CST Spring West

CST Western Edition

CHARTER SCHOOLS TODAY

Spring 2009

www.charterschoolstoday.com

Focus on Environment and the Arts River Heights Charter School

An Old-Fashioned School With A High-Tech Edge Literacy First Charter School

Education With Aloha

Kua O Ka LÄ Public Charter School THE MAG A ZINE FO R CH ARTER SCH O O L E X ECU TIVES

Editorial Editor in Chief: Alonzo Ellis

Managing Editor: Rebecca Czarnecki

Production Director: Hayley Gold

Contributing Editors: Dr. Tiffany Griffin

Project Directors: Eric Gunn Hanim Samara Todd Rodgers

Correspondents:

Shelley Seyler, Senior Staff Writer Holly Alexander Jim Barlow Jacqueline Bodnar Prem Desai Lauren Muscarella

Letter from the Editor Our country is witnessing a historic moment. While global leaders seek to aid the economy, charter school leaders are seeking to reform education in America. It is an exciting time for educators­; our new president, despite having inherited an economy that requires domestic and international tailoring, is elevating the importance of education and encouraging innovation in our nation’s schools.

Thanks to President Obama’s attention, education is in the midst of the discussion about how to move the country through the undeniable challenges it presently faces. Charter schools in particular are poised to have significant influence. The spring issue of Charter Schools Today delves into the successes of 8 charter schools from across the west and the ideas and philosophies that help them reach their students. It will also highlight topical issues facing the movement as we begin a new era of our nation’s history.

From all over the western region, our journal looks to capture those sometimes fleeting moments that can leave indelible marks on our students.

Bull Run Media Executive Team

On the west coast, in El Cajon, California, Literacy First Charter School began with just three students and is today successfully flourishing, serving a diverse student body with hands-on projects and parental involvement.

Publisher:

Kua O Ka Lā in Hawai’i exists for the purpose of catering to children of Native Hawaiian origin. Budding from the roots of a non-profit with a similar mission, the school is fostering a sense of Hawaiian culture in each student while still balancing, and in many cases surpassing, the necessary testing requirements.

Kalena Alston-Griffin, Partner Keyla Carr, Partner Alonzo Ellis, Partner Kalena Alston-Griffin, Partner

Executive Editor: Keyla Carr, Partner

Design Department:

Sheryvonn McDonald, Senior Designer Julie Hudak, Graphic Designer Ashish Kansara Jay Vandewani

Operations

Karyn Dowty, Director of Operations Daniella Gonzales Kelly Matlock

We are excited to see the successful implementation of ground-breaking ideas serving students and out-growing the mold of traditional education. And yet, we know that many challenges remain; this edition addresses current issues in a discussion on how we can overcome these barriers.

From school expansion to unique learning curriculum and instruction, charter schools around the country are also listening. As a movement, we are listening and waiting to see how the new administration will re-draw education in America.

As we continue to monitor these developments, we hope you enjoy and share what we included in the pages of the spring edition of Charter Schools Today. We will continue to serve as a voice in these undefined times and we are elated to see innovative and improving trends for our students’ and our country’s future. ~CST

Advertising Sales & Marketing Department: Bjorn Michals William Lee Yin

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Contents

Cover Story Education with Aloha Kua O Ka Lā Public Charter School Sitting on 600 acres of oceanfront, Kua O Ka Lā Public Charter School in Hawai’i is not your typical charter school. Principal and co-founder, Susie Osborne, describes their ethos as “education with aloha - which means education with caring and respect.” The school clearly embodies this idea as it demonstrates great respect for the environment and Hawaiian culture. The school is completely solar powered, uses composting toilets, and teaches Hawaiian cultural skills such as fishing, net making, and carving, integrated through core academic curricula.

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Spotlights 6

Dealing With the Financial Crisis in Your Classroom Learning how to make the most of what you have.

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Ipods in School-Turning Toys Into Tools Teaching with technology and making the most of it.

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Time Management Organize your time with the building blocks of productivity.

Op-Ed: American Education Is the dream slipping away?

Technology in Schools The back to school cell phone craze is booming.

Charter Schools Today

Spring 2009

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Facilities Financing Some tools for the never-ending challenge.

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Workplace Performance Improve your workers' productivity and reduce sick days.

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Regional Spotlight: New England An overview of New England charter schools.

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State Caps on Charter Schools Examining the argument for removing caps and the positive impact it would have on the charter school movement.

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Spotlight on Behavior Teaching anger management and emotional control to children.

Features Midwest & West

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Focus on the Environment and the Arts River Heights Charter School, MN

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Helping Charter Schools Across Arizona Education Team Partners, AZ

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Building Strong Foundations New Designs Charter School, CA

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Addressing Real-World Issues Chula Vista Community Learning Charter, CA

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An Old-Fashioned School with a High-Tech Edge Literacy First Charter School, CA

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Education with Aloha Kua O Ka LÄ Public Charter School, HI

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A Small Charter School with Big Ideas Beehive Science & Technology Academy, UT

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President Obama and Charters Looking at the president's stance on charters from what he said on the campaign trail to their inclusion in the stimulus.

The Waldorf Difference Pine Forest Charter School, AZ

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American Education in a Globalizing World How the American education system measures up to the rest of the world and the influence of charter schools.

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Spotlight: Your Charter as a Business Resolving employee morale issues so you can have a happier and more vibrant workplace.

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Spotlights

Dealing With the Financial Crisis in Your Classroom: Learning How to Make the Most of What You Have Almost every sector is affected by the economic crisis in one way or another, and the Education sector is no exception. Classrooms all over the country if not the world are being affected by budget cuts. Teaching materials are scarce, after school services are being eliminated, and layoffs are becoming inevitable. Do you have less teaching materials to use in your classroom?

Are your planned activities not as engaging as they used to be as a result?

Here are a few suggestions that will help bring back the enthusiasm and a full engagement from your students in your classroom again.

The most basic thing you can do is to recycle your old teaching materials.

For example, you can adapt materials that were used 2 or 3 years ago with your 5th grade class to plan activities for your current 7th grade class.

The next option is to literally raid your colleagues’ closets. Fellow teachers are a great resource for teaching materials. Teachers are known to keep all types of materials including decorative materials years after years. It is common knowledge that teachers have a hard of getting rid of their teaching materials hoping that such materials will be somehow reused in the future.

Teachers have always used their imagination and skills in their classroom.

Teacher-created materials as it is known are materials that teachers create to be used in their classrooms for specific lessons. The financial crisis and the challenges that it brings is a great opportunity for you to put your imagination to use. This is a great time to pull out your construction paper, scissors, markers, etc. Your imagination is the limit.

Finally, have you ever thought about swapping or selling your teaching materials? As mentioned above, most teachers have accumulated a lot of materials over the years that are either sitting in their closets or that they no longer have any use for. Do you have any used materials that other teachers can use in their classrooms? That activity book that you used 5 years ago with your New York City 3rd grade class can certainly be of use to a 3rd grade teacher in Kansas this fall. In return, you will gain access to materials needed for your current assignment. Swap it, sell it, and use it.

The economic crisis is inevitably affecting American classrooms. Budget cuts make teaching materials more and more scarce nowadays. In order to keep your lessons interesting to your students, you need to be very imaginative.

Recycle, create your own materials, swap or sell your old teaching materials.

About the Author: Gia Theodore is the founder of http://www.swapboards4teachers. com and Educationow. Educationow is a resource for educators, scholars, researchers, and others seeking to improve and raise the level of educational standards in the world.

Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/k-12-education-articles/dealingwith-the-financial-crisis-in-your-classroom-707931.html

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Charter Schools Today

Spring 2009

Ipods in SchoolTurning Toys Into Tools: Teaching With Technology Everywhere you go in the world today, you see people with iPods connected to them. Do you ever wonder what they are listening to?

Maybe you assume they have some crazy music pumping into their brain? What if they are listening to award-winning works of literature?

Reading is imperative to becoming a successful and productive citizen.

for students to hear and see words multiple times. Research tells us that effective fluency instruction begins with modeled reading. Audioassisted reading can provide unlimited practice for students, while silent independent reading alone has not shown to increase reading fluency. Finally, audio books create motivated readers.

Students who struggle with reading will struggle in most subject areas in school and in many avenues of life. Using audio books to improve reading fluency with all readers promotes success for students in most areas of life. Intervening early improves student achievement along with self-esteem.

There are at least four ways iPods in school increases student achievement and motivation; independent reading, shared or smallgroup reading, whole class listening, and lending out the audio books for home use.

Audio books are an excellent solution for teachers to use when attempting to instruct students of differing ability levels and with different learning challenges such as struggling, reluctant, below-grade readers, bilingual students, special needs children as well as those children diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorders or Dyslexia.

The iPods in School program started at DeKeyser Elementary in early 2007 with 25 iPod Shuffles and some audio books. Children in second and third grades check out the book and the iPod for use outside of school. Students document whether they read along with the audio book, or just listen, and whether they discuss the book with their parent after listening. These books and iPods are in great demand within these two grade levels. The excitement for reading is immense and parents and children report pleasure in the project.

In addition to listening to books commonly found in the library, I would like to expand the program to include the textbooks from different classes and grade levels to help those students who need to either hear the text again, or are struggling to read it the first time.

Research (from Boston Public Schools) proves that audio books accelerate reading gains. Data shows that audio books can improve reading comprehension by 34% as it bridges the gap for students attempting to read text above their individual reading level. Listening to oral reading is also proven to help students acquire new vocabulary while stimulating vocabulary development by allowing opportunities

“Do you have any brand new audio books?” “Which one is your favorite?” “Have you listened to this one? It has a great person with lots of expression reading!” These are common questions from seven-, eight-, and nine-year old children engaged in our iPods in School program. In addition to improvement in reading scores and motivation for reading, seeing the eager children begging for iPods and audio books to check out of the library makes the program extremely worthwhile.

With the cost of the iPod Shuffle decreasing to just $49, this cost of implementing this program is not extreme. The benefits far outweigh the cost.

Excite your students and have them begging to listen to quality literature!

About the Author: Join Kathy and a group of educators dedicated to improving student learning through technology in the Mastermind Group of Educators http:// mastermindgroupofeducators.com for continued support, resources, book discounts and community in educational technology. Kathy Cothran is an elementary media specialist committed to helping teachers engage students through the uses of technology. Her vast teaching experience ranges from preschool through Master’s level education classes. For years Kathy has been a “Gadget Girl.” She loves technology! Tie that to her extensive teaching background and she has been able to interest, invigorate, and inspire children and teachers to use technology in a rich, exciting manner.

Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/k-12-education-articles/ipods-inschool-turning-toys-into-tools-teaching-with-technology-727107.html

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Spotlights

Time Management Organize Your Time with the Building Blocks of Productivity An effective daily schedule can be constructed with three types of blocks.

Structuring each day starts with locating a space for large block, followed by several medium blocks of grouped activities. How much you can pile on (your productivity) each day depends on how well you organize your time.

productive when you can focus on one type of task rather than switching back and forth among assorted tasks. Constant multi-tasking slows you down. Activities that can be grouped include returning non-urgent telephone calls, processing your email inbox, filing, and reading.

What lessons you can learn from small children! One day I was watching two youngsters, ages 3 and 5, playing with “bricks” constructed out of heavy cardboard. The brick blocks came in three sizes: a 10” x 16” rectangle, a 10” square, and the standard 3” x 10” brick size. Over time they spent hours creating structures. At the beginning there was no understanding of larger pieces providing a stronger foundation for the smaller pieces and so things would come tumbling down without using all of the bricks. With lots of trial and error the children discovered that if they started with the biggest size, they were more likely to be able to use all of the bricks.

The length of this session depends on the work. If you average about five phone calls at a time, you may only need to block out ten to fifteen minutes. With email, you might need to spend thirty minutes at a time.

Any of these can be repeated during the day. For instance, you might quickly check your email first thing in the morning for ten minutes to handle urgent issues, then spend thirty minutes before lunch and thirty minutes again later in the afternoon. Stick to the amount of time that you have originally allotted rather than letting it trail on. That will keep you focused on the task at hand and will increase your productivity.

Move what you do not complete to the next block of time.

An effective daily schedule can also be constructed with three types of blocks. How much you can pile on (your productivity) each day depends on how well you organize your time.

Large Blocks - Your Day’s Foundation Make your day’s foundation an uninterrupted block of time when you can focus on difficult, involved projects. The ideal length is an hour and a half, approximately twenty percent of an eight-hour day. If you cannot possibly find that length of time, try for an hour. Even with 45 minutes of uninterrupted time you can get a significant amount of work completed because you are not requiring twenty additional minutes after each interruption to get back into the “flow.” As you develop this routine, aim for the hour and a half each day.

During this time, do not answer every phone call. Turn off your general email alerts. If you want to ensure that a certain person or message gets through immediately, set up your software rules to notify you of that specific message. When you can block twenty percent of your time, you will accomplish about eighty percent of your work for the day.

You recognize instinctively that having uninterrupted time is effective when you arrive at work an hour early or stay for a couple of extra hours at the end of a day, knowing you will get so much done in that quiet time. Why not become more productive by including that quiet time within your day instead of adding extra hours in order to get the same amount of work done?

Medium Blocks (Grouping Blocks) -- Multi-Tasking Isn’t Always The Best Option Group as many like activities as possible since you are four times more

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Charter Schools Today

Spring 2009

Small Blocks - The New Items and Lower Priority Tasks To Be Handles New items and lower priority tasks can be worked on between the other blocks. These might include requests for help from a colleague, quick answers to questions, filling out forms, and other project components that did not fit into your major blocks, but that you still have time to work on.

Structuring each day starts with locating a space for that large block, followed by several medium blocks of grouped activities. Small blocks are then added. If you do the reverse, which means coming in to work and clearing out the small items before you find a time for the most important work, you may wrap up the day without handling your priorities.

Why spend extra hours in the evenings on work that you could have fit into the day with the right construction of your schedule?

About the Author: As a productivity trainer, organizing specialist, and owner of Key Organization Systems, Inc., Denise Landers has spent years speaking, training, consulting, and coaching on the topics of time management and effective workflow. If you’d like to attend an organizing seminar but do not have the time, Landers now provides you with the full benefits of corporate training in managing time, paper, and email while listening at your own convenience. Get The Productivity Series at: http://www.keyorganization.com/cds.asp Article Source: www.businesshighlight.org

Op-Ed: American Education Is the Dream Slipping Away?

The American Dream is also slipping in the K-12 systems throughout the country. Too few students are prepared to function in a world that is filled with computer technology. Students need exposure to technology early. Some say that analyzing the changes in the American Dream by looking at elementary school is not appropriate. The country needs to take a long term look at how each citizen is prepared for future employment demands. The types of jobs that K-12 students must fill will require different types of abilities which must be an integral part of their current education.

There is a sea of changes happening in the financial markets that provided families with funding to pay for K-12 education and college.

Individuals who have a decent income are finding it more difficult to obtain a loan with a good interest rate. It is putting a greater pressure on families to save more money. Unfortunately, saving money can be difficult when a couple is living in a major city. The inability to obtain fair interest rates may force students to take out loans with higher interest rates that will last 30 years.

People all over the world still come to the United States with the expectation of the American dream. The dream that they can start new lives and have greater freedom continues to draw them to this country. They understand that having access to education will increase their children’s employability. It’s important that the country uses the talents of every citizen that is here. America needs to prepare for an increasing diversity in the workforce of the 21st century.

There was a time when each American generation thought that the next generation would do better than themselves. A good college education would lead to employment in a company for thirty years. The dream of an American education is slipping away due to the rising cost of post-secondary education. Now it seems that a college education does not guarantee sufficient income. Some college graduates are returning home because they cannot afford student loans and the cost of living.

Students who have to work to pay for college are finding it difficult to keep pace with the cost of living. It is not uncommon to have a book cost $100.00 or more. Students do not get much in return for selling their book back to the bookstore. The cost of room and board is rising steadily as the price for food, electric and gas continue to increase.

The recent changes in minimum wage also lag behind the typical living expenses. Students are facing financial challenges outside of the classroom that are causing them to sit out for a semester or two.

The American Dream is what the citizens make it. It takes everyone working together toward a common cause. Some K-12 schools and colleges are enduring difficult times keeping up with the rapid changes in society. Students are using the internet to communicate their changing perceptions of America’s commitment to their dreams and desires. They realize the amount of debt that they will accrue to pay for college. Some students are asking is it worth getting a college degree if they cannot get a basic job after graduation. America must rethink how it will invest in providing every student who wants to experience a college education with the financial aid resources to do it.

About Dr. Stephen Jones: For twenty-six years, Dr. Jones has delivered presentations on numerous topics including how to study, leadership, effective communication, and innovative management practices. He is the author of two books one is titled “Seven Secrets of How to Study” and the second is the “Parent’s Ultimate Education Guide.” The book provides an easy understanding of the seven pillars that are essential to learning effective study techniques. His URL is http://www.sevenbooks.net.

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Spotlights

Technology in Schools The Back to School Cell Phone Craze is Booming When students and parents start their shopping list for the new school year one item on the top of their list is a cell phone.

How times have changed. The idea of searching for paper and pencils is taking a back seat to modern technology. The cell phone companies have caught on and they are releasing so many new cell phones each month that it is hard for anyone to catch up. Cell phones have reached epidemic proportions throughout American society.

You cannot go to a city or countryside road without finding someone who is using a cell phone.

A growing phenomenon among parents and students is text messaging. The ringing of the phone has been silenced by the tapping of alphabetic keys. Messages between cell phones can be transferred instantaneously.

Students are using text messaging to respond to each other and to communicate with their parents. Abbreviations are often used when text messages are sent. It represents a form of communication that has broad implications

for society. Text messaging can take up time that a student would normally spend studying. At the same time students can send a reminder that a homework assignment is due. It has become a two edged sword that allows parents to pick up a child from football practice or to plan a trip to a movie.

Communicating fast has become an even faster way of keeping parents in touch with their student. Parents realize that when their son/daughter goes back to school putting down the cell phone to focus will require real discipline. Students are too easily disrupted by the buzz of their cell phones. The speed at which a student communicates can cause a chain reaction of positive or negative results for a student who has a test on the next day. Peer pressure can even occur when one student yields to the temptation to respond to a cell phone call rather than study.

Communication by way of the cell phone is here to stay. School districts are forced to come up with strong statements about

when the cell phone may be used during the school day. Students try to find creative ways to ignore the rules. Parents are frustrated when they must go to school to retrieve their son/daughters cell phone. Learning by way of the cell phone has been a challenge for most schools. Cell phone use is not easily incorporated into class instruction like an actual computer. Some professionals have found ways to download papers to the cell phone and read them while they are traveling but this is not a priority for students.

Some students are using their cell phones to discuss assignments and presentations they are giving. Students can save some of the major points of their presentation on their cell phone. Students can send a reminder that a quiz is occurring tomorrow to a friend.

Messages like it’s time to get prepared. Some students put reminders in their cell phone and the phone makes a funny noise to remind them to start preparation for a major test. The calendar can also be used as a way to manage time.

During the twenty first century technology will continue to influence the back to school journey. Schools that use laptop computers to educate students are already springing up all over the country. Cell phones do offer news, television and the internet but most students do not have access to these services.

Moving forward bringing the cost down and increasing the services will make the versatility of the cell phone a total learning experience. It is apparent that going back to school will never be the same.

About Dr. Stephen Jones: For twenty years, Dr. Jones has delivered presentations on topics including how to study, leadership, effective communication, and innovative education practices. Working with students has enabled Dr. Jones to have a complete understanding of the challenges their facing http://www.sevenbooks.net.

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Spring 2009

Facilities Financing Some Tools for the Never-Ending Challenge Written by Holly Alexander Facilities are almost always a challenge for charter schools. A high proportion are required to lease rather than own facilities, and funding is highly competitive. In addition, many districts provide little or no facilities funding to their public charter schools, so many charters need to pull some of their facilities money from per-pupil operating funds, and raise additional dollars from foundations or other sources. The unfortunate reality is that per-pupil operating funds for charter schools are almost always lower than those for traditional public schools in their districts. Currently, charter schools receive per-pupil operating funds at an average of only 73 percent of the amount given to traditional public schools in the same districts.

Only a handful of states have provided perpupil facilities funding to public charter schools, though 26 states provide some state aid, such as the use of vacant school district buildings, while 14 states provide no facilities assistance of any kind for charters.

However, there are some bright spots in government funding and private sector partnerships and resources.

Several types of opportunities for school funding in the new economic stimulus plan, officially the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), signed by President Barack Obama on March 6, are of interest.

The bill first addresses the fact that there are major funding problems on all fronts as states and communities, which must operate with balanced budgets, have begun slashing education funds. The bill allots $48 billion for general education spending to state and local governments. It requires that 81.8 percent of that be used to restore recent cuts, including higher education. This may be especially important to charter schools since they already need to stretch their per-pupil funds so far.

The remaining 18.2 percent of the funding may be used to support instruction, although it can also go to other state and local needs, including modernizing schools. The report accompanying the bill recognizes charter schools as beneficiaries of the funding, so they can’t be overlooked when distributing the funding; however, it doesn’t mandate any funding, either.

Governors have been able to request ARRA funding since April 1. For the discretionary money as well as other parts of the act directed toward school facilities funding, projects that are ready to go have a significant advantage, since the goal is to stimulate the economy as quickly as possible and monies must be spent

by December 31, 2010.

Some states and communities say they may prefer to spend the unrestricted portion of the stimulus money on facilities or technology upgrades rather than operating costs, because

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Spotlights

they don’t want to increase general school funding that they won’t be able to continue after 2010.

The ARRA also offers several tax programs that can benefit public charter schools, including $1.4 billion in new funding to Qualified Zone Academy Bonds, $22 billion for a school construction bond program, $10 billion to the New Markets Tax Credit Program and $25 billion in Recovery Zone Bonds, all of which might be tapped for school facilities.

These are all bond programs, not grants. They generally require a package of funding through community development agencies, who in turn work with banks and other financial institutions to issue, sell and manage the bond issues. Foundation and other grants may be combined with these funds.

Administered by the U.S. Department of Education, the Qualified Zone Academy Bonds is a revival of a federal program funded in 1999 - 2004, and can only be used for schools.

It may not be used for new construction, but can underwrite renovating school buildings, purchasing equipment, developing curricula and/or training school personnel.

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The newly authorized school construction bonds will provide $22 billion, $11 billion in 2009 and the remaining $11 billion next year.

They, along with other public-entity bonds, use a new structure with a mix of traditional non-taxable bonds and taxable bonds offering above-average returns. The bond money will be distributed to states, the 100 “large local education agencies” recognized by the federal government, and to Native American tribes based on the number of people aged 5 to 18 in their populations.

Charter schools have built facilities with funding assistance from the New Markets Tax Credits Program since its inception in 2002.

Directed to building projects in low-income communities, most of the funding goes to housing, but community and business projects can be funded, too.

One such project is $14 million to refinance facility debt for the Thurgood Marshall Public Charter School in Washington, D.C., put together by City First Bank. The school says the bonds will save $50,000 per year, with a total value of $5.5 million, and allow it to begin spending all donor money on education for the first time in its history. The high school’s new building, completed in January, includes

13 classrooms, three science labs, a library and media center, and a moot courtroom. January was a great month – Thurgood Marshall was also named the most-improved school in D.C.

by Business Week magazine and the Council of Great City Schools.

City First Bank put together a similar package for the E.L. Haynes Public Charter School, also in D.C., which allowed it to purchase property and build a new 46,000-square-foot building to serve 468 K - 8 students. The new $21 million facility opened in 2008. In addition to two classrooms for each grade, the building has a large cafeteria/auditorium space, regulationsize gym, a state-of-the-art science laboratory, and both art and music rooms.

View Park Preparatory Accelerated Charter Schools in the Crenshaw area of South Los Angeles were the first to be financed by the Los Angeles Charter School New Markets (LACSNM) fund. View Park’s latest funding award is for its high school, which will build a new, three-story, 19,000 square-foot building, including 12 regular classrooms plus one for performing arts, a college center, administrative offices, a cafeteria, storage areas and underground parking. View Park is one of a number of Inner City Education Foundation

Public Schools (ICEF) in Los Angeles.

Another of its partners is the New Schools Venture Fund, which raises venture capital for projects focused on low-income and minority children in urban communities, and has put together funding packages for both individual and groups of charter schools across the nation.

The Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, dedicated to improving urban education, has been another contributor, and donated to many more charter schools organizations, including the California Charter Schools Association, Green Dot Public Schools in Los Angeles (which opened a school in New York in 2008), Aspire Public Schools in Oakland, California, and YES Prep Public Schools in Houston, Texas.

California, the District of Columbia, Minnesota and Utah are generally far ahead of other states in funding charter school buildings because they were originally the only states eligible for a federal program called the State Charter Schools Facilities Incentive Grants Program, which awarded five-year grants in 2004, but was never funded again. Funding

was limited to the states and the District that provided state per-pupil funding for charter schools, and they were the only four that did so.

While it isn’t part of the stimulus bill, it should also be noted that some of the most significant funding for charter school facilities to date was provided by a federal grant program titled the Credit Enhancement for Charter School Facilities, which has assisted a much broader group of charter schools since 2002. Grant funds are used to help charter schools improve their credit rating, which in turn help them borrow and leverage money for facilities.

