Jim Dierke, Middle School Principal of the Year

Congratulations to principal Jim Dierke of Visitation Valley MS who has been honored with the National Middle School Principal of the Year award. The Chronicle writes:

At first glance, it might not appear the principal of the year would come out of Visitacion Valley.

The school faces declining enrollment, test scores that don't meet federal standards, teacher turnover, truancy and a high neighborhood crime rate.

Yet that's where real leadership comes in, the organization noted.

In an SFUSD press release, Superintendent Garcia adds that:

“Principal Dierke has worked with the San Francisco Unified School District for 36 years,” said SFUSD Superintendent Carlos Garcia. “Here at Visitation Valley Middle School he has focused on the fundamentals: school safety, classroom management, home-school communication, and trust among the staff, students, and parents.”

School Board Notes 9.25.07

Hooray! School Board Notes returns! I had feared for their demise, but I'm quite happy to present them here again. As usual, they will be published on the San Francisco School Board Notes blog and here.

Also note that the webcast of this meeting is also available here.

School Board Notes 9.25.07
By Nicole Achs Freeling
GreatSchools.net Correspondent

• Board Calls on City to Halt Hunters Point Development
• Hot Line Established for Bullying, Student Harassment

Board Calls on City to Halt Hunters Point Development

The board called on the city Tuesday night to halt construction on a controversial Hunters Point residential development. Residents in the neighborhood say they have experienced nosebleeds, headaches and asthma attacks, which they blame on construction-related dust and toxins. Several schools are in the vicinity of the building project, including Malcolm X, Bret Harte and George Washington Carver elementary schools, and Drew Academy, a K–3 school.

Impassioned residents of the Bayview Hunters Point community packed the house Tuesday night, many speaking before the board to criticize the actions of the city and the developer, Lennar Corporation, in providing inadequate air quality monitoring on the site. Lennar, a Florida-based company, is building a 1,500-unit condominium complex on the former site of the Hunters Point Shipyard. The board resolution, authored by board members Eric Mar and Kim-Shree Maufus, alleged several problems with the way Lennar and regulatory agencies have monitored air quality and toxin exposure. The allegations included:

Construction crews' failure to turn on air monitors during the first four months of the project during heavy grading

• Retaliation against workers who blew the whistle on monitoring activities
• Excessive amounts of asbestos routinely allowed in the air
• Poor communication with neighbors about these incidents

San Francisco Health Director Mitchell Katz disputed the claims that the construction had posed undue health risks. The parcel being developed, he said, had been used for residential purposes in the past and did not contain the toxins found on other parts of the shipyard. He said the problems caused by the construction were limited to those associated with dust from any major construction project.

"Dust of any sort is certainly a health risk if you are asthmatic, but dust in and of itself does not cause asthma," he said. The dust also contains some naturally occurring asbestos, which, he said, is part of the serpentine rock prevalent in California. "As you move earth, you will disturb some of that rock," he said. He said the level of resulting asbestos in the air is lower that it is at some of the district’s schools.

Some board members expressed concern about getting involved in an action that is essentially a non-binding. "What we’re asking to have happen in this resolution is not going to happen. That’s very clear to me," said Commissioner Hydra Mendoza, who also works in the mayor’s office as the school district liaison. She also expressed concern about straining in any way the board’s relationship with the city, "a relationship we’ve worked so hard to build."

But board members agreed that the district had a legitimate right to ask for health reports when its students and facilities are affected.

The resolution does not compel any action but calls upon the city to halt construction, order health assessments and communicate these reports to the district and the public. Language added by Commissioner Norman Yee also asks the city to consult with the district on any major construction projects in close proximity to schools that might pose adverse health effects.

"It’s clear things the city does in proximity to schools ... (are) going to have some effect. If they agree to consult with us, that’s perhaps the most meaningful action we can take with this issue," Commissioner Jill Wynns said in supporting Yee’s amendment, which passed unanimously.

Maufus praised board members for reaching agreement on an issue they had started out far apart on just a few weeks ago. "By passing this resolution, we’re showing we’re in the action on this for real. It’s not symbolic."

Hot Line Established for Bullying, Student Harassment

The district has established a hot line for students who feel threatened or bullied by other students to report incidents anonymously to school officials. The students can contact the Safe School hot line at (415) 241-2141 or via email at safeschool@sfusd.edu to report an incident, where it occurred and the people involved. Online forms will soon be available as well, in English, Spanish and Chinese. For phone conversations, officials will attempt to find translators for other languages as well.

Once students file a complaint, the principal will be notified and the involved students counseled.

"We need multiple, anonymous access points," said Associate Superintendent Trish Baskum. She said she hopes the new method will encourage greater reporting and response. "At the very least, we’ll be able to see trend data that can tell us if there are more incidents than we think."

Grab-and-go, Epicurious style

Speaking of healthy choices for school kids, this week Epicurious features a slew of articles on healthy snacks and lunches for school kids: School Days. Here's a list of recipes you'll find if you visit this article: Snack Attack

Energy Boosters

• Whole Wheat Pita Chips with Garbanzo Bean-Cumin Dip
• Deviled Eggs with Smoked Salmon and Green Onions
• Red Pepper Hummus
• Creamy Tofu Salad

Wholesome Sweets

• Cranberry-Almond Granola
• Pear and Granola Whole Wheat Muffins
• Sports Bars with Dried Fruit and Peanut Butter
• Orange and Kiwi Compote with Toasted Almonds

From the Thermos

• Low-Fat Vegetable Soup
• Mom's Hearty Chicken and Rice Soup
• Fresh Fruit Smoothie
• Super Energy Smoothie

Among the articles is one by Fast Food Nation's Eric Schlosser that is a good read. But like many articles about the pitiful state of school lunches nationwide, his article covers issues that SFUSD has been addressing for years now. Still, Schlosser provides a powerful presentation of the overall nutrition problems faced by the coming generation.

School Beat: Salad Days

Dana Woldow, a distinguished crusader for healthy food for kids, writes about the expanded salad bar offerings in this week's School Beat column.

School Beat: Salad Days

Soon, students choosing the hot lunch will also be able to visit a salad bar offering a mix of fresh greens, a variety of raw vegetable such as baby carrots, broccoli, and cherry tomatoes, plus fresh fruit and whole grain breads and muffins, all at no extra cost to students. The salad bar was piloted at 3 schools last year; at Balboa High School, 26% more students ate the school lunch once the salad bar was implemented, and virtually all of them were also students who qualified for free or reduced price meals.

Some on the list have questioned how the pilot schools were chosen. In this article, Dana provides answers. Check it out.

NYC reforms are no prize, parents retort

I would love for this blog to be as interesting as the NYC Public School Parents blog, but I think our district may be too successful and harmonious. No, really, I'm not kidding.

The New York City Department of Education just won the 2007 Broad Prize for Urban Education. Outraged NYC parents sent the Broad Foundation a dissenting view. This is worth following even from across the country.

A poster on the nationwide Small Schools listserve did refer to our blog as "venomous," which beats being boring. (I think this was someone who dislikes my posts about charter schools.)

Ex-S.F. Edison principal takes over Oakland USD

The state-appointed administrator who had been running Oakland schools just resigned suddenly, and today her interim successor was named: Vincent Matthews, last in the news running San Francisco's Edison Charter Academy. His biggest achievement was snookering the press (though not the S.F. Chron) into repeating (unchecked and unquestioned) the PR line that Edison was "a successful school in a failing district" at a time when it actually had the dead-lowest test scores in the San Francisco Unified School District -- so that was indeed quite an accomplishment.

District level API data bonanza!

I've taken the recently released 2007 API Growth Data and compiled a spreadsheet with various views on the district level API results. The spreadsheet is found here:

California school district scores, 2007 Growth API
ca district api 07 gdb.xls

What will you find in this spreadsheet? Data. Lots of data. Ten separate worksheets with different focuses. No analysis. The worksheets include

• A list of all districts in the five Bay Area counties sorted by district API: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Santa Clara, and San Francisco. All reported data is included for each district, including sub-groups.
• A list of the 50 largest districts, as measured by the number of API test takers. This allows one to compare SFUSD against other large districts.
• A set of seven different worksheets that compile the districts with the largest populations of various identified sub-groups: African American, Asian, Hispanic, and White students, as well as Socioeconomically Disadvantaged, English Learner, and Students With Disabilities
• A list of all results for all California districts, sorted by district name -- included for reference purposes only.

What does it all mean? What does the spreadsheet show? That is fodder for debate. I've compiled the data and I want to make it available for others to share their insights.

What jumps out at me confirms what we already know.

• SFUSD is failing its black students. African American student performance lags badly behind the results of other districts with large AA populations. Not only are we faced with a wide gap within our district, we are not doing as well as other districts to serve our AA students.
• We're getting mediocre results for our Asian students too. There may be demographic reasons why our Asian students are not excelling, relating to English fluency and immigration status. But the results are not great on a raw score basis.
• SFUSD is not among the larger districts for Hispanics or Whites. So I did not list SFUSD in those worksheets. If you do plug our numbers in for those groups, we're pretty mediocre with the Hispanic students. White kids are doing pretty well.
• Results for Students With Disabilities are mediocre. Not sure if we can usefully measure our SpEd services by looking at API results, but on that measure we do not stand out.
• The district is doing well with Socioeconomically Disadvantaged and English Learner students. Very well. Which probably helps explain a lot of other shortfalls.

One other factoid that jumped out at me was the huge number of tiny districts. What's up with that? From a policy perspective, what sense is there in having one district -- LAUSD -- with half a million students at the same time there are 173 districts with fewer than 100 test takers? We hear that small districts are in financial distress. Maybe the solution includes a healthy dose of consolidation?

Update: added San Mateo county districts to the Bay Area district worksheet

Why can't our schools be like they used to?

Education commentator/Sacramento Bee columnist Peter Schrag did a nice job exploring the mass bashing of our educational system in an article in Harper's — the full version locked up tight behind Harper's firewall, but a shorter version here in the Fort Wayne, Ind., paper.

SCHOOLHOUSE CROCK
50 years of blaming America's educational system for society's woes
By Peter Schrag

In 1951, when historian Henry Steele Commager first observed that “no other people ever demanded so much of schools and of education as have the Americans,” he couldn’t have dreamed how much more would be demanded.

Win the Cold War; beat the Germans and the Japanese in the battle for economic supremacy; out-duel the Chinese and Indians in the training of scientists and engineers; Americanize millions of children not just from Southern and Eastern Europe, which Commager celebrated, but from 100 Third World cultures he thought little about; make every child “proficient” in English and math; educate the blind, the mentally handicapped and the emotionally disturbed to the same levels as all others; teach the evils of alcohol, tobacco, illegal drugs and premarital sex; prepare all for college; teach immigrants in their native languages; teach driver’s ed; feed lunch to poor children; entertain the community with Friday-night football and midwinter basketball; sponsor dances and fairs for the kids; and serve as the prime (and often the only) social-welfare agency for both children and parents.

Some of those things were on Commager’s list. Many others are responses to more recent demands and stresses, particularly the rapidly growing gaps in earnings between the very rich and almost everyone else. Given the mandates, is it any wonder that so many Americans think the schools are lousy?

When you think about it, a nation's leadership normally tries to put the best spin on its national institutions. War in Iraq? Mission accomplished! Levees in New Orleans? Heckuva job! So it is really weird that Bush and really most of our national leaders are eager to put our schools in the worst possible light, to exaggerate them as crashing failures. Not that I'm against openly discussing problems, but it's still strange and inconsistent behavior.

— Caroline

Are SFUSD parents racists?

"Everyone's a little bit racist sometimes/
Doesn't mean we go around committing hate crimes..."
— "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist," "Avenue Q"*

According to Chuck Nevius in today's Chronicle, it's SFUSD parents who are a little bit racist, because schools that have more African-American students get fewer applicants in our all-choice district.

That's "proof," the headline says (disclaimer: writers don't write the headlines).

No it's not.

I'll back up. Anecdotally, it's undoubtedly true that some parents choosing schools in SFUSD's all-choice system incorporate racism in their decision. School staff (like Starr King Principal Chris Rosenberg, quoted in Chuck's column) who lead parents on school tours get an earful — hints and codes and sometimes overt comments.

But science doesn't accept anecdotal evidence. If the study is as described in the column, it doesn't provide proof that parents are making racist choices. It fails to control for confounding factors and reverse causation that are obvious even to a methodology meathead like me. I can't figure out if it could control for those things.

1. The study shows that what parents want most are high test scores and special programs such as language immersion. Most of the SFUSD schools with high African-American populations have (I'm sorry to say) low test scores, which is what all the talk about achievement gaps is about. And few SFUSD schools with high African-American populations have special programs such as language immersion. So how do we know that it isn't the lack of high test scores and desirable programs, rather than the students' demographics, that deter non-black parents from applying to schools with higher percentages of African-Americans? We would only know that if the study used control schools with high APIs, popular programs and high African-American populations.

2. The study shows that African-Americans, along with Latinos, are less likely to utilize SFUSD's choice process. A child whose family doesn't choose a school will be assigned by default to a school with openings. That means, by definition, a less-popular school, because that's why it had openings. In other words, it's not that the school is less popular because more African-American kids are there; rather (and sadly), more African-American kids are there because it's less popular. Isn't that what reverse causation is?

The woman who did the study may impress the media with her deft use of regression analysis, but that doesn't account for the two factors above (and maybe more that aren't obvious to me).

Of course, as a non-black SFUSD parent I also think it's pretty rich to spotlight those of us who choose to send our kids to SFUSD schools as racist. What about the families who move to places like (ahem) Walnut Creek, and the high percentage of San Francisco families who bail out and head for private schools, none of them exactly celebrated for their high percentages of African-Americans?

"I'm a little bit racist; you're little bit too/
I guess we're all a little bit racist; admitting it is not an easy thing to do..."
-- "Avenue Q"

— Caroline

Leading charter advocates do their thing

Oakland Tribune education reporter Katy Murphy posts on the newspaper's Inside Bay Area blog about Attorney Gen. Jerry Brown sending out a recruitment letter in his official capacity as AG (stationery, logo etc.) for the Oakland School for the Arts, the charter school he founded. (See below.)

Meanwhile, Jeanne Allen, head of the right-wing, privatization-pushing Center for Education Reform — she's the national face of the charter school movement and its best-known spokesperson — writes about sending her son to college. The funny thing is that you can tell from the weasely language that she didn't send the kid to a charter school (it could be inferred that they started at a charter school and bailed out). We're shocked — shocked.

... we wanted our son to be part of a school that would offer a sense of community, that would reinforce the values we taught at home, and that would, of course, put forth a challenging education program.

We got all three for the first few years, but as the grades in his first school progressed, the educational programs did not. A subsequent choice for 5th grade ended taking him all the way through to twelfth grade graduation.

Here's the blog post about Jerry Brown. Needless to say, we adore the part about how it's the Attorney General's role to determine whether it was proper for him to send that letter on AG stationeary.

Jerry Brown writes families, plugs charter school
Posted by Katy Murphy on September 6th, 2007

Jerry Brown might have returned to state politics, but he is still the #1 booster of the Oakland charter school he started as mayor.

Using his personal stationery with the California state seal and his title, the attorney general sent a recruitment letter to local families last month on behalf of the Oakland School for the Arts.

Someone who received the letter sent a copy to us and asked if political officials were allowed to use their titles to promote a personal (though not necessarily financial) interest.

I called the California Fair Political Practices Commission. For questions regarding the use of political titles, seals and/or resources, commission spokesman Roman Porter told me, “I would typically refer folks to the attorney general’s office.”

Interesting…

Not surprisingly, Gareth Lacy, a spokesman at the attorney general’s office, said Brown had every right to help recruit students for the charter school.

“It is acceptable for Jerry Brown to send out mail on personal letterhead,” Lacy said, adding, “The bottom line is that he thinks the Oakland School for the Arts is a great school and it’s helping to revitalize downtown Oakland.”

(that was all Katy Murphy's post, not my words.)

— Caroline

Congratulatinos Miraloma ES

Here's a nice story about one of the schools that stands out in this year's API scoring. Miraloma ES was one of the biggest gainers among all SFUSD schools.

Principal finds test scores hair-razing

Ron Machado stood in the center of the Miraloma Elementary School playground Thursday surrounded by 300 students chanting, "Mohawk! Mohawk! Mohawk!"

A few minutes later, the 33-year-old principal sported a Mohawk - spray-painted pink - as tufts of his brown hair blew across black asphalt.

The students had been waiting all summer for this day. They had earned it.

Last year, his first as a principal, Machado had promised to sport the new hairdo if the students raised the school's Academic Performance Index by 55 points - an uncommon one-year gain on the 1,000-point scale.

The students came through with a 67-point gain on the API, an annual compilation of test scores used to rank schools.

Other standouts include Metro HS (+93), Newcomer HS (+70), Marshall ES (+60), Tenderloin ES (+58), and Bessie Carmichael ES (+51). One year variations like that are hard to come by. Congratulations to the students!

Opinions about school enrollment and desegregation needed

Got an opinion about SFUSD's school enrollment process? About desegregation efforts in our schools? Who doesn't! Here's an interesting chance to express yourself in the context of a Stanford student's sociology research. Check it out:

Dear parents,

I am a Stanford student pursuing a Bachelor's and Master's Degree in Sociology. For my honors thesis, I am researching how parents in San Francisco approach the SFUSD school assignment process and the issue of racial diversity in the classroom .

My survey takes 10-15 minutes to complete and is available in English, Spanish, and Chinese. On the last page of the survey, you can provide contact information if you are interested in participating in the second phase of my research: in-depth interviews. After my research is complete, the contact information data will be erased. The survey pages are SSL encrypted and all of the final data from the surveys and interviews will be anonymous.

I would greatly appreciate if you would take the time to fill out my survey.
Click here for the English version
Click here for the Chinese version
Haga clic aquí para la versión en Español

Please feel free to contact me (dcheng20 @ stanford.edu) if you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions about my research. Although I recognize the benefits of discussing issues on the blog, I would request that you contact me privately with any comments you may have about my research. Public discussion of survey questions might influence the responses of other parents filling out my questionnaire.

Additionally, I am looking for opportunities to distribute this survey to other parents of SFUSD students. Please let me know if you are part of your school's PTA, SSC, or other parent organization and would be willing to forward my survey to any email lists you may be on.

Thanks for your time, and I hope this school year is starting off well for your family.

Sincerely,
Diane Cheng.

Annual meal application drive begins

Every year the effort to get all SFUSD families to complete the meal application kicks into overdrive. The application is used to enroll qualifying students in the federal free and reduced lunch program. The goal is to enroll every qualifying student by getting every family to complete the form regardless of need. DCYF is training volunteers to conduct outreach at school sites to help with this effort. The first training date is on September 12th with outreach work happening many schools sites on the 19th. See the SF Schools calendar for details.

Here is the copy of a flier about the campaign:

We Need Every Family to Fill out a Meal Application By October 9th!

Why is this so important?

We Get More Money for More Eligible Forms! Our school’s federal (Title 1), local (Weighted Student Formula), and private grant funding is based on the total number of eligible Meal Application Forms collected.

Better Quality Meals! The more eligible forms collected, the more money Student Nutrition Services (SNS) receives to spend for better food.

What if I know I do not qualify for free or reduced price meals? You can still help our school by filling in your child’s First and Last Name, School, and writing, "Not Interested", anywhere on the Meal Application.

What if my child doesn’t want school breakfast or lunch? If there is a chance that you qualify for free or reduced price meals, please fill out the form, including income level, to help our school receive more funding.

But I filled out a form last year! Federal Law requires schools to recertify all students for the School Meals Program each year. Even if you qualified last year, SNS will only receive reimbursements for your child if you fill out a new application this year. Our school’s funding is also determined each year based on current forms.

What if we are not citizens or legal U.S. residents? Free and reduced price meals are available for all children regardless of their citizenship status. All information on the Meal Application Form is confidential - it is not shared with INS / ICE or any outside agency. If you do not have a social security number, simply write "none" in that space.

Do I have to fill out an application if we already qualify for food stamps or other public assistance? Yes! Although your child is automatically eligible for the School Meals Program, we still need you to fill in your child's FIRST and LAST NAME, SCHOOL, and CalWORKS CASE NUMBER under Student/Child Information in Section III.

What if I don’t want others to know my child receives a free lunch? We are requesting applications from ALL students, qualifying or not, so returning the application won’t identify your child as receiving a free lunch. Neither our school nor the School District singles out or publicly identifies children who qualify for School Meal Programs.

Questions? Call Student Nutrition Services at 749-3604

College admissions and learning disabilities

Here in San Francisco, the Parents Education Network has an informational event this Friday morning, Sept 7, on college application issues for learning-disabled students:

Accommodations for SAT/College:
What a Psych-Ed Report Needs to Say

Applying for accommodations for your student to take the SAT or ACT can be a daunting task, and it helps to understand what it all means! If a student has been tested and has a report, how can parents know if it will meet the College Board or the ACT guidelines or not? Jane McClure will answer this and other questions pressing to parents nearing this process.

RSVP REQUIRED!
pen@parentseducationnetwork.org / (415) 751-2237

(This group is a useful resource for families of students with disabilities, though it's startlingly private-school centered.)

Feeding the college admissions beast

The College Ranking Service retorts to the U.S. News worldview:

For the seventh straight year, the College Ranking Service (CRS, rankyourcollege.com), has found that prestige in colleges and universities correlates with the size of endowment. The richest schools are the most prestigious. ...

For the seventh straight year, the CRS found that state universities continue to be squeezed by state governments. They will never be as prestigious as the universities above because they don’t have their wealth. But they are the engines that provide this country with its educated workforce. Without Harvard et al., this country would still do well. Without UCLA et al., this country would be in real trouble. The CRS suggests that you take the money that you would normally give to your prestigious and already wealthy alma mater (if you perhaps went to one of those schools) and give it to your state university instead.

For the seventh straight year, the CRS found that US News' college ranking is fraudulent in at least two ways: 1) it tries to make quantitivate distinctions between universities on the basis of statistically insignificant differences; 2) it jiggles its methodology every year to make sure its rankings change in order to generate public interest.

And the Seattle Post-Intelligencer comments:

College Rankings: A better exam

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD
U.S. News & World Report's lucrative rankings of colleges are out again. The scoring is taken very seriously by colleges, high school students and, presumably, the magazine's accountants.

"Second Thoughts on Admissions Reform" in Inside Higher Ed (Aug. 30) aims at those who follow, studiously or obsessively, every twist in the debate about "early admissions" or "early decision." If that's you, here's the latest.

2007 API Growth Data for SFUSD

The California Department of Education published the 2007 API Growth data on Friday. I've downloaded the full dataset and produced an Excel spreadsheet containing the data for all San Francisco schools here:

SFUSD 2007 API Growth Data

The table is sorted by school type then by API growth from 2006 to 2007. From a quick look at the data it appears the district is continuing to make solid progress. The growth from year to year inevitably fluctuates a great deal.

Next I will integrate the new data into the table of API growth data from 1999 to the present. That will be a lot more interesting. For now, here is the raw data.