A new study takes a look at the role interim assessments can play in improving student achievement. And it offers an interesting conclusion. I'll let the co-authors speak for themselves:

"We conclude that interim assessments that are designed for instructional purposes are helpful but not sufficient to inform instructional change," they say in a policy brief summarizing the study's findings. "When well-supported by their districts and schools, teachers used interim assessment data to decide what to re-teach and to whom, but not necessarily to change the ways in which they taught this content."

The study is by three scholars at the Consortium for Policy Research in Education, who examined the ways teachers used interim assessments in math in nine elementary schools in Pennsylvania.

It's particularly interesting in light of the increased attention that assessments are getting in the bid to improve student achievement. There is a lot of discussion about the role that the "right" kinds of assessments can play in guiding instruction.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 1:56 PM | Permalink | No Comments | TrackBacks (0)

If you've been reading this blog in recent months, you've heard a great deal about the effort to develop common standards in math and English/language arts, including a post just yesterday by my colleague and co-blogger, Catherine.

But you might not know about a separate effort getting under way to devise a set of "next generation" science standards. I recently attended the inaugural meeting of a panel of experts convened by the National Research Council to craft a "conceptual framework" for those standards.

You can check out my story from edweek.org for lots more details.

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I'm not telling you anything new when I mention that many people are less than thrilled when federal officials start exerting a broader influence on local schools. This skepticism has long roots, and has cropped up time and time again in education debates.

As I track the development of the common-standards initiative, it's certainly one of the themes I hear. I saw it again while reading my colleague Lesli Maxwell's new blog on state policy. And the message comes across loud and clear in this story, too.

What does this mean for the common-standards initiative? Skepticism toward a large federal government role in shaping education was one of the factors that helped doom recent previous efforts to create national standards. That's why the organizers of the current initiative bent over backwards to let people know that this effort is completely voluntary and "state-led." They avoided the loaded term "national standards" in favor of "common standards."

So what accounts for the persistence of the notion that common standards are being imposed on states by the feds? One hint came from a remark a state school board member made to me during a break in the NASBE meeting in Las Vegas last week. "Race to the Top has co-opted common standards," she said. She was referring to the ardent support federal officials have expressed for common standards and assessments, and the fact that they dangled Race to the Top money in front of states that would commit to them, too. In a similar vein, I heard folks at this meeting grumble that support of common standards doesn't feel wholly voluntary when your state needs money so badly that it pretty much has to apply for Race to the Top funds and has to commit to them in order to improve its chances of winning a slice.

I keep hearing people joke about the "race to the trough," the idea that states agreed to all kinds of things in order to get a chunk of the federal stimulus money. However cynical or sincere the states were in their applications, has this race confused or "co-opted" key messages of the common-standards initiative?

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A draft of revised social studies standards for North Carolina is facing criticism, with a chief complaint being that high schoolers apparently would only be taught about U.S. history beginning after Reconstruction. But a top state official says such complaints are missing the big picture of what the state has in mind for U.S. history K-12, and that no child would miss out on George Washington or Honest Abe.

James Elias writes on the Common Core blog that the state "plans to eliminate the Revolutionary War, Andrew Jackson, the Mexican-American War, and the Civil War and most of Reconstruction from high school American history classes. ... How can students assume the responsibilities and privileges of democratic citizenship if they don't know the basic facts of our national experience?"

A Fox News story quotes a history teacher and an education analyst as also criticizing the draft standards.

But state Superintendent June Atkinson says the revised standards would actually increase the amount of time students spend studying U.S. history during their elementary and secondary schooling.

"Our goal is to give students more study of United States history and to teach it in a way that helps them remember what they have learned," she said in a Feb. 3 press release. "The events, people, and dates that are so familiar to many of us will still be taught to students. That means everything from early exploration through the Civil War, the 20th century, and today."

The press release says that under the draft curricular framework, students would get a full year of U.S. history instruction in both elementary and middle school, significantly more time than they receive now. Students would also study civics in high school, and could choose from a wide range of additional electives in history, including more American history.

The high school U.S. history course would begin with 1877, at the end of the Reconstruction period.

That would replace a "broad, sweeping survey" course of American history, and allow teachers more time to "dig deeper," said Vanessa W. Jeter, the communications director for the state education department.

To see for yourself what the draft document is proposing, you can examine the proposed revisions online. Also, you can compare them with what is currently in place.

The deadline for submitting comments on the current draft is Feb. 15. The revised standards are slated for "several rounds of revision" before being finalized, according to the press release from the state education department.

Image provided by the Library of Congress.

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I've been seeing quite a few reports lately that seek to capture what people in education, whether students, teachers, or administrators, really think. Yesterday, I blogged about a Gallup poll of principals' views on the effects of recess. (Most think it improves student achievement.)

Today, I'll turn to surveys of arts educators and science students. First, the arts. This report and survey, funded by the National Art Education Foundation, seeks to move beyond the conventional wisdom that the No Child Left Behind Act is crowding out things like art and music instruction in schools. It surveyed a random sample of more than 3,000 arts educators across the country, mostly at the K-12 level, to learn about their experiences and impressions.

The findings were a bit more nuanced than the conventional wisdom. In the areas of staffing, teaching loads, and enrollment, arts education programs have experienced "limited negative consequences" because of the federal law, with its heavy emphasis on test scores in math and English/language arts, a summary of the findings said.

More specifically:
• 68 percent said the number of art teachers in their district stayed about the same;
• 65 percent said teaching loads stayed about the same; and
• 62 percent said enrollments stayed about the same.

However, the survey data suggests that NCLB has "created a number of negative effects" on art education programs in the areas of scheduling, increased workload, and funding, the summary says. For instance, 43 percent reported decreases in all or some areas of arts education funding. Also, about two-thirds said art schedules had been affected, with 47 percent reporting increased "interruptions, conflicts, and problems."

Overall, the majority of arts educators said they do not believe NCLB has helped students become better learners, but they did suggest some aspects of arts education experienced positive effects. "As a group, art educators feel that NCLB has contributed to making them become more reflective about their programs and teaching," the summary says.

There's a ton of information in the full survey report. Check it out to learn more.

Now, to the survey on science. This online poll, conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of the American Society for Quality, asked some 1,100 students in grades 3-12 to rate their science teachers in several areas, using letter grades.

Overall, the students seem to think their teachers know a lot about their subject, with 85 percent giving them either an A or B on this point. About two-thirds say their science teachers making the subject "exciting and fun" to learn.

However, the grades dropped considerably when students were asked whether their teachers talk about engineering as a future career. Here, 63 percent of teachers got a C or lower. (This question was only posed to students in grades 7-12.) Teachers got higher marks on whether they show students how science can be used in a future job or career, with 58 percent getting an A or B.

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We all know that children—most of them—anyway, love recess. It was probably my favorite "subject" in elementary school, and my heart raced when I heard the bell go off and we were free to hit the playground. But what's being billed as the "first ever" national poll of elementary school principals on the subject finds that most of them believe recess helps children learn.

Four out of five principals report that recess has a positive impact on academic achievement, with two-thirds saying students listen better after recess and are more focused in class. Virtually all of the nearly 2,000 administrators surveyed (which also included some assistant or vice principals) believe that recess has a positive effect on children's social development.

The poll was conducted in October by the Gallup Organization. It was sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Association of Elementary School Principals, and the nonprofit Playworks.

Of course, in today's world, there's increased pressure to move beyond impressions of improved learning to more concrete evidence (as in, on standardized tests). The report about the poll highlights a 2009 study published in Pediatrics as shedding more light on the matter. But that study doesn't draw any conclusions on academic performance. It does find that teacher ratings of classroom behavior (among 8- and 9-year-old students) were higher for those groups of children who had 15 minutes of recess each day. One could certainly argue that kids have to pay attention in order to learn anything. So if they're behaving better, they're more likely to be paying more attention.

Not content to stop there, I decided to take the matter one step further. The Pediatrics article, by Romina Barros, a professor of pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, does reference a few other studies, including an overview of research on recess from 2002 that was funded by the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education. This report, "Recess in Elementary School: What Does the Research Say?" seemed cautious in its findings.

It says, "The available research suggests that recess can play an important role in learning, social development, and health of elementary school children. While there are arguments against recess, no research clearly supports not having recess."

"However," the report then continues, and you know where this is going, "more research is needed to determine the current percentage of schools that have abolished recess and assess the effect of no-recess policies on student test scores, attitudes, and behaviors."

So, know of other studies to illuminate this issue? Post a comment.

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A report by USA Today tells us that more students are taking Advanced Placement tests than ever before, but fewer are producing the required 3 out of 5 score that the College Board considers passing.

Using information publicly available on the College Board's Web site, the newspaper compiled a report that paints a national portrait of all AP test participation and passage, combining all tested subjects and test-takers of multiple grade levels. This is a different kind of report than the "cohort" analysis the College Board releases annually. That report, scheduled for release next week, examines what portion of each successive graduating class takes AP exams, and how they perform. (For an example, see the story I wrote about it last year.)

The kind of analysis USA Today did doesn't exactly delight the College Board. Its officials argue in the story that combining all the tests taken, regardless of subject matter or grade-level cohort, is misleading.

Take a look and see what you think.

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Kevin Jennings, the U.S. Department of Education's top school-safety official, is making a pitch for common standards, but not the academic kind that get so much attention. He would like to see standards that describe "school climate"—whether a school is a place in which students feel safe and included.

In an interview with the Phi Delta Kappan magazine, Jennings discusses his safety agenda. He says that school safety includes far more than just making sure students don't bring guns into the building. Students can't learn properly unless they're both physically and emotionally safe and they feel valued, he says.

"Just as we have standards around academic goals, we need standards around school climate because what gets measured is what gets done," Jennings says. "We're only going to put school climate at the priority level it deserves—which to me is at the top—if we have standards around it and start measuring it."

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 10:29 AM | Permalink | No Comments | TrackBacks (0)

State boards of education seem to be lacking a good deal of information about the proposed common-core standards. And in most states, these panelists will be the folks who will have to decide whether to adopt them.

That message emerged clearly from Day 2 of a meeting of Western board members I attended this week in Las Vegas, organized by the National Association of State Boards of Education. (See my blog post from yesterday about Day 1.) About a dozen states had representatives attending the meeting, and they spent a chunk of the morning discussing the questions they have about the common standards, and the potential challenges they see looming over the adoption decision. (UPDATE: See my story about the meeting here.)

The states ticked off a daunting list of challenges, including political opposition, reluctance to change standards so soon after revising their own, and a lack of money to pull together the new curriculum materials, assessments, and professional development necessary to make the common standards successful.

While there were many potential challenges, and some questions about the standards were indeed answered during the meeting (check my blog post!), many questions remained unanswered. Here are a few: What would happen if we pledged support for common standards in our Race to the Top application, won money in that competition, and then decided not to adopt the standards? How will common standards be revised in the future? How long will we have to wait to get a "final" draft that we can consider for adoption? How will these standards affect career and technical education? What happens if our standards adoption timeline is too slow to meet the August 2010 adoption deadline in Race to the Top?

Interestingly, some of these questions do have answers, but they seem not to have been communicated fully to state boards. For instance, several people said they are confused about how and when the "draft" standards will be finalized into a form that boards can consider for adoption. The National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers have described the process and have a multicolored flow chart laying it out. The chart, along with a set of frequently asked questions and answers about the common standards, and other briefing materials, is now being included in the notebooks board members get as they attend the NASBE regional meetings.

Given the conversations I heard at this meeting, I'd bet that a vendor working the room might have done nicely selling T-shirts that said: So Many Questions. So Little Time.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 10:43 AM | Permalink | No Comments | TrackBacks (0)

A recent study finds that 2005 high school graduates earned more credits in "STEM" courses than did their counterparts from 1990. Also, although there were gains in such course credits across all racial and ethnic groups studied, some gaps remained over time.

For example, in 2005, white graduates earned more credits than black and Hispanic students in the categories of "advanced mathematics" and "advanced science and engineering," says the study by researchers at MPR Associates Inc. The federally-funded report relies on data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress High School Transcript Study.

Looking at gender, the report finds that both male and female students earned more credits in the STEM—or science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—fields, but that there were differences in course-taking habits. In 2005, a larger percentage of females than males earned credits in four specific STEM courses: Algebra II, advanced biology, chemistry, and health science/technology. On the other hand, a larger percentage of males earned credits in physics, engineering, engineering/science technologies, and computer/information science.

Overall, the NAEP data from 2005 includes transcripts collected from 640 public schools and 80 private schools, constituting what the report calls a "nationally representative sample" of 26,000 public and private high school graduates.

There's plenty more information to mine in the report, including a look at differences among students from urban, suburban, and rural communities.

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