Curriculum Matters

When American leaders publicly fret over the challenges posed by international economic and educational competition, few of the United States’ foreign rivals inspire as much consternation as China, with its burgeoning free-market system and, of course, its enormous population—1.3 billion-citizens strong. But in truth, the international community has relatively few hard facts about how China's students measure up, because the Asian power has not had its scores released on major, high-profile international assessments, like PISA and TIMSS, as other nations have, including the United States.

But soon, a fuller picture of China could emerge, albeit incrementally.

Officials who run PISA, or the Program for International Student Assessment, expect at least one major Chinese jurisdiction, Shanghai, population 18 million, to have its test scores on that exam released in December of 2010, the next time country-by-country results on the exam are unveiled, said Andreas Schleicher, a top official with the assessment. Schleicher is the head of the indicators and analysis division of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, in Paris, which oversees PISA.

That would mean Shanghai's scores would come out as nation-by-nation results in math, science, and reading are unveiled. Schleicher, however, said it was too early to know if the Chinese municipality's scores would be released in all subjects, or just some of them. I caught up with Schleicher at a forum for U.S. business and state leaders on international education, held in Washington, where he made a presentation about PISA trends. (Education officials from a pair of top-performing countries, Finland and Singapore, also delivered remarks, which I wrote about this week.)

In addition to Shanghai, a number of Chinese provinces have had students assessed on PISA, though they haven’t released scores. Three provinces in China have so far completed the PISA 2006 assessment; three provinces from middle China and three provinces from western China are currently undergoing the process, adhering to standard OECD procedures and technical requirements, Schleicher said in a follow-up e-mail. Hong Kong and Macau, special administrative regions of China, have taken part on PISA and released scores; Hong Kong also takes part in, and does very well on, TIMSS.

Schleicher told me he did not believe Chinese authorities' were reluctant to release PISA results because of concerns about low performance; instead, he attributed their stance to concerns about the exam detracting from the attention schools and students place on the nation's internal, high-stakes tests, which determine high school and college admission. In fact, Schleicher predicted that the scores from Shanghai, and, if they’re eventually put forward, Chinese provinces, could prove impressive. "We will all be surprised when the Chinese results are released, by their high performance," Schleicher told me.

Obviously, you could argue that Shanghai is no more representative of China's overall education system than some American behemoth, like New York or Los Angeles, is of the broader U.S. system. Even so, I'll bet many followers of international tests—educators, economists, and the like—will be keen on any insights the PISA results can provide.

Photo: Sevans/Education Week-File

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The Minneapolis-based McKnight Foundation has decided to start a grant program to help children in the Twin Cities learn to read by the end of 3rd grade, according to the Philanthropy News Digest and a press release from the foundation.

Often with foundations, as they decide to fund a new area, they stop funding in another area. And this is the case with the McKnight Foundation. The foundation plans to discontinue grants for fatherhood development, parenting skills building, and family economic success.

I'm aware of a number of foundations that fund adolescent literacy; I haven't had an opportunity yet in reporting on the reading beat to learn about those that have a track record of funding literacy in the early grades.

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Kichoon Yang begins work this week as the new executive director of the 100,000-member National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, which holds significant sway over the math strategies used in American classrooms. He replaces Jim Rubillo, who last year announced his intention to retire from the post.

Yang comes to NCTM having most recently served as provost and professor at Northwest Missouri State University, positions he has held since 2005. Before that, he was dean of the College of Natural Sciences and professor of mathematics at the University of Northern Iowa from 2001 through 2004. He was also a program director in the Division of Mathematical Sciences at the National Science Foundation for three years. Earlier, he served for 12 years on the mathematics faculty at Arkansas State University.

The new exec director, in a statement, said he was both thrilled and "humbled by the opportunity, knowing how important mathematics education is to the future of our nation."

NCTM, based in Reston, Va., publishes voluntary national standards that have shaped instruction and curriculum around the country. In 2006, the organization released "Curriculum Focal Points," a document that spells out priorities for teaching math in elementary and middle school. The organization is planning to release a similar document for upper grades later this year. NCTM had voiced concerns about not being included in ongoing discussions about creating common standards in reading and math, but the group's president, Hank Kepner, is one of several people who will serve on an advisory panel for the group, as this EdWeek story explains.

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Joanne Jacobs raises a good question while highlighting a complaint from a parent that he can't access the full curriculum of Baltimore County Public Schools online.

"Do other school districts make it hard for parents to access the curriculum?" Joanne asks.

See the comments she's gotten so far. They're interesting.

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The list of individuals who will be drafting the multi-state “Common Core” standards in reading and math was unveiled today. Reaction from the various education communities and factions is sure to follow.

Actually, there are separate categories of experts and insiders involved. First of all, there are two main “Work Groups,” which will write the standards in math and English; their members include several representatives of Achieve, the College Board, and the ACT, and for now, they’re focused on setting “college and career readiness” standards. You can read the list on the a Web site set up by the two organizations leading this process, the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, at www.corestandards.org. The goal is to have a set of college and career-readiness standards completed and ready for comment during in July. The effort will then shift to broader K-12 standards; more names will be added to the Work Groups at that point, with the goal of completing those standards by December.

Two separate groups of experts, known as “Feedback Groups,” have also been established to “provide information backed by research to inform the standards development process” and offer opinion on the draft documents. The NGA and CCSSO note that these groups’ role will be “advisory” and not a “decision-making” one.

I’ve only given the Work Group and Feedback Group lists a cursory glance so far. Regular readers of EdWeek will recognize plenty of the names, in both math and language arts. A couple inclusions worth noting: the list of Feedback Group members —the advisory panels—includes representative of two big organizations that had voiced worries about being shut out the process. Hank Kepner, the president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, is on the math Feedback Group; Carol Jago, the president-elect of the National Council of Teachers of English, is on the English-language arts Feedback panel. A couple other members of the math advisory panel: Hyman Bass, from the University of Michigan; Roger Howe of Yale U; Robert Linn, of the U of Colorado; Jim Milgram of Stanford; and William Schmidt of Michigan State, who many of you know for his work on international standards. In language arts, Checker Finn of the Fordham Institute; Michael Kamil of Stanford; and Tim Shanahan of the University of Illinois at Chicago are represented. Among many others.

Lots of references to "feedback" here. Here’s your chance to offer up your own, once you’ve given the names a look.

UPDATE: My esteemed colleague Michele McNeil offers a more complete look at The List and all that it entails.

UPDATE (2): I've corrected this post to say that Carol Jago is the president-elect of NCTE. Kylene Beers is the current president until November.

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EdWeek is publishing a potpourri of stories on reading, chosen by its staff. The collection is part of our "Spotlight" series, which covers various education topics. This one focuses on some of the major questions facing reading educators and experts today, including early literacy, the role of educational TV in reading instruction, the pitfalls of reading research, reading software and tips for engaging reluctant readers. It's six articles and two commentaries, in PDF form. Have a look.

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I sat in on an enlightening forum on international education yesterday over at the National Press Club. Two of the featured speakers were from academic superpowers: Ms. Low Khah Gek, the director of curriculum, planning, and development for the Ministry of Education in Singapore; and Timo Lankinen, director general of the National Board of Education in Finland. They spoke to a crowd of state officials and corporate leaders, who were curious about what we could learn from these high-flying nations.

Ms. Gek and Mr. Lankinen offered interesting details and thoughts about finding, keeping, and rewarding high-quality teachers, and about high-stakes testing. Some aspects of these two systems were already familiar to me, but it was worth hearing these two speakers' firsthand accounts, which you can read more about in my EdWeek story.

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Count a parents' coalition as one of the interest groups asking for a say in the ongoing, multi-state effort to draft common standards, which is being led by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers.

The organization, which calls itself the United States Coalition for World Class Math, is a group of parents, mathematicians, and other interested parties from across the country. You can read more about their principles on their Web site. Generally speaking, they believe mathematicians should have a strong role in shaping math standards; that the math standards of states like Massachusetts should serve as a model for the new, multi-state effort; and that the principles of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel should guide the Common Core.

The National Math Panel, which released its final report last year, won praise from many quarters, but also criticism from those who said it advocated too narrow an approach to teaching that subject. In general, many of the coalition's guiding principles present what some might consider a "back to basics" position, as staked out in the various math wars: the limited use of calculators in elementary school, an emphasis on standard algorithms, and so on. Yet many of the coalition's views, if you read through their positions, are not so easy to pigeonhole. The coalition's press release comes a few weeks after the influential National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, among other organizations, asked for a greater role in Common Core.

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Boys like to read about trucks, boys being bad, sports, and war. They like humor. They like action. I'm picking all of this up from well-acclaimed children's authors who are presenting at a conference I'm attending here at Shenandoah University in Winchester, Va., on how to get boys hooked on reading.

But here's a thought from the conference that may not exactly be intuitive: Boys also like to read books that grab them emotionally, according to Jack Gantos, the author of the Rotten Ralph series and Joey Pigza books, which are about boys who are bad. Gantos said that when he writes a book, half the material is about what happens on the outside of a character, which includes a lot of action, but half the content is also about what's going on inside the character. The message of his books about kids who are bad, he says, is that the children are loved unconditionally despite the fact that they mess up a lot, which children can identify with. His books are popular among boys.

Boys, Gantos contends, "like the emotional stuff as much as the physical stuff." He says that when kids read about characters with feelings, it helps them to recognize the feelings they have themselves.

To give an example of how his books contain both action and a "human foundation," Gantos read from his book, Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key. In the story, Joey, the narrator tells how after lunch at school, his medicine has worn off and he is "wired." He annoys his teacher until she puts him out in the hallway. He then spins in the hallway in imitation of a Tasmanian devil. The teacher tells him to stop and stay in one place in the hallway. Joey seems to be unable to keep from being extremely annoying, and he knows he is extremely annoying. His actions are funny, but the reader also begins to wonder where all this is going to end up on an emotional level.

I draw attention to Gantos' point here because I was inclined to think that the more that a book focuses on a character's feelings, the less a boy would want to read it.

Donna Wasserbach, a teacher at Baltimore's RICA school, which is for students with special needs, mentioned to me in a lunch conversation an experience that confirmed for her the importance of not putting boys in a box in predicting what kinds of books will engage them. She said that she had an 8th grade male who read the Anne of Green Gables series, which is about a girl who is adopted out of an orphanage by a man and his sister who run a farm together. The series is generally well-loved by girls, but not by boys.

"He was in foster care and knew what it was like not to be wanted," she said. "He could identify with Anne of Green Gables." She said the boy, who was usually a reluctant reader, read the series several times because Anne's feelings matched many of his own.

Wasserbach concluded, "You can't think that just because they're a boy, they're going to want to read action-packed novels."

written by Mary Ann Zehr

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The 21st- century skills movement is making a push into the world of science and geography, with two organizations that support teaching in those subjects unveiling curriculum "maps" aimed at blending academic content knowledge in those subjects with practical skills.

The maps seek to give teachers examples of how 21st Century skills—which emphasize problem-solving and communication skills—can be meshed with specific lessons. The maps provide a desired "outcome" for students by topic and grade level, then an example of how teachers could work toward that outcome in the classroom.

For example, at the 12th grade level, the science curriculum map says that students, as an outcome, should be able to "explain why mathematical equations and formulae are used as representations of scientific phenomena and as a means of communicating scientific ideas." As an example, it says a teacher should ask students to design an observational or experimental investigation to "explore mathematical relationships commonly applied in science" at an appropriate difficulty level by collecting and analyzing data to support an evidence-based description of a mathematical relationship. In an algebra lesson, students might explore change over time by measuring the initial circumferences of several balloons filled with helium and several filled by air exhaled from their lungs, make additional measurements at intervals, plot the changes in size versus time, discuss the different rates of change for the two types of balloons, and determine the mathematical equations describing the results.

The maps are the product of a collaboration between the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, the National Science Teachers Association, and the National Council for Geographic Education. Maps for social studies and English were released last year.

Once you've had a chance to explore the outcomes and skills described, give me your opinion. Should teachers be nurturing these skills in science and geography lessons? And are these documents going about it in the right way?

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