August 2009 Archives

An interesting attempt to bring more specialization, and presumably more expertise, to science teaching is occurring in suburban Washington. The schools in Montgomery County, Md., with support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, are seeking to put a "highly trained" science teacher in each of the system's 130 elementary schools. The idea is to place a "go-to" person in each elementary school as an "ambassador" to other teachers on science. In most elementary schools today, teachers are generalists, covering all subjects, and they may have scant knowledge of science.

I'm not sure if all students in a school would be routed through these ambassadors for their science lessons, or if these specialists would simply help their elementary school peers teach science on their own. I've written about schools' interest in creating elementary math specialists, or content experts in that subject, who can give students a solid foundation in math. The Montgomery County program, called the Elementary Science Leadership Program, seems to have a similar intent.

This effort is an outgrowth of a Hughes-supported effort in the 1980s to strengthen the science curriculum in Montgomery County's elementary schools, which placed a greater emphasis on hands-on experiments and the scientific process. Participating teachers in the new effort are given training and money to pay for class equipment, according to the institute.

One barrier to using subject-matter specialists in elementary schools, at least as it's been explained to me, is cost. If a school is forced to keep its current stable of generalists, and then add a specialist, that's an extra financial burden for the district, especially when you're talking about paying for those specialists across an entire system. If you're in a school district that has experimented with specialists in math or science, perhaps you're a part of an alternative approach that keeps costs low. If so, I'd love to hear about it.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 9:57 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

Arne Duncan, in an video interview with Scholastic News, talks about the importance of parents reading to kids, what he reads to his kids, and what his parents read to him. It seems there's a lot of Harry Potter getting covered in the Duncan household these days, and Dr. Seuss has had his day.

As for what the secretary's parents read to him as a boy, Duncan mentions J.R.R. Tolkien, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and—if I understood him correctly—Moby Dick. Ambitious stuff for a kid, though maybe the secretary meant that he tackled some of those a bit later in adolescence, on his own. "I was just really, really lucky to grow up in a household filled with great books and two parents who wanted to read to us," he said.

Here's the clip:

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 4:41 PM | Permalink | 4 Comments | Recommend

A favorite, or maybe I mean never-ending, debate in education circles is whether students are overburdened with homework, blowing it off at will, or simply doing about the right amount.

A recent study by researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln concludes that students are not saddled with an undue amount of homework—at least according to their parents. As described by Time magazine, the study found that mothers and fathers reported that their kids spend about as much time watching TV as they do on their out-of-school studies.

The research counters some past reports suggesting that the amount of homework has increased over time, or that it's more than students can handle. As EdWeek's ace reporter on research issues, Debbie Viadero, put it in a story last year: "A perennial parade of authors, newspaper stories, and parents have raised questions over whether the nation’s schoolchildren are doing too much homework, or doing it at too young an age, and whether too much of it is busywork." Yet as that story noted, a poll showed that 85 percent of parents polled in a recent study believed their children are doing the right amount, or even too little homework.

Whether the latest study moves the homeworkometer one way or another remains to be seen. I'd be curious to see any research that compares different generations of parents' attitudes toward homework. Do parents today have noticeably different beliefs about how much time children are spending on homework than they did in, say, the 1970s, or 1980s?

If anybody's seen research of this sort, enlighten me.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 3:42 PM | Permalink | 11 Comments | Recommend

Over the past week, I've discussed a number of scholars' thoughts on what schools can do to nurture creativity and innovation among students. One point of view I meant to highlight earlier this week was offered by Robert Root-Bernstein, a professor of physiology at Michigan State University. He’s written about the topic and studied the backgrounds and educational training of top-tier scientists, including Nobel laureates.

In a presentation before the National Science Board this week, Root-Bernstein argued that many schools take the wrong approach to building creative skills, in part because they encourage students to pursue a relatively narrow set of academic interests. Evidence suggests that students would be better off following a well-rounded curriculum, which includes the arts, and being encouraged to take on extracurricular pursuits, he explained. And the process of learning a new talent or hobby, with all of the pleasure and frustration it brings, helps spark students' creativity in other areas, such as scientific study.

I’ll quote from a blog post that Root-Bernstein and his wife, Michele, wrote for Psychology Today:

“The fact is that the arts foster innovation. We've just published a study that shows that almost all Nobel laureates in the sciences actively engage in arts as adults. They are twenty-five times as likely as the average scientist to sing, dance, or act; seventeen times as likely to be a visual artist; twelve times more likely to write poetry and literature; eight times more likely to do woodworking or some other craft; four times as likely to be a musician; and twice as likely to be a photographer. Many connect their art to their scientific ability with some riff on Nobel prizewinning physicist Max Planck words: ‘The creative scientist needs an artistic imagination.’ ”

In another post, Root-Bernstein recounted his experiences teaching a course on the creative process at UCLA. One of his goals was to refute the notion that creativity is something that students either have or they don’t, which comes to them like a lightning bolt, or the private counsel of The Almighty. He calls this “the Mozart myth”—the idea that some people “are born with talent so tremendous that music and other cultural products spring from their minds fully-fledged, as if by magic. Mozart, so the myth goes, would compose his symphonies in one sitting with nary a revision through a single act of inspiration.” Yet creativity is never the result of a “single act,” the professor explained to his students. It’s the product of toil and sweat. As an example, he had his class discuss Beethoven, who “filled notebook after notebook with musical dead ends and futile variations in painstaking composition.” Yet some of those seemingly pointless notebook scribblings evolved into the Fifth Symphony.

The professor, in his essay, recalls a student in his class who was a songwriter, and who had penned a big hit, but who was struggling to return to those creative heights. Over the course of the class, Root-Bernstein required students to learn a new craft or hobby. He asked them to keep daily journals on what they were doing, or not doing, to cultivate their skills. He told the songwriter to reflect on the process he followed in composing that song he was so proud of. The genesis of that song had actually come about through six months of tough work, writing and revising, breakthroughs and setbacks, before the final product came together.

Schools can help students develop creative skills at an earlier age by helping them understand this often-laborious path. Yet schools today “tend to do just the opposite,” he writes. “[W]e hold up for scrutiny only finished products, strip them of the processes, tools, skills, histories and personal stories that gave them birth, and Intentionally or not, discard and erase creative know-how .”

What do you make of Root-Bernstein’s arguments, and how easily could they be applied to K-12 education?

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Earlier this week, I attended meetings at the National Science Board on what schools can do to nurture students' innovative skills. As America's foreign competitors spawn new businesses with the help of a growing class of entrepreneurs—and cheap labor—some argue that U.S. growth will increasingly depend on innovation, the kind that can drive business and produce breakthroughs across society.

But how do you measure a nation's collective innovative and creative power and its connection to economic growth?

One such measure, albeit an imperfect one, was mentioned during a presentation at the science-board meeting by R. Keith Sawyer, of Washington University in St. Louis. It's data from the World Intellectual Property Organization, and it seeks to measure the link between "creative industries" and countries' gross domestic product and employment.

As you can see from the chart to the right, the United States ranks higher than any country in the link between creative industries and GDP. Sawyer, in his presentation, pointed to the United States' relative strength in this area, but argued that in the future, it's likely that the American education system will have to do more just for the U.S. to keep up.

I'm sure you're asking, well, what is this chart really showing? As Sawyer readily acknowledges, the definition is fuzzy. It appears to focus on "copyright-based" industries, though he also believes this could include manufacturing of tools for distribution, such as CD players and VCRs. Presumably, it would also include video-game production and the music business.

During Sawyer's presentation at the science-board event, one attendee speculated that the United States' apparent creative economic power might be driven primarily by Hollywood. Sawyer said that link was certainly one explanation. You'll also notice a couple countries with economies far less advanced than the United States, like the Philippines, faring pretty well in terms of creative employment. Sawyer speculates that this could be explained by the aforementioned manufacturing of entertainment equipment.

After you're had a look at the chart, and the accompanying WIPO report, give me your thoughts. You can also read more of Sawyer's views on innovation and the economy here. (Click on the table above, from the WIPO, for an enhanced image.)

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 9:30 AM | Permalink | 7 Comments | Recommend

Just a reminder to the math-happy among us that we're staging a live chat today on your favorite subject. The topic is high school math: Why does U.S. students' performance appear to stagnate at the high school level, despite the relative progress made at earlier grades? Our guests are Hank Kepner, the president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and Susan Eddins, a math consultant and a retired, longtime teacher at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy.

You can watch, and submit questions, at this site.

UPDATE: Here's the transcript from the chat.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 8:39 AM | Permalink | 4 Comments | Recommend

A friend passed along this story in the Charleston Gazette about the upcoming 35th anniversary of the textbook wars in West Virginia's Kanawha County school district. The conflict over the district's choice of textbooks was so contentious it led to violence, which made it on to the national news and was eventually chronicled in a book, The Storm in the Mountains.

One of the organizers of the long and drawn out protests against the textbooks held a reunion last weekend, which drew about 40 people, according to news reports.

The organizers have a Web site with a guest book where participants (and critics) have added comments about the controversy.

It's hard to believe it's been almost a decade since I went to Charleston to cover the 25th anniversary of those battles, and their lasting impact on teachers and school leaders, and, indirectly, a generation of students. Here's some of that EdWeek story:

There are no visible scars from the bomb that ripped through a darkened classroom at Midway Elementary School here a quarter-century ago. Evidence of the dynamite and pipe bombs left in and around several other Kanawha County schools, and of the bullets that hit school buses and police cars, is also gone. The threatening phone calls, too, are all part of the painful past for the educators targeted by protesters in one of the largest and most violent textbook controversies in the nation's history. In fact, just about everything in this 30,000-student district appears to have gotten back to normal years ago.

But as the community learned when friends and relations turned against each other in the conflict over what and how students should be taught, not everything is as it appears. Though the name-calling has ceased and the fear subsided, all is not forgotten.

During my visit to the district, and discussions with educators, school leaders, and some of the protesters, I was taken aback by how fresh and raw the memories were for many involved, even a quarter-century after the fact.

From the Gazette story, and some of the comments on the group's Web site, it sounds like some of those emotions are still running high.

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Ted Kennedy’s imprint can be found on countless aspects of federal education policy, as has been widely discussed today. Students of recent congressional history will also remember that he played a role in shaping the design of what is probably the country’s premier test of student learning, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP.

In the late 1980s, Kennedy was a player in a bipartisan agreement to expand the influential test to include state-by-state results, as opposed to simply churning out national scores. Today, those state results receive tons of scrutiny. They allow the public and policymakers to weigh the reading and math progress of students in their home states against others around the country, on a comparable scale.

Kennedy also was part of a coalition of lawmakers who helped create an independent panel, the National Assessment Governing Board, to set policy for NAEP. The idea was to set up an oversight body that was free of partisan politics to guide the exam. Federal lawmakers created the governing board in 1988. Today, the board meets at regular public meetings to review and modify test content and policies, and all politics are supposed to get checked at the door.

Some of the changes made to NAEP had been recommended by a blue-ribbon panel, formed in 1986 by then-Education Secretary Bill Bennett. The panel's members included Linda Darling-Hammond, Michael Kirst, and somebody named Hillary Rodham Clinton. I culled a couple of old EdWeek stories, from 1987 and 1988, describing the work of Kennedy and Congress in expanding NAEP, which is known as “the nation’s report card.” Also see this history on the creation of the governing board (found near the bottom of the linked page).

If you were working on or around the Hill back then, feel free to offer you own recollections of how a revamped NAEP came to be.

Photo by Chitose Suzuki/AP-File.

UPDATE: There were many days when Kennedy and the folks in Ronald Reagan’s education department couldn’t find common legislative ground, recalls Fordham's Chester E. Finn, who served under the Republican president. But Finn also praises Kennedy’s work in reshaping NAEP, as one piece of his “enormous legacy.”

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 3:39 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

An informal survey of the nation's science teachers shows that a majority like the idea of a national curriculum—and crave more professional development. Alas, at the elementary school level, the help they seek appears to be in short supply.

Conducted by the National Science Teachers Association, the survey of 3,500 science professionals found that 53 percent of those polled favored a national curriculum in science, compared with about 41 percent opposed. Interestingly, backing for the idea was stronger among elementary (58 percent) and middle school teachers (59 percent) than among high school science teachers (46 percent) and university/college faculty (40 percent), according to an unpublished breakdown of the results. The vast majority of those surveyed were science teachers, rather than administrators and other school employees, NSTA officials say. (Some more detailed results from the poll can be found here.)

Fifty-eight percent of science teachers said they didn't have enough professional-development opportunities in the subject. A breakdown of the findings shows that many elementary teachers, 74 percent, say they are being given more PD opportunities in subjects other than science, compared with 60 percent of middle school teachers and 55 percent of high school educators who feel that way.

A few other tidbits:

—74 percent of those polled said that comparisons of science performance between countries are important, roughly the same portion who see value in school-to-school comparisons.

—When asked if science was more important as a subject in the country 50 years ago than it is today, a strong majority of those polled, 69 percent, disagreed.

—Just 18 percent of those surveyed said they are satisfied with the direction of education in this country, as opposed to 68 percent who are not.

—When asked which skills are most important for science teaching, 60 percent cited the ability to translate content into learning, followed by 16 percent who said a passion for working with students, and 14 percent who said a passion for science. Only 4 percent cited content knowledge, on its own.

What are the most important messages that you see coming through in the survey?

Photo of elementary science classroom by Michael Dwyer for Education Week.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

This morning I attended the second day of a National Science Board panel discussion, which focused on how U.S. schools can do more to cultivate the students who can morph into innovators or super-innovators—basically, the Albert Einsteins, Robert Noyces, and Frank Lloyd Wrights of tomorrow. (Maybe you've got your own innovators list.) Board members were joined by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who plugged some of the administration's efforts in math and science and hinted at another one coming down the road.

The secretary, who provided opening remarks and fielded questions, didn't break a lot of new ground, again making his case for how $4 billion in federal "Race to the Top" funds will help struggling schools and improve how schools use data.

He also stressed the potential for the money to help states and schools recruit new teachers in math and science. Today, too many students are taught by educators who don't know the content in those subjects, the secretary noted. He made another pitch for differential pay for math and science teachers, as well as for teachers in other high-need subjects, possibly spec-ed and foreign languages. He also mentioned the importance of increasing access to AP programs, and singled out a teacher-training program, the University of Texas' "UTeach," for helping produce the "next generation of great leadership" in schools. Interestingly, those remarks came on the same day that the Dallas-based organization that's seeking to replicate the UTeach model and expand AP access said that its participating schools have seen a major increase in AP passing scores.

Duncan also previewed what he said will be a "national campaign" this fall to sell the teaching profession to young people. That effort will be a "call to service," the secretary said, which will target 18-19 year olds, and possibly career-changers. As my colleague Steve Sawchuk noted recently, the dismal job market has made it difficult for some of the most determined future teachers in math and science to find work.

Overall, American schools need to churn out students with better math and science skills, said Duncan, who, as he has previously, cited mediocre U.S. scores on international tests as a source of worry.

"We've become complacent," he told the audience. "We've sort of lost our way. This is huge challenge for us."

UPDATE: On a related note, Duncan’s agency today announced the awarding of $6.3 million in grants to 32 colleges and universities to support efforts to encourage more students to stick with STEM. Some of the grants will be made under the department’s Ronald E. McNair Post-baccalaureate Achievement Program, which provides support to undergraduates from disadvantaged backgrounds to pursue advanced degrees. Other money will flow through the Minority Science and Engineering Improvement Program, which supports a range of K-12 and college activity, including student tutoring, curriculum development, and renovations of labs.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 12:21 PM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

The National Assessment of Educational Progress bills itself as "the nation's report card"—and in fact, it serves as the country's only continuing, nationally representative test of what students know in different subjects. Yet for years, officials who run the test have struggled with a difficult issue: How to set consistent policies for the testing of English language learners and students with disabilities. Currently, those students' participation on the test is determined largely by state and local decisions. As a result, the portion of students excluded from the NAEP, or given special accommodations on it, varies widely among states and cities. To some critics, this undermines the test's credibility. How can we be certain that student achievement rose or fell in a jurisdiction, the thinking goes, if its exclusion or accommodation rates were unusually high or low?

As I reported a couple weeks ago (before I bolted from town on a vacation), two expert panels of the board that sets policy for NAEP have proposed major changes to its policies for testing ELLs and spec-ed students. The proposals seek to bring more uniformity to the process. For students with disabilities, a task force has called for setting a uniform expectation of 95 percent participation on the test. Perhaps most critically, it proposes that students would only be allowed to receive special accommodations on the exam if they were allowed by the rules of the NAEP (rather than by any particular jurisdiction's standard.)

For ELLs, a second task force is recommending that all students selected to participate in the NAEP who have attended U.S. schools for at least one year take part in the exam. Again, it's a more consistent standard than what exists now.

The National Assessment Governing Board is seeking public comment on the proposals for both ELLs and spec-ed students. The board also expects to hold public hearings this fall, before its members vote on the proposals, probably in either November or March.

These issues have generated a lot of interest from advocates for ELLs and special education students in the past. If you'd like to make your voice heard, here's your chance.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 9:30 AM | Permalink | 3 Comments | Recommend

The National Math and Science Initiative, an effort to increase Advanced Placement participation, particularly among disadvantaged students, appears to be showing results, according to testing information compiled by the organization.

The number of students passing AP math, science, and English tests among schools taking part in NMSI rose by 51 percent over the past year, according to information compiled by the initiative from 67 high schools across six states.

The NMSI, which I wrote about a few years ago, seeks to boost AP participation in a number of distinct ways, one of which is to provide financial incentives to participating teachers. The program also provides extensive training for educators on how to lead AP classes. NMSI, which is headquartered in Dallas and has significant corporate backing, grew out of a similiar program to increase participation in the college-prep courses, run in schools in and around that city. The CEO of the initiative is Tom Luce, a former top education official in President George W. Bush's administration.

A major focus of the organization is to increase access to AP courses in schools where those classes previously did not exist or were limited—and to replicate NMSI's approach on a national scale, in many states. (The program's system of rewarding educators with extra pay has in some cases drawn the opposition of teachers' unions.) A second piece of NMSI seeks to replicate the teacher-training strategies used by the UTeach program at the University of Texas at Austin.

NMSI officials say the latest AP results show participating schools increasing the number passing scores by African American and Hispanic students by an average of 71 percent and by women by 55 percent. The rise in the number of passing scores among minority students were even higher in individual states, NMSI officials say.

Those test score results "show that the combination of enhanced teacher training, teacher incentives, student scholarships, more time on task for students, and master teacher mentoring can dramatically increase the number of students succeeding in college-level work," the organization said in a statement.

Alabama state officials were scheduled to discuss the impact of NMSI in their state at an event today. See the initiative's Web site for more information on the AP results among participating schools.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 8:14 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

To keep up with the issues of the times, Street Law Inc., a nonprofit organization supporting civics education, has added a chapter on immigration law and policy to its new textbook for high school courses in "practical law."

"Everyone needs to think about what our immigration policy should be," said Lee Arbetman, the director of U.S. programs for Street Law, in explaining why the 2010 Street Law textbook has included immigration issues.

The organization lines up law students to co-teach classes about the nation's laws with high school teachers. Typically, the class is taught as an elective. I mention Street Law in a story about civics education that edweek.org published this week.

Along with adding a chapter about immigration to the topics it traditionally has covered over the years and providing law students to help teach about the law, Street Law is also launching a program to provide immigration lawyers or law students to support high school teachers in teaching students about immigration law. The American Immigration Lawyers' Association and the American Immigration Law Foundation are partners in that effort.

The chapter on immigration law covers such topics as how one becomes a U.S. citizen and the process for seeking asylum. It gives students case studies to discuss to apply their understanding of immigration law.

But I came across a statement in the chapter that didn't fit with what I've learned about immigration law while reporting on English-language learners for EdWeek. Here's an excerpt:

Minor children (under age 18) born in the United States to parents who are not in the country legally are citizens. However, they can be required to leave the country if their parents are removed or deported so that the family can stay together.

I checked this wording out with Richard Rocha, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He said that minors who are born in this country cannot be required by the U.S. government to be deported along with their parents. "They are U.S. citizens. They are legally authorized to be here in the United States."

If parents who are undocumented are removed from the country, he said, the U.S. government leaves it up to them to decide whether they want to transfer guardianship of their children to someone in the United States or take their children back with them to their country of origin.

I guess one could conclude that statement in the textbook is not wrong in that U.S.-born minors can be required by their parents, though not by the U.S. government, to leave the country. But I think it's fair to say the statement is misleading.

I conferred with Roger Rice, a lawyer for the Somerville, Mass.-based Multicultural Education, Training, and Advocacy, an organization that advocates for ELLs, on this same issue. He noted that the statement in the textbook "may be written in too stark of a way." His understanding of the law matched what the spokesman for ICE said.

But he added that textbook writers have a huge challenge in trying to convey immigration law to high school students in a simple, clear way. “Immigration law is incredibly difficult to articulate accurately in a straightforward, simple way," Rice said.

I'll say "amen" to that, from what I've learned while writing sometimes about immigration issues.

I've sent an e-mail message to Arbetman to see if he has anything to add about the statement regarding removal of minors in the textbook, and I'll update this blog if I hear back from him.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 2:32 PM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

Students in the United States show little distinction compared with their peers in most other countries in reading, mathematics, or science at any grade level or age, according to a special analysis released this week by the Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education. According to one international test, American students are near the bottom of the pack in math.

The report caught the attention of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who said in a statement, "Today’s report is another wake-up call that our students are treading the waters of academic achievement while other countries’ students are swimming faster and farther." He also used the report as an opportunity to push common national standards.

On the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study 2007, both 4th and 8th graders scored above the scale average in math, and scores for U.S. students increased since 1995. Fourth graders in eight of the 35 other countries taking the test scored higher on average than 4th graders in the United States. Eighth graders in five of the 47 other participating countries performed better than U.S. students.

Question: Would you like to take a guess on which countries had students that outscored American students in both grades 4 and 8?

Answer: Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and Japan.

On the Program for International Student Assessment 2006, given to 15-year-olds, U.S. students were below the average scale score in math. That put U.S. students in the bottom quarter of performance for participating countries. They've been in that spot since 2003.

The results were similar for science. On the TIMSS 2007, U.S. 4th and 8th graders scored above the average scale score in science. Students in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and Japan outshone the U.S. students. On the PISA 2006 in science, U.S. 15-year-olds scored below the average.

The IES researchers examined the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study 2006 to compare reading performance of U.S. students with their counterparts in the rest of the world. On that test, U.S. 4th graders’ reading-literacy score was higher than the average scale score. At the same time, students in 10 of the 45 participating countries or provinces (three Canadian provinces participated) did better on the test than did students from the United States.

My colleague Sean Cavanagh has written extensively in EdWeek about the differences between the various international tests and how experts advise caution in interpreting them. The goal of TIMSS, for example, is to assess students' knowledge in school-based curriculum while PISA measures students' skills and their ability to apply them.

See the Washington Examiner's take on the report here.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 4:30 PM | Permalink | 8 Comments | Recommend

While reporting on trends in civic education, I came across a couple video clips from this spring when retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor appeared on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," produced by Comedy Central.

On the show, she talks about her interest in helping Americans understand the judicial system better, so they won't make the mistake that some have in perceiving judges as "secular, godless humanists who are trying to tell us what to do."

She talks about the development of free interactive videos for middle schools students about the judicial system. The games, produced by Our Courts, were launched just this month.

The justice is quite funny in some of her blunt characterizations about what it's like to be a member of the highest court of the land, such as that "you have to learn to disagree agreeably," and that it's not wise to obsess over cases once a ruling has been made. "You do your best and live with it," she says.

She objects to Stewart's characterization of her as the "swing justice," and he congenially corrects himself and calls her the "most principled justice." She tells him that is "much better."

The justice shows a sense of humor as well when Stewart asks if she's done any "judging" since she retired from the court. Sure, she says, she can't help but judge her children and grandchildren sometimes.

I think the video clips could be useful for engaging students in a U.S. government class.

August 20 Update: I interviewed Justice O'Connor for my story about civic education as well, which is online at edweek.org here.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I haven't forgotten how teachers flock to the giveaways during trade shows at education conferences. So I'm passing along this announcement that PBS is giving away 20 DVD sets of its series "We Shall Remain" on Native American history. I thought some of you might want to try your chances to get one of them.

The films are also streaming online here.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 2:42 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Cesar Chavez, a Latino civil rights and labor leader, is cited in the draft of the revised Texas social studies standards, even though one of the six "experts" appointed by the Texas state board of education to advise standards writing teams questioned if he should be included.

But some other historical figures who are listed in the social studies standards now in place in Texas have been removed from the proposed standards and replaced with other people.

In the U.S. history standards for high school, for example, Shirley Chisholm, the late congresswoman from New York*, and Franklin D. Roosevelt have been crossed out from the list of "significant political and social leaders in the United States." Henry B. Gonzalez, Thurgood Marshall, Sandra Day O'Connor, and Billy Graham have been added. FDR did make it into a standard about the Great Depression.

In addition, Bill Gates, Sam Walton, and Oprah Winfrey have been added as examples in the U.S. history standards of "American entrepreneurs."

An article published over the weekend, "School Books in Texas May Get Browner," in the San Antonio Express-News talks about how the proposed social studies standards have included a number of important Latino historical figures. Earlier this summer, The Dallas Morning News reported on how some Texans feel Cesar Chavez belongs in the standards and others don't. See the Associated Press preview of issues that may arise in the standards-approval process here.

EdWeek has just published an article I wrote about how the U.S. history part of the proposed social studies standards is likely to be most controversial. The board of education is scheduled to have public hearings on the draft standards next month. A vote is expected in March.

*corrected from an earlier version, after an alert reader pointed out my mistake. I had said Chisholm was from Texas and I was dead wrong.

Photo credit: Charles Rex Arbogast/AP

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 12:21 PM | Permalink | 3 Comments | Recommend

There's a well-produced and intriguing video circulating around some of the listservs featuring Michigan State University education professor Yong Zhao and his views on the nation's education reform strategy as it relates to global competitiveness. He's generally critical of the accountability movement, which, he argues, places too much value on test scores at the expense of creativity, innovation, and encouragement of students to follow their passions.

What makes Zhao's perspective so compelling is that he is a product of the Chinese education system and speaks rather passionately on the right and wrong paths toward American competitiveness.

Zhao, who was raised in a village in China by illiterate parents, was the first in his family to get an education beyond the 3rd grade, and the first in his village to go to college. He sees himself as fortunate for not receiving a great education by Chinese standards. I assume he's implying that he was not subjected to the stereotypical high-pressure environment that drives students in China to study hard in pursuit of the narrow goal of doing well on placement tests, which determine their educational attainment and the kinds of jobs they can get.

"The American education system now is driven ... to push us toward standardization, centralization, and embodying test scores, which actually I think is moving American education away from the future," he says in the video, produced by the Mobile Learning Institute and sponsored by the Pearson Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the publishing giant. "The global economy requires niche talents, requires people to become artists, become creators, become musicians, become innovators, become people who are passionate about their work."

Zhao also argues that the test-based approach is leading to a generation of students who are inclined to be "lower-level, left-brain directed" workers, which is quite the opposite of the stated goal of producing a workforce that can solve problems, think critically, and thrive in a high-tech environment.

He also has a recent blog post at ASCD Inservice about the common standards effort, and his concerns about lack of transparency in the process. And his book, Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization, is due out this fall.

Take a look at the video and feel free to weigh in.

UPDATE: One commenter, Liza Dittoe, took me up on my offer to "weigh in." She says:

His views are comforting, but does that make him right?

I saw a debate he did with Bob Compton, creator of the film Two Million Minutes - http://2mminutes.com/ - back in Sept.

Compton says what we need to hear, not what we want to hear.

http://bit.ly/ONowc

Good point, I think. I think it's fair, however, to identify Dittoe as a PR person associated with the "Two Million Minutes" project. But there were many unaffiliated fans, as well as critics, of the film when its was released early last year. You can catch up on EdWeek's coverage of the project here.

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I spoke this week with Gail A. Lowe, the chairwoman of the Texas state board of education, and she told me that state board members support Texas Commissioner Robert Scott's decision not to join the effort to create national common standards. Since Missouri got on board, only three states—Texas, Alaska, and South Carolina—are still holding out.

Lowe picked up on some critics' views that the drafting of the common standards has not been transparent, saying she has a "concern that something is done in a group in secret, and we don't know where it's headed."

She added: "The work they've done so far is mediocre. As Texans, we think what we have is better."

I'm working on a story about how Texas is now revising its social studies standards. Look for that story on edweek.org later this week.

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Evolution is being covered more extensively and better in state science standards than was true nearly a decade ago, according to a review of the standards in 50 states and the District of Columbia by the National Center for Science Education. But the reviewers are concerned that at the same time, "creationist jargon" has increasingly been included in science standards. My story on the review was just published at edweek.org.

Some may question if the reviewers are overly sensitive about what they deem to be "creationist jargon." The head of the Texas board of education, who voted for the new Texas science standards, by the way, says the reviewers are dead wrong in concluding that her state's standards contain creationist jargon.

One example of creationist jargon in the Texas standards, the report says, is that students are asked to "analyze and evaluate scientific explanations concerning the complexity of the cell."

But Anton Mates, a co-author of the 50-state review of how evolution is included in state science standards, contends that he and the other co-author are not reading too much into things.

"Creationists have become more sophisticated in their language," he said. "We're looking for language that allows teachers to bring in materials that attack evolution."

Photo credit: Library of Congress

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Jesuit Refugee Service/USA has created a free curriculum to teach high school students about refugee and migration issues. I have more to say about it over at my other blog, Learning the Language.

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The California state board of education won't approve new textbooks for K-8 students until January 2016 at the earliest because of reduced state spending in the budget for textbooks, according to the Los Angeles Times. At the same time, the San Jose Mercury News reports that state education officials have approved 10 digital textbooks that can be used in the state for math and science. California's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is promoting the use of digital textbooks.

Blogger Joanne Jacobs observes that if schools go the route of digital textbooks, that might create some problems because teachers may not have training in how to use them.

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The National Governors Association's effort to pay states to increase participation of minority and low-income students in Advanced Placement courses has been successful, according to a report on the association's Advanced Placement Expansion project released today.

Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maine, Nevada, and Wisconsin received grants as part of the project, and, according to the report, they collectively succeeded in raising the number of students who took AP classes in their states by 65 percent over two years. The number of minority and low-income students taking the courses more than doubled.

But what's perhaps most interesting about the report is not the generalizations about how the states overall increased participation of minority and low-income youths but rather explanations about how they did it. I'll list examples of some of the policies here:

—Alabama, Kentucky, and Nevada used online-learning technology to increase access to AP in rural areas.

—Kentucky expanded the possibilities that middle school students would be prepared to take AP courses by using the College Board's SpringBoard curriculum.

—In April 2008, Kentucky's governor, Steve Beshear, signed legislation that gives public schools financial incentives for offering AP science and math courses.

The report also gives some examples of policies supportive of AP access in states that weren't piloting the expansion project. It says, for instance, that Arkansas and West Virginia require every high school to provide at least four AP courses in the content areas of English, mathematics, science, and social studies. In addition, Michigan, Minnesota, and New Mexico require every student to have a college-level learning experience before graduating from high school.

The project was financed by the NGA Center for Best Practices.

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Missouri has joined the effort to create national common standards, so now only three states are not on board. The holdouts are Alaska*, South Carolina, and Texas.

The District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands have also agreed to take part.

An Aug. 7 press release (tweeted by @ASCDpolicy) says that the Missouri state board of education voted on Aug. 6 to join the common standards initiative. Earlier this summer, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, had announced his commitment to the undertaking.

*corrected from earlier version

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I've joined Twitter (@mazehr), and I'm picking up some interesting content through that media tool. Larry Ferlazzo (@Larryferlazzo) just tweeted about an interview with Henry Louis Gates Jr. by Public School Insights about a curricular idea that Gates thinks could help African-Americans to become more engaged in school.

The interview with Gates (yes, the Harvard professor now famous for being arrested at his own house in Cambridge, Mass.) took place last summer and was republished today. Gates is working on a public school curriculum that builds on his PBS series in which he traces the ancestry of famous African-Americans. He's already finished a documentary on Oprah Winfrey's ancestry, which I watched one evening. I remember she was very moved to learn more about one of her ancestor's efforts to create a school for African-Americans in the United States.

Gates' idea is to have students examine the science behind their own DNA and reconstruct their own genealogy.

In the interview, Gates expresses his concern that 50 percent of African-American children aren't graduating from high school.

"So my idea is to use the fascination with one's collective self, one's familial self, to seduce people back into learning," Gates says in the interview. He adds: "I'm trying to bridge the gap between Harvard and Harlem."

Gates' assistant in Harvard's Department of African and African-American Studies told me today that the professor is still developing the ancestry-based curriculum; she didn't have a projected time for release.

Photo credit: Stephan Savoia/AP

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Two of the top officials who are guiding the multi-state effort to draft common academic standards offered an update on the project Friday. And there was some news to report on that process, known as the Common Core, an effort led by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers.

Because of the sheer volume of responses to a first draft of the standards—leaked on the Web a few weeks ago—the date for when a second, reworked version will be posted online has been moved from a target of mid-August to sometime in early September.

"We were inundated," explained CCSSO's Scott Montgomery. "The complexity and the [detail] of the review was such that we couldn't do it justice with just a two-week period."

Montgomery and Dane Linn of the governors association gave members of the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policy for NAEP, an update on the schedule for the standards, and an overview of the project. Members of the board, attending their quarterly meeting in Washington, asked questions about the standards-writing so far, with some of them praising the document they'd seen.

Board member Henry Kranendonk, a math curriculum specialist with the Milwaukee public schools, said he was "pleasantly surprised" with the organization of the document and the math content covered. Like other board members, he had questions. In the end, how different or similar would any participating state's standards have to be to the Common Core? Agreements arranged with the states spell out that they should eventually adopt standards that are 85 percent based on the Common Core academic content, Linn and Montgomery explained at one point. While the two men suggested that making a determination about the composition of states´standards could require some analysis, the idea is to promote enough consistency that "state A and state B" would not look "vastly different," Montgomery said.

Not surprisingly, in a room stuffed with test gurus, board members also asked about the prospects of states actually adopting common exams to match the standards. CCSSO and NGA have said previously that developing common assessments will be important if the standards are going to have a positive influence in classrooms. They've also pledged to work with states to develop those exams. (See a Q and A provided by the two groups for more detail.) Linn said he couldn't predict how many states would come up with common tests, or how soon it would happen. But he said state officials had made clear their frustration with their high testing costs from the very beginning of the project.

"I don't know how many states are going to sign up for the common assessments," Linn told the board, "but I think there's an incentive."

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 6:00 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The board that sets policy for the National Assessment of Educational Progress is considering a bunch of changes aimed at bringing more consistency and uniformity to how to test students with disabilities and English-language learners. As it stands now, one state might exclude, or give special testing accommodations to a much larger chunk of its special education population than another does. As a result, when the NAEP scores are released, some people wonder if a state's propensity for excluding students is skewing its scores.

I attended a meeting to discuss that topic in Washington yesterday, and we'll have a more detailed story on some of the proposals being considered by the National Assessment Governing Board later, on EdWeek's homepage. Two task forces are studying the issue: one is focused on special education students, the other on ELLs.

A couple items that didn't make it into that story:

—The task force on students with disabilities is recommending an intriguing change in how the NAEP reports scores for those students. The panel says the NAEP should report the scores of students with individualized education programs, or IEPs, and those with Section 504 plans separately. Those two programs refer to federally-designated academic plans, crafted at the local level, to provide services for individual students with different levels of disabilities. Students with IEPs must qualify in one of 13 federal classifications of disability; the definition of who qualifies under a 504 is broader.

Currently, the NAEP combines the scores of all of those students. In order to maintain the current "trend line" from past tests, the task force recommends keeping that reporting mechanism, while breaking out the separate IEP and 504 scores.

—A while ago I wrote that the governing board was exploring the idea of "targeted testing" or "adaptive testing." That kind of testing involves tailoring tests to gain a more precise understanding of the performance of students at the highest and lowest ends of the scale. This kind of testing could potentially reduce the portion of students excluded on the tests.

It appears that those earlier discussions have planted a seed. Both the special education and ELL task forces see potential in targeted testing, and they recommend that federal officials look at its feasibility. With targeted testing, "standard errors would be reduced at the low end of the continuum," a report of the ELL task force says, "and better information would be available about student performance and improvements over time."

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I often hear math teachers and others talk about the importance of the study of statistics in high school, and how they believe it's unfairly shunned, in favor of other math studies, particularly calculus. There are others who say statistics, in fact, is getting its due. The College Board, for instance, offers an AP test in that subject and sometimes you'll hear of a high school offering some other kind of statistics-focused course.

The New York Times has a story this week about the growing need for statisticians in the job market, which they suggest is a result of the rise of digital data. The story draws from such varied examples as Netflix, IBM, and the White House Office of Management of Budget to make its case. What should be the role of statistics in the K-12 system, and how does it mesh with other areas of math?

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Did you know that in Colombia all high school students are required to take two years of philosophy? Students in that South American country take a yearlong course in the history of philosophy and another yearlong course in logic.

I learned that while reporting on how a private family foundation, the Squire Family Foundation, has established a mission of expanding offerings in philosophy and ethics in precollegiate education in the United States. My story was posted yesterday at edweek.org.

In the United States, philosophy offerings in K-12 schools are not that common. The College Board doesn't offer philosophy as part of its Advanced Placement program, for example. One of the biggest providers of the class is the Center for Talented Youth at Johns Hopkins University, a summer program for gifted and talented students. About 1,000 students take philosophy classes with that program every year.

I observed a logic class while reporting the article. The teacher and students discussed how to structure arguments that are well supported. I had the feeling while sitting in on the class that I would have benefited from taking a similar logic class during high school, since I ended up eventually becoming a writer. I still sometimes struggle with the structure of articles, how to best lay out generalizations and strong evidence to support them.

By the way, the Squire Family Foundation, through the American Philosophical Association, is inviting teachers who are teaching philosophy or want to teach it in high schools to form a national network to support each other.

The network is called PLATO.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 10:15 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

This item isn't exactly related to K-12 education, but I suspect it will garner a lot of attention among students and teachers at all levels. A recent study by researchers at the University of Michigan shows a decline in the religiosity of students who major in the humanities and social sciences, but a rise among those who study education and business.

Yet students who are highly religious tend to choose humanities and education majors at the outset, according to the study, which I first saw reported in the Christian Post. The results suggest "that there is something attractive about the humanities to students who are highly religious," the authors say. "This apparent attraction of the humanities is especially interesting," given the "dampening" effect on religious belief.

The results of the study are reported as a working paper of the National Bureau of Economic Research. I've linked to it, above.

Education majors, meanwhile, are "clearly a safe haven for the religious," the authors write. Highly religious people seem to prefer education majors, and they tend to stay in that major, their results show. "Highly religious people enter education majors, stay in them, and become more religious," they conclude.

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Research shows that when information in a film doesn't match what's in a history text, students are more likely to remember the film version, according to my colleague Debbie Viadero over at Inside School Research.

Her post makes me glad that I'm a fan of documentaries about history, such as those directed by Ken Burns or Henry Louis Gates (yes, I watched his PBS series on Africa before he became famous for speaking out publicly about his arrest by Cambridge, Mass., police), and I'm not inclined to watch history films that come out of Hollywood.

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When education officials from foreign countries talk about the qualities of the U.S. school system they most admire, one thing they mention is the wealth of independent research projects encouraged by American teachers. In math and science, these projects, whether organized in school or out of school, are usually designed to nurture students' problem-solving skills and their ability to examine a topic in depth, sometimes across disciplines. When I visited China a few years ago for a series of stories on math and science, school and government officials there told me that they believed independent projects helped promote creativity among students, and so they were keen on emulating that aspect of American study.

But do students from disadvantaged backgrounds get the support they need to undertake these efforts? One U.S. program that seeks to address that challenge is the Society for Science & the Public. That effort provides grants of $8,500 to U.S. math and science teachers, known as fellows, who work with disadvantaged students to help them foster independent research projects. The effort also seeks to establish lasting networks of scientific mentors for students.

Ten teachers were selected as the society's first-ever group of fellows this year, through a competitive process; applications came in from teachers in 36 states.The fellowships are supported by the Intel Corp.

Last week, each of those teachers, known as fellows, attended an institute in Washington, D.C., where they received training and shared ideas for how they will go about their work. Presentations were made by researchers, university scientists, experienced K-12 teachers and others. Participating teachers can keep their fellowships for up to four years, with the idea that they'll help guide students' research interests over an extended period. The teachers will also receive continuous training throughout their fellowships.

I'll pose a few questions for readers, which the society's fellows are almost certainly addressing on their own. What is the key to a successful independent research project in math or science? Why do some student projects fall flat, while others succeed? And how can these projects be encouraged in schools where students do not have a lot of resources?

The photo of the fellows, outside the White House, was provided by Society for Science & the Public.

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Teaching to the test is not a problem in schools as long as it is the right test, argue a couple of commentators in an online debate, "What Do School Tests Measure?," published by the New York Times this week. The backdrop for the debate is the news that New York City's students have greatly increased their scores on the state of New York's mathematics and English tests over the last seven years.

Lance T. Izumi, the senior director of studies at the Pacific Research Institute, leans toward assuming that New York state has the right test. But Sandra Stotsky, a professor of education reform at the University of Arkansas, says that when she looked over an 8th grade reading test from New York several years ago, she judged the reading selections to be appropriate for students in grades 4 or 5, independent of what the cutoff score was for the test. She asks the question regarding the New York City situation: "Should English teachers be teaching to these particular tests?"

A number of commentators give examples of how a school's curriculum suffers if teachers are teaching to a test that has a lot of flaws.

Perhaps the most scathing criticism of standardized testing in the collection of commentaries comes from Marcelo Suarez-Orozco and Carola Suarez-Orozco, co-directors of the immigration studies program at New York University. They say that English-language learners are not being served well by current standardized tests and accountability systems.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 3:06 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

Parents, educators, and politicians spend a lot of time debating whether academic standards have risen or fallen over time. What if there was an online tool that could help the public make those judgments?

That's what's being proposed by Great Britain's Conservative Party. The Tories say they will launch an Internet site of test papers, dating back to the Victorian era, to allow the public to compare and contrast. The site will give a "granular picture of the evolution of British education and exams," according to a story in the Daily Telegraph.

Whether this idea becomes a reality, or lands in the vast rubbish bin of political stunts, remains to be seen. Anyone who comes across old exam papers in a shoebox in their attic, the story suggests, would be able to upload those materials to the site.

The Tories appear to be arguing that : 1) parents and the public have lost faith in the nation's system of exit exams, known as the Graduate Certificate of Secondary Education, or GCSE, and that schools are ditching them in favor of "international" assessments; and 2) the ruling British government is treating the content of current exams as "state secrets," according to the story.

Would an online tool of this sort prove popular in the United States? And would it have any research or policy value, as opposed to simply satisfying our curiosity?

Photo of Churchill courtesy of the Library of Congress

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Jim Burke, a high school English teacher in Virginia and prolific writer about what he does in the classroom, doesn't mention the common core standards that are the talk of educators across the nation in his post today about what schools need to do to teach "academic literacy." But he posts something that he calls the "Academic Essentials Matrix," which conveys what he feels students need to know and be able to do in English to prepare for college and the workplace. He's throwing it out for what it is worth, saying it represents "all that I have come to consider essential to academic success; the 'academic essentials,' represent those skills, abilities, and qualities students need—and I had to learn the hard way when I finally went to college (while working at a printing factory at first!)—if they are to succeed in high school and, eventually, college and the workplace where these same skills, as we have seen, are equally necessary.”

It's a simple chart that gets a whole lot of specific ideas across, such as that students must be able to generate "questions, hypotheses, claims, connections, ideas, alternatives, and categories." And they must be able to write an "explanation, narrative, commentary, argument, summary, and critique."

I couldn't help comparing Burke's matrix, as basic as it is, with the common national standards for English that were leaked to the public last month.

With its simple chart format, Burke's version is much easier to digest. Of course, it's a very stripped-down version and people might say it leaves a lot open to ambiguity.

What do you think? Has the committee that drafted the English standards for the nation done a much better job than the lone English teacher from Virginia in including what students really need to know and be able to do?

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 1:45 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The study of biology will increasingly require skill in math, or “a toolbox of diverse mathematical approaches,” according to a new article published in the journal Science. I don't know if biologists tend to fear and avoid math to the extent that much of the general population does, but the changing nature of their scientific field makes math knowledge more essential than ever, the authors argue.

The need for math training is becoming more crucial in areas such as systems biology, where math models have been successful in helping scientists understand molecular structure, they say. Moreover, algebraic models have become increasingly useful in the study of evolutionary biology, such as in examinations of RNA.

The paper, "Mathematical Biology Education: Beyond Calculus," published by Raina Robeva of Sweet Briar College, in Virginia, and Reinhard Laubenbacher of the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech, requires a subscription, but here’s a summary of it. If this topic interests you, so might a second paper: “Computing Has Changed Biology—Biology Education Must Catch Up,” which is published in the same issue.

“Algebraic models should be considered critical for the professional development of biologists,” Robeva and Laubenbacher say. “Mathematics and biology educators must work together to determine the best way of including these in undergraduate curricula.”

What implications does the idea of mathematizing biology have for high school science, and the way that biology courses and math courses are taught?

Photo by Michael P. Farrell for Education Week

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