A new report recommends that the nation take 12 key steps to ensure that humanities and social sciences maintain an important place in American classrooms.

"The Heart of the Matter," issued today by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, grew from a congressional request for guidance on how to protect the central role of those disciplines during an era that has ramped up the focus on the state-tested subjects of English/language arts and math, and on the hard sciences.

In 2011, the Cambridge, Mass.-based academy announced the creation of a commission to make recommendations in answer to that question. In its final report, it outlines 12 steps its members consider crucial to preserving a central role for the study of social sciences and humanities.

It groups three under the banner of "educating Americans in the knowledge, skills, and understanding they will need to thrive in a 21st-century democracy:"

• Supporting full literacy as a foundation for all learning, not just in school, but over a lifetime.
• Investing in the preparation of citizens in a democracy, by ensuring a "thorough grounding" in history, civics, and social studies.
• Increasing access to online resources, so all students—especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds—can use quality materials.

Five steps are aimed at "fostering a society that is innovative, competitive, and strong":

• "Significantly" increasing the federal government's investment in research into social sciences and the humanities.
• Creating "cohesive curricula" to ensure "basic competency" in humanities and social sciences. This includes focusing on key "qualities of mind," such as critical analysis, problem-solving, and communication.
• Creating a humanities "master teacher corps," akin to the STEM Master Teacher Corps recently proposed by the White House. Loan-forgiveness programs designed to encourage advanced-degree holders into K-12 classrooms, and partnerships between higher education and K-12 schools could bring more expertise into precollegiate classrooms as well.
• Encouraging universities, foundations, research centers, and government agencies to bring representatives of all disciplines together to solve the world's "grand challenges."
• Communicating the broad implications of research to the public.

Four steps are intended to "equip the nation for leadership in an interconnected world":

• Promoting language learning. Schools can take advantage of blended learning approaches to streamline costs.
• Expanding education in international affairs and transnational studies. It recommends adoption of a new "national competitiveness act," which would fund education in these areas.
• Supporting study abroad and international exchange programs for undergraduates.
• Developing a "culture corps" that matches adults with schools, community centers, and other groups to "transmit humanistic and social-scientific expertise from one generation to the next."

In a world characterized by change, the study says, humanities and social sciences play a critical role in helping citizens understand where they came from and where they are headed.

"A fully balanced curriculum—including the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences—provides opportunities for integrative thinking and imagination, for creativity and discovery, and for good citizenship.

"The humanities and social sciences are not merely elective, nor are they elite or elitist. They go beyond the immediate and instrumental to help us understand the past and the future. They are necessary and they require our support in challenging time as well as in times of prosperity. They are critical to our pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness, as described by our nation's founders. They are The Heart of the Matter."

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 9:20 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Did you miss the live chat about EdWeek's four-part series on the common core? You can read a transcript of all the questions and answers on our website.

Thanks to all the readers who participated, I had the opportunity to consider and answer some great questions about common-core implementation in English/language arts. They ranged from high-level, national questions about how prepared we are to put the common standards into practice to very specific questions about what I saw while I watched one classroom, in one school district try to make them work.

A lot of the worry and wondering I heard in yesterday's chat circled around our collective ability and capacity to do this work; and that is exactly what drove me to spend six months in one place, seeing how it played out.

In case you missed the first three installments of our series, here's a link to where you can find them. "Common Core: A Steep Climb" documents the work of 8th grade teacher Dowan McNair-Lee, her colleagues at Stuart-Hobson Middle School, and the leadership of the District of Columbia school system during the second semester of the 2012-13 school year. The last installment will appear in August.

I welcome you to read the series, and the chat transcript, and share your thoughts in the comments section here, or with me directly, by email, at cgewertz@epe.org.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A new study of teacher-preparation programs finds much to lament, calling them an "industry of mediocrity."

Our Stephen Sawchuk explains it all for you in a story on EdWeek's website today. It's a very good read, not only for what the study by the National Council on Teacher Quality found, but for the intense criticism it's getting for its methodology. A professor quoted in Steve's story likened the NCTQ's research to evaluating a restaurant based only on reading the menu. Ouch.

The study's getting big national media play today, with stories on National Public Radio, in The Wall Street Journal, and in U.S. News & World Report, which partnered with NCTQ on the study and published highlights of its findings.

Preparation programs, it turns out, were judged in part on whether they prepared teachers to teach the Common Core State Standards. The study began only six months after the final standards were released (three years ago this month).

Even as many in the field dispute the study, its overall message—that teacher-preparation programs vary wildly in quality—resonates and harmonizes with what other studies have found, Steve reports. Check out his story, and read the NCTQ study for yourself and see what you think.

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 9:38 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Guest post by Bryan Toporek. Cross-posted from the Schooled in Sports blog.

"Angry Birds" isn't the only game with a bevy of underlying mathematical and scientific principles.

A new 10-part online series from NBC Learn (the educational arm of NBC News), the United States Golf Association (USGA), and Chevron Corp. explores the science behind the game of golf.

The videos, available for free online, were made "to provide teachers and students with high-quality engaging stories that demonstrate that STEM is everywhere in the world around us, including our favorite sports," said Mark Miano, senior producer for NBC Learn, via email. Each video tackles a different scientific or mathematical concept, such as friction and spin, the physics of the golf swing, and how to calculate a golfer's handicap.

The National Science Teachers' Association will be releasing lesson plans to go along with all 10 videos within the next week, Miano said. After beginning to watch one of the videos, teachers can access the lessons by clicking the "Lessons" tab on that particular video. All the lesson plans will be aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards, according to Miano.

"The stories can help supplement a lesson, illustrate a science concept, or serve as a simple 'bell-ringer' to engage students," Miano said. "Some teachers use just parts of the stories—often the amazing graphics or slow-motion footage—to review a particular concept or present a problem for the class to work on together."

With the help of the USGA, NBC Learn enlisted a handful of amateur and professional golfers to help demonstrate the concepts discussed in each video. NBC's high-speed "Phantom" camera, which can capture movement at up to 10,000 frames per second, allows for a slow-motion view of the scientific principles at play in golf.

Longtime readers of this blog may remember an interview I conducted with professional golfer Phil Mickelson last summer, in which he also touted the benefits of STEM knowledge in regard to his golfing career.

"Putting has an exponential falloff as you go away from the hole," he explained. "I'll make 100 percent of my shots from 3 feet away from the hole, 90 percent from 4 feet, 70 percent from 5 feet, 63 percent from 6 feet. Every foot away from the hole is critical."

That knowledge inspires Mickelson to spend most of his practice time within 150 feet of the hole, aiming to land his approach shots within a 12-15 foot radius from the hole.

The "Science of Golf" is the fifth series in NBC Learn's "Science of Sports" series. Previous "Science of" series have covered NFL football, NHL hockey, the Summer Olympics (tied the London 2012 Games), and the Winter Olympics. NBC Learn has already started production on "Science of the 2014 Olympic Winter Games," Miano said, in partnership with the National Science Foundation. It's planned to launch in mid-January, right before the Sochi Games begin.

For those who can't get enough of the "Science of Golf" series, 10 more videos will be launched next year, right before the start of the 2014 U.S. Open.

Posted by Bryan Toporek at 5:45 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Updated: (11:08 a.m.)

The existing science standards in 12 states and the District of Columbia are "clearly superior" to the Next Generation Science Standards developed by a coalition of states and national organizations, a think tank concludes in a new report.

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute gives the standards a middling grade of C, and suggests states are better off looking elsewhere should they wish to overhaul their standards, such as to those in South Carolina or the District of Columbia.

Fordham's reviewers say the common standards, released in final form in April, omit too much important science content knowledge, and that the heavy focus on science and engineering practices overshadows the learning of core content, among other objections.

"Throughout the [standards], content takes a back seat to practices, even though students need knowledge before they'll ever demonstrate fluency or mastery of scientific practices," says a foreword to the report written by Checker Finn and Kathleen Porter-Magee of Fordham.

"We found some good things in it," Finn, a former education official in the Reagan administration, said more broadly of the standards during a conference call yesterday with reporters. "It is a C, not an F. We found some improvements over earlier drafts. ... But we also found some serious shortcomings."

He said, "There's just not enough beef in this bun."

The Fordham analysis concludes that the standards in 16 states are "clearly inferior" to the Next Generation Science Standards, including Colorado, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania. And for another 22 states, the relative quality was "too close to call," the report said.

It remains to be seen what influence the think tank's report will have on state adoption decisions. The think tank has been an outspoken supporter of the common-core standards in literacy and math. In April, for instance, Porter-Magee coauthored a commentary on National Review online (and also on the Fordham website), titled "Why Conservatives Should Support the Common Core."

(By the way, Education Week is hosting a webinar today at 2 p.m. on the Next Generation Science Standards, with a focus on the implementation challenges ahead in states that adopt them. You can register here.

Three States Already Adopted

Already, three states—Kansas, Kentucky, and Rhode Island—have adopted the new standards. The critique may prove of greatest interest to states beyond the 26 that were lead state partners in crafting the standards.

The report, issued today, suggests that Kansas took a step backward in embracing the standards, since its own prior ones received a 'B' from Fordham in 2012. Rhode Island and Kentucky, meanwhile, both got 'D' grades from Fordham. (Fordham periodically reviews and grades state science standards.)

Asked specifically about Kansas' decision this week to adopt the common standards, Finn voiced skepticism of the action.

"I hope [the] state board of education knows what it's doing," he said, arguing that the standards Kansas is "ushering out the door are superior."

But Matt Krehbiel, a science education consultant for the Kansas department of education, criticized the Fordham report as using a flawed approach to evaluate the standards, and said the new standards are worthy of embrace for Kansas. He noted that a 60-member team of Kansas experts in science and science education carefully reviewed the standards upon completion and recommended them for adoption. (This same team also provided extensive input into the development of the standards.)

"Respectfully, our committee and expertise disagrees [with Fordham]," he said. "We've carefully evaluated these standards, brought together a wide stakeholder group with diverse experiences to evaluate them, and very much stand behind the move in Kansas [to adopt]."

Krehbiel said the standards strike an appropriate balance between science content knowledge and practices, and feature the critical science concepts students need.

"The Kansas group, as they reviewed these standards, focused in on the most essential core ideas that students need to know to prepare them for college and careers and citizenry," he said, noting that the state team included 11 representatives from postsecondary education who provided a careful look to ensure the standards would adequately prepare young people to succeed in college-level science.

The National Research Council panel that created the framework to guide the standards, recently issued a "fidelity check" that concluded that the new standards are in keeping with that document's vision for science education. (Fordham separately graded the framework document, giving it a B+.)

Meanwhile, more than 40 U.S. companies signed onto a letter of support for the standards, including IBM, Merck, Microsoft Corporation, and Bayer Corporation.

"We are confident that the Next Generation Science Standards will provide an important foundation to help restore America as the world's leader in the production of mathematics and science talent," the letter says.

Fordham is the only organization that currently grades state science standards. Its 2012 report gave about half of states a 'D' or 'F.'. The reviews are based on two broad categories: content and rigor, and clarity and specificity, with scores converted to letter grades.

The Next Generation Science Standards, more than three years in the making, went through two rounds of public comment before they were issued in final form in April. Key tenets of the standards include providing a greater emphasis on depth over breadth in science education and asking students to apply their learning through the practices of scientific inquiry and engineering design.

For those who have been paying close attention, the new Fordham report should not be a big surprise. The think tank began raising concerns about the direction the standards were heading well before they were completed. It submitted detailed comments on both the first and second draft of the standards. In February, it concluded that big problems "abound" in the second and final public draft. And when the final version came out, Finn told me his early look suggested the final version did not change his mind.

To review the final standards, Fordham relied on a team of seven experts in science and engineering, led by Paul Gross, a professor emeritus of life sciences at the University of Virginia and the former director and president of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass. You can find information about all seven reviewers in the report, but they include Ursula Goodenough, a professor of biology at Washington State University, and physicist Lawrence Lerner, a professor emeritus in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at California State University, Long Beach. (Two math experts will offer further analysis this summer of how the standards address math learning and connect with the common-core math standards.)

'Vaguely Worded' Expectations

With regard to content concerns, here are two examples of the critique the report provides:

• In physical science, the coverage of content is "mediocre" in the elementary grades and steadily gets worse in middle and high school, the report contends. "The physical science standards fail to lay the foundation for advanced study in high school and beyond, and there is so little advanced content that it would be impossible to derive a high school physics course or chemistry course from the content included in the NGSS.

• "High school chemistry is largely absent from the NGSS," the report says. "What little content is included is too often found in vaguely worded performance expectations that assume mastery of knowledge not previously introduced. The standards are further weakened by limitations found in the Clarification Statements and Assessment Boundaries, which place arbitrary caps on the knowledge and skills that will be assessed each year."

An appendix to the standards document, responding to feedback throughout their development, offers a response to questions about coverage of science content at the high school level.

"In contrast to many current state standards, the NGSS specify content and skills required of all students, and are not intended to replace high school course standards," it says. "The NGSS are meant to specify the knowledge and skills that will provide a thorough foundation for student success in any chosen field, and can be supplemented with further in-depth study in particular upper-level science courses."

Porter-Magee made clear in a conference call with reporters that Fordham is not opposed to incorporating science and engineering practices into the standards, but she said the standards simply went overboard, diluting the critical need for students to build science content knowledge.

"Unfortunately, we didn't feel the NGSS achieved the right balance," she said. "To do this well, you have to very clearly delineate the content, so you're using the practices to analyze and think about the knowledge. ... The NGSS too often glossed over or omitted entirely the knowledge students need to make the standards feasible and worthwhile."

But Carl Wieman, a professor of physics at the University of British Columbia, rejects the notion in the Fordham analysis that practices crowd out content.

"In its repeated criticism that the NGSS are abandoning knowledge in the pursuit of practice, the Fordham reviewers are holding up a false dichotomy, suggesting there is competition between knowledge and practice in the standards," said Wieman in an emailed statement. "In fact, in its emphasis on the integration of practice and content, the NGSS is calling for knowledge to be learned deeply and usefully, the way scientists learn and use that knowledge."

Mr. Wieman, an American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in physics 2001, served on the team that reviewed the final National Research Council framework, a document that guided the development of the Next Generation Science Standards.

He said, "The Fordham analysis fails to recognize that the NGSS [performance expectations] can only be satisfied with deep and substantial content knowledge, a much deeper knowledge ... than science education research is showing most students are now achieving even after completing university courses in chemistry and physics."

Fordham Offers Some Praise

The Fordham report does seem to strike a conciliatory tone at times.

It says of those who developed the standards: "We respect them, we knowledge their hard work, and honor their intentions," it says.

And it offers some praise, including for the decision to integrate engineering practices into the major scientific domains.

"We also recognize that the drafters faced tough choices in pursuit of their goal of K-12 science standards that are 'fewer, clearer, and higher,'" it says. "The failure to make such choices can lead to 'kitchen sink' standards that then prove essentially impossible to implement."

Indeed, while the report laments some of the science content left out, it suggests some standards are just about right.

The document includes "many standards that clearly delineate what students need to know and be able to do, including the integration in some cases of altogether worthwhile 'practices,'" pointing, for example, to a high school standard for earth and space science about the Big Bang Theory.

But, the review says, such examples are "more the exception than the rule when it comes to clarity and specificity. Overall, the standards are difficult to navigate and overwhelmed by vague performance expectations, all of which include practices, even when their inclusion confuses rather than clarifies."

(An earlier version of this blog post incorrectly reported the number of states with standards that Fordham deemed "clearly superior" to the Next Generation Science Standards.)

Posted by Erik Robelen at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

If you've been reading our series on one district's experience implementing the Common Core State Standards in English/language arts, you might be interested in joining an online chat next week to ask questions of the reporter who's been writing it.

That would be me.

Join me on Monday, June 17 at 2 p.m. Eastern time to discuss what I found when I spent six months reporting on how the District of Columbia's very-aggressive common-core implementation trickled down to one classroom.

Our team has put together a Storify that gives you the highlights from the series, and also links you to the three parts we've published so far (the fourth comes out in August):

Posted by Catherine Gewertz at 9:53 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Most states that adopted the common-core math standards lack high school graduation requirements that ensure all students will get the coursework they need to meet the new expectations, according to a report issued today.

Only 11 common-core states fully meet the definition of math alignment set out in the report by the National School Boards Association and Change the Equation, a Washington-based coalition of business leaders promoting improved STEM education. Those states include North Carolina, Tennessee, Ohio, and Arizona. Another 13 states that adopted the common core are partially aligned, the organizations conclude. In all, 45 states plus the District of Columbia have adopted the math standards.

"Until states and districts reexamine their graduation policies, a high school diploma will not necessarily signify college- and career-readiness as envisioned by [the] common core," says the report. Careful alignment with these policies "can send an important message to communities that they are serious about the higher bar set by the new standards."

The report determined that graduation requirements most likely to be aligned to the common-core standards must include math in each year of high school and convey substantial content typically taught in Algebra 1, geometry, and Algebra 2 classes.

States whose graduation requirements were considered not aligned include California, Colorado, New York, and Pennsylvania.

The report comes just as I finalized a new Education Week story looking closely at recent debates and developments concerning Algebra 2. As I've blogged recently, both Florida and Texas have taken steps to back away from expecting all students to complete Algebra 2, though some other states have recently started to implement new graduation requirements for Algebra 2 (or its equivalent), such as Tennessee, Arizona, and Ohio.

Although the common core does not explicitly state that students take any particular courses, the standards at the high school level spell out learning objectives in several areas, including algebra, geometry, and statistics and probability. Also, an appendix to the standards spells out model pathways for high school coursework.

The report offers several noteworthy caveats. First, even states whose graduation requirements "appear to reflect the demands of the common core" may not truly do so, if the content of those courses doesn't really match the standards. Also, the report emphasizes that states need not necessarily require a course called Algebra 2, an imprecise label that gets applied to all sorts of courses (a point I also explore in my new story).

"States and districts may decide to organize common core content into coherent and rigorous alternative pathways towards high school graduation that do not easily align with traditional course titles," the report says.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

By a vote of 8 to 2, the Kansas state board of education yesterday adopted the Next Generation Science Standards as their own. With that step, Kansas joins Rhode Island and Kentucky in approving the standards (though Kentucky's action is conditional at this point, as I explain below).

Kansas, Kentucky, and Rhode Island are part of the coalition of 26 "lead state partners" that teamed up with several national organizations to craft the science standards.

The K-12 standards, more than three years in the making, went through two rounds of public comment before they were issued in final form in April. Key tenets of the standards include providing a greater emphasis on depth over breadth in science education and asking students to apply their learning through the practices of scientific inquiry and engineering design.

The standards make clear that biological evolution is a fundamental principle of understanding the life sciences. In the past, the issue of teaching evolution in schools has been especially controversial in Kansas, and at least one of the board members voting against the standards referenced this as part of his opposition (as well as concerns about how the standards treat climate change).

The Kansas vote came on a day when much of the board's energy was consumed by a heated debate on the Common Core State Standards, with friends and foes of those standards for math and English language arts crowding the board room to present hours of testimony, as the Topeka Capital-Journal reports.

The science standards were approved after much of the crowd had left, the story notes.

"I am pleased to be able to bring the rigor, clarity, and connectedness of these standards to the teachers and students of Kansas," state board chairwoman Jana Shaver said in a press release from the Kansas education agency.

Two Republican board members, Ken Willard and John Bacon, voted no on the science standards.

"Both evolution and human cause of climate change are presented in these standards dogmatically," Willard said, according to the Associated Press. "This nonobjective, unscientific approach to education standards amounts to little more than indoctrination in political correctness."

It's worth noting that while Kansas in the past has been Ground Zero for debates about teaching evolution in schools, the state standards in place until yesterday, adopted in 2007, make clear that biological evolution is a core principle of science that students are expected to understand. In addition, in taking a quick peek at those standards, I also discovered that they refer to climate change as well, including the human contribution.

Here's an excerpt from the 2007 standards: "Human activity impacts global climate. Example: Burning of fossil fuels produces ground level ozone that hinders plant growth."

To be clear, the vote by Kansas to adopt the standards comes as little surprise. The state has been knee-deep in the development of the standards since the beginning. It assembled a statewide team of some 60 Kansans to review multiple drafts of the document. And the state board got monthly updates on the development of the standards for more than a year.

"Kansas educators have been able to be involved in the development of these standards from the beginning, and our board has heard regularly from those who have been part of this effort," Shaver said.

How many states ultimately choose to adopt the standards remains to be seen. Most, if not all, of the lead states in crafting them seem likely to do so. In addition, some other states tracked the development of the standards closely, and may eventually sign on as well.

Returning for a moment to Kentucky, the unanimous vote by the state board earlier this month is apparently not the final word. As a state official explained to me, a forthcoming "regulatory process" will involve a public hearing followed by a review by legislative committees. Depending on the feedback from the hearing and the action of the legislative committees, the standards could either be enacted or they could come back to the state board for changes.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 9:22 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A new report takes a close look at five public schools it sees as doing exemplary work to make the arts a high priority as part of a redesigned and expanded school day.

So, what does this look like in practice?

The arts are not considered "extras" in these schools, according to the report, issued last week. Students get at least one hour daily of arts-specific instruction (and in two of them, it's often closer to three hours). Teachers routinely seek opportunities to integrate the arts across core disciplines. The schools hire arts specialists who are both talented artists and educators. They connect with museums and other cultural institutions. Students have access to a menu of different arts opportunities, from visual and performing arts to multimedia and design projects. These are just a few examples of what the researchers learned in studying these schools in depth.

The arts hold a "fragile place" in public education, says the report, developed by the National Center on Time & Learning, with support from The Wallace Foundation (which also underwrites reporting by Education Week.)

"The two arenas of academics and the arts are often positioned as competitors in a kind of zero-sum game, rather than as partners in a potential educational synergy," the report says. But the schools profiled in the report "have each sought to make the arts a central—even a driving—feature of their students' educational experiences."

Although the report says all of the schools profiled operate in an environment in which their effectiveness is judged primarily through state assessments, it finds that the schools make ample time for the arts. "[T]he leaders of these schools do not feel that they have to forgo time spent on arts education in order to ensure that their students meet prescribed learning targets."

Despite many differences in design and approach, all of the schools embrace three "essential approaches" to arts education:

• Arts classes are considered a core feature of their comprehensive educational program;
• The school day and staffing are organized to reflect the central role of the arts and dedicate ample time to their practice; and
• The educators value how the arts can leverage student engagement and achievement.

"With the right structure and supports and, significantly, the time to innovate and implement approaches that best meet the needs of all students, schools can indeed create meaningful arts education programs," the report says.

The five schools profiled in the report include:

• Berkshire Arts & Technology Charter Public School in Adams, Mass.
• Clarence Edwards Middle School in Boston
• Metropolitan Arts and Technology High School in San Francisco
• Cole Arts and Sciences Academy in Denver
• Roger Williams Middle School in Providence, R.I.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 9:13 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Republican Gov. Rick Perry of Texas today signed legislation to rewrite state graduation requirements, reducing from 15 to five the number of end-of-course exams students must pass to earn a high school diploma, and revising the default course of study.

"The legislation I signed today strikes a balance between our need for rigorous academic standards and a student's need for flexibility, and between accountability and an appropriate level of testing in the classroom," Gov. Perry said in a press release. "We are improving workforce readiness and expanding and developing career and technical education courses to better guide students from the high school or college classroom into careers with the most job opportunities."

The new law replaces the state's "recommended" diploma pathway, dubbed the "4x4" curriculum, with a "foundation" diploma that requires fewer courses in history, science, and math, allowing students to skip subjects such as Algebra 2. Students may pursue diploma "endorsements" in several areas—such as STEM or business and industry—that would require additional coursework. Also, students may seek a "distinguished level of achievement" designation with additional course requirements, including Algebra 2.

On state testing, all students still will have to pass state exams in Algebra 1, biology, English 1 and 2, and U.S. history. But they would not have to take end-of-course tests for Algebra 2, chemistry, physics, world history, and some other subjects that under prior law were required.

The measure won overwhelming, bipartisan support in the state legislature. It had strong backing from state education and parent groups, but divided the business community.

Proponents said the legislation provided welcome relief from a long list of mandated tests and handed students needed flexibility for coursework that best suits their career path. But critics, including some Texas business leaders and national advocacy groups, argued that it represents a step backward for a state they see as being in the vanguard nationally in setting policies to better prepare young people, especially low-income and minority students, for college and careers.

The Dallas Morning News criticized the governor's action in an editorial, arguing that the legislation "risks making it easier for students to graduate without challenging math, science, and English courses. There were compromises to be struck around this bill, but unfortunately they didn't become part of the legislation."

You can find more background about the legislation in this Education Week story and this blog post.

Posted by Erik Robelen at 3:53 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend