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Welcome!
What is
Urban Edge?
Urban Edge is a service that provides CUBE districts
with relevant information to help your awareness of education issues around the
country. We will glean news sources, blogs, research studies, and NSBA's wide range of expertise for timely information that guides CUBE districts in making sound decisions. Around
the nation
Teacher
tenure, contracts, and changes
Springtime brings contract negotiations, long nights,
and ideally, an agreement. Many CUBE districts
(and some non-CUBE urban districts) are making
headlines with innovative structures of paying
teachers in the coming year. New Haven gained
a lot of attention last year for changing the way
they will pay teachers, and New York State recently
passed a law allowing more charter schools and
altering their policies as they apply for round two
of Race to the Top funds, which will impact urban
districts there. Denver has also adopted a
plan to pay teachers more if teachers opt-in to a
new program, "ProComp." Pittsburgh
and Washington, D.C. also altered the way teachers
are going to be paid, linking student achievement to
teacher salaries, and D.C. teachers may get up to a
20 percent salary increase next year. Much of
the monies for the D.C. raises will be paid for by
private organizations, which has raised some
controversy over how public schools are
funded. As many districts face large cuts, and
efforts to pass the Keep
Our Educators Working Act continue, teacher
contracts are going to be a critical piece to school
budgets nationwide.
Link
to Washington Post article 6/3/10
(free registration)
Link
to Denver's ProComp plan
Nashville set to roll out virtual school
Metro Nashville Public Schools will follow
the lead of many other districts when it starts its
own virtual school in the fall. The plan is to
have every high school student take at least one
class virtually before graduation. The
district hopes that using technology as a learning
tool will guide students in the digital age.
"What we want is to teach them the appropriate
use for technology. When you think about it,
every office has computers, every workplace has
computers, every home, every business," the
district's Director of Instructional Technology
said. "When you don't introduce them to
their future work environments, you haven't
adequately prepared them for life." The
virtual school has many benefits, including being
able to continue learning while recovering from
surgery, as one parent points out. With
Tennessee being watched closely after scoring
millions of dollars in the first Race to the Top
funds, Nashville's program may be ripe for
duplication in other urban districts.
Link
to Tennessean.com
6/13/10
San Antonio gets reality check on obesity
In Texas, students are required to do a "Fitnessgram"
yearly to assess weight and fitness through PE
classes. When a filmmaker wanted to do a
documentary on the impact of childhood obesity on a
teen, she asked for a student with a body mass index
(BMI) of 40. After looking over the
Fitnessgrams, the coordinator in San Antonio found
440 students who fit that criteria, and she knew she
had to address the problem at the district
level. One school piloted a program this
spring to focus on all aspects of health, not just
weight, and is working to create a healthier,
comprehensive lifestyle, which also involves parents
of students. The pilot program gained state
approval, which means it can be replicated elsewhere
in the state. With so much emphasis recently
on childhood obesity, this program from San Antonio
is likely to be a model to other urban districts in
Texas and perhaps nationwide.
Link to MySanAntonio.com 6/1/10 Secretary
Duncan addresses school boards
In a video from the Department of Education's
YouTube channel, Secretary Duncan speaks directly to
school board members calling for them to continue
the work on a local level, reassuring school
districts that Title I funds will not become a
competitive program, and more. If you have not
been able to see Secretary Duncan speak at the NSBA
Annual Conference, CUBE Annual Conference, or NSBA's
Federal Relations Network (FRN) conference, this
four minute video may be worth a look.
Link
to Secretary Duncan's video
5/27/10 Other
sources
CUBE
and NSBA have excellent print and on-line
sources for up to date education information, but we
also like to stay aware of other organization's
resources and share them with you when
possible. Two items from ASCD
recently caught our attention. The first
discusses supporting new urban teachers and the
second addresses homeless students. Many CUBE
districts are facing struggles with both of these
topics and may be worth reading and sharing with
your colleagues. If you ever come across
something you think is worth sharing with other CUBE
districts, please let us know (kscott@nsba.org),
and put "CUBE Edge" in the subject line.
Link
to Educational Leadership (new urban teachers)
Link
to Education Update (homeless students)
NSBA
News
NSBA
commends the Common Core Academic Standards that
were released earlier this month. In a press
release, NSBA has encouraged states to listen to
local school leaders as they consider adoption of
these standards, and that they remain voluntary to
states, not part of a mandate as a condition for
federal funding. To see the press release in
its entirety, click here.
Final
Webinar: National School Climate Survey 2010: To help district officials understand the importance of school climate
and its relationship to educational outcomes, NSBA
is supporting the efforts of Dr. Brian K. Perkins,
principal investigator for the National
School Climate Survey 2010 survey. CUBE
districts are already familiar with the first three
school climate studies he conducted, which can be
found here.
Perkins will host a series of informational webinars
on the survey which will provide data to
participants to help make decisions on ways to
improve school climates, including student,
administrator, teacher, and parent perceptions of
school climate, and student academic achievement and
school performance indicators. Register for a
webinar on one of the following days: June
23 at 4 p.m. EDT.
Registration
and housing are now open for NSBA’s annual T+L
Conference, the premier technology and learning
conference for school leaders. This year’s event,
to be held Oct. 19 to 21 in Phoenix, will focus on
change and the tools and programming you need. Go here
for more information, or here
to register.
CUBE
News
Mark
you calendars for September 30- October 2, CUBE's
Annual Conference is coming soon! Stay
tuned to CUBE's Urban Edge and the CUBE web site for
more details! Nominations
for the 2010 Benjamin Elijah Mays Lifetime
Achievement Award are being accepted
now. If you have had the benefit of working
with a dedicated individual who has been committed
to urban schoolchildren as a school board member,
consider nominating them for this prestigious
award. More details can be found on CUBE's
web site.
CUBE
is on Twitter-Follow CUBE_Edge (CUBE_Edge)
for daily updates on what's happening in urban
education around the country.
Program
Note
Did
you know that all previous editions of the Urban
Edge are available on CUBE's web site? If
you missed an issue, wanted to go back to find a
link to a research study we referenced, or need some
information about what other districts are doing,
click here.
Disclaimer
Links
on the Urban Edge are subject to change or
become inactive after a period of time. Please
be aware that CUBE has no control over links to
other organizations or entities.
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