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One step closer to common standards
State boards of education are moving rapidly to adopt the
common-standards proposal made by state governors and schools chiefs
this week, with many in the South eager to act within the next few
months, The Washington Post reports. "I think you'll get half of the
states by the end of the year, based on what they've said to us,"
said Brenda Welburn, executive director of the National Association
of State Boards of Education. According to Welburn, some Western
states appeared more cautious. The blueprint aims to replace a
hodgepodge of state benchmarks with common standards. President
Obama has aggressively encouraged state action as a key to improving
troubled schools and keeping the nation competitive. New academic
standards would affect textbooks, curricula, teacher training, and
student learning from coast to coast. The new proposal is considered
a breakthrough after years of stalemate over the federal role in
setting education standards. Both the George H.W. Bush and Clinton
administrations tried and failed in the 1990s to establish voluntary
national standards, leaving expectations for students up to states.
Related:
http://www.corestandards.org/Standards/K12/
A 'broader and more complicated' look at civil rights in education
The federal Department of Education will intensify its civil rights
enforcement efforts in schools around the country, taking a deeper
look at issues that range from programs for English language
learners to access to college preparatory courses, the Associated
Press reports. Though such investigations have been conducted
before, the department's Office of Civil Rights intends to undertake
broader, more complicated reviews that will look not just at whether
procedures are in place, but at their impact on students of one race
or another, and if student needs are being met. In remarks in Selma,
Ala., Secretary of Education Arne Duncan outlined troubling data: At
the end of high school, white students are six times more likely to
be college-ready in biology than black students, and more than four
times as likely to be prepared for college algebra. A quarter of all
American students drop out before graduation, and of these, half
come from 12 percent of the nation's high schools, which have
predominantly black and Latino populations. Black students without
disabilities are more than three times as likely to be expelled as
white students, and those with disabilities more than twice as
likely to be expelled or suspended.
Related:
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2010/03/portland_education_leaders_tal.html
Deep reform underway in Pittsburgh
Issues of what makes a teacher effective and who gets to decide this
are among those facing administrators in the Pittsburgh Public
Schools and the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers as they begin
implementation of a new performance pay plan, reports The Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette. The plan, part of the $40 million grant that the Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded the district last year,
includes seven core initiatives designed to improve teacher
efficiency and the learning environment in the school district.
These include the creation of a Promise-Readiness Corps, a team of
teachers who will shepherd the same group of students from ninth
through 10th grade. The plan also calls for expanded career
opportunities through the creation of six new job classifications
that would account for 400 teaching positions; a teacher academy to
train incoming teachers in certain subjects, and a teacher practice
and evaluation system. The district will also streamline its human
resources operation and information technology platform to better
track and place teachers and students. In addition to the $40
million grant awarded to the Pittsburgh schools, the foundation is
also funding a two-year research project in eight school districts
around the country -- including Pittsburgh -- to come up with a
method of teacher evaluation.
The rundown on I3
Andy Smarick of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute has read the
377-page final application for the federal Investing in Innovation
Fund (I3), and writes on his Flypaper blog that "not all that much
changed since the draft documents were released last year." The
competitive grant program for districts, nonprofits, and groups of
schools is still "wholly focused" on high-need students, with the
same four priority areas as the Race to the Top initiative: teacher
and principal quality; better use of data; improved standards and
assessments; and improving failing schools. Unlike RtTT, extra
consideration will be given to proposals in four targeted areas:
early childhood; college access and success; special education and
LEP; and rural education. In Smarick's analysis, "the greatest
disappointment is that the Department did not reconsider its earlier
decision to disallow private schools from making up a 'consortium of
schools'" -- the upshot of which is that faith-based urban schools
will be excluded from participation. Andrew Rotherham of Education
Sector writes that Smarick's synopsis misses the big understory --
the inclusion of evidence standards in the final draft. "These
standards set a pretty high bar for the big money that largely
reflects the views of some senior administration officials with
strong views on research evidence," says Rotherham. "As a result,
there are some organizations, including some Smarick cites, that may
not be eligible for the big money. Not because they're not producing
results, but because they don't have evaluations of sufficient
methodological rigor completed yet."
Related:
http://www.eduwonk.com/2010/03/i3.html
More analysis of the broad reforms in NYC
A new report from MDRC looks at the historical backdrop to New York
City's effort to transform its public high schools from 2002 to
2008. At the start of the decade, the city routinely assigned
students to zoned high schools, which often had thousands of
students and were overcrowded and low performing. By the 2007-2008
school year, 23 large and midsize schools with graduation rates
below 45 percent had closed or were on their way to closing, and
almost 200 new small schools for high school-aged kids had opened.
Under new procedures, all eighth-graders submit up to 12 schools
that they wish to attend, ranked in order of preference, and the New
York City Department of Education (DOE) use a computerized process
for assigning students. The sweeping reforms affected all public
high school students, but were directly intended to benefit
academically and socioeconomically disadvantaged students,
especially those living in low-income, largely nonwhite areas of
Brooklyn and the Bronx. MDRC's report rests primarily on
quantitative data from large databases maintained by the DOE, the
New York State Education Department, and the U.S. Department of
Education, but includes other sources.
A closer look at career-changers
A new report from Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation
underwritten by the MetLife Foundation points to significant
shortfalls in preparation and support for those who change careers
to teach, and debunks common assumptions about their paths to
teaching. Its survey of 504 teachers found that that the majority of
career changers -- 92 percent -- pursued teacher education through a
university program, and nearly nine in 10 considered their programs
to have been excellent overall. Programs were mainly faulted for
failing to prepare teachers for real-world challenges. On a
composite index of ratings, more than one-quarter of those surveyed
(28 percent) gave their teacher preparation a "C" or better with
regard to dealing with behavioral issues, incorporating standards
into the curriculum, and teaching English language learners. The
report also counters stereotypes about career changers as midcareer
or second-career executives taking large pay cuts to teach. It found
that nearly three in five career changers (57 percent) worked in
other jobs for less than ten years before entering the classroom.
Two out of three (67 percent) reported that their teaching salaries
were the same as or better than salaries in their previous jobs. To
be eligible for the survey, interviewees had to be current teachers
who had been teaching in public schools for no more than 20 years,
and who had held positions in other fields for at least three years
before teaching.
Teaching of the fittest? Maybe not
A "new and unusually careful survey" finds that in the case of at
least one Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) charter school, it is
untrue that student scores are high because weaker students have
dropped out, according to Jay Mathews of The Washington Post.
Mathews, who published a favorable book on the KIPP network last
year, relates that the study from the National Bureau of Economic
Research "is the first to use a randomized control group method to
determine the effects of KIPP's long school days, energetic
teaching, and strong work ethic on fifth- through eighth-graders."
Comparing the progress of 200 students admitted to the KIPP Academy
in Lynn, Mass. with another 200 who applied but were not selected in
a random lottery, the data indicate significant gains in math and
reading for KIPP students compared to the control group. In the
words of the study, this particular KIPP school "raises achievement
more for weaker students." It looked at the lowest category of
scores on the Massachusetts state test (the "warning level") and
found that "a year at KIPP Lynn reduces the probability that
students perform at the warning level by 10 percentage points for
math, with an equal likelihood of reaching the advanced level. For
ELA [English Language Arts], the table shows a five percent drop in
the warning group. . . It is noteworthy that achievement gains in
both subjects come from a shift out of the lowest group."
Related:
http://www.nber.org/papers/w15740
Progress in assessment
A new report from Achieve, a nonprofit group created by the nation's
governors and business leaders, charts changes in state standards
and practices in the years following its National Education Summit
in 2005. Five years after the summit, 31 states report having
college- and career-ready standards, including eight that adopted
aligned high school standards in the past year. In 2005, only three
states had graduation requirements that all students complete four
years of mathematics at the level of what is typically taught in an
Algebra II course, and four years of grade-level English. Today, 20
states and the District of Columbia require these for graduation. At
the time of the summit, only three states had operational P20
longitudinal data systems. Today, 16 states report that they have
begun to match K12 and postsecondary student-level data annually,
including five new states in the past year. However, at the time of
the summit, no state had a comprehensive college- and career-ready
accountability system, and there has been little progress in this
area in the five years following.
The wellness gap
According to a new study from Equity Matters, better efforts to
address health disparities that impede learning for students from
disadvantaged groups are needed to close the achievement gap,
reports Education Week. "At the national level, we're on the verge
of investing billions in our educational system, and the return on
those investments is going to be jeopardized unless these health
issues are addressed in a much more cogent way," said the study's
author, Charles E. Basch of Teachers College, Columbia University.
The report examined over 300 studies in education, psychology,
health, and other areas, identifying disparities and strategic
leverage points for improving student learning. For identification
as leverage points, health problems had to negatively affect urban
students from traditionally disadvantaged minority groups, be linked
in some way to poorer educational outcomes for students, and have
some evidence of school-based programs and policies that could
successfully address them. The six "educationally relevant health
disparities" Professor Basch selected are: vision problems, asthma,
teenage pregnancy, aggression and violence, physical inactivity,
lack of breakfast, and inattention and hyperactivity. Beyond
treatment of these problems, better coordination is needed among
school-based health-related prevention and intervention programs so
that simultaneously occurring issues can be treated together.
Related:
http://www.equitycampaign.org/article.asp?t=d&id=7381
BRIEFLY NOTED
Bid to redefine tenure
Minnesota's K-12 teachers would have to reapply for teacher tenure
every five years if a proposal from Gov. Tim Pawlenty is approved by
the legislature.
Bringing Turkish Harmony to Lone Star
In Texas, university professors and graduate students from Turkey
who thought American students were lagging in math and science
founded the charter Harmony Science Academies, which now have 25
campuses and 12,000 students K-12 statewide.
And so they come to the end
Saying that Baltimore's schools have made great strides in the past
several years toward providing better teaching to special education
students, a federal judge ended 26 years of oversight of the school
system and paved the way for a final settlement in two years.
Pawning its gold?
New York State officials are considering scrapping all but a handful
of the vaunted Regents exams, "the gold standard of academic
achievement" in the state's schools, to save millions of dollars.
So much for the experts
A widely heralded Stanford Universityrun charter in East Palo Alto
has landed on the state's worst list.
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"The
MetLife Foundation/Civic Ventures: Community College Encore Career
Grants"
MetLife Foundation/Civic Ventures Community College Encore Career
Grants explore how community colleges can help those in the second
half of life pursue new careers in education, health care, social
services, and similar fields. Maximum award: $25,000. Eligibility:
community colleges. Deadline: April 12, 2010.
"Target:
Early Childhood Reading Grants"
Target Early Childhood Reading Grants promote a love of reading
and encourage young children to read together with their families by
supporting programs such as after-school reading events and weekend
book clubs. Maximum award: $2,000. Eligibility: schools, libraries,
and nonprofit organizations. Deadline: April 30, 2010.
"Target:
Arts and Culture in Schools Grants"
Target Arts and Culture in Schools Grants help schools and
nonprofits bring arts and cultural experiences directly to K-12
students. Programs must have a curriculum component. Maximum award:
$2,000. Eligibility: schools and nonprofit organizations. Deadline:
April 30, 2010.
"ING:
Unsung Heroes"
The ING Unsung Heroes awards program recognizes innovative and
progressive thinking in education through monetary awards. Maximum
award: $25,000. Eligibility: full-time educators, teachers,
principals, paraprofessionals, or classified staff members with
effective projects that improve student learning at an accredited
K-12 public or private school. Deadline: April 30, 2010.
"NCSS:
Christa McAuliffe Reach for the Stars Award"
The National Council for the Social Studies Christa McAuliffe Reach
for the Stars Award aims to help a social studies educator make his or
her dream of innovative social studies a reality. Grants will be given
to assist classroom teachers in: 1) developing and implementing
imaginative, innovative, and illustrative social studies teaching
strategies; and 2) supporting student implementation of innovative
social studies, citizenship projects, field experiences, and community
connections. Maximum award: $2,500. Eligibility: full-time social
studies teachers or social studies teacher educators currently engaged
with K-12 students; NCSS membership required. Deadline: May 1, 2010.
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