A Republican proposal to end the federal mandate for science testing in public schools is coming under fire from a broad-based coalition that supports improved STEM education.

"Removing the existing requirement ... sends a powerful, negative, and unambiguous signal to U.S. schools and the public that science—along with all of its related subdisciplines—is no longer a national priority," says the STEM Education Coalition in a letter sent today to members of the House Education and the Workforce Committee.

A draft bill released last month by Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., the chairman of the House education committee, would abolish the current requirement in the No Child Left Behind Act that states test students in science three times before they graduate high school. It would keep, however, the law's mandate for testing English/language arts and mathematics in grades 3-8 and once in high school. The GOP proposal was part of legislation to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. (NCLB is the latest version of the 1965 law.)

"If the requirement for science testing is eliminated, schools will shift their limited resources away from science classes, less time will be devoted to science, and professional development for science educators will suffer," says the coalition, which describes itself as an alliance of more than 500 business, professional, and education organizations. Members include Microsoft Corp., the American Chemical Society, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the American Society of Civil Engineers, and Time Warner Cable.

James Brown, the executive director of the STEM Education Coalition, told me that members of the group are speaking with the offices of House lawmakers on the committee "every day" to make known their concerns about the GOP bill.

The coalition also complains that the draft bill would strip out the $150 million Mathematics and Science Partnerships program at the U.S. Department of Education without offering any new, STEM-focused program in its place.

"While we recognize the bill's goal of streamlining a myriad of education programs," the coalition says, "we disagree with the absence of any strong STEM education focus for Title II [of the ESEA] grants or any significant linkage between Title II activities and workforce needs."

The letter seeks to make an emphatic connection between STEM education and the workforce.

"In short," the coalition says, "we believe that education reforms that are strongly focused on the STEM subjects are reforms that are strongly focused on jobs and economic recovery."

Posted by Erik Robelen at 4:31 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The situation Achievement First—a nationally-recognized charter schools network—finds itself in today exemplifies one conundrum of the push towards common standards and tests. And that is, the assessments will be a little less common.

As most readers surely know by now, most states have adopted the common-core standards for English/language arts and mathematics. But two separate state consortia are developing assessments to match.

According to my quick count, SMARTER Balanced now has 29 state members; PARCC has 23 plus the District of Columbia. (A handful are hedging their bets.)

And therein lies the rub for Achievement First, which operates charter schools in both New York and Connecticut. Yes, indeed: the Empire State joined one assessment consortia, Connecticut joined the other.

I was chatting this week with Nancy Livingston, the vice president of teaching and learning at Achievement First, for an upcoming story about the new math standards. She's a big fan of the document. ("Yes, a resounding yes," she replied emphatically, when I asked if she liked the math standards.)

But Livingston lamented that her network's 20 schools won't be taking the same state assessments, at least as of now, because of the states' decisions in choosing a new testing route.

"They opted into two different assessment consortia," Livingston told me. "I would like to convince Connecticut to move to PARCC. That is step one. But we're planning right now that it will be two."

She added: "We've had [our schools] operating under two different assessments historically, so it's not that different. But it's a little sad in getting to common standards that we're not getting to common assessments."

Posted by Erik Robelen at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Should states develop a creativity index for their schools? When I first learned that Massachusetts was exploring the idea, I was intrigued. What would it look like? How would it work? Are any other states interested?

I examine these and other issues in an EdWeek story published online today.

The idea of such an index comes as many political and business leaders have become increasingly concerned about the need to better foster creativity and innovative thinking among today's students. It also comes as a lot of educators worry that the pressure of high-stakes testing may be squeezing out opportunities for students to develop those very qualities.

The concept of a creativity/innovation index, at least at this point, is about educational "inputs," not "outputs." That is, it's meant to gauge the extent to which schools provide opportunities that will foster creativity and innovation in young people.

In Massachusetts, a new state commission began meeting last fall to draft recommendations for such an index for all public schools. The action came in response to a 2010 law. (I'm told that the legislature would have to pass another measure to actually require that the index be implemented.)

Meanwhile, the California Senate in late January approved a bill calling for the development of a voluntary Creative and Innovative Education Index.

And Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin recently announced plans for a public-private partnership to produce an innovation index for schools, which she described as a "public measurement of the opportunities for our students to engage in innovative work."

As my story explains, a variety of experts and participants in the state efforts caution that no one is exactly sure what a creativity index should look like. The Massachusetts legislation suggests that it might include such indicators as access in schools to arts education, debate clubs, science fairs, filmmaking, and independent research. But several people I interviewed say they want to be sure the index goes beyond a superficial checklist. And they emphasized that creativity can be nurtured in all sorts of activities and subjects, from robotics to mathematics.

How educators and schools would respond to a creativity index remains to be seen. Certainly, some folks are likely to be leery of adding still another public measurement for schools. But the president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association said his union is supportive of the idea, arguing that it fits with the desire of many teachers to move toward a "multiple measures" approach to evaluating schools that gets beyond test scores in reading and math.

In any case, a creativity index is certainly a provocative idea, and one that is starting to be taken seriously in at least a few states. But the efforts are still in their very early stages. Stay tuned.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 11:12 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Our colleague Jackie Zubrzycki has some interesting news over at the Inside School Research blog: the International Reading Association is setting up a panel of experts that will draw on research to create a set of best-practices recommendations for literacy instruction.

Aside from the list of panelists, there are few details yet about the panel's plans. Those, apparently, are forthcoming at the IRA's conference this spring.

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

The first public glimpse of a draft of common science standards for states will come in early spring, we've just learned.

Currently, 26 states are playing a lead role in helping to develop the Next Generation Science Standards, which organizers of the effort hope will eventually be adopted by all—or at least most—states.

The plan is that by late March or April, the draft standards will be made available for public comment, according to Stephen Pruitt, a vice president at Achieve, the Washington-based group facilitating the standards-writing process.

"We are hard at work. We are preparing for a public draft," he told me yesterday.

There will actually be two rounds of public comment on the standards document, said Pruitt, who previously was a science supervisor at the Georgia Department of Education. The second public review will occur in the "third quarter" of the year, he predicted. And the final document, he said, will be completed by year's end.

The states are working in partnership with the National Research Council, the National Science Teachers Association, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science to develop the new standards. Last summer, an NRC panel of experts wrapped up work on a framework to guide the development of the standards. The framework identifies the core ideas and practices in the natural sciences and engineering that all students should know by the time they graduate.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Guest post by Jackie Zubrzycki

The loops and tails of cursive letters this week came a step closer to being resurrected in Indiana schools. A bill authored by Republican state Senator Jean Leising that would require the state's public schools (and private schools that receive vouchers) to teach cursive was unanimously approved by the Senate education committee Thursday and sailed through the Senate yesterday (while other education bills deadlocked). It's now awaiting debate in the House. We reported that the bill was being considered in a story considering the larger debate about teaching cursive handwriting in schools.

Cursive was included in Indiana's standards until last June, when the state adopted the Common Core State Standards and did not specifically add cursive, which the standards do not now include. There was an outcry from the public after news media picked up on the story—Sen. Leising said she heard from constituents immediately, and grew increasingly concerned. "By not teaching cursive, we will establish a new kind illiteracy," she said, citing potential workplace dilemmas that might arise when those schooled in cursive try to communicate with the unschooled.

In an interview in early January, Sen. Leising said she had already heard from about eight state Senators from both parties. "If you end up with that many [supporters] before the bill's even scheduled for a hearing, that means people are discussing this issue in the rest of Indiana." She said she had sent an online poll to 6,000 of her constituents, and 90 percent of the respondents said cursive should be mandatory.

At the time, Ross McMullin, a spokesman for the Indiana Department of Education, said: "To be clear, no one is forcing schools to stop teaching cursive. School corporations may still include cursive in their curriculum offerings if they want to." The department couldn't be reached for a new comment this week.

Researcher Steve Graham, of Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, said in an interview for the Education Week story that he believes cursive should be taught, but that the debate clearly goes beyond any academic or cognitive benefits of different styles of penmanship. "I've never seen anything in writing that people feel so passionate about," Graham said. "On the one hand, I like it—we want people to be passionate about writing. On the other, you're mystified about why the passion is on this one, single subskill."

The passion's widespread, it seems—the bill passed 45-5 in the Senate, and the House may take it up as early as next week.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

[UPDATED, 3:07 p.m.] The GE Foundation's $18 million common-standards grant, announced this morning, will focus on helping teachers understand the shifts in instruction necessary for the new standards, and will build a storehouse of free resources for them to use.

The foundation's "Developing Futures" districts—seven school districts that it has been working with to improve math and science instruction—will be key beneficiaries of the "immersion institutes" that Student Achievement Partners will hold as part of the four-year grant, officials of the philanthropy and the nonprofit group said in a conference call. But those institutes will be held nationally as well, in an attempt to spread understanding of the standards and develop "teacher champions" who can work with colleagues around the country.

Some of the grant money will be used for the training institutes, they said, and some will be used for "direct collaboration" with teachers nationally, in person and on the Web, to produce examples of good instruction on the standards. Some of the grant will be used to build a new website, www.achievethecore.org, with free resources for teachers. These already include videotapes of instructional units in math or English/language arts, and will expand to include tools to help teachers track and evaluate students' work, and other as-yet-unspecified resources.

David Coleman, co-founder and CEO of Student Achievement Partners, and one of the lead writers of the common standards in English/language arts, said that SAP will collaborate with teachers and national teachers unions, and groups such as the Council of Chief State School Officers and the Council of the Great City Schools, to develop and share resources that will help "make the common core real" for teachers. Only the best of what is submitted will be posted online, he said; he envisions a collection of resources that is carefully "curated" by SAP and expert teachers.

Whatever Student Achievement Partners develops in support of the common standards will be available for free, Coleman said. On achievethecore.org, SAP says that it will not hold any intellectual property in what it develops, will not accept money from publishers, and will not compete for state and district contracts.

I asked whether this will be the case in all SAP work in support of the common core, whether part of the GE Foundation grant or not. Coleman said that those principles would apply to all its work.

Student Achievement Partners relies on philanthropic grants and contracts for its support, Coleman told me. It currently has three contracts with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, together worth $4.1 million, to do common-core related work. Those projects include creating ways to measure the complexity of texts, developing instructional units for teachers in reading and writing, developing publisher's criteria for the standards, and creating a common digital language for cross-referencing them online.

The New York City-based nonprofit, as we told you earlier, was founded by three of the lead writers of the common standards: Coleman, and Susan Pimentel (English/language arts), and Jason Zimba (math). It counts the other lead math writer, William McCallum, and a member of the math-writing panel, Phil Daro, as advisors.

The $18 million grant is one of the biggest that the GE Foundation has made in education, its president and chairman, Robert L. Corcoran, said during the conference call. It has made five-year grants of between $20 million and $25 million to several of its large "Developing Futures" districts, focused narrowly on specific aims, he said. The grant to Student Achievement Partners is an investment in "infrastructure," to enable "something that can help millions of children" over many years, he said.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 9:46 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Here's what looks to be a new twist in the debate over teaching creationism in public schools. A state senator in Indiana has succeeded in amending a bill on the topic to require that public schools teaching creationism must include origin theories from multiple religions, including not just Christianity but also Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Scientology, the Associated Press reports.

Critics of the original bill said they believe it would be rejected by the courts, as have previous efforts to teach creationism in public schools. The author of the new amendment, Sen. Vi Simpson, a Democrat, said she did not think the changes would have any bearing on the constitutional question. But she suggested it might make school districts pause before tackling creationism, the biblically based view that God created humans in their current form.

"It does make it clear that a school board can't just say we're only going to teach Christian creation theory but we also have to cover other multiple religions," Simpson said, according to the AP.

The broadened bill still faces a vote by the full Senate before advancing to the House, the AP story notes.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A new report offers a "bleak picture" of the state of state science standards across the nation, with just over half earning a grade of D or F. Among the 10 states to receive a failing grade were Idaho, Oregon, and Wisconsin. (See the full list below.)

Only California and the District of Columbia were given a solid A, while four states were handed an A-minus, according to the review by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washington-based think tank.

The Fordham report, issued today, focuses on two main areas: "content and rigor," and "clarity and specificity." It argues, for instance, that many states' standards are "so vague as to be meaningless." The review also contends that state standards often undermine the teaching of evolution.

The new report represents the third time Fordham has examined state science standards, with the last study released in 2005.

"The results of this rigorous analysis paint a fresh—but still bleak—picture,"
write Fordham Institute President Chester E. Finn Jr., a former education official in the Reagan administration, and senior director Kathleen Porter-Magee, in a foreword to the report. "A majority of the states' standards remain mediocre to awful. In fact, the average grade across all states is—once again—a thoroughly undistinguished C."

The study is timely, as a major effort is underway to develop a set of common, "next-generation" science standards. Twenty-six states are playing a lead role in helping to develop the new standards, which are guided by a framework developed by the National Research Council. (In fact, Fordham recently graded the framework itself, giving the document a B+.)

On the issue of teaching evolution, the report says that while "many states" are handling the issue better than in the past, "anti-evolution pressures continue to threaten state science standards."

Although it highlights a few overt efforts, such as the Louisiana Science Education Act, Fordham says the tactics elsewhere are often "far more subtle." It notes that Missouri has "asterisked all 'controversial' evolution content in the standards and relegated it to a voluntary curriculum that will not be assessed." And the report says a common technique in some states is to direct students to study its "strengths and weaknesses."

The report indicates that only four states—Florida, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Rhode Island—openly embrace human evolution in their current science standards.

I should note here that the NRC framework, developed by a panel of experts in science and education, is emphatic about evolution's role in learning science. This suggests that the topic will play an important role in the common science standards. The NRC panel identified biological evolution as one of the four "core ideas" for understanding the life sciences.

Another issue flagged by the Fordham report is the teaching of scientific inquiry. The report concludes that many states do a poor job of integrating scientific inquiry with content in their standards, and fail to make the link between science and mathematics.

"Unfortunately, too many states treat inquiry as an afterthought or add-on," the report says.

Fordham's Porter-Magee told me that she's hopeful that the new report, in addition to spurring states with low grades to revise their standards, also will highlight some models worthy of consideration to inform the development of the common standards.

California and the District of Columbia, she said, "did an outstanding job" with their standards. (California's standards haven't changed since 2005, but DC's have, and its grade improved from a C in 2005 to an A this time.)

"Those standards in both cases were very comprehensive, really outlined all of the important science content that students need to learn across all the disciplines and all the grades," she said. "They were also clear, free from jargon, really provided the kind of roadmap that teachers, curriculum developers, and assessment developers need."

Porter-Magee cautioned that each state's grade does not tell the whole story for its science standards, because it may have received higher or lower marks in particular domains of science.

"If a state got a C overall, it doesn't mean it got a C in all areas," she said. "For example, high school physics and chemistry was almost across the board among the weakest" domains in states' science standards. "A lot of states don't even delineate high school physics and chemistry standards, and that's important. You need to have that content and it needs to be separated out."

Here's the breakdown of states by the grade they received:

A: California, District of Columbia

A-: Indiana, Massachusetts, South Carolina, Virginia

B+: New York

B: Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Ohio, Utah

C: Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, Texas, Vermont, Washington

D: Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, West Virginia

F: Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Wyoming

Posted by Erik Robelen at 8:54 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A legislative challenge to Indiana's adoption of the Common Core State Standards failed earlier this week, we learn from the Indianapolis Star.

As you might recall, we've reported on a number of anti-common-core rumblings in the states (here and here, for example), but nothing that has—at least so far—gained any traction.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 9:56 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend