If you read this space regularly, you know that we've been doing our best to keep you abreast of efforts in state legislatures to question or unravel the Common Core State Standards. In that vein, we heard that the Alabama state Senate has approved a resolution encouraging the state board of education to undo its adoption of the common core.

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think thank that opposes the common core, reported the progress of the resolution in its blog, The Foundry.

It seems that SJR49 passed the state Senate earlier this month. The resolution "encourage(s)" the state board of education to "take all steps it deems appropriate, including revocation of the adoption of the initiative's standards, if necessary, to retain complete control over Alabama's academic standards, curriculum, instruction, and testing system." The bill, according to the legislature's web-based bill tracker, has now made its way to the House.

You might recall that there was some deep unrest on Alabama's board of education last fall, when a pro-common-core faction battled back opposition by opponents, including the governor, who is the president of the state board.

Word of the Senate resolution was circulating on conservative blogs, which were encouraging readers to pressure their lawmakers to take action on the bill.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 9:52 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Shelbi Cole, a former math education consultant for the Connecticut State Department of Education, is the new mathematics director at a consortium of 27 states working to develop assessments pegged to the Common Core State Standards.

The SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium also has just named Magda Chia, a doctoral candidate in education at the University of Colorado, Boulder, as the director of support for under-represented students.

Cole has already been involved in the work of the SMARTER Balanced consortium. She served as the co-chair of its performance task work group and was closely involved in the development of the consortium's math content specifications issued last year, a press release says. She earned a master's degree in secondary education and a doctorate in gifted education from the University of Connecticut, Storrs.

In her new role, Cole will oversee item writing, quality, and alignment, as well as the production of formative assessment and professional development materials.

Chia, whose research addresses validity and fairness in assessments across diverse student populations, will lead the consortium's efforts to ensure the assessment system is "designed to effectively serve the needs of all students, including students with disabilities and English language learners," the press release says.

The announcement follows news last week that Barbara Kapinus, a senior policy analyst at the National Education Association, was named the consortium's English/language arts director.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 9:43 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

You might have heard already that David Coleman, one of the main architects of the Common Core State Standards, was named the new president of the College Board. We reported that to you in a blog post as the news broke in the wee hours of yesterday morning.

Now we've got a story up on our website that goes into more detail and solicits the thoughts of a variety of folks in the field.

You can see it here.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

UPDATED: (4:45 p.m.)

The International Baccalaureate program will live to see another day—and school year—in New Hampshire after a legislative attempt keep it out of schools was soundly rejected by the state Senate, the Union Leader newspaper reports. The program has come under fire recently from critics who suggest that it indoctrinates students and usurps local control of participating schools.

But New Hampshire defenders of the IB program insist that the real intrusion into local control was the attempt by state lawmakers to ban an academic program adopted by school officials and popular with families.

The House of Representatives in March approved the anti-IB bill on a largely party-line vote of 209-102, with most Republicans supporting the measure.

But since then, many local students, parents, and educators have staunchly defended the prestigious curricular program, which was founded in Geneva, Switzerland, in the late 1960s. The IB program currently is offered in just two new Hampshire schools.

The House bill said a school's curriculum and instruction must promote "state and national sovereignty and is not subject to the governance of a foreign body or organization." One way to demonstrate this infringement would be for a participating school to be called a "world school," which just so happens to be a phrase used for schools that participate in the IB program.

For background on the rapid rise of the International Baccalaureate in recent years, check out this EdWeek story on the program, which includes courses of study at not only the high school level, but also middle and even elementary schools. Currently, more than 1,300 U.S. schools offer the IB program.

Supporters of the House bill said the IB program promotes an international ideology that they find distasteful, according to a recent story in the Union Leader newspaper.

"Do you want your children to be indoctrinated to be world citizens or do you want them to be residents of this state and this country?" said Republican Rep. Ralph Boehm, the main sponsor of the bill, according to a May 1 article in the Union Leader. (You can watch a video of Boehm speaking in favor of the measure here.)

Supporters of the bill also raised concerns about the IB program's connection to the United Nations. (The Union Leader story notes that according to the IB website, the program has been recognized as a nongovernmental organization of UNESCO since 1970.)

The New Hampshire Tea Party has been a strong backer of the measure. In a recent blog post, it said the bill "will bring back local control. There is no excuse for a foreign political group to be directing education in New Hampshire's schools."

But the IB programs offered in two schools, one public and one private, appear to have a lot of local support, including from students, parents, and educators.

Those backers not only dismissed the claims of global indoctrination, but made the issue one of local sovereignty, an argument that tends to appeal in New Hampshire.

"If you would want to strip and usurp the authority of a local school board, ... then we need to come up with a new motto for our license plates [other] than 'Live Free Or Die,' said Bedford High School junior Michael Courtney, at a hearing, according to the Union Leader.

In fact, Courtney, one of the main organizers of a campaign to defeat the bill, has posted a video on Youtube called Save IB in NH.

"This is much bigger than saving the IB ... curricula," he says in the video. "This is about local control. This is about Bedford deciding what is best for Bedford's citizens, not the state."

John R. White, a New Hampshire resident who testified at a May 1 hearing before the Senate education committee (and whose daughter previously studied in an IB program), offered an impassioned speech defending the program. You can watch it here.

"The opposition to IB would be hilarious were it a skit on 'Saturday Night Live' or a Stephen Colbert comic rant," he said. "But coming as it does from people elected to do the public business in the hallowed halls of Concord, it is frightening. The assertion that the IB is somehow an international plot fomented by the United Nations to undermine national loyalty and cause the disintegration of liberty in the United States is a preposterous notion."

He added: "IB emphasizes critical thinking and writing skills. It insists on scholarship. It offers vibrant programs in language, history, and mathematics, hardly the stuff of subversion."

Posted by Erik Robelen at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The College Board has announced a new president and chief executive officer: David Coleman, one of the lead writers of the Common Core State Standards in English/language arts.

The New York City-based organization made the announcement early this morning. Coleman will take over Oct. 15, replacing Gaston Caperton, who has served for 13 years as president of the organization best known for the SAT college-entrance exam and the Advanced Placement program.

Currently, Coleman is one of three founding partners of Student Achievement Partners, a New York City-based organization that played a leading role in crafting the academic standards that have been adopted by 46 states and the District of Columbia. His co-founders are Susan Pimentel, who served as a lead writer of the English/language arts standards, and Jason Zimba, a lead writer of the mathematics standards.

Coleman told Education Week that he hopes to align the SAT to reflect the common standards, a move that would help ensure, he said, that students who do well on the exam possess the skills that colleges and universities are seeking.

Student Achievement Partners recently reorganized itself as a nonprofit and won an $18 million grant from the GE Foundation to create a range of support materials for the common standards, as we reported to you in February.

The organization has stirred controversy with its "publishers' criteria," which are meant to guide publishers and teachers as they assemble materials for the new standards, but have touched off resentment in some quarters that they wade inappropriately into pedagogy. Those criteria have also fueled a debate about the role of prereading strategies in literacy instruction.

A key aim of the common standards, as you likely recall, is to make students ready for college and careers. While debate persists on precisely what constitutes college and career readiness, the standards articulate one vision of that readiness, and the U.S. Department of Education has granted $360 million to two groups of states that are designing assessments to reflect that vision.

Many colleges and universities have pledged support to the idea of allowing students who reach a "college readiness" cutoff on those "common assessments" to skip remedial work and enroll directly in credit-bearing, entrance-level courses. The tests are far from being ready, however, and that cutoff score has yet to be determined.

Aligning the SAT with the common core would touch on a piece of the college-readiness formula that higher education's support of the common assessments does not reach, and it's a highly sensitive piece: college admissions. Shifting the college-entrance exam to embody the new standards would involve the same significant shifts that mark the standards themselves.

Top education leaders—including U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, a big fan of the common standards—are on record in the College Board's press release as commending Coleman's selection as the organization's new leader.

Coleman's biographical details are in the College Board's press release. How his life and priorities reshape the work of the College Board in the coming years bears watching.

Photo: Courtesy Student Achievement Partners

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 12:06 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Okay, this is one of those posts that require a full confession: I'm a poetry freak. I can't seem to get over the idea that connecting students to poetry would be awesome. Why do I say 'would be'? Because I know people teach it; and some teachers even teach it well. But honestly, in most places it's just overlooked. And where it isn't overlooked, it's often numbingly dry and boring.

This is a crying shame, since our students are surrounded by poetry daily (the kind that's set to music), giving us about a zillion open doors to reach them and connect that cool stuff to other cool stuff from before they were born. Poetry offers us the same chance that music does to respond to rhythm and rhyme, to dig into relevant topics. But only if it's taught well.

In that spirit, I like to flak the National Poetry Out Loud contest each year. And it's tonight. You can watch the finalists compete via livestream on the National Endowment for the Arts website. The NEA partners with the Poetry Foundation to put this showcase on annually.

This isn't a poetry slam; this is about students reciting poetry from memory. In an age when folks trumpet analysis over rote memory, is this a hopelessly dated, irrelevant practice? Hardly. Knowing poetry by heart is like the muscle memory of playing an instrument or dancing. Speaking it aloud offers a dimension that reading it from the page can't do. Thank goodness for poetry slams, which bring young people's original work to the stage and showcase the performing talent that goes with it. But thank goodness, also, for this event, which brings students to life in a different way, through other poets' work.

Tonight's showcase will feature nine state finalists who will compete for the national title, which carries a $20,000 cash prize. It takes place here in Washington at 7 p.m. Eastern time.

As fabulous as the live webcast is, unfortunately it is a one-time-only broadcast. There are some videos of past winners on YouTube, but no organized archiving of the finalists' performances, something I griped about last year. For those of you who teach, the lack of full archiving is really a shame. But if you catch it, maybe it will offer instructional ideas as well as entertainment and inspiration.

You can get more information about Poetry Out Loud on the program's website, www.poetryoutloud.org, and on Twitter, at @PoetryOutLoud and @NEAarts.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 2:00 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Art fans visiting the nation's capital have some impressive options to get a little culture. The National Gallery of Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Phillips Collection, to name a few. For the next month or so, there's another competitor offering a dose of the visual arts, and it's an unlikely suspect: the U.S. Department of Education.

A new exhibition at the department's headquarters building in downtown Washington is displaying works by K-12 students from around the country, from paintings and drawings to photography and mixed-media projects. The 45 artworks are student creations born out of partnerships between art museums and nearby schools. Participating museums include the Dallas Museum of Art, the Georgia O'Keefe Museum, the San Jose Museum of Art, and the Phillips Collection.

"Art is a powerful tool for education, and museums provide invaluable access to arts education for students in this country," said Chris Anagnos, the executive director of the Association of American Art Museum Directors, in a press release about the effort. "More than just field trips, these museum-school partnerships result in more innovative programs than ever before, with a focus on long-term community engagement with students and teachers alike."

I chatted the other day with Suzanne Wright, the director of education at the Phillips Collection, about the exhibition and the work her museum is doing with two public schools in Washington.

"Each museum is really demonstrating how they engage their communities, and in particular, their museum-school partnerships," she said. "One thing that is exciting about the exhibition is that it represents so many different types of museums and projects."

The Phillips Collection works with two local elementary schools serving large concentrations of low-income families. As part of the partnership, museum staff come to the schools almost every week, she said, and students get repeated opportunities to visit the art gallery, which houses famous works from the French impressionists to American modernists. A key focus, Wright said, is to provide classroom teachers with help in integrating the arts across the curriculum.

"The goal is for the teachers to feel comfortable doing this on their own," she said.

"Our agenda is really that arts integration in particular is a way to engage students ... in a more meaningful way, that it deepens personalized learning and links to multiple learning styles and '21st century' skills," she said.

The new exhibition at the Education Department includes three artworks (featured in this blog post) from the Phillips partnership, including a three-dimensional montage on the theme of transportation created by a group of students with disabilities.

These school-museum partnerships call to mind a story I wrote last year about the work many science centers and museums are doing in collaboration with local schools. That article was part of a broader special report, Learning Science Outside the Classroom. In fact, I had the chance to visit Explora, a science center in Albuquerque, N.M.,that has been working with that city's public school district for many years.

The exhibition at the Education Department, which began May 11, runs through June 22.

UPDATE (5/16/12): The exhibit is located in the Department of Education building at 400 Maryland Ave. S.W., in Washington, DC. To visit the exhibit Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., contact Nicole Carinci at nicole.carinci@ed.gov or Jackye Zimmermann at jacquelyn.zimmermann@ed.gov.

Art images: All three artworks featured in this blog post, supplied by the Phillips Collection, are on display at the U.S. Department of Education. The unnamed piece at top was created by students at Tyler Elementary School in the District of Columbia. The second, titled "Ben's Chili Bowl," and the third, "The Big Chair," were created by students at Takoma Education Campus in the District of Columbia.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

As the general public now gets a chance to weigh in on a first draft of common standards in science, the question arises: Who is writing these voluntary standards, anyway?

The short answer? It's complicated.

Organizers have billed the development of the so-called Next Generation Science Standards as a "state-led" process. And that includes 26 states spanning the continent, from California to Maine, and from South Dakota to Georgia. But that doesn't tell the whole story.

First, those same organizers—by whom I mean state officials involved, as well as leaders at Achieve, a Washington-based nonprofit managing the process—emphasize that the standards are guided by a conceptual framework developed by the National Research Council. Basically, the NRC appointed an 18-member panel of experts in science and science education to craft that document. In fact, when I asked organizers a few questions related to the handling of some scientific topics in the draft (especially evolution and climate change), I was told that the standards draw on and defer to the consensus of that panel.

To give you a flavor of the membership of the NRC panel, here's a sampling:

• Helen Quinn: chair of the panel and professor emeritus of physics at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center at Stanford University;

• Wyatt Anderson: professor of genetics at the University of Georgia, Athens;

• Philip Bell: associate professor of the learning sciences, University of Washington, Seattle;

• John Mather: senior astrophysicist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center;

• Rebecca Richards-Kortum: professor of bioengineering, Rice University.

