November 2011 Archives

It would be quite an understatement to say that there is intense interest in the common assessments.

Judging by the outpouring of participation and questions we had for our webinar on the topic yesterday, people in the edusphere are craving a whole lot of information that isn't really available yet and are anxious about the many unresolved questions. That makes sense, of course, given the stakes that will be riding on the tests when they become available in 2014.

The presenters were Laura Slover and Joe Willhoft, leaders of the two assessment consortia, PARCC and SMARTER Balanced, respectively. They walked participants through the basics of their test-design ideas and reported on where the projects stand and what we can expect in the months ahead. (The webinar is available on a special page of our website, and the Power Point presentation is available for download, too. To view the webinar, you'll see that if you were a registered participant, you have to log in to see the archived version. If you haven't registered, you have to do so in order to see the archived presentation.)

In the hour we had, we were able to ask Willhoft and Slover only a small fraction of the questions that inundated us before and during the webinar. A sampling of the questions, though, offers interesting insights into what's on people's minds, and the broad range of people who are watching this work very keenly.

Among those listening in yesterday were curriculum, assessment, technology, and content-area specialists from school districts and state education departments; superintendents, principals and classroom teachers; representatives of major education publishing and testing companies; folks from a wide range of advocacy groups; college professors and high-ranking university administrators.

There were long-range policy questions (How will the consortia be funded once the $360 million in Race to the Top funds runs out?) and nitty-gritty implementation questions (Can calculators be used for the PARCC math assessment? What are the plans for essay scoring?).

There were questions that suggested a need for clarification of the assessment dialogue itself, such as this one from an assistant superintendent in a school district: "Is the term 'interim' synonymous with 'benchmark'?" And this one: "What is the difference between formative assessment and classroom instruction?"

Unusually large numbers of questions fell into several key areas, though. One was how the new assessments will be accessible to students with disabilities and those learning English. Another was a vein of concern about districts' and schools' technological capacity to move to large-scale online assessment.

Yet another probed the question of comparability: With two assessment systems, will you really be able to compare the performance of students in a PARCC state with that of students in a SMARTER Balanced state? Another cluster of questions sought clarification of how the tests will be used by higher education: Will they be used for admission? What about for course-placement purposes?

Answers to these buckets of questions are worth listening to for yourselves; some are more nuanced than others, and all are clearly influenced by the early stage of the work.

Another bucket of questions focused, of course, on concrete details about the tests themselves (When will we be able to see prototype test items? When will the test blueprints be available?). The consortia's timelines offered some answers there. But clearly, folks are anxious for far more concrete information than what is currently available. We'll do our best to bring that to you as we get it. But that gap between standards and assessments is not a comfortable place for states, districts, schools, and teachers to find themselves.

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When I was a kid, I would often make a huge mess of my bedroom when I pulled a set of hefty wooden building blocks in various shapes and sizes out of the toy box. I spent hours toiling away on construction projects with these blocks (which are not to be confused with the small square blocks that nestle in your palm). Well, according to The New York Times, these blocks are back in style.

A story published the other day reports on "a renewed faith in unit blocks—those basic, indestructible wooden toys created in the early 1900s—sweeping through some elite swaths of New York's education universe." It notes that while many "progressive" private and public schools have long sworn by blocks, "more traditional institutions are now refocusing on block centers amid worries that academic pressure and technology are squeezing play out of young children's lives."

Studies dating to the 1940s, the story notes, indicate that blocks help children absorb basic math concepts. And a 2007 study found that those with block experience scored significantly better on language acquisition tests.

Trusting that EdWeek surely at some point had taken a look at this phenomenon, I did a quick check of the archives. Sure enough, here's a big takeout on teaching with unit blocks, published in 1989 on edweek.org's Teacher channel.

Back to the Times story, it suggests that "perhaps the hottest pitch of late, particularly to high-stress, high-strung New York City parents is that blocks can build the 21st-century skills essential to success in corporate America."

Watch out corporate America, here I come!

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It looks like they're going to need a bigger table, and some extra chairs, to write those new science standards.

If you thought 20 states was an awful lot to play a "lead" role in crafting the standards, brace yourself. Today, we learned that six more are joining in the fun: Arkansas, Delaware, Illinois, Montana, North Carolina, and Oregon, according to an announcement from Achieve, the Washington-based group facilitating the effort.

"A majority of the states, educating more than 50 percent of our nation's students, have committed to developing the Next Generation Science Standards, and they should be commended," Achieve's president, Michael Cohen, said in the press release.

I should note that when the standards process was first getting under way, we reported that Achieve was planning on having a much smaller group of states play a lead role in writing the standards, though certainly the hope was that most, if not all, states would weigh in and eventually embrace them. (Later, this approach was revised in favor of a "the more the merrier" outlook.)

I should also note that just because a state agrees to join those taking the lead in writing the standards, it's still not committed to adopting them, though the participating states are expected to "give serious consideration to adopting" them, Achieve says.

We also got a couple of announcements today from states about their participation.

"Last year, Oregon joined over 45 other states in adopting the common-core state standards, raising the bar with national learning expectations for English/language arts and mathematics," said Oregon state Superintendent Susan Castillo. "I am excited we are now engaged in the work of developing national, college- and career-ready science standards aligned with the common core."

"Just as Delaware took a leadership role in writing national common-core mathematics and English/language arts standards, it is important for our science educators to have a hand in this groundwork," said that state's secretary of education, Lillian M. Lowery.

The states are working in partnership with the National Research Council, the National Science Teachers Association, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science to develop the new standards. Last summer, an NRC panel of experts wrapped up work on a framework to guide the development of the standards. The framework identifies the core ideas and practices in the natural sciences and engineering that all students should know by the time they graduate. Now, the work under way is looking to put some flesh on those bones.

Drafts of the science standards will be made available for public input "at least twice" during the development process, Achieve says.

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When it comes to common standards, we are pretty much past Adoption Season. (Remember? That was a period of about a year and half in which all but four states adopted the standards.) Now we're in Implementation Season. But if states' and districts' next step is putting the standards into practice, that work isn't exactly flowing across the nation in a rolling wave.

To be clear, there is some very aggressive work going on out there to implement the new standards. But we're also seeing a good number of questions, hesitations, dilemmas, and delays about implementation. A recent case in point was a study by the Center on Education Policy, which found roughly half of school districts reporting that they aren't really moving ahead in key areas—for a variety of reasons—when it comes to common-standards implementation.

The most recent round came in a conference call I had yesterday with the common-core leadership team at ASCD. A longstanding professional-development group, ASCD smelled the coffee on common standards and, like many other groups, began resituating itself to provide help to educators as they figure out how to put the new standards into practice. Lead strategist Efrain Mercado Jr. and policy director David Griffith are heading up ASCD's common-core team.

ASCD is holding summits in four states—Arkansas, Colorado, North Carolina, and Utah—to gauge what educators need to move the common standards from paper to practice. One of their findings is that far too few teachers understand the standards.

"Implementation seems to have made its way down to the district level, but often not to the school level and clearly not to the classroom level," Griffith said. "There is a huge need for information, and also resources, about what this is going to look like. And overhanging everything is what the assessments are going to look like."

Most of you already know that two big groups of states are working with federal Race to the Top funds to design assessments for the common standards. Those tests aren't due out until the 2014-15 academic year. (EdWeek is hosting a webinar today, at 2 p.m. Eastern time, by the way, that will feature leaders of those two consortia explaining the work they're doing. Click here to register and participate, or to go back later and watch the archived webinar.)

What Griffith and Mercado have found in the state summits they've hosted so far is that while some states and districts are forging ahead with curriculum, and even revised or new tests to reflect the new standards, others are hanging back, uncertain of how and whether to take those steps. Much of that is because of the gap between the standards—available now, and adopted by nearly all states—and the tests, which won't be a fully known quantity for three more years.

"The uncertainty over the assessment pieces has kind of of paralyzed a lot of people," Griffith said. "It's given them an excuse not to do anything until they see what direction the testing is going to take. We've been telling people not to do this, that they need to get their ducks in a row and move ahead."

"It's confusing because we have accountability tied to current state assessments, yet we are moving toward new standards, but the assessments won't be ready until 2014, and [teachers] have to teach to them now," Mercado said. "How do they impact evaluations between now and then? How do they impact school accountability between now and then? It's left people with their heads on a swivel, like, 'Where do we look?'"

As ASCD talks with members, it's emphasizing that while the common standards cover only math and English/language arts, implementing them should be part of a "whole child" approach to education. That means building in the necessary supports for students to meet the ramped-up expectations, and making sure all students have access to a "broad and enriched curriculum," Griffith said. It means infusing the so-called "21st century skills" into learning, and revamping teacher preparation and professional development to encompass all these things.

ASCD plans to release lesson plans and other resources, based on the feedback it gets from members and its four focus states sometime in 2012, Griffith said. The group will also continue its series of webinars on the common standards.

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We've written recently about the U.S. Department of Education's efforts to fuel innovation in education, but that's not the only federal agency engaged in this arena. The National Science Foundation recently issued seven grants—worth about $5 million in total—to support research projects intended to "transform" STEM learning.

Work is now getting underway on the set of winning proposals, which include an online "iPuzzle" project to help middle schoolers learn math, a plan to use "green" school buildings as a context for STEM learning, and research on a set of redesigned STEM-focused high schools in North Carolina.

"The intent was to get proposals that were cutting edge ... and involve different models of schooling," said John Cherniavsky, the acting director of the NSF's Division of Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings.

The awards were part of a new strand of grantmaking at NSF called Transforming STEM Learning. It reflects a partnership among several NSF programs within the agency's research on learning division. The grant recipients were selected this summer, Cherniavsky told me, but there was no formal, public announcement, unlike with the recent news release on the federal Investing in Innovation program (dubbed i3) at the Education Department.

A second round of NSF grants will be awarded next year.

Here's a quick synopsis of the first batch:

• Organization: American Association for the Advancement of Science
Amount: $499,000
Project: Transform middle school math and science curriculum through an initiative that leverages the growing existence and interest in environmentally sustainable "green" school buildings as a context and topic for student learning.

• Organization: Education Development Center
Grant Amount: $499,000
Project: Develop a model for supporting student engagement in learning math through iPuzzle, an interactive, online "puzzle environment" that could be used in a single networked classroom or on the Web for use at multiple schools using different computing devices and platforms.

• Organization: Loyola University of Chicago
Amount: $500,000
Project: Engage high school students in the pursuit of learning science through a blended instructional model that will deeply involve family and community, and that leads to the discovery of environmentally sustainable resources and practices.

• Organization: New York Hall of Science
Amount: $500,000
Project: Support the creation and testing of two innovative science games to advance student learning about frictional force and linear motion. The focus is on rigorous, highly motivating, data-collection activities conducted in museum and playground settings, with in-depth data analysis and additional scientific investigation in the classroom.

• Organization: Research Triangle Institute
Amount: $2 million
Project: Conduct a study of ten redesigned STEM high schools in North Carolina, with the goal of learning how the creation of innovative STEM learning environments can help motivate students to become active learners with the capacity to think critically and solve real-world problems.

• Organization: TERC Inc.
Amount: $500,000
Project: Research and develop a digital gaming environment, called Arcadia: The Next Generation, that attracts and retains a player audience and supports high-quality science learning.

• Organization: TERC Inc.
Amount: $500,000
Project: Design and develop an innovative approach to science learning at the secondary level that integrates practices of science and art, with a focus on water-related issues of local and global significance.

To be sure, at a total of $5 million, the set of NSF grants does not have near the firepower of the $150 million reserved for the recent federal i3 awards (which included a number of STEM-focused plans). But it's an intriguing set of projects.

I should note that earlier this year, as part of a special report, Science Learning Outside the Classroom, I examined in greater depth the NSF's role in particular in promoting informal science learning. In researching that story, I was struck by the interesting array of activities the science agency has funded in recent years, from a set of exhibits at the Golden Gate Bridge to educate millions of visitors on the science and engineering behind the San Francisco landmark to work in Washington State helping local Girl Scout troop leaders get trained in teaching children about scientific inquiry. The NSF even provided $700,000 for an experimental theater troupe in New York City to produce a musical on climate change and conservation (and in the process, drew the ire of some political conservatives in the blogosphere).

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Arthur Rimbaud, the 19th-century French poet, was apparently still a teenager when he produced some of his best known works. A new poetry prize announced today aims to spotlight a new generation of young talent, with the idea that these high school poets will serve as "literary ambassadors" who encourage their peers to explore and develop their creative side.

Five outstanding high school poets will be chosen each year under the new program developed by a public-private alliance that includes the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities.

The award will go to students whose work demonstrates "exceptional creativity" and dedication to their craft, according to the announcement. The winners will receive a $5,000 academic award and be asked to promote the appreciation of poetry and the importance of creative expression through readings and workshops at libraries, museums, and schools.

"What you learn through reading and writing poetry will stay with you throughout your life," first lady Michelle Obama said in the press release. "It will spark your imagination and broaden your horizons and even help your performance in the classroom."

The National Student Poets Program is a collaboration of the White House advisory panel, as well as the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services and the nonprofit Alliance for Young Artists & Writers.

The presidential panel in May issued a report that highlighted the potential the arts hold to bolster student engagement and academic achievement.

"As the data consistently shows, students who are engaged with the arts do better in school and life," said Rachel Goslins, the executive director of the presidential advisory panel. "We can think of no better way to demonstrate these benefits than by engaging a class of talented and promising students to work with their peers and lead by example."

The first batch of winners will be announced next summer and introduced at the Library of Congress' National Book Festival in September.

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Little by little, states have been deciding which common-assessment approach to go with: Will it be the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or the SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium?

Ohio has made its choice: It's going with PARCC.

As we've told you, most states have chosen one or the other assessment consortium by now. A few, however, have insisted on being polygamous, maintaining membership in both consortia until they decide which approach is best for them. Ohio, until last week, had been one of the polygamous states.

The states that have kept feet in both consortia have had to do so as "advisory" or "participating" states, which means they can participate in conversations about the testing systems, but not set policy. Becoming a "governing" member of a consortium—as Ohio has now done with PARCC—means a state gets the full monty of privileges, including a voice in test design.

You can check on which states are governing and participating members in each consortium by checking PARCC's state list, and SMARTER Balanced's state list. (PARCC's hasn't yet been updated to show the change in Ohio's status, though.)

Six states are still participating in both consortia: Colorado, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Kentucky, and South Carolina. Wyoming is participating—but not governing—in SMARTER Balanced. Five states are not participating in either group: Texas, Virginia, Alaska, Minnesota, and Nebraska.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The National Council of Teachers of English was asked by a group of its members to take a strong stand against the common standards, but it declined to do so.

The decision unfolded at the organization's annual convention this past weekend in Chicago. As it does every year, the group accepts proposed resolutions from members, which are then debated at the annual meeting and considered for adoption by its resolutions committee. Those that secure two-thirds approval become policy.

This year, one of the resolutions called on the NCTE to "oppose the adoption of national standards as a concept," and, specifically, oppose the set of standards drafted as part of an initiative spearheaded by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. (As you know, all but four states have already adopted those standards.)

