Curriculum Matters

Last week I wrote about a study that drew some intriguing conclusions about the state of the "pipeline" of students entering math and science studies and fields. The analysis, by Hal Salzman of Rutgers University and Lindsay Lowell of Georgetown University, found that the flow of students from K-12 schools to the workforce appears to be quite strong, contrary to the assertions of many policymakers today.

To the extent that students are leaving the pipeline, the authors found, they tend to be high-achieving students. In other words, young people don't seem to be fleeing those fields because of lack of ability, but because of other factors—such as that they don't find those jobs attractive for whatever reason.

Now, an organization that represents businesses, research universities, and foundations, who have a major interest in maintaining the "STEM" pipeline, is offering a critique of the study's methodology and conclusions. The Business-Higher Education Forum, in a paper made available to its members, says the loss of high-performing students in STEM was more likely explained by the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2000—not by college or businesses not doing enough to keep them.

"Students rationally voted with their feet as jobs vanished from an imploding sector of the economy," the BHEF says. Recent data, they say, shows an upswing of interest in engineering and computer science studies in recent years.

The BHEF, in examining the data in the Salzman/Lowell study, also asserts that it judges STEM in isolation, and people in other studies/careers tend to abandon those interests at similar rates. But a broader issue the study doesn't address, says BHEF Executive Director Brian Fitzgerald, is that STEM-related talents, particularly in technology, are increasingly demanded by businesses that, strictly speaking, have not been considered "STEM"-oriented in the past. He cites the growing need for STEM talent in the insurance industry, as one example. The business reps the BHEF works with talk often about the shift away from a manufacturing economy, and how important science- and math-related skills are becoming in their workplaces. The study doesn't account for that, he says.

"Across fields, more will be demanded," Fitzgerald told me. "Every major corporate sector is undergoing a shift, with technology at its core."

I contacted Salzman, who responded to BHEF's points. He acknowledges that the dot-com bust may have affected students' career choices, but says that ultimately proves the study's point: that STEM choices are market-driven. "I'm not sure [the pipeline is] 'broken,' if students choose to leave a field that is in decline," he wrote in an e-mail.

Salzman also says that, contrary to the BHEF's critique, the authors are not saying that top-achieving students avoiding STEM simply because companies aren't making those jobs attractive enough. The key point is that students are responding to what they know of job market conditions— and that it's not a matter of them not being academically gifted enough.

For instance, Salzman, who has studied labor markets extensively, says his research has shown that mid-level and senior engineering workers voice satisfaction with their careers, overall, but are concerned it won't be a good or stable a job in the future.

"The decline in retention from college to first job might also be due to loss of interest in STEM careers, but alternatively, top STEM majors may be responding to market forces and incentives," Salzman said by e-mail. "We tried to be very clear that there are number of possible explanations, and that the key point is that enrollments are sensitive to market conditions. This, then, would be entirely consistent with the [BHEF's point about dot-coms]. ... In fact, in terms of IT, we make that very case in a couple of earlier papers."

He also says when he and Lowell have written on this topic in the past on a similar theme, they've asked critics to provide data backing up the claim that demand for STEM jobs outstrips the supply of qualified talent. No such data has emerged, he said.

I'll invite readers to offer their own analysis of this debate, which—no matter what you come down—surely reflects one of the most important education-meets-labor market questions out there today.

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Those of you who've been wondering when the next round of common, multistate standards would appear may want to clear some time in mid-December. That's when the first draft of K-12 standards are likely to be unveiled, says one of the officials leading that process.

Dane Linn of the National Governors Association, one of two organizations guiding the Common Core State Standards Initiative, said at a forum on Wednesday that committees have been working on the K-12 document for a while now and a draft should be ready by the middle of next month. The K-12 document, as many readers know, is part two of the multistate standards project. Part one was the unveiling of draft college and career-readiness standards, back in September.

Officials from the NGA and Council of Chief State School Officers also expect to have members of a "validation" committee review the K-12 and end-of-high school documents at the same time, and have them approved by February, Linn added.

Linn was speaking on a panel on national standards hosted by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, in Washington. Joining him at the event, which was moderated by Chester Finn, Fordham's president, were Sheila Byrd Carmichael, an education policy consultant; Stephen Wilson, a professor of mathematics at Johns Hopkins University; and Sandy Kress, who was a senior adviser to George W. Bush and involved in the crafting of the No Child Left Behind Act.

Linn also said his team has surveyed the state officials they work with about how soon they might adopt common standards, once those documents are complete. Of 41 states that responded, 16 predicted that work could be done in one to six months, Linn said; 15 said it could take 6-12 months; 10 others indicated it would take 12 months or more.

What remains unclear is how the states' schedules for adopting common standards will mesh with the Race to the Top guidelines, which seem to set a more aggressive timeline for state action, as my colleague Michele McNeil noted in a recent story.

The Obama administration has proposed giving a competitive advantage to states applying for $4 billion in federal Race to the Top funding if they adopt common standards. It has also offered $350 million in competitive federal aid to states to craft common assessments based on common standards. Finn asked the NGA official if he expected that all states would adopt one common test, or if consortia or groups of states would band together to create their own assessments. Linn said Common Core officials had been talking with state leaders about the "pros and cons," of each approach and he expected a clearer picture to emerge in the next month or so.

Kress, during his opening remarks, argued that the standards won't mean much unless states agree to revamp teacher training and instructional materials to make the effort worthwhile. They'll also need good tests that measure what the standards call for and set high passing thresholds, he said. Without all that, standards amount to a "leaky bucket," Kress said, quoting from a recent paper by Russ Whitehurst, of the Brookings Institution. He also said the Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, before rewarding states with federal funding for common standards, should make sure they're taking steps "to actually implement them, and effectively so."

"I say unless a state can can show it's doing all of these things," Kress said of standards, "what good are they?"

Want to hear more? Fordham's event was streamed live, and a recording should be available soon at the institute's site.

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Many scientists have a lot to say. Unfortunately, a large swath of the public at large has trouble understanding what it is they're talking about.

This is a problem, many scientists agree, not just because important scientific facts and ideas are misunderstood, or because those topics end up getting ignored in the public sphere. The language barrier also makes it difficult for the public, including K-12 students, to grasp why science is important at all, and how it affects their lives.

In reporting a story recently, I was directed to an online resource that seeks to help scientists overcome these barriers. It's called "Communicating Science: Tools for Scientists and Engineers," and it's run by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, one of the most prestigious scientific organizations in the world.

The site, which is supported by the National Science Foundation, includes how-to tips for scientists to conduct interviews. It also houses online "webinars," ideas for coming up with public outreach opportunities, and a list of workshops to help scientists. For members of the working media, looking at these resources often has the added benefit of cluing us in to how the rest of humanity regards us (in some cases with fear and suspicion). But on the AAAS site, the authors try to anticipate scientists' struggles to explain their work to reporters and offer them practical tips. Here's a sample from the site:

"The phone rings, you answer. It's a reporter from the New York Times. She quickly explains that she's writing a story under deadline and another scientist she spoke to gave her your name. What should you do?

1. Hang up in fear.
2. Ask what the story is about and the deadline, and then arrange with the reporter a better time to talk, keeping in mind his or her deadline.
3. Say 'sure,' answer her first question, and then discuss in great detail your most recent published discovery for the next 30 minutes, interrupting the rest of the reporter's questions."

The correct answer, the site explains, is #2. This approach will give the scientist time to think through how he or she plans to explain a topic, the authors say. Other, more detailed advice for interviews is also included.

I often hear scientists talk about how difficult it is to explain the rules and language of science to lay audiences. Their frustration level was especially high during the spate of fights over evolution and intelligent design in schools a few years ago, when many scientific experts sought to describe the kinds of questions science can answer, and those that it can't. If you're a K-12 teacher or student, what tips could you give scientists on how they can explain their work in clear and lively terms?

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In the wake of a recent release of uninspiring test scores and a federal study showing that states lowered their "proficiency" standards, there's been a lot of tough and in some ways surprising analysis being put forward recently about math instruction in this country. Here's a sample:

—In The Baltimore Sun, a college physics professor and parent says schools are rushing students through overly difficult material, rather than ensuring that they are taught rigorous math through "age-appropriate concepts and techniques." Joseph Ganem describes his teenage daughter's struggles with high school trigonometry material that he says is at a level appropriate for upper-level college physics students. Many students, he says, are lost when they get to college-level math because they have been fed math processes but lack a solid understanding of math. "Learning techniques without understanding them," Ganem writes, "does no good in preparing students for college, where emphasis is on understanding, not memorization and computational prowess."

—The Des Moines Register looks beyond Iowa's overall state scores to examine how students are faring, by achievement level, when compared to those students' peers in other states. The paper's editorialists are troubled by the fact that Iowa has far fewer students scoring at the "advanced" level than top-performing states, particularly Massachusetts. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds are also lagging behind those from more affluent backgrounds.

—A recent examination of states' tendency to set very divergent, and in many cases very low "proficiency" standards has a lot people asking hard questions of state officials. This story in the Chicago Sun-Times about that state's proficiency standards is one example.

—And on a different note, a new survey reveals just how lost many parents are when it comes to helping their children with math and science homework. Many mothers and fathers, it turns out, find it easier to talk about the perils of illegal drug use than about math and science content. The Orlando Sentinel sums up an Intel survey on parents' math and science knowledge, or lack of it.

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The National Academies has just released a handbook of sorts that seeks to give educators and others practical advice on how they can use museums, science centers, and other "informal" forms of education to improve student learning.

The guide, titled "Surrounded by Science: Learning Science in Informal Environments," is based on the research found in a study of informal science learning, released by the National Research Council earlier this year. Museums and science centers, as well as TV shows and other efforts, can be a major resource for science teachers and parents—if they know how to use them.

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Some of the country's top researchers on science education have been meeting at the National Academies in the hope of laying the groundwork for new and improved standards in that subject.

The goal is to create a conceptual framework built around "core ideas," in science. That framework could in turn inform the future development of standards as part of the multistate Common Core State Standards Initiative, an ongoing project we've been writing about a lot.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the researchers at the Academies, a congressionally-chartered entity that provides advice to the federal government, are using language that will sound very familiar to followers of the Common Core. They want to establish a framework that promotes the study of "fewer, deeper, clearer, and higher" ideas in science, which echoes the fewer-clearer-higher theme of the Common Core. The Academies organizers also believe that recent research on student cognition in science can help shape better standards, said Martin Storksdieck, the director of the the board on science education at the National Academies. For instance, researchers today take a strong interest in a concept known as "learning progressions," basically, ordering lessons in a way that reflects how students learn and builds on what they already know.

Research is showing that students "are capable of learning much more in science than we thought them capable of before," Storksdieck told me. He described a prime goal of science standards this way: "We need to teach science in a way that gives students a stronger sense of just how exciting science is."

I've written a bit about the potential for the Common Core to move on to science, after finishing language arts and reading standards. As part of its work on a science framework, the Academies staff have been working with the National Science Teachers Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Storksdieck noted. The science researchers have also stayed in touch with Achieve, which is a partner in the Common Core, he added.

Here's a useful page that offers papers and presentations from an Academies conference held this month on the creation of standards. Stay tuned.

Photo of Albert Einstein courtesy of Library of Congress.

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"Dear editors," the letter reads, "Please do not continue to encourage the improper use of the word 'forensics.' The courses referred to in the article ... are courses in forensic science. Forensics is to argue in a court of law. It is also used, and has been for the past 100+ years, to refer to debate."

A reader from Colorado takes exception to my use of the word "forensics" as shorthand for the study of "forensic science" in schools. I wrote about the proliferation of classes on that topic this week.

Ask teachers and students today what's meant by forensics, and I'll bet that most of them will associate it with the study of crime scenes, criminal evidence, "CSI," and so on.

Yet this was not always so, and it should not be the case today, the reader contends. He explains that his school offers "forensics" classes that focus on the study of debate—in addition to forensic-science classes, which look at "finding evidence for argument in criminal cases." (A colleague in my office recently said a similar thing, observing that she could remember when forensics meant "debate.")

But it appears that the definition of "forensics" has evolved over time.

An edition of the 1985 American Heritage Dictionary defines "forensics" as simply "the study or practice of formal debate; argumentation." It defines "forensic," as an adjective, as 1) "pertaining to or employed in legal proceedings or argumentation: forensic medicine; 2) Of, pertaining to, or employed in the debate or argument; rhetorical." No mention of crime scenes, blood spatter, fingerprint analysis, etc.

Yet when I consult my own 2001 edition of Webster's New World College Dictionary, it defines "forensic" (from the Latin term forensis, for public) as 1) "of, characteristic of, or suitable for a law court, public debate, or formal argumentation; 2) specializing in or having to do with the application of scientific, esp. medical, knowledge to legal matters, as in the investigation of a crime." Used as a noun, it refers to "debate or formal argumentation."

So it seems the definition has shifted a bit toward the CSI-side-of-things in recent years. Even so, to the reader from Colorado, I say point taken! You may be waging a lonely, and ultimately futile battle against the weight of popular culture and journalistic imprecision, but it's a distinction worth noting. Of course, if you really want your argument carried to a larger audience, you'd lobby the creators of "CSI" to slip some relevant dialogue on this subject onto the show.

I'll pose this question to teachers and school administrators: Do you refer to the debate classes and activities in your schools as "forensics"? Or simply "debate"?

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

In this week's issue, I have a story about the continued growth of forensic science courses in schools, a trend that can almost certainly be attributed partly to the "CSI effect" or the public's fixation on cops-and-crime TV shows.

When reporting on teachers taking on a relatively new topic in science, one question I'm always curious about is where educators get their classroom materials, and ideas for lessons? The teachers I interviewed for this story tapped some interesting sources, including local police departments and forensics experts, as well as research on forensic science and the TV shows themselves—sometimes to test the veracity of an idea or concept presented on the show.

One teacher whose account I was not able to include in my story was Brian Pressley, who teaches science at Brunswick High School in Maine. Pressley is also a textbook author, and he recently wrote a new book on forensics, published by Walch Education. In addition doing a lot of research and reading about forensics, Pressley gathered ideas from his school's security staff, who have law-enforcement training. The teacher said he knew that forensics would be a popular topic for a book after witnessing the reaction at several professional development conferences of science teachers.

"Teachers were standing in the doorway, trying to get information," he said of one crowded session. He thought he'd have better luck at another one later in the day, but "people were out the door at that one, too," he recalled.

About three-quarters of the members of the National Science Teachers Association who responded to a survey a few years ago said some kind of forensic science was being taught in their schools. If you're teaching forensics, how did you develop a curriculum for your class?

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Many school districts around the country have seen an influx of Hispanic students, who also occupy a growing portion of the workforce in their communities. How can educators and policymakers encourage those students to pursue a college education, and a career in science, technology, engineering, and math (the so-called 'STEM' occupations), specifically? This week, a forum hosted by the Hispanic College Fund on Capitol Hill will explore that topic.

I've written a bit in the past about schools' efforts to build non-native English speakers' skills in math and science at an early age. This event looks the experience of Latinos later in the K-12 pipeline. A number of Hispanic students and business leaders will offer ideas on strategies to help students. The event is set for Thursday, Oct. 29, at 9:30 a.m., in the south congressional meeting room, in the Capitol Visitor's Center.

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Arne Duncan spoke before a top White House advisory panel on science today, hammering home a couple points. The nation will need many more, and more talented math and science teachers in the years ahead, the secretary said. He also echoed worries that too many schools have pushed science out of the curriculum in the No Child Left Behind era, and said the administration wants to find ways to end that erosion, as part of efforts to reauthorize the law.

On these and other points, Duncan was speaking to a receptive audience: the President's Council of Advisors on Science in Technology, a part of the White House executive office. The panel heard the secretary's thoughts on the state of 'STEM' education, and threw some questions his way afterward.

One of Duncan's points was that, given an anticipated wave of teacher retirements in the years ahead, policymakers will have to work harder to lure aspiring math and science educators into the profession—through pay incentives, by loosening certification requirements to allow career-changers, and so on.

"Our ability to attract and retain great talent over the next four, five, six years is going to shape education over the next 30," Duncan told the council.

The secretary has plugged differential pay for teachers of math, science, and other high-need subjects before. He told the science council he wasn't sure of what dollar amounts are necessary, but argued that there needs to be more of a market in which schools can bid more for outside talent and recruit it. "It's not the solution," he said of math-science teacher shortages, "but it's a piece of the solution."

Council members also voiced worries about what they saw as the poor quality of many state science tests, which in their view, place far too much emphasis on multiple-choice and rote memorization, and have the effect of killing many students' love of the subject. Duncan predicted that the $350 million pool of federal funding the administration is putting toward supporting common standards and tests would have an impact, and said he, too, wants to support "less fill-in-the-bubble, more critical thinking," on science exams.

The secretary also voiced concerns about science getting ignored, as districts scramble to raise math and reading scores. He recounted a recent meeting with a school superintendent who told Duncan that he'd recently visited 100 schools and didn't see science being taught in any of them. Duncan said he and his staff are looking at ways to encourage schools to cover a broad range of subjects, as the administration considers ways to revamp No Child Left Behind.

"I worry tremendously about the loss of science and engineering," Duncan said at one point. The main question, he added is: "How do we create the incentives so that students have a well-rounded curriculum?...We're thinking these things though."

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

A coalition of parents interested in promoting high-quality math instruction says the draft of common, multistate standards gets some things right, but is off the mark in a couple key areas.

The U.S. Coalition for World Class Math, by its description, supports giving students a strong grounding in procedural math skills, which it believes will also lead to their acquisition of "conceptual skill," or higher-order thinking. It says its members include state coalitions of mathematicians, engineers, and others with strong math backgrounds, a collection of voices, the group says, is often neglected in developing math standards and curricula.

While "needing some work," the draft math standards "are substantially well written," it says. "If these standards are to serve as the forerunner of future K-12 grade-by-grade objectives and standards, however, we believe more clarity is needed and [we] made suggestions for improving the discussions and the standards themselves."

Update: Barry Garelick, of the math coalition, says my initial post did not adequately describe his group's concerns about the draft standards. And after re-reading their position, I see his point. The coalition worries that the standards do not do enough to address the math standards that students who are interested in pursuing math and science careers, or advanced studies, will have to meet. "[A]ppropriate standards must be developed for them," they write, "so that teachers, school administrators, and textbook publishers can develop appropriate courses of instruction for STEM-intending students." The coalition also argues that the draft places too much emphasis on statistics, probability, and math modeling, which it says aren't as essential for college readiness as other topics. I've changed the headline and first line to reflect this point. See Garelick's comment below, or the link, above, for more detail.

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A couple of my colleagues have written about Grover "Russ" Whitehurst's recent paper on the importance of curriculum in improving schools. To sum it up, Whitehurst, the former director of the federal Institute of Education Sciences, says the research suggests there's a greater payoff for students in addressing curriculum than on the issues that seem to be receiving the most attention from the Obama administration, at least publicly—charter schools, early childhood ed, common standards, merit pay for teachers. Whitehurst makes that analysis based on his examination of the "effect sizes" of various education policies—basically, the relationship between an ed policy and an outcome, as judged on statistical-numerical terms.

I'd like to touch on one of Whitehurst's observations that some EdWeek readers may have overlooked. In his introduction, the former IES chief says he sees a very different focus in ed-policymaking from the Bush and Obama administrations. He argues that the Bush team, in which he served, was very keen on improving curriculum. This occasionally caused problems: the administration was accused of overstepping its legal grounds on curriculum through the federal Reading First program, as Whitehurst notes in his paper. But the administration also delved into the topic in other ways: creating the What Works Clearinghouse to conduct rigorous evaluations of curriculum, and launching a number of other studies of curricula across subjects. (He also could have mentioned Bush's creation of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, which probed curriculum, as well as other issues, in its study of how to prep the nation's students for algebra.)

Whitehurst then looks at the Obama administration and sees different interests:

"In light of the legislative prohibitions on endorsing curricula and the political taint surrounding Reading First, one can imagine high-level meeting in the Obama administration in which curriculum and third rail were mentioned in the same sentence. But one can also imagine an administration that is staffed with policy makers who cut their teeth on policy reforms in the areas of school governance and management rather than classroom practice, people who may be oblivious to curriculum for the same reason that Bedouin don't think much about water skiing.....

"People who are trying to create more charter schools, or pressure unions to allow more flexibility in hiring and firing teachers, or transform schools into one-stop shops for community needs, do not sort with people who are trying to improve the teaching of fractions or children's reading comprehension. The disciplinary training, job experience, professional networks, and intuitions about what is important hardly overlap between governance and curriculum reformers. For the governance types, teaching resolves to the question of how to get more qualified teachers into the classroom, e.g., 'How can we remove the artificial barriers to entry into the profession so that smart people who want to teach don't have to jump through the hoops of traditional teacher training and certification?' For the curriculum reformer, teaching is about specific interactions between students and their curriculum materials as shaped by teachers. For a curriculum reformer, teachers with higher IQs and better liberal arts educations are desirable, to be sure. But just as people with musical talent have to work hard to develop musical skills and have available to them exceptional compositions if they are to be successful musical performers, so too bright aspiring teachers have to learn a lot about how to teach and have good curriculum materials if they are to be effective with students. Thus being smart is the starting point of becoming a good teacher for a curriculum reformer whereas it is often the end point of governance reforms.

"Let's assume the Obama administration has ignored curriculum inadvertently because it is staffed with governance people who are simply valuing what they know. If so, then the administration would do well to heed Obama's assertion that, 'you do what works for the kids.' The administration should be open to all the categories of reform and innovation that could have an appreciable impact on student learning."

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It's not unusual for teachers of science and other subjects to use popular films, or clips from movies, to introduce or reinforce a topic or present it in an engaging way. But judging the academic merits of Hollywood creations is not easy.

One of the better resources I've seen that tries to help teachers answer those questions is "Blick on Flicks," a Web site run by the National Science Teachers Association that offers movie reviews for science teachers. The critic is Jacob Clark Blickenstaff, an assistant professor of physics and the assistant director of the Center for Science and Mathematics Education at the University of Southern Mississippi.

Blickenstaff judges movies not only on their scientific accuracy, but also on whether they present science in an engaging way and how they depict the work that scientists do. Many films obviously present a lot of misconceptions about science, but they can still present phenomena that are useful, which teachers couldn't possibly demonstrate in the classroom, Blickenstaff explained in an e-mail. His reviews include suggestions on how teachers can integrate what's occurring on screen into their lessons.

The professor's work for NSTA began when he heard the organization was looking for a reviewer. He contacted the teachers' group, submitted a sample column, which was favorably received, and a film critic was born.

His recent reviews of films (which are also podcast) include the latest Batman installment The Dark Knight, M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening, and the animated film Up. The recent, critically acclaimed District 9 is also written up.The headlines offer a taste of his opinions: "Jumping to Conclusions" (about the sci-fi fantasy Jumper) and "Physics and Batman: A Troubled Relationship."

In his review of The Happening, Blickenstaff is pleased to see that the protagonist in the film, played by Mark Wahlberg, is a science teacher. He takes issue, however, with the character telling students in his class that many of the concepts that end up in science texts amount to "just a theory." Writes Blickenstaff: "This dreadful sentence works to reinforce one of the most problematic misunderstandings between scientists and the general public: a theory in science is not an unsubstantiated guess, it is an explanation of a process or phenomenon that has a great deal of evidence backing it up." The teacher later redeems himself, Blickenstaff says, by reviewing the process for answering scientific questions.

Some of the movies on his site, at first glance, would seem of little use to science teachers. He reviews The Devil Wears Prada, for instance, a popular film starring Meryl Streep about the pretensions of the fashion industry. Yet Blickenstaff sees science on-screen. A physics teacher could use the film to discuss the pressure, or force per unit area, created by high-heeled shoes. Biology and life-science teachers, he says, can draw from its depiction of the pressure women face to stay slender to discuss body image and nutrition.

"In contrast to some of the other people who write about movies and science, I try to balance the negative and positive," Blickenstaff told me. "I try to have a balance of life and physical sciences, and also to go beyond the sci-fi and action genres to show that science is truly ubiquitous."

Note: Blickenstaff is the assistant director of the math and science center at his university, not the director, as I originally wrote.

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A coalition of business and technology organizations is launching a major effort to get Massachusetts students interested in STEM careers—by reaching out to them at an early age.

The organizers of the project, known as "DIGITS," will arrange to have workers from various science, technology, engineering, and math fields visit 6th grade classrooms and present information on what they do in their careers. The plan is to set up presentations in 568 schools across Massachusetts.

The project is being overseen by the STEMTech Alliance, a coalition of six statewide science and industry associations. "Ambassadors" working in various STEM fields will visit classrooms to talk about their work; they will also be given written resources and materials for video presentations to students, including interactive graphics (presumably on computers). You can find more information on the DIGITS Web site, linked above. The program was piloted over the summer and showed good results, alliance officials say.

How common is it for supporters of STEM fields to tout their work to students as early as middle school? What advantages and drawbacks do you see to this approach?

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The science and math community places a high value on student competitions, which reward students with cash, college scholarships, or simply recognition for innovation. We at EdWeek are flooded with information about these contests. But this week I received a notice about one in particular that earns points for its creativity and eccentricity.

A new contest called "Dash+" challenges high school students to put their creativity, design, and math and science skills toward a mission of interest to millions of auto-dependent Americans everywhere: building the car dashboard of the future.

The contest, supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, opens for registration today. The goal is to have student teams design dashboards with gauges, instruments, and interfaces that will prod drivers to maximize fuel efficiency and have less of a deleterious effect on the environment. Student competitors will be required to submit a written technical plan and video presentation that would help convince both automakers and the general public to adopt whatever tools they come up with.

The high school competition is a part of a larger automotive "X Prize," sponsored by Progressive Insurance, a contest that invites adult teams of scientists to develop and submit ideas for more fuel-efficient vehicles. The rules for the high school Dash+ contest say that teams must include between two and five students in grades 9-12, ages 14 and older, and they must have an adult mentor.

I've seen some very innovative, and potentially patentable ideas come out of high school science clubs over the years. Maybe the next great dashboard won't come out of Detroit, but rather from the school down the street.

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If you're looking for additional analysis of last week's lackluster NAEP math results, the New York Times offers a useful forum with online commentaries. The opining authors include college faculty and parents. Some call for less-punitive testing systems that encourage teachers to instead use test results to improve instruction. Others say the results call for rethinking of curriculum at the elementary level.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There's a ton of interest these days in the possibility of creating common academic standards across states, as a multistate effort led by the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association rolls forward. So far, that project has focused on two subjects: math and English-language arts. Over the past couple months, I've also heard from educators and interested parties in other subjects, particularly science, asking "what about us?"

The answer: Your time could be coming soon.

Leaders of major science education organizations have already had preliminary discussions with folks from the NGA/CCSSO effort, known as Common Core State Standards Initiative, about cooperating on science standards. NGA and CCSSO officials have talked in fairly broad terms about eventually trying to forge common standards in other academic subjects. But after getting additional details from some of the people involved, I thought I'd put some of what is playing out behind the scenes on the record.

For about three years now, the National Science Teachers Association has been working on creating a new set of science standards. That project is known as "Anchors," and is being undertaken in cooperation with officials from Achieve, as well as the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Research Council, two prestigious scientific organizations, the NSTA's executive director, Francis Eberle, explained in a recent interview. The NSTA, which has 58,000 members, has had tentative talks with Common Core folks about eventually merging "Anchors" with the Common Core, as opposed to producing two different documents, Eberle told me. "The hope is it's not a separate effort," he said. The goal is to bring more consistency to science lessons nationwide, he added, arguing that this would help "re-energize the field."

The AAAS and National Research Council, as many science teachers know, produced their own standards documents in the 1990s, which are widely cited in individual states' standards documents today. NSTA officials say they hope "Anchors" could draw from those documents but also present science in a more focused and streamlined way, placing an emphasis on major concepts in science. (I described the goals of "Anchors" in a story a few years ago.)

Dane Linn, who directs the education division at NGA's Center for Best Practices, confirmed that Common Core officials have had some tentative talks with folks involved in "Anchors." He also said that discussions have been held with various social studies organizations about future standards work in that area.

"We've heard from several states about their interest in moving into other subjects— particularly science—next," Linn said. Discussions with advocates from the social studies community, he added, are ongoing.

While the NGA and CCSSO officials don't want to put off the move into science and social studies for too long, Linn also emphasized that the organizations are determined to make sure that math and language arts are on solid ground before moving on. "We need to demonstrate success in the first two subjects we're focused on," he said.

If you've been following the standards push to this point, how easy or difficult do you think it would be to create multistate standards in science and social studies, compared to those in language arts and math?

Photo of student in science class by Dave Martin for Education Week.

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We've written, as have others, about high school graduates who lack the academic skills necessary to make it in college and the workforce, and efforts to rectify that problem. But a new report examines a different, and perhaps equally vexing issue: What if students simply aren't interested in going into the fields where the jobs are?

A new report by the ACT looks at that mismatch and unearths some interesting results. The report lists the five highest-growth occupations, based on U.S. Department of Labor projections, requiring at least a two-year college degree. In this order, they are: education, including secondary school teachers and administrators; computer/information specialists, who would include computer programmers, database administrators; community service professionals, such as social workers and school counselors; management, such as hotel and restaurant managers; and marketing and sales employees. In all five fields, the percentage of high school graduates who said they were interested in those careers—ACT takers were the ones surveyed—falls short of projections. See the accompanying chart from the ACT, below.

Some academic researchers have questioned state and local efforts to raise academic requirements in subjects such as math and science, saying the new, tougher mandates aren't always aligned with what the job market is actually demanding. The ACT report, on the one hand, notes that too many high school graduates aren't meeting academic standards for college readiness. Yet it also seems to beg the question: Even if students have the academic talent and academic preparation needed to make it in the job market, are they going to end up in the jobs where they're needed the most?

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The main research arm of the U.S. Department of Education is funding the creation of three new centers, two of them focused on math curriculum and instruction, the third of which will examine how to "scale up" effective schools and revamp low-performing ones.

It's probably no accident that those topics are getting a lot of attention from policymakers today, as part of the effort to craft common standards and revamp struggling schools. The federal Institute of Education Sciences invited applicants to apply through a competition to be selected to run the centers, and bids were due earlier this month.

One center would seek to examine what kinds of standards and assessments produce the best academic results for children. Currently, standards and test frameworks are usually developed by expert consensus, IES notes in its request for applications. Yet there's "little empirical basis" to make those decisions, it says.

"[W]hich early skills are most predictive of those mathematics skills that are currently assessed in upper elementary grades, middle school, or high school? " the IES says. "What do skills that are currently assessed in elementary, middle, and high school predict in terms of later mathematics achievement? Although there is an emerging consensus among experts as to the content and skills that should be taught and assessed to prepare children for algebra, the empirical evidence to support the predictive validity of these skills is quite limited."

The IES currently funds 13 research and development centers, which probe aspects of education policy ranging from college access to pay incentives for teachers and other school employees to the use of technology. Two additional centers focus on special education.

The second newly proposed math center would examine strategies to improve student achievement through cognition—basically the study of how people think and learn—and redesign math curriculum based on that research. The agency says it is not interested in supporting a project that results in a redesigned math curriculum that is "entirely teacher-centered" or "entirely teacher-directed," a reference to a common ideological feud in the so-called math wars. (And an issue that some experts, like those who served on the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, say is overblown.)

The third center would seek to identify "policies, programs and practices" in schools that have strong records of improving performance in "underachieving populations," and examiend ways to scale up those strategies. As it now stands, many practices that are touted as effective have not been rigorously studied, says IES, echoing a common refrain among ed policymakers. As a result, districts and schools are forced to make decisions "on the basis of little empirical evidence," the agency says.

How likely are these centers to contribute to the ongoing debates and discussions about national standards and overhauling poor-performing schools?

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Mark Schneider, the former chief of the U.S. Department of Education's statistical office, lays bare the discrepancy between American high schoolers' enrollment in tougher math classes, their alleged success in those courses, and their continuing mediocre academic performance in that subject.

Policymakers have long been flummoxed by U.S. students' failure to make gains in high school math, during the same period when math scores among younger students have risen. Schneider, writing for the American Enterprise Institute, suggests that American states and schools are fixated on putting students in the kinds of math courses that are supposed to be "rigorous," but in truth are anything but.

On the one hand, more students than ever are taking tougher math high school math classes—Algebra 1, Algebra 2, and calculus—and taking them earlier in school, he explains. On paper, Schneider explains, it seems like a "remarkable change." They're also getting better grades in those classes: The average math GPA has risen from 2.2 to 2.6 since 1990.

But here comes the rub. Schneider, the former commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, notes that students who take various high school math classes are actually doing worse than they did 30 years ago, as judged by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. (Check out Figure 5.) He also looks at data from international tests.

"Students who stopped at Algebra I, geometry, and Algebra II all scored lower on NAEP in 2008 than the students enrolled in the same courses in 1978," Schneider writes. "The only bright spot is that students completing calculus now do about as well as their peers from thirty years ago."

Schneider also knocks down a couple possible explanations for these unsettling trends. One of them is that the flat scores are primarily due to a decline in the U.S. population of higher-scoring white students at the high school level. That trend is indeed occurring, he says, but so what? It hasn't prevented an increase in the math scores among 9- and 13-year-olds.

Many of the math courses with impressive-sounding titles, Schneider concludes, are simply not what they seem. The responsibility to ensure that math courses are top-notch rests largely on states, which have not shown an inclination to make sure that curricula and tests are holding students to high standards. (Some say that under No Child Left Behind, states haven't had much incentive to do so.)

"If policymakers decide that a mark of a successful high school career is completion of Algebra II, then schools enroll more students into a course called Algebra II," he says. "But not all math courses are equal—and it is easier to rebrand courses and still teach low-level math than it is to increase the rigor of math instruction."

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I neglected to note the confirmation last week of Brenda Dann-Messier as the new assistant secretary for vocational and adult education at the U.S. Department of Education. Dann-Messier, who was confirmed by the U.S. Senate, most recently served as the president of Dorcas Place, an adult and family learning center in Rhode Island. Dann-Messier was given the Senate's blessing at the same time that lawmakers confirmed Alexa Posny, former Kansas commissioner of education, as assistant secretary for special education and rehabilatative services.

As I've noted previously, Dann-Messier brings a somewhat different background to the job than those who served in the role under former President George W. Bush. Some people I've spoken with have suggested that her selection, along with that of other officials in the department, could reflect the Obama administration's desire to pay more attention to community colleges and adult education, particularly in light of the need to improve the skills of workers and help those who have lost their jobs. Obama has pledged to create a greater role for community colleges in the nation's education pipeline, though there are a lot of unresolved questions about how that will play out. One voc-ed group notes that Dann-Messier, in her pre-departmental career, authored a number of papers about strategies for increasing college access to students from different backgrounds.

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"School newcomer centers," which educate English language learners who have recently arrived in this country, are increasingly offering academic content to go with basic training in English, my colleague Mary Ann Zehr reports on her Learning the Language blog. Those results were included in the findings of a survey conducted by the Center for Applied Linguistics. Among the academic subjects of interest? Pre-algebra, according to the center.

Lack of English skill is a major hurdle for many students in math classes, as well as in science, as I've discussed in previous stories.

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President Obama hosted a group of students at the White House last night for an event aimed at stirring their interest in science, and more specifically, astronomy. Telescopes were set up on the White House lawn (I'm assuming they were sufficiently high powered to cut through Washington's light pollution) and real-life astronauts (Buzz Aldrin, Sally Ride) were on hand. In remarks at the event, the president plugged some of his administration's math and science initiatives—specifically talking up the Race to the Top's potential impact on curriculum and instruction. But mostly, Obama seemed intent on describing science as both important and cool:

"Galileo changed the world when he pointed his telescope to the sky, and now it's your turn," Obama told the students. "We need you to study, do well in school, explore everything from the infinite reaches of space to the microscopic smallness of the atom. We need you to think bigger and to dig deeper and to reach higher. And we need your restless curiosity and your boundless hope and imagination. Our future depends on it.

"So, don't let anybody tell you that there isn't more to discover. Don't let anybody tell you that there's knowledge that's beyond your reach. There's something out there for each and every one of you to discover."

Photo by Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images.

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Many readers are no doubt familiar with the work of 4-H, a 6 million-member-strong youth organization that promotes citizenship and life skills, often with an emphasis on agricultural training. Now that organization is throwing its weight behind a venture of major interest to educators and policymakers: getting more students interested in science, technology, engineering, and math—the so-called "STEM" education fields.

The nonprofit is organizing a a nationwide science experiment today called "Biofuel Blast," which seeks to show middle school students how cellulose and sugars in plants (like switchgrass and algae) can be made into fuel. The event is part of 4-H National Youth Science Day, an effort the organization began last year to bring more American young people into science careers. The youths taking part around the country will create biofuel, and following the experiment, the 4-H will host discussions about alternative energy in different locations around the country. The development of biofuels is a major economic and political issue in many of the communities where 4-H is popular.

STEM-ed advocates would seem to have reason to be enthusiastic about 4-H's promotion of those subjects. The 4-H organizes a lot of year-round out-of-school programming, which is developed by the nation's 106 land-grant colleges and universities and implemented through 3,100 local cooperative extension offices, according to background provided by the organization. 4-H officials estimate that more than 5 million youths currently take part in the organization's science, engineering, and technology programming in topics such as robotics, rocketry, wind power, GPS mapping, agricultural science, film making, and water quality and conservation. The organization has also set a goal of luring another million youths into science, engineering, and technology programming by 2013, through its "One Million New Scientists, One Million New Ideas" campaign.

As they roll out the new program, 4-H officials are also touting research that they say shows their program's positive impact on students' in- and out-of-school development. A longitudinal study found that young people who take part in 4-H are two times more likely to get better grades than youths who do not; two times more likely to go to college; 40 percent less likely to engage in risky behavior; and more likely to contribute to their families and communities. The study was conducted by researchers at the Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development at Tufts University.

What impact do you think an organization with the grassroots reach of 4-H—which says it can be found in every county in every state—is likely to have on STEM?

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California's superintendent of schools, Jack O'Connell, is urging state officials to reconsider their unusual decision to issue a five-year suspension on adopting curriculum "frameworks," saying the delay will hurt teachers and students.

Academic standards, in California and other states, are expectations for what students should know in various subjects. California's curriculum frameworks are documents that explain and translate the state's academic standards for teachers, essentially helping them craft lessons out of them. They also serve as the basis for textbooks and other instructional materials.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other state officials have been forced to take a budget ax to many aspects of state government, schools included. A law passed recently cut support for curriculum development and supplementary materials, blocks the state board of ed from adopting any materials, and prohibits any framework development. My colleague Kathleen Kennedy Manzo provided some of the background in a story from a few weeks ago.

In a teleconference and a statement this week, O'Connell argued that cutting framework development will result in nearly completed documents in history/social science and science getting left on the curb. At the very least, the situation in California is a reminder of what is often the glacial pace for drafting and approving standards and curriculum in states. Restarting the process in California, once the suspension on frameworks is lifted, O'Connell said, will take years—meaning that students today will not receive instructional materials until at least 2017. In the meantime, teacher credentialing and professional-development programs for teachers will drop the frameworks, the superintendent contends, "and the connection between content standards and teaching will be lost."

Do you agree with O'Connell's view of the severity of these cuts?

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Stanford University professor Mike Kirst lays out his concerns about the proposed common academic standards, in a new online essay. Kirst's basic argument is that the draft document wrongly suggests that the skills that students need for colleges (two- and four-year) and very different jobs in the workplace are the same. The Stanford scholar made some of these points in our recent EdWeek story on the draft, but he goes into more detail here.

Kirst discusses his recent work on an expert panel that examined the feasibility of judging college and workforce preparation on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, scale. That panel, he notes, found that many occupations don't have consistent training requirements; some require a lot geometry, for instance, while other demand more algebra, or number computation. It examined job training programs for certain "exemplar" occupations, he says. This seems like a more precise way of judging the skills need for workforce success than what the standards-writers are using.

Do you agree with Kirst's point of view?

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I'm neither a mathematician nor math teacher. Plenty of the readers of this blog do fall into those categories, however, and today I'm seeking them out.

A new report by Achieve, released today, shows students in 13 states struggling, big-time, with algebra, both at the introductory and advanced level. More than 80 percent of students in each of the states (which took part voluntarily in the exam) were not prepared for college-level math in Algebra 2, by the standards of the test. Those results won't strike a lot of people as surprising, given the fact that students are flummoxed by algebra, and that this exam was designed to be an especially tough one.

Yet the Achieve report also includes breakdowns of where students struggled the most, by algebra topic. In Algebra 1, it was in data, statistics and probability. They did better, on the other hand, in non-linear relationships. In Algebra 2, students had difficulties with polynomials (a math expression with three or more terms) and rational functions. They fared a bit better on exponential functions.

Here's a snapshot of the percent of students reaching "mastery," as defined by the test, by category:

Algebra 1
—Non-linear relationships, 26.5 percent reached mastery
—Linear relationships, 24.6 percent
—Operations on Numbers and Expressions, 22.5 percent
—Data, Statistics, and Probability, 18.9 percent

Algebra 2
—Exponential Functions, 24.3 percent
—Function, Operations, and Inverses, 22.7 percent
—Equations and Inequalities, 21.8 percent
—Operations on Numbers and Expressions, 20.2 percent
—Polynominals and Rational Functions, 18.8 percent

A couple questions for readers who are tasked with explaining these math concepts to students every day—either at the K-12 or college level: Are these results what you would have expected? Do you find that your students tend to flail in data, statistics, and probability, and polynominals, more than other math topics? Or could these results simply be a function of this test's content?

UPDATE: Here are some thoughts on the question I posed from William McCallum, who directs the mathematics department at the University of Arizona. I wasn't able to get his comments about students' specific algebra shortcomings in my original story. While he notes that his interpretation would depend on knowing more about the test items, he also says:

"[P]olynomials and rational functions are a topic that many students struggle with because they require a real proficiency in algebraic manipulation that goes beyond just being able to perform the steps." That type of problem-solving "really requires an ability to step back from a calculation," he added, "and foresee which way it's going to go, and maintain some supervision of the calculations to detect error...This is a higher level of proficiency in symbol manipulation than many students acquire."

The Achieve test also found that students struggled most on constructed-response math questions, as opposed to multiple choice. Said McCallum:

"[Of] course [these] are always going to be more difficult, because they require an independent ability to plan a solution and marshal techniques, rather than just perform the techniques. But I have to believe that the large number of students who got zero on those is partly (perhaps largely) the result of the test not having any consequences, so that students would have just blown those off."

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I write in this week's issue about how schools and organizations are using technology to put students in direct contact with scientists in the field (on a remote research vessel in the Pacific, for example). The idea is that students get a much deeper understanding of science—maybe even a love for it—when they interact with somebody who's actually doing it.

The takeaway point here, I would argue, is not the technology. Many of the tools described in the story—blogs, Webcasts, videos—are not new, and probably won't strike the techies out there as especially impressive. You'll find fancier and costlier tools elsewhere. What will probably interest most scientists and science teachers is the application of it, and the promise of presenting their favorite subject the way they see it: as a fun, dynamic way to explore and understand the natural world. The comments of Alan Friedman, a longtime museum director who I interviewed for the story, are instructive. Students don't want to just read about scientists, he said. They want to see and hear and communicate with scientists, as those researchers struggle and push forward.

In this respect, scientists in the field and students in the laboratory, who taste success one day and cope with setbacks the next, have a lot in common.

Photo from the New England Aquarium.

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Steve Robinson, a math and science adviser at the U.S. Department of Education, will be working out of the White House. Robinson will still be officially a part of the department of ed, but he will going about his business from the White House's Domestic Policy Council. My colleague Michele McNeil explains it all on Politics K-12.

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A new magazine is geared toward getting students charged up about engineering studies by going to where young people live and breathe: the Internet.

The American Society for Engineering Education has launched eGFI —Engineering: Go For It, a digital magazine with a bevy of online features, which includes articles on engineering's role in the workplace and the world, videos, search engines, and links to Twitter and Facebook.

The digital magazine grew out of an online version of a print product offered by the ASEE, which is based in Washington. That magazine circulates to about 400,000 readers, said Bob Black, ASEE's deputy executive director. On the new site, students can search for a topic—say, alternative energy or biomedical engineering—and they'll be provided with articles, videos, and other relevant links. The goal is to create a resource for both students and teachers to use in class, and for young students to look at in their spare time, Black told me.

The ASEE plans to rework the site continually to draw more young people in. One idea the organization is kicking around is to arrange engineering contests online. Another is to stage regular quizzes, with prizes for students.

Going online, and building upon existing features, gives the magazine "wider appeal," Black said. "The great thing about the Internet is it's dynamic."

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An organization of state officials has sharply criticized recently proposed standards to test students across the country in technological literacy, saying that without changes to the current draft, the document will "cause confusion across the nation" and ultimately "not have a positive impact on students and education."

The State Educational Technology Directors Association, or SETDA, warns that the proposed tech-lit framework for the National Assessment of Educational Progress defines skills in that area in a much different way than what is currently being used in the states. States are required to report on their definitions of tech literacy, SETDA officials say, as part of the No Child Left Behind Act, Title II, Part D, and in the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act. The mismatch could lead to "detrimental effects for policy, funding, and educational outcomes," according to SETDA's board of directors, in a letter to the governing board.

The National Assessment Governing Board, for those who don't know, is an independent panel that sets policy for the NAEP test. It released a draft of the tech-lit framework (basically, a blueprint for writing the exam) earlier this summer. It's not unusual for the board to receive feedback—sometimes strongly worded feedback—on draft frameworks, a testament to NAEP's influence over testing and curriculum around the country.

All states have already created their own definitions of tech-literacy, the letter says. Their primary sources have been definitions established by SETDA and the International Society for Technology in Education, according to the letter. The proposed NAEP framework breaks tech literacy into three, interconnected areas: design and systems; information and communication technology; and technology and society. That three-part definition, SETDA says, does not mesh what the states have established, which have been in place for at least seven years.

If the three proposed areas of NAEP tech literacy are reported to the public as one test score, those results "will not have any relevance to the states' adopted definitions of technological literacy or reported results," which will "cause confusion across states and by federal policy-makers," the authors of the letter assert.

SETDA asks the governing board to consider two-part solution: Divide the NAEP tech-literacy assessment into the three sections being proposed and report them separately, rather than as a composite score. That way, they won't "conflict with federal laws or state and national efforts." The letter-writers also want the test to be given a name that clearly spells out what the NAEP is testing in tech-lit, like "technology and engineering" or "technology and innovation."

Defining tech literacy is tough to do. My former colleague Andrew Trotter laid out many of the longstanding debates over tech terminology, and turf, in a story earlier this year. What do you make of SETDA's concerns, and of the proposed NAEP framework overall?

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In our rush to prepare students for the "knowledge" economy, are we ignoring the tangible and intangible benefits of providing them with basic, manual skills? That question is at the heart of a new book by Matt Crawford, "Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work," which has appeared on the bestseller list. The author is the subject of a good profile in the Washington Post.

Crawford, 43, is the former executive director of the George C. Marshall Institute, and he holds a doctorate in political philosophy from the University of Chicago. Today, in addition to writing, he runs a garage in Richmond. He sees a general turn away from the cultivation of manual skills in American society, and in our schools, as embodied by the replacement of shop classes with computer labs and the general de-emphasis on hands-on know-how, the article explains.

"There's this false dichotomy out there between intellectual work and manual work," he tells the Post. Students and adults today want to be "knowledge workers," Crawford says. As the article notes, Crawford is not in any way calling for an abandonment these knowledge-based pursuits, but simply arguing for preserving a society in which people can perform basic tasks under the hood, as well as at the computer terminal.

Crawford's book seems to be resonating among at least one segment of the American population, judging by book sales. Do his arguments have any relevance for schools and the career-and-technical education classes found in U.S. high schools?

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The Obama administration is expected to unveil a proposal to channel more money&mdash$12 billion—into the nation's community college, to pay for everything from construction to the development of online courses, according to the Washington Post.

We're a K-12 publication, and this is at least partly a K-12 story. Supporters of community colleges have always touted them as a bargain, compared to four-year schools, and they say that their role is especially crucial in this dire economy. It can be tough to graduate from four-year universities for reasons that have nothing to do with academic achievement; students often struggle to gain access to the classes they want, for instance. Community colleges allow students to pick up credits and skills and transfer when they're ready. They're also a major entry point for many students with a strong interest in career-and-technical education.

Obama seems intent on elevating the role of these two-year institutions. What impact do you see these initiatives having on high school students?

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UPDATE: Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has signed legislation creating a career-focused diploma for high school graduates. Critics says it will lower standards (see below), though Jindal, echoing the views of other supporters, argues that it will help students who would "otherwise slip through the cracks." Expect these tensions between advocates of higher standards and those who call for alternative graduation options to play out around the country.

ORIGINAL POST: As states raise course-taking and graduation requirements, Louisiana officials have gone in a different direction. Whether it's a better or worse direction for students is a matter of opinion.

The state appears set to approve a new curriculum, which emphasizes career skills, as an option for high school students. Currently, high school students in Louisiana who pursue a traditional college-prep route must take four units of math, English, science, and social studies/social sciences, according to this story in the Baton Rouge Advocate. There’s also a less-demanding option. Under the new measure, which was approved by an overwhelming margin in both chambers of the legislature, some students would be allowed to graduate earning four units of English, with more freedom as to which courses they take, and four math credits, a few of which could be tied to career-oriented tracks. They would also be required to take three science credits, two of them tied to career options; three social studies credits; and seven other career-oriented credits, the story says. One especially controversial piece of the legislation would lower the passing requirements on the state's 8th grade English and math test, in allowing some students to pursue the new curricular option. Here's a recent description by the state Department of Education:

"Under present standards, students must score Approaching Basic and Basic in English and math on the state’s 8th grade LEAP test in order to advance to the 9th grade. However, if [the bill] clears the Senate, students who are 15 years old, or who will turn 15 during the upcoming school year will be allowed to progress to 9th grade and pursue the career diploma if they score Approaching Basic or higher on either the English or mathematics portion of the LEAP test. In fact, all students will have the option of pursuing the career diploma."

The measure, which Gov. Bobby Jindal says he will sign, was opposed by a number of school officials who contend that it will lower standards in the state. The critics include state schools Superintendent Paul Pastorek and the Council for a Better Louisiana, a nonprofit business-advocacy organization. The state's education department, in explaining its opposition, notes that the Louisiana students can already pursue numerous career tracks through the college-prep diploma. But lawmakers see the new path as necessary to prevent dropouts and give students a greater range of course options that will keep them interested in school.

“They don’t see any relevance in reading Beowulf and Chaucer and trigonometry,” state Sen. Bob Kostelka, a Republican sponsor, said of those students.

“It is ludicrous to say we are dumbing down education,” Rep. Jim Fannin, a Democrat and bill sponsor, told the Advocate.

How does this mesh with Louisiana, just this month, agreeing to join the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, in which states agree to refashion their standards, tests, and professional development to blend tech literacy, communication, and entrepreneurship into classes covering core academic content? How might Louisiana’s decision shape the thinking of lawmakers in other states who are worried about students failing to keep up with rising academic expectations? Perhaps the biggest question is this: If states are going to allow career tracks to graduation, what's to prevent students from slipping into courses that don't challenge them or prepare them for a two- or four-year college, or a demanding job?

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President Obama has announced that he intends to nominate Brenda Dann-Messier, the leader of a Rhode Island nonprofit who has a background in adult education, workforce, and literacy issues, to serve as his assistant secretary for vocational and adult education.

Dann-Messier is currently the president of Dorcas Place, an adult literacy and learning center located in Providence, which advocates for creating education opportunities for low-income parents and adults. As assistant secretary for vocational education, she would oversee the U.S. Department of Education’s career-and-technical education program, which has a budget of more than $1 billion annually and funds vocational and job-training classes in areas ranging from automotive repair and construction to health care in high schools across the country.

Dann-Messier’s background is something of a departure from those who served in the vocational post under Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush. The assistant voc-ed secretary when Bush left office was Troy Justesen, who moved to the post after serving as the Education Department’s deputy assistant secretary for special education and rehabilitative services. Prior to Justesen, the position was held by Susan K. Sclafani, who had an extensive background in K-12 schools. She had been a former adviser in the Houston school system to Rod Paige, who later became secretary of education under President Bush.

Bush repeatedly tried to eliminate funding for the federal vocational program, arguing that it has not been successful in raising academic achievement and setting high expectations for students. Career-oriented programs have proved popular in Congress, however, and federal lawmakers rebuffed Bush’s attempts. Supporters of career-and-technical education say they play a vital role in keeping some students interested in school and preventing dropouts, and that the best programs help supply industries with talented workers in specific trades.

As president of Dorcas Place, Dann-Messier has overseen a wide range of efforts— some of which received federal funding—to improve the skills of adults, according to the organization's Web site. Her organization worked on family literacy through the federal Even Start program—a $66.5 million literacy venture that Obama has proposed eliminating. It also received a Full Service Community Schools grant, federal money that supports cooperative efforts between schools and family and heath services. In addition, Dorcas Place established a program to help immigrants who were professionals secure jobs in their fields, according to the Web site.

Before joining Dorcas Place, Dann-Messier worked as a special projects manager at a regional education laboratory at Brown University, also located in Providence. From 1993 to 1996, she served as regional representative for New England for the U.S. Department of Education, according to biographical information from Dorcas Place.

UPDATE: Kim Green, who works on career-and-tech issues for a state voc-ed directors' organization, told me today that the selection seems consistent with the Obama administration's emphasis on "adult career pathways," and the connection between K-12, college and the workforce.

Green noted that Dann-Messier does not have an extensive career-and-tech background, though she also said that wasn't unusual, in terms of people who've filled the post in the past. She said she hoped that the Rhode Island official can help improve cooperation between K-12 and adult voc-ed programs, which has been lacking in the past.

Green, the executive director of the National Association of State Directors of Career and Technical Education Consortium, in Silver Spring, Md., said she hoped Dann-Messier would strengthen "programs of study" with the existing federal vocational law. Programs of study are education plans that grant recipients are required to create under the law, that map out academic plans for students interested in specific careers. Green believes those programs need to be strengthened and expanded to include clearer expectations for academics and job skills.

"There's a lot of interest in CTE right now," she said, referring to career-and-tech ed. "We have an opportunity to break a lot of the stereotypes out there."

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We don’t write that often on this blog about career-and-technical education, or what used to be called voc-ed. And that’s probably an oversight.

After all, almost all students in this country take some sort of career-and-technical education class. The Perkins Act is the largest federally funded high school program in the nation. And high school students, on average, earn more credits in vocational education courses (4.01) than they do in math (3.68) and science (3.34). I’ve taken this information from the 2004 National Assessment of Vocational Education and other federal data on voc-ed.

Advocates for voc-ed classes say they can play a vital role in keeping students who are otherwise bored in school interested in academics—and give them valuable job skills. There are critics, too, who say too many voc-ed classes amount to second-tier courses that aren’t preparing students for college and demanding work. That debate received a lot of attention during the Bush administration, as Congress began moving toward its eventual renewal of the Perkins Act.

One challenge for high schools is that counselors often don’t know much about what goes on in CTE courses, or how they should be organized during high school to prepare students for life afterward. That issue is explored in a recent issue brief, "Counselors as CTE Stakeholders," released by the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium. A whale of a name, I know; simply put, they represent state chiefs of voc-ed programs.

The brief discusses how counselors can work with teachers and employers and colleges to make sure courses meet standards. Counselors can help arrange career-themed classes around “career clusters,” or 16 different occupational groupings, it says.

I imagine that some counselors might be wary of directing students to certain tech courses—lest they be accused of steering them away from a more demanding academic path. But the brief argues that effective counseling will actually encourage students to take academic classes more seriously. Students may become “more likely to enroll in rigorous and relevant courses because they will better understand the necessary next steps,” whether that’s college or the job market.

The brief gives examples of states that have sought to connect counselors with CTE. Missouri, for instance, with state funding, is offering curriculum and professional development, among other resources, to CTE teachers and counselors.

What should counselors be telling students about career-and-technical ed? How much potential is there for school staff members to keep students who might otherwise be on the verge of dropping out of school on task, by directing them toward a health, technology, or auto course that excites them?

Photo by Tim Shaffer for Education Week.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Several big organizations, in a letter to President Obama, are calling for more federal support for career and technical education (the subject formerly known as voc-ed). The primary federal vehicle for those efforts right now is the Perkins program, currently funded at more than $1 billion a year. I've seen Perkins, which was reauthorized a few years ago, described as the largest single high school program in the country.

President Bush repeatedly sought to kill the Perkins program, and got nowhere, probably at least partly because of career-and-tech programs' strong popularity in Congress. Critics have said that career-oriented programs do too little to challenge students academically (here's a story I wrote in 2004 on the issue). The education organizations point to research they say indicates career-and-technical education plays an effective role in dropout prevention. I wrote about an approach to integrating math in CTE courses a few years, which was studied by the federal government and found to be effective.

There's been speculation that community colleges, which play a big role in Perkins, could receive special attention from the Obama administration, partly because of the backgrounds of some of the key nominees to fill jobs at the U.S. Department of Education.

Your thoughts: Should the federal government be directing more funding toward Perkins? Or should funds be directed toward other federal efforts?

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Difficult economic conditions are having an impact on students' pursuit of GEDs, recent reports suggest.

The number of people seeking out the credentials, officially known as the General Educational Development test and diploma, has risen in California, according to this AP story. The article notes that in that state, where unemployment is the highest in 15 years (at 9.3 percent), the number of people taking the GED test has increased from 46,184 in 2005 to 59,416 in 2008. Just last year, the number of people taking the exam rose 15 percent in the state, according to a state official.

A good portion of GED-chasers appear to be adults, who've been told they need the credential, or at least believe an employer will demand they have one in the future.

But a good share of them are most likely recent dropouts. Thousands of teenagers in North Carolina are saying that they have dropped out of high school to pursue a GED, in the hope of getting a job relatively quickly, according to this interesting piece in the Asheville Citizen-Times. It's difficult to know the extent to which students are actually following through and taking the steps necessary for a GED, because much of the information about them is self-reported, the story says. Even so, the story has some surprising insights. Districts are required to report why students drop out. "Across the state, the top reason for dropping out has been too many absences to graduate. For the past four years, the No. 2 reason has been earning a GED," the article says.

Many of those students ultimately find themselves disappointed by the surprisingly tough demands of the GED test, North Carolina school officials report. Relatively few of them go on to obtain professional certification or a community college degree, they say.

GEDs have long been a prime option for high school dropouts and others lacking a traditional diploma. The value of the GED has long been questioned in some quarters. In 2007, more than 728,000 adults worldwide took some combination of the GED's battery of five tests; 451,000 earned passing scores on the five tests, according to the American Council on Education. Participants must be at least 16 years old to pursue the GED credential.

(Thanks to the Association for Career and Technical Education for alerting me to the issue.)

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 10:38 AM | Permalink

The Education Commission of the States has launched a pair of online resources, which seek to provide a nationwide view of state efforts in science, math, and career and technical education (the subject formerly known as vocational education).

The first resource, at http://www.ecs.org/hsdb-stem, provides a 50-state database on state programs and efforts in STEM education. These include state policies in the recruitment of science and math teachers, after-school programs in those subjects, graduation requirements, state mentoring and internship programs, and so on.

The second online site is a database on career and technical education, at http://www.ecs.org/hsdb-cte. It includes information on the quality of state CTE programs, how they are funded, and states' use of tools to gauge students' value to employers.

CTE programs probably don't get as much attention in the media as they should. This is despite that fact that they're among the most popular programs in many districts. As recently as a few years ago, it was estimated that the federal vocational education program, funded at more than $1 billion per year, was the largest single high school program in the country.

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