School Funding CenterCentral source of expertise on school improvement issues

    PULLMAN, Wash. – Art work gems from the permanent collection of the Washington State University Museum of Art will be shown May 19-July 2 in the “Curators Choice 2011″ exhibition.   Two musical events in the museum gallery will complement the show: the Nighthawk Jazz Quartet, noon Tuesday, June 7; and the Summer Solstice Wind Quintet, 2 p.m. Saturday, June 11. Admission is free.   The summer exhibition alternates between showcasing regional artists and presenting selections from the museum collection. This collection show will focus on the art of landscape, featuring works by Andy Warhol, George Inness, Gaylen Hansen, Patrick Siler and more.   The sole purpose of this exhibition is to feature some of the best pieces of our permanent collection for visitors to enjoy,” said Keith Wells, Museum of Art curator. “A museums value is in its collection, and yet because of limited gallery space those same collections often remain locked in a vault, hidden from public view.   “Its been many years since weve had the opportunity to share this diverse selection of works with our museum patrons,” he said. “You need to see this show to fully appreciate the sheer variety of styles and disciplines represented, and the quality of each piece of art.
Works in the collection come to the museum as gifts from individuals, foundations and corporations.     The museum is located on Wilson Road across from Martin Stadium in the Fine Arts Center on the WSU Pullman campus. Summer gallery hours are noon-4 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. For more information, please contact the museum at 509-335-1910.

On Monday, the day’s best game belonged to Hall and Suffield. Behind four goals from Olivia Morin and Rachel Aronow, Hall defeated Suffield 15-14 in a thrilling double overtime battle to earn its eighth victory of the season. For more of the day’s scores, turn the page.

The Boston Celtics lost tonight. Until mid-season they were the top team in the East. What happened?

The Celtics made a trade. At the time of the trade, my favorite NBA commentator, David Berri, imagined the following conversation:

Celtics General Manager Danny Ainge: Sam, what can I do for you?

Thunder General Manager Sam Presti: Danny, how about you take the two worst players on my team? And in return give me a big man that can help me contend for a title?

Thats in fact what happened. The Celtics traded a slightly above average center, Kendrick Perkins. In return, the main attraction was supposed to be Jeff Green, pictured above.

Berri has always had a very simple but profound notion about the NBA. People overvalue scorers. People undervalue many other things. And not just fans. Even famous general managers like Danny Ainge, who has spent his life playing, coaching, and now evaluating the game.

Berri is an economist and a fan. He has zero special knowledge of the game of basketball. Instead, he has complicated mathematical regressions. The formulae tell him things which experts may overlook. In this case, he knew that Jeff Green, the guy the Celtics got, was a terrible rebounder for a man of his size (69). He is also a very inefficient scorer. As a result, he harms his team every minute he plays.

Ive written previously about the MET project, funded by Gates Foundation. The early finding is that the popular teacher evaluation rubrics the forms filled out by many principals and other evaluators seem to be overlooking something. We just dont know what.

These tools, when used by trained observers, fail to predict student learning very well, as measured by student test score gains. These evaluation tools are like Danny Ainges eye.

The problem is we dont have a David Berri yet. We do not have a much better way of evaluating teachers such that we can do a decent job of predicting the future (how much each teachers kids will learn, as measured by VAM).

In fact, the early MET data, released to the public a few months ago, seemed to show that Harvard political scientist Ron Ferguson was closer to being David Berri than any of the teaching experts. His approach is to never observe the teacher at all. Instead, survey kids.

That is, if instead of giving an expert on of these teacher evaluation forms, you give the kids a survey called Tripod, you are more likely to be able to predict the learning gains of that teachers students.

My belief is we need to open up the teacher evaluation challenge to the hive mind tens of thousands of curious people around the world who have zero expertise in teaching, and therefore may be able to see things that experts cannot.

I will explain my idea in a future post. It involves putting lots of teacher video on the web. But only with explicit permission of teacher and kids for each clip.

Essentially, wed create a game that allows anyone to try to predict student learning by watching teachers in action.

My belief is some new insights would emerge that move our field forward. Whether those insights will come from a retired calc teacher in Omaha, an off-Broadway actor who knows something about performance, a psych grad student in India, or a security guard at a pork and beans cannery, I have no idea.

But Id bet a lot that someone would move us forward if we made the raw video easy to play with and think about.

Markham Elementary in Southwest Portland, built in 1951, is one of eight schools that would be fully rebuilt if Portland Public Schools voters say yes to the biggest local government bond in state history.In the next nine days, voters in Portland Public Schools will determine the fate of the biggest local government bond ever proposed in Oregon: $548 million to fully rebuild eight aging Portland schools and make smaller fixes to all 77 others.

Voters face plenty of issues in the May 17 election, including school board races, other school money measures and funding for a new Sellwood Bridge. But no issue has drawn more attention than whether to raise property taxes inside the state’s largest school district by 9 percent to fund an unprecedented school reconstruction effort.

The Oregonians continuing coverage of the Portland Public Schools bond proposal.A $1.1 million pro-bond campaign — paid for mainly by construction firms, labor unions and others that would benefit from the building boom — has made it the only ballot item advertised on TV this spring.

The school district also has generated a cavalcade of fliers, emails and website postings to get out the word. The state elections office is investigating complaints that some of those efforts crossed the line into illegal taxpayer-funded promotion of the measure.

And, in an unusual step for Portland, where most money measures pass by a wide margin and without organized opposition, a fledgling group of Portland parents has formed to oppose the bond. The group, which favors a separate proposed property tax increase to help retain teachers, calls itself Learn Now, Build Later. Members have made sure that community forums held to educate voters about the bond cover drawbacks as well as pluses.

Here are answers to some key questions about the bond:

What big-ticket items would the bond pay for?

It would:

• Fully renovate and rebuild Cleveland High ($87 million), Roosevelt High ($75 million), Rigler K-8 ($33 million), Markham Elementary ($27 million), Laurelhurst K-8 ($26 million) and Marysville K-8 ($21 million).

• Build a new Jefferson magnet high school on the Jefferson campus ($48 million), a new Faubion K-8 ($27 million) and a new sixth-grade wing at West Sylvan Middle ($13 million).

• Pay off debt the district incurred in recent years for new roofs and portable classrooms: $25 million.

• House students in other buildings while their schools are rebuilt, and transport them there: $20 million.

• Add entrance ramps, elevators and other features to provide wheelchair access to the first floor of every school and to upper floors at some: $15 million.

• Build covered play structures at 37 schools: $11 million.

• Install or replace turf fields at six high schools: $9 million.

• Improve classrooms or building configurations at eight high schools: $9 million.

• Pay off debt for Rosa Parks Elementary, built in 2006: $9 million.

• Replace part or all of the roofs of four schools: $8.5 million.

• Install new energy-efficient boilers at 38 schools: $8 million.

How much would it cost taxpayers?

Property owners would pay $2 for every $1,000 of assessed property value. For the owner of the typical home inside Portland Public Schools’ boundaries, worth about $240,000 and assessed at $143,000, the yearly bill would start at $295 this fall (taking a 3 percent annual assessment increase into account) and rise to $340 by 2016, the last year the $2 rate would be charged.

The school district is also asking voters to approve a five-year increase in the property tax for school operations to preserve about 200 teaching jobs and other positions. That would raise property tax rates by 74 cents per $1,000 of assessed value, amounting to about $110 a year for the owner of that typical home.

How many students would benefit?

Every school building in the district would get some improvement, including improved disabled access and card-controlled locks on exterior doors, so the roughly 43,000 students who attend district-run schools would all see some change. (Charter schools and privately run alternative schools, which together enroll nearly 3,000 students, won’t get upgrades.)

Two-thirds of the money, nearly $350 million, would be devoted to full-blown renovations or new construction at the eight schools. Those schools currently enroll about 5,100 students, or 12 percent of the total.

District officials plan to enlarge four of the eight schools when they rebuild them. Faubion, for example, has 400 students now but would be built to hold 750 because that is the ideal size for a K-8 school, they say.

All together, the new or rebuilt schools would have room for nearly 7,000 students. District officials say they expect the updated learning environments to attract that many.

How do Portland’s plans compare with those of other area districts?

No other local district has schools that date primarily to the 1940s or earlier. Most have focused on building new schools, not renovating old ones.

Portland’s planned costs to renovate its schools, averaging $325 per square foot, far exceed what nearby districts paid recently to build new schools.

The proposed tax rate of $2 per $1,000 is pretty typical. In the next 10 largest metro-area districts, taxpayers pay an average of about $1.75 per $1,000 of assessed property value for voter-approved school construction bonds.

Why did the district propose this now, in a down economy?

Board members say the conditions of Portland’s schools are so dire that improvements can’t be put off until rosier times. And delaying construction would mean paying higher prices. They plan to seek another bond in six years to rebuild more of the schools to modern standards.

What do opponents say?

Learn Now, Build Later members say the bond is badly planned. They say costs should be trimmed and the work should be more focused on seismic upgrades and other safety features at schools serving more students. They also say the district should close or consolidate small schools like Markham, Faubion and Marysville to save money in the long run rather than rebuild them bigger and better.

Where can I learn more?

The Voters’ Pamphlet contains legally binding information about the measure on Page 41.

The school district web site has numerous fact sheets and explanations.

The Learn Now, Build Later group lays out its information at learnnowbuildlater.org.

The pro-bond campaign, Portlanders for Schools, makes its case at portlandersforschools.org.

Another district publication shows exactly what would or would not be added at each school.