The resolution was put forth by a group led by activist Susan Ohanian and retired education professor Stephen Krashen. When they introduced the same resolution last year, it passed only as a "sense of the house" resolution, meaning it's not binding policy on the NCTE.

Adoption of the resolution this year would have been at odds with NCTE's current policy, which is officially neutral on the standards themselves, but pledges to support teachers whose states and districts are implementing them. Many of the sessions at the conference focused on helping teachers understand and teach to the new standards.

Barbara Cambridge, the director of NCTE's Washington office, told me at the conference that the resolution, as adopted, is consistent with NCTE's existing policies.

The final resolution was a blended version of the Krashen/Ohanian resolution and another, longer resolution sponsored by Michael Shaw, an associate professor of education at St. Thomas Aquinas College, in Sparkill, N.Y.

The Shaw resolution asked the NCTE to declare a vote of no-confidence in U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, which the final resolution did not do. A good deal of the rest of the language in the Shaw resolution made it into the final resolution, albeit in edited form.

Interestingly, one of the pieces that made it through to the final without much editing involved high-stakes testing.That sentence says the NCTE will call on the Obama administration to "end high-stakes testing and the evaluation of teachers and schools based on students' test scores."

Top NCTE officials told me that this poses a slightly awkward shift from current policy, which says that teachers and schools shouldn't be evaluated based solely on students' test scores.

Cambridge told me that she could see how it could be interpreted as opposition to using test scores in any way in school or teacher evaluations. But she expressed confidence that when viewed in context of all of NCTE's policy positions, its stance on testing remains quite clear: Test scores shouldn't be the sole basis for judgments about schools' or teachers' performance.

Another chunk of proposed language posed potential problems for the NCTE, but those were avoided when the wording was tweaked. Proposed phrasing, at one point in the discussion, would have asked the NCTE to "publicly voice its critique of and opposition to educational reform policies that mandate standards, curriculum, and means of student assessments, particularly those that adversely affect social and educational equity."

That pretty much sounds like the NCTE would have had to oppose any policy that requires standards, curriculum, and tests, with particular opposition to things that undermine equity.

The final version calls on the NCTE to "publicly voice its critique of and opposition to educational reform policies that mandate standards, curriculum, and means of assessment that adversely affect social and educational equity."

So the NCTE wouldn't have to oppose standards, curriculum, or tests unless it views them as producing social or educational inequity. That's a comfortable place for NCTE, Cambridge said, since it's consistent with its neutrality on common standards.

The business of blending the two resolutions, however, left some of their most passionate sponsors pretty peeved.

"The correct term is pissed off," Krashen told me at the conference. "My first reaction, when I saw the final [version], was, 'Where's my resolution?' Because it had basically disappeared."

Official NCTE process allows for such blending; it's done routinely by the resolutions committee to minimize redundancy and also to avoid conflicts with policies adopted by another body: the NCTE's executive committee, which oversees things like legislative policy.

The resolutions committee has tremendous discretion in deciding which resolutions to move to the floor for discussion and how they will be edited, NCTE officials told me. And the committee blended the Shaw and Ohanian/Krashen resolutions the way it saw fit.

I can't give you a tally on the final resolution. NCTE officials said they only do a per-person count when a show of hands (cards, to be specific) suggests it's a close vote. When it's so lopsided as to be obvious, no count is made, and that is what happened this year. The resolution passed with strong support.

An open question, however, is what proportion of NCTE's 35,000 members share the sentiments in the resolution (or the original, proposed resolutions, for that matter). Only about 250 members were at the business meeting to vote on the final resolution. That's the way it works with NCTE resolutions; you have to be present to vote on them.

The final resolution is policy now, just like the resolutions approved by the executive committee.

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A new international initiative, to be financed at more than $20 million, aims to foster literacy among impoverished children in developing nations.

The new effort is a partnership of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Australian Agency for International Development, and World Vision. In addition, the U.S. Department of Education will support the campaign, dubbed All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development.

"Teaching children to read in primary school translates to improved health outcomes and economic growth in developing countries," USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah said in a press release. "Through this partnership, we are helping to create scalable, sustainable, cost-effective innovations that will improve reading outcomes for millions of children in low-income families."

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Chicago

The National Council of Teachers of English has banded together with nearly two dozen other groups to create a new literacy center that aims to be a resource and point of collaboration for teachers of all disciplines.

Announced today at the NCTE's annual convention here, the new National Center for Literacy Education will offer a Web-based hub of information and resources for teachers, called the Literacy in Learning Exchange. It will offer research, expert commentary, and case studies of schools—including video clips and work samples—that are using fresh, effective approaches to literacy. (The Exchange website is just getting up and running; its pages are being built as we speak.)

To be part of its network of "literacy in every classroom sites," schools or districts must have a collaborative "community of practice" approach to literacy. The center will use this network to conduct research on what works and share the results with the network members and with policymakers.

A key aspect of the project is that it envisions literacy work across all subjects, reflecting an emphasis of the common-core standards.

The Ball Foundation is taking the lead in funding the project. The 22 other partners include education groups, such as the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, and the Association for Career and Technical Education, and philanthropies, such as the Panasonic and Verizon Foundations.

Collaborative teacher teams are a pillar of NCTE's world view, as reflected in its education policy platform.

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Twelve museums and libraries have won a national competition to develop "21st-century learning labs" that will use digital media to help young people "move beyond consuming content to making" it, according to a press release announcing the victors.

The announcement was made today by the federal Institute for Museum and Library Services and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which are jointly funding the initiative. The eight libraries and four museums each won a portion of $1.2 million in grants.

The lab competition was inspired by a teen space at the Chicago Public Library called YOUMedia, as well as innovations in science and technology centers, the press release explains.

"Digital media are profoundly influencing young people's lives, their behavior, their civic participation, and where and how they learn," said Robert Gallucci, the president of the MacArthur Foundation. "These innovative new teen labs are designed to provide young people with engaging and diverse opportunities for learning and exploration beyond the classroom."

Locations for the 12 new learning labs are: Allentown, Pa.; Columbia, Md.; Columbus, Ohio; Houston; Kansas City, Mo.; Nashville; New York City; Philadelphia; Portland, Ore.; San Francisco; St. Paul, Minn.; and Thornton, Colo.

Teenagers in the labs will use both digital and traditional media that promote creativity, critical thinking, and hands-on learning, the press release says. The labs will connect teens to mentors and peers, as well as provide access to information through online social networks so that they can pursue their interests more deeply.

The 12 winners were selected out of a pool of 98 applicants from 32 states. Application materials for a second round of grants will be available in the spring.

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A few months back, we noted that the effort to develop common standards in science sparked something of an outcry from some sectors that felt left out. In an effort aimed at addressing those concerns, the National Research Council later this week is hosting a two-day meeting to examine "the state of practice and research" in the teaching of the social, behavioral, and economic (SBE) sciences at the K-12 level, and to explore "future directions and possible roles" for the NRC in supporting the teaching of these subjects.

Here's the agenda for the Nov. 17-18 meeting in Washington. A few of the questions to be considered include:

• What are the goals and rationales for including SBE sciences in K-12 education?

• To what extent (and how) are the SBE sciences currently included in K-12 education and in state standards?

• What are options for strengthening and expanding school coverage of in these areas across the K-12 curriculum?

As we explained in a July blog post, many organizations representing the social and behavioral sciences had complained that their disciplines should have been included as "core sciences" in the draft blueprint for new science standards developed by the NRC. In the final version of the blueprint, the NRC panel acknowledged some of the concerns and promised to hold a workshop this fall to take a closer look at the SBE sciences.

Now, that meeting is at hand. The question, of course, is whether the gathering will lead to further action.

For more on this event, keep an eye on our Inside School Research blog. My colleague Sarah D. Sparks is attending the meeting and will likely be sharing some of what she learns.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

STEM education is getting a boost from the U.S. Department of Education in the latest round of the federal Race to the Top program.

If states want a slice of the $200 million prize, they must develop plans aimed squarely at improving education in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math), my colleague Michele McNeil explains over at Politics K-12. Apparently, only the nine runner-up finalists from last year's Race to the Top competition are eligible for an award this time.

Today, the Education Department spelled out the rules for applying in this, the third round of Race to the Top. To qualify, states must meet nine requirements, or "assurances". Based on a look at those requirements, Michele says South Carolina would seem to be out of the running. So that leaves Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

Available funding will allow for awards ranging from around $12 million to $49 million, depending on state population, the department says.

The news comes as STEM education was a big winner last week in the second round of another Education Department competition, the federal Investing in Innovation program.

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A new report makes the case for restructuring the school calendar to allow more learning time for science, and through a set of case studies seeks to explain promising approaches to make the most of that extra time.

"Together, these schools offer a glimpse of what is possible when schools and districts make science a priority and when they furnish students and teachers with the time they need to build dynamic science programs," says the report from the National Center on Time & Learning, a research and advocacy group.

(Released today, the report was supported by funding from the Noyce Foundation, which recently provided a grant to Education Week to produce a special report on science learning outside the classroom.)

The report issued today by the National Center on Time & Learning laments the science achievement levels of U.S. students overall and cites studies suggesting that science instruction in the elementary grades has increasingly been squeezed out of the curriculum.

"At just the moment when science education is reaching a crisis, the dedication of public schools to teaching the subject is declining, for the simple reason that science has been edged out as a priority," says the report. It notes in particular the influence of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, with its emphasis on improving test scores in reading and mathematics. (Of course, as many readers of this blog know, similar concerns have also been voiced about shrinking coverage of other disciplines in public schools, from the arts to history and civics.)

The case studies highlight five regular public schools that serve large populations of disadvantaged students, including Matthew J. Kuss Middle School in Fall River, Mass. In September 2006, as part of a state Expanded Learning Time initiative, the school day was extended by about 100 minutes per day, the report explains. Some of that time, needless to say, was reserved for science.

One initiative to enhance science instruction was a partnership with the Urban Ecology Institute. Through that, teachers have received professional development in running an outdoor classroom, conducting field studies with students, and teaching them to use hand-held GPS units and digital cameras. The work is tied to learning about the health of the Taunton River and its immediate environment. Because the work is incorporated into the core science curriculum, every student in the school participated in field studies this past academic year, the report says.

In addition to getting five, 90-minute core academic science periods each week, all students must take a 90-minute science elective once a week. Recent offerings included astronomy, forensics, marine ecology, and a class called "Science of the Titanic."

There's plenty more detail on this school and the others in the new report, titled Strengthening Science Education: The Power of More Time to Deepen Inquiry and Engagement. But I'll stop there other than to briefly mention that the report says Kuss Middle School's 8th graders have seen improved science achievement on the state's MCAS exam over the past few years.

The report identifies a number of "key successful practices" across all five schools, from integrating more hands-on learning activities and facilitating more scientific discourse in the classroom to creating connections for students to science careers and role models through collaborations with outside partners.

In the end, the National Center on Time & Learning contends: "Without fundamentally restructuring the school calendar—particularly at the elementary and middle school levels—to add more learning time and prioritizing science during that time, most American students will simply not spend enough time to become either proficient in, or excited about, science."

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Judging from the traffic on our website, many people are interested in the redesign of the GED, the biggest revamping the test has undergone in its history.

With the interest come questions. In the comments section, and my email inbox, I'm hearing concern about the for-profit arrangement created to oversee the redesign. (As has been widely reported in EdWeek and elsewhere, the American Council on Education, the nonprofit that originated the GED, teamed up with Pearson to do that work.)

In a document answering questions about the partnership, the GED Testing Service explains that reworking the GED system required greater resources than the ACE could manage on its own.

"The investments necessary to increase the speed and amplitude of our response to the growing problem called for outside-the-box thinking," the joint venture says. "This work could no longer be considered the exclusive domain of nonprofit organizations and the government if real results were to be attained."

The ACE, in short, needed Pearson's "leading technology and test-administration expertise," the document says. Pearson's Randy Trask told the Chronicle of Higher Education that the company "could not sit on the sidelines" during such a potentially important project. The ACE's gross revenue from the GED Testing Service exceeded $17 million last year, according to the Chronicle.

The for-profit element in the partnership drew the notice of The Washington Monthly, which remarked that "the potential to make money has been an unqualified success" in efforts to improve education.

Texas Monthly included the ACE/Pearson partnership when it did a major piece exploring concerns about Pearson's reach in that state—and what one lobbyist quoted in the story called the "business education complex."

I asked the GED Testing Service whether the profit-making element of the arrangement raises questions about the new GED. Its executive vice president, Nicole Chestang, said in an email that the joint ownership and governance, by the ACE and Pearson, "allows GED Testing Service to deliver on its mission to help prepare more adults for college and careers." Because revamping the test as well as preparation materials and other supports was "monumental," she said, the ACE couldn't do it alone and needed a strategic partner.

I asked for a description of the profit-making arrangement, but no answer to that question was included in the company's response.

I also asked if the company anticipated a change in the price of the new GED in 2014, either for those who take the tests, or for states, which lease it from the GED Testing Service. Chestang said that it was too early to know whether the price would change, but said the company recognized the importance of keeping "costs lean and the test accessible."

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

National guidelines for the study of foreign languages are being revised to make explicit the links to the common-core standards, the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages announced this week.

The news came just days before the council hosts its annual conference, with the theme "Empowering Language Educators Through Collaboration." The Nov. 18-20 convention is in Denver this year.

The council has already issued a draft document on its website showing how the existing national standards for foreign languages, issued in 1996, align with the common standards in English/language arts and mathematics. In addition, the organization is planning to develop a new set of what Executive Director Marty Abbott calls "scenarios" linked to the standards that are in keeping with the common standards.

(Abbott last month was named the new executive director of ACTFL. Since 2004, she was the group's director of education.)

The scenarios, Abbott explained in an interview, are essentially "snapshots of what's going on in a language classroom that reflect the standards. ... In 1996, when we released the first document, there were scenarios. Now we want to update them to reflect what's going on in today's classrooms."

In a press release, Gene Wilhoit of the Council of Chief State School Officers praised the effort to revise the standards documents by ACTFL, in partnership with the Standards Collaborative Board (a coalition of a variety of groups involved with language teaching), which led the initial creation of the standards, the National Association of District Supervisors of Foreign Languages, and the National Council of State Supervisors for Languages.

"The [common standards] make clear that literacy is the responsibility of all disciplines," said Wilhoit. "I applaud the efforts of ACTFL and its partnering world-languages organizations to identify explicit practices in learning languages that make a direct contribution to the development of literacy for all students.

In March, ACTFL unveiled a 21st Century Skills Map, which it developed with the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. This document showcases learning activities that incorporate such skills as collaboration, responsibility, media literacy, and technology for students.

Also, readers may be interested to know that ACTFL has just published a new report: "A Decade of Foreign Language Standards: Impact, Influence, and Future Directions." In a nutshell, that report makes the case that the national standards have indeed had significant impact in multiple areas of the profession, from classroom teaching to professional development.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I wanted to revisit the recent NAEP results one more time, this time with an eye toward the federal push for states to meet inclusion targets for students with disabilities and English-language learners. Basically, most states did boost their representation of these populations in the latest round of math and reading testing, but many still have far to go to reach the inclusion targets, my colleagues Lesli Maxwell and Nirvi Shah report in an EdWeek story posted today.

Overall, they note, the numbers of 4th and 8th grade students who took the NAEP and were identified as having a disability or being an English-language learner rose in 2011, continuing a trend that began more than a decade ago when NAEP began allowing students to use accommodations, such as additional time, when taking the exams.

Among the states with high exclusion rates, and where the figures actually climbed, the story says, are Kentucky and Oklahoma.

In Kentucky, for instance, 63 percent of the 4th graders identified as English-learners in the state's testing sample were excluded from the reading assessment in 2011, up 20 percentage points from two years ago. Among the targeted test-takers in Oklahoma, 60 percent of 8th graders identified as having disabilities were excluded from the math exam, as were 51 percent of 4th graders. The Oklahoma numbers represent double-digit increases over the exclusion rates in 2009.

For more analysis of the Kentucky situation, check out this blog post from Richard Innes at the Bluegrass Institute.

For the big picture on the latest NAEP results, see our recent EdWeek story. Also, we followed up here by highlighting some of the reaction.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

We heard that common-standards opponents on the Alabama board of education had drafted a resolution to rescind that state's adoption and had scheduled a vote for yesterday. We checked on it after the board meeting, and learned that the resolution was voted down 6-3. That means that the November 2010 adoption stands.

The most intriguing thing about this is that the state's governor, Robert Bentley, drafted the resolution and was one of the three board members voting for it. (In Alabama, the governor sits as president of the state school board.) The voting majority clearly wasn't intimidated by his position as chief executive; one member, Randy McKinney, even introduced a competing resolution supporting the standards and asserting the board's power to make decisions about them.

Voting with the state's Republican governor were board members Betty Peters and Stephanie Bell, who have been pressing for some time to get the standards-adoption rescinded. Peters had hoped that an influx of new board members might boost the chances of that, but she told me after the meeting that this clearly wasn't the case.

"New members, same attitudes," she said on the phone.

As reported by the local news media, Bentley opposes the standards as an overstep by the federal government, since the U.S. Department of Education's Race to the Top grants favored states that had adopted them.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, has released its final content frameworks for the common standards. And the newsiest thing about the document is this: The consortium is going to create content frameworks for grades K-2.

In a document describing the key strands of feedback on the content frameworks, PARCC said that one of the biggest demands was for K-2 frameworks that dovetail with the guidance the frameworks already offer for grades 3 and above. The consortium is already working on formative-assessment tools for K-2, but said it will also now develop content frameworks, to be issued in 2012.

If you're lost already, take a look at my blog post and my story on the content frameworks. In a nutshell, the frameworks are an attempt to capture the key ideas in the common standards to guide curriculum developers, teachers, and test developers.

The "content specifications" issued by the other assessment group, the SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium, or SBAC, are also discussed in the story. They are a bit different from PARCC's content frameworks, but both documents begin to put some meat on the bones of the two groups' visions of the tests they are working on.

SMARTER Balanced's content specifications came out in draft form in August, and appear to be still undergoing public comment and revision. Finals had been expected out in October, but a revised timeline has now stretched that to mid-to-late November. PARCC's content frameworks came out in August, too. It extended the feedback period a bit, and now they're final. You can see the updated versions on the group's website.

So what's changed between the first drafts and the finals? On the math side, PARCC says it shortened the document by nearly a third and tried to simplify "technical terminology" that reviewers said made the thing hard to understand. Consortium folks tried to clarify confusion about what concepts and skills were being emphasized and whether the frameworks were tacitly giving teachers permission to ignore some standards.

In response to another strand of reviewer feedback, PARCC also attempts to offer more specifics to guide creation of math courses at the high school level, an area it admits has been "challenging." They don't come right out and say it here, but one of the challenges is political: taking steps toward more specificity while steering clear of dictating curriculum. What PARCC does say is that it tries hard in the revised draft to provide "initial, high-level guidance" about courses without specifying all their contents.

On the literacy side of the house, PARCC said it got a lot of requests for content frameworks for grade 12. It won't do that, but it will—as it has said all along—create "bridge courses" that will beef up seniors' readiness for college.

Most of the issues with the literacy frameworks centered on balancing areas of emphasis and being clear about intent. For instance, a goodly chunk of those who reviewed them apparently complained that their emphasis on "close reading" of text downplayed the importance of students being able to move between multiple texts and across disciplines. Another chunk criticized them for de-emphasizing the role of imaginative literature, in favor of informative text. Yet other readers took PARCC to task for not being clear enough that multimedia text types were included in references to "text." Additionally, the consortium tried to respond to criticism that narrative writing was being downplayed in favor of writing to persuade or inform.

All of the feedback is intriguing, of course, since it reflects larger debates about what is in the standards themselves.

But when it comes to the public-comment-and-revision process itself—in a publicly funded project—it would have been even more informative to see the disaggregated input.

It's one thing to describe the sorts of folks who provided feedback ("educators, principals, superintendents, higher education faculty, school board members, parents, and students."). It's another to be able to interpret the feedback based on who gave it (without identifying names, of course). For instance, hearing a math teacher say that the math section is too bogged down in technical terminology is quite a different matter from hearing a parent level the same criticism.

It was very kind of PARCC to summarize the 1,000 responses for us. But I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Why not let us see it for ourselves?

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The U.S. Department of Education today announced 23 finalists in line to win a grant under the "Investing in Innovation" contest, and STEM education is well-represented in the mix. (Important caveat: All applicants must secure a private match of a portion of their grant to get the federal aid.)

In fact, the largest single grant is expected to go to Old Dominion University Research Foundation, based in Norfolk, Va. It requested nearly $25 million for a "scale-up" grant aimed at providing high-need middle schoolers with increased access to challenging math courses.

For the big picture on this second round of the federal competition, dubbed "i3," check out my guest blog post over at Politics K-12. Also, just last week we provided an overview of some of the STEM-focused applications. I should note STEM was a very popular topic among applicants. One reason for that may be that STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education was given special emphasis in this round by the department, as it was identified as an "absolute priority." (I'll explain what this means later.)

Before I highlight the Education Department's picks in the STEM realm, here's just a very quick primer for those not familiar with the i3 program. It was established with funding from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and extended by Congress earlier this year as part of the fiscal 2011 budget. The program seeks to find innovative and promising education strategies that also have a good record of success. Awards this time range from up to $3 million for "development" grants to as much as $25 million for the "scale-up" award. The bigger the award, the more evidence of past success is required.

Five of the 23 successful applications identified "promoting STEM education" as an "absolute priority" in their application. And those plans accounted for a full one-third of the nearly $150 million jackpot. In addition, the department notes that three other applications selected include a strong STEM focus, even though they did not identify STEM as the "absolute priority."

So, who else won? And what are they planning to do?

In addition to Old Dominion, here's a very quick overview of the other four applicants selected that identified STEM education as their "absolute priority."

• Applicant: National Math and Science Initiative
Amount Requested: $15 million
Project: Scale and replicate a program that aims to increase the number of students passing AP exams in math, science, and English in order to boost student achievement and college-readiness in the STEM subjects.

• Applicant: New York Hall of Science
Amount Requested: $3 million
Project: Develop, implement, and evaluate a new system of technologies, called SciGames, designed to bridge formal classroom and informal playground science learning environments.

• Applicant: Baltimore City Public Schools
Amount Requested: $3 million
Project: Evaluate and refine the district's Middle School STEM Summer Learning Program, which aims to provide high-need students with additional out-of-school time focused on math instruction and robotics.

• Applicant: New York City Board of Education
Amount Requested: $3 million
Project: Develop and evaluate the district's "InnovateNYC" network of schools. (I'll be honest, I read the summary of this grant request several times and still don't really understand what they're planning to do other than promote "innovations" in STEM education. But I assume the folks reviewing the applications do!)

I should note that an Education Department said while the agency's final grant awards may not exactly match the requested figures, they're definitely in the same ballpark.

Now onto the three successful applications that the department highlighted as having a strong STEM focus, even as it was not the "absolute priority."

• Applicant: New Visions for Public Schools
Amount Requested: $12.9 million
Project: Create the Accessing Algebra Through Inquiry project to drive student achievement in 30 high-need secondary schools.

• Applicant: The College Board
Amount Requested: $3 million
Project: Expand a program that helps high-need students succeed in AP biology through "direct, actionable feedback that research shows to be effective in changing student outcomes."

• Applicant: KnowledgeWorks
Amount Requested: $3 million
Project: Proposes to create two STEM-focused "New Tech High Schools" in South Carolina, with an emphasis on serving disadvantaged students in rural communities.

As in the first round of i3, the applicants were reviewed and rated by a set of independent peer reviewers convened by the Department of Education.

One key change this year was that the department added two new categories to the "absolute priority" list: promoting STEM education, and improving achievement and graduation rates for rural school districts. Basically, every applicant was required to select one of the five "absolute" priorities. In addition to STEM and rural education, the other three priorities are innovations that: support effective teachers and principals; complement the implementation of high standards and high-quality assessments; and turn around persistently low-performing schools.

Out of the 587 applicants in this round of i3 grants, 162 identified STEM as the "absolute priority," more than any other single category. As if readers of this blog need a reminder, clearly STEM is a pretty popular issue in education (and political) circles right now.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 8:59 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

With a fresh round of national test data released last week for reading and math, a variety of analysts have sought to weigh in. I'll highlight a few examples I've come across. (For the full EdWeek treatment, see my story from last week.)

First, the National Journal today posted three separate opinion pieces, including from Michael Petrilli at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, Sandy Kress, a former education aide to President George W. Bush, and former Arizona schools chief Lisa Graham Keegan.

Kress cautions against missing the good news in the results when taking the long-term perspective. For one, he notes that even as achievement gaps have proven very difficult to close, both black and Hispanic students have made significant gains over time (a point we also made in the EdWeek story last week). He noted for instance, that in math, students of color are achieving, on average, at roughly two-and-a-half grade levels above where they performed in 1992. The biggest area for concern, he said, is reading.

Kress concludes: "Yes, let's be sober about where we are and acknowledge how very much more we need to do to reach our goals. But let's also be true about and appreciate the gains we've made."

Petrilli, meanwhile, wonders whether the 8th grade gains in reading could be attributed in part to the federal Reading First program, which was in its 'heyday' in the mid 2000s (but was eliminated a couple of years ago). He notes, for instance, that the 8th graders who made the greatest progress since the early 2000s were the lowest-achievers—"the very population Reading First was designed to help."

Richard Innes from the Bluegrass Institute argues in a blog post that Kentucky's 4th and 8th grade scores in reading are "probably untrustworthy." The reason? The large exclusion rate for students with disabilities.

(For those not familiar with this issue of inclusion/exclusion, students are selected to participate in NAEP based on a sampling procedure designed to yield a representative sample. Once selected, students with disabilities or those identified as English-language learners may be offered accommodations or excluded altogether. States and jurisdictions vary in their proportions of special-needs students and in their policies on inclusion and the use of accommodations.)

Innes notes that while, across the nation, the exclusion rate for participation on NAEP has declined over time, it has actually increased in Kentucky. The national rate was 3 percent in 2011 for 4th grade reading, he said, while in Kentucky it was 8 percent. (That is, 8 percent of ALL students initially selected for testing in Kentucky were students with disabilities that the state chose to exclude from the testing. That level was tied as the highest with Maryland and New Jersey.)

"Very simply, Kentucky excluded eight out of every 100 students from the 2011 4th grade NAEP reading assessment," he writes. "Those excluded students as a group would unquestionably score very low on NAEP had they been allowed to participate. In fact, ... most of those students probably can't read at all and would likely receive close to a nonperformance score if they were presented with a NAEP test booklet."

Kentucky's 8th grade exclusion rate was also among the highest across states, at 7 percent.

Also, over at Learning the Language, my colleague Lesli Maxwell looks at student achievement among English-language learners, including some discussion of exclusion rates for those students.

At the Quick and the Ed, Kevin Carey of Education Sector offers some initial thoughts, including the point that amid the economic recession, "it's good to see that student achievement in reading and math appears not to have suffered."

Taking the larger, historic perspective in math, he writes: "Long-term NAEP trends in mathematics, particularly in elementary school, put the lie to any assertion that significant improvements to the national education system are impossible."

Carey also notes that, when comparing the 2009 and 2011 results, "states were far more likely to get better than get worse. Thirteen states improved their 8th-grade math scores; one declined. Ten states improved their 8th-grade reading scores; none declined. This is what you would expect from a federal system of government where most of the educational money and decision-making power remains in the states. It suggests that state leaders can take steps to improve education, but many are not."

Meanwhile, over at the new Sputnik blog (an independent opinion blog hosted at edweek.org), Robert Slavin homes in on the flat 4th grade reading scores.

"Writing about flat NAEP scores is like writing about the sun rising," says Slavin. "There is nothing new or exciting about this news. ... It is time we focus intensely on scaling up evidence-based successful practices. Our kids deserve, and our economy needs, a laser focus on changing these sadly predictable outcomes."

Posted by Erik Robelen at 2:55 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

We're learning more about Chicago's work to report an array of college-readiness metrics on its high schools.

A couple of weeks ago, we told you about a Chicago newspaper report that said the district would soon be factoring things like college enrollment rates into decisions about school intervention and closure.

That piqued our interest, especially in light of the big ouches we're hearing as New York City starts basing high schools' ratings in part on college-readiness metrics.

So we gave the Chicago Public Schools a call. Jennifer Cheatham, the district's chief instructional officer, explained that the school report cards are for parent information only; the data in them is not what forms the basis of district judgments about whether schools need intervention, consolidation, or closure. Those decisions are based on the criteria listed in Chicago's "performance policy," Cheatham told me.

Why are we quibbling about this? Because if the district is going to start basing school-closure decisions on stuff like the percentage of students who enroll in college, there could be some serious bumps ahead. So it's worth taking a look at what the district is reporting to parents in the report cards, on the one hand, and the criteria it considers when it evaluates schools, on the other.

The report cards, described in an official statement and in a four-page graphic, cover all grade levels. But since we're talking about college readiness here, let's look at the sorts of things the district is now reporting to parents at the middle school and high school levels.

At the high school level, you can see that the report cards disclose each school's ACT scores (which are required of all juniors as part of the statewide Prairie State Achievement Exam). Also reported are freshmen's and sophomores' scores from the ACT's EXPLORE and PLAN tests, and a school's five-year graduation rate.

Disclosed, as well, are the rates at which high schools' students enroll in two-year and four-year colleges. Additionally, there is a "college eligibility rate" that is derived from combining students' ACT scores and grade-point averages. The bar is set pretty high here: They're aiming for levels that indicate eligibility for "selective or highly selective" colleges. It doesn't take rocket science to project that for schools, this will be a big ouch.

School report cards also include the percentage of students taking Algebra I in 8th grade, and the percentage passing it.

Now let's take a look at the criteria in the performance policy, which is outlined in a PowerPoint presentation on the district's website. You can see that intervention and closure decisions are based on status and growth on state tests, as well as factors such as attendance, and, at the high school level, students' ACT scores, the rate of enrollment in AP classes, and the one-year dropout rate (that's the number of students in a high school who drop out in any given year).

So I asked Cheatham: If the indicators in the report cards are crucial information for parents, to enable them to judge their schools, why didn't the district decide to evaluate schools on those same criteria?

She explained that schools need a "chance to do the work" before being evaluated on it. The report cards offer a chance for "transparency, and a better and clearer indication of whether students are on track" for college and good jobs, she said. As such, they are a "major step in the right direction," Cheatham said.

I asked whether the district will eventually judge schools by those college-readiness metrics. Cheatham said it was too soon to know that, but added that, "over time, it's important to us that report card and the accountability system are aligned. We don't want to be using dramatically different metrics. It creates confusion and a lack of transparency."

Expect the report cards to "morph" as the district gets a better sense of which metrics are the best indicators of college readiness, she said.

The new report cards are coming out at the same time the district makes its case for closer scrutiny of underperforming schools, particularly high schools.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 8:58 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Here's one for you in the never-say-never category: Montana has adopted the common standards.

Remember when a huge wave of states adopted them, back in the summer of 2010? The standards had just been finalized, and states stood to gain an advantage in the Race to the Top competition if they had adopted. By the fall of 2010, more than 35 states had done so. As of yesterday, only five had not.

With Montana's move today, that's down to four states, as you can see from our updated map: Alaska, Nebraska, Texas, and Virginia.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 11:57 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

We've been telling you that the demand for professional development aligned to the common standards has been soaring. One publishing executive told us not long ago that PD was "driving" the common standards market right now. So in that light, it's worth noting that Kentucky has been chosen as a demonstration site for a new, statewide professional-development model reflecting the common standards.

Learning Forward, a professional-development outfit that used to be known as the National Staff Development Council, is leading the effort, with funding from the Sandler Foundation. Six other states—Georgia, Illinois, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Utah, and Washington—will serve as "critical friends," helping to develop the new PD system.

There are some other very familiar names on board for this project. No doubt you haven't forgotten that the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers spearheaded the common-standards initiative; they're part of this initiative, too.

Also aboard is the National Association of State Boards of Education, which, you might recall, has been convening state boards nationwide to get them schooled on the standards and exploring the challenges states face in implementing them. Also involved in the initiative is the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education, a signal of awareness that aspiring teachers—not just the ones already in the classroom—must be reached if states are to translate the common standards into sound curriculum and instruction in the coming years.

Part of the PD project will involve creating and delivering the professional development itself, but it reaches into the school day as well; Learning Forward noted that it will "support new school year and daily school schedules that provide substantive time for professional learning for educators."

Kentucky was the first state to adopt the common standards. And it's been pushing forward on implementation; it's one of eight states that are piloting instructional tools created by math and literacy "design collaboratives" working to build new resources for the common standards.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 9:57 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

On Capitol Hill yesterday, a House panel examined efforts that encourage experts in the STEM professions to transition from jobs in industry to new careers in teaching (or consider serving as mentors).

"Individuals who have spent time in a STEM profession bring a unique perspective to the classroom and can make a great contribution to our STEM education efforts," Rep. Mo Brooks, an Alabama Republican who chairs the House Subcommittee on Research and Science Education, said in a press release. At the same time, he cautioned that "good teaching requires an additional and special set of knowledge and skills."

The panel invited five witnesses to discuss teaching in the STEM fields—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—including former software engineer Christine Sutton, who now teaches secondary math and computer science in Huntsville, Ala.

"As a parent, I had many opportunities to volunteer at my children's schools and to help their friends with math assignments," she said, according to the press release. "I was amazed by how many students (and adults) disliked math and believed that I could transfer my love of problem solving to the classroom to change attitudes and build confidence."

At EdWeek, we've recently highlighted some efforts aimed, at least in part, at recruiting and preparing professionals from other fields for new careers in teaching, including two fellowship programs: Math For America and the Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellowship program.

UPDATE (1:05 p.m.)
Speaking of STEM and Congress, I just learned that Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) this week introduced the STEM Education Innovation Act of 2011.

The bill would:

• Create an Office of STEM Education at the U.S. Department of Education;

• Institute a state consortium bringing together states to take the lead in shaping best practices in STEM education; and

• Establish the Education Innovation Project to promote the development of "transformational technologies" for the classroom by providing grants to develop ed-tech innovations for STEM education.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 8:29 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

$737 million. That's the total value of 163 STEM-related proposals seeking a slice of federal aid under the "i3" Investing in Innovation program. Ideas range from supporting the creation of new academies with a clean energy focus in Colorado to expanding the Chicago Algebra Initiative and an online STEM games project in Los Angeles.

Of course, given that only $150 million is available in this second round of funding, it's safe to say many of these proposals won't get any money. But there are plenty of interesting proposals to examine.

The U.S. Department of Education publicly released information on all the new applicants last month.

STEM education (science, technology, engineering, and math) was a pretty popular topic in the first round of the i3 program. This time, there was a stronger incentive, as the topic was added as one of the five "absolute" competitive priorities. Basically, applicants had to select one of those priorities as the focus for their grant requests. (The others include innovations that support effective teachers and principals, innovations that complement the implementation of high standards and high-quality assessments, turning around low-performing schools, and improving achievement and graduation rates in rural areas.)

In all, 28 percent of the 587 applications identified STEM as the absolute priority. Here's the full list of STEM proposals.

For the big picture on the new round of i3 proposals, check out this EdWeek story. In it, my colleague Michelle McNeil offers a helpful primer:

"The i3 program, born of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and extended by Congress earlier this year as part of the federal fiscal 2011 budget deal, seeks to find innovative and promising education strategies that also have a good record of success," she writes. "Awards for this round will range from $3 million for 'development' grants to as much as $25 million for 'scale-up' awards. The bigger the award, the more evidence of past success is required."

Last year, the Education Department ultimately awarded 49 i3 grants for a total of $650 million. And as we explained on this blog, a number of those focused on improving education in specific areas of the curriculum, including STEM.

Anyway, so what do applicants have in mind this time? Here's a quick sampling:

• Applicant: National Society of Black Engineers (Alexandria, Va.)
Amount Requested: $3 million
Project: Support the three-week Summer Engineering Experience for Kids Program, designed to expose African- American children to the STEM career fields;

• Applicant: Project SEED (Arlington, Va.)
Amount Requested: $15 million
Project: Expand a program that provides supplemental math instruction for elementary school students and professional development for teachers;

• Applicant: Poudre School District (Fort Collins, Colo.)
Amount Requested: $3 million
Project: Develop two high school Clean Energy Academies that will deliver STEM coursework based on clean-energy-related content, and enhance middle school STEM activities that lead to the academies and other STEM programs;

• Applicant: Museum of Science (Boston)
Amount Requested: $2.9 million
Project: Expand the Gateway to Implementing Technology and Engineering Standards project, which aims to increase the number of Massachusetts and Maine school districts providing high-quality STEM education and ultimately the number of students pursuing careers in the STEM fields;

• Applicant: Depaul University (Chicago)
Amount Requested: $8.2 million
Project: Expand and validate the work of the Chicago Algebra Initiative to make it possible for algebra-ready middle school students to take a rigorous high school algebra course, and to create policies and mechanisms so that successful students are placed in the next level of high school math; and

• Applicant: University of Southern California
Amount Requested: $3 million
Project: The proposal for a STEM Games project will expand and evaluate an online game-centered curriculum recently introduced in several Los Angeles public schools. The program was first used as a medium for teaching high school math, but would expand the scope to include middle school science and engineering topics.

The Education Department is expected to announce the winners of the second round of i3 grants by the end of this year, so stay tuned.

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

If had a dime for every time I, or someone I know, uttered the word "standards," I'd be so far beyond worrying about my kids' college tuition that it's not even funny. We talk about standards, and talk, and talk, and talk. But we don't often take the idea apart and think about what it means.

Curriculum consultant and professional development guru Grant Wiggins takes it apart his way today. In a post on his blog, Wiggins offers the idea that a standard has three parts: content (what students should know), process (the skills students must have), and performance (how, and how well, they must be able to do what's being asked of them).

To convert Wiggins' example to an activity near and dear to my heart, if I were held to a pie-making standard, I'd have to know about the history of pies, what ingredients go into making them, and such. I'd also have to know how, technically, to make some good fillings, make and roll out the dough, put it all together, and bake it properly. But I'd also have to be held to some kind of performance standard; it's all well and good to make a mediocre lemon meringue, for instance. But to make a really good one—one that might be worthy of being in demand—I need to do far better than that.

But how much better?

This is where Wiggins' third part gets interesting. Because most people understand that a standard includes content and skills; we've heard the phrase "what students must know and be able to do" a gazillion times. But the third part? Most people tend to think of performance as measured by summative tests. Wiggins, however, contends that exemplars play a pivotal role in defining standards. Without good illustrations of how well students should be expected to do something, it's pretty tough to design curriculum and instruction to get them there.

The exemplars must be chosen to reflect "wider-world valid standards of performance," Wiggins writes. It makes sense. We often do this unselfconsciously. When I want to know what a really, really good sour cherry pie looks and tastes like—when I want to hold myself to that standard—I go looking on the Internet, in cookbooks, in restaurants. I ask friends about the best cherry pies they've ever had. I combine all of that into an approach that I hope rivals a "wider-world valid standard of performance."

The exemplars, then, can form the "anchor" of a performance assessment to determine how well a student has learned all three parts of a standard, Wiggins says. But exemplars have to have two aspects, he writes: they have to embody the right task for the knowledge being probed, and they have to illustrate a high enough level of performance to suggest proficiency. Figuring out how to do that is tricky, Wiggins says, and something he plans to dig into in his next blog post.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Most California elementary students are not getting access to high-quality science instruction, or to much teaching in the subject at all, concludes a new report from WestEd.

Forty percent of all elementary teachers surveyed said they spend an hour or less on science instruction each week. Furthermore, only 44 percent of principals believe it likely that a student would receive high-quality science teaching in their school.

Only about one-third of teachers feel "very prepared" to teach science, according to the report, "High Hopes—Few Opportunities: The Status of Elementary Science Education in California." By contrast, more than 80 percent feel very prepared to teach English/language arts and mathematics. In fact, more than 85 percent of elementary teachers surveyed said they have not received any science-related professional development in the past three years.

"Students do not have the opportunities they need to participate in high-quality science-learning experiences because the conditions that would support such learning are rarely in place," the report concludes. "We estimate that only about one in 10 California elementary school students regularly are exposed to the kind of science-learning experiences consistent with the emerging national consensus of what is needed. And across the state, teachers simply do not have time in the school day to teach science."

Research for the WestEd report was conducted by the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California, Berkeley, and SRI International.

The report cites a variety of obstacles, including a lack of district resources to provide teachers with professional development, a lack of specialized classroom materials, and a lack of assessment systems to provide needed feedback on student progress in science. In addition, the report argues that these problems are "rooted in part in the state and federal accountability systems that place the greatest emphasis on English/language arts and mathematics. These subjects, the report says, "receive the lion's share of political and practical attention."

In closing, the report says that California needs a "new road map for supporting science learning in public schools. Policymakers must review and revise the accountability, resource allocation, and support systems that are driving science education out of our public schools. Strengthening science education must be a priority."

Posted by Erik Robelen at 4:37 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

In the face of state cutbacks to early-childhood programs, school districts might find themselves wondering whether to invest their own scarce funds in preschool or in full-day kindergarten. A study out today has a clear message: If you want to maximize the chances of strong 3rd grade reading results, preschool programs in combination with full-day kindergarten is the way to go. But if that's not possible, it's better to go with pre-K and half-day kindergarten than relying solely on all-day kindergarten.

The report, "Starting Out Right: Pre-K and Kindergarten," uses a federal database that followed more than 21,000 students from kindergarten through 8th grade. The students' progress was gauged by the National Center for Education Statistics with specially designed tests.

The reading tests given to the children defined five levels of achievement. Researchers from the National School Boards Association analyzed the relationships between the type of pre-K and kindergarten programs the children attended and their performance on the test. They found consistently that children who attended preschool and half-day kindergarten had substantially greater chances of doing better on the reading test than those who had attended only full-day kindergarten. The benefits were particularly strong for Hispanic and low-income students and those learning English.

For instance, at level 4 on the test, which assessed children's ability to extrapolate from what they read, those who had attended preschool and half-day kindergarten were 18 percent more likely to show proficiency in that skill than those who had attended only full-day kindergarten. That number rose to 20 percent for low-income students, 24 percent more likely for Hispanic students, and 25 percent for English-learners.

The report's author, Jim Hull, writes that his findings confirm the already-established benefits of combining preschool and kindergarten. While he suggests that they could help district policymakers decide how to invest their resources, he cautions against cutting back full-day kindergarten to half-day. "The emphasis," he writes in the report, "should be on adding prekindergarten to existing kindergarten programs."

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 4:17 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A new set of test data from "the nation's report card" has just been released. For the full EdWeek treatment, check out this story. The quick version is that math scores inched up by 1 point (on a 0-to-500 scale) compared with 2009, while reading was once again flat at the 4th grade and rose 1 point at 8th grade.

You can expect lots of analysis, and probably a healthy dose of handwringing today from various analysts and advocates. It is worth keeping in mind that NAEP is probably most valuable in gauging changes in achievement over longer periods of time, rather than simply comparing 2011 with 2009. From this larger, historical perspective, the story seems to be one of robust gains in math and small ones in reading.

For example, the national average has climbed 21 points in grade 4 and 16 points in grade 8 for math since 1992. By contrast, in reading the gains were just 4 points at grade 4 and 5 points at grade 8. (Also, I used 1992 above for an apples-to-apples comparison, but the math NAEP was first administered in 1990, and if you count that, the growth has been 28 points at 4th grade and 21 points at 8th grade.)

Despite the significant progress in math, David Driscoll, the chairman of the National Assessment Governing Board, expressed concern that recent improvements in math have failed to keep pace with earlier gains.

"Over the past eight years, progress has slowed, particularly at grade 4 where it had been very rapid for more than a decade," he said. "The percentage of students 'below basic' has been reduced substantially, but it remains far too high—particularly at 8th grade for blacks and Hispanics."

I just received a statement from Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on the results. Here's an excerpt:

"The modest increases in NAEP scores are reason for concern as much as optimism. While student achievement is up since 2009 in both grades in mathematics and in 8th grade reading, it's clear that achievement is not accelerating fast enough for our nation's children to compete in the knowledge economy of the 21st century. After significant NAEP gains in the 1990s, particularly in mathematics, the 2011 results continue a pattern of modest progress."

Anyway, you'll find far more analysis in the EdWeek story. And if you want to see the detailed results for yourself, here are links to the full report in math and reading.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Here's another tidbit in an accumulating pile that suggests we are trending toward closer scrutiny of high schools: state test scores at more than half of Illinois' high schools sank because the state has closed a loophole that allowed lower-performing juniors to avoid the test.

The Chicago Tribune's analysis of state test scores detailed the resulting rise in the number of students tested, and the drop in performance on the Prairie State Achievement Exam, which includes the ACT.

Last week, we told you about plans in Chicago and New York City to add college-readiness metrics to school report cards. And states that get waivers from No Child Left Behind will have to report the rates at which their districts' and schools' students enroll in college and accumulate credit.

Combine that with the recent years' focus on dropout factories, and tightened federal regulations that require a method of calculating graduation rates that's tougher than the one some had been using, and you get a much closer—and not often pleasing—look at how well our high schools are serving students.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 9:21 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend