September 2010 Archives

There's still more STEM education news of note this week I'd like to highlight. (Sorry about bundling these into roundups, but given the steady stream of stuff, it's the most efficient way to go.)

First, the National Academies today issued a new report declaring that minority participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education at all levels should be an urgent national priority, and offering a road map on how to accomplish this. In particular, the report focuses on drawing in more African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans.

Second, the National Academy of Engineering has just released a report arguing against the development of standards for K-12 engineering education "at this time." The document suggests that it would be "extremely difficult to ensure usefulness and effectiveness at this time." It offers several reasons, including what it sees as relatively limited experience with engineering education in schools and the lack of a critical mass of teachers qualified to deliver it. But fear not, the report also offers approaches for "leveraging current national and state standards" to improve engineering instruction in schools.

And while on the topic of reports, computer science education gets some attention in a study coming out next Wednesday. Researchers from the Association for Computing Machinery and the Computer Science Teachers Association contacted each state to survey the status of computer science education and determine whether the subject is getting adequate attention in schools. Based on my previous conversations with folks at those organizations, and this EdWeek story, I think I know their answer.

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Welcome back to the world of common-standards adoptions, my map addicts! Minnesota makes its mark on the map today, but in its own unique way.

Minnesota has become the 38th state to adopt the common standards, but only in English/language arts, not in math.

As you know, it is the state boards of education that are empowered to adopt academic standards in most states. But there is no state board in Minnesota. In that state, the decision lies with the commissioner of education. And the state ed department confirms for us that Commissioner of Education Alice Seagren has adopted the ELA standards.

Seagren's decision followed a process that included review by teachers and by the state's academic standards committee, according to department of education spokeswoman Christine DuFour. The standards now proceed to administrative rulemaking, but state officials don't anticipate any changes, DuFour said.

You can look over the draft ELA that Minnesota adopted here. As permitted by the organizers of the common-standards initiative, Minnesota added some material from its own standards as well.

We've known for a while that Minnesota doesn't plan to adopt the common standards in math. The state, widely known for its high math standards, felt that the common set wasn't as rigorous as its own. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty expressed those concerns in a June letter to one of the state assessment consortia, citing the math standards as a reason the state would not join the consortium (to be a member, you have to commit to adopting the standards.). His letter does leave the door open to a change of heart later, though.

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Welcome back, common-standards-watch addicts! In this slow post-Race to the Top season, I have only incremental news for you, but perhaps that's better than nothing.

In that spirit, I can report that yesterday the South Dakota board of education voted to move the common standards on to the next phase in its approval process: a public hearing. That hearing will take place Nov. 29, with the possibility of a vote by the panel the same day.

Stay tuned as we keep you informed, to the best of our ability, on the common standards initiative. I typically post the map only when additional states have been added, but since I know that some of you really, really miss it, and it's been a while, I'll post it today to remind everyone where things stand (you can't say I'm not tenderhearted.).

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Remember a couple weeks back when the federal government gave out $330 million to groups of states that are designing new assessments for the common standards?

Well, now comes news that those state consortia are getting a chunk more cash from the feds. According to my intrepid colleague Alyson Klein, it seems there were "leftover" funds lying around, unused, after the Race to the Top and other competitions, so they decided to channel it to test design.

(Wait, wait, I'm still trying to digest the idea of leftover funds. Leftover. Funds. Please give me a few minutes.)

Remember that the Race to the Top assessment competition was originally for $350 million, but $20 million of it wasn't handed out. There was a high school exit-exam piece of that contest that didn't get funded. That might be some of what's creating the excess, at least in the RTT-A competition. Some of this windfall today comes from other federal competitions as well, as Alyson reports.

Interesting though, that the excess is for implementation. That's been a gripe in some of the states: it's wonderful that you're giving us all this money to design new tests, and please don't think we're ungrateful, but how are we going to pay to sustain this new system once we give it legs? This money—divided among the 44 states represented in the consortia—won't go a very long way toward answering that question, either, I'm guessing.

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There are still more developments in promoting STEM education this week (beyond Obama's call for 10,000 new STEM teachers over two years).

First, the National Governors Association's Center for Best Practices today kicked off a public-private partnership with states and a business alliance called Innovate+Educate to improve STEM education through the "sharing of best practices and leveraging industry investments," according to a press release.

Meanwhile, the Business-Higher Education Forum and Raytheon Company yesterday announced a set of new activities to help policymakers and educators improve STEM education. They include a package of "hands-on tools" as well as a new, state-level STEM modeling project to help develop regionally-specific approaches to STEM education. As part of the announcement, the Business-Higher Education Forum issued a new report on increasing the number of graduates in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Finally, there's a briefing on Capitol Hill Oct. 6 to discuss a recent report from the National Research Council on reviewing the education programs at NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. A press release notes that there is "a persistent concern about whether federal agency education programs are well coordinated within and across agencies, and whether the programs are reaching their goals. The NRC review ... deals directly with these issues."

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How do you turn standards into curriculum, and how do you test students to see if they've mastered the stuff in the standards?

Those, of course, are a couple of the Big Questions generated by the standards movement. And they've had new life breathed into them by the common standards movement. As you know, 36 states and the District of Columbia have already adopted the new set of standards, and they're now grappling with the curriculum-and-assessment questions that form the Holy Trinity on this (some would include a fourth: cut scores. But I digress...).

We've reported on discussions and grant-making that have been taking shape about curriculum development, and we've talked your ear off about the consortia of states that are working on designing assessments, fueled by $330 million in federal funding.

So if you are interested in all that stuff, you will probably be interested in this discussion of curriculum development by Core Knowledge Foundation founder E.D. Hirsch, Jr. (A version appeared in the New York Daily News as well.) Hirsch talks about the importance of developing curriculum that builds students' content knowledge and literacy skills simultaneously.

Reflecting discussion in the field, the common standards treat reading as something that should be taught in—and tailored to—all subject areas, not just English. Turning that into real-life practice will require a bit of a paradigm shift in the field, and that's putting it mildly. (Teaching literacy across the subject areas figures prominently in yesterday's New York Times profile of a big Massachusetts high school that turned itself around. Take a look.)

I'm interested, as I hope you are, in following this conversation about reading as it progresses.

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Amir Abo-Shaeer, who teaches high school science and engineering in California, has been named one of this year's 23 MacArthur Fellows by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Fellows receive a "no strings attached" award of $500,000 over five years to use at their discretion.

This is apparently the first time that a public school science teacher has received the MacArthur award, often referred to as a "genius grant."

In an interview, Abo-Shaeer said he was "stunned" when he learned that he was a recipient of the honor. "I feel a sense of responsibility to really try to do the award justice," he said.

Abo-Shaeer began his professional career as a mechanical engineer before moving into education in 2001. He teaches physics and engineering at Dos Pueblos High School, in Goleta, Calif., and develops courses focused on project-based learning, including a robotics class. In 2002, he started the Dos Pueblos Engineering Academy, a specialized program at the high school with a rigorous applied science curriculum that integrates physics, engineering, and math courses, and he continues to direct the academy.

The MacArthur website says that "Abo-Shaeer's novel and effective model of science instruction is instilling a passion for the physical sciences in young men and women and is contributing to the preparation of the next generation of scientists and engineers for the 21st century."

"This group of fellows, along with the more than 800 who have come before, reflects the tremendous breadth of creativity among us," MacArthur Foundation President Robert Gallucci said in a press release announcing the 2010 winners. "They are explorers and risk takers, contributing to their fields and to society in innovative, impactful ways."

Other winners this year include a stone carver, a quantum astrophysicist, a jazz pianist, a theater director, and an economist. "All were selected for their creativity, originality, and potential to make important contributions in the future," the foundation says.

