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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
Boston gift is one to watch
Over the years, Boston has gained attention
for winning the CUBE Award for Urban School Board
Excellence and the Broad Prize for Urban Education,
but the most recent award for the city may be
something for all urban districts to pay attention
to. A $27 million gift was given to help the
city's students, from cradle to career, combining
the efforts of religious schools, charity groups
like the United Way, and Boston Public
Schools. The funds will be used for a variety
of goals, including raising the graduation rate to
80 percent by 2014. According to the article
in the Boston Globe, the superintendent and
mayor are aware of the stakes involved, "Mayor
Thomas M. Menino said yesterday that the growing
support for education reflects growing awareness
that overhauling urban schools is a job too big for
government to do alone. He and the district’s
superintendent, Carol R. Johnson, helped develop the
latest effort and welcomed the scrutiny it will
invite."
Link
to Boston Globe article
6/22/10
Are small urban high schools working?
New York City Schools and the Gates Foundation
have been spending a lot of money on creating
smaller urban high schools and some recent evidence
is pointing to the fact that these schools may be
improving student achievement. In the last
eight years, Chancellor Klein has shut down 20 large
high schools to create 216 smaller schools,
impacting thousands of students. The smaller
schools have improved academically, and since
students are picked via lottery that is open to all
8th graders, not academically selective, and serves
students who fall into high poverty situations, the
strategy is getting a lot of attention for its
success so far. Other CUBE districts have been
active in creating similar small high schools,
including Atlanta and Chicago.
Link to Google/AP News story 6/23/10
Link
to eSchoolNews story 6/25/10 Is
it time for the Harlem Children's Zone to go
national?
As CUBE has covered in earlier editions of the Urban
Edge, the Harlem Children's Zone is an
educational experiment that has been gaining
attention for at least two years. NPR has the
most recent installment on "HCZ" because
the Obama administration is now asking for
applications to replicate the program in other parts
of the country, calling them Promise
Neighborhoods. While even the group's founder,
Geoffrey Canada, is cautious about trying to
duplicate its success, many educators and
policymakers find it hard to ignore the allure of a
program that has this level of business, education,
and community support.
Link
to National Public Radio 6/24/10
(approximately 5 minutes) How
to turn around a school
In the last 18 months, the words reform and
turnaround have been used so often in education
circles that they have become cliché. That's
why a recent entry on the Washington Post's
education page caught our attention, because it came
from a principal of a school who has actually turned
around a school and improved the graduation
rate. He did not do it by firing the staff,
giving merit based pay increases, or getting a
directive from the mayor instead of the school
board. He outlines his experience on how to
"turnaround" a school, and encourages
anyone with a stake in education to read it.
Link
to Washington Post article 6/24/10
(free registration) Webinar
Opportunity
Next
Wednesday, July 7, a free webinar is being offered
by the Alliance for Excellent Education and the
Campaign for High School Equity titled "The
Economic Benefits of Reducing the Dropout Rate: An
Analysis of Students of Color in the Nation's
Largest Metropolitan Areas." CUBE
districts may find this opportunity useful because
the panel of experts is highly regarded for their
work in urban education, and the discussion will
center around recent data as well as questions from
those participating. For more details and
information on signing up, check their web site here. Other
sources
NSBA
has many sources for information that impacts urban
districts. Legal
Clips, a free service from NSBA's Office of
General Counsel and Council of School Attorneys (COSA),
is a great place to research topical issues facing
school district's legal situations. For
example, a recent post discusses Jefferson County's
(KY) student assignment plan, and the recent
challenges now facing the district after the Supreme
Court struck down its desegregation plan in
2000. Last year, CUBE recognized Jefferson
County for their commitment to diversity. For
more, see Legal Clips' new web site, here.
CUBE
News
Mark
you calendars for September 30- October 2, CUBE's
Annual Conference is coming to Baltimore 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
through July
20. 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.
NSBA
News
NSBA
commends the Common Core Academic Standards that
were released in June. 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.
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.
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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