Old Developments
in Previous Updates
Given the dormant status of the SSDC
website, we direct interested parties to the developments
on the sister website at AsoraEducation.Com. Most of the work reported there is
also relevant to a non-profit version of these schools
if one bears in mind that the organizational and
operational structures of the two versions are similar.
For these reasons, visitors will note that there are no
recent quarterly updates reported here- and there will be
none until resources are found to develop this side of the
effort.
September
2007 Updates
Bifurcation
of Effort: The Three Websites
The Stellar Schools effort, as mentioned elsewhere, is now
being pursued in two separate efforts: one is the
non-profit effort supported by this website,
StellarSchools.Org, and the other is its "sister"
for-profit effort supported by the website
AsoraEducation.Com. A
third website,
StellarSchools.Com, is
the original website of the Stellar Schools effort and
is now simply a conduit or "fork in the road" website
allowing access to the other two just mentioned.
We
Think Social Promotion Is The
Culprit
The low student proficiencies we have observed in studies
of K-12 achievement tests in several geographic locations
within the United States are, almost by definition, the
result of lax social promotion policies in public and
private schools. Given that Stellar Schools are designed
without age based grade levels and will require mastery of
each subject for students to advance, these schools will
elliminate the phenomenon of social promotion and thereby
help cure its associated ills.
Revisions To Strategic Plan Being
Contemplated
Our for-profit counterpart, Asora Education Enterprises, is
currently revising its business plan to make it more
attractive to investors and other participants. Earlier
planning suffered from projecting anemic growth of the
enterprise that was of little interest to investors and
other prospective players.
In a similar vein, the strategic plan for the non-profit
Stellar Schools Development Corporation also contemplates a
slow development over many years. We believe that donors
and sources of grant money will look more favorably on a
plan that is more rapid in its evolution. We intend to
"piggyback" on the Asora planning and thus will not embark
on our strategic plan revisions until the business plan is
fully revamped.
Report Card for Ventura County,
California
Our for-profit counterpart, Asora Education Enterprises,
offers consulting services. They were recently engaged to
map all public schools operating in Ventura County,
California. This region's schools perform at about the
national average. Social promotion, is rampant, and they
estimate that only 33% of the graduates (from a median high
school) actually earned their diplomas.
They currently have a draft report available
(VenturaProfNums.doc) which can be downloaded from
their
website. The
complete report awaits further analysis of Ventura's
private high schools, which they expect to undertake
shortly.
Finished Rhode Island's Report Card
Asora Consulting has now made NAEP scale estimates for all
public schools and districts in Rhode Island. Given their
interest in Rhode Island public and private K-12 education,
they have performed this project on a pro bono basis. The
two reports,
RIProfNumsBasicReport.doc and
RIProfNumsTechReport.doc,
describe this work and are available from our
Asora's reports on reform page.
June
2007 Updates
Stellar
Schools Development Corporation (SSDC)
Arguably
our most important current task in the development of
Stellar Schools is the launching of the non-profit SSDC
that will likely collaborate with the for-profit Asora
Education Enterprises to develop schools and services.
We have ongoing discussions with a number of individuals
who have expressed interest in becoming trustees of the
board but no actual board has yet been constituted nor has
the organization completed its incorporation. The
principals of Asora are limited by federal law from certain
kinds of participation if the relationship between them and
the non-profit is less than "arms length." Thus, those who
would perform tasks in both organizations need to
understand the legal and ethical limits involved.
During this period we have also produced a list of tasks
that need to be completed before SSDC can commence its
operations as a 501(c)(3) organization.
Getting
Catholic Educators on Board is Like Herding
Cats
Our
hope has been to find a person influential in Catholic
education for the position of President of SSDC. We say
this because we think Catholic school systems might play an
important role in Stellar School development and could
become important customers who would benefit greatly from
the more cost effective Stellar School operating format.
But our attempts to interest Catholics have produced only
guarded interest to date.
School Reform News Article
In the
April edition of School Reform News, David Anderson
authored a guest article, "Integrity Is Remedy for Harms
Caused by Social Promotion," in which he discusses the
question as to whether these "harms" constitute child abuse
and if so what to do about them.
Education
Industry Days Meeting in Washington
At the
annual Education Industry Association meeting in Washington
there was much discussion about the status and
reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind legislation. We
learned that Senator Kennedy has introduced legislation
aimed at making state administered achievement tests align
better with the well respected National Assessment of
Educational Progress (NAEP). A staffer from the relevant
Senate Committee told us that the legislation would
encourage interim measures such as mapping the often
inflated state achievement test scores onto a scale
consistent with the NAEP. We had already been working in
this area and as a result took encouragement to focus more
in this area. Our sister enterprise Asora Education has
been developing and applying methods that remove this
inflation. There are a number of available reports in
Asora's downloadable reports on reform area.
March
2007 Updates
Since the Stellar Schools Development Corporation's website
is new (as of July 7, 2007) there are no old developments
of its own to report.
However, the past developments of the earlier Stellar
Schools Company and its renamed successor, Asora Education
Enterprises, can be found on this link.