In 2008, credit enhancement funds went to Civic Builders, Inc., which received $8.3 million to help build and renovate charter schools in New York and New Jersey. In 2007, $36.5 million in funding went to Housing Partnership Inc. in Boston, the Illinois Facilities Fund, the Low Income Investment Fund in San Francisco and the Michigan Public Educational Facilities Authority.

Previous enhancement fund winners were America’s Charter (now part of Building Hope), Center for Community Self-Help,

Charter Schools Development Corporation, Community Loan Fund of New Jersey, Inc., Local Initiatives Support Corporation, Raza Development Fund and Reinvestment Fund.

These and other organizations and businesses interested in charter schools are developing additional facilities resources for charter schools. Individual businesses have also helped charter school facility needs with resources including donated faculties, low-cost leases for buildings and direct grants to a school’s capital campaign. Some businesses have provided loans, or loan guarantees similar to the federal credit enhancement program.

The fourth bond program in the stimulus bill, Recovery Zones Bonds, will be awarded to states based on their decrease in employment as compared to the national rate. Each state will be required to allocate money to counties and municipalities with populations of 100,000 or more, based on how much their decrease in employment exceeds the state average. These bonds may be used for whatever economic recovery priorities the state, county or municipality may choose.

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Workplace Performance Improve Your Workers' Productivity and Reduce Sick Days Have you asked your employees what their New Year’s Resolution is?

If the answers are similar to my informal survey this year, chances are that around 25% of your employees want to lose some weight and get into shape this year. Obviously, it is in your company’s best interests for them to achieve their health goal because their improved health will generally translate to improved efficiency and less sick days off.

So what is your company doing to support the health goals of your employees?

To support the health objectives of your work colleagues the human resources manager just needs to get in touch with the staff and find out what their health goals are. You can do this in casual conversation or in a staff memo or email.

Have a follow up conversation with the work colleagues who do want to get into shape and ask them how your company could help them achieve their goal.

At the suggestion of this, some human resource managers defensively reply, “We already provide discounted gym memberships and health insurance.”

But is this what your work colleagues want?

Low participation rates in many so called Corporate Wellness programs seem to suggest that many corporate wellness programs are not so interested in improving the health of their work force. For one, the large majority of companies do not even measure the fitness or health of their staff. It would be easy to conclude that it is a greater priority for the company to be seen to be supporting the health of the work force than delivering actual results.

But how can you measure health results of your employees?

I suggest three ways to measure results...

The first is to have an annual physical. This could include a standard blood test (by a wellness-based doctor), fitness test (at the local gym with a trainer) and a postural assessment/spinal screening (by a chiropractor).

I recommend a doctor with training in wellness and prevention to do and interpret the blood test because they often request a more thorough blood analysis of certain biomarkers of health rather than the standard cholesterol and blood sugar levels.

It is important to monitor your fitness levels because it is a reliable indicator of how well workers will be able to maintain your energy at work. There are a variety of fitness tests that can be performed. When I studied exercise physiology at the University of Adelaide, we compared different fitness tests that estimated your fitness level (Your VO2 max) to the actual accurate measurement of your fitness (VO2 max). The problem is that this test requires you to exercise to exhaustion while being connected to all sorts of machines and monitors.

We found that different fitness tests were not an accurate measure of your actual fitness but we did find that if you continue to do the same fitness test over time, the results are an accurate indication of your fitness progress. So when you measure your fitness with these tests that

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estimate your fitness, don’t worry what fitness level it says that you are.

Just use the results to monitor your progress and beat your previous result.

Getting a spinal screening and postural evaluation is one of the most important things to get measured because aches, pains and injuries are one of the most costly ailments for business. It is essential that these evaluations are performed by a chiropractor because they are the best trained in detecting potential weak spots and imbalances that can cause injury in the future.

Many companies and schools have had nurses or physical therapists do a spinal check by getting them to bend forward and that’s it. Because their training is more on rehabilitating injuries than prevention, using such professionals has resulted in failing to prevent so many injuries that have been waiting to happen.

Since back pain is one of the biggest costs to business you want to be checked by the profession that has the best record in dealing with back pain.

Secondly you should ask your employee to rate their health. I can recall many years ago that an article published in a major medical journal shocked the medical profession. The study concluded that doctors should actually listen to what the patients were saying because if you asked the patients how they were, typically their answers were quite accurate.

You just need to ask your team to rate their health on a scale of 0 -100.

Then ask them what needs to happen to their health in order to get them their score to 100. This presents the perfect opportunity to ask how your company can support them in this goal.

Thirdly you should monitor their lifestyle with a simple lifestyle evaluation form. That way you can identify potentially harmful lifestyle habits and direct them to healthier alternatives and advice.

With many people making New Year resolutions to get into shape, the start of the New Year is the ideal time to assist your employees with their health goals because they are often more motivated at that time.

In reality you can start any time.

The fact that you even ask your employees about their health and are interested in their health shows your employees that the company cares about them. Not only will this help the health of your employees and confer productivity benefits to your company, the fact that your company shows that you care will create loyalty and produce work productivity benefits on their own.

About the Author: Dr. Paul Lanthois is the director of The Work Life Balance Foundation, www.WorkLifeBalanceFoundation.com, that develops personalized health improvement strategies for company employees that result in greater productivity, energy, stress relief and less days absent through illness.

Article Source: http://human-resources-mgt bestmanagementarticles.com

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Midwest & West

River Heights Charter School

Focus on the Environment and the Arts Produced by Eric Gunn & Written by Jim Barlow In a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood of West St. Paul, Minnesota, is a project-based charter school of 75 students -- a mix of suburban and big-city kids whose education centers on environmental awareness and the arts.

“I am very proud that we have a very eclectic group of kids here who are from a wide socioeconomic range and find connections despite their diversity through their academic projects,” says Jane Davin, now in her second year as director of River Heights Charter School. The school has four eighth-graders, with the remainder spread through the 9th to 12th grades.

Davin taught music and art history for 14 years in private and public schools in the south Minneapolis suburbs. When the charter school where she had been teaching closed, she accepted the River Heights position; 25 of her former students found River Heights to be their best public school option.

As a theme-based charter school, River Heights is unique in their student-centered and project-based curriculum. Students work closely with advisors to research and work in a chosen passion and strength. This not only empowers students to, in a sense, define their own education, but also gives them many more opportunities and activities that have come to define the River Heights community.

Reaching Goals A recent school-wide accomplishment was meeting Adequate Yearly Progress in all five assessments last year, even though River Heights doesn’t receive a title grant under the state’s NCLB funding. “We met AYP,” she said. “We were a minority in our region that did. There’s a laundry list of schools that didn’t.” She cites “a disconnect” between the expected outcomes of NCLB and actual academic progress of students. “It is a flawed indicator.”

“We’re a project-based school,” Davin said. “When parents bring a child to us, we try to let them know that this is a school that encourages kids to think independently, to learn how to create and innovate projects, based on what they love to do -- what they have a passion for, or perhaps what they hope to do when they go off to college or consider careers.”

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Not Your Parents' Public School River Heights Charter School is a member of the EdVision Cooperative, which was founded in 1994 by educators in the Minnesota River Valley. The 13-school cooperative is based on educational entrepreneurship as an alternative to formal, highlyregulated agreements with traditional school districts. Initially, EdVision also sponsored River Heights.

“I appreciate the atmosphere of the EdVision Cooperative,” Davin said. “It encourages innovation in the schools, rather than replication and standardization. We want our school to be a green school and more of an arts-and-music-minded school.”

The school today has a $750,000 budget overseen by a sevenmember board, which includes three parents. About $525,000 comes from the state based on average daily attendance; the remainder comes from lease funds, state money paid based on facilities and student numbers, as well as from grants and fundraising.

The school is on the second floor of an office building shared by other businesses, including a physical therapy center and an insurance company. Office-open partitions separate River Height’s classrooms and offices, which include an arts and presentations studio, advising areas and administrative space. The student body, more than 15 percent Hispanic, many of whom enjoy the luxury of living nearby, fits comfortably in the facility. The school’s ninemember staff includes five licensed teachers, including Davin, who teaches language arts, two educational aides, a student-staff liaison, and an administrative assistant.

Since 2007, River Heights has been sponsored by the Audubon Center of the North Woods, which serves in an overseeing position, financially and strategically, and it is a partner in mission definition for the school’s emerging environmental focus.

Educating the Mind and Soul When typical discipline problems emerge, one of the consequential

“I am very proud that we have a very eclectic group of kids here who are from a wide socioeconomic range and find connections despite their diversity through their academic projects.” ~Jane Davin

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Midwest & West options Davin’s staff uses is restorative justice, in which involved parties meet around a table to clear the air and find solutions.

A recent success story: two students, a junior and a senior, “diverse in personality and background,” worked on a musical recording project. “The respect and appreciation for the other’s perspective was a great learning experience in itself, and the music they produced was impressive,” Davin said.

Impressively, one of River Heights’ seniors serves as the school’s own on-site IT expert. Another student helps others with autism

and other emotional disabilities, and recently completed her senior project in Early Childhood Development.

“We have a caring community of learners. Kids are not numbers here." ~Jane Davin

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As part of their projects, students learn appropriate educational concepts and material that prepares them for not only assessment tests but also for life after they graduate. “We are working really hard to communicate to kids the importance of being collegebound, at least to a two-year college, hopefully, a four-year college,” Davin said.

“We encourage students through their projects to create a portfolio so that if they go to check out different colleges and sit down with a dean or anyone in an interview process they won’t just have a

transcript -- they will be able to bring a portfolio that will show some of the important projects they worked on through their high school career that really describe even more about what their skill sets are.”

This spring, the school launched a “hope study” to seek new ways to assess things that are important in every student’s life. “It’s not just academics we are interested in,” Davin said. “It’s not just GPA [grade-point average]. There is more to a student’s academic assessment necessary for recording than simply their GPA, important as that is. Who the student is emotionally, socially, and as a whole person is also vital to becoming a productive member of society.”

The independent nature of the school’s approach, she said, sometimes allows students to complete graduation requirements before senior year, allowing them to enroll in college courses offered free through the state’s Post-Secondary Enrollment Options program for eligible students in high school.

As a true innovator, River Heights Charter School enjoys trying new methods. With proof that their new strategies are successful, students in their neighborhood are lucky to have such an exciting option for their education.

“We have a caring community of learners. Kids are not numbers here,” Davin said. “Teachers care about them and we love them.

When they don’t perform, we are able to speak to each situation individually and effectively and they respond. Kids want to be here. We are creating a great learning atmosphere. We are an experiment…which means we need to pay attention, try new things, and be willing to adjust and recognize when a new and helpful dynamic emerges. Often, the students themselves ignite these new ideas and practices. I see our school as very unique. I just know that if you have the right atmosphere, creative, innovative students and a bright and supportive staff who are not afraid to ‘think outside of the box,’ a lot of really great things can happen.”

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Midwest & West

Pine Forest Charter School The Waldorf Difference Produced by Todd Rodgers & Written by Jacqueline Bodnar Approximately 80 miles from the Grand Canyon, in Flagstaff, Arizona, you will find a charter school that dances to a different beat. The Pine Forest Charter School was founded in August 1995 as a K-4 public school. Today, the tuition-free public charter school is inspired by Waldorf Education principles, has an annual budget of $2.2 million, and 225 students, grades K-8. With 23 full-time and another 15 part-time faculty members, Pine Forest Charter School is well equipped to meet its mission.

The Pine Forest Team Leading the group is its principal and director, Michael Heffernan.

Working at the school for the past six years, he has been in the education field since 1989 and has seen the school grow and strive to meet its goals.

His experience includes teaching in schools in Flagstaff and Tucson, as well as in jails. He also spent three years teaching English as a Second Language in Ecuador, and has logged time as a professional white-water rafter.

All of these experiences have put Heffernan in a position to help lead other teachers and administrators, and to work with his students to create a successful learning atmosphere. The school places an important focus on teacher development and incorporates a variety of enrichment programs into each school year.

“We have dedicated teachers and staff,” says Heffernan, “and we have a

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very low teacher-absenteeism rate. I also do my best to buffer the teachers from dealing individually with how to incorporate NCLB [No Child Left Behind] and state mandates. I take the info from those, put it into the curriculum, and bring it to them in another way.”

The school works with teachers to offer both in-house and extended opportunities for enrichment. There are summer school programs, special training sessions, retreats, and special guest speakers who are consultants on the Waldorf Education model. The teachers also all attend a 5-10 day intensive training program in the summer, which is held in Sacramento or Denver. Summer trainings which our teachers attend are held at Rudolf Steiner College in Fair Oaks, CA, as well as institutes in Colorado and New Hampshire.

Additionally, there are weekly meetings, which include playing musical instruments and singing songs, and in-service days In-services are workshops held once a month for teacher enrichment. Past in-services have included artistic expression, classroom management, integrating Arizona State standards with the Waldorf curriculum. .

The School’s Approach Pine Forest Charter School is one of 600 schools around the world that uses the Waldorf curriculum. There are approximately 30 to 40 publicly

funded schools around the United States using Waldorf education to some degree who are members of the Alliance for Public Waldorf Education.

There are over 150 tuition-based independent schools registered with the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America. Publicly funded schools in the US are not members of this association.

Waldorf education integrates the arts, humanities, sciences and mathematics. Its methods encourage creativity and imagination, and foster a sense of creative thinking that aides the student for the rest of his or her life.

With the approach they take, the mission is to prepare students to be selfdisciplined and independent, and to think analytically and critically. It also aims to create a sense of reverence about the world’s beauties and wonder.

What sets a Waldorf experience apart from other teaching models? The integration, according to Heffernan.

“At the surface level, the teachers integrate art throughout the curriculum,” he explains. “Artistic expression is interwoven in all curriculum areas. Our teachers use thematic blocks and integrate illustration, painting and music.”

Along with core classes, the school offers a variety of activities for student involvement, including volleyball, basketball, and a chess club. They have placed a high priority on teaching their students trust, mutual respect and harmony.

The Need for Redirection When it comes to handling student misconduct, the school takes the

approach of treating the behavior that took place, rather than labeling the child. Several years ago, the administrators sat down and devised a student discipline plan. Today, that plan has been used to successfully address situations where students may be disrespectful in the classroom. If students are referred to the principal’s office, he sits down with them to discuss the issue and determine a consequence. If there are three incidents in a row, then there is a parent/teacher conference. On very few occasions, the school has had to resort to in-house or out-of-school suspension.

“We try to treat the behavior and find out why that behavior took place,” says Heffernan. “We take a very humanistic approach.”

Charter School Challenges The challenges that face Pine Forest are similar to those that other schools around the country face. For starters, Heffernan believes that charter schools should have more flexibility in determining what a “highly qualified” teacher is, in regard to the NCLB. “That way, we can think outside the box concerning who we hire and train,” he says.

For example, Pine Forest has some teachers from Europe, and some specialists in their respective fields (e.g., art, music, etc.), who don’t technically meet the NCLB definition of “highly qualified.” Another area of concern for the school is the standardized tests that are required, and the numbers of students they must have take them. The school annually has a 20 to 25 percent special education rate, and they are only allowed to excuse 2 percent of students from the tests. This scenario can present a challenge for

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Midwest & West a school that is trying to keep their standard test scores up.

Additionally, Heffernan cites funding as a “huge issue” that schools are faced with today. There are many standards in place regarding what is expected, and not enough funding to help schools get there. Along with this challenge, another sign of the times is that the school has many parents who work multiple jobs, making it harder for them to be directly involved with the school and their child’s education.

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The school works to encourage parental involvement through volunteering in the classrooms, as well as trying to get them familiarized with the curriculum, understanding the balance, supporting their kids with homework, and helping them study. The school also encourages the parents to ensure that the kids get proper sleep and healthy food. At school, the students are not allowed to have candy or soda.

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Pine Forest’s Future

Michael Heffernan, Director, Pine Forest Charter School

Pine Forest is currently working on plans for a new “green” and environmentally-sustainable school building. The 10-acre site will be more like a community learning center, where they can become a model for regenerated energy. Additionally, they will continue their community service projects of visiting local senior centers to play music, engaging in outdoor street clean-up projects, and holding a May Day Festival each year.

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The 10-acre site will be more like a community learning center, where they can become a model for regenerated energy.

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Education Team Partners Helping Charter Schools Across Arizona Produced by Todd Rodgers & Written by Shelley Seyler In 2000, Education Team Partners (ETP) began its services and was established as a business in 2002 in Tempe, Arizona, “totally by accident,” as founder and president Alex Hristov likes to put it. This “accident” has since become a busy and booming business with the objective of assisting and supporting charter schools throughout the state. Alexander Hristov and Elka Hristova started the business with a unique concept for organizing information systems and knowledge management. Equipped with those tools, their company Education Team Partners has risen to the top of its field, delivering quality, growth, and academic achievement results to charter schools in Arizona.

Unexpected Success “If you had asked me 11 years ago to talk about charter schools, I would have said, ‘what kind of animal is that,’” jokes Alex. “Then one day a friend

at Arizona State University (ASU) approached me for assistance with a charter school that was in financial trouble,” and this was the beginning for ETP. His reputation gained steam and more charter schools began turning to Alex when they found themselves in financial strife. “After about four or five calls, we decided to treat it as a business,” says Alex.

Today, he and his wife, Elka Hristova, lead Education Team Partners to support the vision of educators and professionals from charter schools in three main areas: facilities, grants, and technical assistance. ETP also helps with strategic planning and assists those schools that are in start-up, developmental, and growth mode. “When charter schools want to expand, new stricter charter regulations may require as much as 300-page new charter application, and charter schools seek advice from us,” comments Alex.

Before Education Team Partners was even on their radar, the couple

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West

worked at ASU, Elka gaining extensive experience in sponsored project management and competitive grants. She also holds certifications as a Senior Grants Consultant, Reviewer, and Administrator from Research Associates and CUFS Certification from ASU. Alex completed a Ph.D. study in Public Affairs at ASU and also worked as a Project Manager / Executive Trainer and subsequently a graduate courses instructor for the university. The two came to the United States from Bulgaria where they completed their undergraduate studies.

Working as a consulting company and a think tank, ETP relies solely on word of mouth and referral demand to keep the wheels of the business turning and its doors open. “Right now ETP is experiencing huge demand for its services and is fully booked until August,” explains Alex.

pre-arranged shape…ETP…can custom build a model that fits best the individual charter school needs and desires and provide a dream charter school facility.”

Technical Assistance ETP’s technical assistance and strategic planning programs involve program design, implementation, and development and strategic planning for charter schools. This can include development of new charter applications, charter renewal applications, business start-up work plans and financial projections, development of academic and managerial abilities, management of growth and strategic planning, building leadership capacity, and school community development.

Grant Services

Focused on Quality

ETP specializes in competitive grants and national competitions. Enjoying a high success ratio, ETP does not take a lot of clients but develops strong relationships with those who do turn to ETP for assistance. The organization completes needs assessment, detailed studies, and collects detailed data sets so it is well-informed of the school’s current status and where it wishes to be. If the situation arises where the charter school is not in the position to be eligible or with sufficient capacity to apply for a specific grant, ETP will work with the school, sometimes for several years, to help the school get there.

Working with approximately 10 to 12 charter schools at any given time, ETP is staying dedicated to the importance of quality. “We want to stay focused on quality and not compromise quality for quantity. We are carful in expanding Education Team Partners to make sure that the quality of services does not go away,” explains Alex.

The Charter School Cornerstone: Facilities When it comes to facilities, ETP provides a wide spectrum of services which takes into account each school’s specific needs and determines what the most cost-effective approach for the school is. This often involves a creditenhancement component and a grant program and conventional financing products which, as a combined effort, may provide 100 percent facility financing. ETP has assisted with this challenge in many other ways including tax-exempt bonds, conventional commercial loans, specialty loans, credit enhancement grants, specialty grants, and private source financing.

Impressively, ETP has been consistently generating an average of 50 plus full-time employment positions every single year in its clients’ organizations, which are a direct result of the efforts of Education Team Partners and the leadership, expertise, and commitment of Alex and Elka.

ETP also has another vision: to help educators translate their dreams into a charter school and assist them to make a major difference in public education. Offering top-quality services to local charter schools, the state of Arizona is lucky to have an organization within its borders that is able to do just that.

ETP’s services for facilities financing do not stop there. The organization has also helped develop funding models to secure school facility financing; helped schools find a location and property for the facility; worked with local jurisdictions to determine regulatory requirements; and assisted with executing the real estate transaction, among others.

Most recently, ETP established collaboration with CORE Construction, Arizona’s largest and the nation’s seventh largest school builder, and OrcuttWinslow, an experienced architectural firm, to form a manage-design-build group that caters to the unique challenges of charter schools. This team is equipped to cover all functions necessary to develop a charter school facility. Whether it is a new construction project or existing facility acquisition, ETP and its partners are equipped to tackle both. The team will be in constant communication from the “get go” regarding the specific aspects of each project, thus eliminating the many odds related to project costs and financing, major player selection and involvement, project coordination and management, and one of the most critical items: time management.

“Bottom line is: the ETP business model for charter school facility development does not try to mold the charter school needs into a specific

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Midwest & West

New Designs Charter School Building Strong Foundations Produced by Eric Gunn & Written by Prem Desai The director of school operations at New Designs Charter School in Los Angeles, Warren Sata, also happens to be an awardwinning Japanese Taiko drummer. He only gets to do it “once in a while” though, as there’s so much happening on campus, he says with a grin.

It is no joke; Warren certainly has his hands full but he is well-equipped for the task.

Before coming to New Designs he did his teacher training at Columbia, got his administration degree from Harvard, worked briefly for the Department of Labor and even did a stint on Capitol Hill before coming to the school.

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Founded in 2004, New Designs opened accommodating grades six through eight.

Since then, the school has grown to two locations in Los Angeles, one called Watts and the other University Park, and now includes grades six through 12. The annual budget is $6 million and Warren looks after 32 teachers and 15 administrative staff.

“We’ve grown steadily from originally around 100 students to what we have now, approximately 600 students,” says Warren.

Their Methods Serving urban youth from downtown Los

Angeles, New Designs is a secondary mathscience-technology school, with a curriculum that hinges on these subjects as well as English and history. Just as important as the curriculum is the school’s focus on fostering a safe learning environment that incites in its students the desire to strive for academic, social, and emotional achievement and allaround wellness.

What is perhaps most unique about New Designs’ methods is its blending of human and structural components through the ethical modeling of problem solving, leadership, teamwork, and excellence.

Aiming to release the next generation of

Midwest & West to meet those requirements because of the way it is structured.” Warren acknowledges, however, that the foundation of the program is strong; but there are times when it needs to have the ability to differentiate for the needs of a particular school.

Their curriculum is necessarily reviewed by the state and by local universities; however test requirements often dictate curriculum for most schools. “The way we like to say it is, we’re not necessarily teaching to the test but we do have to do a certain amount of test prep. There’s a fine line between teaching the test and doing test prep.”

Their Teachers

leaders and professionals into the world, the school teaches to make a difference in the students’ academic lives.

In addition to this vision, New Designs has an important overarching goal: to prepare its students to meet and exceed UC A-G requirements. Set forth by the University of California, these guidelines ensure that all in-coming college freshmen, regardless of major, are prepared to participate fully in the University’s first-year program.

To achieve this, the school designed before- and after-school programs, a Saturday Academy, and collaborates with the Fulfillment Fund, a group dedicated to preparing inner-city youth for college and economic stability.

“We are de-emphasizing direct instruction and trying to do a little more hands-on stuff with the kids - activities and project-based learning,” he explains. New Designs recently received a grant from the Gates Foundation to do project-based training, enabling the school to bring this to both school campuses.

Their ethos is simple: “differentiation is …at the centre of what we’re attempting to do.”

Warren admits that Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), mandated by No Child Left Behind, can be a burden. “Let me give you an example: two years ago we met our criteria in 21 out of 22 categories but according to

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AYP we did not meet the standard because we missed the one. We are going through a review and probably will be up to speed for that year. But sometimes it can be a bit tough

Warren does have some flexibility in picking teachers, despite No Child Left Behind’s criteria. The school is able to hire people who are on university internships or who are on track to be licensed by a certain date.

This allows New Designs the flexibility it needs as an inner-city school that serves mainly minority students and underserved populations.

“Sometimes it can be challenging to recruit staff who are willing to stay here rather than them just looking at us as a career step.

What we really would like to see here is a core of teachers that we can train and build our program around and have something sustainable for the kids we have coming to us in the sixth grade and all the way up to when they graduate 12th grade.”

To that end, the school has staff development for two hours every other week, four full days per year, and for two weeks before school starts. Even administrators work towards a set of standards.

New Designs is also trying to diversify their course selection. “We would like to have more elective offerings. We do have an early college program, so we’re able to offer courses that expand our offerings after school hours are over,” explains Warren.

Parents and Community Involvement As for misconduct, they have an intervention program and a dean of students who tries to prevent problems from occurring. “He meets

with any kids who may have issues that need attention at the start of the school year, or maybe at lunch, maybe after school. He keeps in contact on a regular basis to develop some skill sets to try to prevent there becoming an intervention issue.”

Counseling is also available on campus through Mount Sinai Hospital which provides two counselors, free of charge, who are available on campus everyday. When a student faces expulsion, the dean, principal and vice principal sit down with parents to draw up a plan.

This is not the only time parents are involved.

“We have a school leadership team where parents can voice their perspectives and become more integrated. We also have a curriculum team where parents can contribute to what we do. On occasion in the past we have even had some parents involved in the advisory board of directors.”

Parents are also asked to give 30 hours of volunteer time each year. Though the school does not penalize students whose parents don’t participate, it does encourage them to

be as involved as possible throughout the year. Advisory leaders from New Designs have also completed home visits to help build a bridge between the parent, the family, and the school site.

New Designs is involved with the community through partnerships with charities, the University of Southern California, and other local bodies. “We partner with the Los Angeles Dodgers,” says Warren. “They recently did a visit with us and brought 26 major-leaguers to the school which was a great opportunity for the kids.”

Over the next five years, Warren sees the potential for expansion into two new charters in the school’s future.

“The big question for us like any school is: can we sustain what we’re doing with the current economic climate? We’re going to face some cutbacks from the state next year so that makes us a little nervous. Other than that it’s the usual day-to-day stuff that keeps me awake at night.” At least he has his drumming to unwind.

Midwest & West

Chula Vista Learning Community Charter: Addressing Real-World Issues Produced by Eric Gunn & Written by Jacqueline Bodnar In 1998, the Chula Vista Learning Community Charter School (CVLCC) opened its doors in southern San Diego County, California. The school has an important mission: to take on real-world issues and teach students concepts they can apply to their world and use throughout lives.

Thus far, it has been successful at achieving this important objective.

The school has accomplished this goal through a variety of educational tools that have helped to create a unique learning environment for the elementary students.

The success of the school’s approach can be measured by its growth in popularity.

When the school originally opened its doors, it had 190 students; today it has 588.

CVLCC students are exposed to a unique learning environment and a dedicated team of professionals ready to assist them on their journey.

The CVLCC Team Leading the educational team at CVLCC is Dr. Jorge Ramirez, the school’s principal, who has been with the school since 1998 and in education for the past 17 years, mainly in the role of principal. Over the years, Dr. Ramirez has also taught in both public and private schools, as a bilingual Spanish teacher.

Currently, he is teaching methods courses for new teachers at San Diego State University.

Dr. Ramirez’s team also includes the school’s instructional focus specialist and the instructional leadership team which is made up of teacher representatives. The Chula Vista Elementary School District helps drive the school’s educational challenges and goals it puts forth.

Leading a team of 55 teachers and personnel, Dr. Ramirez has helped establish the school’s vision and set the pace for how to get there.

Making the implementation of teacher quality-improvement measures a high priority, the school now operates several programs that benefit both the students and the teachers.

One of the most unique aspects of CVLCC’s learning approach involved their Dual Language program. The 50/50 model utilizes Spanish and English with the purpose of eliminating the achievement gap that adversely affects minority students. The school uses research-based strategies to ensure that this is an effective method to reach both English- and Spanish-speaking students as a way to impact social and educational change.

Through this program, the school also promotes the development of bilingual and multicultural competencies and supports Spanish and English instruction as a second language for relevant students.

CVLCC also utilizes the services of the Developmental Studies Center which provides coaching for teachers and arms them with tools that increase the reading comprehension of their students. The process took two years, and helped teachers develop effective strategies that improve literacy and strengthen students’ personal responsibility for their education.

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Spring Spring2009 2009

“There is a lot of reflection involved with this program,” says Ramirez.

“Teachers have a lot of opportunity to reflect.”

Teachers also benefited from training provided by Targeted Leadership Consulting. This five-year process helped CVLCC to establish a uniform instructional focus throughout the school. They did this by analyzing student data to identify areas of concern, and then created a plan to address those areas.

“We found out through our data that, in the area of reading, our kids were not achieving,” says Ramirez. “They helped us identify the skills that were needed, and we used strategies that worked.”

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The school is also very transparent when it comes to teacher observation. Ramirez is part of a process known as an instructional walk-through, where they pick a day after the planning and development has been completed and walk around campus, observing teachers in action, taking note of who is doing well, and where improvements may be needed.

Developmental Studies Center (DSC) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to children’s academic, ethical and social development.

DSC develops classroom and after-school programs that help children build capacities to think deeply and critically, and enable them to continue learning throughout their lives.

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DSC carefully integrates curriculum materials with reflective professional development.

Unique to CVLCC is the fact that students are taught half the day in English and the other half in Spanish. This is designed to enhance students’ cognitive development and increase their chances of academic success. Learning is focused on core curriculum courses, with an emphasis placed on character development.

Additionally, students have access to computer labs, where they learn the various parts of a computer and how they operate.

Students are also introduced to the library and throughout their elementary years, they learn how to locate, check out, and recognize materials that may be of interest to them.

One of the most innovative routes for reaching the students and giving them skills they can carry with them for many years is

referred to as a MicroSociety®. In creating a MicroSociety within the school, students take an active role in creating their own small city. They participate in everything from naming it to having a job. The experience even includes the students forming their own government and currency, and learning about money. Through spending 45 minutes each day in the society they helped create, they work, contribute, and even make purchases, thus learning skills that can be carried with them and used beyond the walls of the school.

“When the school was established, we wanted to create an educational society that would challenge students,” adds Ramirez.

“This gives students the opportunity to create their own society. It gives them the ability to experience leadership in a variety of ways.”

Like many charter schools, students at CVLCC do follow a closely enforced dress code; however, the school rewards the students by allowing them free-dress days on their birthday, as well as on other special reward days.

A Collaborative Effort Like most schools, CVLCC recognizes the

We are committed to inspiring teachers and empowering students. DSC curriculum programs are researchbased and highly interactive.

The materials ignite minds with academic rigor and simultaneously instill values of kindness, helpfulness, personal responsibility and respect for others.

We take pride in customizing our services to meet the specific needs of your site.

Partnering with DSC provides schools and districts with the tools to create a culture of learning on your campus and a sense of autonomy, belonging and competence in your students.

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Midwest & West importance of parental involvement when it comes to student success and higher achievement. Because of this, the school encourages parents to get involved, and also has a parental volunteer requirement of 30 hours each year. Throughout the school district, CLVCC has been highly recognized for its parental involvement.

Those hours can be completed in a variety of ways, including attending parent activity nights and parent/teacher conferences, volunteering, supporting enrichment programs, and becoming a member of a school committee. The school also offers a variety of parent training programs that cover various parenting topics.

Students are expected to maintain good classroom behavior and to respect their teachers and classmates. When discipline issues become a concern, depending on the severity of the misconduct, students have conferences with parents, teachers, and the principal.

Going Forward During the school's planning and inception its collaborators referred to CVLCC it as the “Dream School.” They envisaged a place where students would acquire tools and skills that would be applicable in the real world. Today, the creators have achieved this, and they have set still more ambitious goals for the future of the school.

“Five years from now, we see ourselves serving as a model for the state, the nation, and the world,” said Ramirez.

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Literacy First Charter School An Old-Fashioned School with a High-Tech Edge Produced by Eric Gunn & Written by Prem Desai

“We like to say, ‘it’s an old-fashioned school with a high-tech edge,’” says Debbie Beyer, Executive Director of Literacy First Charter School and its parent group in El Cajon, California. Beyer studied in New Mexico and at San Diego State, taught in bilingual general education classrooms, taught Spanish, developed and directed a homeschooling program and served as a consultant for bilingual education before deciding to tackle the challenge of starting a charter school.

Byer and the teacher group approached the school district in 1999 and, after some battling, a charter was approved in June 2001. “School was starting in August of 2001 so we had about 50 days to get school together,” says Beyer. “We had a church that had an education building they weren’t using that was just kind of a mess so we started trying to make a school. We assembled a team of about six of us and started knocking on doors, putting flyers through doors and or car windows, just every ridiculous thing we could to get students,” explains Beyer.

Just two weeks before school started, the school had three students registered. They then started holding information meetings in the community and took out ads in the local penny saver. By the end of August, school started with 114 students for the first year.

Word spread quickly and by the end of the second year, this number grew to 300 with a waiting list. “We were maxed out,” says Beyer.

Beginning with grades K through 3, Literacy First added a grade each year and today has about 1,000 students in grades K through 8,

across four different locations, and a budget of approximately $6 million. The school just recently began construction of the high school in fall 2008.

“That was before the whole financial market crashed,” says Beyer. “Right now we’re frozen with the building because the bond market is frozen. So we’re kind of coming up with plans d, e, and f.”

In the meantime, the school is thriving with a dynamic mix of students. Located on the “urban fringe,” as Beyer describes it, the school attracts a diverse student body.

Approximately one-third of their population consists of political refugees from Iraq who are Chaldean Catholics and were being persecuted for their religious beliefs. Seeking refuge in the United States, many found their way to Literacy First. With Chaldean and Arabic being their native tongue, these students are English-language learners.

Thanks to the school’s great technology and teachers, Literacy First attracts students from all socio-economic brackets. “We’ve got both ends of the spectrum!," says Beyer smiling.

Their methods are simple. “We have a longer school day and a longer school year,” says Beyer, “and our teachers specifically train in brain-based research methods - how the brain works and how to use that in the classroom.” The school also has a very strong literacy program, a strong character education program, and a strong focus on American History.

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Another secret: “lots of hands on and lots of parent involvement we get 30 additional full-time staff on campus everyday, that’s how many volunteer hours we have every year.” Indeed, a recent auction of artwork by the kids raised $7,000 from engaged parents to help fund school trips.

Parents are also very involved in any case of misconduct, though serious incidences are rare. “When students misbehave parents are brought in quickly. We have a standardized policy where kids are given a time out or have to make restitution or we send them home or parents come up to school and they work on the problem together.”

For high school students, Literacy First conferences with parents to

get them on the same page as the school in regards to good behavior, “so the expectation is there from home too,” says Beyer. The school also has a unique system where each teacher is responsible for a cohort of students who they keep track of for two years. Through interactions at lunchtime, on a break, calling, or email, students are connected to adults they respect, leading to a much stronger relationship. “That’s been very effective for us this year,” Beyer adds.

Given the school’s unique student body, No Child Left Behind, is, naturally and unfortunately, a double-edged sword. “There are parts of it I’m not really crazy about but be it good, bad, or indifferent it has forced people to raise the bar. At the same time, we have these children who came from Iraq three months ago and we have to give

them the test. How is this kid going to write an essay? He can’t even understand English,” says Beyer.

“The major concern is that you don’t want teachers teaching to the test, or having it as the only measure.” Throughout the year, Literacy First teachers give quarterly assessments and complete an individualized profile for each student where they identify each student’s learning style along with a variety of other student learning indicators.

Teachers also get together on a regular basis to have lunch or after school, in grade level teams, and discuss topics. A unique professional growth strategy that LFCS has implemented is called “staff conversations.” Each year the discussions are themed - this year it’s technology.

There is also a week of training before school starts as well as in-service days and quarterly school-wide professional growth opportunities.

“We’re always looking at making things better. Right now we’re looking at our spelling program and looking at using a different strategy for teaching spelling. Last year we changed our handwriting program because some staff felt the one we had wasn’t working well.”

Literacy First isn’t afraid to implement new programs to supplement their curriculum. For example, they started a local spelling bee circuit to encourage children to get excited about spelling.

Literacy First also has a relationship with Specialized Therapy Services who sends consultants to help teachers cater to special education students. “We’ve never seen the level of attention that we’re getting, or the progress that students are making and I think that part of that is that our regular classroom provides so much attention too.”

In five years, Beyer sees the construction of their new high school being complete as a LEED certified and eco-friendly building. That’s what keeps her awake at night, she says, but added that she’s looking forward to getting a waiting list for this new facility and expanding with even more students in the years to come.

The opportunity to dynamically impact a community in this way is a blessing to the entire community, teachers, parents, students and administration alike.

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Kua O Ka La Public Charter School Education with Aloha Produced by Eric Gunn & Written by Prem Desai Sitting on 600 acres of oceanfront, Kua O Ka Lā Public Charter School in Hawai’i is not your typical charter school. Principal and co-founder, Susie Osborne, describes their ethos as “education with aloha - which means education with caring and respect.” The school clearly embodies this idea as it demonstrates great respect for the environment and Hawaiian culture. The school is completely solar powered, uses composting toilets, and teaches Hawaiian cultural skills such as fishing, net making, and carving, integrated through core academic curricula.

Founded in 2000, the school has 83 students from grades six through 12 as well as K through first, 18 staff, and a budget of approximately $800,000. The school is currently expanding, adding a grade each year until they service grades K through 12. Kua O Ka Lā is preparing for the expansion of the student body, hoping to have 115 students next year, 130 the year after, and happily expects that the number will continue to grow from there.

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Osborne and her partner, Keikialoha Kekipi, established Ho`oulu Lahui Inc., a nonprofit, organization that was the predecessor to Kua O Ka Lā Charter School, in 1995 after the desecration of an ancient burial site. It was through meeting with community kupuna (elders) that Keikialoha learned of his lineal decadency to the people of this wahi pana (sacred place). Osborne and Keikialoha founded a non-profit on the site to provide cultural education programs to serve mental health programs, prisons, public schools, and many other organizations that had a high percentage of native Hawaiians. Osborne’s exposure to the kids who became involved with the non-profits’ work sparked in her the desire to create a school that would provide a unique, hands-on, culturally-driven experience for students.

“I would see the lights come on when they were doing relevant, hands-on projects,” said Osborne. After charter school legislation passed, Osborne knew she wanted to “really deepen our work with

the native Hawaiian community.” The pair then decided to use the site owned by Kamehameha Schools for a charter school.

“40 acres of it is one of the most intact, ancient Hawaiian village sites that remain today,” she says. “So it is rich with fish ponds, a very healthy rainforest and all the archaeological features. We began stabilizing the village and running cultural education programs within the different community groups.”

Their Challenges The definition of highly-qualified teachers is, of course, even harder to meet at such a specialized school. “I’m fortunate that I have a very receptive, open-minded, dedicated, wonderful staff,” says Osborne. “They’re willing to get whatever certifications they need.” To maintain the cultural element in the school’s curriculum, Osborne often pairs teachers with cultural experts and practitioners. Though this is expensive and has led the school to seek alternate funding in the form of grants, it is worth it for Osborne and Kua O Ka Lā students.

Teachers meet every Friday to plan for the coming week, as children do their cultural electives - including hula dancing and ukulele on that day. “We’re doing a lot of work with professional learning communities; developing those within our school so we’re not always looking for outside help. We’re building more a culture of professional learning within our school environment.”

Teaching our Keiki Mai käpae i ke a`o a ka makua, aia he ola ma laila.

Do not set aside the teaching of one’s parents for there is life there. - Hawaiian proverb (Pukui, 2065)

Pictured are haumäna, students, working in a lo`i kalo, taro patch.

Land-based programs aim to nurture mind, body and spirit by connecting learners to the `äina, land.

At Kamehameha Schools, we strive to prepare students for educational success, while creating opportunities for learners to develop and affirm deep connections to the knowledge, practices and language of their native culture. In this environment, today’s keiki, children, are equipped to become part of a vibrant Hawaiian community tomorrow.

Kamehameha Schools is a private, charitable trust, operating a statewide educational system comprised of three K-12 campuses and 31 preschool sites statewide. Additional services and support are provided through collaboration with charter and public schools, outreach programs and community partnerships.

www.ksbe.edu

Midwest & West Kua O Ka Lā also takes a different view on special education, with 25 percent of their students in this category. “We’re fully inclusive with it,” explains Osborne. “If you place a ninth grade special education student in a ninth grade class, nine times out of 10 you’re setting them up for greater frustration and ultimately failure.”

Osborne explains that they place students for English and Math at performance level. She acknowledges this does not necessarily conform to No Child Left Behind but cites an example of an eighth-grade student who was doing trigonometry. “Why hold that child back?”

Assessments do shape the curriculum to an extent but are balanced with Kua O Ka Lā’s cultural focus. “There needs to be multiple measures of success. That’s one measure but that’s not the comprehensive picture,” said Osborne when asked about standardized testing.

“How can you have a school system founded for research and innovation opportunities - how can you do something so completely unique such as our Hawaiian charter schools - and expect to make drastic turnarounds in one year? Give us some time, give us some flexibility and let us use other measures to determine the success of our children to ensure that upon graduation they are more wellrounded.”

The school does use their own measures for rigorous assessments (NWEA) but must, of course, adhere to the State HSA tests.

“Our students that have been with us for a few years tend to get better with the traditional academic testing but I think it’s a little difficult. As we stabilize our growth over the next few years, that will be easier to handle. It’s definitely a concern and my prayer is that President Obama will listen to the common sense wisdom out there that can guide the spirit and intent of NCLB. My hope is that we’ll see some drastic change under our new president.”

They work hard to include parents too. “We’re a very values-driven school so Hawaiian values really drive everything,” said Osborne.

When the school conducts the entrance interview with families, they sign an agreement that indicates their agreement to the school’s cultural values and dedicates parents to a minimum of 16 hours each year of support to the school. With 80 percent attendance at parent nights, the school is continuously looking to strengthen this program. They are currently planning a fundraising concert with the involvement of many families.

In the case of student misconduct, parents are also involved with the school to draw up a behavior plan. Though some students have been suspended, no child has ever been expelled. The expectations and values of such a culture-driven school do a lot of the work to keep students in line. “We don’t call the teachers Mr. and Ms.,” she says. “Everyone is uncle and auntie and immediately that makes it a more family-feeling environment.”

The Importance of Community Focused intensely on infusing Kua O Ka Lā with Hawaiian culture, the school maintains important relationships with numerous

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Midwest & West

community organizations whose support elevated the school to where it is today.

While trying to get the school get off the ground, the Queen Lili’uokalani Children’s Center offered much-needed aid. During the school’s transition from a non-profit to a charter school, the center helped them draft grants and assisted with other technical and financial support, realizing the two had the same mission: to help Hawaiian children.

Looking Ahead

The future means greater expansion and improvement for Kua O Ka Lā and they’re even in talks with Harvard to become the first We are extremely proud of the tremendous accomplishresearch school in Hawai`i to ments made by Susan Osborne and Keikialoha Kekipi, bring multi-discipline researchers founders of the Kua O Ka La Charter School. Susan and and practitioners together to Keiki recognized the importance of the cultural roots of their better understand and validate students as a connecting point/source of personal pride and the culturally driven educational identity, which in turn formed the foundation of their further methods our native Hawaiian learning. Together with caring and dedicated cultural practicharter schools rely upon. tioners and instructors that the students could identify with,

“

they created a learning environment that emphasizes ‘hands on’ experience and which utilizes the beautiful land resource at Puala‘a as a learning laboratory for their students. The interface of traditional culture with modern technology and wisdom, is another aspect of their program success.

- Lance Niimi

“One important concept is the bridging of ancient and modern Other important relationships for technologies,” says Osborne.

Kua O Ka Lā include the Hawai’i “My school is the first school Charter School Administration in Hawai`i to be operating on Unit Manager, Queen Lili‘uokalani Children’s Center, Hilo Unit.

Office, Kamehameha Schools, solar power and commercial Na Lei Na`auao and the Hawai’i grade composting toilets; we Charter School Network. “Community support, engaging local won the EPA award for region nine and other multiple awards for clubs, informing the community; when times get tough, you can call environmental issues. [Students] learn how to make ancient torches upon your community,” commented Osborne. from the kukui nut but also to operate the solar systems within the school…I want them to be grounded in the culture but very prepared for today’s world - both ancient and modern.”

”

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Beehive Science & Technology Academy A Small Charter School With Big Ideas Produced by Eric Gunn & Written by Jim Barlow Beehive Science & Technology Academy (BSTA) in Salt Lake City, Utah, touts itself as “a small charter school with big ideas.” Last fall the school literally rose to new heights, moving out of a comfortable but cramped basement of an office building to a facility more than three times as large, on two acres of land, three miles away.

“We didn’t have a playground and had to use a parking lot for playing,” said Frank F. Erdogan, Beehive’s executive director for the last two years. “It was so hard to deal with the tenants and owners, and it was hard to keep our students safe and secure. Finally, we moved to this building last summer.”

Erdogan was born in Azerbaijan and received his chemistry education in Turkey. He taught chemistry in charter schools in Los Angeles, California for a year, then started a charter school in San Diego and served as the principal for one year. The junior-senior high school, which opened in 2005, was founded amid growing concerns over problems educating the area’s children in math, science and technology. Since its opening, the school has achieved its annual academic yearly progress in every area. This year, at the new location some five miles south of downtown, approximately 200 students are enrolled.

“There are a lot of factors in a school environment -- among them parents, teachers, staff, the turnout rate for teachers and students,” he said. “All those factors should be put together when determining if a school is doing well. We’re supposed to teach life to the kids, not just a test.”

As an open-enrollment public charter school, the academy, however, must meet curricula standards of the Utah State Office of Education by providing the essential basic education components specified in Utah Core Curriculum. BSTA students must take the statemandated criterion-referenced tests, but “it is not the mission of the academy to ‘teach the test,’” Erdogan said. The curriculum and instruction at BSTA is designed to teach students to master critical thinking and other crucial elements the test seeks to assess while still being flexible enough to meet different students’ needs.

BSTA, operating this year on $1.3 million budget, opened in August 2005. It is governed by a five-member board, on which Erdogan serves as a non-voting member. The school features a science-minded college preparatory program. According the school’s Web site, the curriculum “is designed to provide students with a solid foundation in humanities and social science as well as math, science and technology.” The goal is prepare students to be “responsible and educated members of the society who have the

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skills and understanding to participate and work productively in our increasingly technological, diverse, and multicultural society.”

“We have programs for highly achieving academic students and also for challenged students,” Erdogan said. Student progress is monitored by homeroom teachers. If a student, at any level, is found to be at risk of failing, teachers are required to arrange meetings with parents.

A part of Beehive’s culture is a clearly defined dress code, and a detailed guideline for personal appearance for all students. All students must wear navy-blue, polo-type-style shirts with the school’s logo affixed on the upper-left chest.

To help enhance the school’s science-heavy curricula, teachers get professional training from the California-based Accord Institute

for Education Research. While that training is geared for preparing students for the Math Olympics, Erdogan said, “we actually get their concept in many different areas, such as after school tutoring programs, academic clubs for high-achieving students and our curricula.”

An example is the Advanced Math and Science Program for gifted and talented students, which prepares students for possible competition in the International Mathematics Olympiad, International Olympiad in Informatics, International Physics Olympiad, International Biology Olympiad, Intel Science Talent Search and Utah State Science Fair.

It is not easy to find high-caliber science teachers who fit the school’s programs, while also meeting NCLB standards for highly qualified teachers, admits Erdogan.

“It is hard to find highly qualified math and science teachers in the USA. For me, I hire teachers from different countries. If you’re looking for someone who is high qualified, but they don’t have teaching credentials, they have to take many steps so they can be coined highly qualified by the state standards. We have to follow some sort of processes; that’s fine, but not accepting some candidates as highly qualified teachers is hard for us.”

6 of his 18 teachers are from foreign countries. Assuring that candidates from non-English-speaking countries will be able to communicate with the school’s students is important. Candidates must first prove their English proficiency to their consulates, and

they are interviewed in their home countries or by telephone by school staff. “Although this is the case, there have been problems with these teachers communicating with the students at first, but in a couple of weeks, they overcome this problem easily,” said Erdogan.

Recruiting successes are clear, he added, pointing to one teacher who received a gold medal at a national science competition; another won a national computer-Olympics competition and yet another received an award from the president of his home country in recognition of his teaching performance. “We really try to hire very intelligent people from other countries to help bring success to our program,” Erdogan added.

Parental involvement also is crucial to Beehive’s success, he said.

Parents are strongly encouraged to volunteer for 30 hours per child.

“Our parents are so much involved that most of them exceed the limits. In every part of the school, you can see our parents. They do the cleaning. They organize field trips. They organize fundraising events. They take care of our library. They organize our lunch program. They serve.”

In addition, teachers each year are urged to visit every student’s home to touch base with parents and students outside of the academic environment. The home-visit program, while voluntary, aims to promote partnership between parents and teachers, encourage parental involvement, help parents understand the school’s educational policies, explore each student’s learning style, understand the emotional and social needs and behaviors of students, and identify changes in students’ interests and concerns.

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Spotlights

Regional Spotlight: New England An Overview of New England Charter Schools Written by Lauren Muscarella In late February 2009 during an address to a Joint Session of Congress, President Barack Obama said, “We know that our schools don’t just need more resources. They need more reform. That is why this budget creates new incentives for teacher performance, pathways for advancement, and rewards for success. We’ll invest in innovative programs that are already helping schools meet high standards and close achievement gaps, and we will expand our commitment to charter schools.”

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Obama has consistently urged states to lift limits on charter schools and some have been more responsive than others. New England’s six states, though close in proximity, have varying levels of engagement on the issue of charter schools.

Currently, state law caps charter school enrollment in individual communities. Rep. Eugene O’Flaherty D-Mass., and Sen. Jack Hart D-Mass. both filed legislation that would lift the cap and allow more charter schools to open in high-need communities.

In Massachusetts, a state that boasts 63 active charter schools, some legislators see charter schools serving the inner-city, low-income, minority students and want to encourage more of the same. Others fervently disagree.

Another piece of legislation introduced by Rep. Karyn Polito, R-Mass., would change how charter schools in Massachusetts are funded. According to the Massachusetts Association for Public Charter Schools

(MAPCS), the proposal would shift onehalf of charter public schools’ funding out of the Chapter 70 formula and into a separate budget line-item, exposing half of charter school funding to annual attacks by the teachers union, superintendents and school committees.

Taking this course of action would be a sharp deviation from Massachusetts’ consistent generosity and support of charter schools.

The state currently sends money back to the districts after students leave. Replenishing the funding is a sign that Massachusetts recognizes there are fixed costs and gives those districts time to adjust their budgets or back fill seats, in which case they don’t lose state aid.

Its neighbor, New Hampshire, a state with 12 active charter schools, has been confronted by similar legislation. Recently, the House passed an amendment that would jeopardize the state’s public charter school program if it was made into law. According to the New Hampshire Center for Innovative Schools (NHCIS), the amendment limits start up funding, adds redundancy to the approval process to become a charter and extends the moratorium on state-approved charter schools for two additional years to June 2011. This amendment would harm New Hampshire’s ability to compete for federal start up grants by showing a lack of support for charter schools and further confusing or micro managing the state’s charter school law.

The NHCIS released this statement after the amendment passed, “At a time when New Hampshire is taking positive steps to streamline charter school authorization encourage local authorization and applying for potentially millions of dollars in federal aid, this amendment is unnecessary, adds another layer of bureaucracy and can be harmful to the public charter school program in New Hampshire.”

While debates heat up in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont do not have any active charter schools.

With tough economic times prevailing, many public schools are losing funding and shutting down. Educators see these closings as an opportunity to open charter schools to curb high school dropout rates that have run rampant, in Maine especially.

While Vermonters have been somewhat

divided on the issue, charter schools have garnered substantial support over the past few years in Maine. Maine is currently in the planning stages and will soon submit a bill modeled after the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools (NAPCS) in Washington, D.C., to finally bring charter schools to the state. According to the Maine Association for Charter Schools, MACS, the bill will “seek to expand learning opportunities for disengaged students who are underserved by the current system,” turn failing public schools into charter schools, provide teachers with an active role and voice in students’ academic goals, grant eligibility for funding from the Federal Charter School Grant Program, FCSGP, and allow Maine to accept students from out-of-state on a space-available basis while charging them tuition.

The outcome from the varying degree of advocacy for charter schools can only be measured in time. There are, however, several studies being conducted in states that show the benefit of charter schools, especially for those in areas of distress. The Massachusetts Charter Public School Association (MCPSA) is engaged in a federally-funded, three-year endeavor called Keeping the

Promise: the Massachusetts Charter School Dissemination and Replication Project (KTP). Through KTP, MCPSA studied five high-performing urban schools, documented their keys to success, produced papers, a book, and a film, and offered study tours. The goal was documentation, dissemination, and replication of critical and common practices in high-performing urban charter schools.

The results showed improved retention rates and standardized test scores, two of the several reasons many educators continue to support charter school expansion.

In some states expansion has been stunted by a resounding lack of support. Both Connecticut and Rhode Island, each with less than 20 active charter schools, have hit a similar wall of issues as their geographic counterparts regarding funding and legislation.

Despite these challenges there have been measurable successes. Many educators support charter schools because they are run by independent boards, make skillful use of longer school days and enhance curricula.

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Spotlights

State Caps on Charter Schools The Argument to Remove Them Written by Jim Barlow Calls for removing caps that limit start ups of new charter schools have landed support this year from two important voices, including that of President Barack Obama, who, in March, cited the innovation charter schools bring to the country’s educational landscape.

The other important voice was that of Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, who in January urged New York and other states to drop their caps and increase funding. He too cited educational innovation and improved teacher effectiveness as benefits of the charter-school movement.

Charter school caps challenge these benefits.

They limit the number of charter schools allowed in a state and place restrictions on individual authorizers of charters; still

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other caps restrict the numbers of students a charter school can have. Considered arbitrary by professionals in the movement, caps fail to take into consideration school quality, academic achievement and progress of students enrolled in charter schools and proponents of charter schools worry that caps will stymie efforts to improve public education.

Why we Have Caps Existing caps can be traced to early opponents of charter schools: public school boards, their administrators and financial managers feared a draining of quality students and significant loss of public funds; teacher unions worried that non-unionized teachers would gain an advantage; and politicians were concerned

about threats to the traditional public funding mission of government. All worried that students of low socioeconomic families and the disabled would be turned away from charter schools, when, in fact, the opposite is the case.

In some states, if not all, caps also exist to limit charters’ share of money. While the pros and cons are debated about the repercussions of caps, the important questions about charter schools are overshadowed, their growth and improvement stunted, and their benefits overlooked.

According to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS), 26 states and the District of Columbia currently have caps. The number of schools allowed in each state is often

tied to political motivations such as policymakers being concerned with how charter schools will affect school districts as a whole.

Arguments most often cited in cap debates don’t go deep enough, noted Andrew J. Rotherham in “Smart Charter School Caps,” a study published in September 2007 by Education Sector, an independent education policy think tank in Washington, D.C. “Unfortunately, the debate about charter schools rarely accounts for such performance variation, just as charter caps do not differentiate between good schools and lousy schools,” he wrote.

Rotherham’s conclusions call for the removal of the politically and emotionally charged caps now in force and the implementation of “smart caps,” in which charter school successes and failures would be monitored.

“Smart charter caps,” he wrote, would allow “for deliberate capacity-driven growth, would direct new resources to high-achieving schools and “work within today’s political reality.” Poor-achieving or financially troubled schools, under such an approach, could be shut down to maintain efficient charter-school numbers within jurisdictions.

Benefits of Removal While arguments to maintain caps reappear repeatedly in media coverage, supporting data to do so is rarely offered that compares academic assessments of traditional public and charter schools. Such studies have provided conflicting results or failed to find significant differences.

Charter school supporters say their schools offer a diversity of schooling options, reduce public funding because they receive on average 22 percent less than traditional schools, provide comparable or superior instruction, cater to minority students and meet demands by parents. Caps have only stifled these improvements from reaching more students and led to waiting lists of thousands of students, particularly in Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina and Texas.

According to a national poll cited by the NAPCS and conducted in April 2008, 77 percent of registered voters favored giving parents more options for where to send their children to school. Removing caps on

charters would only increase these options as the numbers of charters grow within each state.

Another surfacing argument to remove caps is that competition for students will drive overall improvement in schools across the board. This argument also appeared in North Carolina’s General Assembly in March, when a trio of Democrats, responding to a Republican call to lift or expand the state’s cap, said they would support the move if existing schools were shown to be functioning fully, reported the Durham Herald-Sun. “It will remove some money from our traditional schools, but these are public schools,” said State Rep. Verla Insko about the proposal. “The traditional [school districts] should not be afraid of the competition from charter schools.”

President Obama’s vision for education includes the removal of caps. In his March speech to the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, he criticized state caps that limit new charter schools without consideration of student progress. “That isn’t good for our children, our economy or our country,” he said.

executive officer, praised Obama’s remarks: “With 365,000 students on charter waiting lists, there is no excuse for state laws that stifle the growth of these schools. President Obama has taken a bold step by challenging states to get on the reform bandwagon.

He’s right to couple the promise of growth with a demand for accountability -- and nowhere will you find stronger support for high-quality chartering than in the charter movement itself.”

With support from our new president, charter caps may yet begin to go by the wayside. Were this to happen, increased charter school numbers would not be the only benefit. Administrators and others could then focus more energy on accountability, improving charters already innovative service to education in America.

Sources: • • • • • •

http://www.publiccharters.org about schools/ factsheet http://www.publiccharters.org http://www.publiccharters.org/node/786 http://www.educationsector.org http://www.gatesfoundation.org/annual-letter/ Pages/2009-bill-gates-annual-letter.aspx http://cell.uindy.edu/transformingeducation/ charterschoolstudy.php

Nelson Smith, NAPCS president and chief

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Spotlights

Spotlight on Behavior Teaching Anger Management and Emotional Control to Children These days, anger management is a hot topic among educators. More and more, we see angry students committing acts of violence against classmates. Educating the public on the topic of anger management is the best way to help children manage their anger in an appropriate way.

The secret to anger management is to intervene early. Most children use anger because it is their only coping mechanism for daily stress.

What is anger?

Angry feelings are normal emotional reactions to daily stresses in our lives that range from irritated to enraged. It’s natural for children to experience emotions of anger but it’s critical to teach them proper coping mechanisms so that they do not express these feelings in an uncontrollable manner.

The goal as a parent is not to completely stop the angry emotion since they are hardwired into our brain. The goal is to teach the children to develop self-control and make appropriate choices regarding how to handle these feelings.

Strategies for teach children to handling anger appropriately: 1. Lead by example – Research shows that children model their parents so if the parent blows up in fits of rage in front of a child. The child will learn to use anger as a coping mechanism for their situations in their lives.

2. Teach empathy and tolerance. Empathy is the ability to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. Children that understand the feelings of others deal better with disagreements with other children.

3. Remain calm – Yelling at angry children to control themselves will only increase the intensity of the outburst. Remaining calm yourself will assist the child caught by the anger bee.

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4. Use positive self-talk – Teach children to stay in control by saying affirmations. Affirmations are simple positive messages that the child can say to themselves in stressful situations. For example, here’s a few that a child could learn: “Stop and calm down”, “Take a deep breath”, “Stay in control”, or “I can handle this”. Suggest a few to your child and practice it with them. The more you practice it with them the more likely they will use it during an anger driven situation.

5. Teach them deep breathing – During an angry episode, our breathing changes to quick short breathes. This breathing causes a cascade of physiological changes in our body that creates anger. By learning to controlled, deep breathing, children can short circuit the angry response. Teach your child to inhale to a 5 counts, then hold for a 2 counts, and exhale for a 5 counts. For young kids, I call this breathing exercise “Dragon’s breath”. Have them pretend that they are breathing out fire with the exhale and that the fire is the anger leaving the body.

6. Identify anger triggers – Most children respond to specific triggers that cause anger. Ask your child “What situations make you angry?” The answer will vary from frustrations over homework to bullying at school. Then, talk about solutions that are more appropriate to the problem situation. You can

even rehearse the scenario by role-playing.

7. Watch for the warning signs – When anger starts to arise, they will show signs. Tell your child that it’s important to listen to the warning signs. Ask your child what the specific warning signs that show that they are getting upset. Some examples of signs could be talking louder, heart pounding, face getting red, clenching fists, or breathing faster. Once you identify the signs, start pointing them out when they show signs of getting upset. For example, “I see your breathing fast” “Looks like you are getting anger” “You’re clenching your fist. Are you getting upset.” This self-awareness will snap the child back into reality and help them manage the anger early – before it’s out of control.

The secret to successful anger management is to intervene early. Most children use anger because it is their only coping mechanism for daily stress. By identifying problem situations and providing them new techniques for coping, you will keep the anger bee from grabbing hold of your child.

Author: Tim Rosanelli

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Spotlights

President Obama and Charters

From the Campaign Trail to the Stimulus Written by Shelley Seyler The long road that led President Barack Obama to the White House began what seems like eons ago. While on the campaign trail, education was certainly a important topic of debate and one in which his opponents were less apt to attack his experience: in the 20 years since he arrived in Chicago, the public school system became one of the most improved in the nation. He also pumped $150 million into the education budget and served on two education boards at the University of Chicago.

Though never untouchable on the subject, President Obama has, since the beginning, proven his knowledge of the complicated and often personal subject. Many who have listened to his speeches, whether as a candidate or as president, gained insight into why he is as intelligent and hard-working as he is. Even if one did not vote for him, these two facts do seem undeniable.

His openness revealed this story: his mom used to wake him at 4:30 in the morning, before school started, to tutor him. When young Barack complained, she said simply, “this is no picnic for me either, Buster.”

Campaign to Policy Thus, the importance of education fostered in him since a young age, President Obama makes his deep concern with the nation’s educational system known; and he is already taking steps to correct it.

While still a candidate for president, Barack Obama promised to double federal funding for public charter schools while holding those with poor records accountable. Now that he has ascended to the oval office, recent education news is heavily in favor of charters, and concrete policy reforms are beginning to take shape.

Setting the tone in mid-December for his education reform, President Obama appointed Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education. Duncan served for seven years as chief executive of Chicago public schools, the third-largest school district in the country. During President Obama’s Chicago days, Duncan and the then senator would hold frequent and inquisitive discussions on education policy.

In late February, the administration included increased support for high-quality charter schools in its fiscal year plan for 2010. The exact numbers will not be released until April but the administration’s favorable attitude toward the movement in certainly positive progress.

The budget also calls for increased transparency around results for teachers and principal preparation programs.

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Most recently, Duncan laid out how the government hopes states will spend their stimulus money: reform. “More money will be dedicated to charters than ever before,” he said, warning that if states don’t do some innovative thinking on the money’s usage, “we’re going to come down like a ton of bricks.”

The president has also, on more than one occasion, called on those states that currently have caps on the numbers and size of charters to lift these restrictions. The administration is “promoting innovation and excellence in America’s schools,” and believes that charter schools are “one of the places where much of that innovation occurs.”

Limiting their growth, the president continued, “isn’t good for our children, our economy, or our country.”

The President’s Biggest Challenge With much of the news surrounding the president revolving around the economy, it is important to note the inclusion of education financing in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, also known as the stimulus plan, drawn up to fix the economy. With the markets in sustained disarray, many are commenting that this may be his biggest challenge.

Though the jury is still out on exactly how each dollar will be allocated, it is clear that, in the education stipulations in the ARRA, there is potential for improvement in the charter school market. Duncan has $5 billion of this fund available to shape school reform and reward states that push for classroom innovation, $650 million of which will support partnerships between schools, or schools and non-profits.

During a visit to a charter school in Washington, DC, the president spoke of “rewarding innovation the way it’s taking place here.”

All this positive talk is certainly reason to hope for increased federal support of this innovative and forward-thinking movement. With a president who genuinely values and understands the importance of education, the future certainly looks bright.

Sources:

Brooks, David. “No Picnic for Me Either,” The New York Times. March 12, 2009: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/13/opinion/13brooks. html?scp=30&sq=obama%20charter%20schools&st=cse Dillon, Sam. “Obama Looks to Lessons from Chicago in his National Education Plan,” The New York Times. Sept. 9, 2008: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/10/us/politics/10educate.html Dillon, Sam. “Obama Picks Arne Duncan for Education Post,” The New York Times. Dec. 15, 2009: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/15/obama-picksarne-duncan-for-education-post/?scp=44&sq=obama%20 charter%20schools&st=cse Glod, Maria. “Stimulus Billions May Spur School Reform,” CBS News.

March 26, 2009:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/03/26/politics/

washingtonpost/main4894098.shtml

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Spotlights

American Education in a Globalizing World: Where We Are and How Charters Can Help Written by Jim Barlow How does the United States stand in educating youth for the world stage?

Numerous studies in the last decade paint a muddy landscape. Americans tend to do well in reading at an early age, overall, but they barely rank in the top 25 percent among industrialized countries in math and science.

In general, a review of numerous published reports says the U.S. is lagging in all areas.

U.S. fourth-graders were behind Russia, Scotland and France in reading, according to a 2006 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). Twelve percent

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of U.S. fourth-graders achieved the highest performance benchmark. The results were in a report comparing the U.S. with other members of the Group of Eight countries published in March by U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences.

Girls did better than boys in all countries.

However, 70 percent of U.S. eighth-graders cannot read at grade level “and most will never catch up,” noted the Broad Foundation.

In math and science, regardless of the studies reviewed, the United States is not in the foreground.

Most recent findings, released in the 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS), found Japan’s fourth- and eighth-graders dramatically led the Group of Eight (G8) which includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These eight countries participate in international studies and meetings to compare and discuss educational performance and policy issues. The study found that 26 percent of Japanese eighthgraders achieved the highest benchmark targeted. U.S. students were in the middle, at

6 percent, among the other countries, whose proficiencies ranged from 8 percent (Russia) to 3 percent (Italy).

In science, the TIMMS findings in 2007 found Japan again leading the Group of Eight, with their students rising to the top by eighth grade. U.S. 8th-grade boys outperformed their female counterparts Americans finished in the middle. The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), in 2006, found 15-year-olds in Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom and Germany ahead of U.S. students. More troubling was one-quarter of U.S. 15-year-olds scored at or below proficiency levels on combined science literacy.

In 2005, a study by the Paris-based Organization for Cooperation and Development found that U.S. 15-yearolds were below average in their ability to apply math skills to everyday life, ranking far below Finland, Korea, the Netherlands, Japan, Canada and Belgium at the top of the rankings. The Broad Foundation’s chart on the study shows that America’s top math students, overall, rank 25th, with U.S. students falling two years behind grade level by eighth grade.

Janet Mertz’s study led by the University of Wisconsin, published in the October 2008 issue of Notices of the American Mathematical Society, added another level of fuzziness to U.S. performances in math.

U.S. culture, she found, discourages girls from exceeding in math and the girls who do succeed are almost always immigrants or daughters of immigrants from countries where math is a priority.

Mertz’s study examined data tracking U.S. high-school students’ performance from the nation’s most competitive contests such as the International Mathematics Olympiads and the Putnam Mathematical Competition.

A common thread surfaces in the studies reviewed, including those cited here.

Something happens in the transition years of middle school, showing itself through declining scores in the 8th grade in the United States.

The Center for Public Education argues that the U.S. is not failing as media coverage of international comparisons suggest. However,

a statement at the organization’s Web site notes: “Knowing where the U.S. stands is the first step. A closer look into the data will help us better understand how the U.S. compares to other countries and uncover what other countries seem to be doing well that might apply here in the United States.” The center also noted the marked performance drop.

Where do charter schools fit in? Many are putting an emphasis on exploring instructional techniques that boost students’ overall performance with the goal of seeing their students successfully go on to college. Many have special science and math programs. Their approaches and success stories surface in the profiles appearing in this magazine. Charter school administrators often note how their schools accept students who had been struggling -- many insufficiently challenged -- in traditional schools.

Where do charter schools fit in? Many are putting an emphasis on exploring instructional techniques that boost overall performance with the goal of seeing students successfully go on to college.

The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools recently featured two such success stories. The first took place at Independence Charter School in Philadelphia. The school this year won the Goldman Sachs Foundation Prize for Excellence in International Education, which carries a $25,000 prize and recognizes efforts in cultural awareness, world history and a global curriculum. The 700-student K-12 school requires all students to study Spanish, Japanese and Arabic in addition to core academic subjects. A diverse offering of world geography courses are also among the school’s courses.

Another success story: Last fall, Luke Andraka, an 8th grader from Chesapeake Science Point (CSP) charter school, finished fourth in the nation in the U.S. Middle School Science Competition, the country’s biggest national science fair. Luke’s story rises to the top because the school pinpointed an untapped scientific potential during his

initial assessment at the school. “CSP took a boy who was unsure of himself and doubted his abilities, and gave him the opportunity to start believing in himself,” Luke’s mother told the alliance. “I know for a fact that he would never ever have been successful in math and science without the amazing staff at CSP.” In Salt Lake City, the science-and-mathoriented Beehive Academy, provides its teachers with professional training from the California-based Accord Institute for Education Research. Concepts learned in the training help teachers prepare students for the Math Olympics and are used in afterschool tutoring programs. Numerous charter schools have science and math at the top of their priorities.

“Despite its fundamental importance to our society, we’ve lost our way on education,” wrote Thomas J. Donohue, president and chief executive officer of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in October. In his column, he called for more charter schools and increased funding for them. “The statistics don’t lie: 1.2 million students drop out of high school every year. Seventy percent of eighth graders cannot read at grade level. Fewer than 10 out of every 100 low-income students will ultimately graduate from college. And if that’s not enough, the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report 2008–2009 ranked the quality of primary education in such countries as Estonia (11th), Tunisia (21st), and Slovenia (24th) ahead of the United States (25th). Something must be done to reverse this trend.”

Donohue’s comments were in response to the newly published report by the chamber’s Institute for a Competitive Workforce. He wrote that that charter schools “are designed to provide tuition-free public education for students and their parents, liberate teachers and administrators from red tape, and allow more innovation in the classroom. In exchange for this flexibility, charter schools accept high accountability, knowing that they can be closed if they fail to live up to their promises.”

Donohue urged business support of outstanding charter schools, saying that the private sector can help build a supply of high-quality new schools and help provide qualified people to lead the schools. He also called for “charter-friendly public policies” to emerge from state and local lawmakers.

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Spotlights

Spotlight: Your Charter as a Business How to Resolve the Employee Morale Issue Emerson states, "Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm." A majority of the issues related to worker productivity stem from enthusiasm or the lack thereof. Individuals simply go to work despite their abhorrence of their employer, the monotony, and the products. There is no passion or pride.

Much of this issue stems from practices embedded within an organizational culture affecting morale and productivity. These include:

•

Leadership not serving as exemplars - some leaders today are narcissists, demeaning and ruthless. More importantly, leaders’ salaries can exceed employee pay by 425 times the average worker. Leaders need to act in harmony with employees and ensure equal treatment of all. Cultures where this practice occurs frequently include McDonalds, Fed Ex and UPS where employees and management are one.

•

Little or no accountability - The United States economic system is currently in financial turmoil and no one is accountable. Employees need to know that mistakes may count for learning but criminals are punished for repeat offenses.

•

Career planning and succession planning is null - simply put there is no succession planning. Most CEOs and senior managers join an organization from competitive industries and companies. Whatever happened to the mailroom climb?

•

Too many silos and departmental infighting - Companies are in business for one reason- to create clients. End the infighting and focus on the most vital asset! When the fighting ends (and everybody understands their reason for being employed) perhaps harmony arrives.

Causes of low morale correlate to the organization, its culture, and its management. After 25 years of research in this area, we find five factors contributing to organizational morale. A study by the Corporate Leadership Council reveals the tremendous impact managers have on an employee’s level of commitment. It is imperative to note that individuals do not leave companies - they leave poor managers. Organizational mismanagement contributes to negative morale. As recent as 2006 the Gallup Organization estimated there were 32 million actively disengaged employees costing the American economy up to $350 billion per year in lost productivity.

Such loss includes absenteeism, tardiness, and poor work.

To dilute the productivity impact, research shows that taking time to build relationships with employees through personal interaction, is a key step managers can take to keep morale high.

Employees need to feel trust and respect from their managers.

Employees desire feedback from management to understand their work matters.

Ending the morale issue is not easy but there are cures.

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1. Begin with talent acquisition - Start with the right people. No firm we work with ever hires on a proactive basis. Most firms conduct employment searches reactively. Seek employees that fit with the organizational culture and with the obligatory skills. Never wait!

2. Hire for skill - Talent is innate. Organizations hire for personality and behavior first and skill second. Skill is not interchangeable, behavior is. A great hire might have a wonderful temperament and lack the skill to plug a socket into an outlet. I recall a five star hotel that sought advice to correct housekeeping flaws. After five minutes, it was easy enough to terminate staff and find those without flaws.

3. Look at best practices from best people - Management focuses on "fixing those that cannot" rather than "improving those that can." Icons of performance exist in your organization. Discover what they do right and encourage others to emulate it.

4. Passion - In the 1980’s Sylvester Stallone appeared again as Rocky this time with a theme, "Eye of the Tiger." What a great metaphor for valuable talent. Seek to acquire talent that truly loves work. Passion too is innate. Employees must love what they do and how they do it. When passion is high so too is morale.

5. Focus on the Customer - Managers, the organization, and the employees must vehemently focus on the customer. Remember Winnie the Pooh, try finding Eeyore amongst staff at Disney; Southwest Airlines and FedEx, all intensely focus on servicing the client.

Lastly, managers must constantly strive to provide feedback to employees. Feedback is not an annual performance review event. It is imperative that daily communication exists for good information and improvement. Coaching, counseling, and mentoring are components of organizational morale. In addition, many attend church and hear the words, "It is right to give thanks and praise."

Many watch professional sports and view coaches coddling athletes.

We can learn something here; simple words of thanks and praise constantly improve morale and employee relationships.

Finally, the first item terminated during economic volatility is training.

Research finds that employees are assets and require that treatment.

Never stop training; this improves productivity and morale at all times.

Issues of low morale and productivity are onerous, volatile, and difficult to control. There is a need for management, the organization, and the individual to assist with success factors.

Much is dependent on the desire to change; methods chosen and consistent follow through. However, if you do nothing you still have a morale issue. Take the time, seek remedies, and keep morale high. Doing so, lowers attrition, improves productivity, increases profitability and most importantly- reduces stress. Š 2008. Drew J. Stevens Ph.D. All rights reserved.

"It is the mark of an educated mind to entertain a thought without accepting it."

-Aristotle

"A mind Once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions."

-Anonymous

"The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards."

-Anatole France

"Teachers open the door but you must enter by yourself."

-Chinese Proverb

"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge."

-Albert Einstein