October 2011 Archives

Unless you've been on a Rip Van Winkle-style nap, you've heard about the Occupy Wall Street movement that has grown to multiple cities. That spirit seeped into education this week, as activists in New York City declared that they would "Occupy the DOE" (city department of education).

Extended call-and-response chanting muzzled the Panel for Educational Policy on Tuesday night as it tried to begin a meeting at a high school on the city's Lower East Side, intended to introduce parents to the common standards. The panel, you might recall, was the body that replaced the board of education in 2002 when the mayor got the right to control schools in the Big Apple. Eight of its members are appointed by the mayor, and the remaining five by the city's borough presidents. Its role is largely advisory.

This YouTube video shows Chancellor Dennis Walcott trying to manage the crowd and begin the meeting. You can also see that David Coleman, a chief writer of the common standards in English/language arts, is also there, and manages to say, "The common-core standards, which are as much about evidence as shouting ..." But then Coleman and the panelists appear to decide that it's best not to tangle with the demonstrators, and they withdraw.

During the time it takes for this to happen, the crowd chants continually, contending, among other things, that the city did not sufficiently engage parents and teachers in its decision to adapt instruction to the common standards (which New York state adopted in July 2010). Demonstrators also chant that the city wants to raise standards without the supports that students need to reach them.

As they file out the front door of the building, the demonstrators chant, "Show me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like!"

News reports said that Walcott and the other panelists, employing the help of police, met with parents in upstairs classrooms.

All this hubbub was dutifully recorded and discussed on a dedicated Facebook page, (you have to have a Facebook account to get access) as well as on the websites of groups that supported or participated in the demonstration, such as the New York Collective of Radical Educators, and in various news media, from The New York Times, the New York Daily News, and the Huffington Post to the city's scrappy GothamSchools website (here, here, and here).

The demonstration sparked the ire of the New York Post, which contended in an editorial that the new standards could improve the lot of the city's schoolchildren, and called the demonstrators "thugs."

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Seems like just yesterday (oh, wait, it was yesterday) that we were telling you that New York City is on the cusp of including college-readiness metrics in the way it evaluates high schools. We said—and we've said it before—that this is something we'll be seeing more and more of, given the national focus on college readiness and the Obama administration's emphasis on judging schools according to how well they prepare students for work or education after high school.

And with that, we bring you news that Chicago is factoring college readiness into school evaluations as well. The Chicago Tribune reports that including college-readiness indicators in school evaluations could boost the number of high schools that must close in coming years.

A Power Point presentation given at the board of education's meeting yesterday makes the case for tightening the screws on high schools, noting that fewer than six in 10 students graduate, and that students' average ACT score is 17, short of the ACT's "college readiness" benchmark of 21. Only 8 percent of 11th graders are testing "college ready" in all subjects on the Prairie State Achievement Exam, which includes the ACT. (Those depressing data points, and more, were released in August.)

Neither the Tribune story nor the Power Point spells out what college-readiness metrics the district is planning to use to rate schools. In a press release issued for the board meeting, officials said they have commissioned new interim tests in literacy, math, and science that all 9th, 10th, and 11th graders will take this coming spring, to replace a patchwork of tests used for this purpose in the past. But it sounds like these tests are more for feedback purposes than for evaluation.

Stay tuned for more on this when we get it.

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As the education field focuses so intently on college readiness, and states apply for waivers from No Child Left Behind, it's interesting to note a little something taking shape in New York City.

Gotham Schools, a scrappy local news site, has been reporting this week on the city's work to illuminate how well high schools are preparing students for college.

The city has been issuing school "report cards" since 2007, grading them on a variety of factors from students' academic progress to school climate. But, concerned about high rates of college remediation among its graduates, the city will soon begin considering factors such as the percentage of high schools' students that take challenging courses, pass Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, or the state regents exams at college-ready levels, and enroll in college. (See the city's Power Point presentation about how the school grading system is changing.)

The new data were reported on schools' report cards this week, but won't actually be factored into their grades until next year, Gotham Schools reports. Even with a year's grace period, though, there is good reason to anticipate that some high schools could see their grades drop because of the college-readiness metrics.

Data released this week show that only one-quarter of the students graduating from high school are ready for college, according to Gotham Schools. (And if that isn't a big enough problem, take this one: The same data show that less than half the students who were in 9th grade in 2006 are now in college.)

Some high schools that get high grades on the current report cards aren't doing so well on some of the college-readiness metrics, according to city data.

The "ouch" that could be coming down the pike next year when New York City high schools get their grades could be echoed in many other places. We're talking about states that get waivers from key provisions of No Child Left Behind. You might recall that one of the conditions of getting a waiver is that states will have to agree to report their schools' college-going and college-credit-accumulation rates. And in many places, that will not look pretty.

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Although debates persist about the common standards now adopted by 45 states, a new book suggests they hold the potential to "transform American education." And with this in mind, author Robert Rothman has just written something of a primer that seeks to explain the standards effort to a broad audience, and that also highlights the challenges ahead in realizing their potential.

Rothman, a senior fellow at the Alliance for Excellent Education, and a former Education Week reporter, spoke about his book yesterday at a forum hosted by the alliance on the common standards. I wasn't able to attend that event, which also included several other speakers, but I did chat with Rothman by phone yesterday about the common standards and his new book—Something in Common: The Common Core Standards and the Next Chapter in American Education, published by the Harvard Education Press.

To be clear, Rothman is definitely a fan of the common standards in English/language arts and mathematics, which he describes as "clear and coherent" and says are rightly and effectively aimed at preparing students for college and a career.

"This is a very significant milestone in American education, and it happened very quickly, and I don't think a lot of people really knew the whole story behind it," he told me. "I thought it was worth examining what this is, how it came about, why it might be different from previous efforts, and what the promise and challenges are ahead."

As you might imagine, our conversation focused mainly on the promise and challenges.

"Since the inception of the standards movement, the idea was that if states developed standards and used them as the centerpiece of their education system, that that would drive improvement, but it hasn't resulted in as much improvement as had been hoped," Rothman said.

Part of the problem, he argues, is that "the translation of the standards from state documents to the classroom didn't happen very well, and so these documents didn't really drive changes in classroom practice in the way they could."

One reason for this, he explains, is that state assessments in general have not followed along as closely to the standards as was expected. "A lot of research on alignment of tests and standards found that there were big gaps, and tests tended to measure relatively low-level skills and knowledge and didn't capture all the expectations in the standards," he said.

As the stakes attached to tests have steadily risen, Rothman said teachers have placed more emphasis on the assessments rather than the standards. He also suggested that there was never the level of quality professional development to help teachers bring state standards into the classroom.

And so, what now? First, Rothman said he's encouraged to see many states working hard to help teachers understand the common standards and what they mean for classroom practices, from professional development to curriculum maps and Web portals supplying curriculum resources and so on.

Another promising development, he says, is the work under way by two state consortia to develop common assessments that closely mirror the standards.

"That is a huge development, and the consortia are developing some additional resources for implementation of the standards," including content frameworks and professional-development resources.

But big questions remain, Rothman cautions.

For one, the common assessments are a work in progress. "There are still questions about how much the consortia can do, especially because the states have to pick up the tab of administering [the tests]. They don't want to develop these overly ambitious models that states can't follow through on. ... So to the extent that the assessments are less than what the standards expect, that could affect how they're implemented."

Another big challenge, Rothman said, is whether states and school districts in difficult fiscal times will find the money to provide the quality and quantity of professional development needed to help teachers bring the standards into the classroom.

Rothman also notes that political challenges remain for the common standards. Although 45 states have adopted them, "there is some opposition emerging." There were efforts in a number of states, including New Hampshire and South Carolina, to rescind the common standards, but none of those legislative measures passed.

The final chapter of Rothman's book is titled "Promise and Challenges." He ends it by expressing his hope that the common standards can be transformative.

"The importance of the standards is that, for the first time, expectations are the same for all students, regardless of their backgrounds or where they live," he writes. "The promise of such a step is too great to let it slip through our fingers."

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In an effort to persuade more young people to pursue careers in the STEM fields, Massachusetts Lt. Gov. Timothy Murray yesterday announced a new statewide public awareness campaign dubbed the "WOW Initiative" that will highlight, among others, a video game designer and a statistician for the Boston Red Sox.

The campaign, announced at the state's 8th annual STEM Summit, will include a series of videos distributed to schools.

"The benefits of encouraging more students to study STEM fields will have a catalytic effect on Massachusetts' future workforce, jobs and the economy," Murray said in a press release. "By raising greater awareness today through the 'WOW Initiative', we are developing a pipeline of talented future employees in a range of innovative careers in Massachusetts."

Among the first batch of individuals to be featured in the videos promoting careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are Red Sox statistician Bill James, video game designer Jim Toepel from Harmonix Music Systems, ocean researcher Amy Kukulya from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, and Nigel Jacobs, the emerging technology adviser to Boston Mayor Thomas Menino.

Lt. Gov. Murray also announced yesterday that the city of Boston has formed a regional STEM network, joining six regional preK-16 STEM networks across the state. The STEM summit, co-hosted by Gov. Deval Patrick's STEM advisory council, EDC, IBM, Intel, and others, brought together government, academic, business and community leaders together to focus on future initiatives to enhance STEM opportunities in the state.

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Citing concern about how evolution is typically taught in high school and college—and the fact that even the study of it remains contentious—a new national initiative seeks to infuse evolutionary science into high school and college curricula as a "fundamental and integrating principle of modern life science."

The effort will be launched at a two-day meeting next week co-hosted by the National Research Council and the National Academy of Sciences.

"Often [evolution] is presented as one discrete topic among many in the biology curriculum, leading to the false impression that it can be isolated or even removed from biology," says an announcement of the event and the broader effort. "A more appropriate and effective way to teach evolution is as a fundamental and integrating principle of modern life science."

The Oct. 25-26 meeting, titled "Thinking Evolutionarily: Evolution Education Across the Life Sciences," will bring together a variety of experts in education science to help develop a strategic plan to incorporate evolution as a central theme in biology teaching across institutions and academic levels.

It comes as the recent NRC framework for developing a set of common standards in science includes a call for teaching about evolutionary principles throughout the K-12 curriculum.

The national meeting next week will focus on a series of issues and questions, including:

• Why 'thinking evolutionarily' is a useful way to teach biology, with a look at how students, faculty, and science benefit;

• What curricular resources are currently available, what additional ones are needed, and who should produce them; and

• How to encourage and facilitate change, including professional development for high school and college faculty, communications strategies, and engaging "diverse communities" in the life sciences.

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Starting next year, a new federal awards program will honor K-12 teachers who bring an innovative approach to environmental education and use "green" topics as a context for learning, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced yesterday.

The news comes as just last month, the Obama administration launched a new Green Ribbon Schools program. It also comes as we just published a story about apparent momentum building around the promotion of environmental literacy in schools.

"This awards program will highlight and encourage innovative ways to getter integrate environmental issues into our young people's everyday learning experiences—helping to turn environmental education into environmental action," said EPA Deputy Administrator Bob Perciasepe in a press release.

Two teachers from EPA's ten regions will be selected to receive the Presidential Innovation Award for Environmental Educators, a program jointly developed by the EPA and the White House Council on Environmental Quality. You can find more details here.

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We reported earlier this year that states are increasingly making it a priority to ensure that children are proficient readers by the end of 3rd grade. It turns out that cities and counties are joining that movement at a pretty good clip, too.

The Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, a collaborative of funders who are aiming energy and money at early literacy, reports that 82 localities have officially joined the effort.

What made it official is a prize: These cities and counties have declared their intent to apply for the National Civic League's 2012 All-America City Awards. Today's the deadline for letters of intent, and even as I post this, the number of communities that are submitting them keeps going up. It includes big cities like Houston, Los Angeles, and the District of Columbia; smaller cities like El Dorado, Kansas (population 13,000), and neighborhoods, like Morrisania in New York's South Bronx.

This year's awards, as we've mentioned, go to 10 cities or counties that have smart and sustainable plans to attack a cluster of related issues: lack of school readiness, chronic absenteeism, and summer learning loss. These three play key roles in undermining children's acquisition of strong reading skills (as well as other important skills, as you can imagine).

Since the National Civic League, United Way Worldwide, the National League of Cities and the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading are working together on this year's award, applicants can get help with their applications through the campaign's network. A not-so-small sideline benefit: They get in front of dozens of funders with resources.

So it seems that we have a bit of momentum on the reading-by-3rd-grade issue at the state and local levels. As the campaign points out, early literacy is an element in the comprehensive Senate bill to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (currently known as No Child Left Behind), due for debate and revision next week. It's also got a high profile in the administration's Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge.

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At a time when many people are wondering how the common standards will find their way into the classrooms, a higher education group has just launched a new initiative to prepare new secondary math teachers to do just that.

The Mathematics Teacher Education Partnership aims to redesign mathematics teacher preparation programs through a collaborative approach that brings together colleges and universities, middle and high schools, and other organizations. The effort is being led by the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU), with an initial planning year funded in part by a $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.

"The adoption of the Common Core State Standards for mathematics necessitates that we re-examine the policies and practices surrounding the preparation of secondary mathematics teachers to ensure that new teachers are ready to teach to these new, more rigorous standards," said W. Gary Martin, a professor of math education at Auburn University in Alabama and a co-principal investigator for the partnership, in a statement. "The common vision for K-12 mathematics across the states opens up new possibilities for collaborative work within and across higher education institutions and with K-12 schools—essential partners in meeting this challenge."

Key goals for the effort include:

• Building consensus on guiding principles underlying teacher prep programs in secondary math;
• Developing and undertaking a collaborative research and development agenda to support programs built on the guiding principles;
• Catalyzing the transformation of teacher prep programs nationally by stimulating the use of model programs and practices and promoting changes in state program approval, accreditation, and other policies necessary to support the agenda.

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Florida Gov. Rick Scott this week talked up the need to encourage more STEM majors in his state, but don't get him started on anthropology.

"How many more jobs do you think there is for anthropology in this state?" he said, according to the Associated Press. "You want to use your tax dollars to educate more people who can't get jobs in anthropology?"

The story explains that in these and other remarks, he called for shifting more funding to promote degrees with the best job prospects, but repeatedly dissed anthropology as a loser in the job market.

"It's very unfortunate that you would characterize our discipline in such a short-sighted way," wrote the leaders of the American Anthropological Association in a letter to Gov. Scott this week. "Perhaps you are unaware that anthropologists are leaders in our nation's top science fields, making groundbreaking discoveries in areas as varied as public health, human genetics, legal history, bilingualism, the African-American heritage, and infant learning."

This story led me to wonder to what extent anthropology has been introduced at the secondary level. In my quick search, I came across a 2005 essay touting the benefits of integrating anthropology at the high school level.

"What better science is there than anthropology—the study of humanity—for helping our students to make connections between their studies and their lives?" wrote anthropology professor Lauren M. Hasten from Las Positas College.

I also found a master's thesis that describes an anthropology class at Durant High School inµdrumroll please—Florida.

Also, a follow-up AP story reports that Gov. Scott's daughter majored in, you guessed it, anthropology.

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We know that when it comes to No Child Left Behind, states are the huddled masses yearning to be free. So it's no surprise that the Education Department's offer to excuse them from some of the law's most burdensome requirements has drawn 39 official declarations of intent to apply. [UPDATE]: Arizona and Utah join the list of states intending to apply. See our story.

As my colleague Michele McNeil of the Politics K12 blog points out, these are just intentions. They're not binding, so any of these states can decide not to apply for waivers. Likewise, some states that didn't file notices of intent could still decide to apply.

