| FINALLY...but still trumpeting NAEP like it is worth something... |
| philipkovacs :: AERA comes out against NCLB |
| New Research on Achievement Test Scores Slow Under No Child Left Behind Reforms, Gauged by States and the Federal Assessment WASHINGTON, D.C., July 30, 2007 – As Congress reviews federal efforts to boost student performance, new research published in Educational Researcher (ER) reports that progress in raising test scores was stronger before No Child Left Behind was approved in 2002, compared with the four years following enactment of the law. The article “Gauging Growth: How to Judge No Child Left Behind?” is authored by Bruce Fuller, Joseph Wright, Kathryn Gesicki, and Erin Kang, and is one of four featured works published in the current issue of ER—a peer-reviewed scholarly journal of the American Educational Research Association. |
July 31, 2007
The Educator Roundtable: AERA comes out against NCLB
EdWeek: 12-State Study Finds Falloff in Testing Gains After NCLB
Since the enactment of the No Child Left Behind law, test-score improvement among 4th graders in 12 states has fallen off in reading and slowed in math, according to a new study
The paper also cites National Assessment of Educational Progress scores reflecting a virtual halt to progress in closing racial achievement gaps in reading since the federal law was signed in 2002.
The research, which draws on data from both state tests and the federally administered NAEP, is sure to add fuel to the heated debate over the controversial law as Congress prepares to take up its reauthorization.
Full story: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/08/01/44fuller.h26.html
NYT: Crucial Lawmaker Outlines Changes to Education Law
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
July 31, 2007
Crucial Lawmaker Outlines Changes to Education Law
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO
WASHINGTON, July 30 — The chairman of the House education committee, an original architect of the federal No Child Left Behind law, said Monday that he wanted to change the law so that annual reading and math tests would not be the sole measure of school performance, but that other indicators like high school graduation rates and test scores in other subjects would also be taken into account.
“Our legislation will continue to place strong emphasis on reading and math skills,” the chairman, Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, said at the National Press Club. “But it will allow states to use more than their reading and math test results to determine how well schools and students are doing.”
In the speech, Mr. Miller described an array of criticisms that have emerged over the past year in hearings on renewing the education law. But he repeated his commitment to the law and spoke passionately of its goal of raising the achievement of poor and minority students.
His comments were the first public disclosure of changes he would make to the law, which was put together by President Bush with strong bipartisan support in 2001. Although business leaders and education and civil rights advocates praised Mr. Miller’s vision for renewal, they also said they would reserve judgment until an actual bill appeared. Mr. Miller said that would probably occur in September.
In response to questions about his proposal for broadening the measures of student achievement, Mr. Miller said additional indicators of progress could include participation in Advanced Placement or college preparatory curriculums, high school graduation rates and statewide tests in subjects other than reading and math.
Students “would still have to do very well on reading and math,” he said, adding, “This is not an escape hatch.”
Still, Mr. Miller’s remarks provoked immediate reaction from the ranking Republican on the education committee, Representative Howard P. McKeon of California, who said any changes that would weaken “accountability, flexibility and parental choice will be met with strong opposition from House Republicans and are likely to be a fatal blow to the reauthorization process.”
The White House referred questions to Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, who hinted that the administration would rather see no bill at all than one that “rolled back the clock on school accountability.”
“While we all hope to see action on reauthorization soon, a comprehensive bill that has bipartisan support and holds firm to the goal of every child reading and doing math on grade level by 2014 is worth the wait,” Ms. Spellings said in a prepared statement.
In his speech, Mr. Miller acknowledged the many complaints about the No Child Left Behind law from school districts nationwide, saying: “Throughout our schools and communities, the American people have a very strong sense that the No Child Left Behind Act is not fair. That it is not flexible. And that it is not funded. And they are not wrong.”
Mr. Miller said he would also propose so-called pay for performance, which would pay teachers more based in part on how much their students improved, and a system to reward schools if students were on a trajectory to reach proficiency within a few years, even if they were not actually on grade level. He also said a new law would differentiate between schools that failed on a broad scale and those in which only one or two groups of students came up short, allowing solutions tailored to each school’s specific deficiencies.
Currently, the law requires annual testing in reading and math for students in Grades 3 to 8. High school students must be tested once. Schools must report results to show that each demographic group — low-income, minority and special education students, along with students for whom English is a second language — is showing sufficient progress toward 100 percent proficiency by 2014. High poverty schools that fail to show sufficient progress, which currently number more than 9,000, face steadily more severe penalties, including possible closure.
Susan Traiman, director of education and workforce policy at the Business Roundtable, a coalition of companies closely involved in the passage of the original law, said the group was encouraged by Mr. Miller’s remarks but hoped to see a bill with bipartisan support.
“We need to see the details on what he means by these multiple measures and how these would work,” Ms. Traiman said.
July 31, 2007
Crucial Lawmaker Outlines Changes to Education Law
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO
WASHINGTON, July 30 — The chairman of the House education committee, an original architect of the federal No Child Left Behind law, said Monday that he wanted to change the law so that annual reading and math tests would not be the sole measure of school performance, but that other indicators like high school graduation rates and test scores in other subjects would also be taken into account.
“Our legislation will continue to place strong emphasis on reading and math skills,” the chairman, Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, said at the National Press Club. “But it will allow states to use more than their reading and math test results to determine how well schools and students are doing.”
In the speech, Mr. Miller described an array of criticisms that have emerged over the past year in hearings on renewing the education law. But he repeated his commitment to the law and spoke passionately of its goal of raising the achievement of poor and minority students.
His comments were the first public disclosure of changes he would make to the law, which was put together by President Bush with strong bipartisan support in 2001. Although business leaders and education and civil rights advocates praised Mr. Miller’s vision for renewal, they also said they would reserve judgment until an actual bill appeared. Mr. Miller said that would probably occur in September.
In response to questions about his proposal for broadening the measures of student achievement, Mr. Miller said additional indicators of progress could include participation in Advanced Placement or college preparatory curriculums, high school graduation rates and statewide tests in subjects other than reading and math.
Students “would still have to do very well on reading and math,” he said, adding, “This is not an escape hatch.”
Still, Mr. Miller’s remarks provoked immediate reaction from the ranking Republican on the education committee, Representative Howard P. McKeon of California, who said any changes that would weaken “accountability, flexibility and parental choice will be met with strong opposition from House Republicans and are likely to be a fatal blow to the reauthorization process.”
The White House referred questions to Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, who hinted that the administration would rather see no bill at all than one that “rolled back the clock on school accountability.”
“While we all hope to see action on reauthorization soon, a comprehensive bill that has bipartisan support and holds firm to the goal of every child reading and doing math on grade level by 2014 is worth the wait,” Ms. Spellings said in a prepared statement.
In his speech, Mr. Miller acknowledged the many complaints about the No Child Left Behind law from school districts nationwide, saying: “Throughout our schools and communities, the American people have a very strong sense that the No Child Left Behind Act is not fair. That it is not flexible. And that it is not funded. And they are not wrong.”
Mr. Miller said he would also propose so-called pay for performance, which would pay teachers more based in part on how much their students improved, and a system to reward schools if students were on a trajectory to reach proficiency within a few years, even if they were not actually on grade level. He also said a new law would differentiate between schools that failed on a broad scale and those in which only one or two groups of students came up short, allowing solutions tailored to each school’s specific deficiencies.
Currently, the law requires annual testing in reading and math for students in Grades 3 to 8. High school students must be tested once. Schools must report results to show that each demographic group — low-income, minority and special education students, along with students for whom English is a second language — is showing sufficient progress toward 100 percent proficiency by 2014. High poverty schools that fail to show sufficient progress, which currently number more than 9,000, face steadily more severe penalties, including possible closure.
Susan Traiman, director of education and workforce policy at the Business Roundtable, a coalition of companies closely involved in the passage of the original law, said the group was encouraged by Mr. Miller’s remarks but hoped to see a bill with bipartisan support.
“We need to see the details on what he means by these multiple measures and how these would work,” Ms. Traiman said.
ER report on NCLB slowing down student achievement
Educational Researcher published a report saying that NCLB has actually slowed the rate of student achievement. ER uses NAEP results almost exclusively. Several blogs picked up this story, and it made the front page of popular website digg.com
The researchers pushed beyond earlier studies by tracking progress in both state and federal test scores in 12 diverse states, going back to 1992 in many cases. This approach captured the generally positive effects of maturing state-led accountability programs in both reading and math, gauged by state officials and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
Using this longer time span as the baseline, annual changes in student performance generally slowed after 2002, as gauged by state and federal testing agencies, and the earlier narrowing of achievement gaps ground to a halt (NAEP results), according to the study.
July 30, 2007
Ed Week: Education a Lost Issue in 2008?
In their first seven debates, Democratic and Republican presidential candidates have presented America with a cornucopia of plans for solving a plethora of urgent issues—health care, national security, energy, the economy. But the candidates in both parties have had relatively little to say to most viewers about one of the most prominent issues of the past several elections: education.
Education is falling off the nation’s priority list. Indeed, during the 2000 presidential election, Americans ranked education either first or second among the nation’s priorities. In 2004, it fell to fifth.
Ed Week: Us Poised to Sit Out Advanced TIMSS Test
The U.S. Department of Education has decided for the first time to sit out an international study designed to show how advanced high school students around the world measure up in math and science.
Mark S. Schneider, the commissioner of the department’s National Center for Education Statistics, which normally takes the lead in managing the U.S. portion of international studies of student performance in those subjects, said budget and staffing constraints prevent his agency from taking part in the upcoming study, which is known as the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study-Advanced 2008.
The Myth About Boys
Time cover story on boys about how despite all the recent fuss, boys are actually doing fairly well by many criteria. According to the author, reading is one area that is a real problem:
What about school? Boys in the fourth, eighth and 12th grades all score better--though not dramatically better--on math tests than did the comparable boys of 1990. Reading, however, is a problem. The standardized NAEP test, known as the nation's report card, indicates that by the senior year of high school, boys have fallen nearly 20 points behind their female peers. That's bad, not because girls are ahead but because too many boys are leaving school functionally illiterate. Pollack told me of one study that found even the sons of college-educated parents had a 1 in 4 chance of leaving school without becoming proficient readers. In an economy increasingly geared toward processing information, an inability to read becomes an inability to earn. "You have to be literate in today's world," says Sommers. "We're not going to get away with not teaching boys to read.
July 28, 2007
WSJ Commentary: No Standards Left Behind
July 28, 2007
COMMENTARY
No Standards Left Behind
By NEAL MCCLUSKEYJuly 28, 2007; Page A8
In early 2002, Republicans passed the No Child Left Behind Act, the most intrusive federal education law in American history. Five years later, with NCLB up for reauthorization, they can't jump ship fast enough.
The list of Republicans already overboard is long. Several of them are Bush administration alumni, including former Deputy Secretary of Education Eugene Hickok. Numerous House and Senate Republicans instead have endorsed the Academic Partnerships Lead Us to Success Act (A-PLUS), which would let states run their own schools without losing federal funds. And on Wednesday, Rep. Scott Garrett (R., New Jersey) introduced the Local Education Authority Returns Now Act (LEARN), to let states opt out of NCLB and give federal education money directly back to state citizens in the form of tax credits.
NCLB's biggest problem is that it's designed to help Washington politicians appear all things to all people. To look tough on bad schools, it requires states to establish standards and tests in reading, math and science, and it requires all schools to make annual progress toward 100% reading and math proficiency by 2014. To preserve local control, however, it allows states to set their own standards, "adequate yearly progress" goals, and definitions of proficiency. As a result, states have set low standards, enabling politicians to declare victory amid rising test scores without taking any truly substantive action.
NCLB's perverse effects are illustrated by Michigan, which dropped its relatively demanding standards when it had over 1,500 schools on NCLB's first "needs improvement" list. The July 2002 transformation of then-state superintendent Tom Watkins captures NCLB's power. Early that month, when discussing the effects of state budget cuts on Michigan schools, Mr. Watkins declared that cuts or no cuts, "We don't lower standards in this state!" A few weeks later, thanks to NCLB, Michigan cut drastically the percentage of students who needed to hit proficiency on state tests for a school to make adequate yearly progress. "Michigan stretches to do what's right with our children," Mr. Watkins said, "but we're not going to shoot ourselves in the foot."
Today, evasion syndrome is epidemic. According to a report last month from the Institute of Education Sciences, a research branch of the U.S. Department of Education, while states are declaring success on their tests, almost none have standards even close to those of the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress -- the so-called "Nation's Report Card." Almost all states have set their standards below NAEP's "proficiency" level.
In light of its perverse effects, as well as complaints that it is underfunded, over-prescriptive and so on, NCLB is not wildly popular. When first asked what their attitudes were about NCLB, a recent Educational Testing Service survey found that only 41% of Americans were favorable, while 43% were not. An Ohio University poll in May found the more people actually knew about NCLB the less they liked it.
Thankfully, as bills like A-PLUS and LEARN make clear, many Republicans plan to fight the President on reauthorization. Indeed, A-PLUS alone has 60 Republican cosponsors in the House -- including Minority Whip Roy Blunt -- up from the 33 Republicans who voted against the original NCLB. Nevertheless, the administration and many congressional Republicans are sticking with NCLB. President Bush continually declares reauthorization "one of his top priorities." On his Web site, House Minority Leader John Boehner, who chaired the Committee on Education and the Workforce during NCLB's first time around, mystifyingly declares the law "a huge step in the right direction for Americans who believe Big Government is not the solution to the problems with our education system."
The threat now is that Democrats will take advantage of Republican infighting and greatly increase spending under NCLB, something party leaders like Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy and California Rep. George Miller have been demanding almost since the moment Mr. Bush signed it into law.
But Democrats do so at their peril. While the party's constituencies such as teachers unions and school administrators love Washington's money, they hate tests and standards. Maybe that's why an even smaller percentage of Democrats (35%, according to the Education Testing Service poll) support NCLB than do Republicans (52%). And Democrats will almost certainly have to preserve those hated components to get the extra dough.
In the end, neither Republicans nor Democrats should fight for NCLB. It hasn't helped either party, and it has hurt children all over the country. Indeed, if NCLB has taught one thing, it is this: When Washington gets involved in education, no one wins.
Mr. McCluskey is an education analyst at the Cato Institute and author of the recently published "Feds in the Classroom: How Big Government Corrupts, Cripples, and Compromises American Education" (Rowman and Littlefield).
URL for this article:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118558716087281024.html
Copyright 2007 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
July 27, 2007
Summary of This Week's News
Time magazine released an article regarding the condition of boys in America, as recent editorials such as “Boy Trouble” and “The Boys Crisis” has put the state of boys, particularly in education, to the forefront. The article states boys are less likely than girls to take the S.A.T., go to college and obtain degrees and also trail on NAEP assessments by nearly 20 points. The author points to several factors that observers believe have contributed to the underperformance of boys including families, schools and popular culture. However, the article also shows boys are improving at the fourth- and eighth-grade levels in reading and on standardized tests.
On July 23rd, the Washington Post ran an editorial regarding Senator John Edwards’s endorsement of a plan to integrate schools by income rather than race after the Supreme Court ruled against the use of race as factor in school choice. The article states “the evidence is strong that low-income students thrive in higher-income schools – in fact, after socioeconomic level status of a student’s family, the biggest predictor of academic success is the socioeconomic level of the school.” It goes on to state that the NAEP 2005 Mathematics Report showed fourth-grade low-income students “attending more affluent schools scored 20 points higher – the equivalent of almost two years’ learning – than low-income students in high-poverty schools.” The blog post from D-ED Reckoning titled “The WaPo Editors are Idiots”, which follows the Washington Post editorial in the document, challenges three points made in the editorial. 1) According to the income levels that classify students as low-income under NAEP, the poorer students in affluent schools are not as poor as the students in the lower-income schools. 2) Low-income students do not perform well in either setting. 3) The number of higher-income schools could not accommodate the larger number of low-income students and
The Center on Education Policy released a study this week based on a survey of 349 school districts reporting a decrease in the amount of instruction time on social studies, science and art lessons in favor of increased focus on reading and mathematics. Secretary Spellings released statement saying the report was too narrow and “there is much evidence that shows schools are adding time to the school day in order to focus on reading and math, not cutting time from other subjects.”
There are also articles with various proposed initiatives for No Child Left Behind. One of those includes several bills to create different consequences for schools that continuously miss NCLB goals and those who miss marks for only a few student groups. There is also movement to push forward with the Achievement Through Technology and Innovation Act introduced earlier this year by Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard to provide direct funds to disadvantaged schools that would be used to supply computers, video equipment, and other technological tools. Provisions in the Act would include professional development for teachers on the use of the equipment in the classroom and a requirement for students to be technologically literate by the eighth-grade.
These can be viewed in Task 1\Article Compliation\Weekly Clips 7.27.07
On July 23rd, the Washington Post ran an editorial regarding Senator John Edwards’s endorsement of a plan to integrate schools by income rather than race after the Supreme Court ruled against the use of race as factor in school choice. The article states “the evidence is strong that low-income students thrive in higher-income schools – in fact, after socioeconomic level status of a student’s family, the biggest predictor of academic success is the socioeconomic level of the school.” It goes on to state that the NAEP 2005 Mathematics Report showed fourth-grade low-income students “attending more affluent schools scored 20 points higher – the equivalent of almost two years’ learning – than low-income students in high-poverty schools.” The blog post from D-ED Reckoning titled “The WaPo Editors are Idiots”, which follows the Washington Post editorial in the document, challenges three points made in the editorial. 1) According to the income levels that classify students as low-income under NAEP, the poorer students in affluent schools are not as poor as the students in the lower-income schools. 2) Low-income students do not perform well in either setting. 3) The number of higher-income schools could not accommodate the larger number of low-income students and
The Center on Education Policy released a study this week based on a survey of 349 school districts reporting a decrease in the amount of instruction time on social studies, science and art lessons in favor of increased focus on reading and mathematics. Secretary Spellings released statement saying the report was too narrow and “there is much evidence that shows schools are adding time to the school day in order to focus on reading and math, not cutting time from other subjects.”
There are also articles with various proposed initiatives for No Child Left Behind. One of those includes several bills to create different consequences for schools that continuously miss NCLB goals and those who miss marks for only a few student groups. There is also movement to push forward with the Achievement Through Technology and Innovation Act introduced earlier this year by Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard to provide direct funds to disadvantaged schools that would be used to supply computers, video equipment, and other technological tools. Provisions in the Act would include professional development for teachers on the use of the equipment in the classroom and a requirement for students to be technologically literate by the eighth-grade.
These can be viewed in Task 1\Article Compliation\Weekly Clips 7.27.07
EdWeek: Math Courses Add Up to Success in Science
Students who had more math courses in high school did better in all types of science once they got to college, researchers say.
On the other hand, while high school courses in biology, chemistry or physics improved college performance in each of the individual sciences, taking a high school course in one science didn't result in better college performance in the others.
Philip M. Sadler of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Robert H. Tai of the University of Virginia surveyed 8,474 students taking introductory science courses at 63 U.S. colleges and universities. Their findings are reported in Friday's edition of the journal Science.
Full story: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/07/27/44apmath_web.h26.html
EdWeek: U.S. Poised to Sit Out Advanced TIMSS Test
The U.S. Department of Education has decided for the first time to sit out an international study designed to gauge how advanced high school students around the world measure up in math and science.
Mark S. Schneider, the commissioner of the department’s National Center for Education Statistics, which normally takes the lead in managing the U.S. portion of international studies of student performance in those subjects, said budget and staffing constraints prevent his agency from taking part in the upcoming study, which is known as the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study-Advanced 2008.
Full Story: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/08/01/44timss.h26.html
Informed Reader
WSJ article (subscription required) on how boys are faring better recently. The article uses NAEP scores as one reference.
July 26, 2007
Schools for tomorrow: Testing, 123
Here’s something I don’t get. It hasn’t been keeping me up nights, but I should get it, because I had to take statistics for 3 excruciating semesters. Sampling. The deal is, if you want information about a population, the most efficient way to get the information is by collecting a random sample from an observation set and testing it. The least efficient way is by testing every single widget. So why are we testing every single kid? What am I missing? Is this just a stupid federal mandate? A stupid state mandate? Am I really stupid that I don’t understand this methodology?
NAEP seems to think random sampling across schools works. Why wouldn’t this work on CSAPs? It would save money, time and pain. And it might accomplish a couple of other things as well. First, there is a lot of talk about “teaching to the test.”More here: http://www.headfirstcolorado.org/blog/index.php/2007-07-26/testing-123/
July 25, 2007
Kids Count Report shows states lagging
Our worlds collide...
PHOENIX — Arizona youngsters are far behind their counterparts elsewhere in math and science achievement, at least according to a new study being released today.
Figures gathered by the Annie E. Casey Foundation for its annual Kids Count report show that more than half of Arizona eighth- graders tested in 2005 did not have even a basic knowledge of science skills considered appropriate for that grade.
NY Times: Focus on 2 R's Cut into Other Subjects
Almost half the nation’s school districts have significantly decreased the daily class time spent on subjects like science, art and history as a result of the federal No Child Left Behind law’s focus on annual tests in reading and math, according to a new report released yesterday.
July 24, 2007
In Testing, the Infrastructure Is Buckling
"While most public school students enjoy the idle days of summer, the nation’s testing companies are working around the clock to help states get the results of millions of standardized state tests to parents before the start of the new school year, a deadline under the federal No Child Left Behind Act that many states may not make."
July 23, 2007
WaPo: Integrating Schools
Who is supposed to be reading WaPo?
See also blog response "The WaPo Editors are Idiots" (the idiot part is directed at the NAEP section)
Integrating Schools
John Edwards has interesting ideas about how to do it.
Monday, July 23, 2007; A16
BY AN ACCIDENT of timing, the Supreme Court handed down its ruling restricting the use of race in school integration efforts on the same day last month that the Democratic presidential candidates gathered at Howard University for a forum on issues of interest to minorities. Every candidate was quick to denounce the ruling, appropriately so, in our view. On his poverty tour last week, former North Carolina senator John Edwards moved the debate forward in a useful way, endorsing a plan to focus integration efforts on income rather than race -- in other words, to promote schools that are economically diverse.
This is not a new idea, but especially in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, it is a timely one. According to Richard D. Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation, whose work Mr. Edwards cites, about 40 U.S. school districts, with 2.5 million students, use socioeconomic status as a factor in student assignment -- including the Wake County (Raleigh), N.C., school system, where Mr. Edwards's two oldest children were once enrolled. In 2000, the school board there voted to replace a race-based integration plan, which provided that schools in the district should have between 15 percent and 45 percent minority students, with one setting a goal of having no more than 40 percent of students in individual schools eligible for free and reduced-price lunches. The results have been promising, in terms of both maintaining racially integrated schools and improving the performance of disadvantaged students. According to Mr. Kahlenberg, "Wake County's low-income and minority students substantially outperform comparable low-income and minority students in large North Carolina districts that have greater concentrations of school poverty."
Promoting socioeconomic diversity in schools makes sense in its own right; it can be a backdoor way of achieving more racially integrated schools, which also is a plus. African American and other minority students are nearly three times as likely to be poor as white students. And the evidence is strong that low-income students thrive in higher-income schools -- in fact, after the socioeconomic status of a student's family, the biggest predictor of academic success is the socioeconomic level of the school. In the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress given to fourth-graders in math, low-income students attending more affluent schools scored 20 points higher -- the equivalent of almost two years' learning -- than low-income students in high-poverty schools. Low-income students in middle-class schools did better than middle-class students in high-poverty schools.
Deciding on school assignment plans is a local issue, and an emotionally charged one at that. Mr. Edwards, though, would dangle various carrots to spur systems to consider economic integration. He proposes $100 million for school districts implementing economic integration programs, to pay for transportation and extra resources to schools that enroll low-income children. In addition, he says, he would double current federal funding for magnet schools, to $200 million a year, and dedicate the increase to schools that draw students from across district lines, attracting middle-class suburban students to schools in high-poverty urban neighborhoods. These are tiny numbers in the context of federal education funding; Title I funding, for low-income schools, is more than $13 billion. But Mr. Edwards's proposals move the debate forward in a useful and stimulating way.
Other editorials in this series can be found athttp://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions.
See also blog response "The WaPo Editors are Idiots" (the idiot part is directed at the NAEP section)
Integrating Schools
John Edwards has interesting ideas about how to do it.
Monday, July 23, 2007; A16
BY AN ACCIDENT of timing, the Supreme Court handed down its ruling restricting the use of race in school integration efforts on the same day last month that the Democratic presidential candidates gathered at Howard University for a forum on issues of interest to minorities. Every candidate was quick to denounce the ruling, appropriately so, in our view. On his poverty tour last week, former North Carolina senator John Edwards moved the debate forward in a useful way, endorsing a plan to focus integration efforts on income rather than race -- in other words, to promote schools that are economically diverse.
This is not a new idea, but especially in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, it is a timely one. According to Richard D. Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation, whose work Mr. Edwards cites, about 40 U.S. school districts, with 2.5 million students, use socioeconomic status as a factor in student assignment -- including the Wake County (Raleigh), N.C., school system, where Mr. Edwards's two oldest children were once enrolled. In 2000, the school board there voted to replace a race-based integration plan, which provided that schools in the district should have between 15 percent and 45 percent minority students, with one setting a goal of having no more than 40 percent of students in individual schools eligible for free and reduced-price lunches. The results have been promising, in terms of both maintaining racially integrated schools and improving the performance of disadvantaged students. According to Mr. Kahlenberg, "Wake County's low-income and minority students substantially outperform comparable low-income and minority students in large North Carolina districts that have greater concentrations of school poverty."
Promoting socioeconomic diversity in schools makes sense in its own right; it can be a backdoor way of achieving more racially integrated schools, which also is a plus. African American and other minority students are nearly three times as likely to be poor as white students. And the evidence is strong that low-income students thrive in higher-income schools -- in fact, after the socioeconomic status of a student's family, the biggest predictor of academic success is the socioeconomic level of the school. In the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress given to fourth-graders in math, low-income students attending more affluent schools scored 20 points higher -- the equivalent of almost two years' learning -- than low-income students in high-poverty schools. Low-income students in middle-class schools did better than middle-class students in high-poverty schools.
Deciding on school assignment plans is a local issue, and an emotionally charged one at that. Mr. Edwards, though, would dangle various carrots to spur systems to consider economic integration. He proposes $100 million for school districts implementing economic integration programs, to pay for transportation and extra resources to schools that enroll low-income children. In addition, he says, he would double current federal funding for magnet schools, to $200 million a year, and dedicate the increase to schools that draw students from across district lines, attracting middle-class suburban students to schools in high-poverty urban neighborhoods. These are tiny numbers in the context of federal education funding; Title I funding, for low-income schools, is more than $13 billion. But Mr. Edwards's proposals move the debate forward in a useful and stimulating way.
Other editorials in this series can be found athttp://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions.
July 18, 2007
Ed Week: NCLB Seen as Curbing High and Low Students' Gains
A new study of Chicago students suggests that the federal No Child Left Behind Act may indeed be leaving behind students at the far ends of the academic ability spectrum—the least able students and those who are gifted.
July 16, 2007
Teaching, Tests And Paperwork… And Tests and Paperwork… And Tests And Paperwork
The volume and apparent irrelevance of paperwork is a major complaint among teachers. A blog entry remarks on this, especially in light of ELL students (and the extension could be made for special ed teachers as well).
"On the New York Times‘ weekly education page, Samuel Freedman tells the compelling story of one English as a Second Language [ESL] teacher in the New York City public schools, Allison Rabenau. Aptly entitled “So Much Paperwork, So Little Time to Teach,” Freedman’s essay explains how during the first and last six weeks of the school year, Rabenau’s time was totally consumed by tests and paperwork."
"On the New York Times‘ weekly education page, Samuel Freedman tells the compelling story of one English as a Second Language [ESL] teacher in the New York City public schools, Allison Rabenau. Aptly entitled “So Much Paperwork, So Little Time to Teach,” Freedman’s essay explains how during the first and last six weeks of the school year, Rabenau’s time was totally consumed by tests and paperwork."
July 12, 2007
NYT: How Hard Can It Be to Teach? The Challenges Go Well Beyond the Classroom
Herszenhorn's final On Education column. On what he has learned in the past 4 years covering NYC schools on how hard teaching is. One thought in particular I thought was rather relevant to us. (Esp. anyone who has been yelled at in the booth by angry teachers!)
The daily work in schools is so hard that most educators in the system do notFull article at NYT.com
distinguish between the chancellor’s office and the mayor, the labor unions and
state government, the teachers’ contract and the federal No Child Left Behind
law when they complain, frequently, that the “system” is against them.
Potter Has Limited Effect on Reading Habits
According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a series of federal tests administered every few years to a sample of students in grades 4, 8 and 12, the percentage of kids who said they read for fun almost every day dropped from 43 percent in fourth grade to 19 percent in eighth grade in 1998, the year “Sorcerer’s Stone” was published in the United States. In 2005, when “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” the sixth book, was published, the results were identical.
July 9, 2007
Bridging Differences: The Role of the Media
"I served for seven years on the NAEP governing board. Whenever scores went up or down more than a few points, the customary response was to wonder what went wrong with the test or the scoring or something else. When scores jump way up or down, alarm bells are supposed to start ringing. But today, we read about scores leaping by large numbers and the press reports it without questions or alarm bells.
(...)
(...)
The end result is not hard to foresee: A populace that knows how to take tests but is uneducated, lacking the civic skills, the democratic understandings, and the cultural knowledge to enrich their lives and our society.
Diane
July 2, 2007
Huffington Post: Proficient Readers: Dear Strong American Schools
Mr Bracey writes on the topic of the NAEP achievement levels. This time in the form of a letter to Strong American Schools (the Gates/Broad initiative)...
Excerpts:
Did you know that only 33% of Swedish 4th graders are proficient in reading? (We don't have data on 8th graders). Twenty-nine percent of American 4th graders are not proficient. But Sweden is the highest scoring country in the world in reading and we are not far behind. It is the NAEP achievement levels that are failing, not the kids.
I also attach "A Test Everyone Will Fail," which was an op-ed in a May, 2007 Washington Post. I heard that the National Assessment Governing Board decided not to respond because they know they can't win.
The primary use of the achievement levels is as a bludgeon and for fear mongering. That is how you are using them.
Full letter: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-bracey/proficient-readers-dear-_b_54086.html
Excerpts:
Did you know that only 33% of Swedish 4th graders are proficient in reading? (We don't have data on 8th graders). Twenty-nine percent of American 4th graders are not proficient. But Sweden is the highest scoring country in the world in reading and we are not far behind. It is the NAEP achievement levels that are failing, not the kids.
I also attach "A Test Everyone Will Fail," which was an op-ed in a May, 2007 Washington Post. I heard that the National Assessment Governing Board decided not to respond because they know they can't win.
The primary use of the achievement levels is as a bludgeon and for fear mongering. That is how you are using them.
Full letter: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-bracey/proficient-readers-dear-_b_54086.html
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