April 2010 Archives

At a time when it's hard to find bipartisanship in Washington, it appears that legislation to reauthorize the America COMPETES Act may prove a noteworthy exception. Yesterday, the House Science and Technology Committee by a vote of 29-8 approved a wide-ranging bill to reauthorize the law, which includes a strong emphasis on improving education in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

"The statistics speak for them themselves. More than half of our economic growth since World War II can be directly attributed to development and adoption of new technologies," said Rep. Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., the chairman of the House science panel, in an April 28 press release. "The path is simple. Research and education lead to innovation. Innovation leads to economic development and good paying jobs."

The bill "makes investments in science, innovation, and education to strengthen the nation's scientific and economic leadership, support employers, and create jobs in the short-, mid-, and long-term," the press release explains.

In a blog item yesterday, I highlighted a few of the education-related provisions. I also linked to a story I wrote earlier this year about how the America COMPETES Act as crafted in 2007 contained a variety of education provisions, but that many of them have never been funded.

Below I'll point to a few additional aspects of the House legislation provided in the committee press release.

The science panel approved a so-called "manager's amendment" that, in addition to technical and minor changes, lowered the authorization levels in the base text by just over 10 percent from the bill as first introduced. The legislation still maintains a path toward doubling spending on key federal science offices and agencies; the modified text will double authorized funding over 10 years based on the 2007 appropriated-funding levels, the committee summary says.

One section of the legislation "would require the White House to create an advisory committee on STEM education responsible for soliciting input from a variety of stakeholder groups in order to offer guidance to the president on how to better align federal programs with the needs of states and school districts, and to improve connectivity between public and private STEM education efforts," the release says.

The bill also clarifies the role of the Department of Energy in contributing to STEM education, including energy-systems science and engineering education.

I haven't had time to really dive into the details of this legislation yet, but as I learn more about any new provisions or important changes related to programs that target K-12 education, I'll blog about them.

UPDATE: Here's a tidbit I just learned about after speaking with James Brown from the American Chemical Society. He tells me that during the science committee deliberations yesterday, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., agreed to withdraw an amendment that would have removed from the America COMPETES Act a provision to fund the Partnerships for Access to Laboratory Science program. The pilot program, which was part of the original COMPETES law in 2007 but to date has received no funding, is designed to improve lab-based STEM education in high schools.

UPDATE #2: I was correct in describing the science committee vote as bipartisan, but it was not ovewhelmingly so. Only five Republicans voted "aye." All eight "no" votes came from Republicans, including Rep. Ralph Hall of Texas, the panel's senior Republican. Four other Republicans, plus two Democrats, did not vote.

In his opening statement yesterday, Rep. Hall cited the high overall cost of the legislation as one of his main objections. "As stewards of the taxpayers' dollars, during these times we need to be even more vigilant with how we allocate our resources," he said.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I don't know about you, but I've still got a student living under my roof, so I see flashcards in use from time to time at my kitchen table. (Yes, even in this tech-heavy age, even at the high school level, some of her teachers suggest that students memorize certain things by making flashcards.)

Those of you following the common standards now have your own set of flashcards to use. (You don't have to make these yourselves. The Alliance for Excellent Education already did that for you.)

These flashcards are electronic. You can go online and get the lay of the land in each state relative to the common standards. They include stuff like when a state last revised its standards, whether it's on board with the common-standards movement, what portion of its students graduate from college in four years, and what its teachers think the impact of adopting the common standards might be.

They also draw on the alliance's earlier work calculating the cost of a poor or incomplete high school education; the flashcards report what each state would save by graduating every student ready for college or career.

Make no mistake: These flashcards don't purport to be briefs on the pros and cons for each state in adopting common standards and assessments. They're unabashed statements of support for adoption of both. The alliance is one of the inner core of organizations that have supported this initiative from the get-go (and has Gates funding to help move it along).

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The House Science and Technology Committee today is taking up legislation to reauthorize the America COMPETES Act. The law includes a strong emphasis on improving education in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, though as I noted in a story several months back, many of the education-related provisions have failed to receive funding.

A press release from the science committee notes that the House bill, HR 5116, expands support for STEM education, such as language to coordinate STEM education activities across the federal government (which previously passed the House as HR 1709) and ensuring a vision and strategy for STEM education at the Department of Energy.

In addition, the package contains legislative language introduced by Rep. Harry Mitchell, an Arizona Democrat, to amend the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program to reduce the cost-sharing requirement for colleges and universities so that a more diverse group of institutions can afford to participate in the Noyce program, according to another committee press release.

"If U.S. students are going to remain competitive in a global economy, it is vitally important that we recruit and train qualified and motivated STEM teachers to work in our K-12 schools," said Mr. Mitchell in the press release. "The Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program does exactly that. It is especially crucial to make it easier and less expensive for universities to provide this valuable training during these tough economic times."

Although many of the education provisions in the COMPETES Act have never been funded, the Noyce scholarship program is one of the exceptions, as federal aid has climbed substantially over time, even as it's still well below the level authorized in the law. For fiscal 2010, it received $55 million. In addition, under the federal economic-stimulus law, it got an additional $60 million in one-time aid.

Rep. Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., the chairman of the House science committee, said his goal is to have the full House pass the America COMPETES Act before the Memorial Day recess.

Stay tuned for more details and analysis as this legislation moves forward.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

We've talked before about the effect that common standards and assessments could have on the publishing industry (see a blog post here and a story here). Today we have one more peek into those possibilities.

In a conference call yesterday to discuss first-quarter earnings for this year, McGraw-Hill executives discussed the impact of states' ordering decisions. To be sure, the tough economy had a lot to do with decisions to downsize or delay. (Company execs also talked about large orders they received from several states.) But common-core considerations are in the mix, in ways that are both potentially disappointing and potentially profitable for the publishing company, and you can see them in here.

The call shows an echo of the dynamic we reported earlier this year, which saw states delaying updates to their own standards because the common standards were coming down the pike. Here, McGraw-Hill execs discuss Indiana's advice to districts to delay purchasing instructional materials until they can get materials aligned with the common standards. (See Page 2 of the transcript of the conference call.)

In the longer run, the McGraw-Hill executives said they see "favorable implications" for them in the common-standards movement because states will adopt materials that incorporate the new standards and because of cost savings in not having to customize content from one state to another.

There are some interesting bits in the call, too, about the opportunities the publisher sees in the summative and formative testing markets as the Race to the Top assessment competition gets under way. Formative testing has been an area of particular interest among educators and federal education officials, as they seek better ways to gauge student learning as it happens, so instruction can be adjusted. Toward the end of the conference call, Terry McGraw, the company's chairman, president, and CEO, said the company is "shifting our focus here very heavily to the formative testing opportunities."

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The latest issue of the journal Science features a special section on the importance of linking science learning with language and communication skills. (If you click on the Science link, you cannot return immediately to this blog. Also, a subscription is required to view the articles online, or you can purchase individual ones.)

"By reconceptualizing science education through closely connecting literacy lessons with active inquiry learning in science class, one can make a strong argument for greatly expanding the time spent on science in primary school," writes Bruce Alberts, the editor-in-chief of Science, in an editorial. "This alone would carry tremendous benefit in places where, like the United States, science for young students has often become marginalized to less than an hour a week."

In one article, Catherine E. Snow, an education professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, notes that a "major challenge to students learning science is the academic language in which science is written. ... Students need help in learning academic vocabulary and how to process academic language if they are to become independent learners of science."

She adds: "[Students] must have access to the all-purpose academic vocabulary that is used to talk about knowledge and that they will need to use in making their own arguments and evaluating others' arguments. Mechanisms for teaching those words and the ways that scientists use them should be a part of the science curriculum."

Snow's article is titled "Academic Language and the Challenge of Reading for Learning About Science."

Jonathan Osborne, a professor of science education at Stanford University, writes in another article that while argument and debate are common in science, they are "virtually absent from science education." His article, "Arguing to Learn in Science: The Role of Collaborative, Critical Discourse," provides an overview of existing research on the contribution of collaborative discourse and argumentation to learning and discusses the implications for teaching and learning science.

"As one of the hallmarks of the scientist is critical, rational skepticism, the lack of opportunities to develop the ability to reason and argue scientifically would appear to be a significant weakness in contemporary educational practice," he writes. "In short, knowing what is wrong matters as much as knowing what is right."

One article, "Literacy and Science: Each in the Service of the Other," examines the "synergies" between inquiry science and literacy teaching in schools. It is coauthored by P. David Pearson, an education professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Elizabeth Moje, an education professor from the University of Michigan, and Cynthia Greenleaf, a researcher at WestEd.

It focuses on how reading and writing can be used as tools to support inquiry-based science, and how reading and writing benefit when embedded in an "inquiry-based science setting."

Finally, although not about the nexus of science and literacy, the April 23 issue of Science also includes a new study my colleague Debbie Viadero has written up about pairs of identical and fraternal twins in Florida schools that bolsters a growing body of evidence on the importance of good teachers.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Vote early and often. The next phase of the Race to the Top Commencement Challenge, which I've blogged about a couple of times, began Monday. President Obama will speak at the graduation ceremony this spring for the winning high school.

You can view a three-minute video and short essay from each of the six finalists chosen by the administration and rate them from 1 to 5. But don't be fooled into thinking your vote will decide the ultimate outcome. The voting only determines the three top finalists. Then, President Obama will select the winner.

For more details, see this description from the White House. Voting ends at 11:59 p.m. EDT this Thursday, April 29. The winner will be announced on May 4.

Being a cynical reporter, I can't help but point out that four of the six finalist schools are in political "swing" states in presidential elections: Colorado, Florida, Michigan, and Ohio. So rest assured, Curriculum Matters will be watching carefully to make sure this whole selection process is above board!

Photo Information: President Barack Obama waves as he arrives to deliver the commencement speech during the May 2009 graduation ceremony at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind. Gerald Herbert/AP-File

Posted by Erik Robelen at 6:13 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

In writing about the common-core standards, we've often touched on the argument about how much math students need. In this Commentary on our website, two gentlemen assert that the common core is unreasonably demanding because most people—91 percent, according to one study they cite— don't need that level of math sophistication. What's more, they say, demanding that level of math from all students essentially displaces from the curriculum courses of study that could prove valuable, such as career-tech ed.

I've heard versions of this argument before, and there's something that always hangs me up about it. It's not the question of how much math most young adults will need in their jobs, or even the curriculum-displacement issue. It's the issue of when this "how much" question gets decided for kids.

Let me try to explain by asking something of anyone who has raised kids, or who has taught them at the middle school or early high school levels: How well can 13- or 14-year-olds decide for themselves how much math they will need? Because if all kids aren't going to take the same highly rigorous math curriculum, then someone will need to decide who takes what. And that's where I start getting concerned.

Obviously, adults are going to have to be involved in helping kids decide what to take, or in deciding for them, because very few young teenagers have a clear enough idea of their pathway at that age to select math courses wisely. This is pretty much the system we have now. Kids with engaged, educated parents benefit from this advice, with or without the input of teachers and school counselors. Kids who don't have the good fortune to have engaged, educated parents are at the mercy of their teachers' and counselors' expectations—and the quality of their particular schools' courses and teachers—when course-signup time rolls around. Which is to say that course selection morphs into a class and culture issue. Not exclusively, but in patterns that are too pronounced to ignore.

Unless we have a smart plan to address these kinds of disparities, simply allowing students to take a less-rigorous curriculum—not just in math, but in any core subject—risks perpetuating the problems we have now. Just as those who advocate raising the bar for all kids need a plan for getting even the most disadvantaged kids over that bar, those who advocate allowing students to take a less-rigorous curriculum if they choose must have a plan that ensures they will still have a multitude of good career or college choices open to them when they are finally mature enough to make those choices.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

It was an interesting forum on the common standards yesterday at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. The two very smart and articulate standards-writers who spoke, Jason Zimba from the math panel and David Coleman from English/language arts, focused on the content of—and thinking behind—the standards. They steered clear of most implementation and policy issues. (Goodness knows, there are plenty of those.)

Video of the forum is available here. A few highlights (I know, the expanse of gray below doesn't suggest "a few." But hey, these things are really hard to talk about briefly! And even this offers only a sense of the discussion. Please watch for yourself! Even better, review the actual standards and then watch for yourself.):

Fordham President Checker Finn, who moderated the event, asked the speakers at one point to address eight "flash points" on the standards. Zimba got a laugh when he responded that even the question itself made him "want to go wincing back to the gentle arms of quantum theory."

I won't be able to summarize all the answers from both subject areas. So when the video is posted, I urge you to listen for yourselves. But one of the flash points was the very hot question about whether the standards prepare students for Algebra 1 in 8th grade. Zimba said that the grade K-7 standards have the "intellectual prerequisites" for an "authentic, rigorous" Algebra 1 course in 8th grade, but that they were not designed to force every student into that path. Nor are the standards at 8th grade to be viewed as an authentic, rigorous, stand-alone Algebra 1 course, he said. The standards have to "click into a lot of different environments" state to state, Zimba said. (I can already hear a range of mathematicians and math educators groaning or screaming here, for a variety of reasons.)

Finn asked how the math standards fit into the debate about "integrated" math curriculum versus the traditional Algebra 1-geometry-Algebra 2-trigonometry pathway. Zimba said the standards are designed in "conceptual categories," not course titles, to maximize flexibility in that area, rather than to resolve the issue.

The next question was quick and easy: How, Finn asked, do the standards resolve the debate about the role memorizing math facts should play in learning math? Practically a sigh of relief there: The standards expect kids to know math facts by memory, Zimba said. "We've resolved that," he added with a smile.

There were two more questions about math flash points—how they resolve the debates about calculator use and how much statistics students need— but to keep this post from being as long as the Torah, let me jump to the three English "flash points." The first focused on whether the primary-grade levels of the standards were faithful to the findings of the National Reading Panel. Coleman said that while "big issues" remain, early reading is an area of great consensus, and that the standards, as a result, balance the importance of comprehension and knowledge with fluency in those years.

Another question for Coleman was how the English standards balance the tension between skills and knowledge development. He said the standards require knowledge of science, literature, and other fields, and also include a separate strand of language skills in spoken and written English, such as vocabulary. The strand was "controversial," but the standards-writers felt those skills were important, he said, adding, "We're conservative in that way."

Addressing the argument that a required reading list should be part of the standards, Coleman said a reading list is meaningless unless students master various types of texts of sufficient complexity, a chief aim of these new English standards. That said, the document supplies dozens of examples of texts that describe the quality and range of what students should be reading, he said. And they strongly suggest inclusion of important works such as Jane Eyre and Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1964 "Letter From Birmingham Jail." In one little glimpse of how the final version of the standards could evolve, Coleman did say that "world literature" will be "more present" in the next version than it is in the current draft.

The American Federation of Teachers' consultant David Sherman asked how curriculum, professional development, and assessments will take shape to maximize the utility of the standards. (There is a lot of buzz out there about this; lots of folks moving or getting ready to move in these areas.) Both speakers demurred here, noting that states, unions, foundations, and others are discussing this in various ways. (That's putting it mildly.)

A final note: It was clear yesterday that organizations supportive of the common-standards work have been refining a messaging strategy. Available at the event were sheaves of papers outlining the key ideas that led to the standards' development, and that underlie the way the math and the English/language arts standards are written. They've also got a "myths vs. facts" handout that offers the initiative's answers to some of the criticism that's been floating around about the endeavor. All this work was done by the James B. Hunt Jr. Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy, which has a $3.8 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to do policy and communications work to help states implement the common core. These papers aren't anywhere online yet, but we've got them for you here. Also, here is a Power Point presentation distributed yesterday by Achieve Inc., which co-sponsored the event along with Fordham and the Hunt Institute, and is playing a central role in developing the standards.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 3:04 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

When I first learned that the U.S. House passed a bill this week to combat childhood obesity by promoting physical education in schools—the Fitness Integrated with Teaching (FIT) Kids Act—I assumed it would simply be a case of Uncle Sam sending some money out to help districts improve their P.E. offerings.

But I was wrong.

By my read, this is not really a grant program at all. The core thrust of the legislation is to impose a new set of reporting requirements on school districts so that the public has a better handle on exactly what schools are offering when it comes to P.E. Given all the federal reporting mandates schools are already coping with, something tells me that school administrators may not be thrilled at the prospect of adding still more.

I called the American Association of School Administrators to ask about the bill, which was approved by a voice vote on April 21, but the group declined to comment.

So, what would districts be asked to do?

Beginning one year after enactment of the law, and then on an annual basis, any district receiving federal Title I aid (which means virtually all of them) would have to post on the district website, or otherwise make available to families:

• Information on how its schools are promoting "healthy lifestyles," including school programs and policies on nutrition, physical education, and physical activity;

• Information on whether its schools follow an "age-appropriate physical education curriculum" for all students that adheres to national guidelines adopted by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or by the state;

• The most recent national recommendations for P.E. and physical activity for elementary and secondary students; and

• A description of the amount of time students in K-12 are required to spend in physical education, "disaggregated by grade level."

In addition, districts would have to assist each school individually in "collecting and disseminating" similar information to families enrolled in that particular school. But in this case, the school would also have to provide a description of the facilities available for P.E. and physical activity for students. And it would be required to let families know about any "health and wellness council" at the school, with a list of its members, membership criteria, and opportunities for parental involvement, as well as meeting dates and agendas.

Districts also would have to submit to the state data on the amount of time students at all grade levels are required to spend in P.E. classes. Then the state would have to make all this information publicly available, such as by posting it on the state education agency's website.

The legislation would not authorize any money to districts for P.E. programs, but does call for an unspecified amount of federal aid to pay for the National Research Council to examine and make recommendations on "innovative and effective ways to increase physical activity" for students and study the impact of physical education on students' ability to learn.

From a political perspective, it's worth noting that the bill has bipartisan support. One of the co-authors is Rep. Zach Wamp, a self-described "conservative" Tennessee Republican.

"Physical education has been squeezed out of our schools and it needs to be welcomed back in with open arms," Wamp is quoted as saying in a press release from the House Education and Labor Committee. "Research shows that children who get a good healthy dose of cardiovascular exercise have better brain functions, test scores, and sleep patterns, along with an increased quality of life."

The FIT Kids Act has been endorsed by a variety of organizations, including the American Heart Association, the National Association for Sport and Physical Education, and the National Association of Health Education Centers, as well as exercise guru Richard Simmons, according to the committee press release. But there was no mention of backing from the main K-12 education groups in Washington.

"In my heart, I knew this day would come," Simmons says in the committee press release. "For the last three-and-a-half years, I have worked so hard with my team to make the FIT Kids Act a reality. We will continue to work hard so it will also pass in the Senate, and on the day that President Obama signs the bill into law, he'll give me one of the pens."

Posted by Erik Robelen at 10:32 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Today is the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. No doubt, plenty of schools around the country have come up with creative ways to celebrate, and turn this occasion into a teachable moment. Two weeks ago, I posted a blog item with some resources I came across.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will speak at an Earth Day ceremony on the National Mall at 5:30 p.m. today. I got a sneak preview of his prepared remarks, in which he's going to announce a "Summit on Education for a Green Economy" in September, though it's apparently geared more toward higher education than the K-12 arena.

"The central goal of the summit is to define the role of schools in the transition to a green economy," Secretary Duncan says in the prepared remarks. "All schools have a role to play, particularly colleges and universities."

He adds: "The summit will bring together leaders from higher education, business and industry, labor, government, and NGOs to build shared visions and strategies for education's role in building a sustainable and green economy."

Duncan also is going to emphasize in his speech today how Earth Day has turned into a powerful occasion for teaching and learning.

"That's why it's one of the most successful public education campaigns," he says. "We live our lives differently because of the lessons we've learned on Earth Day."

Photo Credit: NASA (from Apollo 17)

Posted by Erik Robelen at 3:41 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

If you're tired of hearing bad news about the state of arts education amid budget cuts and pressure on schools to focus most of their energy on boosting test scores in subjects like reading and math, a recent analysis about string and orchestra programs may, well, strike a chord.

It finds that significantly more public schools are offering programs to teach kids how to play stringed instruments these days. Twenty-nine percent of public school districts in the nation offered string programs in 2009, compared with 18 percent in 1997, says the white paper by the National String Project Consortium.

Also, although the white paper does identify a shortage of string teachers, with 3,000 needed by 2013, that's smaller than the 5,000 teacher shortage by 2005 that was identified in an earlier study.

"The bad news is that the United States is still facing a shortage of string teachers," Robert Jesselson, the executive director of the National String Project Consortium, writes in an introduction to the paper. "But the good news is that this shortage has decreased in the last eight years, even while the percentage of school districts with string programs has increased."

The paper, "Wanted: 3,000 String Teachers! The Status of String and Orchestra Programs in United States Schools," draws on research conducted by Michael L. Alexander, an associate professor of string music education at Baylor University and Bret P. Smith, an assistant professor of music education at Central Washington University.

Of course, not all of the news from the research is hopeful. Between 2003 and 2008, financial support from school districts for string education decreased in 66 percent of programs, the white paper says.

These are just a few highlights. For those looking for far more information, check out the white paper for yourself.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 9:49 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

What's up, you might wonder, with those common standards?

It's been nearly three weeks since the public comment period closed, and not a peep. Yes, we remember the estimate that it would take six to eight weeks until the final version (we can stop saying "draft" at that point) is out, which would be the last half of May. But we couldn't help wondering: maybe that summary of 10,000-plus public comments would be out earlier? And is the six-to-eight-week timeline for the standards themselves holding true, or could they be—gasp!—out even earlier?

Well, don't hold your breath for any huge insights or excitements today. National Governors Association spokeswoman Jodi Omear tells me they are working on the comments summary and incorporating "appropriate feedback" into the standards. She said to stay tuned for both documents in "late spring."

In the meantime, if you're going through common standards withdrawal, you can watch a live webcast of a session about it tomorrow. There have been many salons about the topic, but this one is a bit unusual because it features two of the lead writers: David Coleman from the English/language arts panel, and Jason Zimba from the math panel. The session, which will be held at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute here in Washington, runs from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., Eastern time tomorrow. You can view the webcast live here, and you can also e-mail questions to the panel through this site.

UPDATE: The Baltimore Sun asked a sampling of teachers to review the standards and delivers this report. The thoughts of Arkansas teachers who attended a meeting there sponsored by the state department of education are here.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 1:11 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

With the Texas board of education expected to take a final vote in May on revised social studies standards, the debate surrounding that effort doesn't show any signs of easing up.

As of late last week, some 800 history professors from around the nation had signed on to a letter that calls for the state board to delay a final vote to allow "qualified, credentialed content experts" to review the changes and make recommendations, reports the Austin American-Statesman.

The letter charges that some of the changes recently approved by the Republican-controlled board would undermine "the study of the social sciences in our public schools by misrepresenting and even distorting the historical record and the functioning of American society."

The standards were tentatively approved on a party-line vote of 10-5 in March. As I blogged last week, the latest draft of the standards is now online.

The American-Statesman story quotes Gail Lowe, the board's chair, as saying the process has already been extended to allow for additional input and that further delays were not likely.

Meanwhile, Don McLeroy, a leading conservative on the state board, shared his thoughts on the standards in an opinion piece in USA Today last week.

"The proposed changes have attracted national attention because they challenge the powerful ideology of the left and highlight the great political divide of our country," he writes. "The left's principles are diametrically opposed to our founding principles. The left believes in big, not limited, government; they empower the state, not the individual; they focus on differences, not unity."

I should note that McLeroy recently lost his bid for re-election to the board to a fellow Republican in the primary.

Finally, in the typical point-counterpoint approach of USA Today, the paper's editorial board ran an editorial the same day criticizing the draft social studies standards.

"Members of the Texas board and their backers say they're just trying to restore balance to an academic system they view as skewed to the left," the editorial says. "But that misses the point. Standards should be set by professionals in their fields. They should not be a vehicle for scoring points in the culture wars."

Posted by Erik Robelen at 2:23 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I wanted to draw your attention to two new studies on math education my colleague Debbie Viadero has just written about, one focused on the preparation of math teachers and the other on their ongoing professional development. Neither offers particularly encouraging news.

One report finds that future U.S. math teachers in the elementary and middle grades, on average, were in the middle of the pack when compared with those in 15 other nations, based on a new test designed to gauge their skills.

Debbie explains: "Among the world's aspiring elementary teachers, the results show that American college students nearing the end of their teacher-preparation programs performed 'neither particularly low, nor particularly strong.' They scored at rates similar to those of future teachers in Germany, Norway, and Russia, but not on par with typically high-achieving countries such as Taiwan and Singapore."

Meanwhile, the next generation of middle school math teachers performed slightly worse, landing on what the study calls "the divide between countries in which students usually do well on international math exams and those that don't." U.S. teachers-to-be outperformed their counterparts in Botswana, Chile, and the Republic of Georgia, for example, but trailed far behind the top-scoring Taiwanese teacher-preparation students, the story explains.

In another math-related story, Debbie says "first-year findings from a federal study of 77 middle schools suggest that even intensive, state-of-the-art efforts to boost teachers' skills on the job may not lead to significant gains in student achievement right away."

The study, "Middle School Mathematics Professional Development Impact Study," released April 6, is the "second major experimental study by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences to find that a high-quality professional-development program failed to translate into any dramatic improvements in student learning," Debbie's story explains.

A two-year study of efforts to improve teachers' instructional skills in early reading reached a similar conclusion in 2008, the story notes.

While I'm on the subject of math research, the federal Institute of Education Sciences recently awarded a four-year, $6.1 million grant to SEDL (formerly the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory) to study the effectiveness of McGraw-Hill Education's Everyday Mathematics, a curriculum for students in pre-K through 6th grade.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 1:02 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A sample of the divergent views on common standards for you this morning. Ed Miller of the Alliance for Childhood notes the split in two pieces that ran recently in The Boston Globe and The Washington Post.

In the Globe op-ed, Nancy Carlsson-Paige and Diane Levin argue that the standards won't close the achievement gap because they will do nothing to address the inequities in the education system that cause it. They say the standards will impose more rote learning on young children and drive play further from school curricula. (Carlsson-Paige, a professor of early childhood education at Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass., was also quoted in our story about the early childhood community's views of the common standards.)

Miller notes quite a different view from that expressed by Carlsson-Paige and Levin, and that comes from "Core Knowledge" founder E. D. Hirsch Jr., in The Answer Sheet blog in The Washington Post. Cognitive science, he argues, suggests that common standards will indeed improve student achievement, and he commends the standards writers for charting "a way out of the incoherence that reading instruction has become." (Core Knowledge, as you might recall, announced a plan in February to align its key curriculum sequence to the common standards and make it available for free.)

More diverging views from Massachusetts, as well. This supportive piece in the Globe from former Massachusetts education commissioner David Driscoll, and this critical piece in the Lowell Sun from the folks at the Pioneer Institute.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

When the common standards initiative first got off the ground, one of the things that created tumult in some quarters was the relative absence of teachers on the panels created to write and review the documents.

One of the results of the too-few-teachers complaint was that the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, which co-lead the common standards work, reached out to the national teachers' unions to help work teachers into the process. More teachers were placed on the panels, and teams from around the country also did periodic reviews of the drafts as they went through revisions, says the CCSSO's Chris Minnich.

Now the 1.4-million-member AFT is braggin' on the role their members played in shaping the standards. They're circulating a letter, too, from the lead writers on the math and English language/arts panels, thanking the teachers for their efforts and detailing the changes that were made as a result of their feedback.

The 3.2-million-member National Education Association made reference to their teachers' influence, as well, in a statement they issued when the first public draft of the common standards was posted for public comment, and in a brief summary of the initiative.

We've heard before that a meaningful teacher role in shaping curriculum, assessments and such builds buy-in in a major way. We'll see if that holds true here.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 2:32 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

THE place to be over the next three days for all you robotics enthusiasts is Atlanta's Georgia Dome. That's where more than 10,000 students—and 530 robots—from around the world are competing in the 19th annual FIRST Championship. (FIRST stands for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.)

The three-day event involves a series of "high-energy, intense robotic competitions," according to a press release from FIRST, the nonprofit that organizes the effort. This year, the competition gave 212,000 young people the chance to work with professional engineers to solve "complex, real-world problems, and help to fuel the next generation of leaders."

On Saturday, the final day of the competition, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is scheduled to address the participants and the audience.

Each year, the nonprofit FIRST, founded by inventor Dean Kaman, issues an engineering challenge. With the help of mentors and professional engineers, students then build and program robots to compete in the challenge.

The championship includes three competitions:

• The FIRST Robotics Competition, dubbed "Breakaway," involves robots competing in a soccer-like game to climb obstacles and score goals against their opponents. There are 1,809 robotics teams with an average of 25 students per team, all high schoolers.

• The FIRST Tech Challenge, dubbed "Hot Shot!", involves robots earning points by collecting and firing balls into designated goals. This is a "more accessible and affordable modular robotics kit," with more than 100 teams of approximately 10 high school students, the press release explains.

• The FIRST LEGO League, targeting middle schoolers, features 84 teams in a "Smart Move" competition applying robotics and research to transportation safety and efficiency problems.

So, it's not too late. Get in your car, hop on a bus, catch a plane—or better still, a LEGO robot—to the Peach State.

Photo Credit: Teams fine-tune their LEGO robots in a regional First Lego League competition in Orangeburg, S.C. Christopher Huff/Times & Democrat.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 5:30 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The wait is over. A month after the Texas State Board of Education finished up Round Two of its deliberations over rewriting the state's social studies standards, the Texas Education Agency today finally posted the latest draft, which includes many amendments (some rather controversial) from the March meeting. The board tentatively approved the standards March 12 on a party line vote of 10 to 5, with all Democrats opposed.

Those even vaguely familiar with what's going on know the Texas debate has proven "lively," you might say, and has attracted widespread coverage well beyond the Texas border. I've blogged about developments a few times—here, here, and here for example—and we ran a larger story about Texas as well as several other states working to revise their social studies standards.

While a relatively small number of amendments have attracted the most attention, the standards documents cover a lot of terrain and I encourage you to check them out for yourself.

Here are links to the proposed standards for elementary, middle, and high school students. There's also a separate document for economics (with, and I'm quoting the title, an "emphasis on the free enterprise system and its benefits").

The state board is scheduled to reconvene in May, at which time it's expected to approve the final standards. However, keep in mind that board members may well seek to make further changes at that time, so this is not necessarily the final package.

Happy reading.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 1:03 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Just minutes ago, we were telling you about how those assessment consortia are evolving in their bids for Race to the Top money. Now comes the news that Susan Gendron, Maine's commissioner of education, is leaving her job to help lead one of those consortia.

The news left one state lawmaker lamenting that Gendron wouldn't be around to help the state win money in the second round of the main (no pun intended) Race to the Top competition. She's also led a move there to consolidate school districts, and some lawmakers said they hated to see her leave that work now.

Gendron knows more than a little about common assessments; with three other states, Maine is part of the New England Common Assessment Program. She is also just finishing a term as president of the Council of Chief State School Officers, which is co-leading the initiative to design common standards (with which common assessments are supposed to be aligned).

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Documents trickling out of the groups of states aiming for Race to the Top assessment money show that they consider it very important to design testing systems that permit comparisons among students no matter what state they live in.

You remember (right?) from your attentive reading of this blog and a recent story on edweek.org that the groups, or "consortia," of states applying for chunks of that $350 million have boiled down from six to two (not counting the one that is aiming solely at the $30 million for high school end-of-course assessments).

Most of that winnowing happened in private winter meetings convened by the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association (i.e., the two groups leading the work to draft common standards, to which these new-age assessments are supposed to be aligned. With me so far? Good.). They got leaders of five of the six consortia (which you read about here) to merge into two groups, and outline their plans. Using those plans, the CCSSO and the NGA put together a paper describing the "common vision" and priorities shared by both groups, as well as their differences. They released the paper today, and the consortia's outlines are included as appendices.

A good deal of the paper is stuff we've heard before, since it reflects administration priorities such as making sure the new tests yield data about the growth in student achievement (not just the status), take advantage of new technologies, involve teachers in their design, and incorporate a mix of tasks that go far beyond long lists of multiple-choice questions. But it's interesting to read more in detail about the types of tests the consortia are planning to design.

And there's an interesting bit in there about comparability. The CCSSO and NGA say that this is a high priority for the governors and state education chiefs in designing new assessments, so the two groups are leading a joint project to make sure that scores from the summative assessments created by the two consortia can be compared from state to state. So even if West Virginia is using assessments created by a different consortium than the one Florida belongs to, scores from a school in one state could still be compared to scores in the other (although this wouldn't be possible on a student-by-student basis). The two groups are going to convene testing experts to see how this can be done. And they plan to ask each consortium to sign a memorandum pledging support for this comparability effort.

When I chatted with NGA and CCSSO leaders, they made no bones about their wish that the two consortia merge further into one. They could benefit from better economies of scale, and one system of assessments used across all the states that adopt common standards would enable student-to-student comparisons, they said. (There is some simple division here: one consortium gets a bigger chunk of the RTT money than two would. Of course, a huge portion goes to the test developers—whoever they turn out to be. But the idea is that by banding together and getting a bigger chunk of RTT money, it's more efficiently used in developing one set of tests for everyone, and also, I'm guessing, that each state has more money to use in implementation than if two consortia—with overlapping membership, as things stand currently—remain.)

Whether the two will merge into one is still an open question. As you read this, the jostling is still going on. And how folks will feel about one set of tests offered to everyone is anyone's guess (the NGA and CCSSO folks didn't see this as potentially controversial.). But until the tea leaves become more clear, you can read this paper and the appendices and give us a shout-out right here.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 9:31 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A quickie for you: the public comment period on the draft common standards drew more than 10,000 comments.

Organizers of the Common Core State Standards Initiative are working on summarizing the comments (my sympathies to the pour soul who has to summarize those babies.). No word yet on when they will post. And no relenting, despite my urgings, on their decision to summarize the comments instead of just posting them for all of us to see.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 4:15 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

OK, you've heard a lot lately about the Race to the Top competition between states (and the Race to the Top Assessment program). Today, I'm going to update you on another race that's far more important—at least to some high school seniors, anyway: The Race to the Top Commencement Challenge.

The White House and the U.S. Department of Education last week announced six finalists among U.S. high schools for a chance to have President Obama speak at their graduation ceremony.

The finalists are:

• Blue Valley Northwest High School (Overland Park, Kan.);
• Clark Montessori Junior High and High School (Cincinnati);
• Denver School of Science and Technology (Denver);
• Environmental Charter High School (Lawndale, Calif.);
• Kalamazoo Central High School (Kalamazoo, Mich.); and
• MAST Academy (Miami).

Congratulations!

For the record, two of the six finalists are charter schools (the schools in Denver and Lawndale, Calif.) and another, MAST Academy, is a magnet school. Only public schools were eligible for the competition.

And by the way, not sure if I missed it last time, but the April 9 White House announcement described this as an "annual" event, so schools that didn't make the cut will get another chance next year.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 2:44 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Specific writing strategies can play an important role in boosting reading comprehension. That's the bottom-line finding of a new analysis of research.

The report, out today from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, says that teachers can improve students' reading skills by having them write about what they are reading, teaching them writing skills, and increasing how much they write.

The analysis of research is one in an ongoing series of literacy studies funded by the philanthropy. (You might recall that it released its capstone report on adolescent literacy just last year. Click here for our story about it.) The new report builds on findings in the organization's 2004 study "Reading Next," which examined ways to improve adolescents' literacy skills, and its 2007 report "Writing Next," which looked at ways to improve adolescents' writing skills. The new report focuses on how the teaching of writing can improve reading.

Co-authors Steve Graham and Michael Hebert of Vanderbilt University examined the research on writing strategies that improve reading and found three areas of promise. One is to have students write about the texts they are reading, by summarizing, writing notes, or creating and answering questions about them.

Such techniques were shown to improve students' comprehension of science, social studies, and language arts. They were more effective in improving comprehension than just reading the text, re-reading it, reading and studying it, reading and discussing it, or receiving reading instruction, the study found.

Students also improve comprehension when they are taught writing skills and processes that go into creating text, such as paragraph and sentence construction or text structures. Increasing how much students write was also found to help their comprehension.

The authors conclude that more content-area teachers should use writing to promote better understanding, including in mathematics, science, social studies, and the arts.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Today is a big day for more than 4,100 seniors in Massachusetts who have yet to pass a high-stakes science test, a high school graduation requirement that kicked in for the first time with the class of 2010.

The students, who represent roughly 6 percent of the state's nearly 70,000 12th graders, have failed to earn a passing score in science repeatedly. Today's test is the final opportunity for these seniors to pass in time to receive a diploma with their classmates at June graduation ceremonies.

The Boston Globe reports that some education advocates worry that the persistent failure could cause many students to give up on receiving a diploma.

But Mitchell D. Chester, the state commissioner of elementary and secondary education, is quoted as saying the state is standing firm.

"I'm always concerned about individual students who have not met the graduation requirement,'' he said. "Nonetheless, the science requirement is appropriate and reasonable, and our schools have demonstrated the ability to deliver increasingly stronger results for students.''

Jonathan Considine, a spokesman for the state education agency, says the test results will be returned on May 21, in time for graduation in June. Students will also have another chance to take the test in June.

The state administers science exams in biology, chemistry, physics, and technology/engineering. Students need to pass only one of those by scoring at least "needs improvement," the second-lowest of four scoring categories.

The state has been testing in science for some time now, but this is the first group of seniors who must pass the test as part of their graduation requirements. Massachusetts students have long been required to pass tests in mathematics and English. The high-stakes English and math testing had faced strong criticism in the early years of its implementation, but the opposition has died down considerably over time as the pass rates have gone up. Here's a state overview of the testing requirements.

Considine notes that the state also offers an appeals process that gives students who don't pass all the required state tests another route to earn a diploma. So far, he says, 349 students have met the science requirement through the appeals process.

I can't resist noting that the Globe story quotes Susan Szachowicz, the principal of Brockton High School, which I featured in a recent story included in our Quality Counts 2010 publication. That school, which serves a diverse, urban population, has come a long way over time in improving its pass rates on the state's standardized tests, winning state and national recognition.

The Globe story explains that Brockton High has been offering struggling seniors intensive help, which reduced the number who had yet to pass a science test from 70 in September to 16 as of last month. In fact, the students who still hadn't passed were attending a biology "boot camp" three times a week to help them gear up for today's exam.

"We are keeping our fingers crossed,'' Szachowicz told the Globe.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

It's a hot topic now: It's no longer enough to just graduate from high school. Students have to be sure that their high school education actually prepares them for college or good jobs. (If you thought that was obvious, you were ahead of a lot of folks, who, um, didn't.)

It's popular to say everyone needs to be college- or career- ready. But the trick is, not everyone agrees on what that means. (We've written tons about this, but one recent overview is from our Diplomas Count report.)

Into that fray wades the Association for Career and Technical Education, which today released an official definition of what it considers career readiness. The ACTE's definition has three parts: a certain core of academic skills that all students need, regardless of whether they are going to college or straight into a job; employabilty skills such as adaptability and critical thinking that any young person needs for jobs or college; and "technical skills," which are more specific to the field a student is entering, or plans to enter.

This is interesting, given the rising arguments in recent years for state to beef up academic study in light of job-market changes that suggest a growing convergence of the skills needed for work and college. The folks at ACTE are trying to present what they see as a more complete picture of the skills needed for work. There is certainly an overlap, says ACTE Executive Director Jan Bray, but the skills sets are not identical. It's a call they hope will be heard by lawmakers on Capitol Hill as they reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and by those pushing for better, higher standards, be they state standards or common standards.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 4:39 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Is it appropriate for the Chinese government to pay for Chinese-language instruction in U.S. public schools? That question has sparked some debate in a California community, reports the Los Angeles Times.

In January, the Hacienda La Puente Unified School District board voted 4-1 to adopt a new Chinese-language and -culture class at Cedarlane Middle School, at no cost to the district. It's being paid for by the Chinese government's Chinese Language Council International, also known as Hanban, the story says.

"I am not against the teaching of foreign languages, but this is a propaganda machine from the People's Republic of China that has no place anywhere in the United States," said John Kramer, a former superintendent for the district who has been vocal in the debate, the Times reports.

The issue has drawn the attention of a prominent national education expert, Chester E. Finn Jr., from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute (and a former education official in the Reagan administration). In a blog post yesterday, he sharply criticized the move.

"Though one tiny corner of my conscience says sure, the more the Chinese spend IN the United States, the less they'll have to compete with and undermine us," he writes. "But most of me is outraged, and a little bit alarmed."

He says it's not unusual for nations to "propagate their language" in other countries, citing as examples work by the Alliance Francaise for France and the Goethe Institute for Germany. At the same time, "to my knowledge, however, they do these things after school, on weekends, at night, and usually for adults, not 'compulsory' students."

But others say the concern is unwarranted.

"A lot of people are saying it's a way for the Chinese people to brainwash our students. They are really misinformed," the Times quotes Jay Chen, a vice president of the Hacienda La Puenta board as saying. "From Oregon to Rhode Island, public schools have implemented the same program. As far as I can see, nothing sinister is going on."

The Times story says China created the Confucius Institute in 2004 to promote Chinese language and culture at the university level. And last year, Hanban expanded the idea, launching the Confucius Classroom to focus on K-12 education. There are currently about 200 Confucius Classrooms, the story says.

People worried in 2004 when the Confucius Institute was launched, the story quotes Susan Pertel Jain, the executive director of the UCLA Confucius Institute, as saying. "Everybody was concerned we would be told what to do, what to teach. That's not the situation at all. It's very much a partnership," she said of the UCLA program, which began in 2007.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 11:32 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Debate is heating up in Connecticut over legislation that would require public schools to allow students to opt out of dissections or experiments with animals if they raise a conscientious objection, the Hartford Courant newspaper reports.

"This is about an ethical choice these kids are making," the newspaper quotes state Rep. Maryanne Hornish, a co-sponsor of the measure, as saying. "Some can't handle the blood and gore."

The bill was approved recently by the legislature's bicameral education committee and is similar to one introduced last year that reportedly made it to the Senate floor before it died without a vote.

Thirteen states currently have policies requiring schools to allow students to use alternatives to dissection, the Courant says, such as virtual dissections on computers.

But, the newspaper says, some teachers and biologists contend that although the computer programs are a good tool, they don't compare to the sensation of exploring a real animal.

"I would compare it to eating a hamburger online—:it's just not the same," said Jonathan Morris, past president of the Connecticut Association of Biology Teachers. "Having your hands on a living thing is often what teaches people the love of biology. It draws people in."

For more on this topic, check out an EdWeek story from 2004.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 4:42 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The education gaps between boys and girls have long drawn attention. For a while, the focus was on girls lagging behind boys in math and science. More lately, attention has been focusing on how boys trail behind girls in reading.

A new report by the Center on Education Policy examines this issue. (See my colleague Erik Robelen's story about the report, as well.)

The center's president, Jack Jennings, offers an overview in a commentary newly posted on edweek.org, and argues for systematic strategies to address the boy-girl reading gap.

When I reported the most recent NAEP reading scores recently, I noted that boys' scores were improving more quickly than were girls in recent years. The Center on Education Policy report examines the gender gap on state tests.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 12:44 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Here's something you probably didn't know about our nation's secretary of education: He played the drums when he was in middle school. But he apparently wasn't very good.

"I learned some good lessons in the process—despite my forgettable performance," Secretary of Education Arne Duncan says in prepared remarks for a speech he's set to deliver this afternoon to a conference hosted by the Arts Education Partnership. (His father, by contrast, was an accomplished banjo player, he notes.)

The speech offers what Education Department officials say is Duncan's most extensive remarks to date on the administration's recent call to promote a "well-rounded education." That idea is embedded in both the Obama administration's budget request for the Education Department in fiscal 2011 and in its blueprint for reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (a.k.a. No Child Left Behind).

"For decades, arts education has been treated as though it was a novice teacher at school, the last hired and first fired when times get tough. But President Obama, the first lady, and I reject the notion that the arts, history, foreign languages, geography, and civics are ornamental offerings that can or should be cut from schools during a fiscal crunch," he says. "The truth is that, in the information age, a well-rounded curriculum is not a luxury but a necessity."

And yet one of his core policy prescriptions at the federal level may not come as welcome news to proponents of arts education. Or history education, or civics education, for that matter. That's because the administration wants to consolidate nine existing programs into a larger, more flexible spending pot, titled "Effective Teaching and Learning for a Well-Rounded Education, with a price tag of $265 million in fiscal 2011. Among the programs to be consolidated under the proposal are the $40 million Arts in Education, the $119 Teaching American History, and the $27 million Foreign Language Assistance programs.

Duncan says he recognizes that the proposal "may make some arts providers nervous, even if they can potentially compete for significantly more funding than in the past. Change can be unsettling. But I urge arts educators to have the confidence of their convictions to compete and demonstrate the value of their disciplines on student outcomes."

Indeed, a variety of organizations and lawmakers—Republicans and Democrats alike—have criticized elements of that plan. A chief concern is that the consolidation would lead to the neglect of issues Congress has long identified as national priorities through separate funding streams.

Duncan also notes in the speech another idea in the administration's ESEA blueprint that he says could help bolster attention to subjects like the arts and history.

"Our ESEA proposal will allow states to incorporate assessments of subjects beyond English/language arts and math in their accountability systems," he says. Presumably, the idea is that if these tests count, teachers and schools will devote more time and attention to other subjects. And yet, I have to imagine many states would be reluctant to go this route.

In addition, Duncan highlights some other ways the Education Department will help to promote a well-rounded education.

"The department will ... continue to fund research studies on the effectiveness of curricula as it has in the past," he says. "We are currently in the midst of conducting the first large-scale survey of school principals, music teachers, and visual -arts specialists in 10 years."

Duncan closes his prepared remarks with a nod to President Kennedy:

"Let the arts, as President Kennedy said, establish the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment."

Update: Rocco Landesman, the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, also spoke at the arts conference today.

He announced five states that the NEA will work with this summer—Oregon, Washington, New Hampshire, Illinois, and Ohio—through the Education Leaders Institute. This initiative, launched in 2007, brings together policymakers, educators, advocates, and others to design arts education plans in individual states.

"The arts provide us with new ways of thinking, new ways to draw connections," Landesman said in prepared remarks. "They are important social capital, and they help maintain our competitive edge by engendering innovation and creativity."

Landesman added: "It is our job to support and expand the work of our public schools. But the public schools need to own arts education—it should not be outsourced to us."

Photo Credit: Sevans/Education Week

Posted by Erik Robelen at 10:32 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A new report offers a bleak outlook for school districts as federal economic-stimulus aid runs out and many continue to struggle financially, with widespread layoffs and severe cutbacks forecast. For an overview, check out this story by my colleague Alyson Klein.

I decided to take a closer look at the impact on classroom and curriculum matters. The findings are based on surveys of 453 school superintendents and other district-level officials from 45 states. The surveys were conducted last month.

Here's some of what I found.

First, not surprisingly, class sizes are on the rise. In 2008-09, 9 percent of respondents said class sizes increased. That number grew to 26 percent of surveyed districts for this school year, and will more than double to 62 percent in 2010-11.

Many districts are reducing academic interventions and Saturday classes. About half expect cuts in this area next school year, compared with 24 percent in 2009-10 and 5 percent the year before.

Elective courses are taking an increasing hit. About half of those surveyed said they anticipated cuts in such courses for next school year, compared with 16 percent in the current academic year and 6 percent in 2008-09.

Furthermore, increasing numbers of districts are delaying textbook purchases. Roughly half of district officials surveyed expected delays in 2010-11, compared with about one-third this year and 14 percent in 2008-09.

Another area pegged for cuts is school field trips. About half of district administrators expect a cut for 2010-11, compared with 24 percent seeing cuts this school year and 11 percent in 2008-09.

Other areas where cuts are being seen and are expected to grow include summer school, extracurricular activities, and technology purchases.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

With the 40th anniversary of Earth Day just two weeks away, I thought I'd pull together a few resources for those hoping to make it a teachable moment (not that schools should only be concerned about environmental education once a year).

First (according to my Google search) is the Earth Day 40th Anniversary Curriculum Unit, courtesy of the Earth Day Network. It introduces a broad history of the environmental movement with resources for a variety of users.

Meanwhile, the Green Education Foundation is promoting a global day of service, with the goal of getting schools and youth groups to plant 10,000 gardens under its "Green Thumb Challenge!" You can access lesson plans, activities, and gardening instructions at the site.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has a special Web page devoted to Earth Day 2010, which includes a link to suggested lesson plans on climate change, ecosystems, air pollution, and other topics.

PBS Kids! is presenting a new line of eco-friendly episodes on April 22 in its "Share the Earth Day" celebration where families can learn about earth science.

Seventh Generation, a company that makes environmentally friendly home and personal-care products has provided free electronic lesson plans for teachers, including a lesson that allows students to measure the carbon footprint of their families.

I'm sure there's plenty more out there, but hopefully this is a good start.

Finally, if you just can't wait two weeks to start celebrating all things green, next week is officially National Environmental Education Week.

And OK, I can't resist. In case you're wondering what other issues are now the subject of a national awareness day, week, or month in April, here's a sampling:

• Youth Sports Safety Month
• Administrative Professionals Day (formerly Secretary's Day): April 21
• National Playground Safety Week: April 25-30
• National Oral Health Month
• Facial Protection Month
• Consumer Awareness Week: April 19-24.

And that's only a slice of the April celebrations, according to ePromos.

Oh, by the way. Happy National Window Safety Week (April 4-10).

Posted by Erik Robelen at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

To carry on in the spirit of a couple recent blog posts (here and here), where I've linked to reactions from a variety of folks to the common standards, here are some thoughts from Bert Fristedt, a math professor at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and former member of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel.

Fristedt did not submit these thoughts to the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers during their public-comment period on the common standards. But he is circulating them by e-mail to interested colleagues and others (with a copy to U.S. Ed. Sec. Arne Duncan, I might add). He told me that he didn't submit his comments to the Common Core State Standards Initiative because, in his judgment, "the public draft is of such quality that it cannot be turned into a satisfactory document in one step." He was referring to the fact that the draft is in its last stage of being reworked before becoming final.

And a note about one of those earlier blog posts. In this one, I described the group of folks responding to the common standards as "mathematicians." A mathematician wrote to me to take issue with my description, noting that quite a few of the people on that list were math educators, not mathematicians. I dare not duke it out with either math educators or mathematicians on such distinctions. It is, uh, what it is.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

What's the RTT assessment competition about, and what do some folks have to say about it? Read our story.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 4:58 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The recent struggle in Wisconsin over sex education apparently isn't over yet, based on a rather alarming message a local prosecutor has conveyed to several school districts. Scott Southworth, the Juneau County district attorney, told the school systems in a letter that sex education teachers could face criminal charges if they follow a new state law that allows them to instruct students about proper contraceptive use, reports the Associated Press.

Southworth, a Republican, said the instruction could amount to contributing to the delinquency of a minor if teachers know students are sexually active, the story explains. He said the districts should drop sex education until the law is repealed.

"Depending on the specific facts of a case ... this encouragement and advocacy could lead to criminal charges," Southworth wrote to districts in his county.

In February, Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat, signed legislation that requires the state's public schools to teach about birth control and sexually transmitted diseases as part of comprehensive sex education classes, IF they choose to offer such classes. (The law still leaves it up to local school boards to decide whether to offer sex education courses.) As I noted in a blog item, the measure was opposed by all Republicans in the Wisconsin legislature.

Meanwhile, I recently wrote a story about sex education provisions in the federal health care package President Obama signed into law last month.

One measure reinstates a controversial abstinence-only approach to sex education, with $250 million provided over five years. Another provides $375 million over five years to promote more-comprehensive approaches to sex education that touch on both abstinence and the use of contraceptives to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. The emphasis in the program is on funding efforts that are "evidence-based," "medically accurate," and "age-appropriate," the law says.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 11:32 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

You already know that the $350 million Race to the Top Assessment competition opened yesterday, and we will have more on that for you later today. But here's an interesting note to share: the field of competitors for the money appears to have narrowed considerably even before the government issued regulations on how to apply. Which is a lucky coincidence (ahem), since the feds plan to give out only a few awards in this contest.

Remember when we told you back in February that states were scrambling to join one of six consortia that were applying for the RTT assessment money? It seems that those six have now merged into three.

Achieve is working with many of the states in the so-called "Florida" consortium to design new-age summative tests that would include performance assessments. That effort is being helmed by Achieve's Mike Cohen and leaders from Massachusetts, Florida, and Louisiana. Three other consortia—the "SMARTER" group, which is interested in using adaptive technology; the "MOSAIC" group, which was zeroing in on formative assessments; and the "balanced" consortium, which was aiming for a system of curriculum-embedded, performance-based tasks scored by teachers—are all working together now, under the leadership of Linda Darling-Hammond and the handful of states that led those consortia, such as Maine, West Virginia, and Oregon. Finally, the National Center on Education and the Economy, which proposes to design a system of high school assessments based on the British "board exams," is aiming for the $30 million carved out for high school assessment. UPDATE: Darling-Hammond let me know that I got something wrong here. She is not leading the consortium, but is one of many people advising it. It's being led by state chiefs and assessment leaders from the states. She also said the "balanced" group is working on "a fairly traditional test" of multiple-choice and constructed response items that will also include "a couple of fairly modest" performance tasks at each grade level.

The numbers of states involved in each of the three consortia are still in flux, but word is that about 30 are participating in discussions with the Achieve-Florida group, and about 40 are talking with the MOSAIC/SMARTER/balanced group (gads, we need better names for these!). Last I heard, the NCEE group involved eight states, but that could be changing. As I said, nothing's set in stone yet.

Could NCEE be the only entity applying for the high school slice of the money? Achieve has a history of developing common assessments at the high school level, too, and the government's regulations permit consortia applying for the "comprehensive" assessment systems to apply separately for the high school assessment money. What about College Board, keeper of the Advanced Placement franchise? And could anyone else be cropping up to apply for all this cash? These consortia are the big ones folks are talking about, but it will be interesting to see if they remain the only ones.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Many advocates have bemoaned the focus on multiple-choice testing that has grown since the advent of No Child Left Behind. They often argue for more meaningful assessments, ones that include more essay and performance-based items. But because those assessments are more expensive to score, the cost of such systems is typically seen as a stumbling block.

Well, maybe not. That's the conclusion of a study due to be published next week as part of a Stanford University project. It finds that by implementing key savings strategies, states can actually save money by using assessment systems that tilt more toward essays and performance-based tasks.

The paper's three authors estimated the cost of a typical state assessment system, defining that as once-per-year summative tests that are nearly all multiple-choice questions, with one or two extended constructed-response questions in reading, writing and mathematics. Such a system, they concluded, costs a moderate-sized state $52.3 million, or $19.93 per student, over a four-year period that includes the original year of development and field-testing.

A testing system they refer to as a "high-quality comprehensive assessment system," which would include half as many multiple-choice items and more essay and performance-type questions, would cost $146.1 million, or $55.67 per student, over that same four-year period.

But certain cost savings can reduce that substantially, the authors found. Chief among them were joining in a consortium of 30 or more states to share costs, and using teachers instead of vendors to score test items. If states were to employ all the cost-reduction strategies outlined in the report, the cost of the "high-quality comprehensive assessment system" would drop to $10 per student, half the cost of the current typical state assessment system, the study found.

The authors, Barry Topol, John Olson, and Ed Roeber, are affiliated with the Assessment Solutions Group, an organization that provides consulting services on testing issues. They did the study as part of a Stanford University project that is exploring various aspects of performance assessment. All eight papers released as part of that project, including this one, are due for release on April 13, and can be viewed then at http://edpolicy.stanford.edu.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 8:44 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A new EdWeek commentary explores what the advent of digital textbooks and related media likely will mean for districts and schools, with some cautions about getting caught up in the e-hype.

"What the shift to electronic readers and e-texts portends needs close inspection, with an eye to the impact on teaching and learning, not dreaming or even optimism," writes Gilbert Sewall, the director of the American Textbook Council.

On one hand, he says: "[D]igital textbooks offer teachers and districts the chance to break out of standard lessons and use something better. Increased competition and open-source instructional material challenge the monopoly market, and could result in alternatives to the glossy mediocrity that flows from established publishers."

On the other, he says: "Are digital textbooks really the cheaper, better learning tools that California state officials have envisioned? Most experts think not. The most high-minded educational software designers admit that electronic formats are not conducive to sustained reading."

He ends the piece with the argument that, ultimately, content is more important than the medium in which it's presented.

"Regardless of who the digital winners among publishers are, dumbing-down and trending-up textbooks has been a steady moneymaker over the past 20 years," Sewall writes. "If new media go this direction, only more so, the losses to teaching and learning will be catastrophic."

Posted by Erik Robelen at 4:47 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

By guest blogger Michele McNeil, cross-posted from the Politics K-12 blog:

The U.S. Department of Education has given the green light to the $350 million Race to the Top assessment competition, which will award grants to groups of states to create rigorous common tests to complement the common standards effort already underway.

The $350 million is part of the larger $4.35 billion Race to the Top Fund grant program. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced in June 2009 he wanted to peel off $350 million to help states create the "next generation of assessments."

According to the final regulations out today, a consortium, to be eligible for the awards, must be at least 15 states big. The department is expecting to give out one to two awards, at around $160 million each, according to the application materials. For insight into what these assessments might look like, read my colleague Catherine Gewertz's story on the run-up to the competition.

Even as EdWeek reporters begin wading through the 85 pages of regulations and even more hoops in application materials, intrepid Teacher Beat reporter Stephen Sawchuk already has found one noteworthy item about this competition: If states get letters of support from their colleges and universities, saying, for example, that they'll use these tests to exempt students from remedial work, then states will get bonus points in the competition.

Within the $350 million, there's going to be a smaller, $30 million competition for states to design end-of-course tests for high school students.

The $30 million high school assessment competition is open to smaller consortia of states, those with at least five members. But there will only be one winner in that competition, the application materials say.

It's important to note these are final rules; there will be no more public comment or hearings—input that's already occurred.

Catherine, who covers and blogs here about assessments, is sure to have much more about these competitions tomorrow.

Applications for both will be due sometime toward the end of June (the exact date is 75 days after the final rules have been published in the Federal Register, and that hasn't happened yet). Money will be awarded in September.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 3:56 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

While conducting interviews for my recent story on state social studies standards, I heard again and again about efforts to ramp up instruction in personal financial literacy, including in Colorado, which approved new standards in December. Unfortunately, as often happens in journalism, some interesting material never made it into my article. But that's what blogging is for, right?

So, today I'll highlight a press release from the Colorado Department of Education about an April 8 Personal Financial Literacy Summit.

The daylong summit brings together district leaders in curriculum, economics, math, and career and technical education to support implementing the new personal financial literacy expectations in the state's revised math and economics standards. It's being co-hosted by the Colorado Jump$tart Coalition— ye$, isn't that clever?—a collection of groups dedicated to improving financial literacy.

"Prepared graduates in the 21st century need to understand how to manage credit, debt, and risk in order to make informed financial decisions that will affect their future," Melissa Colsman, an official from the Colorado education agency, said in the press release.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 3:24 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I've been blogging lately (and just finished this larger story) about efforts to rewrite social studies standards in Texas, North Carolina, and Ohio. History, not surprisingly, has been an especially thorny issue. And so this item from the Associated Press caught my eye, about the rejection of a state history textbook by school officials in a western Nevada district.

The Elko County school district is reportedly trying to get a refund from publisher Northwest Speaks for an 8th grade history book called "Nevada History: Past, Present, and Tomorrow" because of grammatical errors in the text and complaints about how race and gender are presented. For a much more detailed look at the situation, check out this story from the Elko Daily Free Press.

The textbooks aren't exactly new. They were given to schools in April 2009, though individual schools distributed them to classrooms at different times, the story says.

The district's new superintendent, Jeff Zander, told central-office staff to collect the books, which are now stored in a warehouse.

Apparently, the state requires Nevada districts to teach students about the state's history, but there was no current textbook. Nevada history is a nine-week component of 8th grade U.S. history.

The textbooks cost the district $52,346, which was paid for through donations by two local mining companies.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 2:32 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The public-comment period for the proposed common standards has closed. At some point soon, we will get a summary of the 5,000-plus comments the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association received on the K-12 standards.

In the meantime, as a continuation of my blog entry from last week, I'm posting a couple more examples of feedback submitted on the math portion of the common standards: Here is what the Learning Sciences Research Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago submitted, and here is what the U.S. Coalition for World Class Math submitted.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The U.S. Department of Education this week rolled out nearly $100 million in five-year grants for teacher-quality initiatives, including $2.2 million to expand the UTeach math and science program to Cleveland State University and $7.7 million to Lehman College to support a math initiative in the South Bronx.

The UTeach program for recruiting and preparing math and science teachers has been implemented at 13 universities since 2008, and is expanding to 21 universities this year, according to a press release from the National Math and Science Initiative, which was awarded the grant. The program, created originally at the University of Texas at Austin, enables college students to graduate in four years with deep content knowledge in a math or science major as well as a teaching certificate.

The new grant will be used to launch the UTeach program at Cleveland State University during the 2010-11 academic year.

Meanwhile, Lehman College, which is part of the City University of New York, will use its teacher-quality grant to implement a program called "MATH-UP," short for Mathematics Achievement with Teachers of High-Need Urban Populations. The effort aims to prepare 125 teachers in grades 1-6 to provide strong instruction in math, with an emphasis on differentiating instruction for English language learners and students with special needs. The idea is to offer a school-centered 5th year teacher preparation program with integrated professional development and induction support targeting high-need, low-achieving students.

"This grant will create a new program for elementary school teachers before they enter the profession," Lehman College president Ricardo R. Fernandez said in a press release. "With this preparation, they will be able to give younger students a stronger foundation in math upon which to build."

In addition, the University of Chicago Urban Education Institute's Urban Teacher Education Program received an $11.6 million federal grant to improve and expand its teacher preparation efforts, including with the development of a "robust secondary mathematics and science certification program," according to a University of Chicago press release.

In all, the U.S. Department of Education announced 12 grants this week under the Teacher Quality Partnership grants program. These grants were funded by the federal economic-stimulus law.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 1:04 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A new study finds that more states are using online state assessments already, or plan to be doing so in the near future. The study also found that state education leaders are really interested in open-source platforms for state accountability testing.

Researchers for the study interviewed officials in educational assessment and technology offices in 27 states, as well as "opinion leaders" from the public and private sector. They found that 23 of the 27 states were already conducting state assessments online, or will soon be doing so. Educators cited easier logistics, quicker data turnaround, and the option of more customizable reporting among their reasons for using online assessments or being interested in doing so.

Among the ongoing challenges they cited of online testing were infrastructure problems such as inadequate bandwidth, too little district-level technology expertise, and difficulty on more complex items such as constructed-response questions.

The study was conducted by Grunwald Associates LLC and Education Development Center Inc., with funding from the Educational Testing Service.

For more on online assessments, see our recent Technology Counts report. (Click on "Ed-Tech-Stats.")

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

In the same spirit as my post yesterday, which offers up at least a teensy slice of the feedback on the math portion of the common standards, here are some responses to the English/language arts section.

Some of these have been formally submitted on the initiative's website as feedback during the public comment period (which ends today). Others have been issued by their organizations to contribute to a public dialog, but have not been officially submitted as common-core feedback.

Keep in mind that many organizations are not submitting feedback online during the public-comment period because they already shared their views with the two groups leading the initiative, the National Governors Association and the Chief State School Officers, as the documents were being written. Feedback shared in that way remains private, unless those who gave it choose to release it. The NGA and CCSSO are using it to shape the standards, but not making it publicly available. Likewise, the 5,000-plus comments submitted during the public-comment period are not going to be posted; the plan is to summarize them and post that summary.

So I will post some of the comments, analyses and critiques as best I can. (Remember, too, that I include reactions to the common standards in my stories, such as in this one about the public draft being released, and this one about states' feedback shaping an earlier draft.)

Here is a sprinkling of feedback on the ELA portion:

Longtime media literacy advocates Frank Baker and Richard Beach call for revisions that better address the importance of building these skills. The National Association for Media Literacy Education urges better attention to visual/viewing literacy.

The Association of Literary Scholars and Critics expresses concern that the study of literature and literary history are not sufficiently reflected in the standards.

The National Council of Teachers of English made several sets of comments on earlier drafts of the standards, which can be found here, but has not issued another set on the version that is now posted for comment. You can read what NCTE folks are saying about the common standards in discussions on the group's Ning (if you want to post a comment on the Ning, you have to register).

UPDATE: A new analysis of both the English/language arts and the math portions was published today by the Pioneer Institute in Massachusetts, which has been pretty critical of the common standards thus far. The critique is here.

I've linked you to these in previous blog posts, but in the "roundup" spirit, here they are again: The critique by Sandra Stotsky, a member of the Massachusetts board of education who helped shape that state's widely admired standards; the analysis by Common Core, a group that advocates strong content knowledge along with skills and gave the ELA portion of the common standards an A-minus; and a critique by two experts brought in by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, who gave the ELA portion a B.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I can't recall the last time the death of a school teacher, much less a math teacher, attracted as much attention as the recent death of Jaime Escalante. Of course, it doesn't hurt to have a movie made about you. (Escalante rated "Stand and Deliver" as 90 percent fact and 10 percent fiction—pretty good for Hollywood.)

But as the obituaries and tributes pouring out make plain, Escalante made a big mark in education, well beyond the students he taught.

"A lively, wisecracking Bolivian who did not begin teaching in the United States until he was 44, Mr. Escalante transformed one of the lowest-performing high schools in the country into a model for raising the achievement of disadvantaged children," writes education columnist Jay Matthews in the Washington Post. "A 1988 film about his success, "Stand and Deliver," with Edward James Olmos playing the East Los Angeles math teacher, spread his story around the world and inspired teachers in hundreds of inner-city schools to copy his methods."

Matthews knows a thing or two about Escalante, having written a book about him: "Escalante: The Best Teacher in America."

Here are more obituaries from the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, National Public Radio, and the Associated Press.

President Obama issued a statement praising Escalante. He said: "Throughout his career Jaime opened the doors of success and higher education for his students one by one, and proved that where a person came from did not have to determine how far they could go." Others who have offered up tributes include Randi Weingarten from the American Federation of Teachers and Checker Finn from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

My colleague Mary Ann Zehr shares some thoughts about Escalante in her Learning the Language blog.

Finally, to hear Escalante in his own words, check out this 2006 interview with Teacher Magazine.

Photo Information: This March 16, 1988, file photo from the Associated Press shows Jaime Escalante teaching math at Garfield High School in Los Angeles.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend