May 2009 Archives

Several Texas lawmakers have already made their dissatisfaction known with the performance of the state board of education and the recent saga over evolution's place in the state standards. Now members of the state Senate have succeeded in blocking the reappointment of the board's controversial chairman, Don McLeroy.

McLeroy, a dentist from College Station who joined the board in 2007, pushed for standards that encouraged more criticism of evolution and many core components of the biological theory. As self-described creationist, according to media reports (see this story from the Austin American-Statesman) he played a major role in the 15-member state board's recent revision of the state standards. Some of the more controversial language, which called for students to understand evolution's "strengths and weaknesses" was removed from the document, though other aspects of it have stirred unease within the scientific community, as I reported a while ago.

McLeroy's reappointment to the board by Republican Gov. Rick Perry was blocked by the state Senate, according to the Associated Press. The vote was actually 19-11 in favor of keeping him, but he needed a two-thirds majority, and Democrats in the upper chamber were opposed.

Republican lawmakers quoted in the story blasted the opposition, saying, in effect, that McLeroy was being punished for his conservative Christian views. But Sen. Kirk Watson, a Democrat from Austin, said lawmakers, and the public, believe the board has strayed from focusing on classrooms under McLeroy.

"Whether they agree with McLeroy or not, Texans simply cannot have faith in this board when it is led by a man who has so enthusiastically embraced his role in these endless culture wars," he said.

Whether McLeroy's ouster represents a shift in political and public sentiment on evolution, or simply an isolated and unfair act is a matter of opinion. What's yours?

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 1:52 PM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

The Wal-Mart Foundation plans to get involved in improving literacy in the middle grades in a big way, while the Carnegie Corporation of New York is pulling back somewhat from its sharp focus on funding adolescent literacy. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Education is inviting states to compete in an application process for $7 million of funds left over from fiscal 2008 from the Striving Readers program for middle and high schools, the same program U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has said the Obama administration wants to expand from $35 million to $370 million per year and extend to elementary schools.

Those are some of the news tidbits I gleaned yesterday while covering the 6th annual meeting of a group of private and public funders of adolescent-literacy research and initiatives. Participants included representatives from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the Ed Department's Institute of Education Sciences and office of vocational and adult education, as well as the Wal-Mart Foundation and Carnegie Corporation of New York. They called the meeting a "funders forum."

Let me elaborate on the news:

—Margaret McKenna, the president of the Wal-Mart Foundation, which gave away $423 million last year, reported that her foundation supports literacy in middle school and programs for youths to "re-engage" in school as part of its efforts to promote "youth success." This past year, the foundation financed the Boys & Girls Clubs of America to support literacy among students in the middle grades. But the foundation would like to change direction and find a way to provide tutors on a very large scale across the country for this group of students. McKenna said her staff is exploring options, such as training volunteers who work with Americorps, Vista, or other programs, to be tutors. "While the rest of you are fixing the [K-12] system, we can train tutors to work with students who are two or three years behind grade level in grades 4 to 8," she said.

—In September, a report on adolescent literacy is scheduled to be released by the Carnegie Corporation of New York called "Time to Act." The release will include publication online of a report about the publishing industry and a report on how much various literacy programs cost per student. While the foundation will continue to fund literacy efforts, it is scaling back somewhat, according to Andres Henriquez, the program officer and manager for the adolescent-literacy project of the foundation.

—Marcia J. Kingman, the program director for Striving Readers for the Ed Department, reported that evaluation proved to be a very important part of the Striving Readers program, which is in its third of five years of implementation. Seven school districts and one state (Ohio) are participants in the program that requires teachers across a whole school to get involved in supporting literacy. Each district receives $3 million to $5 million annually to improve adolescent literacy. A good share of the money has paid for literacy coaches, Kingman said. One of the issues that has arisen is how best to sustain literacy programs in middle and high school, Kingman said. "Is it better for a district to grow it's own literacy model or buy a commercial model?"

She said it looks as if Chicago, one of the participating districts, is going to expand the use of the Striving Readers model that it developed, which speaks well for the sustainability of the literacy effort there. Commercial programs, she said, tend to be more expensive and "teachers don't buy in to them to the same degree."

Another issue, Kingman said, is that "schools are struggling with initiative overloads," so it can be hard for them to schedule a 90-minute block of time for struggling readers, as the Striving Readers program requires. She said the $7 million in leftover funds that states may now compete for will be used to implement only the part of the Striving Readers program that targets struggling readers.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

President Obama, in a speech before the National Academy of Sciences last month, vowed that his administration will have federal agencies do more to inspire students to take an interest in green-energy and renewable-energy fields. The president also called for scientists to step out of their laboratories and play a stronger role in guiding students and teachers.

On the issue of urging students to take an interest in energy issues, he said:

"[T]he Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation will be launching a joint initiative to inspire tens of thousands of American students to pursue these very same careers, particularly in clean energy. It will support an educational campaign to capture the imagination of young people who can help us meet the energy challenge, and will create research opportunities for undergraduates and educational opportunities for women and minorities who too often have been underrepresented in scientific and technological fields, but are no less capable of inventing the solutions that will help us grow our economy and save our planet."

I was curious to see more details about what the administration wants done in this area. A number of federal agencies, including the NSF, Department of Energy, and NASA, already sponsor outreach programs to K-12 students and teachers.

The NSF released a statement after Obama's speech pledging to support "innovative technology experiences for students and teachers." Those efforts "will assess what works and why, enable enhanced learning in the K-12 setting on topics relating to clean energy, and consider new and innovative ways to communicate the challenges and promise of clean energy," it said. Those could include "incorporating currently popular ubiquitous social communication platforms," and "projects to design and evaluate educational strategies and assess how to scale them up to reach large numbers of students. This will also include innovative technology experiences for students and their teachers that address how to effectively interest and prepare students to participate in the clean energy workforce of the future."

An NSF spokesperson told me this week that this is a new effort, created in response to the president's priorities, though at this point there is no new funding devoted to it. The agency is currently taking inventory of existing clean-energy education programs, in response to Obama's agenda, spokeswoman Maria Zacharias said in an e-mail. The new program is being run jointly by NSF and the Department of Energy, though the science foundation's directorate of education and human resources is taking the lead on this project.

What role can and should federal agencies play in creating classroom resources on energy topics for students? As I've reported, many teachers complain that scientifically reliable documents on energy and environmental topics are in short supply, so they often end up having to cull together their own. There appears to be a real hunger for "green energy" curricula and lessons in classrooms. A report released a few years ago cited a lack of coordination among federal agencies in planning and implementing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of K-12 programs. Can this new effort avoid those those pitfalls?

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 8:47 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

One of the carrots meant to lure college graduates, and career changers, into math and science teaching is loan forgiveness, a form of assistance offered by states, nonprofits, and the federal government. Whether these programs actually have an impact on creating a sustained pool of talented teachers is a matter of dispute. But it's probably a safe bet that for some aspiring teachers, particularly those thinking of forgoing higher-paying gigs for the classroom, the promise of paying off their college debts—especially if the debts rise as high as $50,000 or $70,000—means something.

A story in yesterday's New York Times talks about the impact of the nation's economic slide on these programs, focusing largely on what's occurring at the state level.

When I wrote about loan-forgiveness programs a few years ago, 31 states had some sort of program aimed at providing scholarships or aid to teachers and aspiring teachers. One of the main hurdles for educators on the hunt for money is fairly basic, as I learned: They don't know where to look for aid. They're often unaware of the state and federal money available to them.

If you're teaching in a math or science classroom, what impact do you think the loss of loan-forgiveness programs is likely to have on whether new recruits enter the field?

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 2:46 PM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

The state of Alaska recently announced plans to create a position for a new director of rural education, whose job will include working the state’s native population, known as Alaska Natives. The new director is likely to spend a lot of time on the road, or rather, in the air, traveling to the state’s far-flung villages and school districts, and cultivating relationships with community leaders, a spokesman for the state department of education told me.

It’s bound to be a major task. Twenty-three percent of Alaska’s 128,000 students are Alaska Natives. The state’s daunting (and spectacular) landscape makes serving them, and rural communities in general, a major challenge. Back when I visited Alaska in 2003, the state had 506 public schools, 135 of which had 50 or fewer students and 100 of which have three or fewer teachers. I visited the Chugach district, outside of Anchorage, which served a significant Native population and had improved its academic standing, and a very remote school in the Bering Strait, with a population that was 100 percent Native, for a profile of a first-year teacher there. (See the photo from the island of Little Diomede, at right, taken by the photographer who accompanied me, James Prichard) Luring teachers to those communities is a challenge, to say the least.

The director of rural education will focus on the improving academic performance in remote districts, and will oversee the implementation of the state’s cultural standards, which were created in the 1998 and designed “to ensure that students are well-grounded in their community’s traditions,” according to a statement from Alaska officials. The position is “an important step in building bridges between rural schools and their communities,” Alaska Education Commissioner Larry LeDoux said in a statement.

I was curious about whether other states have their own administrators whose job it is to work specifically on American Indian issues, and it turns out that several do, according to Robert Cook, the president of the National Indian Education Association, an organization which advocates for students of those backgrounds. Those state officials' titles and duties vary.

Cook and other education officials I spoke to cited Idaho, Nebraska, and New Mexico, among others, as having full-time directors or coordinators responsible for overseeing Indian education. He said he'd like to see more of them, particularly in states with significant American Indian populations.

Helping predominantly American Indian schools cope with the demands of the No Child Left Behind Act, and preserving and developing programs in native languages are just a few of the tasks those state officials focus on, said Cook, a member of the Oglala Lakota Nation who lives in South Dakota. He called the new Alaska position “a great opportunity” for the state.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 10:37 AM | Permalink | 3 Comments | Recommend

Is this the new face of policy gatherings in the nation's capital? The Partnership for 21st Century Skills will stage a "Cyber Summit" on 21st-century skills, to be held entirely online from June 1-12.

The summit will offer a series of live video presentations, online forums, and webinars on examining 21st-century skills and knowledge (see my colleague Stephen Sawchuck's recent exploration of the issue, as well his follow-up article examining some of the criticism of the movement). Several state schools chiefs, including Steven Paine of West Virginia and Tom Horne of Arizona, are scheduled to participate.

The forum will include discussions of professional development, standards, assessments and curriculum, as well as an exploration of state and local practices aimed at promoting those skills.

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

Life as a new or otherwise inexperienced chemistry teacher isn’t easy. You may be asked to conduct labs that are unfamiliar to you. Your classroom equipment may be outdated, or in short supply. Your class sizes may be too big, which makes managing a hands-on chemistry activity difficult.

If this sounds familiar, you might be interested in a new report published by the National Research Council. It focuses on “strengthening high school chemistry education through teacher outreach.” Unlike some reports by the congressionally chartered NRC, this one doesn’t contain specific findings or recommendations. Instead, it examines some of the common challenges facing chemistry teachers and looks at how teaching might be improved through professional development and other means. It was based on a workshop in 2008, which brought together teachers from top high schools, academic researchers, federal officials, and others.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the report says that research shows that students who are exposed to high-quality chemistry tend to get better grades in that subject in college. High school course requirements in chemistry have increased over the years, and many more students report taking those classes than they did a decade ago, it says. (Page 13)

Yet teachers report major hurdles in trying to prepare adequate chemistry lessons for students, the authors note. While most high school chemistry teachers have taken college classes above the level they are assigned to teach, they also say they need help in using technology in instruction, in working with students with special needs, and in using “inquiry”-based lessons, or crafting lessons based on the way that actual scientists perform science. Teachers also report struggling to connect the work that goes on in chemistry labs to students' everyday experiences. Lab work also tends to be disconnected from coursework, an issue I looked at in a story from a few years ago. (Chapter 3)

The report examines a number of options for helping prepare teachers for chemistry lessons, including teacher-to-teacher mentoring, professional development, and informal networks in which chemistry teachers can share ideas. It also mentions a few programs (some sponsored by the federal government) that put K-12 teachers in touch with professional scientists. (Chapters 5 and 6)

After you’ve had a chance to peruse the report, give me your thoughts. What are the most common challenges that chemistry teachers face, and how can they overcome them?

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 10:17 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

Teachers, researchers, undergrads, grad students, and assorted policy types looking for some summertime reading might be interested in a new resource on math and science being offered by EdWeek. It's a collection of recent stories called "Spotlight on STEM," which can be downloaded in PDF form for the price of $4.95. EdWeek has offered these packages of stories on other topics, such as "response to intervention" and tips for new teachers, but this is the first one we've put out on math and science topics.

For those who are interested in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education resource, here's the link.

Topics in the spotlight package include an examination of students' woes in algebra and what schools are trying to do to help them; the role of games in building students' math skills; the growth of renewable energy topics and curricula in schools; schools' efforts to help students apply skills in math and science to subjects like engineering; and a look at what research says (or doesn't say) about what makes an effective math teacher.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 3:59 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

The end of state legislative sessions has brought the death of a batch of evolution-related bills in various state capitols. One of those measures was aimed not at critiquing the landmark theory, or the man who pioneered it, Charles Darwin, but rather at taking on prominent British scientist and atheist Richard Dawkins.

Legislation emerged and receded in recent months in three states, Alabama, Missouri, and Oklahoma, according to the National Center for Science Education, which defends the teaching of evolution. (For a more exhaustive search of bills from around the country, go to the center's web site directly.)

An Alabama proposal sought to promote "academic freedom" in discussions of evolution—using language that closely resembled the wording of proposals in other states. The measure would have protected teachers and other school officials from being fired or disciplined for presenting "scientific information" on various topics, including "biological or chemical origins." Defenders of similar proposals in other states have argued that being allowed to question evolution is a constitutional right. Critics say the measures open the door to presenting misleading depictions of evolution in classrooms.

A bill in Missouri, meanwhile, called for school officials to allow students "to explore scientific questions, learn about scientific evidence, develop critical thinking skills, and respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about controversial issues, including biological and chemical evolution." Most scientists, of course, say there is nothing controversial about evolution, one of the most vetted theories in all of science.

One of the most peculiar evolution proposals (actually, a pair of them) to come and go this spring arose in Oklahoma, where a lawmaker introduced bills denouncing a visit by prominent British biologist Richard Dawkins, who also happens to be an atheist, to the University of Oklahoma. The two bills, HR 1014 and HR 1015 were introduced by Todd Thomsen, a Republican lawmaker. With the end of the session, and Dawkins' speech before Sooner Nation on March 6, the bills now seem moot.

One of the bills criticized the university's department of zoology of promoting a "one-sided indoctrination of an unproven and unpopular theory." The bill further stated that Dawkins, pictured at right, has made statements about evolution that "demonstrate an intolerance for cultural diversity and diversity of thinking and are views that are not shared and are not representative of the thinking of a majority of the citizens of Oklahoma."

Perhaps it's best to let Dawkins speak for himself. Here's a video of his lecture at the university.

"Well I don't want to blow my own trumpet," he told the crowd at one point, "but it isn't everybody who's the subject of legislation."

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 3:30 PM | Permalink | 4 Comments | Recommend

What Michael L. Kamil, a reading researcher at Stanford University who was a guest on an EdWeek live chat today on adolescent literacy, has to say about free reading may surprise you. A transcript is now available.

Here was the question: "What is your opinion of allowing students time in class to read what they want, instead of following a rigid, prescribed reading plan?"

Kamil gave the following answer:

The research on free reading, reading practice, or recreational reading shows that having students read more does NOT lead to better reading. Instead it seems to show that good readers read a lot more than poor readers. Besides, the key to learning is not to read randomly but rather to obtain both organized and useful knowledge. ... If we believe it is important for students to learn mathematics, history, biology, etc., we have to direct students to read specific materials.

As a supplement, with appropriate instruction and feedback, some choice in reading does help, but only with those two variables added in.

Readers, what are your observations about students' free reading?

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 2:43 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

If you're one of those people who's still struggling to master the most basic functions on your cell phone (like send, receive, and check messages), you may not want to continue with this blog post. What it says may depress you.

As you sort through your technological shortcomings, it turns out that two young men in suburban Chicago—a 9-year-old and an 11-year-old, to be precise—have developed an application for an iPhone that allows users to solve math problems on the device. It costs 99 cents to download the application, according to this story describing their application, in the Chicago Tribune. The article says the application allows users to perform
"random addition, subtraction, multiplication or division problems and their solutions."

By now it's become routine to send e-mails and photos and video images by phone. Some journalists are quite adept at filing entire stories from their Blackberry devices. (I am in awe of their typing ability.) So it probably shouldn't come as a surprise that technology has advanced to the stage where students can use their phones to practice their math skills.

My question, after reading about this application, was how far beyond a basic calculator's functions this device would take users. A question for teachers and parents out there: What other similar devices or applications have you seen that allow students to perform math functions—and perhaps more importantly, actually challenge them to solve problems? Are these technologies encouraging students to think about and practice math outside of school? And while I'm not looking to uncoil another debate about the role of calculators in the classroom, what implications do these devices have for cultivating students' foundational math skills, and their ability to solve problems by paper and pencil?

UPDATE: I suppose that this story in the New York Times on text-messaging provides some context for understanding the role that technology plays in students' everyday lives. In one of those statistics that will make geezers like me mutter, "Can that really be right?" it says that American teenagers send and receive an average of 80 texts a day—roughly twice the number they did the previous year. Talk about a captive audience for a math teacher!

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 9:45 AM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

Michael L. Kamil, a prominent researcher on reading, will join us today for a live chat on how to improve adolescent literacy. It will take place from 1 p.m to 2 p.m., Eastern time. Find more information here.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 9:04 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A former editor of elementary and secondary school textbooks explores the issue of how textbooks are developed by too many hands. Basically, she implies, the process that textbook publishers use to create textbooks hinders the possibility that the books will contain engaging and original content.

Is the situation really as dire as this writer in Edutopia suggests? Anyone want to make a few counter arguments?

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 9:55 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Take note that Rosetta Stone, a language-software company, has done well in its launch as a public company on the New York Stock Exchange. A Washington Post article published this month says the "company appears to be a bright spot in the economic drudgery." (Hat tip to Colorin colorado.)

The success of the company, which sells software to the U.S. Army and State Department's Foreign Service Institute, as well as schools, indicates that many people in this country desire to learn a foreign language (of course, we really don't know how much they are actually using the software they are purchasing). But at the same time, the Center for Applied Linguistics has documented that the proportion of elementary schools in this country providing foreign-language classes declined over the past decade, which I reported on this year in Education Week.

Could it be that Americans are turning to tools like Rosetta Stone software as adults to learn a foreign language and compensate for something that was missing from their K-12 school curricula?

I've personally used the software for improving my Spanish, and I've found it helpful, but my experiences of being immersed in Spanish during summer study stints in Latin American countries were much more valuable. I also find that my English-Spanish conversation exchanges with Spanish-speakers here in the Washington area have been a better teaching tool than any software.

The software is used as supplementary material in a lot of schools for teaching foreign languages and English as a second language. The lessons use photos to illustrate words and ideas in the target language and don't provide translation into English. Thus, they're based on the concept of immersion.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 1:25 PM | Permalink | 3 Comments | Recommend

Two stories in today's newspapers highlight efforts to improve math and science education in major cities, one of which is well under way in Los Angeles, while the other is just getting off the ground in Detroit.

A story in the Los Angeles Times describes a pilot program taking place in six schools in the city that aims to boost students' interest in computer science. So far, it seems to be having success reaching minority students, according to the story. Over the last five years, the program helped double the number of African- American students taking Advanced Placement computer science and tripled the number of Latinos and girls who were enrolling, according to the Times.

Called the Computer Science Equity Alliance, the program is supported with National Science Foundation funding, according to the story. The program's backers, who include Joanna Goode of the University of Oregon, hope to expand it to 20 more schools, with additional federal funding.

In Detroit, construction is under way on a new math and science charter high school on the city's riverfront, according to the Detroit News. The new school is to be connected to a similarly themed middle school, which is linked to the Detroit Science Center. The high school is expected to receive a major boost from a pair of philanthropies, the Thompson Education Foundation and the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan, to the tune of $15 million, according to the story. Backers of the program hope the schools will support urban revitalization on Detroit's east side and draw more families back to the financially beleaguered city.

A major question, as the story points out, is whether this development will augur efforts to allow more charter schools in Motown. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has said he hopes more charter schools will take hold in Detroit (he's also promised more federal funding as a reward for school innovation in the city), and new Mayor Dave Bing had until recently served on the board of a group that oversees public school academies in the city, including the math and science school, the News reports.

Of course, in order to prepare students for middle and high school math and science, it helps to begin early. Earlier this month, I wrote about a University of Michigan venture to improve elementary school science instruction in Detroit in about 20 schools by building students' scientific-reasoning skills. (Here's a photo from one participating school, to the right.)

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 9:44 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

At a hearing of the House Education and Labor Committee this morning, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said he would like to increase funding for the federal government's Striving Readers program from $35 million to $370 million per year. He said he also wants to extend the program from operating only in middle and high schools to elementary schools. (It's likely that he's referring to the upper elementary school grades that weren't covered under the federal Reading First program. A draft bill is circulating in Congress that could provide a program that could be a replacement for Reading First.)

Duncan added that he "worries" about adolescent literacy, a topic that's creating lots of buzz lately in education circles. The Alliance for Excellent Education has more information about the Obama administration's proposal for expanding Striving Readers in a summary of the administration's proposed budget.

It turns out that one of my colleagues here at Education Week, Dakarai Aarons, wrote about this program in the Memphis city schools back in 2006 when he was a reporter for The Commercial Appeal, a newspaper there. He reported then that in the Memphis district, a $16 million grant from Striving Readers was being used to train core-subject teachers in how to integrate literacy strategies into their lessons and to direct interventions to struggling readers.

I see that Chicago is one of the school districts that has received a Striving Readers grant. So I guess Duncan must feel that the program was working well there when he was superintendent.

See more about what Duncan said at the hearing over at Politics K-12 and at Catherine Gewertz's new blog, High School Connections

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 3:04 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

What's the connection between cultivating students' artistic talent and their overall brain development? That topic was explored at a recent seminar sponsored by the Neuro-Education Initiative at Johns Hopkins University's School of Education, as was detailed in this story in the Baltimore Sun.

Researchers, as the article explains, are exploring whether training in the arts can change students' brain structures and the way they think. It's fascinating stuff. The article alludes to a number of intriguing research projects, who is examining a correlation between students' training in music and their skill in geometry. It also mentions another study underway at Harvard, which is looking at the connection between elementary schoolers' prowess with the piano and violin and their development.

It's safe to assume that advocates for the arts would be keen on several of these topics, particularly as they seek to justify their programs' existence during a bleak budget era. One item that might be of particular interest: A lecture given at the arts event by Harvard University's Jerome Kagan, titled, "Why the Arts Matter."

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 1:49 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The novelist and critic Walter Kirn was a guest on Stephen Colbert's show last night, discussing his new book, "Lost in the Meritocracy: The Undereducation of an Overachiever." Kirn's book, according to the description I've read, is a memoir recounting his transition from rural Minnesota to Princeton, and what he sees as the gamesmanship endemic to getting into the nation's higher education institutions—and succeeding there. He explored some of these points in a 2005 Atlantic Monthly article.

One exchange from last night:

Colbert: "I'm no fan of Ivy League education, because I think they turn people into elites. But I have to admit that it has to be better education than a state school, because it costs more. The market has spoken. Or did you not take economics at Princeton?"

Kirn: "It's the landscaping that costs more..."

Colbert: "It's beautiful there. Really nice..."

Kirn: "And the fact they serve quail...State schools, it's all scrambled eggs."

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 10:42 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

Last week I wrote about Massachusetts' plan to require aspiring elementary school teachers to pass a math-specific portion of the state licensing test, as opposed to simply passing the generic exam.

Many of those teachers, it seems, have a major task ahead of them.

The state this week released results showing how teachers fared on the math portion of the state's licensing exam, and the scores were very poor. Seventy-three percent of elementary teachers failed the math portion, according to this story in the Boston Globe. State education officials were not especially surprised by the low scores, the story says. And why would they be, given elementary teachers' struggles with math content? If we were to break out the elementary math scores in other states (particularly in states that don't fare nearly as well as Massachusetts on the National Assessment of Educational Progress), it's hard to believe their primary-grades teachers would have done any better.

Massachusetts officials are expected to require passing scores in math on the state licensing exam, pending state board approval. They believe they're the first state in the country to take that step. Folks from the National Council on Teacher Quality also told me they think Massachusetts would be the first.

I was curious about how teachers' union officials would react to the elementary licensure results. The story says they've been calling for changes to elementary teacher-preparation programs for a long time, though one of their reps also seemed to question how much could be gleaned from the newly released results. "As a teacher, if I gave an exam and saw a 27 percent pass rate, my first inclination would not be to say there is something wrong with the people who took the test. It would be, is there something wrong with the test or something wrong with instruction?" Kathleen Skinner, an official with the Massachusetts Teachers Association, told the Globe.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 10:26 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

The American Institutes for Research has created an online program in an effort to help schools identify students at risk of dropping out of school, before they're already halfway out the door. It's called the "Early Warning System Tool," and it was created by the National High School Center within the AIR.

Want to take this vehicle for a test drive? Go to the above link and scroll down to the tool, which you'll see listed as an Excel file. Fill in information giving the risk factors of individual students—which include days of school missed per quarter, low GPA, and credits earned (or not earned). The system spits out an final report on a student's risk level, and whether he or she is "off-track." I put two imaginary students through the process, and was told that one of them had stayed on-track, while the other veered off.

School officials are exploring strategies for flagging high school students who may be at risk of dropping out. See my colleague Catherine Gewertz's story on Chicago's efforts in this area, from earlier this year. Here's an Eduwonkette item from last year on "early warning" efforts to prevent dropouts.

Could a relatively straightforward tool like the "early warning" system help schools keep a closer eye on students who are sliding away? Or is there a more practical or systematic way of doing this?

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 9:33 AM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

A top Florida education official has been named as executive director of the somewhat obscure but influential board that sets policy for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP.

Cornelia Smith Orr, who currently serves as an assistant deputy commissioner of education in Florida, will take over the top post at the National Assessment Governing Board. Orr's move was made final by the 26-member governing board at its quarterly meeting in Seattle over the weekend. No date has been set for Orr to start her work with the board, which is headquartered in Washington. She will replace Charles Smith, who left the post to take a position with the ACT Inc.

Orr has an extensive background in the nitty-gritty of testing. She's currently the assistant deputy commissioner of accountability, research, and measurement at the Florida Department of Education in Tallahassee, where she oversees the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, or FCAT. She received a Ph.D. in educational research, measurement, and evaluation from Florida State University in 1982, with a focus on psychometrics, research design, and statistical methods. (When I said the nitty-gritty, I meant the nitty-gritty.)

She's directed a number of Florida K-12 and postsecondary assessment programs, including exams in educator certification and college-placement. She also managed testing programs for Leon County Schools, in Florida.

In a statement, board officials say that some of Orr's top tasks will include ramping up NAGB's efforts to test college and workforce "preparedness," an ongoing project, and overseeing an expansion of NAEP tests of big-city school districts. I'll bet that she'll also be asked to help define NAEP's role in the movement toward setting international standards for states, an area of growing interest inside the Beltway and beyond. What other areas would you like her to take on?

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 12:07 PM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

States have a hit-or-miss record in covering bioscience topics in the curriculum, according to a new report issued by the biotechnology advocates. The report evaluates states based on a number of factors, from student scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress science exam to how well they incorporate bioscience into their state standards to ensuring that biology teachers are well-qualified.

Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, Vermont and Wisconsin are deemed "leaders of the pack" in bioscience ed by the authors. Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and West Virginia have a "lagging performance" in that area, they argue.

The report was produced by three organizations: BIO, Battelle, and the Biotechnology Institute, who call it the "first-ever comprehensive study" of middle and high school bioscience education across the 50 states. Why do the biosciences matter? Here's what they say:

"Bioscience workers are needed to conduct research; translate innovation into product development and improved health care techniques; and, ultimately, to manufacture biomedical and other bioscience-related products. Thus, ensuring the availability of an educated, skilled workforce is critical to developing and sustaining a highly competitive, robust bioscience cluster over the long term. It is also critical for the American society that the public is well-informed about the promise and challenges of biotechnology. Recent national legislation on genetic testing is a harbinger of the complex issues that the biosciences will pose in the years ahead."

A couple figures that stand out from the report. The portion of biology teachers who are certified ranges from 50 percent to 100 percent in the states. Average state scores on the NAEP have declined from 1996 to 2005, among 12th graders.

Some schools and states, with the help of private industry have taken a growing interest in biotech topics in recent years. Earlier this year I wrote about an Alabama initiative supported by a couple of the scientists who were involved with the Human Genome Project. In New York, a number of school districts are partnering with local colleges to bring nanotechnology into the curriculum.

Have a look at the report, and make your own judgment. Are the authors evaluating states by the right criteria?

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 10:16 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

When you think of Hong Kong, what comes to mind? International financial hub, certainly. Perhaps that spectacular skyline, ablaze in neon. Bruce Lee movies, or, if you're a younger generation of film buff, maybe John Woo.

Yet if your primary interest is education, there's a good chance you associate Hong Kong with something else: high-quality math lessons.

Devoted readers of Ed Week know that U.S. policymakers are paying a lot more attention to international assessments these days. Perhaps more importantly, they're attempting to use data to move into very detailed analyses of what other countries seem to be doing well—and what we could be learning from them.

A new study released by a pair of researchers this past week offers a good example of this detailed analysis. Steve Leinwand and Alan Ginsburg decided to examine the 3rd grade math items tested in a top-performing U.S. state, Massachusetts, against that of Hong Kong, which scores extremely well on international tests, like the TIMSS. They found that Hong Kong's test focused more intently on numbers and measurement, which they see as two key topics for preparing students for algebra, and for in-depth problem-solving. They also found that Hong Kong's test required a lot more constructed-response questions than Massachusetts' did&mdash. Those questions tend to demand more of students. And overall, Hong Kong's test questions were more challenging, in terms of difficulty and complexity.

In some ways, the study is reminiscent of Bill Schmidt's analysis of TIMSS data, which has found that high-performing countries tend to teach fewer math concepts, in more depth, than the United States does. See my recent story for more on Schmidt's work analyzing how math is taught in the high-performing state of Minnesota.

I should note that in their study, Leinwand and Ginsburg emphasize that they're not holding up Hong Kong as a model—they're holding up both jurisdictions as models. "[T]he rest of the U.S. states would likely benefit even more by incorporating characteristics of both the Hong Kong and Massachusetts assessments within their own assessments," they write.

While Massachusetts' performance on national and international tests is impressive, Hong Kong's is even better. Roughly 40 percent of Hong Kong test takers reach the "advanced" level on the TIMSS test, nearly twice the proportion that hit that mark in Massachusetts, and four times the percentage that climb that high from the United States, overall.

While we're on the topic of Asian education, I wrote a story this week that deals with math teaching in South Korea. Specifically, it's about an American professor named Janice Grow-Maienza and her quest to have Korean texts and lessons that she and a team of people have translated published commercially in the United States. So far, no luck. Like the authors of the Singapore study, Grow-Maienza is not arguing that U.S. officials adopt a foreign curriculum, or any other model, wholesale. Instead, she says, American officials can learn from various pieces of it, such as Korea's teacher manuals, which she considers especially impressive. Check out her web site of translated Korean materials here.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 1:36 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

In the wake of the demise of the federal Reading First program last year there's been a lot of speculation about when and how the federal government would again attempt to tackle the nation's significant literacy problems. There's been little question about whether there would eventually be a successor to Reading First, which pumped about $6 billion into K-3 reading instruction across the country since 2002.

There's been more discussion of the issue lately (Eduflack outlines his own suggestions here). Now there's a draft bill circulating which details a federal reading effort that would target children of all ages, essentially from birth to high school.

Could this signal that the recent federal hiatus from reading-reform issues, prompted by the controversy over Reading First, might be coming to an end? A Senate aide confirms that there is bipartisan interest in the bill, which reflects the handiwork of the Alliance for Excellent Education, a Washington-based organization that has focused a lot on adolescent literacy. The bill, I'm told, could be introduced after Congress' Memorial Day break.

The proposal holds true to many of the tenets of Reading First, particularly the need for instruction grounded in skills that also builds vocabulary and comprehension. But it goes further in making writing a key component of effective reading instruction, as well as the importance of students' motivation to read.

Reading First drew criticism from many in the field for ignoring those elements. Some other additions might answer some of that criticism as well: There is an expressed emphasis on what are described as "the characteristics of effective literacy instruction." Under that banner students would be exposed to a variety of texts, reading practice, and text-based collaborative learning. Also emphasized are language development, the family's role in building literacy, and the need to build students' interest in reading.

Instructional materials used by grantees in the program would be need to be "based on scientifically valid literacy research," the draft says. There's no detail about what that term means, and under Reading First the demand for materials and strategies based on "scientifically based reading research" caused a lot of confusion and was interpreted in different ways. It also led to a lot of commercial products marketed as "research-based" that didn't necessarily meet the standard.

Reading First was also slammed for real or perceived conflicts of interest among federal officials and consultants involved in the program. The draft bill, and new rules instituted at the Ed. Dept. in the wake of the Reading First controversy, try to address those problems.

The proposal, of course, carries a hefty price tag: $2.3 billion.

Do you think the feds should get back into the reading reform business? Does the draft bill address all the key points, and adequately tackle the problems in Reading First?

Posted by at 1:19 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

Three cheers for Danielle McBurnett, who at age 17, became the youngest person ever to receive a bachelor's degree from Arizona State University's College of Nursing and Healthcare Innovation. She even graduated summa cum laude.

McBurnett was home-schooled, began taking community college classes at age 12, and picked up her high school diploma at age 15, according to the Associated Press.

If you read the story, it's a reminder that extraordinarily gifted students in science and other subjects tend to be extremely well rounded, contrary to popular stereotypes, which have them chained to a desk somewhere, studying nonstop. I was reminded of that a few years ago when I wrote about a study documenting the experiences of high-performers in math and science competitions, who also happened to be the sons and daughters of immigrants. In the case of McBurnett, she had dreamed of becoming a nurse from a young age, and she's planning on entering the school's doctoral nursing program. But she's also considering going to law school. One of her fellow ASU graduates is the apparently multi-talented Raymond Singh, who at the age of 17 will earn a B.A. in aerospace engineering. He hopes to pursue a doctorate in that area, too. But after that he says he's going to spend a year learning the theory and practice of classical music.

Why not? The young man will have his whole life ahead of him—a few more years than most Ph.D. recipients, it turns out.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 4:35 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Jane Miriam Epperson Brinley, a teacher of Latin at St. Anselm's Abbey School in Washington, D.C., expresses sorrow in a Washington Post opinion piece that the College Board will give the Advanced Placement Latin Literature exam for the last time this month.

It will continue to offer an AP Latin exam that still includes test questions on author Virgil, she says, but is halting the Latin exam that covers Cicero and four lyric poets. Brinley is afraid that the cancellation of the exam will lead to reduced student enrollment in Latin courses, and a demise of course offerings across the country.

Here's a teacher who is expressing her deeply felt appreciation for a subject matter that is not taught in many U.S. schools, and, if she is right in her predictions, may soon be taught in even fewer.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 4:22 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Elementary school teachers play a crucial role in introducing students to math, yet many of those educators struggle mightily with the task. Some elementary teachers took only a little bit of math during college—and that may have been years ago. They may have little knowledge of math and how to present it in clear and correct terms to young children.

Now Massachusetts is taking an unusual step to try to improve elementary schoolers' math skills. The state is planning to require candidates for elementary certification to receive a passing score on a math-specific subject test on the state licensure exam, as opposed to simply passing the overall assessment. Massachusetts' commissioner of educator, Mitch Chester, plans to bring the policy before the state board of education next week for approval. The new requirements would be based on a set of guidelines for improving elementary teachers' math preparation, approved by the board in 2007, according to the state department of education.

The goal is to test aspiring elementary teachers' "competence in math," Chester told me yesterday. "It's a pretty substantial standard, not a trivial standard."

Chester said he believes Massachusetts will be the first state in the country to establish a math-specific passing score on its elementary licensure test. The standard would apply to candidates seeking a grade 1-6 certificate. He also plans on establishing a math passing score for preK-8 special education teachers working with students with moderate disabilities.

The commissioner also said he was going to recommend a three-year grace period for candidates who did not meet the passing score to try again.

Policymakers, academic researchers, and others have debated strategies for improving elementary teachers' math skills for years. Is Massachusetts' plan the right one, and are other states likely to follow? How does this compare with other proposals to revamp primary grades math teaching, such as creating more elementary math "specialists," who focus only on that subject, or putting more resources into roving math coaches, who travel from school to school, helping their peers?

UPDATE: Just to catch readers up, the state board in Massachusetts did in fact approve the new requirement. Elementary teachers in the state will be expected to receive a general passing score on the test, and also a passing score on the math section. Those who fall just short of the cut-off math score will have a three-year grace period, which allows them to work with an interim license while they attempt to achieve a passing mark.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 9:36 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Why does curriculum in early-grades math matter? And when a federally sponsored study comes out that appears to favor two types of curricula in particular, how should we interpret it?

A researcher, a college professor, and the head of prominent education advocacy group came together at a forum in Washington yesterday to hash it out.

The starting point for their discussion was a study conducted by Mathematica Policy Research, which found that a pair of elementary math programs, Saxon Math and Math Expressions, had an edge over two others in producing gains in boosting student achievement. (See my colleague Debbie Viadero's story on the report, from earlier this year.) Among the legions of parents, teachers, mathematicians, and policy experts who love to debate the quality of various math curricula, those results produced plenty of chatter.

On Tuesday, the author of that study, Robert Agodini of Mathematica, as well as two others taking part in a panel discussion, cautioned against drawing overly broad conclusions from the document, noting that it's only the first step in an extended research project. The two panelists, Mary Lindquist and Kati Haycock, were similarly circumspect, though all of them seemed to agree that it was just the sort of study that is desperately needed, as teachers and school officials search for answers on how to improve the quality of teaching and learning in math in this country. Curriculum, undeniably, is a big part of that, they said.

In general, the study found that, within a cohort of 1,300 1st graders from 39 schools, students who used Saxon Math and Math Expressions significantly outperformed those using Investigations in Number, Data, and Space, as well as Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley Mathematics. A description handed out at the event offered this general description of the programs: Saxon is a more scripted curriculum with more teacher-directed lessons; Investigations tends to be more student-centered; Math Expressions is sort of a hybrid approach;and the Scott-Foresman model combines a focus on math fundamentals, teacher-directed instruction, and “differentiated” materials for different students. Seven math curriculum programs, including the four he studied, represent 91 percent of the market for grades K-2, Agodini said at the forum.

Lindquist, a professor emeritus at Columbus College in Georgia, is the former president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. She noted the study's limitations—it only evaluated students on one test, for one year, in one grade. Those caveats tend to get lost in the public sphere, though. “I get on the Web and see ‘Two Winners,’ ” Lindquist said. “I’m anxious to see what happens [in the study] after five years.”

Haycock, as many Ed Week readers know, is the president of the Education Trust, which seeks to close the gap between low- and high-achieving students. She was similarly circumspect about the direct implications of the study, though she hoped it would prompt a broader discussion about improving teaching and learning in early-grades math. State math standards are too vague, she said. A big complaint among educators in the No Child Left Behind era is that schools promote teaching to the test. But if teachers aren't given good direction on what to teach through good curriculum, "frankly, it's no wonder" tests drive instruction, Haycock said.

"There is a sense of desperation among teachers for quality curriculum," Haycock said. "Teachers feel like, essentially, they are teaching in the dark."

Lindquist agreed. "Teachers are busy," she said, and at the elementary level, "they aren't experts in every subject." Without guidance through a good curriculum, teachers become reliant on bulky textbooks, said Lindquist, who cited a personal example.

"I know when I started teaching, I moved through the book," she said. "I don't know where my students were, but I was moving through the book."

In recent years, there have been a number of efforts to clarify, and simplify, the work of elementary teachers. The NCTM in 2006 released "Curriculum Focal Points," a document that seeks to guide teachers in elementary and middle-grades math. The National Mathematics Advisory Panel, commissioned by the White House, called for educators to focus on major topics, like fractions and whole numbers, to prepare students for algebra.

What is the value of good math curriculum, for teachers, for schools? And what sorts of questions about early-grades math curriculum should the federal government be attempting to answer, through studies like the one by Mathematica?

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 10:13 AM | Permalink | 5 Comments | Recommend

Talk about "common standards" continues to pop up all over town here in the nation's capital. Vicki Phillips, who heads up the education division for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, testified about what she thinks those standards should look like at a hearing of the House Education and Labor Committee yesterday, GothamSchools reports.

U.S. Rep George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the committee, emphasized the need for the nation to address the high school dropout crisis at the hearing.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Over at Inside School Research, my colleague Debbie Viadero describes Reading for Understanding, a research initiative just announced by the Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education. It's designed to tackle the problem of how children can learn to understand the words they are reading beyond merely sounding them out.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 3:40 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

What’s the main goal of elementary school science instruction? And why do students who thrive in early-grades science seem to stumble when they reach middle and high school?

I explore some of these topics in a story in this week’s issue of Education Week. It’s about efforts by a University of Michigan researcher to cultivate “complex scientific-reasoning” skills in young, urban students. That researcher, Nancy Butler Songer, is challenging elementary students in Detroit not only to understand basic science facts and concepts, but also to understand what science is and what scientists actually do. That means that she and the teachers she works with in 22 Detroit schools ask elementary schools to formulate scientific arguments based on evidence, to make claims, to provide reasoning.

The idea is to give these students, some of them from the poorest neighborhoods in the city, a depth of knowledge that will serve them well later in school. Another goal is to have them develop a love of science. Test scores in the schools participating in the program, which is funded by the National Science Foundation, called BioKIDS, are improving.

Songer was quick to tell me that building scientific-reasoning skills does not mean glossing over scientific facts. Teachers in the program attempt to build knowledge of key vocabulary and ideas throughout the curriculum.

One of the more interesting aspects of this program, obviously, is the setting. Detroit’s schools are beset with problems, many of them financial. While the university has contributed resources to schools taking part in BioKIDS, the program works in very modest settings. Students collect data and make observations and do the work of scientists in scruffy playgrounds and across asphalt blacktops in the heart of the city.

What are the most essential science skills that schools should nurture in young students? After reading the story, do you believe a model like BioKIDS could work in other districts, or not?

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 10:09 AM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

California will offer "free, open-source" digital textbooks in math and science for high school students, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has announced. The governor says his state would be the first in the nation to take that step.

Maybe there is something to Rahm Emanuel's quip about not letting a good crisis go to waste. Schwarzenegger, in a statement about the plan, suggests that the idea for digitalizing textbooks has come about partly because of California's severe and well-documented budget problems. He says the move will cut costs and encourage collaboration among districts.

Schools have shown an increased interest in digital textbooks in recent years, and publishers have moved to meet that demand. (See Ed Week's exploration of the digital market here and here.) Products are changing all the time, through features such as Kindle. Even so, California's plan, which is being coordinated at the state level, sounds ambitious. The governor says he and his secretary of education, Glen Thomas, want to have a set of approved digital math and science textbooks ready for the fall of 2009, and that Thomas will be working with State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell and State Board of Education Chairman Ted Mitchell on the venture. The state will compile a list of digital texts that are aligned to California's academic standards, according to the governor.

An effort to digitalize textbooks in another, less populous state would be interesting on its own. It seems likely that because this is occurring in California, a major textbook market, it could have broader implications for the publishing industry. California officials say that a list of approved digital textbooks will be put together after "content developers" from around the nation have submitted their products for review.

A couple questions come to mind: How ready are publishers who now seek state approval for their products in California to take the digital step? How much money would this save the state, or individual school districts? And if public officials see potential savings in choosing a digital product over a textbook, what impact will this have on the quality of math and science lessons across the state?

For techies and non-techies out there: How will California's move affect digital education, and more importantly, student learning in math and science?

UPDATE: I was curious about who would approve digital textbooks for use across the state. The Office of the Secretary of Education explained it to me this way: California adopts textbooks for grades K-8, but local school districts are responsible for adopting high school textbooks. Under the new digital initiative, the state will review digital material for high school math and science courses based on the state's academic content standards, and provide feedback in a written report, said Jessica Hsiang, of the secretary's office, in an e-mail. The responsibility for approving a product for use, however, will remain with local districts.

I'd also asked why the state chose to focus its digital efforts on science and math, rather than other subjects. Hsiang said the decision reflected the strong state and federal interest in "STEM" education, though she added that this is just a first step in a "much broader effort" to bring digital resources to schools, presumably across subjects.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 11:43 AM | Permalink | 4 Comments | Recommend

The Washington Post published an editorial on Sunday offering support for "common, national standards."

The editorial also says that improvements on the long-term National Assessment of Educational Progress trend data for younger students, particularly minority students, "can be traced to the standards-based reforms embodied in the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law and the state efforts that predated it."

As I indicated in a story about the long-term data published in this week's Education Week, not everyone would agree with that assessment. Chester E. Finn, the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, noted that at least he'd be cautious about attributing the recent success on NAEP of the younger students strictly to the No Child Left Behind Act. He wrote in Flypaper, that the “lion’s share” of gains for 9- and 13-year-olds in math and reading on NAEP from 1999 to 2008 occurred from 1999 to 2004, not from 2004 to 2008, so that “one could even claim that NCLB slowed the rate of gain.” I suspect that Finn has a lot of company in his questioning of any connections between drawn between NCLB and NAEP long-term trend data.

But Eduflack agrees with the gist of the Post's editorial. See his response here.

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

After completing a legendary pro basketball career for the Detroit Pistons, Dave Bing left to see out the twilight of his career with professional teams in other cities. Then he did something unusual, given the socioeconomic forces that have been battering the Motor City for decades: He came back.

As Detroit's population and economic wealth evaporated, and many residents fled for surrounding suburbs, Bing returned to the city after his playing days and founded an ultimately successful steel company. He became active in the community, on issues such as neighborhood revitalization, as his business grew. Bing has traced the origins of his civic involvement partly to the frustration and sadness he felt about the event that drove many Detroiters out: the city's horrific 1967 riots, in which more than 40 people were killed. (Here's a good profile of Bing written by a native Detroiter, for ESPN.)

Now Bing has a chance to shape the troubled city, and its schools, as a political insider. On May 9, he won a special election to become Detroit's mayor, a seat he will hold until at least a follow-up election later this year, but possibly for a full term. Bing was sometimes criticized during his campaign against election opponent Kenneth V. Cockrel Jr., for a lack of specifics. He will face a host of daunting challenges across city government, perhaps none greater than those plaguing the city's 95,000-student school system.

Last year, after Detroit school officials revealed that they faced a deficit of more than $400 million, state schools Superintendent Michael Flanagan declared the district to be in a state financial emergency. The city schools were placed under state oversight; the state-appointed financial overseer, Robert Bobb (formerly a top administrator in the D.C. government and president of that city's school board) has announced plans to cut hundreds of jobs and close schools to get spending under control. Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm recently referred to her state's job losses and overall economic plight as "our own, slow Katrina."

I recently visited Detroit for a story that's coming out this week on a curriculum, designed by researchers at the University of Michigan and in place in more than 20 city schools, which seeks to build scientific-reasoning skills among elementary students in urban environments. It's shown positive results. During my visit, the school system's financial woes were an unavoidable topic. One of the teachers I interviewed, who has embraced the new science curriculum, received her layoff notice last month.

How will Dave Bing cope with these challenges? Some observers, such as the authors of this Detroit News editorial, are arguing that the schools need to pursue a broad expansion of charter schools, as well as the use of merit pay for teachers and other measures. Bing (see a photo to the right from his playing days, circa 1967) has voiced support for charter schools in his campaign. The head of the AFT in Detroit, however, has voiced opposition to merit pay, according to the editorial, which also says that contract negotiations between the city and the union are about to get under way.

What steps are necessary to improve the financial stability, and the achievement of students, in Detroit's schools? Is there any reason that charter school growth cannot occur in Detroit, as it has in other cities? Or would the city's economic deterioration overwhelm efforts to overhaul the education system?

In sum: What advice would you give to Dave Bing?

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 1:02 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Eduflack highlights a small but notable cut in President Obama's education budget in this post about the potential demise of the National Institute for Literacy.

He's right when he describes the quasi-federal agency as struggling, both to tackle its ambitious mission to address literacy from birth through adulthood, and to be a leader in promoting research and innovation in the field. I've written a number of times about the institute's misadventures in trying to launch the Commission on Reading Research, to take on the much-needed task of following up on the work of the National Reading Panel.

Several other efforts by the institute in recruiting and overseeing review panels, as it was told to do by the Education Department, went awry in one way or another. Take these:

— As the federal Reading First program was being rolled out, the institute brought together a group of literacy assessment experts to review the products on the market for gauging reading skills in the early grades. The resulting report came under scrutiny in later investigations of conflict of interest in the $1 billion-a-year program because several of the reviewers had a hand in developing one or more of the tests that received high marks from the panel.

—The institute put out an RFP for a review of commercial reading series that would fit the "research-based" requirement of the Reading First program. But the contract was never awarded after the department came under fire for what were perceived as endorsements of particular products and services.

—The institute funded the initial literature review that supported the work of National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth. The Institute of Education Sciences, however, did not publish the report, saying it did not pass peer review. Experts in the field, however, surmised that the findings did not jibe with the Bush Administration's philosophy for teaching English learners. It was eventually published by the Center for Applied Linguistics.

—The work of the National Early Literacy Panel stretched on for years before its report came out this past January. As I wrote here, the report drew some criticism for what some experts described as its narrow focus on skill development in very young children.

Eduflack describes NIFL's confusion over its direction, particularly after it was enlisted to promote the kind of scientifically based reading instruction prescribed in Reading First, work that was viewed as distracting the institute from its adult-ed projects.

But Eduflack, who worked on the institute's Partnership for Reading initiative, takes the institute to task for its "inability to capitalize on that potential."

He goes on to say that the institute was "almost afraid to take a leadership position in a field where it had every right and responsibility to lead" and "favored inaction over action."

I'm not so sure the institute is to blame for those failures. In speaking with board members and staff over the past several years, and the federal officials at the time, it seemed like the Education Department threw its weight at NIFL at every turn and insisted on micromanaging its every move. When the institute was set to announce the members of the Commission on Reading Research, for example, the Ed Dept. stopped it in its tracks. It's hard to figure out why, particularly if the administration was sincere in promoting instruction based on research. An open record request I filed related to the commission may have shed light on the Ed. Dept.'s reasoning, but, alas, I received 85 blank pages when the request was fulfilled last year. ALL of the info in those documents was redacted by the department.

Some credible professionals in the field who know the story of NIFL have claimed that the Ed Dept. was setting the institute up for failure. There were others, though, who simply saw the NIFL staff as ineffective.

The institute seemed to be walking a fine line, trying to stay apolitical in an increasingly political debate over reading instruction. And it was answering to a board and several federal agencies, not the least of which was the Ed Dept., at times when there wasn't always agreement.

Whether NIFL, and its $6 million budget, will be missed is left to see. I'm sure there are fans out there, particularly among those who've benefited from some of its worthy projects in promoting family literacy and parent involvement in disadvantaged communities.

Posted by at 12:53 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

My colleague Alyson Klein reports over at Politics K-12 that President Obama's budget proposes to slash the $66 million Even Start family-literacy program. During the 11 years I've worked for Education Week, I must admit I've never had the chance to observe this program in action.

I read a research brief recently published by Child Trends and the Center for Social and Demographic Analysis at the University of Albany focusing on low enrollment of Latino youngsters in early-childhood education programs that made the following statement about Even Start:

While the most recent evaluation of the Even Start literacy program did point to gains in literacy outcomes for participants, it did not provide evidence that the gains were greater for those assigned to the program than for those in the control group.

Readers, if you have some insight about what elimination of this program would mean, please fill us in.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Elementary school teachers in this country, by and large, are generalists. That means they’re required to teach everything—math, science, language arts, history, you name it, regardless of how prepared they are in any particular subject. When it comes to math, a lot of people find that lack of expertise pretty troubling.

After all, many elementary teachers leave college having only taken one or two courses in math, at most. Their content knowledge may be pretty shaky, to put it mildly. Yet they’re also expected to provide the essential, ground-floor knowledge of math that young students need to prosper in more difficult math later in school.

Now a new effort is underway is create a cadre of math “specialists” at the elementary level. It’s part of a program at McDaniel College, in Maryland, being led by Francis M. “Skip” Fennell, the former president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

The “Elementary Mathematics Specialists and Teacher Leaders Project” is offering master’s degrees in elementary math teacher leadership. Fennell hopes to expand the program and ensure the continuing development and mentoring of math “teacher leaders” in Maryland. He also wants to establish a “clearinghouse” of elementary math specialist programs nationally, to examine their practices, successes and challenges. A number of universities around the country have established endorsements and degrees for elementary math teachers. You can read descriptions of them here, along with various types of math certification offered by states. Eventually, Fennell hopes the work of the program will lead the state of Maryland to create certification for elementary, or K-8 math specialists. McDaniel College has been graduating students for years with elementary-specific math training, though they haven’t received state certification for expertise in that particular area, Fennell said.

By the way, yesterday Fennell and Vern Williams talked about elementary math specialists and many other issues during an Ed Week online “chat.” The focus of the discussion was the work of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, on which both of them served.

McDaniel will be revising its courses to try to determine what kind of preparation best suits elementary specialists. It will also be staging summer institutes to train educators working at that grade level. The project’s work will also be reviewed by an external evaluator. In addition, Fennell told me that he will be coordinating his work in Maryland with research being led by Deborah Ball (another former member of the national math panel) at the University of Michigan. He said his institute will develop “modules” to support the work of Michigan researchers on the essential content and classroom skills necessary for math teachers to prosper.

Do you think elementary “specialists” could play a role in improving the quality of math teaching? What barriers exist to bringing them into schools? And what key questions should the McDaniel College effort seek to answer?

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 1:06 PM | Permalink | 3 Comments | Recommend

A large-scale randomized control study released yesterday by the federal government doesn't give us much insight into reading programs that are effective because it found that three of the four reading programs examined didn't have a positive impact and one had a negative impact on students' reading comprehension.

But Robert E. Slavin, a researcher and the founder of the Success for All Foundation, which developed the reading curriculum found to have a negative impact, dismissed the findings, saying in an e-mail to me that evaluations sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences, which conducted the study, "repeatedly evaluate programs by imposing them on teachers and school leaders who are not interested in them and are likely to implement them haphazardly, if at all, and then find, over and over again, that nothing works."

I wrote a story about the study, "Reading Programs Found Ineffective," that was posted at edweek.org yesterday.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 9:43 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

See my other blog, Learning the Language, for news about a study of California schools released by the National High School Center that indicates English-language learners don't have the same access as other students to a college-preparatory curriculum.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 9:30 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

The Erikson Institute staged its first-ever international symposium on math education recently. The event brought together speakers who discussed approaches to teaching early-grades math in a number of countries, including Singapore, Japan, Australia, and China. The event was part of Erikson's Early Mathematics Education Project, which seeks to improve teaching of that subject in Chicago.

You can see all of the speakers' Power Points and presentations here.

The guests at the forum included Lyn English, a professor of mathematics education in the School of Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education at Queensland University of Technology in Australia. She's also the founding editor of the international journal, Mathematical Thinking and Learning. She spoke about research on early math learning in her country.

Another presenter will be familiar to many readers: Liping Ma, who has compared the skills of elementary math teachers in China against those in the United States, and found the Americans lacking in certain skills. In a book she published about a decade ago, Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics, Ma found that Chinese teachers were far more likely to have developed a "profound understanding of fundamental mathematics."

I went to China two years ago and found some clear differences between how math is taught in that country and how it's presented here. Chinese education officials, I should note, found a lot to like about the U.S. curriculum. There are also clear cultural differences in how Chinese students tend to regard math and science—and for that matter, how they think about teaching as a profession.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 4:07 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Roughly a year after the National Mathematics Advisory Panel released a major report on teaching and learning in that subject, two people who served on the panel will answer questions in an Ed Week forum. It's an online "chat" to be held tomorrow, Tuesday, at 2 p.m. ET.

One of our guests is Francis M. "Skip" Fennell, former president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. The other is Vern Williams, a math teacher at Longfellow Middle School in Falls Church, Va. You can watch the chat and submit questions (try to keep them short!) up to a half hour in advance, from this site. These two have a lot to say about math teaching.

UPDATE: The transcript of the hour-long chat is available here. Thanks to our viewers for their great questions.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 4:06 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Two reports have been released in the last few days that stress the need for states to have a statewide focus on adolescent literacy. Both reports challenge the traditional assumption that reading instruction in schools should end at grade 3. They emphasize that quite a lot of research is available on teaching strategies for reaching struggling readers in middle or high schools.

A report by the Southern Regional Education Board released on Friday at the Education Writers Association annual meeting calls on states to enact policies to support adolescent reading. See my article, "Southern States Urged to Tackle Adolescent Literacy," about the report over at edweek.org.

And when I got back this morning after attending the EWA meeting, a message in my e-mail in-box said the Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education has released a report of five case studies of states that deliberately focus on adolescent literacy.

The IES report, "Five States' Efforts to Improve Adolescent Literacy," doesn't compare the merits of the different approaches to adolescent literacy used in the five states (Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, New Jersey, and Rhode Island.) Rather, it discusses how the states have overcome common challenges.

For example, one challenge is aligning resources to support literacy goals of adolescents. States have tried to meet this challenge by designating at least one person in the state's education agency to oversee adolescent literacy, the report says. In addition, each state requires schools to provide reading interventions to struggling readers.

Another challenge is to measure students' progress and use data for making decisions and monitoring. States said they were using assessments for making decisions, but none was satisfied with the quality of the assessments available.

Alabama and Florida, by the way, show up in both reports as examples of states that are further ahead than others in trying to address adolescent-literacy issues.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 1:43 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

Officials at the College Board say they are ready to adjust testing schedules for the Advanced Placement tests in case local school officials decide to close their facilities because of the outbreak of H1N1, otherwise known as the Swine Flu.

As of this afternoon, about 300 schools around the country had closed out of concerns that the virus may spread. (See Ed Week's full coverage on the issue here. UPDATE: The U.S. Department of Education reported later today that 433 schools had closed, affecting 245,000 children in 17 states.)

Officials at the College Board, which sponsors the AP, are encouraging students and parents to speak directly with the local AP coordinator to see if the testing will go forward. Advanced Placement tests were slated around the country for the coming week and the one after that.

For schools that postpone their tests, the College Board schedules a series of makeup exams for the third week of May, said Megan Dearing, a spokeswoman for the New York City-based nonprofit. If those makeup AP exams don't go forward, even later makeup tests can be arranged through the local school, Dearing told my colleague, Jen Neidenberg, from Ed Week's Web team, in an e-mail during an online chat today.

"The AP exam administration is designed and prepared for unforeseen school closings and other emergencies," Dearing explained. "The College Board will assist in whatever way possible to ensure that students affected by this matter have the opportunity to take their AP exams."

AP tests are given on school grounds. You can see which AP tests, by subject, were scheduled to be given on which dates, here.

Schools can contact their local AP coordinators at a College Board-run hotline, at: 877-274-6474, or by e-mail at apexams@info.collegeboard.org.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 4:48 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

One interesting sign of academic progress on the latest "nation's report card" results came among students who are presumably at a pretty serious disadvantage. Math scores for students who reported that their parents didn't complete high school rose on the NAEP from 287 to 292, on a 500-point scale, the biggest jump of any student group, as measured by parents' educational background. Overall, 17-year-olds' scores were flat among students in every performance level.

By contrast, among students who said at least one parent had graduated from college, and those who said either mom or dad had "some education after high school," math scores were flat. (Students with better-educated parents, on average, scored considerably higher than sons and daughters of high school non-completers.)

I'll put the test results out there and pose the obvious question: Why are 17-year-olds whose parents didn't make it through 12th grade making gains? One possibility I'll put out for the sake of discussion: Could this be a trickle-up effect of No Child Left Behind? That law sought to bring more scrutiny to the the performance of minority and low-income students, particularly in elementary and middle school. Are those efforts paying off, as these students reach high school? Or are state-level education policies, such curricular improvements, if they created more focused math lessons in elementary and middle school, deserving of credit? Or is there some sort of out-of-school social policy at work here, which could be benefiting students from these backgrounds?

Among 13-year-olds whose parents did not finish high school, scores also rose, from 263 to 268, though that jump was not statistically significant. The scores among students in that age group with better-educated parents also climbed by a couple points in most categories, although those increases also were not statistically relevant. (All this can be found on Figure 12 of the NAEP long-term trends report.)

Overall, parents' level of education has been improving since the late 1970s, according to the NAEP data. The percentage of students who reported that at least one parent had graduated from college increased from 32 percent to 46 percent during that time period. Similarly, the portion of 17-year-olds who said their parents top education level was having "graduated from high school," fell from 33 percent to 19 percent. (See Appendix 2)

How do you interpret the progress among these (presumably disadvantaged) 17-year-olds?

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 8:37 AM | Permalink | 4 Comments | Recommend