January 2012 Archives

Here's what looks to be a new twist in the debate over teaching creationism in public schools. A state senator in Indiana has succeeded in amending a bill on the topic to require that public schools teaching creationism must include origin theories from multiple religions, including not just Christianity but also Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Scientology, the Associated Press reports.

Critics of the original bill said they believe it would be rejected by the courts, as have previous efforts to teach creationism in public schools. The author of the new amendment, Sen. Vi Simpson, a Democrat, said she did not think the changes would have any bearing on the constitutional question. But she suggested it might make school districts pause before tackling creationism, the biblically based view that God created humans in their current form.

"It does make it clear that a school board can't just say we're only going to teach Christian creation theory but we also have to cover other multiple religions," Simpson said, according to the AP.

The broadened bill still faces a vote by the full Senate before advancing to the House, the AP story notes.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A new report offers a "bleak picture" of the state of state science standards across the nation, with just over half earning a grade of D or F. Among the 10 states to receive a failing grade were Idaho, Oregon, and Wisconsin. (See the full list below.)

Only California and the District of Columbia were given a solid A, while four states were handed an A-minus, according to the review by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washington-based think tank.

The Fordham report, issued today, focuses on two main areas: "content and rigor," and "clarity and specificity." It argues, for instance, that many states' standards are "so vague as to be meaningless." The review also contends that state standards often undermine the teaching of evolution.

The new report represents the third time Fordham has examined state science standards, with the last study released in 2005.

"The results of this rigorous analysis paint a fresh—but still bleak—picture,"
write Fordham Institute President Chester E. Finn Jr., a former education official in the Reagan administration, and senior director Kathleen Porter-Magee, in a foreword to the report. "A majority of the states' standards remain mediocre to awful. In fact, the average grade across all states is—once again—a thoroughly undistinguished C."

The study is timely, as a major effort is underway to develop a set of common, "next-generation" science standards. Twenty-six states are playing a lead role in helping to develop the new standards, which are guided by a framework developed by the National Research Council. (In fact, Fordham recently graded the framework itself, giving the document a B+.)

On the issue of teaching evolution, the report says that while "many states" are handling the issue better than in the past, "anti-evolution pressures continue to threaten state science standards."

Although it highlights a few overt efforts, such as the Louisiana Science Education Act, Fordham says the tactics elsewhere are often "far more subtle." It notes that Missouri has "asterisked all 'controversial' evolution content in the standards and relegated it to a voluntary curriculum that will not be assessed." And the report says a common technique in some states is to direct students to study its "strengths and weaknesses."

The report indicates that only four states—Florida, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Rhode Island—openly embrace human evolution in their current science standards.

I should note here that the NRC framework, developed by a panel of experts in science and education, is emphatic about evolution's role in learning science. This suggests that the topic will play an important role in the common science standards. The NRC panel identified biological evolution as one of the four "core ideas" for understanding the life sciences.

Another issue flagged by the Fordham report is the teaching of scientific inquiry. The report concludes that many states do a poor job of integrating scientific inquiry with content in their standards, and fail to make the link between science and mathematics.

"Unfortunately, too many states treat inquiry as an afterthought or add-on," the report says.

Fordham's Porter-Magee told me that she's hopeful that the new report, in addition to spurring states with low grades to revise their standards, also will highlight some models worthy of consideration to inform the development of the common standards.

California and the District of Columbia, she said, "did an outstanding job" with their standards. (California's standards haven't changed since 2005, but DC's have, and its grade improved from a C in 2005 to an A this time.)

"Those standards in both cases were very comprehensive, really outlined all of the important science content that students need to learn across all the disciplines and all the grades," she said. "They were also clear, free from jargon, really provided the kind of roadmap that teachers, curriculum developers, and assessment developers need."

Porter-Magee cautioned that each state's grade does not tell the whole story for its science standards, because it may have received higher or lower marks in particular domains of science.

"If a state got a C overall, it doesn't mean it got a C in all areas," she said. "For example, high school physics and chemistry was almost across the board among the weakest" domains in states' science standards. "A lot of states don't even delineate high school physics and chemistry standards, and that's important. You need to have that content and it needs to be separated out."

Here's the breakdown of states by the grade they received:

A: California, District of Columbia

A-: Indiana, Massachusetts, South Carolina, Virginia

B+: New York

B: Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Ohio, Utah

C: Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, Texas, Vermont, Washington

D: Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, West Virginia

F: Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Wyoming

Posted by Erik Robelen at 8:54 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A legislative challenge to Indiana's adoption of the Common Core State Standards failed earlier this week, we learn from the Indianapolis Star.

As you might recall, we've reported on a number of anti-common-core rumblings in the states (here and here, for example), but nothing that has—at least so far—gained any traction.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 9:56 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

More details are emerging on the college-affordability and -access notes President Obama struck in his State of the Union address this week. Among them? A proposed $1 billion Race to the Top for higher education.

Our Michele McNeil explains it for you at Politics K-12. To get a grant, states would have to create smoother transitions between K-12 and college, in part by making sure that high school exit standards are up to college-level snuff.

Read more in a release issued this morning by the White House.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 9:54 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Tampa, Fla.

Chief academic officers from 14 school districts are here to brainstorm their way into a new instructional era: the era of the Common Core State Standards. One of the big questions on their minds is how to engage their teacher corps in professional development that is far more than the typical drive-by session.

To explore what is ahead for teachers, the CAOs spent hours exploring one facet of the common standards: its requirement that students—and teachers—engage in "close reading" of text. Doing that well means a very different kind of instruction from what many teachers are used to.

The discussion about the common core was part of a retreat organized by the Aspen Institute, which facilitates networks of urban school district leaders. To preserve the frank, problem-sharing nature of the discussions, Aspen asked that we report on the issues being discussed without quoting district leaders by name.

Part of the talk here this week included chief financial officers, as well, in conversations about how best to manage district resources as systems strive to implement the common standards and teacher-evaluation systems linked to them.

The CAO-only discussion about common-core instruction, however, focused on the close-reading requirement of the standards. With David Pook, a New Hampshire teacher who helped shape the English/language arts standards, the 14 leaders walked through an example of close reading. They used a selection that one of the network districts, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., has been using with its 6th graders: an excerpt from Chapter 1 of Russell Freedman's The Voice That Challenged a Nation, which focuses on Marian Anderson's historic recital at the National Mall in 1939.

Unlike a typical lesson, these "students" were asked to read the passage silently, without any context or background knowledge supplied by their "teacher." They explored "text dependent" questions to flesh out the meaning and structure of the passage. Those questions are ones whose answers lie only in the text itself, and that help students make inferences and follow the arguments in it.

Instead of quickly feeding students the answers to the questions they will inevitably have, teachers are going to have to learn a whole new way of working: to "tolerate silences" and take a "let's-find-out" approach, channeling students back to the text for answers, Pook said. This will raise "confidence and stamina issues" for teachers, he said. "We'll have to hold teachers back and push them back to the text," he said.

One district official captured a key shift in the kinds of questions teachers will have to learn how to ask. He pointed to one of the questions, which asked, "What words did Freedman use to characterize what happened next?" He noted that many of his teachers would say they already do this.

