Parents cannot sue over NCLB compliance

A federal appeals court ruled that parents cannot sue school districts to force them to comply with the No Child Left Behind Act. The ruling came in a case filed against the low-performing Newark Public Schools in New Jersey. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said “enforcement of the act is up to state educational agencies.”

The parents claimed that, in contravention of the Act, they were never notified (or received insufficient notification) of (1) the fact that their children were enrolled in deficient schools, (2) their right to transfer from failing schools to non-failing schools, (3) their right to request supplemental educational services under the Act and to receive certain information about providers of such services, and (4) their right to request information about the professional qualifications of the teachers instructing their children.

The court noted that Congress enacted the Act “to ensure that all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education and reach, at a minimum, proficiency on challenging State academic achievement standards and state academic assessments.” But, it ruled that the Act does not confer a right of action enforceable by individuals or individual providers of supplemental educational services. In the decision, the court reasoned that while the reference to “all children” could ostensibly be read as a proclamation that each and every child shall have certain rights, Congress did not refer to the individual rights of each and every child.

Click here to view a copy of the court’s 26 page decision.

Attracting and retaining the best and brightest teachers

Attracting and retaining the best and brightest teachers in the Franklin public school system has been one of the top priorities for the School Committee. Our last post on teachers can be viewed by clicking here. We continuously look for ways to improve the quality of our educational workforce. We have been extremely successful in coordinating this effort, but recent budget issues have placed a strain on our ability to maintain our high standards. We will continue to pursue these efforts nonetheless.

Today, the Boston Globe published an interesting op-ed piece which highlights the need for good teaching. In the piece, we are reminded that President-Elect Barack Obama has declared that “now is the time to finally meet our moral obligation – to provide every child a world-class education.” To do so, we need to focus on teachers in the classroom. As the article further notes:

The clearest result from decades of education research is the importance of teacher quality. My colleague Tom Kane finds that students who are lucky enough to get a teacher in the top quarter of the teacher-quality distribution jump 10 percentile points in the student achievement distribution relative to children who end up with less able teachers. Improving teacher quality has about twice the impact on student outcomes as radically reducing class size.

Just as the human capital of our citizens will determine the strength of our nation, the human capital of our teachers will determine the quality of our schools. The first step toward improving teacher quality is to attract more talented teachers. The second step is to improve teacher selection on the job, promoting the best and encouraging the worst to help society in some other way.

The piece was written by Edward L. Glaeser, a professor of economics at Harvard University. He is the director of the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston. To view the complete article, click here.

Retired teacher volunteering to help at FHS

For some it may be a golf course or beach which calls them out of retirement. But for one retired teacher, it’s the opportunity to get back into a classroom that is the lure.

For the past year, Don Roemer, a Franklin resident and retired teacher from the Wayland Public School system, has volunteered as a part-time teacher working alongside a few full-timers at Franklin High School, in a pilot program he proposed last October to Franklin Superintendent of Schools Wayne Ogden.

The Milford Daily News did a story on his public service and the pilot program. You can see the full story by clicking here. The story is accompanied by a video which can be viewed by clicking the image below or clicking here.

Our thanks and gratitude go out to Mr. Roemer. This is a classic win-win situation, giving our high school students an opportunity to get some extra guidance, and a retired teacher the opportunity to get back into the classroom.