Abo-Shaeer said he's unsure exactly how he'll spend his award, but he said the money is "intended to free me up to do creative things, allowing me ... to act quickly on creative ideas that I have that we can try out in education." And that's what he intends to do.

"I've been doing a lot of things that are creative by any means necessary," he said. "I'd really rather, if we have a good idea, implement it effectively."

At the same time, he cautioned that he has no immediate plans to stop teaching.

"I absolutely will stay a teacher for right now," he said. "This award hasn't changed my trajectory. ... I absolutely feel very strongly about what we have in the community to creating this [engineering] program, and if something is not done, moving on before something is completed is not my style."

In fact, he played a leading role in securing a $3 million matching grant from California to create a new facility to expand the engineering program at Dos Pueblos High School. Construction began on the 12,000 square-foot Elings Center for Engineering Education in July.

Even if he eventually stops teaching, Abo-Shaeer said he expects to stay engaged in efforts to improve public education.

"The core thing I'm trying to figure out how to do," he said, "is offer students unique educational experiences that they cannot replicate in an online experience, so when they're there, they see the intrinsic value."

"I'm trying to change the way we deliver curriculum to students," he said. "There is so much focus on information and not as much on the experience. ... You can't build a robot by reading about it online."

[UPDATE (10:25am): Two other MacArthur Fellows this year also bear mention here. First, is Sebastian Ruth, a violist, violinist, and music educator for urban youth. He founded Community MusicWorks, a nonprofit organization based in Providence, R.I., that offers frequent performances and free musical instruction led by its house ensemble, the Providence String Quartet. Second is Emmanuel Saez, an economist at the University of California Berkeley who, among other things, co-authored a study that sought to calculate the economic value of oustanding kindergarten teachers.

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In a live interview this morning on NBC's Today Show, President Obama said that he has set a goal of recruiting 10,000 new teachers in the STEM fields over the next two years.

The White House later issued a press statement providing a bit more information, though it doesn't explain what in particular the Obama administration will do to help accomplish the goal.

"When I came into office, I set a goal of moving our nation from the middle to the top of the pack in math and science education," he said. "Strengthening STEM education is vital to preparing our students to compete in the 21st century economy, and we need to recruit and train math and science teachers to support our nation's students."

The statement explains that President Obama has three "overarching priorities" for improving education in science, technology, engineering, and math:

• Increase STEM literacy among U.S. students;

• Improve the quality of math and science teaching; and

• Expand STEM education and career opportunities for underrepresented groups, including women and minorities.

The President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology earlier this month issued a detailed report with recommendations to improve the federal role in advancing STEM education.

It says: "The Federal Government should set a goal of ensuring over the next decade the recruitment, preparation, and induction support of at least 100,000 new STEM middle and high school teachers who have strong majors in STEM fields and strong content-specific pedagogical preparation, by providing vigorous support for programs designed to produce such teachers."

To be clear, improving STEM education is not a new issue for Obama. He's frequently discussed the matter since taking office and late last year unveiled a public-private initiative called Educate to Innovate to help generate more assistance from the private sector.

[UPDATE (3:20 p.m.): Secretary Arne Duncan, in a conversation with Tom Brokaw on MSNBC this afternoon, went into more detail on how the department will help recruit some of those new mathematics and science teachers. It involves a new website and a partnership with Facebook to connect current and aspiring teachers.]

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After a heated debate, the Texas state board of education on Friday narrowly approved a nonbinding resolution warning textbook publishers against producing classroom materials that provide an "anti-Christian/pro-Islamic" bias.

The final vote was 7-6, with support coming from the board's bloc of social conservatives. In the end, three Republicans joined Democrats in voting no. (Two other Democrats were absent.) Here's our story from Friday. Meanwhile, you can also check out more from the Dallas Morning News and the Austin American-Statesman.

The resolution says that a "pro-Islamic/anti-Christian bias has tainted some past Texas Social Studies textbooks" and that the state board will "reject future prejudicial Social Studies submissions that continue to offend Texas law with respect to treatment of the world's major religious groups by significant inequalities of coverage space-wise and/or by demonizing or lionizing one or more of them over others."

Posted by Erik Robelen at 11:33 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The Texas Board of Education just started debate on a resolution that would put textbook publishers on notice against infusing their materials with "pro-Islamic/anti-Christian distortions."

It declares that such distortions have "tainted some past Texas social studies textbooks," and that the board should reject any future textbooks that favor one major religion of the world over another.

Here's our story.

You can watch the debate yourself here. Stay tuned for updates.

[Update (12:02 p.m.): The board is STILL debating the resolution. A number of people are testifying about it, including representatives from the Texas Freedom Network and the Liberty Institute.]

[Update (3:30 p.m.): The board has narrowly approved the resolution. Click here for the latest.]

By the way, here's a copy of the resolution.

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You've read here about the controversial deal that Maryland's biggest school district made with ed publishing giant Pearson to partner on an elementary-level curriculum. There's been some unpleasantness on this; most recently, the Maryland board of ed unloaded a bit of ire on the Montgomery County school system about it.

Now The Washington Post is weighing in, devoting a small but valuable chunk of editorial real estate to wishing everyone could just calm down and see the deal as a win for everybody.

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Those of you who follow STEM education closely have almost certainly heard of "Rising Above the Gathering Storm," an influential 2005 report from a panel convened by the National Academies.

Well, the panel is back with an update five years later, and judging by the subtitle, "Rapidly Approaching Category 5," the analysis offered in the new report isn't encouraging.

"The Gathering Storm Committee's overall conclusion is that in spite of the efforts of both those in government and the private sector, the outlook for America to compete for quality jobs has further deteriorated over the past five years," the report declares.

It continues: "[I]n spite of sometimes heroic efforts and occasional very bright spots, our overall public school system—or more accurately 14,000 systems—has shown little sign of improvement, particularly in mathematics and science." At the same time, it notes that "many other nations have been markedly progressing, thereby affecting America's relative ability to compete effectively for new factories, research laboratories, administrative centers—and jobs."

The new report offers a host of recommendations. They include:

• Provide 10,000 new mathematics and science teachers each year by funding competitively awarded four-year scholarships to help U.S. citizens earn degrees in math, science, or engineering accompanied by a teaching certificate;

• Strengthen the skills of 250,000 current teachers by such actions as subsidizing the achievement of master's degrees (in science, math, or engineering) and participation in workshops, and create a world-class math and science curriculum available for voluntary adoption by local school districts; and

• Increase the number of teachers qualified to teach Advanced Placement courses and the number of students enrolled in those courses by offering financial bonuses to high-performing teachers and to students who excel.

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The nation's education publishers got a chance to get the president's ear yesterday, and here is what they said: the common standards may be great, but you need to help states afford to put them into practice.

The concern about paying for the implementation of the common standards ricocheted around the room yesterday where the school division of the Association of American Publishers was holding its annual fall meeting on Capitol Hill. It was an intimate affair; only about 40 publishing executives listening to speakers outlining the education landscape. One focus was the common standards, an area that is wide open for development of curriculum and instructional materials. And big bucks to be made. If, that is, there is money to pay for the stuff that gets developed.

That's how the question came to be posed to the White House. Roberto J. Rodriguez, a key education adviser to President Barack Obama, was taking questions after talking about the administration's education agenda. Richard Blake, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's senior vice president for governmental affairs, asked him what kind of federal resources might be forthcoming, through the ESEA reauthorization or other means, to help states implement the common standards. States are in horrible fiscal shape, Blake reminded Rodriguez, and "finding resources at the state level to make this successful looks pretty dubious." He pointed out that when it comes to curriculum development, a hefty chunk of financial and intellectual capital was sitting right there in that room, ready to make that investment.

Rodriguez noted the difficulty of the road ahead. Getting 36 states and the District of Columbia to adopt common standards was the easy part, he said; "Now the hard work begins." He acknowledged that the cost of professional development necessary to make common standards and assessments work the way they should is "huge," and said that the administration is committed to "recalibrating" the Elementary and Secondary Education Act so that federal funding helps support the common standards and assessments. But the President knows that it will "take much more than that," Rodriguez said, so the administration is looking into public-private partnerships and the philanthropic community for support as well, and will encourage states to "dedicate resources in a serious way" to the new standards and tests when they are making decisions about funding.

Though Blake was the only one to voice the concern about states' ability to pay for standards implementation, other publishers at the meeting told me privately that it's a widespread concern.

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Those of you who were interested in the recent annual SAT report might recall that it yielded some interesting news about the historic rivalry between the SAT and the ACT. For the first time, more students took the ACT than the SAT, according to traditional measures.

When I reported that fact in our Web story, my phone rang almost instantly. The College Board was taking issue with my representation of the SAT's loss of dominance, pointing out that its numbers—which included, for the first time, a group of students it hadn't reported before—showed more students taking the SAT.

That's true, if you include the new group of students. But it's not true if you use the traditionally reported group, to keep the trend lines clean, as we chose to do. (We explained all this in our story and our blog post.)

I wasn't the only one trying to explain the two approaches to calculating who's winning the SAT-ACT war. Inside Higher Ed dove into it, too.

FairTest, a group that's a vocal critic of standardized testing, took up the SAT-dominance issue as well and got pushback from the College Board. In a guest-post for The Washington Post's Answer Sheet blog, FairTest's Bob Schaeffer discusses why he thinks the SAT slipped behind the ACT (though he doesn't get into the numbers issue). The College Board responds with a vigorous defense of the SAT.

You can find the College Board's response, and Schaeffer's rejoinder, here.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The CEO of the nation's largest K-12 publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, stopped by our office last week to talk about his company's agenda, the evolving education marketplace, and shifts in the education policy landscape.

The visit by Barry O'Callaghan (and Senior VP for Corporate Affairs Josef Blumenfeld) came at the end of a busy week for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The company announced a $100 million "innovation fund" intended to support ideas for new products to "promote and enhance student achievement, individualized learning, and effective technology integration in the classroom," according to a press release. (Check out my colleague Ian Quillen's blog post on it here.)

The company also announced an initiative, in collaboration with A&E Television Networks, focused on teaching social studies and history in schools. The effort will draw on content from HISTORY (formerly known as the History Channel), a division of A&E. The two companies will deliver both traditional and digital education materials and tools to "create dynamic learning environments for students that weave compelling historical stories with innovative, experience-based assets and content," the announcement said.

And the company announced that the Milwaukee public school system will institute a districtwide literacy initiative using Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's reading/language arts curriculum.

The company had the highest revenue of any K-12 publisher in 2009, according to Simba Information, the publisher of the newsletter Educational Marketer, estimated at $1.75 billion.

Here are some excerpts from what O'Callaghan had to say during his visit.

• On the 'branding issue':
"We, and we're not alone, I think the big publishers have a kind of a branding issue. People don't actually understand what we do. They assume that all we do is largely print very large books. ... But in conjunction with the books, we provide an awful lot of resources, an awful lot of ancillary materials, and most important of all, we provide professional development to make sure it's implemented properly."

• On online supplements to textbooks:
As part of recent textbook adoptions in Texas and Florida, he said, in addition to the textbook, "we separately gave them online portals that work in tandem with their textbook, so everything they're doing in their textbook they can do online, but then they get the benefits of certain online features that a physical book can't give you. And I mean, the proof of that is we have now got 12 million online users, sitting in school; we have 12 million, a mixture of teachers and students coming to our various online resources on a daily basis. ... The online resources are designed to be more prescriptive, so designed to be very much aligned to the individual learner."

... "So we've got an online portal, for example, called Learning Village, which is effectively a teacher portal where you can go and you can basically get the lesson plans you need, you can click into, if I'm teaching X, you know, here's five suggested lesson plans, and it's automated, and you look at an online tutorial to actually see a best-in-class teacher teaching this particular class."

• On customization of textbooks:
"It's a different publishing process today ... because everything is electronic. ... So all of your content is effectively in a repository or a massive jukebox, and then you basically serve that up aligned to ... the standard. ... And that's why, increasingly what's happening is we're talking to the customer, letting the customer tell us what they want, and then serving that up, as a customized edition for them."

• On the company's new Innovation Fund:
"You always want to be thinking about what's the next great idea, product, solution, etc. ... So we've allocated $100 million into a fund. ... If you're an aspiring entrepreneur, whether you're a ... parent, ... a teacher, an administrator, or a student. If you're anybody out there with a great education idea, come to us."

..."Obviously, the idea is it's something that needs to be scalable; it'll be put through the standard business-plan process: Is it viable? Is it scalable? Can it be profitable in terms of delivering the appropriate return on capital? Is it reputationally safe in the context of what we're about as a company? ... And so, the specifics of what those criteria look like we'll be answering over the next three or four weeks. ... But we don't expect it to be two ideas for $50 million each. We do expect it to be $2 [million] to $5 million investments in 20 to 50 ideas."

"We're willing to look at anything and everything, whether it's educational games for the consumer, whether it's whole-classroom instructional materials, whether it's platforms, hardware ideas where we could bundle our content, mobile and social networking."

• On the overall direction of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt:
"All of these [recent HMH initiatives] are basically variations on the same underlying theme, which is we're actually innovating around technology and around new business models and new products and kind of new thematic trends that are emerging in education, far more aggressively than people think."

• On the 'tipping point' for education reform:
He argued that education has reached a "tipping point" in the United States. "I think this is different. ... It is systemic. ... But I think it's the point of no return." (Among the reasons he cites are the financial crisis and its impact on education budgets, persistent low test scores and related political and public pressure for change, innovations in technology, and improved infrastructure.)

... "I think there is a genuine, not only political, commitment to actually modernize and transform the public education system. I also think, frankly, at an implementation level, I think it's no longer getting ... resisted at the school building level. So, put simply, in my personal opinion, I think administrators, teachers, principals, they know that ... on an outcome basis, it's not working. So the status quo doesn't work; the status quo keeps us where we are today. ... I think what you've got going on here is something that is systemic, and I think it's actionable, more importantly. I think it's real." (As an early example, he points to the widespread adoption by states of common-core standards in English/language arts and mathematics.)

• On the federal Race to the Top program:
"At a high level, the four pillars of Race to the Top, ... it really is kind of a transformation in telling the marketplace where things will be headed. ... The four pillars are data, student outcomes, teacher efficacy, and the services of turning around schools. Those are the businesses we all need to be in, whether you're a publishing company coming at it, an IT company coming at it. So I think the road map of what the marketplace will allocate its time and money to is becoming ever clearer."

Photo by Charles Borst/Education Week

Posted by Erik Robelen at 8:23 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The Maryland State Board of Education voted unanimously yesterday to make environmental education a part of every student's education, but it did not embrace, at least for now, making it a graduation requirement, according to a story in the Baltimore Sun.

The plan as put forward, with backing from Gov. Martin O'Malley and state Superintendent Nancy Grasmick, would have made environmental education a new high school graduation requirement for all students.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation, a nonprofit advocacy group that was a strong proponent of that effort, called the board's action a "partial victory."

Under the new regulation, high school students will not need to take any additional courses, but environmental education will be integrated into existing courses, such as biology, the Sun explains. Every five years, school districts will have to report to the state on whether they have environmental subject matter in courses that every student must take.

When I first reported on this plan in July, I was told by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation that, if fully adopted, it would represent the first time a state had added a high school graduation requirement focused on environmental literacy.

According to the Sun, Maryland's board Chairman James H. DeGraffenreidt told the State Department of Education staff after the graduation requirement was defeated in a split vote that more work had to be done to improve the language in the proposed regulation.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Those of you following the common standards and assessments will be interested in a post by Diana Senechal on the Core Knowledge Foundation's blog. The piece articulates the fear—and Senechal's not the only one expressing this fear—that the rush to design assessments for the new standards threatens to shape the curriculum (and not in a good way). A deep, rich curriculum should be developed first, she argues, and then tests that reflect the actual content taught in the classroom, not just the broad skills articulated by the standards.

Senechal, who served on the work group that wrote the common standards in English/language arts, thinks content too often gets lost in the push for skills. (See the American Educator article she wrote about this last spring.) She worked on curriculum maps that Common Core recently put out for the new standards.

Other interesting tidbits of reading for you:

• An EdWeek story, by my colleague Christina Samuels, on the way common standards could play out for students with disabilities;

• A commentary on our site by research scientist Catherine Lewis, exploring how a "proving ground" for common standards might look, and

• A story by my colleague Sarah Sparks exploring what research tells us about the role a "gap year" can play in boosting students' motivation to go to college.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The federal government needs to substantially step up its role in promoting strong literacy skills at the middle and high school levels, according to a new policy brief from the Alliance for Excellent Education. The Washington-based research and advocacy group points to the pending reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act as an opportunity to tackle the matter.

"The nation's approach to teaching reading is analogous to a builder laying the foundation of a house, but not following through to assist with the walls, windows, doors, and roof," said Bob Wise, the president of the alliance, in a press release. "America's students are getting help they need to become proficient readers in the early grades. Unfortunately, they are not being supported in building vocabulary and comprehension skills to master the more complex materials they will encounter in middle and high school across all of their classes."

The brief offers four recommendations:

• Support the state-led adoption and implementation of common English/language arts standards and aligned assessments that integrate literacy skills throughout subject areas;

• Support states and districts in developing comprehensive literacy plans for all students;

• Encourage states to strengthen teacher education and licensure through the design of performance-based systems that ensure teachers acquire competencies in literacy instruction; and

• Invest in ongoing research and evaluation to promote better understanding of adolescent literacy and pedagogical strategies to improve it.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 3:15 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

You may recall all the controversy earlier this year over the work by the Texas state school board, led by a bloc of social conservatives, to revamp the state's social studies standards.

But if you look at the final product, the controversy was way overblown, according to Gilbert Sewall, the founder and director of the American Textbook Council, an independent research organization in New York City that reviews history textbooks and other educational materials.

In a new commentary posted on The Answer Sheet, a blog from The Washington Post, he offers some analysis that is sure to ruffle feathers among the board's sympathizers and its sharp critics.

"Whatever the fine points and actual language, millions of Americans think Christian extremists on the Texas state school board have completed a radical history overhaul destined to corrupt textbooks nationwide," he writes. "If it is a conservative victory, it is a Pyrrhic victory with a great cost to the Texas state board and social studies."

He continues: "No doubt a few changes—out of thousands of items—were pointed. Republicans tried to use state power to spin historical accounts as they saw them, exactly as multiculturalists have done since the 1990s. Claims of a radical assault on history are false."

In the end, Sewall contends that the "final Texas standards are for the most part conventional and inclusive. A few items betray a conservative viewpoint. They do not warrant the attention and defamation they have received nor the hysteria they have generated. Texas is not rewriting textbooks. Little has changed. The new standards on the whole conform to what's already in textbooks, and the impact on history textbooks nationwide will be very limited."

Sewall founded the New York City based organization in 1989 to promote better-quality history textbooks. He's a former history instructor at Phillips Academy and former education editor at Newsweek.

He suggests that in some cases, conservative board members and their allies generated more negative attention with their rhetoric than with what actually ended up in the new standards. And indeed, as he notes, a lot of initial revisions were softened after debate.

"The truth is, in the final version, the board majority made many adjustments or retractions to meet criticisms. The one world history item that originally dropped Jefferson restored him. Dolores Huerta stayed. Latino contributions to Texas history remain largely intact. Diversity was alive and well."

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At a White House event today, President Obama once again promoted the importance of improving STEM education, highlighting a new report with recommendations for stepping up the federal role, as well as some new private initiatives.

"Everybody in this room understands that our nation's success depends on strengthening America's role as the world's engine of discovery and innovation," he said at the gathering with CEOs, scientists, teachers, and others. "And that leadership tomorrow depends on how we educate our students today—especially in science, technology, engineering, and math."

He noted a new report from the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology: "Today, my science advisory board ... released a set of recommendations to recruit and train more great teachers over the next decade and to promote breakthrough innovation in math and science education. ... There are so many promising ideas out there, proven ideas, that can work if we apply the will to it."

He said leaders at the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education would take a close look at the recommendations "and start figuring out how to implement them." (For more on this report, check out my blog post from earlier this week.)

Obama then touted some new initiatives to expand the Educate to Innovate campaign, a public-private partnership first announced by the president in 2009.

"Last year, I challenged scientists and business leaders to think of creative ways to engage young people in math and science," he said. "And now they are answering the call. All across this country, companies and nonprofits are coming together to replicate successful science programs."

In particular, he touted the new organization, Change the Equation.

"It brings together a coalition of more than a hundred CEOs from the nation's largest companies who are committed to bring innovative math and science programs to at least a hundred high-need communities over the next year," he said.

Mr. Obama also announced several other new commitments. For a list of them all, check out this White House press release.

Yesterday, I spoke with the CEO of Change the Equation, Linda Rosen, to learn more about this particular effort. (If her name sounds familiar to some readers, here's why: Her resume includes former stints as the executive director of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and a senior adviser to former U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley in math and science.)

The new nonprofit is billed by organizers as a "CEO-led initiative" to cultivate widespread STEM literacy. The core idea is to help member companies, of which there were 105 at last count, improve and expand their work in advancing STEM education.

"We have over 100 companies" involved, Rosen told me. "It is a CEO-to-CEO network, so we've got the attention in these companies at the very highest level."

The group has three key goals: improve STEM teaching at all grade levels; get young people "jazzed up about the STEM disciplines," in Rosen's words; and achieve a sustained commitment to the STEM movement from business leaders, government, teachers, and others through what a press release calls "communication, collaboration, and data-based decisionmaking."

Early on, the group's agenda is to:
• Create a snapshot of existing STEM investments by members companies;
• Devise a state-by-state scorecard to assess the condition of STEM education nationwide;
• Craft a self-evaluation mechanism for member companies to measure the effectiveness of their STEM programs; and
• Launch what the press release calls "an ambitious plan to initiate a core set of very effective programs in 100 new sites across the country to broaden the philanthropic reach of the organization's members."

Initial funding came from challenge grants provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, matched by giving from the founding companies, which include Intel Corp., Xerox, Sally Ride Science, Eastman Kodak, and Time Warner Cable.

Rosen said the organization itself will have a fairly small staff, no more than "five or six people," but hopes to draw extensively on the expertise and resources of the member companies. It already has $5 million pledged for year one of its operations, she said.

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Advocates for adult literacy got some welcome news yesterday, when U.S. Rep. Dan Maffei, a New York Democrat, announced the creation of an Adult Literacy Caucus in the chamber.

"It is imperative that we raise the visibility of adult literacy and basic education in Congress at a time when job opportunities for people with low literacy are severely limited," Maffei said in a press release. The group's mission is to promote adult-literacy initiatives on a "local, national, and global level," according to the release.

The co-chair of the new caucus is Rep. Phil Roe, a Tennessee Republican.

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The other day I blogged about a forthcoming report from a White House advisory panel on new federal steps to advance STEM education. Well, it's no longer forthcoming. It's out. And you can find it here.

Stand by for more news on the STEM education front later today. President Obama is hosting a White House event this afternoon. Among the things he's expected to discuss is the creation of a new nonprofit, called Change the Equation, aimed at helping companies improve and expand their efforts in STEM education. I'll have more to say on that organization later, too, including drawing on an interview I had with the group's CEO, Linda Rosen.

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It's pretty well established by now that despite its nickname, the GED is not a "high school equivalency test." Young people who earn a General Educational Development certificate don't fare as well in earnings or in postsecondary education as those who graduate from high school.

But now a new study suggests that the GED offers a key pathway to college for those who didn't finish high school. At the same time, it offers sobering reminders that few GED recipients go far enough along that pathway to reap most of its benefits.

The study was circulated to insiders earlier this spring, but it's being released publicly just this week by the American Council on Education, the group that administers the GED. Made possible by better collection of longitudinal data, it marks the beginning of a three-year effort to dive deeper into the experiences of GED recipients and learn what supports might be necessary to improve their prospects. Part of that initiative is boosting the rigor of the GED exam, work that is already under way.

First, the good news from the study: Of the GED cohort that was examined (those who passed it in 2003), nearly 43 percent enrolled in postsecondary education within six years. While that might seem depressingly low, it suggests, as the ACE notes, that "given enough time," most GED-passers who aspire to postsecondary education (more than seven in 10) will follow up on that goal.

Now the cold water: Of the GED recipients who enrolled in postsecondary education programs, fewer than 12 percent completed them within six years. Only half stick around for a second semester, a potent message that the first semester experience is make-or-break for these students.

The report tells us that the vast majority (nearly 78 percent) of the GED-passers who enrolled in college chose programs of two or fewer years. It also confirms the message that the GED is no substitute for a diploma: GED recipients tend to earn associate's degrees, while diploma recipients earn bachelor's degrees, which carry higher future wages than do two-year degrees. And more high school graduates tend to go to college (64 percent) than do GED recipients (43 percent).

As we mentioned earlier, other research has suggested that the GED doesn't offer the earnings power or postsecondary-ed access that a high school diploma does. A study earlier this year found the GED "does little good" for those who pass it, largely because of their struggles with noncognitives such as low self-esteem, a propensity for high-risk behavior, and weak "soft skills."

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You've probably heard about Obama's back to school speech (transcript here, video here, our PK-12 blog post here). Steering clear of the controversy sparked by last year's speech, he urged students to dream big and write their own destinies, no matter how difficult their current circumstances may be. Anything is within reach with hard work and attention to one's studies, he said. He recounted that he was "kind of a goof-off" in high school, and his mom had to sit him down and exhort him to apply himself. He even worked in an anti-bullying plea for tolerance.

Wonder if the Texas board of ed heard that part. It seems that this panel is never quite finished with rounds of the culture wars. Next week, we are told, it is to consider a resolution warning publishers against an "anti-Christian, pro-Islamic" slant in world history textbooks.

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The National Science Board issued a report today that promotes ways to better identify and develop the next generation of "STEM innovators" in the United States, including a call to "cast a wide net" to seize on all types of talent and reach underrepresented minorities and students from low-income families.

Among the many policy recommendations the board sets forth are increasing K-12 access to accelerated coursework and enrichment programs; expanding opportunities for conducting "above-level tests" to identify gifted STEM students, especially in economically disadvantaged urban and rural areas; and holding schools—"and perhaps districts and states"—accountable for the performance of the very top students at each grade level.

"Currently, far too many of America's best and brightest young men and women go unrecognized and underdeveloped, and, thus fail to reach their full potential," says the report by the board, which sets policy for the National Science Foundation and serves as an advisory body to the White House and Congress. "This represents a loss for both the individual and society."

The report continues: "The nation needs 'STEM innovators'—those individuals who have developed the expertise to become leading STEM professionals and perhaps the creators of significant breakthroughs or advances in scientific and technological understanding."

In an interview yesterday, Camilla P. Benbow, a National Science Board member who led the ad hoc task force on STEM innovators, said that what sets this report apart from so many others on education in the STEM fields—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—is its emphasis on high achievers.

"Most previous [STEM education] reports and most of the work being thought about is to really raise the average level of performance, and that's a really important task," said Benbow, the dean of the Peabody College of Education and Human Development at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. But she said it's critical both to raise the average levels and lift the top levels of achievement.

She also said the board is deeply concerned with "leveling the playing field" to find and nurture talent from demographic groups in which it too often is never tapped. "We want kids from all backgrounds, from all groups, to be high achievers," she said.

The National Science Board report offers recommendations covering three key areas: providing opportunities for excellence, casting a wide net to identify all types of talent from all demographic groups, and fostering a "supportive ecosystem that nurtures and celebrates excellence and innovative thinking."

Here's a quick sampling of the ideas it's advancing:

• Increase access to and the quality of college-level, dual enrollment, and other accelerated coursework, as well as high-quality enrichment programs.

• Create NSF programs that offer portable, merit-based scholarships for talented middle and high school students to participate in challenging enrichment activities.

• Expand existing talent-assessment tests and -identification strategies to the three primary abilities (quantitative/mathematical, verbal, and spatial) so that spatial talent is not neglected.

• Increase access to appropriate above-level tests and student-identification mechanisms, especially in economically disadvantaged rural and urban areas.

• Launch a national campaign aimed at increasing the appreciation of academic excellence and transforming negative stereotypes toward potential STEM innovators.

The report wades into what might be some particularly touchy territory in suggesting a new realm for school accountability, on top of the demands already imposed on schools through state accountability systems and the federal No Child Left Behind Act. It says that progress should be monitored for the top 10 percent and top 1 percent of students in all public schools. Schools and districts that demonstrate progress in increasing student achievement and closing achievement gaps should be rewarded. "Conversely, sanctions should apply if these students are not making progress consistent with their talents and potential, just as it applies to other subgroups of students," the report says.

Stepping back, the report declares: "The board firmly believes that a coherent, proactive, and sustained effort to identify and develop our nation's STEM innovators will help drive future economic prosperity and improve the quality of life for all."

The report also outlines a research agenda to more fully understand "the role of the learning-support ecosystem and its relationship to future innovation."

Speaking of reports on STEM education, yesterday I provided a sneak preview of another one that is forthcoming from the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A bill approved by the California legislature that makes changes to high school graduation requirements has arts education advocates alarmed that it could erode attention to the subject in schools, reports the Sacramento Bee.

Assembly Bill 2446 would allow students to pick from a variety of courses in the arts, foreign languages, or career technical education instead of simply requiring them to complete either a yearlong arts or foreign language class.

The bill, which is on the desk of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto it, is aimed at reducing the state's dropout rate, the story says.

"We feel it's bad educational policy as it sets one education area against another," the story quotes Joe Laddon, the policy director of the California Alliance for Arts Education, as saying.

But the measure's sponsor in the state Assembly, Democrat Warren Furutani, said the bill gives students more options and may better prepare them for future jobs.

"A lot of people are dropping out," he's quoted as saying. "So, I'm focused on trying to find as many pathways or options available to keep students interested in school."

The story makes no mention of how advocates for learning foreign languages feel about the bill.

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The co-chairman of a White House advisory panel yesterday provided a sneak preview of a forthcoming report that will recommend to President Obama a series of new federal steps to advance education in the STEM disciplines.

They include developing a "master teacher corps" that recognizes and rewards strong teachers in science, technology, engineering, and math; supporting the creation of more STEM-focused schools; and providing increased opportunities to inspire in students a passion for those subject areas.

At the same time, the report from the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology will highlight the ways in which federal policy has fallen short.

"We also conclude that the federal government, historically, over the last quarter century, has really lacked a coherent strategy and sufficient leadership capacity for STEM education," said Eric Lander, the co-chairman of the council, speaking at an event hosted by the Brookings Institution in Washington. "There are programs galore all over federal agencies, ... but it's hard to say it's part of any coherent strategy. It's hard to say that many of them have been historically targeted toward the kind of catalytic efforts that have the potential to truly transform STEM education."

The report on K-12 education from the 20-member advisory panel, which includes leading experts in science, engineering, and other fields, is expected out later this month.

Lander, the founding director of the Broad Institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University and a leader in human-genome research, said the two key "organizing principles" in the upcoming report are improving the preparation of U.S. students in the STEM fields and inspiring them.

"We also have to focus on inspiration, that everyone is inspired enough to learn something about STEM, and many of them inspired enough to go into STEM," he told those gathered at the Brookings office in Washington for a panel discussion on STEM education.

Lander proceeded to highlight some recommendations to be included in the report, focused on a variety of issues, from standards and teacher quality to the uses of technology.

• Standards: The panel will urge the federal government to support the common standards in mathematics, as well as science standards currently under development (through a process spearheaded by the National Research Council). Lander said the federal government could be helpful in a number of ways, such as providing support to the states in aligning professional development to new curricula and developing new assessments.

• Teachers: The report will emphasize that teachers need both deep content knowledge and deep understanding of the pedagogy of teaching STEM. "We think the federal government should be supporting programs that prepare teachers who have those two skills," he said.

In addition, he said the report will emphasize both recognizing and rewarding strong STEM teachers. "We need to reward the top 5 percent or so of teachers in this country, ... recognize them as a national treasure, as a master teachers' corps."

• Technology: "We need to be able to drive innovation, scale up dissemination," he said. "We need to be able to build the kind of technology platforms that make it easy for people to write whole-course instructional materials that include lectures and adaptive problem sets and professional-development materials."

To accomplish that, he said, "we need funding at the federal level, and there needs to be an appropriate entity able to [disburse] such funding, and we make recommendations about what type of entity would be needed and the magnitude that might be needed to support such work."

• Inspiring Students: "We need to create opportunities for inspiration," Lander said. "As much as standards matter, nonstandards matter, too. ... We have lots of money for after-school programs in this country, and very few of them target anything having to do with STEM. We have lots of other kinds of wonderful programs, fabrication labs, for example, math contests, science contests."

• STEM-Themed Schools: "We have in this country about a hundred STEM-focused schools," Lander said. "They tend to exist at the high school level, not at the elementary or even middle school level. They tend not to exist in poorer neighborhoods." He suggested that federal funds available for school turnarounds or magnet schools could be used to support creating more such schools.

• Federal Leadership: "Finally, we need strong leadership. We need the Department of Education and the National Science Foundation working together," he said. "They need more capacity. ... We need mechanisms for coordination across the federal government."

Also speaking at the event, Susan Hockfield, the president of MIT, said the United States is failing to take adequate steps to ensure a strong supply of high-quality teachers in the STEM fields, noting that some of "our competitor countries" are doing a far better job in terms of recruiting, training, retaining, compensating, and "celebrating" such teachers.

She noted that many MIT graduates find it difficult to choose K-12 teaching as a career.

"While a small number of MIT graduates each year do decide to become teachers, it's a pretty tough decision for them," she said. "These careers are far less celebrated than the other careers that are open to them, with their backgrounds in science and engineering," and typically pay a lot less. She noted that last year, the average starting salary for MIT graduates was $67,000. "This is the starting salary. And yet, as recently as 2006-2007, the median salary, median career salary for K-12 teachers was $51,000."

For his part, U.S. Rep. Bart Gordon, a Tennessee Democrat who chairs the House Science and Technology Committee, echoed some of the concerns Lander mentioned about the federal role in improving STEM education.

"Right now, there's really no coordination" across federal agencies, he said. "So we're not getting the best bang for the buck."

That said, he noted that legislation his chamber passed earlier this year to reauthorize the America COMPETES Act includes some new measures aimed at improving such federal coordination. (For more analysis, check out this blog item.)

Meanwhile, a key Senate panel this summer approved its own version of the reauthorization bill, but it has yet to see final action in the Senate. During the event yesterday, Chairman Gordon indicated his concern about the situation.

"We have passed the reauthorization with some improvements in the House, and now it's stuck in the Senate," he said, urging those attending the Brookings event to get in touch with leading senators to encourage that chamber to finish its work.

"Tell them it is important to move the reauthorization of America COMPETES, as well as to follow that with funding," he said.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 8:52 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

You've probably heard by now that the annual SAT score report is out. (See our story here.) There isn't any huge news here; scores improved a little in math and remained flat in reading and writing during the last year. They're still down from their decade's peak in 2005. We have the usual depressing score gaps among racial and ethnic groups, and among the privileged and the less-than-privileged.

Here's where it got interesting for me: Just as the number of SAT test-takers slipped beneath the number of ACT-takers for the first time, the College Board included a group of participants it has excluded in the past. By adding those into its total, it can still claim that its test is more popular than the ACT.

Say what? OK. Let's walk through this. It's like this: Every year, the College Board reports the number of students in a given graduating class who took the SAT sometime during high school, excluding those who took it for the first time in May or June of their senior year.

That is how we've reported the scores every year, because that is how the College Board reports them. And that is how the trend line stays intact.

This year, the CB decided to report that additional number of students who took the test for the first time in May or June of their senior year—about 49,000. Adding that group would bring the total 2010 test-takers to 1,597,329, about 28,000 more than took the ACT in the class of 2010 (although the ACT folks tell me that their data cutoff dates end up excluding up to 20,000 first-time-ACT-taking seniors, as well).

But the College Board didn't use the larger total in its trend analysis; it just lets us know how big the group is, that it's increasing in size (44 percent since 2006), and that its scores are a bit lower than those of the cohort it has traditionally analyzed.

This year, for the last time, the College Board trend analysis looks only at the students who took the test sometime in high school, minus the first-timer seniors from May and June. Looking at that group of 1,547,990 students allows the world at large to see the trend lines clearly (but makes the College Board look like its losing the popularity contest with ACT).

It does intend to use the larger figure in future years when it does its detailed trend analysis. This year serves as notice of that change.

All in the things-you-should-know category.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 4:54 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Here are a few more things for the Friday Roundup:

Mathematics
The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics has issued a new series of books that present research findings to improve math instruction in schools. They're written to be brief and direct, with answers to common questions from educators provided in plain language.

The Arts
The nonprofit group Dramatic Results just announced that it hsa been awarded a $1.1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to provide arts education for disadvantaged students in the Long Beach Unified school district in California. Meanwhile, the Wolftrap Center for the Performing Arts, just outside Washington, D.C. (in Vienna, Va.), is launching an Early Childhood STEM Learning Through the Arts program with $1.15 million from the Education Department. I have not seen a full list of grant recipients, but both of these grants are under the federal agency's Arts Education Model Development and Dissemination grant program.

Financial Literacy
The Actuarial Foundation will provide free of charge 10,000 individual sets of "Building Your Future," a financial literacy curriculum, to high school teachers across the country. The curriculum aims to help students master the basics of personal finance and prepare them for life after graduation. The effort has financial backing from The New York Life Foundation.

Book Banning (that's right!)
A school board in southwest Missouri has voted to keep in place a recent ban of a National Book Award-winning novel about a Native American boy after hearing from parents who object to its strong language and sexual imagery, reports the Associated Press. The Stockton School Board voted 7-0 Wednesday to continue the ban on The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

I'm sure there's lots more to catch up on, but hey, it's Friday afternoon, so I'll stop there.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 4:03 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A couple of curriculum-related bits for you this morning:

• We told you recently that the Partnership for 21st Century Skills was moving in with the Council of Chief State School Officers. The Thomas B. Fordham Institute's Checker Finn weighs in on this in the organization's weekly newsletter. (Hint: he doesn't have buckets of love to heap on P21. Along with a list of others, Finn's been critical of P21's ideas, arguing that they shortchange knowledge in the push for skills.)

• An interesting bit of research surfaced the other day that carries a disappointing message for how well supplemental reading programs can help struggling adolescents.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 9:24 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

In an EdWeek story published this morning, I take a closer look at how some of the state winners in the federal Race to the Top competition are planning to improve STEM education. This story picks up on the thread from a blog post I wrote a couple of weeks back, but draws on interviews with state leaders and other experts.

One example that unfortunately ended up on the cutting-room floor was Georgia. But I wanted to take a moment here to highlight an element of that state's application that caught my eye. It involves an effort that doesn't require any Race to the Top money. Instead, it's a policy change related to the federal No Child Left Behind Act. (Also, here's a press release from Georgia announcing that the state won a Race to the Top grant.)

According to Georgia's application, the state plans to require that all public elementary and middle schools make student achievement in science one of their indicators for making AYP—or adequate yearly progress—under the federal law. This is a big deal, because, as many readers probably already know, if a school does not make AYP for two or more consecutive years, a series of escalating consequences kick in.

Erin L. Hames, the chief of staff for the Georgia education department, told me that the state's elementary and middle schools have three main criteria by which AYP is assessed. The first is state assessments in reading and mathematics. The second is ensuring that 95 percent of students in each subgroup participate in the state testing mandated. But for the last one, the state until now has allowed districts some flexibility (though in high school, they must use graduation rates). Most districts, Hames said, select student attendance.

But starting next school year, Georgia districts will be required to use student performance on science exams.

The hope, she said, is that the change will strengthen science instruction in the early grades.

Georgia's Race to the Top application explains the change this way:

"The rationale for this strategy is two-fold: First, student interest in and preparation for science in high school must begin at the elementary level. Unfortunately, teachers and principals often de-emphasize science, partly because of the strong focus on reading and mathematics, where distinct accountability consequences are in place, and partly because many elementary and middle school teachers lack strong content knowledge in the sciences. Second, since what is measured matters, requiring science as a second AYP indicator will put an instructional focus on teaching and learning the subject."

The application emphasizes, however, that it's not simply issuing a new requirement for science. This step will be accompanied by professional development for teachers and other related efforts.

Hames said the change came as a result of the recommendation of a state-organized work group that included local superintendents and other school employees.

She said she's not aware of any other state with a similar mandate.

If any reader knows of another state that requires science performance to count toward AYP, let us know by posting a comment.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A few bits to peruse on this late summer morning:

• The Maryland board of education gets on its biggest district's case for the controversial curriculum contract it signed with Pearson (more about that contract here).

• Whiteboard Advisors, a consulting outfit here in Washington, takes an "insiders' survey" about perceptions of the two state consortia that recently won Race to the Top assessment grants. It finds some intriguing things, and offers a little tease here. Full results are due out tomorrow.

• The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation highlights its work on the common-core standards in its annual report (see Page 5). Released earlier this week, the overview of its 2009 work says that in the next eight years, the foundation plans to invest $250 million in "next-generation instructional tools" that reflect the common standards. (The foundation already handed out about $19 million in this area, and has spent millions more to support various players who have advanced the initiative.)

The Gates Foundation also released results of a survey of its own grantees, and found some interesting wells of discontent. (Disclosure: Editorial Projects in Education, which publishes Education Week, is also a Gates grantee.)

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

What do you get when you mix the National Science Foundation with the National Football League? Well, if you mix in a dash of NBC News, apparently you get an unusual chance to learn about vectors, projectile motion, and hydration, among other topics.

The news network's educational arm, NBC Learn, is teaming up with the NSF and NFL to release the "Science of NFL Football," a 10-part video series designed for teachers and students.

"This collaboration ... uses the universal appeal of football to drive an understanding of complicated scientific concepts," a press release explains. "Students and teachers will see how the principles of science enable players to perform actions such as throwing a spiral pass, blocking an opponent, and scoring a touchdown."

The announcement comes as NBC News later this month hosts Education Nation, a week of programming and related activities that includes a two-and-a-half day "summit" on improving education at all levels. For more, check out this EdWeek story.

By the way, as I started writing this blog post, it was ringing a bell in my head. And now I remember, in January, NBC announced a similar series of videos pegged to the Winter Olympics. And that also was a collaboration with the NSF.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The National Science Foundation has just awarded a five-year, $2 million grant for U.S. researchers to study the use of a mathematics curriculum developed in Russia that aims to teach elementary students about rational numbers, according to a press release from New York University.

The researchers—from NYU, as well as Iowa State University and the Illinois Institute of Technology—will investigate learning in classes that used the Elkonin-Davydov (E-D) elementary math curriculum, the press release notes. The particular emphasis in the curriculum is on multiplication, division, fractions, and ratios.

Martin Simon, a professor of mathematics education at NYU says in the release that the Russian curriculum holds potential for U.S. educators because it "builds on concepts of measurement. Students don't just learn about numbers, but about quantities and how quantities are measured by units. Thus they develop a foundation for multiplicative relationships."

Posted by Erik Robelen at 4:16 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The blogosphere hasn't exactly been spilling over with chat about the Race to the Top assessment grants awarded last week. (See story here, more on Ed Sec Arne Duncan's speech here, and details about how the consortia were judged here.)

If you are craving more dialogue about these potentially influential new tests, you might want to drop by the National Journal, which is devoting a good chunk of space to that topic today.

The entries are just now trickling in, so keep checking back as they stack up. The National Journal's experts-in-education forums typically draw thought-provoking input from heavy-hitters in the field.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Once again, Texas officials may target textbooks to cut costs during difficult fiscal times. On the potential chopping block is state aid for books and related materials in English/language arts and science, among other things.

I first learned about this development from a Dallas Morning News story.

The Texas Education Agency has just produced a plan, in response to a call from Republican Gov. Rick Perry, outlining 10 percent in cuts to K-12 education in the next two-year budget. (Apparently, Perry required all state agencies to come up with recommended reductions.) Other areas of education in the cross hairs include teacher merit pay and new science labs.

The budget-cutting plan comes in the wake of a state revenue shortfall that could reach $18 billion, the Morning News story explains.

I checked in with Debbie Ratcliffe, a spokeswoman for the Texas Education Agency, about the situation. She explained that, if approved, the proposed cuts would mean that students would be missing out on some curricular materials reflecting recently revised standards in both ELA and science.

The state was originally scheduled to buy new science textbooks for all students in 2013, she explained. But because officials knew the budget was going to be tight, the state board of education had already paired down the funding request to simply ask for supplemental science materials for grades 5-8 in biology, physics, chemistry, and a course called "Integrated Physics and Chemistry." These materials were only going to focus on the new standards that the board had added when it rewrote the state's curriculum framework, she said. (That rewrite was completed in 2009.)

"If the legislature adopts the 10 percent cut proposal, we wouldn't have money to buy even this material," she said.

Meanwhile, in ELA, Ratcliffe said the state has already purchased about half the textbooks for classrooms—primarily K-8 reading books and grades 6-12 literature books. Those are in classrooms as of this fall. The state had split the purchase in two pieces because of the high cost, she said.

"Now, we won't be able to make the second half of the purchase for the books listed in that budget document—unless the legislature appropriates some funding," she said.

Ratcliffe did note that the budget plan would cover "continuing contracts so new students can still get books and lost books will still be replaced."

Stepping back, she said: "In general, ... any time we are requested to cut our budgets, textbooks become a likely target for the cuts because they are such a costly item."

In all, the Texas Education Agency identified $262 million in K-12 cuts for the upcoming biennium, with the single largest item being the $48 million in proposed reductions for textbooks and related instructional materials.

Several proposed textbook purchases in recent years have been postponed because of budget problems, the Morning News story said.

Indeed, in an EdWeek story earlier this year about the controversial effort to rewrite social studies standards, we indicated that the budget situation could well cause delays in when the state would actually purchase new textbooks that reflect those standards.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 3:58 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Those of you nerdy enough to yearn for nitty-gritty details of the RTT assessment competition will want to curl up with the reviewers' score sheets on the competing state consortia.

The summary chart of the three contenders' scores shows that in the "comprehensive" category (for K-12 assessment systems), the PARCC consortium took home the most points: 164 out of 220. The SMARTER Balanced group nabbed 151. (We're told, however, that this score difference is not what gave the PARCC group a $170 million grant, while SMARTER Balanced got $160 million.)

In the high school category, the SCOBES consortium got just under 126 points of an available 220. It was the only group vying for money in that category, but it did not get funded.

A more detailed score sheet for the SCOBES consortium shows that the peer reviewers were of radically differing opinions about the group's proposal. (Reviewer #6 seemed to be considering sending flowers, but it's amazing that Reviewer #9 didn't throw darts. Check out those wildly varying totals.)

The score sheets of PARCC and SMARTER Balanced show variations of 71 to 73 points among the nine reviewers.

Each reviewer goes into more detail on the judging in their individual comments. (Listed on the RTT assessment scoring main page.)

We know who the peer reviewers are; but which ones gave which ratings isn't disclosed. The reviewers listed with asterisks were alternates, who evaluated the applications but whose appraisals were not counted in the end, according to the Education Department.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 12:31 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

As you know if you've been reading this space, Ed Secretary Arne Duncan announced the winners of the Race to the Top assessment competition yesterday. (Check our story here for a catch-up if needed.)

We linked you to his speech yesterday, but it's meaty enough that it's worth revisiting today. It's not that there was anything new or groundbreaking in the address; it's just that Duncan situates the assessment announcement more fully in the context of the administration's priorities and goals than is often the case. If you had any doubt about what Duncan and his boss envision for teaching, learning, and testing in America, this speech will clear that right up for you.

One of the things that jumps off the pages here is the elevated place Duncan gave teachers in the discussion of assessment. He emphasized that the new tests will produce useful feedback for them, in real time, on how well students are learning. He lauded the way the assessments will seek to gauge mastery of more complex types of knowledge and skills, capturing a fuller portrait of what students can do. And he said that by capturing that wider range, the tests lend themselves to the use of richer curriculum.

In short, he said, these will be the assessments teachers have "longed for." (Yes, he did say "longed for.")

Teachers were high on the radar when he talked about implementation, too. Seeking to ease worries, he promised that the new tests will not just be dropped into teachers' laps, but that they will be involved in designing and scoring them.

He even threw in a reference to how teachers themselves should be judged ("multiple measures... let me say that one more time: multiple measures"), taking a poke at us schleps in the news media who haven't sufficiently captured this point to his satisfaction (see here and here for a bit of evidence to the contrary).

But hey, wait, was this speech about student assessment, or teacher evaluation? Perhaps the teacher-eval stuff was just a nice dovetail into the context about the administration's priorities and goals. Because that stuff certainly formed a nice soft seat for the assessment talk. There was the mention of how common standards and assessments only cover math and English/language arts now, but science, history, civics, arts and other topics are also crucial, and the administration wants to spend $1 billion to ensure a "well rounded education" in high needs schools. There was the reminder that Duncan & Co. want the reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act to let states include subjects other than math and English in their accountability systems. There was the tidbit about millions set aside for research to develop tests in science, history and foreign language, and the expressed hope that states can collaborate on new science assessments.

And in case none of that was really clear, Duncan wanted to highlight something he said was one of the "least appreciated elements" of President Obama's school reform vision: his determination to reverse the narrowing of curriculum that's evolved under No Child Left Behind.

While they won't deliver us to "educational nirvana" (really? it sorta sounded for a moment there like they might), new-age assessments play a key role in driving profound improvements, Duncan said. Exactly what the new assessments drive, and who will be in the driver's seat, will be an interesting story to watch.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

We told you we'd keep you updated on the Race to the Top Assessment winners, and here you are: news that the two consortia vying for money to design comprehensive K-12 assessments both got funded.

There was only one consortium going after money to design a system of high school tests, and that group didn't get funded.

We'll soon bring you news of Ed Secretary Arne Duncan's speech on this. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Here is Duncan's speech, as prepared for delivery.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Winners of the Race to the Top assessment grants will be announced this morning. Check our website in a short while to find out which of the three state consortia get millions to design new testing systems.

We will keep you posted here during the day with more as we get it.

If you are new to this and need a refresher course, read our story about the groups applying for the money.

UPDATE: See our story here.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 9:09 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Students who move from elementary to middle school may face an academic disadvantage compared with those who attend a K-8 school, according to an EdWeek story highlighting new research on the subject.

The study of New York City public schools, posted online today by the journal Education Next, also finds that the earlier students move to a middle school, the greater the academic gap between them and their K-8-attending peers, a gap that widens as the students age, the story says. In addition, the study finds that students who attend a stand-alone middle school tend to be absent more often.

Some states and large urban districts have begun to veer away from the middle school model toward embracing more K-8 schools, the study notes. In fact, I was recently in New Orleans for a story about how the effort is going to reinvent that city's public schools since Hurricane Katrina struck. And there, I noticed that a lot of the new public schools are configured as K-8 campuses.

The study's authors are Jonah E. Rockoff, an associate professor of business at the Columbia Graduate School of Business, and Benjamin B. Lockwood, a research coordinator at the Paul Milstein Center for Real Estate at Columbia's business school.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 2:06 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

California lawmakers have just sent a bill to the governor's desk designed to prevent new Texas social studies standards from reaching classrooms in the Golden State, according to an Associated Press story.

The state Senate yesterday voted 21-13 to approve SB1451. It requires the California board of education to look out for any of the Texas content as part of its standard practice of reviewing public school textbooks, the story explains.

You may recall that the Texas board of education this spring voted to adopt a new set of social studies standards. And to put it lightly, the elected board's action was rather controversial, drawing national attention as a bloc of staunch conservatives largely succeeded in putting its stamp on the new standards. The debate was marked by tussles over such matters as the separation of church and state, the representation of minority figures and the role of discrimination in U.S. history, and, more broadly, whether the school board's conservatives were seeking to infuse the standards with a particular political ideology.

For some background, here's an EdWeek story written after the final adoption, which gives an overview but also notes how critics are hoping to revise the standards next year. Also, here's a blog post with a bit more info and a direct link to the standards themselves.

Finally, this EdWeek story takes a closer look at the whole question of Texas' influence over the national textbook market, and points to some reasons that it may be waning.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend