January 2009 Archives

On the list of people you least want to tick off on Capitol Hill, Sen. Chuck Grassley's name is probably pretty high up there.

Yet some employees of the National Science Foundation have managed to do just that, after allegedly spending a considerable amount of agency time looking at pornography on the Internet.

The revelations about NSF staff members downloading sexually explicit files from the Web and storing them on their computers emerged in a semiannual report by the agency's office of the inspector general. One of the more startling revelations in the report is that an "NSF senior official" had spent up to 20 percent of his official work time viewing sexually explicit materials and engaged in explicit "chats" with various women. The inspector's report said that wasted time carried a cost of $58,000, based on the employee's estimated salary.

Grassley is the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee. The revelations about NSF come as the agency is seeking billions in the federal stimulus plan, a fact that is not lost on the Iowa senator. While Democrats are in control of both the House and Senate and guiding the stimulus legislation, Grassley has a pretty big platform to voice objections to giving more federal money to the agency. And Grassley says he intends to get more information, according to this story in Politico. He wrote a letter recently to NSF's inspector general, asking that the foundation turn over audit reports, evaluations, and other information related to the agency's computer systems.

"The semiannual report raises real questions about how the National Science Foundation manages its resources," Grassley wrote, "and Congress ought to demand a full accounting before it gives the agency another $3 billion in the stimulus bill."

The NSF, based in Arlington, Va., supports all sorts of research on math and science curriculum, professional development, and other efforts to improve instruction. The agency has taken some steps to more closely monitor employees' computer usage after learning of the abuses, the inspector general reported.

We'll have to see what fallout comes of this, as the stimulus moves forward.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 4:23 PM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

One major piece of the Reading First program is the money it provides schools to hire reading "coaches," who work to improve the skills of fellow teachers. Under the federal law, money flows to states, which provide grants to schools and districts to adopt "scientifically based" reading programs and provide interventions with struggling students in the early grades.

Reading First specifically provides professional development to teachers through institutes, workshops, and on-site literacy coaches. In fact, the law mandates that schools that receive grants use funds to hire those coaches.

I recently came across an interesting study by the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, or NWREL, which examines the backgrounds of reading coaches, and what they actually do on their jobs. About 5,200 reading coaches have been hired in Reading First schools, as of the time of the study.

The authors' research showed that, perhaps not surprisingly, most coaches were relatively experienced teachers, but that they also had little previous experience tutoring other educators. Many of them were hired from their own schools or districts.

On the question of what reading coaches actually do, the NWREL researchers found that, on average, they spent on 28 percent of their time working directly with teachers, which was "dramatically lower" than state expectations. By contrast, coaches, who tend to spend long hours on the job, devoted far more time—60 percent to 80 percent—working in classrooms with teachers, helping them with instruction, in three of the five states studied in the report.

Schools and districts also expected coaches to juggle a lot of duties that seemed to have little to do with actual coaching, like overseeing assessments, managing data, and working directly with students, the authors found.

The authors note that even though the time coaches spent actually "coaching" other teacher might seem disappointing, that teacher-to-teacher interaction was relatively high in Reading First, compared with other teacher-coaching programs.

You can read the report here, and draw your own conclusions.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 2:48 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Can a kickball game help transform the climate of a school?

That playground activity and other informal “classic games,” such as four-square and tag, can promote student health, as well as improved classroom behavior and learning, some health advocates say.

Just last fall, a major effort aimed at expanding access to those activities, during recess and afterschool was launched with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The foundation, based in Princeton, N.J., awarded a four-year, $18.7 million grant to Sports4Kids, an Oakland, Calif., nonprofit, to train adult “coaches” who can supervise and encourage recess and after-school activities.

Sports4Kids’ efforts in that area will grow from five cities to 27 cities, said Jill Vialet, the president and founder of Sports4Kids.The funding will also allow the organization to broaden its training of teachers, parks and recreation works and other adults in supervising and encouraging healthy games, as well as its general advocacy for healthy games, Vialet told me.

Many educators and advocates have argued that recess and student free-time is being squeezed from the school day—and that children are suffering for it.

A study published this month in the journal Pediatrics, by researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, found that 8-9 year-olds provided a break of at least 15 minutes during the school day saw improvements in their learning, social development and health. The principal investigator on the study was Romina Barros, an assistant clinical professor of pediatrics at Einstein.

Some say the benefits of informal games are often overlooked because they lack the official structure of adult-led leagues and school sporting events. Yet “there is a structure to it—it’s just that kids have control over it,” Vialet argued. “There’s a lot of social and emotional learning that happens in that context."

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 10:52 AM | Permalink | 4 Comments | Recommend

Some of the publishers that made a heap of money off the Reading First program—which pumped $1 billion a year into instructional materials and professional development, as well as coaching positions in participating schools—are reporting losses now that the budget has been axed, according to this Publishers Weekly article.

"Worsening economic conditions facing large urban districts were exacerbated by a sharp reduction in federal funding for Reading First programs," the magazine quotes Terry McGraw, the chairman of the company that publishes Open Court Reading and other popular reading series.

Despite the 5.4 percent decline for McGraw-Hill's school division, the company's K-12 arm still gained $1.4 billion in revenue ($6.4 billion in revenue for the company overall). State textbook adoptions are still fueling profits.

A few weeks ago, another publisher also reported some money troubles. Riverdeep, which bought ed publishers Houghton Mifflin and Harcourt a couple years ago, has been saddled with debt and may be looking to sell off some of its consumer publishing assets, according to news reports.

This story, however, includes claims from Houghton Mifflin/Harcourt officials that their business is solid. Houghton Mifflin's reading program has been a popular choice among Reading First schools and was one of just two approved programs, along with Open Court, in California's English/language arts adoption for the early elementary grades several years ago.

Posted by at 12:46 PM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

Is there any obligation for a school sports team to ease up on an opponent, when one side is so outmatched that the event devolves in a blowout that's embarrassing to just about everybody involved? Should athletic associations set up rules to prevent this from taking place?

Those questions leap to mind in the wake of a much-publicized beat-down delivered by the girls basketball team from Covenant School, a Christian school in Texas, to the team from Dallas Academy, on Jan. 13.

Even by the standards of high school basketball, where talent mismatches are common, this score was pretty stunning: 100-0, Covenant. As you might have guessed, that final score brought repercussions, according to this story in the Associated Press.

According to the story, Covenant coach Micah Grimes was fired a few weeks after the game, apparently for letting things get out of hand. This related article says the losing side was so badly outmatched that team members were having trouble bringing the ball up court, committing turnovers that turned the game into a virtual lay-up drill for Covenant.

Not long after the game, Covenant's headmaster and board chairman issued the following statement: "It is shameful and an embarrassment that this happened. This clearly does not reflect a Christlike and honorable approach to competition."

Coach Grimes responded to the criticism by defending his decisions in an e-mail to a newspaper. "I do not agree with the apology or the notion that the Covenant School girls basketball team should feel embarrassed or ashamed. ... We played the game as it was meant to be played. My values and my beliefs would not allow me to run up the score on any opponent, and it will not allow me to apologize for a wide-margin victory when my girls played with honor and integrity."

Grimes was fired not long after issuing that statement, according to the story.

Some state athletic associations have set regulations to reduce the chances of massive blowouts, guidelines commonly known as "mercy" rules. I know of them in basketball, and particularly football, where I believe the thinking is that if one side is so dominant, there's a good chance someone is going to be seriously hurt. Texas does not have a mercy rule in girls basketball, according to the story.

The value of mercy rules, and the rules about when to let up against an overmatched opponent, tend to rouse strong opinions in the sports world, in my experience. For a lot of us, the benefit of mercy rules is obvious: Why allow athletes, particularly teenagers or preteens, to be humiliated by a huge loss? Common mercy rules include letting the clock run without interruption during blowouts or shortening the game. If participating in sports is supposed to teach students lessons, what lessons are to be gained from, say, a 75-7 loss on the gridiron?

The other view, as I've heard it expressed, goes like this (I am drawing from my prodigious memory of sports-radio discussions here): Athletics are supposed to mirror life and to challenge participants in unpredictable and sometimes unpleasant ways. There's a lesson to be learned in an athletic blowout, according to this line of thinking: If you are unprepared or simply overmatched in sports, as in life, you will be embarrassed. Most athletes face an opponent who is far more talented, the argument goes, and learning to compete against that rival, without fear or the expectation of mercy, is part of what sports is about. I don't know how many people would support the Covenant coach in this situation. But I know that some people (I've heard them) argue that teams should not ease up on a struggling opponent; to do so is anti-competitive, they say.

Looking to professional and college sports doesn't lend much clarity here. Coaches and players periodically object to being "shown up" by an opponent who runs up the score, but those extreme drubbings go on, year after year. Of course, in those situations, athletes often settle those disputes through what amounts to street justice, by exacting revenge through cheap play or simply blowing out that opponent, if ever the tables should turn.

In high school athletics, what rules should apply?

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 2:14 PM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

Any time the U.S. Department of Education gets a nudge to move on FOIA requests, particularly those related to the Reading First program, it gets my full attention. I have tussled with the department a number of times over the last six years, constantly nagging and prodding for documents that should be readily available but somehow take months, even years, to find and process.

I'm not the only one to hit such hurdles.

Now CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) has won a round with this federal court judgment. The Washington-based organization, which uses FOIA, litigation, and research to root out corrupt activities in government, filed a document request with the department two years ago. The request was stalled by a department decision that CREW was not eligible for a fee waiver and would have to pay for the request. Similar FOIA requests by other organizations have been halted when the department suggested that they could cost upwards of $100,000 in staff time and printing costs. CREW appealed the decision on its request repeatedly until it was sent to the court for judgment.

Congress requires federal agencies waive processing and printing fees for FOIA requests if the information is (1) “in the public interest because it is likely to contribute significantly to the public understanding of the operations or activities of the government” and (2) “not primarily in the commercial interest of the requester.” 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(A)(iii). This mandate removes "the
roadblocks and technicalities which have been used by . . . agencies to deny waivers.”

So CREW won the argument on the fee waivers.

I'm anxious to see what turns up in the documents. CREW is looking for calendar entries and correspondence that show if and when publishers met with federal officials. Much of the controversy over Reading First—outlined in the Inspector General reports on the program—was over real or perceived favor given to some publishers over others. It will be interesting to see what publishers' reps had an audience with federal officials at the time decisions were being made over states' Reading First plans...and particularly if any met with Spellings, who was domestic policy advisor at the White House until she became Education Secretary in 2005.

Posted by at 10:43 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

The Washington Post has a good story on what I would describe as an under-reported issue in education today: The dissimilarity of math standards and courses that, on paper, appear to be uniform.

The story focuses on Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia, and their efforts to encourage more students to take Algebra 2. The story says DC is moving toward a requirement that all students complete that math class before high school graduation. While Virginia and Maryland are not taking that step, the story notes that all three jurisdictions are raising requirements for Algebra 2 in one way or another, and that Virginia requires students to take a standardized test to show they've learned the material. Nationwide, the number of states that are requiring Algebra 2, or an equivalent course, has jumped from just two in 2005 to 20 today, the story says, citing Achieve.

The story does a nice job of looking at conflicting pressures facing officials in all three systems, pressures that are playing out in districts around the country. On the one hand, they want to encourage many more students to take Algebra 2, to prepare them for college and the job market. But the reality is that many students show up in these courses far from ready. As a result, algebra classes can look very different, depending on the school, and how far the students have to catch up. One Maryland official cites that states' experience, years before, in increasing mandates for Algebra 1, when many schools were forced to offer not only a traditional class, but also "Baby Algebra," a slower-paced version, for students who couldn't keep up. It doesn't take much imagination to see how similar problems crop up in Algebra 2.

I touched on some similar issues in a series of stories I wrote last month on the state of Alabama's experience in setting relatively high math and science requirements. Alabama, despite being one of the lowest-performing states on national tests, was the first state in the country to require four years of both math and science in high school. Just last year, the state moved to increase those requirements once again, phasing in a mandate that students take Algebra 2, with trigonometry, unless their parents opt them out.

Alabama's schools, however, meet the state mandate in very different ways. In some districts, students are expected to take both math and science, literally, all four years, freshman through senior year. In other places, however, such as those using block scheduling, students can squeeze the mandated courses into three or even two years, meaning they might not take any math or science their seniors years. State officials, meanwhile have made large-scale efforts to increase the skills of their math and science teachers, though one of the largest state-run teacher training programs in the country, and students' access to high-quality courses, through distance education and other means.

As more states move to toughen math and science policies, expect to see them grappling with the issue of how to help struggling students—and how to ensure that students in math and science courses with impressive titles are being taught material that's equally impressive.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 10:28 AM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

Scientists are celebrating in Texas today—or are they?

The Texas state board of education on Friday tentatively approved new science standards, the basic blueprint that spells out what students are expected to know in that subject. The overwhelming focus has been on how the document would treat evolution.

The existing version of the standards, which have been around since 1998, call for students to learn about the "strengths and weaknesses" of various scientific theories. Scientists have long complained about that wording, basically arguing that certain critics are only interested in examining what they believe are weaknesses in one theory in particular: evolution. Doing so is misleading, to say the least, most scientists say, because evolution is one of the best-supported principles in all of science.

So today, after many twists and turns, the board today tentatively approved standards that do not include the "strengths and weaknesses" language, a move likely to hearten many scientists. The revised document instead says that students should use "critical thinking, scientific reasoning and problem solving to make informed decisions within and outside the classroom," and that they are expected to "analyze and evaluate scientific explanations using empirical evidence, logical reasoning, and experimental and observational testing."

The board specifically rejected an amendment to re-insert the strengths-and-weakness language.

But you can bet that a lot of biologists (not to mention chemists, anthropologists, and others) will be less enthused about another action by the Texas board. Its members approved an amendment that asks students to "analyze and evaluate the sufficiency or insufficiency of common ancestry to explain the sudden appearance, statis, and sequential nature of groups in the fossil record," according to the Texas Education Agency.

A few advocacy groups following the debate in Texas have already put out statements calling this statement an attempt to undermine the teaching of evolution. Common ancestry is a key concept in evolutionary biology, and one the public often misunderstands. I could try to explain it, but I'd rather quote from "Science, Evolution, and Creationism," a very readable booklet published by a pair of prestigious institutions, the National Academies and the Institute of Medicine, in 2007:

"Each species that lives on Earth today is the product of an evolutionary lineage — that is, it arose from a preexisting species, which itself arose from a preexisting species, and so on back through time. For any two species living today, their evolutionary lineages can be traced back in time until the two lineages intersect. At that intersection is the species that was the most recent common ancestral species of the two modern species. (Sometimes, this common ancestral species is referred to as the common ancestor, but this term refers to a group of organisms rather than to a single ancestor.) For example, the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees was a species estimated to have lived 6 to 7 million years ago, whereas the common ancestor of humans and the puffer fish was an ancient fish that lived in the Earth’s oceans more than 400 million years ago.

Thus, humans are not descended from chimpanzees or from any other ape living today but from a species that no longer exists. Nor are humans descended from the species of fish that live today but, rather, from the species of fish that gave rise to the early tetrapods

If the common ancestor of two species lived relatively recently, those two species are likely to have more physical features and behaviors in common than two species with a more distant common ancestor. Humans are thus far more similar to chimps than they are to fish. Nevertheless, all organisms share some common traits because they all share common ancestors at some point in the past. For example, based on accumulating fossil and molecular evidence, the common ancestor of humans, cows, whales, and bats was likely a
small mammal that lived about 100 million years ago. The descendants of that common ancestor have undergone major changes, but their skeletons remain strikingly similar. A person writes, a cow walks, a whale swims, and a bat flies with structures built of bones that are different in detail but similar in general structure and relation to each other." (p. 24)

Whether the document approved by the Texas board appeals to you or offends you, know this: It's not over yet. The panel is scheduled to meet in March to vote on a final version of the science standards.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 4:29 PM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

Looks like the international assessments, TIMSS and PISA, are set for revamping and will include measures of 21st-century skills. Just how they will quantify those skills may depend on the results of a joint project being undertaken by of three of the world’s largest technology companies: Microsoft Corp., Cisco Systems, and Intel Corp. The companies are working together to create assessments that measure things like critical thinking, technical aptitude, and collaboration.

The project was unveiled this month at the Learning and Technology World Forum in London.

Barry McGaw, the executive director of the Melbourne Education Research Institute in Australia, will oversee the project. McGaw is a former education director of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which runs the PISA.
I wonder how this will affect comparisons of the results from one testing cycle to the next. (There have been times when significant changes to the NAEP have resulted in breaks in the trend line, although those problems are sometimes headed off by bridge studies that allow ongoing comparisons between the new tests and the older ones.)

Officials with the OECD and the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, or IEA, which conducts the TIMSS, have expressed interest in using the measures on the next versions of the international assessments, according to a news release from the forum.

“IEA is committed to the greater integration of [information technology] into all its assessments, especially TIMSS and the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study,” IEA Chairman Seamus Hegarty, said in the statement. “This reflects the changes in learning environments and the potential of technology to enhance the teaching and learning process.”

The project will focus on methods and technologies that encourage and measure the teaching of the kinds of skills students will need in the global marketplace. While PISA tests reading, math, and science, beginning in 2003 test items that measure problem solving were added. Officials had planned to add tasks related to information and communication technology in time for the 2006 PISA test, but were not able to do so, according to McGaw. Such skills, however, are likely to be included on the tests in the future.

"In the global economy, it is the world’s best-performing education systems, not simply improvement by national standards, that have become the yardstick for educational success," said Andreas Schleicher, head of education indicators and analysis at the OECD. "That is why more and more countries measure the relative strengths and weaknesses of their education systems with OECD’s global PISA assessments. To do so effectively, it is crucially important that these assessments continue to evolve to reflect the skills that matter for individuals and economies. Technology-based assessments will be critical to this and the project brings together key partners that can help PISA make this happen"

Posted by at 2:31 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I've written periodically about the struggle to improve educational opportunities for children, and particularly girls, in Afghanistan. In the process of reporting stories like this one, I've always been struck by the intense desire these children have for learning, and the value that families there place on education.

But there are still factions in the country, generally aligned with the Taliban regime, working to prevent children, especially girls, from getting educated. They will do just about anything to derail educational efforts, including maiming and killing teachers and children.

Here's another story, though, about how the desire for education transcends fear and danger.

A couple of months ago, two teenage girls were attacked by a pack of men who threw acid at their faces as they walked to school in Kandahar. This story on CNN.com updates the progress of the girls, and their continued pursuit of schooling.

"Why wouldn't I want to come to school?" one of the girls told a reporter. "I want our country to persevere. I have to do something for my country, I must go to school."

Posted by at 2:56 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I have no scientific data to back up my assumption that most teachers in America—at least the ones teaching in the upper-elementary grades through high school—took time out of the day yesterday either to watch part of the inauguration or discuss the events and their place in history. Even in a busy school day, with a full curriculum, this topic warrants priority.

Over at Teacher Magazine I found an interesting, albeit brief, discussion about what teachers would be doing on Inauguration Day, but I wonder how it all turned out. How did you make the topic meaningful for your students?

Did the events engage them in the content? Will this be part of ongoing lessons in your classroom? Why or why not?

Posted by at 5:18 PM | Permalink | 3 Comments | Recommend

It's been 13 months since I filed a request with the Education Department under the Freedom of Information Act, looking for information related to the appointment of a Commission on Reading Research to update the work undertaken by the National Reading Panel a decade ago. I lost faith that my request would be fulfilled a while back, particularly in light of the preliminary response I got, which included more than 80 blank pages. All the contents of the documents I requested were redacted under an exemption that allows federal officials to withhold information deemed deliberative. The law does not allow redaction of all the contents of documents that include such deliberations, but only of the specific information covered by the exemption.

In FOIA requests I've made over the last several years, the Education Department has been wont to using the exemption rather liberally. Many documents I've requested have come back to me with huge chunks of text-redacted pages missing.

Will such restrictive interpretations of the federal law continue in the new administration? Well, President Barack Obama has said he will change the way FOIA is interpreted, according to this story on msnbc.com.

"He said he was directing agencies that vet requests for information to err on the side of making information public — not to look for reasons to legally withhold it — an alteration to the traditional standard of evaluation."

This is more of a return to the standard that ruled FOIA fulfillment during the Clinton administration, thanks to a 1993 memorandum by then Attorney General Janet Reno.

The msnbc.com report goes on: "Just because a government agency has the legal power to keep information private does not mean that it should," Obama said.

"For a long time now, there's been too much secrecy in this city," Obama said.

Ok, now to figure out what to FOIA first. Any ideas?

Posted by at 2:47 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

California's state board has adopted draft content standards for foreign language, "putting the discipline on the same level as math, science, history, and other core academic subjects" for the first time, according to this article from the Sacramento Bee.

The move is a badly needed endorsement for the subject, which gets a lot of lip service owing to the importance of such a skill in a global economy. But generally, there has been very little action in making more students learn Spanish or Arabic or Chinese, beyond pilot programs and local efforts. Foreign language, like the arts and civics and physical education, is listed as a core subject in the No Child Left Behind Act, but is not part of the accountability measures schools must adopt.

With more time being spent on math,reading, and science—the subjects tested under NCLB—foreign language is way down the list of priorities. A federal project to increase the number of fluent speakers of critical languages has pumped millions into school foreign language programs that build a pipeline of expert speakers, but the money goes to select districts that start courses in the elementary grades.

California still does not require all students to take a foreign language course to earn a diploma, but perhaps this move signals an effort to raise the importance, or at least the perception of the importance, of learning a language. Advocacy groups are trying to make the case in other states as well, with

Posted by at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

They're debating a revision of the state science standards in Texas today, which of course means another debate over evolution's place in the classroom.

The Texas state board of education is reviewing a draft of the standards, which basically spell out what students are expected to know in science.

The current version of that document says that students should be taught the "strengths and weaknesses" of scientific theories. That language has never been to the liking of scientists, who see it as potentially encouraging teachers to pick on evolution as somehow flawed or weak, when in fact the scientific evidence for the theory is overwhelming.

But a recent version of the standards (known as draft #2) appears to be drawing even stronger objections from scientists. Drafted by a six-member committee, it calls for students to "analyze and evaluate strengths and limitations" of scientific theory.

This story from the Associated Press says members of the committee are divided on that version of the standards.

Update: The Texas board is now expected to be presented with a new version of the draft science standards to consider—a third draft. You can read the third draft here, at the top of the page. Go to the second section of bullet-points for a comparison between the current standards (from 1998) and draft #3. It says that students should "analyze and evaluate scientific explanations, using empirical evidence, logical reasoning, and experimental and observational testing."

Early reactions?

And while you're considering that language, don't forget about what's going on in Louisiana.

Last week, the state's Board of Elementary and Secondary Education approved rules on the kinds of supplementary materials schools can use during discussions of evolution, as well as global warming and cloning. The board was supposed to issue the guidelines, following the adoption of a law allowing the use of supplementary materials last year. This story in the New Orleans Times-Picayune notes that the impact of the law isn't clear, at least not yet. The board can prohibit certain materials statewide, the story says, or reject the ones chosen by a district, if challenged by a local resident.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 10:27 AM | Permalink | 4 Comments | Recommend

Here are a couple more resources for inauguration lessons and activities:

CSPAN will host four days of inauguration coverage on its television channel and Web site, and has posted curriculum resources on its classroom site CSPAN in the Classroom.

Channel One, the news program shown in many middle and high schools, will offer an inaugural edition on Tuesday. The program will provide live coverage of the ceremony, in addition to its regular morning broadcast.

Posted by at 3:03 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

In the wake of the attention being paid to English language learners these days (by this newspaper and others) as well as students with disabilities, the public will be given a chance to influence an important policy affecting those students over the next few weeks.

Two public hearings have been scheduled to discuss the options for testing ELLs and students with disabilities on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, commonly known as "the nation's report card."

The hearings, to be held Jan. 30 and Feb. 4, will focus on efforts to bring more uniformity to the rules governing when ELLs and students with disabilities can be excluded from the NAEP, and receive special accommodations on it. Currently, states' policies on exclusions and accommodations are all over the map, and as a result, the numbers of students they choose not to test, or offer special help, vary greatly. Those inconsistencies have led critics to question the legitimacy of NAEP scores in some jurisdictions.

The Jan. 30 hearing will be held in El Paso, Texas, at the University of Texas at El Paso, in the El Paso Natural Gas Conference Center, Wiggins Road, across from the campus library. The Feb. 4 event will be held in Washington, DC, at the Great Hall of the Charles Sumner School, 1201 17th Street, NW. Both hearings start at 9:30 a.m and last through the mid-afternoon. A committee of the National Assessment Governing Board is hosting the hearings, and public input is welcome. More details are available at the NAGB web site. They're also accepting written testimony, which you can e-mail to them at larry.feinberg@ed.gov.

The governing board is mulling over a number of potential fixes to the exclusions/accommodations issue. These include setting uniform national policies for testing the students; altering the method for giving the NAEP through approaches such as "targeted testing"; adding "cautionary flags" if a jurisdiction's exclusion or accommodations numbers get too big; expanding or cutting the number of allowable accommodations; setting "reasonable" exclusion/accommodation rates, based on states' demographics and testing policies; and changing how exclusion and accommodation rates are reported to the public in NAEP reports.

It's a very tangled issue for the governing board, for several reasons. States and cities set their own policies on testing those populations. Many decisions are left to local education officials dealing with students' individualized education programs.

The surest sign of how much trouble this issue gives the governing board is the fact that they haven't found a solution yet. Maybe you can help them.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 12:45 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow John McWhorter offers a scathing critique in this New Republic article of New York City's approach to bridging the reading gap between black and white children.

The solution, he argues, is simple: Adopt the direct instruction approach, a scripted program that has perhaps the strongest track records for teaching children to read. He points to the Project Follow Through findings, as well as test results in Richmond, Va., and other places.

I just keep wondering why, given the evidence of its effectiveness, it is not more popular. Even among educators who subscribe to scientifically based reading research, and are committed to sound, sequenced, and structured curricula, Direct Instruction is often not the first choice of text. There is a very enthusiastic, but relatively small following, however, who seem to have a hard time converting other colleagues.

What do you think?

Posted by at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Take a look at the latest Quality Counts report, which concentrates on English-language learners, and you get an idea of the challenges many school systems are facing in meeting

the needs of this growing population. You may be surprised by the numbers of students in this category, and the broader data picture.

Chris Swanson, the director of the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, which conducted the exhaustive study, presents the data in an informative Webinar, which you can access on the Ed Week website.

There may be some surprises for those of us who aren't up on the information. Two-thirds of these students, for example, are born in this country. Some 17 percent are third-generation Americans, meaning both their parents were born in the United States.

There's lots more worth taking a look at.

Posted by at 2:10 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

The Presidential Inauguration Committee has teamed up with both national teachers' unions on lesson plans related to the swearing in of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States and the nation's first black commander-in-chief.

The plans include ideas for connecting the current events with history, and particularly with the inauguration of another president from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln. There are reading lists, activities, and documents available for download and printing.

A number of other organizations and agencies are also offering resources for use in the classroom. They are designed for various grade levels, and include everything from simple crafts projects to more in-depth research projects and classroom discussions. Here's a sampling:

The National Endowment for the Humanities has some ideas for teaching about the ceremony and inaugurations throughout history at its education site, EDSITEment.

TeacherVision has these lessons dedicated to inaugural poems.

Education World's site offers presidential portraits and trivia hunts.

The Pennsylvania Department of Education has posted lesson plans for elementary, middle, and high school levels on its website, with detailed information about how they satisfy state academic standards. I'm sure other state agencies have done something similar.

Have you found any helpful resources? Send them along.

Posted by at 5:37 PM | Permalink | 3 Comments | Recommend

Rep. Mike Honda, a California Democrat, had to whittle down the list of requests for the few inauguration tickets he had to give away. So the former science teacher, public school principal, and school board member came up with a contest that would reward a few creative constituents and potentially yield some ideas for school reform in the process.

Honda asked entrants to give their best pitch as to why they deserve the tickets, or to share their educational reform ideas. Here's a sampling of the responses from Rep. Honda's Facebook page.

From the summaries posted from the 10 winners, the ideas don't seem all that new. Many of the winners simply shared their deep desire to attend the historic event. But among the "innovations," there are calls for incentive pay for teachers, STEM standards, and tapping the potential of educational technology.

"The quality of the entries makes it clear how much can be gained by using the Internet to harness the insights and creativity of the American public," Honda writes on his Web site.

The congressman has drafted legislation to create an Educational Innovation Board to be included in the economic stimulus package. He's calling for a $10 million grant program to fund innovative school reform ideas.

Posted by at 3:31 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

In what will probably not come as a surprise to anybody, a potential fracas over evolution is surfacing again in Louisiana.

I write that this wasn't unexpected, because the topic was all but certain to re-emerge with the passage of legislation signed into law last summer by Gov. Bobby Jindal. The first-term Republican governor, with little fanfare, gave his approval to Senate Bill 733, which allows teachers to use supplemental classroom materials that will help students "analyze, critique, and review" scientific theories, including evolution. (It also says the "origins of life, global warming, and human cloning" could be the subject of that scrutiny.)

Supporters of similarly worded measures in other states have said that they are necessary to allow students to examine and discuss evolution's supposed weaknesses. Critics call them backdoor efforts to single out evolution for special criticism, and weaken teaching of the foundational scientific theory.

Science teachers, according to the language of the law, are still required to use state-approved science textbooks, but can supplement them with other materials. The law says that teachers can use materials "as permitted by the city, parish, or other local public school board," but it also says that Louisiana's Elementary and Secondary Board of Education must create rules and regulations for the law. Determining what materials are allowed would presumably be the key to whether the law provokes controversy—or lawsuits—in classrooms.

Now the state board has released a draft of its guidelines for local school officials, with language that could stir things up. The document is scheduled to be discussed today (Tuesday) according to this story in the Associated Press.

On the one hand, the guidelines expressly state that "materials that teach creationism or intelligent design or that advance the religious belief that a supernatural being created humankind shall be prohibited in science classes."

But the AP story also quotes Barbara Forrest, a Louisiana academic scholar who has studied the teaching of evolution. She voices skepticism about a few sentences in particular. The document says that "evaluations of supplementary materials shall be made without regard to the religious or nonreligious beliefs and affiliations of the authors of supplementary materials."

But making those judgments is valid, Forrest argues. It's important to know whether classroom resources originated from a credible scientific source, or someone promoting a religious agenda.

What's occurring in Louisiana is a reminder that battles over evolution are sometimes not focused on state standards, per se, but rather supplementary curricular materials aimed at helping classroom teachers. I looked at some of these issues a few years ago.

You can read the latest version of the Louisiana guidelines here, under the "Student/School Performance and Support Committee meeting packet. The action on evolution begins on page 85.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A last-ditch fundraising effort to keep the AP Italian program alive will not be enough to continue the classes and tests beyond this school year, the College Board announced this month.

The language was added to the Advanced Placement program in 2005-06 under plans to double the number of language courses and assessments offered by the College Board. Japanese, Chinese, and Arabic were also added, reflecting the demands of the business world, government agencies, and development groups for experts in those languages.

But Italian seemed like the odd man out. A beautiful language and rich culture, yes, but learning Italian is not likely to open the same kinds of doors for students as others might.

Continuation of the program depended on advocacy groups raising about $1.5 million, a large portion of which was supposed to come from the Republic of Italy. The groups came up far short of the target.

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

After six years the National Early Literacy Panel released its study of preschool literacy research. I wrote about the panel's preliminary report in 2003, so the final version has been a long time coming.

There's nothing too surprising here: The panel found that teaching the alphabet, the sounds of letters, and vocabulary, as well as developing oral language and print knowledge in small children are important foundations for learning to read later on.

But the report's strong focus on the effectiveness of code-related interventions, and weaker findings on the importance of vocabulary and background knowledge, have raised some concerns in the field that the report could have some unintended consequences when applied to policy. The panel, which was chaired by Tim Shanahan and included other prominent researchers like Susan Landry and Anne Cunningham, did not make recommendations, and it doesn't endorse running phonics drills with 3- and 4-year-olds. But it wouldn't be surprising if some people interpreted the findings that way.

It is more likely, however, that the NELP study will be one of many sources that inform early childhood policy at federal, state, and local levels. The National Institute for Early Education Research, for example, released its proposals for the Obama Administration (as requested by the transition team) this week as well. Other advocacy groups, like PreK Now, have been hard at work to get the issue high on the agenda.

Eduflack, who has made a career out of promoting the research-based reading agenda, says the NELP is no National Reading Panel, which he worked closely with to craft and disseminate the recommendations in its influential 2000 report. The NELP report, he says, will have a lesser impact by itself, and will be "one of many tools" for improving preschool literacy.

He has some recommendations for the stakeholders. First, he writes, they should come up with three top issues (although he doesn't say what they should be). He agrees with PreK Now about the need for an early childhood education czar (isn't that what they called Reid Lyon?). Then they must build a coalition to push the agenda and take some bold steps to move it forward.

Posted by at 3:29 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

The other day, Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher wrote a nice profile of Broad Acres Elementary School, in Silver Spring, Md., a school that has made a strong turnaround academically, despite many challenges. A good number of the school’s students are in “survival mode,” the principal says. Many of those students are newly arrived immigrants, who have made harrowing treks to get to the United States.

One of the strengths of the story is that the writer presents readers with what I would describe as an organic picture of a school. By that I mean that in describing Broad Acres, and how far it has come, readers are taken from the principal’s office to the classroom to the surrounding community, and shown how the various parts work together in influencing a school’s culture and its performance. In the case of this particular school, located north of Washington, the picture is one of school and district administrators, teachers (and their union) and parents learning to cooperate in the hopes of moving students forward.

The article lays out some of the likely factors behind Broad Acres’ gains, such as teachers putting in extra hours for extra pay, part of an agreement between the district, the school, and the union. The school has also expanded after-school activities, carved out time for teachers to mentor each other and discuss lessons, and taken other steps.

Part of Fisher’s point is to make a comparison between the school-improvement efforts at Broad Acres, which seem relatively harmonious, and those being pushed (and being met with strong resistance by the union) by D.C. schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee. The columnist is planning to flesh out that comparison on Sunday, when he says he will look at a D.C. school with a comparable population to Broad Acres.

For a broader look at some of the school-improvement efforts undertaken across Montgomery County, check out my former colleague Lynn Olson's story from last year.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

When attempting to help students in math, don't forget the human factor.

That appears to be the central conclusion of an article I came across recently, which came out this fall in the Review of Educational Research, a publication of the American Educational Research Association. Published in September (I just noticed it a few days ago), the study is a research review of 87 experimental studies of the effectiveness of elementary math programs.

You can read it here.

The basic conclusion: Changing teaching practices does more to increase students' math achievement than simply changing textbooks or using computers in instruction.The article is a review of published studies of those three approaches, which had to meet fairly select research standards to be considered.

The authors of the article, Robert Slavin and Cynthia Lake, found that there was limited evidence that particular math textbooks had an effect on student achievement, according to the criteria used in their study. The effects of computer-assisted instruction were moderate, they found. But the strongest positive effects came as a result of changes to instructional approaches, such as the use of "cooperative learning":—having students work in small pairs or small groups#151;efforts to improve teachers' skills in classroom management and how they use their time, and supplemental tutoring programs for students.

The authors point out that changing math students' computers usage, textbook instruction, and focusing on teachers' practices "do not conflict with each other" and in fact could compliment each other to improve student achievement.

Yet the findings "suggest that educators and researchers might do well to focus more on how mathematics is taught, rather than expecting that choosing one or another textbook by itself will move their students forward," they say.

Slavin and Lake are both associated with Johns Hopkins University and its Center for Research and Reform . Their review should provide some fodder for discussion, given the heated debates over math curricula and textbooks that periodically break out across the country, particularly during textbook-approval process. Here's an example of a recent conflagration.

Research has pointed to the primacy of effective teachers in math before, as noted by the National Math Panel's report last year. What's less clear is what kind of background and preparation makes for a good math teacher.

In light of those debates, I suppose the upshot of their review might be, well, what if math curricula and textbooks don't matter quite as much as everybody says they do? Of course, a lot of teachers and math experts would probably say that curricula, textbooks, and teaching are all intertwined. Unfortunately, teachers with shaky math skills rely heavily on their textbooks to guide them. And the textbooks are typically based on individual states' standards and curricula. So if the curricula and textbooks are incoherent, or simply of poor quality, that just makes the teacher's job all the more difficult.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 4:18 PM | Permalink | 5 Comments | Recommend