"They'll say, 'Yeah, I always ask what happened next,' " he said. "But that's not the question. The question was, 'What words did Freedman use?' "

His colleagues around the table smiled and nodded knowingly. This, they seemed to agree, was the kind of thing that is going to have to be incorporated in teachers' understanding before anyone moves ahead to develop units, curriculum maps, and other resources.

Another CAO noted that many of her district's teachers weren't ever taught the disciplinary content that teaching the new standards requires. Another CAO noted that what is now required of teachers is a "sea change," and he's "really worried" about being able to provide the amount and kind of professional development necessary to bring about the needed shift.

It was clear that these CAOs believe such shifts are righteous and necessary. And they're also cognizant of the heavy lift ahead to get there.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

At a time when many federal lawmakers are looking to rein in spending and prioritize programs, the Government Accountability Office has just issued a report on the federal efforts to improve STEM education that are scattered across 13 agencies. It finds that while most of the programs identified "overlapped to some degree with at least one other program," this did not automatically translate into redundancy.

That said, the report notes that a majority of the federal programs—funded at more than $3 billion in total—have not been subject to "comprehensive evaluations" to assess their effectiveness since 2005. It adds that the evaluations GAO reviewed "did not always align with program objectives."

On the question of duplication, here's more of what the GAO has to say.

"Many programs have a broad scope—serving multiple target groups with multiple services," the report says. "However, even when programs overlap, the services they provide and the populations they serve may differ in meaningful ways and would therefore not necessarily be duplicative."

The report adds: "Nonetheless, the programs are similar enough that they need to be well coordinated and guided by a robust strategic plan."

In all, the GAO report identifies 13 federal agencies spending more than $3 billion in fiscal 2010.

If the focus of this report rings a bell with readers, that's probably because I recently blogged about a White House report looking at pretty much the same set of issues. That report was billed as "the most detailed inventory of the federal STEM education portfolio ever compiled."

There was a notable difference in the White House report's conclusion on the issue of duplication. As mentioned, the GAO says STEM programs were "not necessarily duplicative." But the White House panel apparently didn't see the need for the "necessarily" qualifier.

"There is only modest overlap in investments and no duplication among the STEM education investments," says the report from the National Science and Technology Council. "That does not mean that there are not opportunities for better alignment and deployment of STEM resources."

Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., who requested the GAO report and is the chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, sees the latest findings as cause for concern.

"The federal government has dedicated significant resources to developing STEM programs, yet taxpayers have seen little evidence that these programs are actually working," he said in a press release. "According to the GAO, only about a quarter of the 209 federal STEM programs have been evaluated for efficacy since 2005, and nearly 90 percent overlap with at least one other program," said Kline. (For the record, the report says 83 percent.)

Kline continued: "Investing in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics is a worthwhile endeavor—but pumping billions of dollars into programs that may be duplicative or unproductive is just plain foolish."

Speaking of STEM education funding, it's worth noting here that as part of a draft bill Kline recently issued to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, he would eliminate the $150 million Math and Science Partnerships program at the U.S. Department of Education.

In a conversation I had yesterday with James Brown, the executive director of the STEM Education Coalition, a broad-based advocacy group, he said he was not happy with that change. Brown told me that while he understood the desire of Republican lawmakers to hand states greater flexibility in spending federal aid, he worries that STEM education might get lost in the shuffle.

"It's sending a signal that STEM education isn't a priority," Brown argued.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Four superintendents from large districts and the president of an educational publisher waxed poetic about how to improve reading instruction yesterday at a Washington forum hosted by the American Enterprise Institute. The conversation touched on teachers' practical instructional concerns, as well as more general problems associated with school leadership, professional development, and curriculum.

My colleague Liana Heitin gives a nice overview of the conversation over at the Teaching Now blog.

One superintendent, she notes, lamented that most reading programs fail to provide a "deep dive" into all the basic areas of literacy and that individual, research-based programs are often cost-prohibitive. Another superintendent argued that preservice teacher training has contributed to subpar reading instruction, with new teachers "by and large nowhere remotely near prepared to come in and do the task."

Participants included the superintendents for the school districts in Chicago, Los Angeles, Newark, N.J., as well as California's San Juan Unified district.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

We hear it said often that "what gets tested gets taught." With that in mind, advocates for teaching science and history may be concerned about a bill just approved by the Virginia Senate that would eliminate standardized testing for the state's 3rd graders in those two subjects.

The measure, which passed with bipartisan support 33-7, would limit Virginia's Standards of Learning tests to only reading and mathematics at the 3rd grade, according to the Daily Press newspaper of Newport News, Va.

The bill apparently came in response to a study by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission that recommended limiting the state's SOLs to reading and math, the story explains.

"I believe it makes common sense to concentrate on reading and math, and give a good basic foundation in those two core subjects for our students," said Sen. John Miller, a Democrat and the bill's sponsor, according to the story.

Advocates emphasized that science and history would not be abandoned, but Sen. Mark Obenshain, a Republican who voted against the bill, said he was concerned that 3rd graders would no longer be taught those subjects.

The bill was reportedly backed by a number of statewide education groups, including those representing school boards, superintendents, and elementary school principals.

I should note that the action by the Virginia Senate comes as a draft Republican bill released by the House Education and the Workforce Committee would eliminate the federal requirement for science testing by states. Current law under the No Child Left Behind Act mandates such testing at least three times for students, once at the elementary level, again in middle school, and once in high school.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 9:57 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Most states that have adopted the common standards anticipate significant challenges in shifting to a computer-based assessment system designed for those standards, a new study tells us.

A survey released today by the Center on Education Policy shows that 20 states anticipate a "major challenge" rounding up enough computers so all students can take the new tests, which are expected to be fully operational in 2014-15. Another four states said they expected getting enough computers to be a "minor challenge," and nine others said they didn't anticipate a problem, or that it was too soon to tell.

States also cited adequate Internet access and bandwidth as a potential problem with the common assessments. Fifteen called it a major challenge; 10 called it a minor challenge. Eight said it wouldn't be a problem or that it was too soon to tell.

States are also worried about not having access to state-, district- or school-level expertise to help with technological problems as the tests are being given. Fourteen called this a major challenge.

The two consortia of states working on tests for the common standards are jointly designing a "technology needs assessment tool" that will help states and districts gauge their readiness for the common assessments, which are scheduled to be fully operational in 2014-15. The self-assessment should be available for use in March.

In the new survey, the CEP researchers asked states whether their decision to adopt the common standards "might change" in 2011-12. Three states answered yes. The study did not identify which states participated in the survey.

The Center on Education Policy survey also includes updated information from its survey last year on the steps states are taking to implement common standards. States overwhelmingly reported that they were creating long-term implementation plans, adopting and implementing new assessments, and revising or creating curriculum materials. (Last year's CEP study of states is here, and my story about it is here.)

In the new CEP state update, many also reported that they are aligning the content of teacher-preparation programs to align with the common standards, and that they are modifying teacher-evaluation or -induction programs to reflect those new expectations.

Fewer states reported aligning undergraduate admissions requirements or college curricula with the common core.

Thirty-seven states and the District of Columbia responded to the CEP study, but since two of the states had not adopted the standards and one had adopted only in English/language arts, the report from the study focuses only on the responses of 35 states.

Regular readers of Curriculum Matters might recall that the CEP also studied district-level implementation of the common standards last fall, and found a pretty mixed bag. Their study is here, and my story about it is here.

Those of you who like to track states' progress in transitioning to the common core might also want to read about a recent study that the EPE Research Center and Education First did on that topic. See here for my story.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 6:21 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A new $4.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation aims to improve science learning among English-language learners. As such, it's not alone but the latest in a string of federal awards targeting research and development for this student population.

Over at the Learning the Language blog, my colleague Lesli Maxwell describes the NSF grant just announced to researchers at New York University. The project, to involve more than 60 elementary schools in Florida, will examine how English-language learners fare after receiving a new science curriculum designed also to reinforce their language development.

The announcement called to mind a $3 million grant the Exploratorium in San Francisco won in 2010 under the U.S. Department of Education's Investing in Innovation, or i3, program. Under that effort, the Exploratorium—which describes itself as the museum of science, art, and human perception—proposed to blend its approach to inquiry-based science learning with English-language development, expanding a pilot program with an elementary school in the Sonoma Valley Unified School District to the entire school system. The idea, a press release from the Exploratorium explained, is to find ways to integrate "science and language development so that the value-added benefit science brings to language development outweighs the time it takes away from doing language development exclusively."

Meanwhile, in April 2011, the University of Georgia announced that it had won a $516,000 NSF grant to develop a model for improving science teaching and learning among middle school ELLs. The initiative includes a strong emphasis on inquiry-based learning and involving families, including with family science workshops at the University of Georgia campus.

Finally, the NSF issued a $1.1 million grant in July 2011 for a two-year exploratory study to identify effective practices for formative assessments of ELLs. The project, involving researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder and at Denver, as well as the University of Washington, targets Spanish-speaking elementary and middle school students.

I have no doubt there are other examples out there, but these give a flavor of what's going on around the country. Know of another example? Let us know by posting a comment.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 4:29 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Guest post by Jackie Zubrzycki

Depending on whether you're using the Julian or Gregorian calendar, John Hancock either was or was not born today, National Handwriting Day. In either case, his authoritative signature's legacy lives on in debates about handwriting and cursive in schools. Should schools spend precious instructional time teaching handwriting? Should students learn cursive at all, or is it an outdated skill—and here's the Hancock link—how will they sign their names if they don't know cursive?

I wrote an article about the conversation about the role of handwriting in school, prompted by a summit on handwriting that's happening right now at the Newseum here in Washington. The American Association of School Administrators and Zaner-Bloser, an educational company that makes handwriting materials, are co-sponsoring Handwriting in the 21st Century? An Educational Summit," where educators, administrators, and researchers are presenting research, discussing questions of instruction, and recommending that handwriting be added to the Common Core State Standards, which currently include keyboarding but not handwriting.

They're advocating for the addition to the Common Core because it turns out that the research leans heavily in favor of teaching handwriting. Practicing handwriting leads to an increased fluency that allows students to express their ideas without delay, researcher Steve Graham of Vanderbilt University told me. And, Graham said, while kids may be using technology outside of school, he's found that most in-school work is still done by hand.

I also talked with Virginia Berninger, a researcher at the University of Washington, who says that teaching keyboarding is important but can't replace handwriting. She also presented a more unified theory about why handwriting—and spelling— are developmentally important and critical to the writing process: "When we write letters, we sequence strokes. When we spell, we sequence letters. When we compose, we sequence words within sentences and then sentences within paragraphs." These building blocks are important, Ms. Berninger said, and kids don't pick them up by magic—they need to be actively taught and have time to practice these skills. She recommended "tune-ups" on handwriting for students long after the early elementary grades when handwriting is usually taught, and described an activity in which high school students analyzed each others' papers for illegible sections.

Another interesting tidbit, mentioned by Steve Graham and by Judith Gustafson, a document examiner for the Internal Revenue Service, who analyzes handwriting for a living, is that people are mixing print and cursive more and more—and that people who aren't fully taught cursive often create their own connected script in order to speed the process of writing. Ms. Gustafson said these irregular handwriting styles mean people like her need to see a larger sample of any given person's handwriting to come to a conclusion about the authorship of a document. (For instance, if I make my capital Js in three different ways, they'll need to see evidence of all three Js.)

Check out the article, and let us know what you think. Is handwriting still important? Is it being taught in your schools? Should it be part of the Common Core? Teachers, did you learn how to teach handwriting? Do you personally use the handwriting style you were taught, or have you created a hybrid?

Posted by Erik Robelen at 2:47 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

If yearning had a sound, the air would be full of noise right now. That's because teachers across the country are looking for help in teaching the common-core state standards.

We heard this message loud and clear in August, when we hosted a webinar on the common standards. The biggest vein of questions pouring in during the Q&A period could be summed up this way: "Help! Where can I find resources to help me teach these new standards?"

Immediately, we felt their pain. We looked around on the Web to see what kinds of help was out there for teachers, and it wasn't easy to find, at least in any centralized kind of way. (See our blog post here.)

That isn't really a surprise, since each state and district is grappling with the issue its own way. The two consortia of states that are developing assessments for the common core have instructional resources planned, but most of them aren't available yet. The groups that organized or advocated for the common core have a few things out there. (Consider this resource list from the Council of Chief State School Officers, which includes links to a math curricular analysis tool, sample instructional English/language arts units, and some other information sources, and this CCSSO roundup of resources.) But either the pickings are still a bit thin, or folks just can't locate them easily, or both.

Little by little, though, resources are trickling out there. There are private efforts, such as the Common Core's curriculum maps, which we've told you about before. And states are starting to build a bigger resource bank of instructional assistance.

Consider eStandards, a new web application developed by California's Sacramento County Office of Education. It allows teachers to look up standards by grade and subject on their computers or Smartphones.

EngageNY.org, a clearinghouse developed by the New York state department of education, has been getting increasing amounts of attention for its common-core resources. Among its offerings are a 15-part video series that walks viewers through the key shifts in the common standards. Some math teachers I know have been circulating links to the math videos on local listservs.

I've heard, also, that the Kansas education department has developed some text-complexity tools that are proving helpful to people in other states. Those tools are part of a bunch of resources Kansas assembled on its website (here and here).

Do you know of good storehouses of common-core info that you can share? Has your state or district done a particularly good job of creating or sharing resources? Let us know!

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

Efforts to improve STEM education are getting a boost from several recent announcements, including grants from the National Science Foundation and the Gates Foundation to drive research and development, as well as a new initiative that will send a lucky batch of science teachers down to Costa Rica for an eco-expedition.

First, researchers at the University of Virginia and the Concord Consortium have received a $1.35 million NSF grant to create new kinds of science lab activities that bridge virtual and real environments, according to a UVA press release.

"Many science classrooms use simulations to demonstrate scientific principles and theories," said Jennifer Chiu, an assistant professor of STEM education at UVA's Curry School of Education, in the press release. "However, students have trouble making connections between the simulations and the real world."

Second, the NSF recently announced a grant competition under its Computing Education for the 21st Century program.

The work involves three strands, one of which is the lack of computing education at the K-12 level. Through a project dubbed CS 10K, the NSF is seeking to have rigorous academic curricula incorporated into computing courses in 10,000 high schools, taught by 10,000 well-trained teachers. Proposals can target a diverse range of activities, such developing course materials, pedagogy, and professional development.

The NSF anticipates providing $13 million per year over three years for the grants. It will award between 13 and 20 grants. The deadline for applications is April 9.

(For more on the challenges of computer science, check out this EdWeek story about efforts to elevate the status and quality of computing in schools.)

Third, we just learned that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Education Arcade is getting $3 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to design, build, and research a multi-player online game to help high school students learn math and biology.

The game to be developed under this grant will be designed as part of a genre of games in which many players' avatars can interact or cooperate and compete directly in the same virtual world.

"The genre of games is uniquely suited to teaching the nature of scientific inquiry, because they provide collaborative, self-directed learning situations," said associate professor Eric Klopfer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in a press release. "Players take on the role of scientists, engineers, and mathematicians to explore and explain a robust virtual world."

Finally, the Northrop Grumman Foundation yesterday announced a new initiative that will provide 16 middle and high school science teachers the chance each year to visit Costa Rica to experience firsthand field collection of biodiversity and climate data, and bring these learning opportunities to their classrooms.

"We believe that providing a hands-on environmental experience to science teachers will give them insight and inspiration that they can pass on to their students," said Sandra Evers-Manly, the president of the foundation, which was created and is supported by the aerospace and defense company, in a press release.

The new program is a partnership between Northrop Grumman Foundation and Conservation International.

Earlier this year, I wrote about (and participated in) another Northrop Grumman initiative to get science teachers excited about their subjects and to bring that learning back to their schools. The company's foundation recently wrapped up a six-year effort that allowed teachers to get a firsthand taste of the weightless experience astronauts go through when training for space missions.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A new study casts doubt on the popular notion that a gender stereotype—namely, that girls are bad at math—explains why men dominate the higher levels of mathematics achievement and accomplishment. The researchers suggest that evidence is "weak at best" for what's been called the "stereotype threat" explanation.

They suggest this comes at a real cost, because focusing interventions on this particular issue leads to neglect of other, and possibly more promising, paths to better gender balance in the math field.

"The stereotype theory really was adopted by psychologists and policymakers around the world as the final word, with the idea that eliminating the stereotype could eliminate the gender gap," said David Geary, a professor of psychological sciences at the University of Missouri, in a press release issued today. "However, even with many programs established to address the issue, the problem continued. We now believe the wrong problem is being addressed."

The new study, co-authored by Geary and Giljsbert Stoet from the University of Leeds in England, will soon be published in the journal, Review of General Psychology.

The two researchers examined 20 studies that sought to replicate the original 1999 research on the stereotype threat. In doing so, they say they discovered that many of the subsequent studies had serious flaws, including the lack of a male control group and improperly applied statistical techniques.

The new study says that while most researchers agree that gender differences exist in math achievement at the higher levels of performance, "the really interesting question is what factors contribute to these differences, especially given that it will be impossible to close the gender gap without understanding these factors."

The researchers continue: "When policymakers believe that achievement differences in mathematics can be overcome by simply reducing stereotypical beliefs (as the literature suggests), they might not be willing to invest in the study of other potential contributing factors and thus will not pursue solutions for these factors."

For those especially interested in research on math education, here are a few links to other studies we've highlighted on this blog and elsewhere at edweek.org over the past year. One especially popular story with readers was Sarah D. Sparks' article about the causes of math anxiety. In addition, we've featured:

• A study finding that U.S. students typically encounter an easier math curriculum than those in many other nations, with wide differences also seen across states and school districts.

• A study that offered insights into the kinds of math skills children should learn early on to be best prepared for success in the subject as they advance into higher grades.

• Research showing that a lack of language skills can hamstring a student's ability to understand basic concepts in mathematics.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 3:18 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

We talk endlessly about assessment. How are students doing? Do the tests they take truly reflect all that they've learned? How can we find better ways of assessing what students know?

Questions like these seem to rise only higher on the nation's radar, fueled by standards-based education, No Child Left Behind, and common standards. And however weak—or strong—our students look on the tests we give them, it's worth stopping to ask about those whose results are invisible.

I'm talking about the exclusion of students with disabilities and those learning English. Last week, while I was away on family business in Colorado, a telling tidbit emerged from Florida. My colleague Nirvi Shah wrote about it on her blog, On Special Education. But I wanted to make sure I brought it to Curriculum Matters readers, as well.

So what happened? Florida education Commissioner Gerard Robinson fired off a letter to the National Assessment Governing Board, asking that it stop reporting state NAEP scores for states with high exclusion rates. You can see his letter in the Tampa Bay Times' Gradebook column.

The Times put together a little spreadsheet, too, that looks at the NAEP exclusion rates of the 10 states that got the highest ratings on EdWeek's Quality Counts report last week. You can see how these high-flying states vary in their inclusion of students learning English and those with disabilities.

Questions about test results because of exclusion rates are nothing new, of course. Nirvi and another of our colleagues, Lesli Maxwell, reported on concerns about exclusion rates in a recent story.

I highlighted it in my NAEP reporting in 2010, and told you in blog posts (here and here), as well, how NAGB has been agonizing over the issue.

As states implement the common standards, a big issue that hovers is how to make sure that students with disabilities and those learning English can receive the instruction they need to master the standards. And as state consortia design tests for those standards, one of the big questions is how to make those tests accessible to those students. As we often say when big questions hover without clear answers: This bears watching.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Education Week's annual Quality Counts report is out, and it's got a great lineup of stories exploring what U.S. education can learn from other countries.

Start with the overview, which examines the swirl of issues that led the U.S. to focus on its own international competitiveness. You might want to read about how other nations professionalize teaching, how they assess students' learning, and how their curricular priorities influenced the Common Core State Standards that have been so widely adopted in this country.

You will also want to check out the multimedia features we've got that spin off from the main themes of Quality Counts, and the range of perspectives on the topic we've pulled together for the Commentary section. Plus, listen to experts discussing these issues at our Quality Counts launch event today.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 2:43 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Today brings another round of evidence that much work needs to be done to transform the common standards into practice.

A report released today by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center (EPE publishes EdWeek) and Education First concludes that states "have a long way to go" before they have solid plans to implement the standards. My story has a link to the report.

In the three key areas the researchers asked about—curriculum and instructional resources, teacher professional development, and teacher-evaluation systems—only seven states reported having completed plans in all three. Eighteen reported no completed plans in any of those three areas.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 10:32 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

At a time when policymakers across the political spectrum are rethinking the test-driven accountability system at the heart of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, a new case study suggests that English-style school inspections may be worth a closer look.

"Inspections offer a way to make much more nuanced judgments about school performance," writes education consultant Craig Jerald in a report just published by the think tank Education Sector. He notes that such inspections can "leverage expert judgment rather than relying solely on spreadsheet formulas."

To be clear, though, Jerald does say test scores should still be part of the accountability mix, and indeed they are factored into the determinations made under the English system.

(Full disclosure: Jerald previous served as the research director for Editorial Projects in Education, which publishes Education Week. He's also a friend of mine.)