One additional member I'll highlight here is Stephen Pruitt, a former official at the Georgia department of education. Why him? Because last year, he was hired by Achieve to manage the standards-development process.

The NRC panel, as you might imagine, consulted dozens of additional experts in science and science education, as well as groups such as the National Science Teachers Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. And the framework itself went out for public comment. I'm also told that the standards will be reviewed once again by the NRC panel before being finalized.

The actual line-by-line writing of the standards is being handled by a 41-member team. Who is on that writing team? A lot of K-12 educators, plus science education professors and others. Here are a few of its members:

• Peter McLaren, a science and technology specialist at the Rhode Island department of education and the president of the Council of State Science Supervisors;

• Chris Embry Mohr: a high school science teacher at Olympia High School in rural Stanford, Ill.

• Ramon Lopez, a professor of physics at the University of Texas at Arlington;

• Bob Friend, chief engineer at Boeing Co.'s small-satellite programs;

• Lynn Hommeyer, an elementary science resource teacher at Bruce Monroe Parkview School in the District of Columbia.

Beyond the writing team, additional "partners" in developing the standards are the NSTA and the AAAS.

Another key participant is Achieve, a nonprofit group created in 1996 by governors and business leaders that is managing the process. It's worth noting that Achieve played a similar role in developing the Common Core State Standards in English/language arts and mathematics. However, I want to emphasize that the development of common science standards is totally separate from that process.

And then, of course, there are the 26 "lead state partners." Each state has already reviewed and provided detailed feedback on two earlier drafts of the standards. In fact, that feedback is not simply from the state department of education. To participate, each state was required to form a broad-based group to review the standards, including representatives of K-12 education and higher education, as well as of the science and business communities.

Pruitt told me last week that the feedback from states has been taken very seriously, and many changes have been made to the draft document based upon it, even as he said the standards must remain true to the NRC framework.

"It is genuinely state led," he said of the process.

With the public release of the first draft last week, the broader public will have an opportunity to offer comments on the standards. Once the standards are updated to take into account that feedback, they will be put out once again for a second round of comment.

When the final version of the standards is complete, it's up to each state to decide whether or not to adopt the science standards. And to be clear, the 26 lead states have not committed to adopt them; they have agreed only to give "serious consideration" to doing so.

So, there you have it. Who is writing the science standards? Suffice to say, there are a lot of fingerprints on them already. And now it's your chance, Dear Reader, to weigh in.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 3:25 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Science education is likely to be the topic of plenty of discussion— and probably some heated rhetoric—in coming days, as the first public draft of a set of "next generation" science standards was released today.

The ambitious effort—involving 26 states, plus a variety of educators and experts—seeks to refocus K-12 science instruction across the nation with a special focus on ensuring that students apply their knowledge of key concepts through scientific inquiry and engineering design to deepen their understanding.

You can check out the EdWeek story here.

I'll be sure to provide updates and further analysis as feedback on the draft standards rolls in. In a document that calls for promoting depth over breadth in studying science, you can bet there will be some lively debate about what is included and what's left out. Meanwhile, as my story notes, don't be surprised if the treatment of issues such as evolution and climate change spark heated debate in some circles.

You can read the draft standards and submit comments here.

I'll close with a few comments from Stephen Pruitt, a vice president at Achieve, a Washington-based group that is managing the standards-development process (and is himself a former state science education official in Georgia.)

First off, like others involved in the effort, Pruitt emphasized that the draft standards are based on a framework produced by the National Research Council through a panel of experts in science and science education. (For a close look at that document, see this EdWeek story from last summer.)

In addition, he emphasized that the document is a work in progress. In fact, there will be a second public draft available for comment next fall.

"First, it is a draft, a draft based on the [NRC] framework," he said. "And the framework is really the foundation for all of this."

He added: "It's very much a draft for people to tell us the issues they see, ... and to really give us some robust feedback to make these truly world-class standards."

I'll look forward to seeing some of that "robust feedback"—and blogging about it—in the coming days and weeks.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 1:42 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Not every blog post has to be all serious, or even directly related to curriculum, right? Good! In that case, let me offer you a bit of fun for Friday: Bill Cosby's hilarious commencement address yesterday to the 2012 graduates of his alma mater, Temple University.

If most commencement addresses make you cringe, you will find Cosby's 12 minutes at the mic refreshingly unsentimental. I was lucky enough to be in the audience for this, and it was received with roars of laughter and applause, especially from us parents in the balconies.

Cosby's bottom line: Your parents are broke. They don't want you moving back home. Dreams are great, but for crying out loud, get a job.

Take a listen.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend