted with permission from ABC news)

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California GEAR UP schools believe:

• That ALL students deserve an equitable education – one that provides the knowledge and skills to choose and be successful in postsecondary education pursuits;
• That students must master rigorous academic standards to successfully progress along the pipleline from middle school to high school and into and through college;
• That in order for students to plan for college they need to see themselves in college;
• That overcoming the challenges faced by low-income, first-generation college-bound students requires the continued engagement of school leaders, families and communities.

Washington, DC–Recently, the U.S. Department of Education opened the School Turnaround Learning Community (STLC)  to the public, offering a wealth of resources and networking opportunities to educators throughout the country. The STLC is a collaboration platform that enables educators to share success stories, learn from colleagues throughout the country, and inform the Department with their expertise. Currently, the STLC has 4300 subscribed members, provides approximately 500 turnaround school resources, facilitates eight discussion boards, and has hosted nearly 60 webinars on various topics including teacher and leader effectiveness,increased learning time, and community and parent engagement.

According to the STLC site, “The goal of the STLC is to provide states and districts with easy online access to resources and to facilitate networking that will enable them to support schools more effectively…. Both research-based practices and practical examples from states, districts, and schools inventing on-the-ground solutions are available. The purpose of the STLC is to provide one-stop access to these resources and to promote and facilitate sharing across states and districts to deepen learning over time.”

If you are working to support school turnaround, you may want to take a moment to join the School Turnaround Learning Community (STLC) and their two active groups, Increased Learning Time and Teacher Effectiveness.  Once you join, visit the My Account page and click on the Notifications tab to set your preferences for receiving updates on activity in the online STLC.

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Dear GEAR UP Supporters,

National GEAR UP Week is next week!

Here is Congressman Fattah’s official invitation and an update on our National GEAR UP week schedule.

It’s critical that next week be a national celebration of GEAR UP, with activities at sites across the country demonstrating the value of our programs and the support they have in our communities. Please let me know as soon as you can if you can do one of the six focus activities.  We have a team of people here ready to help you make your GEAR UP Week activity a success.

As a reminder, GEAR UP Week focus activities are:

• Post a GEAR UP Dreams Wall – butcher paper for your students to post their dreams and goals
• Host a celebration event
• Host a lunchtime celebration at school
• Write and send letters to your Members of Congress
• Sign and deliver an oversized thank you card to your Congressperson’s district office
• Create a GEAR UP Chain of paper links representing the students and families you serve

And here’s our master planning schedule for the week:

Monday, October 24th – NATIONAL GEAR UP WEEK BEGINS!

• Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Congressman Fattah usher us in with a video message. (Stay tuned for a link – note that it will be available all week.)
• NCCEP’s National GEAR UP Online Week Call to Action launches: 1000 emails and 100 calls to Members of Congress in support of college access.
• Puerto Rico GEAR UP’s Dream Wall activity begins
• Is your action on Monday? Let us know and we’ll list it and help promote it!

Tuesday, October 25th

• National GEAR UP Week actions across the country
• Is your action on Tuesday? Let us know and we’ll list it and help promote it!

Wednesday, October 26th

• National GEAR UP Week actions across the country
• Is your action on Wednesday? Let us know and we’ll list it and help promote it!

Thursday, October 27th

• National GEAR UP Week actions across the country
• Is your action on Thursday? Let us know and we’ll list it and help promote it!

Friday, October 28th

• National GEAR UP Actions across the country
• Is your action on Friday? Let us know and we’ll list it and help promote it!

National GEAR UP Week is all about celebrating GEAR UP and all of the hard work you and your team does to help your community of students get into college and succeed. Let us know how you plan to participate.  We’ll be there to help every step of the way.

If you are celebrating in California, email us and tell us what you are doing: sean.brennan@ucop.edu

Contact the House and Senate Leadership, YOUR Members of Congress and the White House every day through August 2, and demand they protect GEAR UP.

The debt ceiling debate rages on in Washington, DC. Negotiations between the White House and Congress collapsed last week. Now, both the House and Senate leadership are pursuing two separate plans to raise the debt ceiling before August 2, when America’s borrowing authority reaches its legal limit, resulting in default.

As you can see, things are evolving very rapidly as time runs out and only three things are certain:

1. Both Republicans and Democrats are aware of the need to raise the debt ceiling to avoid default, but there’s no agreement on how to do this;
2. Both the House and Senate plans include $1.2 trillion in cuts to discretionary spending over the next 10 years (approx. 12 billion a year);
3. You need to stand up for the principle that low-income people should be protected in whatever deal is cut.

You need to make sure your voice heard every day this week leading up to August 2 and demand that GEAR UP and other college access programs be safeguarded in the deal-making process.

Here’s what you can do now:

1. Recruit 5 persons to reach out to the House of Representatives, Senate and White House (GEAR UP students, GEAR UP parents, GEAR UP teachers, GEAR UP partners, colleagues, friends and family).
2. Contact the following offices:
   • House of Representatives Leadership:- Offices of the Speaker of the House John Boehner (OH-8) @ (202) 225-6205 and (202) 225-0600;- Office of the House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (CA-8) @ (202) 225-4965 and (202) 225-0100;
   • Senate Leadership:- Offices of the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid @ (202) 224-3542;- Offices of the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell @ (202) 224-2541;
   • YOUR Members of Congress in the House and Senate (search for your Members of Congress)
   • White House @ 202-456-1111 or 202-456-1414
3. Follow-up with your group, ask them to continue the “chain” by recruiting 5 more people and get the word out!

PLEASE NOTE: Capitol Hill switchboards and websites have been overloaded over the past few days, keep insisting until you get through because GEAR UP must make its stand for college access, NOW!
The Message

“[ELECTED OFFICIAL NAME], the American people need you to protect the programs and services our low-income, minority and disadvantaged students depend on to enroll in and succeed in college. I urge you to defend GEAR UP in the debt-ceiling and deficit-reduction negotiations, because only an educated workforce can help us secure a prosperous economic future for our country.”

Thank you very much for your hard work and your support in responding to this call to action. It is very important that you act NOW for the duration of this process. Not doing so will have dire consequences for GEAR UP, college access and all of education for many years to come!

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan held a round table discussion at California GEAR UP distinguished school Tincher Prep yesterday in Long Beach. The purpose of his visit was to learn best practices of the school and to hear how Tincher has been so successful in creating distributed leadership and a school community working for the same goals.

Principal Bill Vogel said it best: “You give teachers choice in their professional development, you let them lead the direction of the school, and you let the school have discretion in how to best serve their students.” The teachers chose to participate in California GEAR UP three years ago.

“We need funds to keep programs and people” he said. “We need programs like GEAR UP, AVID, and funding for those programs.”

The secretary listened intently as administrators and teachers talked about the programs that make Tincher a success. Mr. Vogel and the staff repeated listed California GEAR UP as a key program in their development. The East Long Beach K-8 school, where more than 50 percent of the students are designated as disadvantaged, has been lauded for its gains in test scores and was named a “School to Watch” by the California Middle Grades Alliance in 2009.

Duncan said the Tincher sets an example for other school districts in the country.

“I’ve studied your school district for a long time, and I think you have so much to be proud of,” he told a crowd gathered in the school library. “I don’t say this lightly, but more so than the vast majority of school districts that I visit, this school district has gotten things right for a long time.”

Also in attendance was Rep. Laura Richardson, D-Long Beach., who said federal funding should be streamed directly to school districts instead of being “tied up” in Sacramento.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan addressed No Child Left Behind, and the fact that virtually every school in Los Angeles Unified School District will be classified as failing by 2014 if the law is not urgently reformed.

That has led to a narrowed curriculum that focuses intensely on those subjects, sacrificing the well-rounded education that every child needs, he said.

Middle school music teacher Laura Strand said No Child Left Behind should have a greater focus on art, music and sports programs that are in danger of being cut in the budget crisis.

“I see students being pulled out of these programs when they’re finding success and it breaks my heart,” she said.

“No Child Left Behind is fundamentally broken,” Duncan said. “We want to fix it before we go back to school this fall.”

He said Congress needs to rewrite the law to be more “fair, flexible and focused” this year, so it can be implemented for the next academic calendar.

Tincher Prep has been a California GEAR UP school since the fall of 2008 and is part of a cohort of schools receiving professional development services with the goal of creating a college-going culture throughout the school community. Tincher recently received the California GEAR UP Leadership Team of the Year award at our Southern California Community conference, and as the Secretary of Education has pointed out, continues to be a model school.

To learn more about how Tincher has become a leader in the GEAR UP community, please visit our website and check us out on Twitter and the other articles on our blog.

02/17/11

The U.S. Department of Education today launched a new website that provides convenient and transparent access to key national and state education data, highlighting the progress being made across the country in every level of the education system and encouraging communities to engage in a conversation about their schools. The United States Education Dashboard, available at http://dashboard.ed.gov, presents important indicators of whether the country is making progress toward the President’s goal – that, by 2020, the United States will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.

“The Dashboard highlights both our successes and challenges while providing a new level of transparency that is absolutely essential to our efforts to accelerate student achievement,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. “We hope communities will use this information to determine where we need to focus on reforms and investments in education.”

The Dashboard contains a range of cradle-to-career data that furthers the Department’s efforts to provide a more accessible and transparent view of the country’s educational system. On a single webpage, those interested will be able to view indicators of the nation’s performance in education, gauge their state’s progress and see how their state is performing compared to others. The indicators in the Dashboard focus on some key outcomes:  Are we preparing young children to enter school? Are students making sufficient progress to graduate from high school and college? Are they completing college in a timely fashion? Are we providing an excellent education to all students?

This first version of the Dashboard contains a set of 16 indicators that range from participation in early childhood education through completion of postsecondary education, plus indicators on teachers and leaders, and equity for elementary, secondary, and postsecondary students. The Dashboard also includes a section, “An Excellent Education for All,” which provides data on whether subgroups are performing sufficiently. In addition to compiling key data previously reported, the Dashboard presents two new indicators.

The first shows the number of states that indicated in their 2010 State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (SFSF) reports that they have school districts that evaluate their teachers or their principals based in part on student growth or student achievement. The second new indicator shows how high-poverty school districts are funded compared to low-poverty districts in their state.

The Dashboard allows users to quickly find information they need and view it in several different ways.  It also allows users to download customized reports for further analyses.

The Department is committed to continually updating the Dashboard’s data and to enhancing the tools on the website. Indicators will be updated as new information becomes available, and users are encouraged to provide comments and feedback on the Dashboard so that usability and functionality can be enhanced in updates and subsequent versions.

Check out the Dashboard HERE.

In the NY Times this weekend was an interesting article on a national overhaul in standardized tests. Over the next four years, two groups of states, 44 in all including California, will get $330 million to work with hundreds of university professors and testing experts to design a series of new tests that officials say will look completely different from those in use today.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said the tests will look for higher order thinking skills and be computer based.

“The use of smarter technology in assessments,” Mr. Duncan said, “makes it possible to assess students by asking them to design products of experiments, to manipulate parameters, run tests and record data.”

The assessments are being redesigned to align with the common core academic standards that nearly 40 states have recently adopted.

Check out the complete article here.

On Thursday, July 29, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will take part in a live town hall meeting with the nation’s teachers on Sirius/XMs Satellite Radio’s POTUS public affairs channel. The program will air from 11:00 AM EDT-12:00 PM EDT and will feature a studio audience of teachers from a cross-section of public schools, drawing from a variety of districts, grade levels, and disciplines. Tim Farley, host of POTUS’s “The Morning Briefing,” will moderate the event.

Since his appointment in 2009, Secretary Duncan has spoken with thousands of teachers from around the United States together input on the Obama administration’s blueprint for K-12 education reform. Duncan has been a supporter of GEAR UP and has consistantly urged educators to challenge the status quo.

As Congress prepares to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the purpose of this town hall is for teachers to voice their ideas and concerns directly to the Secretary and to discuss the critical issues in education with the educators who work daily in America’s classrooms. In addition to the studio audience, those listening to the program online or via radio will be able to call in free of charge with questions and comments.

The town hall will be broadcast on channel 110 on Sirius Radio and channel 130 on XM. Nonsubscribers may access the program free of charge through these live online feeds by going to www.xmradio.com and clicking on “Free Online Trial.”

Let us know if you plan to take part in the town hall by commenting below.

Arne Duncan was on Los Angles on Tuesday, Decmeber 9, 2009. This was also the day that LAUSD announced the takeover of Fremont High School in South LA.

Of the takeover, Arne Duncan said “I’m very hopeful. . . . I couldn’t be more impressed with the commitment, the sense of urgency, and the lack of complacency or acceptance of the status quo.”

You can listen to the entire interview on NPR here.

Duncan, a huge supporter of GEAR UP, mentions the ability to challenge the status quo in numerous interviews and in the language used to describe the importance in fundamentally changing how we do business in our public schools.

California GEAR UP was designed to work with schools to help them reflect on school culture and continually challenge the status quo to meet the needs of students. Having courageous conversations is an integral element to shifting school culture towards success.

We would like to here about how you are challenging the status quo in your school or community. Send us comments and feedback below.