That said, there are a couple intriguing tidbits to note when it comes to the intersection between the official intenders and the common standards and common assessments.

You will recall from earlier blogging here that a key requirement for states seeking a waiver is that they have adopted "college- and career-ready standards" and assessments. The standards don't have to be the common ones that 44 states and the District of Columbia have already adopted. But if they're not, a state will have to certify, through its public higher education system, that its standards are tough enough that mastery of them will serve as a passport allowing students to skip remedial courses in college and go right into credit-bearing work.

When it comes to assessments, waiver rules say that states will have to show that they've got a good plan to make sure that their tests connote college- and career-readiness. They can do that in various ways, including beefing up existing tests, setting higher cut scores and using the tests designed by the assessment consortia. But it's not exactly clear yet whether the Education Department will treat consortium membership as a proxy for "good enough."

So let's look at who intends to apply for waivers and how that list intersects with common-standards adoptions and participating in a consortium to design common assessments.

Seeking a waiver without totally embracing the common standards: So far, three applicants are going this route. Puerto Rico didn't adopt them, and Minnesota adopted only the English/language arts. Virginia didn't adopt the standards, but reports that it aligned its own standards to the common ones. Keep your eye on how easy these states find it to get their institutions of higher education to give their blessing to their content standards. (Texas, Montana, Alaska, and Nebraska didn't adopt the common standards, but also didn't file notices of intent to seek waivers.)

Seeking a waiver without participating in the common-assessment work: Once again, Minnesota, Virginia, and Puerto Rico. They are not participating in an assessment consortium, so they will have to prove their tests are tough enough to connote college- and -career readiness. (The other states who are sitting out the consortia work are Texas, Alaska, and Nebraska, which, as you know, didn't file notices of intent to seek waivers.)

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Activities at school beyond the classroom like sports, drama club, yearbook, and jazz band are worth protecting in tight fiscal times, contends a new article published in Education Next online today.

"There's not a straight line between the crochet club and the Ivy League," writes former Wall Street Journal education reporter June Kronholz, a contributing editor to the education journal. "But a growing body of research says there is a link between after-school activities and graduating from high school, going to college, and becoming a responsible citizen."

The article, "Academic Value of Non-Academics: The Case for Keeping Extracurriculars," points to a number of studies suggesting the power of after-school activities, even as Kronholz cautions that "the findings about extracurriculars aren't always consistent or conclusive: You can't randomly assign kids to soccer, after."

She also raises concerns about the practice of charging for certain extracurricular activities, pointing to examples of districts that have started to do so.

Near the end of her article, Kronholz describes how she recently turned to a decidedly unscientific method to examine the value of extracurriculars, reporting on the results of a question she posted on the Facebook pages of her college-going sons. She asked what they learned in high school that best prepared them for college.

"No one dumped on high school—'It's not that I didn't have fine teachers,' Andrew Snowe e-mailed me—but no one credited AP chemistry with preparing them for college, either," Kronholz writes. "In fact, no one mentioned classes at all. Instead, they wrote that extracurriculars introduced them to new ideas and interests, taught them to study more efficiently, developed their social skills, and exposed them to caring adults."

Ultimately, she concludes: "I'd rise to the defense of Algebra I any day, and I assume any social scientist would, too. But, leadership, adaptability, social skills? Try a couple of years on the school newspaper to learn that."

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The sprawling ESEA reauthorization bill put forward yesterday by the chairman of the Senate education committee envisions major programs both for literacy and STEM education.

Analysts tell me that the literacy program in the bill from Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, is based on the LEARN Act, and focuses on promoting state-based comprehensive literacy programs spanning from birth through the end of high school. The STEM program, meanwhile, would apparently replace the existing Mathematics and Science Partnerships program and allow states and districts far more latitude in the kind of activities they could use the money for.

(Quick background: For those not in the loop, the No Child Left Behind Act is the latest iteration of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the main federal law for the K-12 world. Congress is far, far behind schedule in reauthorizing the law, which last was updated nearly ten years ago.)

For the big picture on Harkin's bill, check out my colleague Alyson Klein's blog post over at Politics K-12. In it, she explains that the bill was released by Harkin, the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, but is the product of months of negotiations with the panel's top Republican, Sen. Michael Enzi of Wyoming. Also, my co-author, Catherine, did some early analysis on this blog yesterday. And over at Teacher Beat, you can find Steve Sawchuk's analysis on teacher-quality policy.

I'll start with literacy. First off, the bill seems to answer with an emphatic "yes" the question raised earlier this year of whether the federal government should have a major program specifically devoted to literacy. Remember that lawmakers provided no funding in fiscal 2011 for the Striving Readers Comprehensive Literacy program, which I'm told is essentially a pared-down version of the LEARN Act.

"This is an important provision, and we are pleased to see it included in the draft bill," said Phillip Lovell, the vice president for federal advocacy at the Alliance for Excellent Education, in an email. "This proposal takes a comprehensive approach to strengthening literacy by recognizing that students need literacy support and instruction throughout their education."

In a follow-up interview, Lovell explained: "It's pretty much the same as the LEARN Act as introduced, so it's a substantial improvement over current policy. It is is based on what Senator [Patty] Murry has been working on with a number of organizations for several years now."

For a recent analysis of the LEARN Act, check out this post at Politics K-12.

The draft Senate bill seeks to improve reading and writing by helping states implement plans that ensure "high-quality instruction and effective strategies in reading and writing from early education through grade 12," the bill says.

Fred Jones, a colleague of Lovell's at the Alliance for Excellent Education, said a core focus of the measure is supporting professional development for teachers. The money would go out by formula to states, he explained, which would then set up competitions for local districts seeking a portion of the aid. No price tag is attached to the measure, though the Murray bill authorized $2.35 billion per year.

While I'm sure there's a lot more to say about this program, I'll move on now to say a little about the STEM program.

James Brown, the executive director of the STEM Education Coalition, a broad-based advocacy group, said his organization "supports this [bill] 100 percent." He notes that the section is "nearly identical" to a bill recently introduced by Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore. (and several other Democrats).

A recent letter from the STEM Education Coalition describes key provisions in the Merkley bill. For one, it says states and districts would have considerable flexibility in how the money is spent to meet their own specific needs.

It notes: "The allowable activities proposed through the amended program reflect broad input from the business, education, and professional [science and technology] communities and incorporate a variety of best practices that have evolved since NCLB, such as STEM Master Teachers, hands-on engineering competitions, and innovative professional-development models."

The draft bill from Sen. Harkin outlines four key goals for the STEM program:

• Enhancing instruction in [STEM] subjects through grade 12;
• Bolstering student engagement in, and increasing student access to, courses in such subjects;
• Improving the quality and effectiveness of classroom instruction by recruiting, training, and supporting highly rated teachers and providing robust tools and supports for students and teachers in such subjects; and
• Closing student-achievement gaps and preparing more students to be college- and career-ready, in such subjects.

Anyway, there's plenty more to examine in this bill, but I wanted to give a quick flavor for what's up with STEM and literacy.

Word is that the Senate education committee will take action on the bill later this month. Stay tuned.

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The comprehensive draft bill to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (currently known as No Child Left Behind) is officially out. My intrepid Capitol Hill colleague Alyson Klein reports in our Politics K12 blog that the bill would scrap adequate yearly progress as the standard against which schools are judged. Some folks are pretty upset about this already, as Alyson reports, fearing that without specific achievement targets or consequences, schools won't be forced to step up and do what's necessary for struggling students.

There is plenty for everyone to paw through in this 860-page draft. But for purposes of this blog, you can start with Title I, Part A, Section 1111, which begins on Page 31. It's the chunk that discusses academic standards and accountability.

You'll see that it requires states to adopt college- and career-ready standards, which isn't much of a surprise. But then it gets a little more interesting. It says states have to show that their standards—and corresponding test-score cutoffs—are aligned with the demands of credit-bearing coursework at public institutions of higher education. (Note that it does not make a distinction here between two-year and four-year colleges.) State standards and test cut scores have to align, also, with a state's career and technical education standards, and "appropriate" career skills.

The draft also notes that states will not have to submit their standards to the secretary of education for review and approval. At another point, it confronts, even more directly, the ongoing arguments about federal intrusion into curricular decisions:

"Nothing in this section shall be construed to authorize an officer or employee of the Federal Government to mandate, direct, or control a State's academic content standards or student academic achievement standards developed in accordance
with this section," the draft says.

The bill details more unsurprising requirements about testing, which mimic what NCLB already requires (capturing student achievement in math, literacy, and science in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school). But tests would have to measure student growth and involve "multiple measures of achievement," such as higher-order thinking. And, of course, they would have to validly assess the learning of all students, including those learning English and those with disabilities. States must also assess the English proficiency of English-learners, under the proposal.

As Alyson explained, adequate yearly progress as we know it would be a thing of the past, if the concepts in this draft hold together through negotiations. Accountability systems would be based not on consequences if AYP isn't reached, but on disclosing through annual report cards various measures of student achievement and "adequate student growth," and "continuous improvement" of all students and subgroups. (They're still based only on math and literacy assessments, though; no new subjects were mandated here.)

A new twist for high schools is that they would have to report not only on their graduation rates, using the four-year cohort method (tracking the percentage of entering freshmen who graduate four years later), but also on how many of their graduates enroll in institutions of higher education by the next fall (again, no distinction here between two-year and four-year), and how many require remedial classes when they get there.

This is an echo of what we're hearing in the NCLB waiver program, as well, as you already know.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 4:51 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

If you are monitoring inside-the-Beltway maneuverings around the No Child Left Behind Act, this could be an interesting week for you. You probably already know that while the House has been taking a piecemeal approach to renewing this law, Senate leaders have been taking a comprehensive approach. And word is that a draft is about to be released.

As my colleague Alyson Klein over at Politics K-12 reported last Friday, the Democratic chair and the top Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee have been working on this draft for months. She outlines some of the key provisions in her blog post.

This one certainly caught my eye:

"States would not have to set hard-and-fast performance targets, and there would be no end-game in mind akin to the 2013-14 deadline for student proficiency in the current law, or even the 2020 'goal' in the administration's blueprint, released in March 2010," Alyson reports. "Instead, schools would have to show 'continuous improvement' for all students, and for particular subgroups."

Cue the sigh of relief from states, which have been longing for relief from those rules. But cue, also, worries in some quarters that without concrete targets or real consequences, the law lacks the teeth required for real school improvement.

Keep in mind that this is a draft, so its language is in flux. But Democrats for Education Reform already likened the draft's "continuous improvement" standard to saying you're losing weight without ever getting on the scale. And the National Council of La Raza said yesterday that it's worried that schools won't be under the necessary pressure to do right by NCLB's "subgroups," such as low-income and minority students and English learners.

Tom Harkin, the Senate education committee chair who co-led the writing of the draft, said in an essay on Politico yesterday that the bill "aims for a federal role that does fewer things—more effectively."

While the consequences-based approach of NCLB never lacked for critics, the new approach of replacing sanctions with flexibility and incentives for states will have its share, as well. They are concerned about whether the incentives, combined with the shaming power of those annual disaggregated report cards, will be enough to produce the effectiveness that Harkin trumpets.

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

Ever looked at a set of standards and thought to yourself: Why on Earth did they include that? Or, I can't believe they left out XYZ! Well, enough of the Monday morning quarterbacking. A national coalition is looking for a few good men and women to help write a set of "next generation" standards for arts education.

Actually, to be more precise, it's trying to recruit 40 content experts, 10 each in dance, music, theater, and the visual arts. The deadline is Oct. 27 to apply for one of the spots.

For background on the effort to develop the new, voluntary standards, check out this blog post.

The National Coalition for Core Arts Standards recently hired a project director, Phillip E. Shepherd, an independent arts education consultant, and longtime arts educator, based in Lexington, Ky.

"We have a real opportunity to do something extraordinary," Shepherd said in a press release. "If we expect our teachers to teach and our students to truly learn, we need standards reflecting classroom practice and new modes of learning that will make our students highly competitive in the world economy."

In addition, the coalition has named chairs for the four areas:

Dance: Rima Faber, president of the Capitol Region Educators of Dance Organization and former program director at the National Dance Education Organization.

Music: Scott Shuler, arts consultant for the Connecticut State Department of Education and president of the National Association for Music Education; and Richard Wells, director of music and performing arts in the Simsbury (Conn.) Public Schools and music chair for the Connecticut Common Arts Assessment Project.

Theatre: Rachel Evans, assistant professor of theatre education at Kean University in Union, NJ.

Visual Arts: Dennis Inhulsen, president-elect of the National Art Education Association and principal of Patterson Elementary School in Holly, Mich.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 9:01 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Everybody wants to know your college business. That's the message high schools are increasingly hearing.

It used to be that no one even knew their local high schools' graduation rates, let alone how many kids they sent to college and how those kids fared once they got there. Now graduation rates are a standard part of the stuff by which states are judged under No Child Left Behind. And the bar could be getting higher.

The latest evidence rolled out this week, in a panel discussion hosted jointly by the Data Quality Campaign and College Summit, and in a report issued by Jobs For the Future. My colleague Caralee Adams has the skinny for you in her story about the DQC/College Summit panel, and her blog post about the JFF report. But the bottom line here is that pressure is building for states to track how many of their districts' and schools' students enroll in college, how many need remediation, and how well they stack up credits.

In a white paper that served as a backdrop to the panel discussion, the Data Quality Campaign and College Summit urge states to build up their data muscle so they can provide information that loops backward to help K-12 do a better job of getting kids ready for college. (Forty-one states are able to do this, according to the DQC, but only 23 have done it.) In its report, Jobs For the Future joins College Summit and the DQC in asking that states not only track postsecondary information and make it public, but include it in their accountability systems.

These voices step into an ongoing whirl of discussion about linking K-12 and higher education data.

A year and a half ago, when the Obama administration released its "blueprint" for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, it called for states to design accountability systems that report not just high schools' graduation rates, but their rates of college enrollment and remediation. (See the "college and career ready" section of the blueprint.)

More recently, the administration's NCLB waiver process, which our Politics K-12 team has been covering for you, would require states that want relief from key provisions of that law to report their college-going and credit-accumulation rates. They would have to do this for all students as well as for subgroups, at the district and the school levels (which will be a huge "ouch" in thousands of schools. But I digress...).

There are some big questions in all this, to be sure, not the least of which is how to define "college readiness." Keep in mind that assessments being designed for the common standards by two big groups of states are intended to measure college readiness. States that link K-12 and college data could interpret that feedback as a gauge of college readiness, too. But that picture isn't complete, because it typically excludes information on students who enroll in private colleges and universities.

And none of it—the tests or the data-feedback loops—helps us too much in sorting out the debate about whether students need the same skills for community college as they do for broad-access four-year colleges. If the assessments have just one cut score connoting college readiness, for instance, either we haven't answered the "ready for what kind of college?" question, or we have accepted the premise that the skills needed for entry-level, credit-bearing work in community colleges are the same as those needed for broad-access four-year colleges. If data-feedback loops don't distinguish between those two types of colleges, then we don't know a whole lot more how to distinguish good preparation for one type of institution from good preparation for the other, or—once again—we've accepted the premise that they should be prepared similarly for both.

Another question revolves around carrots and sticks. As the New Age Accountability replaces the federal-level NCLB-type sanctions with state-level incentives for good performance, more faith is funneled into the power of publicity—reporting results—because the fear of federal sanctions diminishes. The role that incentives will play in states' willingness to report, and act on, their data is still taking shape.

No Child Left Behind turned the spotlight on high schools by making them report their graduation rates. And new regulations a few years ago tightened up those rules by making them all use the same, tougher method of calculating grad rates. In the post-NCLB era, it seems, they are going to have to report even more of their stuff: this time, their postsecondary business. What they are required to report, what they choose to report, and how they respond to the data, will be worth monitoring.

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

The Engineering is Elementary program will see its reach extend with a $1 million grant from Raytheon Co. announced yesterday. The money will support increased teacher training through the establishment of professional development centers in Washington, D.C.; Phoenix, Ariz.; and Huntsville, Ala.

The program, developed in 2003 by the Museum of Science, Boston, seeks to cultivate an understanding of engineering and technology among elementary school children.

"By helping teachers bring the basic concepts of engineering and technology to life, they will be able to excite future generations of students to become the innovators of tomorrow," Raytheon Chairman and CEO William H. Swanson said in a press release. "We share the Museum of Science's desire to accelerate the adoption of its Engineering is Elementary Program, and to support teachers throughout the nation who are committed to instilling a passion for STEM among America's young students."

The Engineering is Elementary curriculum consists of 20 storybook units with titles such as "Catching the Wind: Designing Windmills" and "Taking the Plunge: Designing Submersibles."

Last year, The New York Times wrote a story about the growing reach of the Engineering Is Elementary program, noting that it is being used in all 50 states. In the story, the program's director counters the notion that elementary students are too young to learn about engineering.

"We still hear all the time that little kids can't engineer," program director Christine Cunningham was quoted as saying. "We say they're born engineers—they naturally want to solve problems—and we tend to educate it out of them."

Posted by Erik Robelen at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

We get a ton of notices about various contests and competitions here at Curriculum Matters, far more than we could ever write about. (And we'll probably get still more after I post this!) Most of the time, we take a pass, but today I'm making an exception.

NASA needs help renaming two robotic spacecraft heading into orbit around the moon. And it's looking for suggestions from students in grades K-12.

Entries must be submitted by teachers using an online entry form by Nov. 11. The final round of judging to pick the names will be chaired by former astronaut Sally Ride and Maria Zuber, a researcher from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

NASA's solar-powered Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL)-A and GRAIL-B vessels lifted off from Cape Canaveral last month for a three-an-a-half month journey to the moon, according to a NASA press release. The two ships will create a gravity map of the moon.

"The mission will enable scientists to learn about the moon's internal structure and composition, and give scientists a better understanding of its origin," the press release explains.

"A NASA mission to the moon is one of the reasons I am a scientist today," said GRAIL Principal Investigator Maria Zuber in the news release. "My hope is that GRAIL motivates young people today toward careers in science, math, and technology."

You can find contest rules and additional information here.

Also, I might as well use this blog post as an excuse to give another plug to a recent EdWeek story about some teachers (and yours truly) who recently got a chance to experience the weightless training astronauts undergo before heading out into space.

Photo: A Delta II rocket launches twin GRAIL spacecraft from the launch pad at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Sept. 10. Alex Menendez/AP

Posted by Erik Robelen at 9:58 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A new analysis of state test scores finds that while states made gains in math and English/language arts between 2002 and 2009, such gains were less common at the high school level than they were in 4th and 8th grades.

The study, released today by the Center on Education Policy here in Washington, shows that while 32 states reported gains by 4th graders and 8th graders on reading or English/language arts tests between 2002 and 2009, only 25 reported likewise at the high school level. Thirty-six states reported gains in math for 4th and 8th graders, compared with 27 for high school students.

The CEP finds that states also saw larger increases at the two lower grade levels than they did in high school. Ten states reported increases of 2 percentage points or more in the proportions of students scoring "proficient" in math, and 11 states did so in literacy, compared with 19 states in each subject at the 4th grade level, 21 in literacy in 8th grade, and 24 in math at that level.

Additionally, the gaps between students scoring at the "advanced" and proficient levels widened in high school: One-third of the states reported declines in the proportions of students at the top of the scoring heap.

Authors of the study write that based on what they found, there is "reason for concern about the achievement of high school students." That's putting it mildly. Their findings add yet another layer to the sobering messages in 17-year-olds' flatline trends on NAEP, in the dropout statistics, and in the literature on student engagement that tell us that our high schools, on the whole, are not exactly soaring.

The CEP's findings are based on the test scores of 40 states and the District of Columbia, since they were the ones that had sufficient data over a period of at least three years. The report is the fifth in a series on state test-score trends, but is the only one that focuses on high-school-level achievement.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 6:37 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A framework for common standards in science issued in July by the National Research Council has been handed a grade of B-plus by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in a new report. Among the concerns identified is whether the document provides "undue prominence" to engineering and technology.

The report issued today by the Washington-based think tank gives the framework a solid seven-out-of-seven when it comes to "content and rigor," but also "finds the strong content immersed in much else that could distract, confuse, and disrupt the priorities of framework users, even though substantial portions of the 'much else' have some merit," write Fordham Institute President Chester E. Finn Jr. and senior director Kathleen Porter Magee. (Finn served as an assistant education secretary in the Reagan administration.)

Beyond concerns about the treatment of engineering and technology, the report suggests too much attention goes to "science process" skills. It also raises concerns that the framework's extensive discussion of equity and diversity," especially in its emphasis on differentiating content and pedagogy for some minority groups, risks contradicting the framework's own mandate to frame the same science content for all young people.

The review was conducted for Fordham by Paul R. Gross, a professor emeritus of life sciences at the University of Virginia and a fellow at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He also served as the director and president of the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole from 1978-88. You can learn still more about his background here. He has served as Fordham's lead reviewer of state, national, and international science standards since 2005.

The review comes as late last month, 20 states were named that will play a lead role in helping to craft a set of common standards in science. The states—from California to Kansas and Massachusetts—will work with Achieve, a Washington-based nonprofit managing the effort, as well as a team of 41 writers that includes science teachers, specialists on state standards, and others. And that work is to be guided by the framework released in July from an expert panel named by the congressionally chartered National Research Council.

For a closer look at the NRC framework, check out this EdWeek story. Top priorities in the framework include promoting a greater emphasis of depth over breadth in understanding science and getting young people to continually engage in the practices of both scientific inquiry and engineering design as part of the learning process. Another goal is to promote what the NRC panel calls greater "coherence" in the teaching of science as students progress through school, with the core scientific concepts revisited at multiple grade levels to build on prior learning and help facilitate a deeper understanding.

But now back to the Fordham report. Here are a few excerpts that highlight some of the concerns raised about the framework:

• On the role of engineering:
"Given the meager hours for science in K-12, is this boost for engineering worth the trouble, the distractions, even the poetry? We suspect the presence of institutional or political considerations, and enthusiasm for the E in STEM as the key to national prosperity, beyond purely rational argument. ... The argument for engineering as a full partner in K-12 science content matters; yet as presented here it is weak."

The report also suggests that a similar argument could be made for the inclusion of medicine. "Why not medicine, then?" he writes. "Modern medicine, an applied science like engineering, has art in its practice, like engineering; and today both have deep involvement in creating and using basic science."

• On equity and diversity:
"As the framework notes, 'Tailored instructional perspectives and additional approaches ... may be needed to engage these and other students in the full range of practices described in Chapter 4.' We are urged to teach differently to different students, or to teach different or modified subject matter to all, in aid of removing a defined inequity. Yet trying to do that means abandoning a repeatedly announced goal: to have one optimum set of science standards that applies to all students."

• On teaching the "processes" of science:
"Directly and indirectly, the framework, like its predecessors, is making (scientific) reasoning a part of content, to be part per se and learned, for which standards must be set. 'Scientific reasoning' is a catch phrase in current literature on K-12 science, a major part of science 'processes.' " ...

... But the state of the data does not convince us that the heavy labor of installing process learning per se, as in this framework, is fully justified by the highest standards of evidence. ... This framework does move away from the vagueness of 'inquiry learning' and other constructivist favorites to the more specific science processes. That is a welcome change. But potential confusion remains."

Finn said his organization will review the common science standards themselves when they are issued, but also said it was worth taking a look at the framework that is intended to guide them.

"It seemed to us that it was important to actually evaluate the framework before the standards writers get too far down the path," he said in an interview, noting that no such framework was prepared to guide the development of the common standards in mathematics and English/language arts. "This is like writing a review of a cookbook rather than a restaurant. Nothing has been cooked yet, you can't taste it yet, but we're looking at what the ingredients are and cooking techniques ought to be."

In his closing remarks to the report, Gross turns to a different metaphor.

"If the statute within this sizable block of marble were more deftly hewn, an A grade would be within reach—and may yet be for the standards-writers, so long as their chisels are sharp and their arms strong."

Posted by Erik Robelen at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

There's been a big swirl of conversation recently about whether our schools do right by the most highly skilled students. It was fueled in part by a couple of things (both discussed in my blog post from a couple weeks ago).

One was a recent article in National Affairs by American Enterprise Institute wonk (and EdWeek blogger) Rick Hess, arguing that while focusing on underachieving students is important, that focus has had a cost for "gifted" students.

The other was a recent study by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute that found that the highest achieving students lose altitude over time.

Now Hess and a few other folks are arguing various points of view on this topic in The New York Times' Room For Debate.

The University of Virginia's Carol Ann Tomlinson suggests that it's not just differentiation in the classroom that educators need to think about, but differentiation across a school, to respond to the full range of students' needs. Kansas teacher Cassandra Davis describes the perverse incentives, created by state-mandated proficiency targets, to ignore the most advanced students.

C. Kent McGuire, who until recently headed up Temple University's College of Education, contends that tracking is too often substituted for differentiation because teachers lack the support they need to differentiate well. The Fordham Institute's Mike Petrilli argues that as tracking has disappeared, "gifted" students haven't gotten the challenging instruction they need. Harvard's Paul Peterson outlines a role for technology in gearing instruction to each student's optimal "learning point."

Interesting points of view, each with some disputed assumptions. For instance: There is hardly universal agreement that tracking has disappeared.

And none of the discussants here addresses the beliefs that color the conversation, revealed by the lingering and widespread use of the word "gifted" to describe the most advanced students. The way we think about what makes high-flyers reach their altitude will have a whole lot to do with how we teach them. Likewise, our beliefs about what underlies the struggles of lower-achieving students have everything to do with how we support them.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 9:58 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend