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June 25, 2007
Morning Shots
Washington Post: New schools chief builds team
Acting D.C. schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee is assembling a transition team that will guide the strategy for the new school session starting in August, focusing on hiring principals and other pressing issues during the summer months.
The team will be led by Jenny Abramson, 30, an advertising manager at The Washington Post, city officials confirmed yesterday. Abramson will take an unpaid leave of absence from The Post for an unspecified period to work for Rhee, company spokesman Eric Grant said. Abramson previously directed program strategy for a year at the national nonprofit organization Teach for America.
Meanwhile, sources said Rhee is actively recruiting Billy Kearney, the Memphis director of the New Leaders for New Schools, a nonprofit training program for principals, to work on principal hiring for the school system. Last week, Rhee decided to freeze the hiring of new principals because she was concerned about the quality of the candidate pool.
Rhee is assembling her team before a scheduled July 2 confirmation hearing by the D.C. Council. The council also will hold a confirmation hearing June 27 for Victor Reinoso, the Deputy Mayor for Education.
To read more about the future of the DC takeover and Michelle Rhee's place in it, check out Jeanne Allen's Op-Ed in today's Washington Examiner.
New York Times: The high school kinship of Cristal and Queen
They graduated together yesterday from the High School of International Business and Finance, a duo who beat the odds in a school system where despite improvements, only 50 percent of high school students graduated on time last June, according to state statistics.
How they did it is a story of two outsiders who found each other in one of the small schools the city has turned to in an attempt to break up large high schools that, with graduation rates of 25 to 40 percent, became known as factories of failure.
Both girls blossomed in the performing arts, joining the choir and the theater group. They never missed a chance at a school trip — with free tickets — to a Broadway show.
The girls applied to many four-year state and city schools, but by mid-June all Queen and Cristal had were rejections. Then on Tuesday, Cristal learned that she had been accepted at the State University at New Paltz, where she had applied through the state’s Educational Opportunity Program, which offers grants, and special consideration, to qualified economically disadvantaged students.
Oakland Tribune: Oakland mother to educate Washington lawmakers
To most people, "Supplemental Educational Services" might just sound like the string of edu-speak that it is. But an Oakland mother of three has taught herself all about the private tutoring provision of No Child Left Behind that allows low-income parents in struggling schools to choose a free, private company to teach their kids after school.
Russlynn Ali, director of the Oakland-based advocacy group Education Trust-West, said such input is essential for creating sound policy. "Far too often we determine federal, local and state policy without the real and most organic stake holders — and that's the parents and students in our schools everyday," she said.
Unlike many other school districts, Shipp said, Oakland has made it easier for parents to access private tutoring for their children. Still, she noted, some school leaders don't go out of their way to make sure families access those resources.
"The jury is not in on SES," she said. "But parents should know their rights and why they need to make the choice."
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