I learned a little about school inspections in England and elsewhere when researching a story for the 2012 edition of Quality Counts, which will be released tomorrow. My story looks at how U.S. accountability practices compare and contrast with those of other nations. And school inspections, which a variety of countries use, from England and the Netherlands to Singapore and New Zealand, certainly offer one clear contrast to the approach brought by No Child Left Behind and state accountability systems.

In the new Education Sector report, Jerald suggests that inspections could be well-suited as a state strategy for accountability. He does not, however, say the federal government should conduct them or require them.

"As they begin to ponder their options for the post-NCLB era, state leaders should take a close look at England's approach to inspections," he writes, "a method that suggests there are ways to ensure rigor and consistency while not sacrificing diagnosis and feedback."

Although school inspections have taken place in England for more than a century, the inspection system as it stands today was launched in 1992, when the English Parliament created the Office for Standards in Education, Social Services, and Skills—or OFSTED. That office now oversees all inspections of English schools. The intent of the system is to give parents better information about schools and to hold them accountable for performance.

The way the system works, inspectors generally visit a school for two days. The frequency of inspections varies, but typically they occur once every three years unless a school receives a poor rating. Schools are rated "outstanding," "good," "satisfactory," or "inadequate." Test data are used in the evaluations, but so are other factors, including classroom observations to determine the quality of instruction.

To illustrate the English inspection system, Jerald tells the story of Peterhouse Primary School, in Norfolk County. The school got a dose of bad news in early 2010 when it failed to pass muster under the government's accountability scheme. In addition to getting an accountability rating, the school also got a 14-page narrative report, based on an inspection, about its strengths and weaknesses in key areas, such as classroom teaching and leadership. Fourteen months later, he says, the school boosted its rating substantially.

What's attractive about the English inspection system, Jerald says, is how it deals with the "multiple measures" issue of accountability by using on-site observations in schools.

"In England, professional inspectors consider standardized test scores when evaluating schools," he writes, "but they also gather first-hand observational evidence on a variety of other factors before judging a school's overall effectiveness and offering a diagnosis for improvement."

He then describes the 2010 report on Peterhouse Primary School.

"Written in a bracingly frank and direct style, the report left little doubt about why the school had been deemed 'inadequate' and how it needed to improve," he writes.

In fact, here's a quote from that inspection report:

"Teaching is too often pitched at an inappropriate level as assessment of pupils' attainment is not used sufficiently well to plan effective lessons. Pupils are not given adequate academic guidance to move their learning on, and the quality of feedback in marking is inconsistent across the school. Pupils' books show that, in some cases, the teachers have low expectations, especially regarding the quality of pupils' written work."

Jerald anticipates some of the concerns about states embracing school inspections to help drive accountability, and tries to address them.

Perhaps the most obvious: Can inspections be relied on to provide fair and consistent judgments?

"Of course, relying on human judgment rather than strict rules and formulas can carry risks," he writes. "Successful inspection systems minimize these risks by taking steps to ensure that judgments are guided by common standards, informed by rigorous training, and steeped in professional expertise."

Another question: Won't these be really expensive?

To answer this, Jerald actually came up with "back-of-the-envelope" estimates of how much they would cost, state by state. His 50-state estimate ranges from a low end of about $635 million per year to $1.1 billion at the upper end, depending on how the system was structured and how frequently inspections would occur.

I should note that England's inspection system is not universally embraced in that country. In my reporting, I heard complaints that the inspections cover far too many issues and are seen by some critics as "formulaic." I also heard complaints that actual time for classroom observations has declined significantly in recent years. (To address some of these concerns, OFSTED last fall announced a new inspection framework that would narrow the scope of inspections and allow more time for classroom observations.)

Peter Tymms, an education professor and the head of the education school at Durham University in England, told me in an interview last fall that he believes the verdict is still out on the value of England's inspections.

"The question is: Does the inspection system improve schools?" Tymms said. "And actually, I think we don't know the answer to that, because serious investigations have not been carried out."

For his part, Jerald says American schools "deserve the same kind of diagnostic guidance and feedback that Peterhouse Primary School enjoyed on its journey to improvement."

He continues: "If American policymakers expect U.S. schools to make vigorous efforts to improve, they must develop accountability systems that can diagnose, inform, and encourage schools rather than merely 'rate' them."

Education Sector has invited a variety of experts next week to explore the merits of school inspections through a series of guest posts on its blog, The Quick & the Ed. I expect the subject will spark a lively debate.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 3:10 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

You've probably heard a lot already about the applications that 11 states have made to waive the major requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. We've written about their common-core implications, and our federal beat reporters have brought you many details in blog posts and stories.

Now a Washington group that focuses on secondary schools is warning that some of those applications—and legislation under consideration in Congress—could weaken high schools' accountability for improving graduation rates.

In a policy brief issued this week, the Alliance for Excellent Education says that "the treatment of high school graduation rates in many state accountability indexes may reverse progress made in recent years to ensure accurate graduation rates are fully included in school accountability systems."

Some states' waiver applications propose accountability systems that would give high school graduation rates much less weight than they currently carry under NCLB, the policy brief says. The intention—to create a fuller picture of college and career readiness—is honorable, but the effect could undermine the pressure to produce good graduation rates, the policy brief argues.

The alliance singles out Kentucky and New Mexico for giving particularly light weights to high school graduation in the accountability systems they propose as part of their NCLB waiver applications. Kentucky's system would give high school grad rates only 14 percent of the total index, while New Mexico's would assign such rates 17 percent. Most states applying for waivers offered plans that would give high school grad rates less than one-quarter of the weight of their total accountability indexes, the brief says.

"If test scores in earlier grades or other indicators count far more for measuring a school's progress than whether a student actually graduates, the fact that high school graduation rates count for so little in the proposed indexes could create an incentive for schools to 'push out' low-performing students in order to increase scores on standardized tests," alliance President Bob Wise, the former chief executive of West Virginia, said in a statement accompanying the policy brief.

"States are moving in the right direction by creating accountability systems that provide a more complete view of whether students are ready for college and a career, but this cannot come at the expense of holding states accountable for graduation rates."

The alliance calls on the federal education department to make sure that states' proposals for NCLB waivers don't contradict federal regulations issued in 2008 that require high schools to use a tough, uniform way of calculating graduation rates and mandate setting ambitious graduation-rate goals. It shouldn't approve waiver applications unless the proposed accountability systems give equal weight to high school graduation rates and student achievement, while also allowing states to use additional measures of college- and career-readiness, the alliance argues.

Wise expressed concerns about the effects on high schools of NCLB legislation under consideration on Capitol Hill, also.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Higher standards. Better assessments. Accountability. Merit pay for teachers. Charter schools. These are among the familiar strands of education reform that have dominated the national dialogue in recent years.

But a new book from a 25-year veteran of educational publishing argues that improving the curriculum—what actually gets taught in classrooms—is all too often left off the table. And the author, who provides an insider perspective on the world of developing and selecting curricular materials, contends that this neglect is a key obstacle to increased student learning.

"Notably, and disturbingly, with all the attention paid to educational reform, there has been little, if any, focus on curriculum as part of the problem," writes Beverlee Jobrack, who retired in 2007 as editorial director for McGraw-Hill. "It has become clear to me that student achievement will at best remain static unless educational reform includes re-evaluating and improving how curriculum is developed, assessed, and selected."

The book, Tyranny of the Textbook: An Insider Exposes How Educational Materials Undermine Reforms, seems especially timely, given the ongoing challenge we've chronicled here of bringing the common standards in English/language arts and mathematics to life in the classroom. Here's the latest of many posts touching on the matter. I should also mention that, in her book, Jobrack cites the work of Grover J. "Russ" Whitehurst, who also has argued for giving curriculum greater attention in school improvement. (Whitehurst, a scholar at the Brookings Institution, was the director of the federal Institute of Education Sciences in the Bush administration.)

Jobrack offers a behind-the-scenes look at how textbooks and other curricular materials are developed, written, adopted, and sold. The author, who prior to working in publishing spent several years teaching middle school and preschool, argues that the curriculum used in most classrooms is mediocre and typically fails to reflect best practices. The core problem, as she sees it, is a system that has failed to create the right conditions and incentives to ensure that high-quality curricula designed to optimize learning are developed and reach classrooms around the nation.

As she puts it, this system is "perpetuating mediocrity in instructional materials and in American education."

Jobrack weaves a tale of:

• School and district committees for curriculum selection filled with teachers and others who lack the appropriate expertise, motivation, and time to make the best choices;

• State textbook adoptions focused on whether curricular materials meet state standards, line by line, with little or no attention to whether they actually are of high quality and represent a coherent and well-designed instructional approach; and

• A radically consolidated publishing industry, driven by sales and marketing teams, that has "resulted in a dearth of customer choice, a reluctance to innovate, and huge [curricular] programs that are barely distinguishable from one another."

With regard to local selection practices, she says textbooks with attractive covers, lots of visual appeal, and "superfluous" features tend to win favor. And she writes of experienced teachers on selection committees who often favor materials that require little change for them in their classroom practices.

"A group of very experienced teachers selects the textbook that is most like what they are already doing so they don't have to change their lesson plans or procedures," she writes.

(Jobrack emphasizes, however that she is NOT bashing teachers. "For a host of reasons," she writes, "I came to realize that hard-working teachers, who have the best interests of their students at heart, are rarely the most effective evaluators of curriculum effectiveness.")

In her book, from Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Jobrack outlines a variety of ideas to improve the quality of curriculum and instruction. One key idea is to transform the curriculum-selection process by schools and districts, as well as the state textbook-adoption process, to focus intensively on the quality of materials. In addition, she says schools and teachers should "implement that new curriculum with fidelity." She cautions that this does not mean a scripted approach, but that teachers not simply skip around and cherry-pick the elements they like and dismiss those they prefer not to teach. She also emphasizes the widely agreed belief that the quality of teachers is absolutely critical. In a nutshell, as she writes, "Quality curriculum taught by quality teachers has the most potential to improve student achievement."

Jobrack discusses the role, and limits, of standards at length in the book, including the common standards.

She is quick to note: "The standards are not the curriculum. The curriculum is what teachers do every day, introduce a concept, check for understanding, have students practice, and assess it."

She cautions that the common standards may not amount to much without real and meaningful changes in the curriculum. And she worries such change may be tough to come by.

In an interview, Jobrack shared her view of how educational publishers are responding to the common standards.

"Here's what's happening right now in textbook land," she said. "They're not changing anything in the curriculum. They are simply relabeling. ... If there's anything missing in a textbook series, the publishers will simply add a paragraph or add a lesson to address that particular standard. It's not a revamping, and even if it was, there has to be very intentional implementation of a curriculum with understanding and fidelity, so that you reap the most benefits from it."

Even as Jobrack doesn't hold back in offering criticism for the educational publishing sector—at one point she describes it as a "monolithic industry that stifles innovation, squashes competition, drastically limits choice, and creates a risk-adverse development process—she believes the publishers will respond if the marketplace demands change.

"If customers start buying materials because they're the most effective, and they don't buy things when they're not effective," she writes, "that will very quickly make effectiveness the competitive issue, and publishers are very, very competitive."

Posted by Erik Robelen at 3:50 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The first-round Race to the Top winners are facing the music this week, as U.S. Ed Secretary Arne Duncan delivers their year-one progress reports. Some are getting pats on the back for being on track with nice progress, while others are getting a round scolding for lagging, particularly on their efforts to design new teacher-evaluation systems based on student progress. Our Michele McNeil explains it all for you in a blog post and a story.

Those of you who track the common standards and assessments will be interested to know that this was not a big area of criticism when Duncan sized up how the RTT winners are doing. For the most part, according to the reports, states seem to be doing OK in this area. (The list of state-by-state reports is posted on ED's website.)

Take Delaware, for instance. In its report, the Education Department said that even though the state was encountering some delays in implementing a new teacher-evaluation system, it had made "significant strides" toward reaching many of its goals.

It noted, in particular, the work Delaware has done to train its teachers on the common core. (In a glowing press release, Delaware made sure everyone knew that it had reached 79 percent of its teachers with that training.) The Ed Department noted the sample units and lesson plans Delaware posted online for teachers. And it noted the state's progress transitioning to new assessments, such as its plans to embed common-core-like items in its own state tests soon, and its decision to require all 11th graders to take the SAT as a college-readiness exam.

In the not-too-surprising category, Massachusetts comes out pretty rosy in the federal report. It gets pats for curriculum frameworks and model units for the common core, and for proceeding with professional development on the new standards even though it struggled with a delay hiring a PD coordinator. The department also noted that Massachusetts' statewide assessments will be based on the common core in 2012-13, which, I'm guessing, is far earlier than most states.

Even states that are in the biggest trouble with the department over their unsatisfactory progress appeared to look pretty good to the department on their standards-and-assessment work.

Hawaii has content specialists working with all its principals across the state, who then pass along their knowledge through "tri-level" professional development, the report says. It provided training to teachers in grades K-2, and 11-12, with plans to move to all the other grades within the next two years. It also moved to online, computer-adaptive assessments, the report says.

New York, which also came in for harsh criticism, was commended for its implementation work on the common core. The department mentioned its training of "network teams" to get this job done, and its plan to "build sequenced, spiraled, content-rich statewide curriculum modules," even though procurement snafus delayed this a bit. The department did note, however, that New York continues to face challenges implementing the common core because of wide variations in the size and capacity of its districts.

Florida did get dinged for delays in some areas of common-standards implementation, such as in getting contracts for interim and formative assessments.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

From guest blogger Nirvi Shah:

A new set of standards outlines the minimum that students should learn about their sexuality from their earliest years in school until they leave high school.

The standards, developed over the last few years by dozens of health and education experts, say that by the end of 2nd grade, students should be able to use the proper name for body parts, including male and female anatomy. By the end of 5th grade, they should be able to define sexual abuse and harassment. By the end of high school, they should be able to describe common symptoms of and treatments for sexually transmitted diseases including HIV, according to the standards released today with the backing of four national health education groups.

Three groups—Advocates for Youth, Answer, and the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States—led creation of the standards. At the time the project was conceived, the hope was that federal spending on abstinence-only sexual education would eventually be extinguished (which isn't yet the case ) and something would be needed to teach sexuality, comprehensively. Still, despite the federal government's continued support for abstinence-only sex education programs in schools, a growing number of states are opting to go beyond abstinence-only and take a more-comprehensive approach to sex education in public schools. For example, many Texas schools have shifted away from an abstinence-only approach.

A 2007 congressionally mandated study found no statistically significant beneficial effect on the sexual behavior of young people participating in abstinence-based programs.

Supporters of the standards note, however, that the new standards don't recommend teaching about hot-button issues such as contraception in the early grades.

"In every other topic under the sun, you build young people's skills—whether it's math or science," said Debra Hauser, president of Advocates for Youth. "You don't have to call it sex ed in elementary school."

But elementary school students could learn about what it means to be a good friend, understand why bullying is wrong, and what good touches and bad touches are.

"That translates later when you're talking about relationships," Ms. Hauser said.

The standards also address social media, sexting, sexually transmitted diseases, and pregnancy, as well as a range of other topics, including bullying. The hope is that states, districts, and even individual schools will adopt the standards, or build their own curricula based upon them.

Sexuality education in the public schools is a perennial source of controversy. It's not clear yet how parents and the public will respond to these new standards. For more on that—and on the details of the standards themselves—watch for my story next week in Education Week.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 5:18 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

We've reported a lot here about the challenges teachers and school districts face in turning the common standards into curriculum and instruction. Less attention has been paid to the best ways for principals to lead their schools through the transition.

That area will be the focus of a partnership between the National Association of Secondary School Principals and the College Board. They've teamed up to create a new online community where principals can connect and discuss common-core issues they're facing in their schools.

The two groups will also host a series of six webinars that explore the most effective roles principals can play to oversee curriculum and instruction for the common core. Scheduled topics include building the capacity of teachers to deliver curricula based on the common standards and building a schoolwide literacy program that embraces its key concepts. The first webinar will be Jan. 18 at 4 p.m. EST. The webinars and the online community can be found at a website created specially for this project at edweb.net, a social-networking site for educators.

Mel Riddile, the NASSP's associate director for high school services, told me last week that in talking with members, the group found that principals' unique needs were being overlooked as common-core information made its way to states, districts, and teachers.

"We didn't find anything that matched the needs of school leaders, and we want to avoid bypassing them," Riddile said. "There are dramatic changes in these new standards, and much of the responsibility for putting those into practice will fall on the shoulders of school leaders. They need to understand the standards themselves, but also their implications for operating a school."

For instance, Riddile said, very few middle or high schools have operated schoolwide literacy initiatives; such programs are more common at the elementary school level. But the new demands of the common English/language arts standards—including literacy skills specific to science and social studies—might make schoolwide literacy programs necessary.

The math standards' emphasis on being able to understand math concepts and explain and justify their answers will bring about "a fundamental shift in the way we teach math," Riddile said, and principals will need to know how to oversee such changes, and how to evaluate teachers based on new kinds of instruction.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 3:35 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

File this under: What were they thinking? In fact, I'm still having a hard time believing this actually happened. But apparently it did.

As reported by ABC News (and other news outlets), students at an elementary school in Norcross, Ga., were given some math questions on a worksheet that (not surprisingly) outraged parents.

One says, "Each tree had 56 oranges. If 8 slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?"

And another: "If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in one week?"

Christopher Braxton told ABC News affiliate WSB-TV in Atlanta that he couldn't believe the assignment his 8-year-old son brought home from Beaver Ridge Elementary School.

"It kind of blew me away," Braxton said. "Do you see what I see? Do you really see what I see? He's not answering this question."

School district officials told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that teachers were attempting to incorporate history into their 3rd grade math lessons.

"Clearly, they did not do as good of a job as they should have done," district spokeswoman Sloan Roach said.

Roach said the school's principal was collecting the assignments so they wouldn't be circulated, and that the principal was working with teachers to develop more appropriate lessons. She told the Journal-Constitution that the teachers were not intentionally trying to offend the students with the questions on slavery.

"It was just a poorly written question," Roach said.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 11:49 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Overriding a veto, New Hampshire's Republican-led legislature this week approved a measure requiring school districts to give parents the opportunity to seek alternatives to any aspect of the school curriculum they find objectionable.

The new law calls on all of the state's districts to establish a policy for such exceptions, but the district must approve of the substitute materials and the parents must pay for them.

In vetoing the law last summer, Gov. John Lynch, a Democrat, said the measure was too vague about what might be deemed objectionable and would prove burdensome to school districts. He also said it risked stifling teachers, who might shy away from exposing students to "new ideas and critical thinking" for fear of sparking complaints.

"This legislation encourages teachers to go to the lowest common denominator in selecting material, in order to avoid 'objections' and the disruptions it may cause their classrooms," he explained in his veto statement.

In an interview with the Huffington Post, the bill's lead sponsor, Rep. J.R. Hoell, emphasized that the new law permits parents to address both moral and academic objections to the curriculum. The Republican lawmaker said he could imagine the provision being used by parents who disagree with the "whole language" approach to reading instruction or the Everyday Mathematics program.

"What if a school chooses to use whole language and the parent likes phonics, which is a better long-term way to teach kids to read?" Hoell told the Huffington Post.

Previously, Hoell has cited an incident in a New Hampshire high school as an example of the need for the measure. In that case, which drew national media attention, a student and his family complained about being required to read Barbara Ehrenreich's 2001 book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America in a class on financial management.

Writing on a blog last year, Rep. Hoell said "this admittedly Marxist book insulted Christians and promoted illegal drug use as well as being critical of American family life."

Gov. Lynch's veto of Hoell's bill was successfully overridden this week on a largely party-line of vote 255-112 in the New Hampshire House. The Senate approved it 17-5.

Mark Joyce, the executive director of the New Hampshire School Administrators Association, said school districts already have policies in place to work with parents who find certain materials objectionable, and expressed concern with how the law might be used.

"We didn't think there was a need for this bill," he said. "A worry everybody has is that it will be too broadly utilized" by parents.

In his veto message, Gov. Lynch complained that the measure "in essence gives every individual parent of every student in a classroom a veto over every single lesson plan developed by a teacher."

"Parents could object to a teacher's plan to teach the history of France or the history of the civil or women's rights movements. Under this bill, a parent could find objectionable how a teacher instructs on the basics of algebra. In each of those cases, the school district would have to develop an alternative educational plan for the student."

The final legislation is significantly different from the version Hoell first promoted, which was approved last year by the New Hampshire House.

It said: "No school district shall compel a parent to send his or her child to any school or program to which he or she may be conscientiously opposed nor shall a school district approve or disapprove a parent's education program or curriculum."

That version had sparked widespread criticism, with the Republican chair of the Senate education committee asking: "You would allow any student out of any program or class without any way of demonstrating what they know?"

In fact, the conservative-leaning editorial board for the Union Leader newspaper suggested that language "would effectively end compulsory public education in New Hampshire."

Joyce from the school administrators group said the final version was preferable to the earlier one, but that school districts will have to scramble to implement new policies.

"There are a lot of news releases and rhetoric going out about what the law does and doesn't do, and so my caution to members is to read the law for themselves, see the actual words of it," he said. "It will take a few days, weeks, to understand it, and adapt existing [district] policies."

Posted by Erik Robelen at 9:36 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The sudden rise of former Sen. Rick Santorum in the presidential campaign, just eight votes shy of winning Iowa's Republican caucuses, means he's sure to get more attention—and scrutiny—in coming days. So, I figured I'd take this opportunity to highlight his run-in with some leading scientific and educational organizations when it comes to the teaching of evolution.

I got an email today from the National Science Teachers Association reminding me of an amendment he pushed a decade ago when Congress was writing the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The two-sentence amendment was sharply criticized by the NSTA, plus dozens of other scientific and educational groups, as a thinly veiled attempt to undermine the teaching of evolution. It was approved by the Senate, but ultimately was stripped out of the legislation.

You can see an EdWeek account of the debate here.

The nonbinding "sense of the Senate" resolution declared that "where biological evolution is taught, the curriculum should help students to understand why this subject generates so much continuing controversy, and should prepare the students to be informed participants in public discussions regarding the subject."

In explaining the amendment, Santorum said it "deals with the subject of intellectual freedom with respect to the teaching of science in the classroom, in primary and secondary education."

He added: "It is a sense of the Senate that does not try to dictate curriculum to anybody. Quite the contrary, it says there should be freedom to discuss and air good scientific debate within the classroom."

But nearly 100 groups, including the NSTA, the American Geological Institute, and the American Institute of Biological Sciences, didn't see it that way.

"As written, the apparently innocuous statements in this resolution mask an anti-evolution agenda that repeatedly has been rejected by the courts," the groups wrote in a 2001 letter to Congress.

The letter continued: "The resolution singles out biological evolution as a controversial subject but is deliberately ambiguous about the nature of the controversy. Evolutionary theory ranks with Einstein's theory of relativity as one of modern science's most robust, generally accepted, thoroughly tested, and broadly applicable concepts. From the standpoint of science, there is no controversy."

For more analysis of Santorum's record on education matters, check out this post today from our Learning the Language blog, and a piece earlier this year over at Politics K-12.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 5:56 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Happy New Year, and welcome to the Year of the Common Assessments. Or at least the year of common-assessment procurements.

I know; what a nerdy way to usher in a new year, right? Sorry; we can't help it. It's part of our job here at EdWeek. One of our ongoing resolutions is to keep you informed about the activities of the two big groups of states that are designing tests for the common standards. And we have some updates for you.

The two consortia—which, you probably recall, are working with federal Race to the Top money—have released documents that shed a bit more light on what the tests might look like when they're fully operational in 2014-15. We say "might" because there is a very long road to travel between these documents and the final tests—lots of tweaking, field-testing, revising, reviewing. But the accumulating stack of documents offers interesting glimpses.

So what do we have here? First of all, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, issued an "invitation to negotiate" for development of its test items. (That's what most folks call an RFP, or request for proposals. But in Florida, which is PARCC's fiscal agent, they call it an invitation to negotiate, or ITN.)

You can find PARCC's announcement here, and the ITN itself here. The ITN goes hand-in-hand with PARCC's model content frameworks, which were released in November and can be found here, along with webinars walking you through them.

A cluster of earlier PARCC invitations-to-negotiate, including one for systems architecture and another for information on artificial intelligence used in assessments, are here, along with the consortium's procurement timeline and descriptions of all its anticipated procurements.

What's in PARCC's newest ITN?

It covers development of the group's summative, end-of-year test, as well as its midyear formative assessments. It doesn't include the consortium's planned early-year diagnostic assessment or its assessment for speaking and listening skills.

PARCC discusses the "innovations" it seeks in the tests. On the English/language arts assessment, for instance, it seeks "enhanced comprehension" reading items that can measure deeper, more nuanced types of understanding and require students to read complex passages and cite evidence to support their answers. There will also be a focus on measuring students' "academic vocabulary."

It gives some hints of what test items might look like as it describes the "task generation models" that winning vendors will use to design items. In a section of the English/language arts test probing students' research skills, for instance, they could be asked to draw on a speech from a historical figure and several related informational texts about the speech. Another task could ask them to do something similar in science, since the standards' literacy skills reach across disciplines.

The ITN previews things like how long the tests might take. The group's performance-based assessment in English/language arts, for instance, one of the two components of its summative test, is envisioned as three sessions over two days, one focusing on a research simulation and another on a literary analysis. The end-of-year, computer-based test will ask students to read about six passages and respond to machine-scorable items, including pairs of readings that enable comparison and synthesis, and "innovative" items that are designed to deepen students text analysis as they move through the test. Reading passages for grades 3-5 will be 200-800 words long, and those for students in grades 6-8 will be 400-1,000 words long. Passages for high school students will be 500-1,500 words long.

The math test will include items with single or multiple prompts. Some will be machine-scorable, and some will require hand scoring. The performance-based assessment in math will include tasks that demand written arguments or justifications of students' answers, or critiques of reasoning. They will also include problems that involve real-world scenarios. The number of tasks is, at least at this point, pretty broad: between 11 and 66 in grades 3-8 on the end-of-year assessment and the first section of the performance-based assessment, for instance, with an additional 2-4 tasks in each of the second and third sections of the performance-based assessment.

The ITN also says that PARCC will develop two series of end-of-course tests in math at the high school level: one for the traditional course sequence—Algebra 1, geometry, and Algebra 2—and another for a course sequence that would integrate those topics.

There is a lot more detail in the ITN, as well as in its appendices. We're still wading through it all.

But a notable feature of the PARCC ITN is that this big chunk of work isn't going to just one vendor. The document outlines two phases: the first phase, in which "multiple" vendors will develop half the test items, and a second phase, in which contractors from Phase I who have "shown the ability to work collaboratively and deliver high quality, innovative assessment items and tasks on deadline" will have their contracts renewed to finish the job. The contracts for this work are slated to be awarded in April or May.

A few new tidbits are trickling out of the other consortium, too. The SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium has issued a cluster of requests for proposals, or RFPs, recently.

You can see its master work plan here, and its procurement schedule—listing each anticipated RFP and what it's for—here. You can see each released RFP and its status here, but you'll see that they are mixed in with all of the RFPs for Washington state, which is SMARTER Balanced's fiscal agent. You can pick out which ones are the consortium RFPs by looking for "SBAC" in the title.

Back in August, we told you about two documents from SMARTER Balanced: its content-mapping-and-specifications document, and RFP #4, which was for item specifications. In a more recent flurry, there are RFPs for developing accessibility and accommodation policies (RFP #6), building the software to support the item bank (RFP #7) and developing style guidelines that will be used to review test items for content alignment, bias and sensitivity, and creating training materials for item writers (RFP #8).

RFP #14, for item writing (among other things), offers a few new tidbits, but doesn't provide the kinds of test details that are included in PARCC's ITN. The August documents get closer to providing those kinds of things. But we do learn in RFP #14 that SMARTER Balanced seeks development of 10,000 selected-response or constructed-response items and 420 performance tasks in math and English/language arts, to facilitate pilot-testing in the 2012-13 school year. Most will be scored with automated scoring, the RFP says.

Part of the work will be conducting research to find out which types of items are best suited to automated scoring and which must be scored by hand. The winning vendor(s) will conduct "cognitive labs" and small-scale trials to test innovative approaches to test items.

An interesting aspect to this RFP is that it asks the prospective vendor to hire and train teachers from SMARTER Balanced states to write items and tasks, and review items for content alignment, accessibility, and bias.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 3:03 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend