"When it comes to reading, race can matter.
A young black male has a better chance of getting teased for reading books instead of playing sports. Black children are less likely to have parents who read to them at an early age and expose them to books."
"By 12th grade, black students are scoring significantly lower in reading than white students, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the Nation's Report Card. Add to that the fact that 12th grade boys overall score lower than 12th grade girls. That puts the average black male high school senior at the bottom of all reading groups.
Much of the reading disparity stems from habits children learn from an early age, said Esther Bush, executive director of the Urban League of Pittsburgh, who has worked closely with schools over the years.
"The vocabulary of African-American children is so much [smaller] than children of other races even when they enter kindergarten. All of us as Americans ought to be teaching our kids good [behavior] such as reading books."
While the numbers in the Nation's Report Card show some racial differences, Luther Clegg, a retired professor at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth who did research on multicultural children's literature, said, based on his experience, reading success is more related to a child's socioeconomic background than race."
Full story: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07242/813343-298.stm
August 30, 2007
August 29, 2007
CNN’s Don Lemon and Sen. Barack Obama discuss No Child Left Behind
In a one-on-one interview at J.V. Martin Middle School in Dillon, SC CNN’s Don Lemon and Sen. Barack Obama discussed No Child Left Behind, the Senator’s Education plan and Nouri al-Maliki as Prime Minister of Iraq .
August 28, 2007
Mark Schnieder writes book
When Mark S. Schneider began working on a book about charter schools several years ago, he was a political science professor at Stony Brook University—and a relative unknown in Washington.
But now, as the book goes on sale in stores and on Amazon.com, he carries a more prominent title: commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics.
Mr. Schneider is today in the unusual position of having a book published on an important, and often hotly disputed, education topic while serving as the head of the NCES, the statistical arm of the U.S. Department of Education, and an agency that seeks to protect its reputation for objectivity.
The book, Charter Schools: Hope or Hype?, uses research methodology to examine charters’ performance in the District of Columbia. The results are “sobering,” and suggest charter schools often “fall short of advocates’ claims,” the description on the book’s jacket says...
August 27, 2007
Rep. Miller's Three-Point Plan for NCLB
Miller's Three-Point Plan
Rep. George Miller said last month that NCLB "is not fair, not flexible, and is not funded." In response to one question on this PBS Web chat, the chairman of the House education committee lays out three things he wants to change about the law:
1.) Revise assessments "so they measure critical thinking, problem solving, and other important skills." New tests could reduce the amount of test-prep and "drill-and-kill" of "low-level skills," he writes.
2.) Create growth models to "ensure that teachers get credit" for raising test scores across the achievement spectrum, as well as for helping students on the bubble between basic achievement and proficiency.
3.) Spur "more relevant and rigorous" standards by requiring states to ensure their standards are linked to the skills and knowledge students need to succeed in college or the workplace.
In the response to another question, Rep. Miller says science labs are the types of performance measures he would like to see included in the reauthorized NCLB.
From a PBS webchat, the full transcript of which can be found here:http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/education/july-dec07/nclb_08-14.html
August 22, 2007
NCES Report on Money Spent in US and Other Countries on Education
From Ed in '08's Roy Romer's blog:
Money Not Translating into Academic Success
We got another report on America’s schools last week from the U.S. Department of Education.
In short, it shows that we spend more on our schools and our students are financially better off than most, but that money and effort does not seem to be helping our poorest students perform in terms of math and science.
Money Not Translating into Academic Success
We got another report on America’s schools last week from the U.S. Department of Education.
In short, it shows that we spend more on our schools and our students are financially better off than most, but that money and effort does not seem to be helping our poorest students perform in terms of math and science.
August 21, 2007
WSJ: When Special Education Goes Too Easy on Students
See NAEP data charts at WSJ.com/Mainstreaming
I'm not 100% sure if the data on the %tested with accomodation is accurate. Lindsy, this is the confusion on the table they were talking about today. Can someone please check.
August 21, 2007
PAGE ONE
EXTRA HELP
When Special Education Goes Too Easy on Students
Parents Say Schools Game System, Let Kids
Graduate Without Skills
By JOHN HECHINGER and DANIEL GOLDEN
August 21, 2007; Page A1
GREENPORT, N.Y. -- On June 25, 2006, Michael Bredemeyer threw his tasseled cap in the air and cheered after getting his high school diploma. Two days later, his parents mailed the diploma back.
Michael, now 19 years old, has learning disabilities and finished high school at a seventh-grade reading level, despite scoring above average on IQ tests. The Bredemeyers say he passed some classes because teachers inflated his grades and accepted poor work. By awarding him a meaningless diploma, they say, school officials avoided paying for ongoing instruction.
"I felt proud because he had worked so hard," says Michael's mother, Beverly, her voice breaking. "You don't want to take that away from him. But you knew it wasn't real. What's he going to do in the future? Will he be able to go to college and get a job?"
The Bredemeyers represent a new voice in special education: parents disappointed not because their children are failing, but because they're passing without learning. These families complain that schools give their children an easy academic ride through regular-education classes, undermining a new era of higher expectations for the 14% of U.S. students who are in special education.
Years ago, schools assumed that students with disabilities would lag behind their non-disabled peers. They often were taught in separate buildings and left out of standardized testing. But a combination of two federal laws, adopted a quarter-century apart, have made it national policy to hold almost all children with disabilities to the same academic standards as other students.
The 1975 statute now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act promoted putting special-education students in mainstream classrooms. The 2001 No Child Left Behind Act said schools would be punished if disabled children don't pass the same state tests as other students. It also requires states to set standards for high-school graduation rates and meet them for all students, including those with disabilities.
By some measures, the extra attention is paying off. Test scores and classroom grades of disabled students are rising, and their high-school graduation rate increased to 54% in 2004 from 42% in 1996.
But critics say some of the gains have come because schools have learned to game the system. For instance, federal rules allow states to make "reasonable accommodations" to help disabled students pass tests and graduate, such as allowing extra time on exams. Some schools, say critics, are giving students too much help, for instance by guiding students to the right answers on multiple-choice tests.
MAKING THE GRADE
• The Issue: Some parents of students with learning disabilities say their children are graduating too easily.
• The Background: Federal laws raised school standards, but left loopholes. Increasingly, special-education students get special help to pass tests.
• The Problem: If schools game the system, those students move on without the skills they need.From 2000 to 2005, special-education fourth graders showed more improvement in reading and math than the general population on an important benchmark test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress. But accommodations also increased. In 2005, 70% of fourth-grade special education students received some sort of accommodation while taking the math portion, up from 44% five years earlier. In reading, 63% used accommodations in 2005, up from 29% in 2000.
On tests used to measure compliance with No Child Left Behind, more states are permitting students with disabilities to use calculators on arithmetic tests or have reading-comprehension tests be read aloud. Massachusetts education commissioner David Driscoll warned school administrators in February that an alarming number of special education students -- a quarter or half in some cases -- were receiving such accommodations on state exams. With unclear guidelines, "People start driving trucks through loopholes," he said in an interview.
Some school districts have an informal policy against failing students with disabilities even if they miss many classes or aren't learning. "I can go into any school we represent and have somebody tell me we have to pass special education students" to avoid being blamed for not providing the right services if students fail, says Janet Horton, a Texas special-education attorney. Federal law says special-education students should receive a "free appropriate public education," but it doesn't prohibit failing them.
Mardys Leeper and Carol Merrill, former teachers at West Philadelphia High School in Pennsylvania, say a special-education administrator there ordered them to pass special-education students. Ms. Leeper says she made concessions for students with disabilities, such as letting them write shorter essays or copy paragraphs she wrote onto a word processor rather than composing their own. But when those students didn't make an effort, or skipped class, both teachers say they sometimes sought to fail them -- only to have the administrator insist on passing grades. The reason they were given: Students had met the goals of their federally mandated individual education plans, IEPs, spelling out goals and services for each special-education student.
"Students who weren't even participating, even trying, we couldn't fail them," says Ms. Merrill, an English teacher who retired this year. Even if they couldn't read, "I had to give them a 'D.'"
The administrator couldn't be reached for comment. Brenda Taylor, head of special education for the Philadelphia school district, called the matter a "breakdown in communication." The district has no written policy against failing special-education students, she says. But rather than being "punitive" if a student performs poorly or cuts class, she says, the district prefers to revise a student's IEP. "We're not in the business of failing students," Ms. Taylor says.
Only 19 states require all students to earn the same kind of diploma, according to a recent University of Minnesota survey. Some of those states let special-education students amass fewer course credits to earn the degree, the survey found. Other states give substitute certificates, in some cases called IEP diplomas, to special-education students who don't qualify for standard diplomas.
Many special-education parents are happy to see their children advance through school and graduate. Reggie Felton, director of federal policy for the National School Boards Association, says special-education students learn more in regular classes even if they're given a break on assignments or grading. The federal government recently decided to triple the percentage of students allowed to take easier tests, to 3% from 1%. Some legislators have proposed exempting more students.
But the rebellion against too-easy passing is growing, says Pam Wright, who with her husband has co-authored books on special education issues and operates a Virginia-based information clearinghouse for special-education parents. She estimates she now receives more than 1,000 email messages a year from parents lamenting that their children with disabilities take mainstream courses but aren't being taught as much as their classmates. Dozens of parents have contended in recent administrative appeals that their children did not deserve the diplomas they received, she says.
The family of Alba Somoza, who has cerebral palsy and speaks only with the help of a computer, filed one such case. Alba drew national attention in the 1990s when her family successfully pushed to include the then-third grader in a regular classroom. Then-President Bill Clinton backed her cause, and Alba, now 23, graduated with honors from a New York City high school in 2002.
Last year, Alba and her family filed an administrative case claiming her education was a sham. A school report prepared weeks before she graduated showed she had language and math skills at an elementary school level, court records show. "You cannot shunt children through -- you cannot scam them through the system," says Alba's mother, Mary.
Since shortly after she graduated, New York has been paying for a special program for Alba that costs $400,000 a year -- including a full-time teacher, an aide, transportation and extensive technology. The city says it is doing so out of compassion, not legal obligation. The family is seeking to continue the public funding another year to help Alba receive enough education to work as a museum docent.
The Somozas lost the administrative case, but a judge in U.S. District Court in Manhattan ruled in the family's favor earlier this year and ordered another hearing. Rather than develop a program that would help Alba reach her academic goals, teachers lowered the curriculum's "level of difficulty" and removed "large and meaningful portions of its substantive content," the judge said. One teacher testified that he did most of the work on Alba's final project in 2002. New York officials say the school properly adapted the curriculum for a severely disabled student.
In northern California, Jennifer McGowan, an 18-year-old who is deaf in one ear and suffers from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and learning disabilities, was supposed to graduate from Vacaville Unified School District in June. She didn't get her diploma -- because her family won a court injunction to stop it.
In an interview, Jennifer said she often received A or B grades for poorly completed work or, at times, when she didn't do assignments at all or show up for class. Achievement tests she took in January 2005 showed that she had the math and reading skills of an elementary-school student, according to her administrative complaint.
The school district denies her grades were inflated and said she showed her proficiency by passing a high-school exit exam. John Aycock, Vacaville's superintendent, said teachers did "a great job working with Jennifer." Jennifer says she failed the exit exam several times despite intensive preparation. "They just wanted to pass me and let me fly by," she says. The school system says it's not unusual to make several attempts to pass.
At the Mercer Island school district in Washington state, the family of a girl with severe learning disabilities complains that, instead of the intense instruction she needed to master reading and math in eighth and ninth grades, teachers showered her with accommodations: a peer note-taker, a peer to read materials to her, oral exams, reduced assignments and a calculator on math tests.
At an administrative hearing, the family -- whose names are not disclosed in the court papers -- sought to force the school system to pay for her private schooling. Noting her strong A and B grades, the district successfully argued that accommodations were helping her learn. In U.S. District Court in Seattle, a judge hearing an appeal of the case disagreed last year, saying the system improperly relied on accommodations rather than instruction, and has returned the case to a hearing officer to determine financial relief for the family.
Boxes of school correspondence and Michael Bredemeyer's old tests and assignments line the hallways of his family's weather-beaten saltbox house in Orient, N.Y., on Long Island's North Fork. Michael's parents are demanding public funding for more services until age 21, to which students are entitled unless they graduate, so he can improve his academic skills for college.
John Bredemeyer, a county public-health inspector, and his wife, Beverly, had high hopes for Michael, who has a strong work ethic and a knack for repairing machines. But once he entered public middle school in nearby Greenport, his parents worried that teachers were letting him skate through classes and tests.
Michael, who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and learning disabilities including dyslexia, says in some classes he "definitely earned" a passing grade, but others were "borderline." He took regular classes except for one period a day. "A little more one-on-one" instruction would have helped, he says.
On state achievement exams, Michael's IEP permitted him extra time, simplified instructions and guidance from a teacher to slow him down if he rushed through answers. But when he completed the eighth-grade math test, his special-education teacher also took him to the resource room and directed him to redo problems he had answered incorrectly. According to a memo from Greenport Superintendent Charles Kozora, the teacher "exceeded the intent" of Michael's accommodations, boosting his score. The state investigated and invalidated Michael's test.
Mr. Kozora said the school system had only two cases of testing irregularities in six years, few conflicts with parents over special education and "many successes" among students with disabilities. The district says achievement, and not cost, dictates its decisions on graduating students.
When Michael was a junior at Greenport High, his chemistry teacher passed him with the minimum grade of 65, even though he says he spent much of the class doodling and playing solitaire on his laptop. Checking his assignments and tests, his parents couldn't understand how he could be passing.
In a letter, the school principal acknowledged that the final grade was a "miscalculation" and should have been 56.6, or an F. The school offered to let him make up his lost credits by volunteering in the town library. When his parents balked, he was instead placed in courses in sociology and psychology. On one psychology pop quiz, five of Michael's seven answers were marked wrong, but a failing grade was crossed out on the paper and a passing score of 65 was substituted. The school district declined comment.
For a senior English assignment, he received an A for one untitled paragraph. "I believe competition today has changed dramatically," he wrote. "Back in the day, sports was some of the only sports that had competition. Today, everyone wants to compete and only be successful. School work, school sports, major league sports, all involve high amounts of success and competition. Competition today has become very extreme." His English teacher, Michael Connolly, said he didn't remember the assignment and had no comment on the grade.
On standardized tests, Michael had mixed results: On the SATs, which have a 200 to 800 scale, Michael received 330 and then 370 in two tries on the reading test, in the bottom 10% of all students nationally. On math, he scored 460 both times. He failed two state exams and passed five others. His school grades put him in the bottom one-third of his class.
A month before graduation, the Bredemeyers debated whether he should accept the degree. "I wanted to have it," Michael says. "Get it and forget it."
On graduation day, a school band played "Pomp and Circumstance." Michael's parents, his sister, his grandmother, aunts and uncles watched as he walked up to the podium and a school official handed him a purple diploma case with his name etched in gold letters.
Michael says he knew his parents might not let him keep it. "I had a feeling they'd do something like that," he said, shrugging. "I'll eventually get it back, one of these days, months, years." This summer, Michael has been mowing lawns and picking up trash at a state park for $9 an hour. This fall, he plans to enter his second year at Suffolk County Community College, which does not require a high-school diploma. Last semester at Suffolk, he received a D-plus in freshman composition, D's in statistics and Western Civilization and an F in the history of rock 'n' roll.
Write to John Hechinger at john.hechinger@wsj.com3 and Daniel Golden at dan.golden@wsj.com4
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I'm not 100% sure if the data on the %tested with accomodation is accurate. Lindsy, this is the confusion on the table they were talking about today. Can someone please check.
August 21, 2007
PAGE ONE
EXTRA HELP
When Special Education Goes Too Easy on Students
Parents Say Schools Game System, Let Kids
Graduate Without Skills
By JOHN HECHINGER and DANIEL GOLDEN
August 21, 2007; Page A1
GREENPORT, N.Y. -- On June 25, 2006, Michael Bredemeyer threw his tasseled cap in the air and cheered after getting his high school diploma. Two days later, his parents mailed the diploma back.
Michael, now 19 years old, has learning disabilities and finished high school at a seventh-grade reading level, despite scoring above average on IQ tests. The Bredemeyers say he passed some classes because teachers inflated his grades and accepted poor work. By awarding him a meaningless diploma, they say, school officials avoided paying for ongoing instruction.
"I felt proud because he had worked so hard," says Michael's mother, Beverly, her voice breaking. "You don't want to take that away from him. But you knew it wasn't real. What's he going to do in the future? Will he be able to go to college and get a job?"
The Bredemeyers represent a new voice in special education: parents disappointed not because their children are failing, but because they're passing without learning. These families complain that schools give their children an easy academic ride through regular-education classes, undermining a new era of higher expectations for the 14% of U.S. students who are in special education.
Years ago, schools assumed that students with disabilities would lag behind their non-disabled peers. They often were taught in separate buildings and left out of standardized testing. But a combination of two federal laws, adopted a quarter-century apart, have made it national policy to hold almost all children with disabilities to the same academic standards as other students.
The 1975 statute now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act promoted putting special-education students in mainstream classrooms. The 2001 No Child Left Behind Act said schools would be punished if disabled children don't pass the same state tests as other students. It also requires states to set standards for high-school graduation rates and meet them for all students, including those with disabilities.
By some measures, the extra attention is paying off. Test scores and classroom grades of disabled students are rising, and their high-school graduation rate increased to 54% in 2004 from 42% in 1996.
But critics say some of the gains have come because schools have learned to game the system. For instance, federal rules allow states to make "reasonable accommodations" to help disabled students pass tests and graduate, such as allowing extra time on exams. Some schools, say critics, are giving students too much help, for instance by guiding students to the right answers on multiple-choice tests.
MAKING THE GRADE
• The Issue: Some parents of students with learning disabilities say their children are graduating too easily.
• The Background: Federal laws raised school standards, but left loopholes. Increasingly, special-education students get special help to pass tests.
• The Problem: If schools game the system, those students move on without the skills they need.From 2000 to 2005, special-education fourth graders showed more improvement in reading and math than the general population on an important benchmark test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress. But accommodations also increased. In 2005, 70% of fourth-grade special education students received some sort of accommodation while taking the math portion, up from 44% five years earlier. In reading, 63% used accommodations in 2005, up from 29% in 2000.
On tests used to measure compliance with No Child Left Behind, more states are permitting students with disabilities to use calculators on arithmetic tests or have reading-comprehension tests be read aloud. Massachusetts education commissioner David Driscoll warned school administrators in February that an alarming number of special education students -- a quarter or half in some cases -- were receiving such accommodations on state exams. With unclear guidelines, "People start driving trucks through loopholes," he said in an interview.
Some school districts have an informal policy against failing students with disabilities even if they miss many classes or aren't learning. "I can go into any school we represent and have somebody tell me we have to pass special education students" to avoid being blamed for not providing the right services if students fail, says Janet Horton, a Texas special-education attorney. Federal law says special-education students should receive a "free appropriate public education," but it doesn't prohibit failing them.
Mardys Leeper and Carol Merrill, former teachers at West Philadelphia High School in Pennsylvania, say a special-education administrator there ordered them to pass special-education students. Ms. Leeper says she made concessions for students with disabilities, such as letting them write shorter essays or copy paragraphs she wrote onto a word processor rather than composing their own. But when those students didn't make an effort, or skipped class, both teachers say they sometimes sought to fail them -- only to have the administrator insist on passing grades. The reason they were given: Students had met the goals of their federally mandated individual education plans, IEPs, spelling out goals and services for each special-education student.
"Students who weren't even participating, even trying, we couldn't fail them," says Ms. Merrill, an English teacher who retired this year. Even if they couldn't read, "I had to give them a 'D.'"
The administrator couldn't be reached for comment. Brenda Taylor, head of special education for the Philadelphia school district, called the matter a "breakdown in communication." The district has no written policy against failing special-education students, she says. But rather than being "punitive" if a student performs poorly or cuts class, she says, the district prefers to revise a student's IEP. "We're not in the business of failing students," Ms. Taylor says.
Only 19 states require all students to earn the same kind of diploma, according to a recent University of Minnesota survey. Some of those states let special-education students amass fewer course credits to earn the degree, the survey found. Other states give substitute certificates, in some cases called IEP diplomas, to special-education students who don't qualify for standard diplomas.
Many special-education parents are happy to see their children advance through school and graduate. Reggie Felton, director of federal policy for the National School Boards Association, says special-education students learn more in regular classes even if they're given a break on assignments or grading. The federal government recently decided to triple the percentage of students allowed to take easier tests, to 3% from 1%. Some legislators have proposed exempting more students.
But the rebellion against too-easy passing is growing, says Pam Wright, who with her husband has co-authored books on special education issues and operates a Virginia-based information clearinghouse for special-education parents. She estimates she now receives more than 1,000 email messages a year from parents lamenting that their children with disabilities take mainstream courses but aren't being taught as much as their classmates. Dozens of parents have contended in recent administrative appeals that their children did not deserve the diplomas they received, she says.
The family of Alba Somoza, who has cerebral palsy and speaks only with the help of a computer, filed one such case. Alba drew national attention in the 1990s when her family successfully pushed to include the then-third grader in a regular classroom. Then-President Bill Clinton backed her cause, and Alba, now 23, graduated with honors from a New York City high school in 2002.
Last year, Alba and her family filed an administrative case claiming her education was a sham. A school report prepared weeks before she graduated showed she had language and math skills at an elementary school level, court records show. "You cannot shunt children through -- you cannot scam them through the system," says Alba's mother, Mary.
Since shortly after she graduated, New York has been paying for a special program for Alba that costs $400,000 a year -- including a full-time teacher, an aide, transportation and extensive technology. The city says it is doing so out of compassion, not legal obligation. The family is seeking to continue the public funding another year to help Alba receive enough education to work as a museum docent.
The Somozas lost the administrative case, but a judge in U.S. District Court in Manhattan ruled in the family's favor earlier this year and ordered another hearing. Rather than develop a program that would help Alba reach her academic goals, teachers lowered the curriculum's "level of difficulty" and removed "large and meaningful portions of its substantive content," the judge said. One teacher testified that he did most of the work on Alba's final project in 2002. New York officials say the school properly adapted the curriculum for a severely disabled student.
In northern California, Jennifer McGowan, an 18-year-old who is deaf in one ear and suffers from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and learning disabilities, was supposed to graduate from Vacaville Unified School District in June. She didn't get her diploma -- because her family won a court injunction to stop it.
In an interview, Jennifer said she often received A or B grades for poorly completed work or, at times, when she didn't do assignments at all or show up for class. Achievement tests she took in January 2005 showed that she had the math and reading skills of an elementary-school student, according to her administrative complaint.
The school district denies her grades were inflated and said she showed her proficiency by passing a high-school exit exam. John Aycock, Vacaville's superintendent, said teachers did "a great job working with Jennifer." Jennifer says she failed the exit exam several times despite intensive preparation. "They just wanted to pass me and let me fly by," she says. The school system says it's not unusual to make several attempts to pass.
At the Mercer Island school district in Washington state, the family of a girl with severe learning disabilities complains that, instead of the intense instruction she needed to master reading and math in eighth and ninth grades, teachers showered her with accommodations: a peer note-taker, a peer to read materials to her, oral exams, reduced assignments and a calculator on math tests.
At an administrative hearing, the family -- whose names are not disclosed in the court papers -- sought to force the school system to pay for her private schooling. Noting her strong A and B grades, the district successfully argued that accommodations were helping her learn. In U.S. District Court in Seattle, a judge hearing an appeal of the case disagreed last year, saying the system improperly relied on accommodations rather than instruction, and has returned the case to a hearing officer to determine financial relief for the family.
Boxes of school correspondence and Michael Bredemeyer's old tests and assignments line the hallways of his family's weather-beaten saltbox house in Orient, N.Y., on Long Island's North Fork. Michael's parents are demanding public funding for more services until age 21, to which students are entitled unless they graduate, so he can improve his academic skills for college.
John Bredemeyer, a county public-health inspector, and his wife, Beverly, had high hopes for Michael, who has a strong work ethic and a knack for repairing machines. But once he entered public middle school in nearby Greenport, his parents worried that teachers were letting him skate through classes and tests.
Michael, who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and learning disabilities including dyslexia, says in some classes he "definitely earned" a passing grade, but others were "borderline." He took regular classes except for one period a day. "A little more one-on-one" instruction would have helped, he says.
On state achievement exams, Michael's IEP permitted him extra time, simplified instructions and guidance from a teacher to slow him down if he rushed through answers. But when he completed the eighth-grade math test, his special-education teacher also took him to the resource room and directed him to redo problems he had answered incorrectly. According to a memo from Greenport Superintendent Charles Kozora, the teacher "exceeded the intent" of Michael's accommodations, boosting his score. The state investigated and invalidated Michael's test.
Mr. Kozora said the school system had only two cases of testing irregularities in six years, few conflicts with parents over special education and "many successes" among students with disabilities. The district says achievement, and not cost, dictates its decisions on graduating students.
When Michael was a junior at Greenport High, his chemistry teacher passed him with the minimum grade of 65, even though he says he spent much of the class doodling and playing solitaire on his laptop. Checking his assignments and tests, his parents couldn't understand how he could be passing.
In a letter, the school principal acknowledged that the final grade was a "miscalculation" and should have been 56.6, or an F. The school offered to let him make up his lost credits by volunteering in the town library. When his parents balked, he was instead placed in courses in sociology and psychology. On one psychology pop quiz, five of Michael's seven answers were marked wrong, but a failing grade was crossed out on the paper and a passing score of 65 was substituted. The school district declined comment.
For a senior English assignment, he received an A for one untitled paragraph. "I believe competition today has changed dramatically," he wrote. "Back in the day, sports was some of the only sports that had competition. Today, everyone wants to compete and only be successful. School work, school sports, major league sports, all involve high amounts of success and competition. Competition today has become very extreme." His English teacher, Michael Connolly, said he didn't remember the assignment and had no comment on the grade.
On standardized tests, Michael had mixed results: On the SATs, which have a 200 to 800 scale, Michael received 330 and then 370 in two tries on the reading test, in the bottom 10% of all students nationally. On math, he scored 460 both times. He failed two state exams and passed five others. His school grades put him in the bottom one-third of his class.
A month before graduation, the Bredemeyers debated whether he should accept the degree. "I wanted to have it," Michael says. "Get it and forget it."
On graduation day, a school band played "Pomp and Circumstance." Michael's parents, his sister, his grandmother, aunts and uncles watched as he walked up to the podium and a school official handed him a purple diploma case with his name etched in gold letters.
Michael says he knew his parents might not let him keep it. "I had a feeling they'd do something like that," he said, shrugging. "I'll eventually get it back, one of these days, months, years." This summer, Michael has been mowing lawns and picking up trash at a state park for $9 an hour. This fall, he plans to enter his second year at Suffolk County Community College, which does not require a high-school diploma. Last semester at Suffolk, he received a D-plus in freshman composition, D's in statistics and Western Civilization and an F in the history of rock 'n' roll.
Write to John Hechinger at john.hechinger@wsj.com3 and Daniel Golden at dan.golden@wsj.com4
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August 20, 2007
Flash Report: TESTING THE CALIFORNIA STANDARDS TEST
Those disparities should lead parents to question whether the CST is a reliable measure of actual student learning. If students do not perform well on NAEP exams, schools face no consequences. However, there is powerful pressure for student performance to improve on the CST because the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) requires 100-percent proficiency by the 2013-14 school year, or the state risks losing around $3 billion in annual federal funding. For all its noble intentions, this requirement introduces perverse incentives for states to water down their academic standards, lower passing scores, and inflate passing rates by letting students apply extra credit work to boost their test scores.
All this fudging misleads parents and misses the point of standards-based education, which is student learning. Such quick-fixes also mask the need for fundamental, systemic improvement of the California public education system.
Full post here: http://www.flashreport.org/special-reports0b.php?faID=2007081701502180
All this fudging misleads parents and misses the point of standards-based education, which is student learning. Such quick-fixes also mask the need for fundamental, systemic improvement of the California public education system.
Full post here: http://www.flashreport.org/special-reports0b.php?faID=2007081701502180
August 15, 2007
Washington Times - "ACT scores up; students still ill-prepared"
ACT scores up; students still ill-prepared
By Amy Fagan
August 15, 2007
The average national ACT test score for high-school graduates increased slightly for the third time in the past five years, but new test data suggests that core classes — particularly in math and science — are not preparing students enough for college work.
“We still have a long way to go in ensuring that all high-school graduates are prepared for the next level, but the progress we're seeing is very encouraging,” said Richard L. Ferguson, ACT's chief executive officer, in response to the release yesterday of the 2007 test results.
Students who graduated high school in 2007 and took the ACT exam — a record 1.3 million people — earned an average score of 21.2, up from 21.1 last year and 20.8 in 2003. The ACT college admission and placement exam is set on a scale of 1 to 36 and covers various subjects, testing college preparedness.
The test is administered nationwide, but a majority of high school graduates take the ACT in 26 states.
This year's test results also showed a continuing increase in the number of students who score at or above the benchmark level in each subject area. The ACT assigns each subject a “benchmark” score, which is the minimum score needed to indicate the student has a 50 percent change of obtaining a B or higher and a 75 percent chance of obtaining a C or higher in a first-year college course.
The percentage of students who meet those benchmarks has been inching higher each year. Sixty-nine percent reached the benchmark for English, 43 percent met the benchmark for math, 53 percent for reading and 28 percent for science.
The bad news, however, is that fewer than half of the test-takers are prepared for college-level work in math and science. And it gets more troubling as the numbers are dissected. Students who took the basic high school curriculum in these areas did worse.
For example, among those who took Algebra I and II as well as geometry — the minimum core course work in math — only 15 percent met or surpassed ACT's benchmark.
And only 20 percent who took the high-school minimum core course work in science — general science, biology and chemistry — met or exceeded ACT's benchmark.
Mr. Ferguson said these findings present a real problem.
“Taking the basic core curriculum should enable most students to be ready for their first year of college," he said.
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said yesterday that test-takers falling short of these benchmarks is “unacceptable.”
She used the opportunity to push for the high school reforms that President Bush wants to include in legislation that will renew the 2002 No Child Left Behind law. Congress is set to start tackling that legislation in September.
By Amy Fagan
August 15, 2007
The average national ACT test score for high-school graduates increased slightly for the third time in the past five years, but new test data suggests that core classes — particularly in math and science — are not preparing students enough for college work.
“We still have a long way to go in ensuring that all high-school graduates are prepared for the next level, but the progress we're seeing is very encouraging,” said Richard L. Ferguson, ACT's chief executive officer, in response to the release yesterday of the 2007 test results.
Students who graduated high school in 2007 and took the ACT exam — a record 1.3 million people — earned an average score of 21.2, up from 21.1 last year and 20.8 in 2003. The ACT college admission and placement exam is set on a scale of 1 to 36 and covers various subjects, testing college preparedness.
The test is administered nationwide, but a majority of high school graduates take the ACT in 26 states.
This year's test results also showed a continuing increase in the number of students who score at or above the benchmark level in each subject area. The ACT assigns each subject a “benchmark” score, which is the minimum score needed to indicate the student has a 50 percent change of obtaining a B or higher and a 75 percent chance of obtaining a C or higher in a first-year college course.
The percentage of students who meet those benchmarks has been inching higher each year. Sixty-nine percent reached the benchmark for English, 43 percent met the benchmark for math, 53 percent for reading and 28 percent for science.
The bad news, however, is that fewer than half of the test-takers are prepared for college-level work in math and science. And it gets more troubling as the numbers are dissected. Students who took the basic high school curriculum in these areas did worse.
For example, among those who took Algebra I and II as well as geometry — the minimum core course work in math — only 15 percent met or surpassed ACT's benchmark.
And only 20 percent who took the high-school minimum core course work in science — general science, biology and chemistry — met or exceeded ACT's benchmark.
Mr. Ferguson said these findings present a real problem.
“Taking the basic core curriculum should enable most students to be ready for their first year of college," he said.
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said yesterday that test-takers falling short of these benchmarks is “unacceptable.”
She used the opportunity to push for the high school reforms that President Bush wants to include in legislation that will renew the 2002 No Child Left Behind law. Congress is set to start tackling that legislation in September.
EdWeek: Dept. Issues Rules On ‘Rigorous’ Classes
The Department of Education proposed regulations last week that would enable high schools to have “rigorous” courses endorsed as such by the department several years into the future.
Under the proposed changes, published in the Federal Register on Aug. 7, high school students planning to apply for federal Academic Competitiveness Grants for use in college could plan ahead and take enough rigorous precollegiate classes to qualify.
August 14, 2007
Teaching With the Tests, Not To the Tests
Through our research, we arrived at the following three fundamental beliefs about preparing students for testing:
1. Successful test-takers must first be smart readers.
2. Successful test-takers must be able to translate the unique language of the test.3. Learning to be a successful test-taker can be fun.
NPR: Financial Literacy
So it was not that great of a surprise to me to learn that high school students have a fairly firm grasp on the economic fundamentals. The first ever National Assessment of Educational Progress focused on economics found 79% of 12th graders had a basic understanding or better of our market economy.
Most could answer questions like: “How will an increase in real interest rates affect the amount of money that people will borrow?” They understood the trade offs between staying in a job and leaving it to get a better education. And 60% could identify what happens to the federal budget when tax revenues fall and spending rises.
Given these results, I am certain high school students would have gotten the right answer to the following question: What happens when, after giving a loan to people who have poor credit or no documented income history, you then try to raise their interest rate by 40%? Of course, you get the subprime meltdown.
August 13, 2007
Newmark's Door: You think Economists Can't Agree? How about Journalists?
Blogger points out the discrepancies in interpretations by copy editors at Wapo and WSJ:
From the Washington Post, August 9, 2007, page D01, headlined "High School Seniors Test Well in Economics"
vs.
From the Wall Street Journal, August 9, 2007, page D2, headllined "High Schoolers Aren't Good at Economics" (may require subscription):Publish Post
From the Washington Post, August 9, 2007, page D01, headlined "High School Seniors Test Well in Economics"
vs.
From the Wall Street Journal, August 9, 2007, page D2, headllined "High Schoolers Aren't Good at Economics" (may require subscription):Publish Post
USA Today: Achievement Gap is Narrowing
Sandy Kress, former senior education, advisor to President Bush - Austin
I want to commend USA TODAY for its editorial "An illusion gains credibility" (Our view, Improving education debate, Aug. 6).
Unfortunately, in his opposing view, Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Association, enlarges the education illusion ("Key subjects get short shrift," Opposing view, Improving education debate, Aug. 6).
Weaver claims dropout rates have increased in the wake of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), but this isn't what the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) says.
In its Digest of Education Statistics: 2006, NCES says the percentage of high school dropouts among people 16 through 24 years old dropped from 10.9% in 2000 to 9.4% in 2005.
August 10, 2007
Education Week: Exclusion-Rate Data for NAEP to be More Accessible
State data on students who are excluded from taking the National Assessment of Educational Progress, as well as those who are given special help or accommodations during the tests, will be featured more prominently in NAEP reports, starting this fall.
Officials are making those changes to ensure a better understanding of state differences, and the limitations of such comparisons, the governing board that sets policy for the federal testing program said this month. The board will also consider ways to standardize exclusion procedures nationwide, beginning with exams scheduled for 2009.
Officials are making those changes to ensure a better understanding of state differences, and the limitations of such comparisons, the governing board that sets policy for the federal testing program said this month. The board will also consider ways to standardize exclusion procedures nationwide, beginning with exams scheduled for 2009.
WSJ says kids can't do economics, then says they can
First, right after the report release:
And today's paper:
I guess the WSJ spent a little more time with the report yesterday...
EDIT: I think the WSJ gets credit for this, actually. The interpretations of the results of the report are really wild online - some people saying more in line with the second WSJ article, and others going even farther in the direction of the first.
High Schoolers Aren't Good At Economics
Although more U.S. high-school students are taking economics courses, most graduating seniors have only a basic understanding of the subject, according to results from a key nationwide test.
And today's paper:
The Kids Are All Right
Pop quiz. Which has been most important in reducing poverty over time: a) taxes, b) economic growth, c) international trade, or d) government regulation?
We know what our readers would say. But lest you think American young people are slouching toward serfdom, you'll be pleased to know that 53% of U.S. high school seniors also answered "b." The latest version of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) asked this question, among others on economics, and the results will not please members of the ..
I guess the WSJ spent a little more time with the report yesterday...
EDIT: I think the WSJ gets credit for this, actually. The interpretations of the results of the report are really wild online - some people saying more in line with the second WSJ article, and others going even farther in the direction of the first.
August 8, 2007
WSJ: Not By Geeks Alone
August 8, 2007
COMMENTARY
Not By Geeks Alone
By CHESTER E. FINN, JR. and DIANE RAVITCH
August 8, 2007; Page A13
In a globalizing economy, America's competitive edge depends in large measure on how well our schools prepare tomorrow's workforce.
And notwithstanding the fact that Congress and the White House are now controlled by opposing parties, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are bent on devising new programs and boosting education spending.
Consider the measure -- the America Competes Act -- that recently passed Congress and is on its way to the president's desk. The bill will substantially increase government funding for science, technology, engineering and math ("STEM" subjects). President Bush, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings as well as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid support this initiative. Nearly all of the 2008 presidential candidates endorse its goals. And 38 state legislatures have also recently enacted STEM bills. The buzz is as constant as summer cicadas.
Indeed, STEM has swiftly emerged as the hottest education topic since No Child Left Behind. They're related, too. NCLB puts a premium on reading and math skills and also pays some attention to science. Marry it with STEM and you get heavy emphasis on a particular suite of skills.
But there is a problem here. Worthy though these skills are, they ignore at least half of what has long been regarded as a "well rounded" education in Western civilization: literature, art, music, history, civics and geography. Indeed, a new study from the Center on Education Policy says that, since NCLB's enactment, nearly half of U.S. school districts have reduced the time their students spend on subjects such as art and music.
This is a mistake that will ill-serve our children while misconstruing the true nature of American competitiveness and the challenges we face in the 21st century.
As with all education reforms, the STEM-winders mean well. They reason that India and China will eat America's lunch unless we boost our young people's prowess in the STEM fields. But these enthusiasts don't understand that what makes Americans competitive on a shrinking, globalizing planet isn't out-gunning Asians at technical skills. Rather, it's our people's creativity, versatility, imagination, restlessness, energy, ambition and problem-solving prowess.
True success over the long haul -- economic success, civic success, cultural success, domestic success, national defense success -- depends on a broadly educated populace with flowers and leaves as well as stems. That's what equips us to invent and imagine and grow one business line into another. It's also how we acquire qualities and abilities that aren't easily "outsourced" to Guangzhou or Hyderabad.
Students who garner high-tech skills may still get undercut by people halfway around the world who are willing to do the same work for one-fifth of the salary. The surest way to compete is to offer something the Chinese and Indians (and Vietnamese, Singaporeans, etc.) cannot -- technical skills are not enough.
Apple's iPod was not just an engineering improvement on Sony's Walkman. It emerged from Steve Jobs's American-style understanding of people's lifestyles, needs, tastes and capacities. (Yes, Mr. Jobs dropped out of college -- but went on to study philosophy and foreign cultures.)
Pragmatic folks naturally seek direct links from skill to result, such as engineers using their technical knowledge to keep planes aloft and bridges from buckling. But what about Abraham Lincoln educating himself via Shakespeare, the Bible and other great literary works? Alan Greenspan's degrees are in economics but he plays a mean jazz saxophone. Indeed, many of today's foremost (and wealthiest) entrepreneurs, people like Warren Buffett, studied economics -- not a STEM subject -- in college. Adam Smith studied moral philosophy.
The liberal arts make us "competitive" in the ways that matter most. They make us wise, thoughtful and appropriately humble. They help our human potential to bloom. And they are the foundation for a democratic civic polity, where each of us bears equal rights and responsibilities.
History and literature also impart to their students healthy skepticism and doubt, the ability to question, to ask both "why?" and "why not?" and, perhaps most important, readiness to challenge authority, push back against conventional wisdom and make one's own way despite pressure to conform. (How will that be viewed in China?)
We're already at risk of turning U.S. schools into test-prepping skill factories where nothing matters except exam scores on basic subjects. That's not what America needs nor is it a sufficient conception of educational accountability. We need schools that prepare our children to excel and compete not only in the global workforce but also as full participants in our society, our culture, our polity and our economy.
Addressing a recent Fordham Foundation education conference, Arts Endowment chairman Dana Gioia said "We need a system that grounds all students in pleasure, beauty and wonder. It is the best way to create citizens who are awakened not only to their humanity, but to the human enterprise that they inherit and will -- for good or ill -- perpetuate."
Creating such a system calls not for a host of specialized new institutions and government programs, but for closely examining the curriculum in all our schools. It also calls for recalibrating academic standards and graduation requirements, as well as amending our testing-and-accountability schemes -- most certainly including NCLB -- by widening the definition of "proficient" to include reasoning, creativity and knowledge across a dozen subjects as well as basic cognitive skills. We need to start reconceptualizing "highly qualified" teachers as people who are themselves broadly educated rather than narrowly specialized.
Abandoning the liberal arts in the name of STEM alone also risks widening social divides and deepening domestic inequities. The well-to-do who understand the value of liberal learning may be the only ones able to purchase it for their children. Top private schools and a few suburban systems will stick with education broadly defined, as will elite colleges. Rich kids will study philosophy and art, music and history, while their poor peers fill in bubbles on test sheets. The lucky few will spawn the next generation of tycoons, political leaders, inventors, authors, artists and entrepreneurs. The less lucky masses will see narrower opportunities. Some will find no opportunities at all, which frustration will tempt them to prey upon the fortunate, who in turn will retreat into gated communities, exclusive clubs, and private this-and-that's, thereby widening domestic rifts and worsening our prospects for social cohesion and civility.
Not a pretty picture. Adding leaves and flowers to STEM and NCLB won't necessarily avert it -- but hewing to basic skills at the expense of a complete education will surely worsen it.
Mr. Finn and Ms. Ravitch, former assistant U.S. Secretaries of Education and members of the Koret Task Force on K-12 Education at the Hoover Institution, are editors of "Beyond the Basics: Achieving a Liberal Education for All Children" (Thomas B. Fordham Institute, 2007).
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118653759532491305.html
Copyright 2007 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.
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COMMENTARY
Not By Geeks Alone
By CHESTER E. FINN, JR. and DIANE RAVITCH
August 8, 2007; Page A13
In a globalizing economy, America's competitive edge depends in large measure on how well our schools prepare tomorrow's workforce.
And notwithstanding the fact that Congress and the White House are now controlled by opposing parties, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are bent on devising new programs and boosting education spending.
Consider the measure -- the America Competes Act -- that recently passed Congress and is on its way to the president's desk. The bill will substantially increase government funding for science, technology, engineering and math ("STEM" subjects). President Bush, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings as well as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid support this initiative. Nearly all of the 2008 presidential candidates endorse its goals. And 38 state legislatures have also recently enacted STEM bills. The buzz is as constant as summer cicadas.
Indeed, STEM has swiftly emerged as the hottest education topic since No Child Left Behind. They're related, too. NCLB puts a premium on reading and math skills and also pays some attention to science. Marry it with STEM and you get heavy emphasis on a particular suite of skills.
But there is a problem here. Worthy though these skills are, they ignore at least half of what has long been regarded as a "well rounded" education in Western civilization: literature, art, music, history, civics and geography. Indeed, a new study from the Center on Education Policy says that, since NCLB's enactment, nearly half of U.S. school districts have reduced the time their students spend on subjects such as art and music.
This is a mistake that will ill-serve our children while misconstruing the true nature of American competitiveness and the challenges we face in the 21st century.
As with all education reforms, the STEM-winders mean well. They reason that India and China will eat America's lunch unless we boost our young people's prowess in the STEM fields. But these enthusiasts don't understand that what makes Americans competitive on a shrinking, globalizing planet isn't out-gunning Asians at technical skills. Rather, it's our people's creativity, versatility, imagination, restlessness, energy, ambition and problem-solving prowess.
True success over the long haul -- economic success, civic success, cultural success, domestic success, national defense success -- depends on a broadly educated populace with flowers and leaves as well as stems. That's what equips us to invent and imagine and grow one business line into another. It's also how we acquire qualities and abilities that aren't easily "outsourced" to Guangzhou or Hyderabad.
Students who garner high-tech skills may still get undercut by people halfway around the world who are willing to do the same work for one-fifth of the salary. The surest way to compete is to offer something the Chinese and Indians (and Vietnamese, Singaporeans, etc.) cannot -- technical skills are not enough.
Apple's iPod was not just an engineering improvement on Sony's Walkman. It emerged from Steve Jobs's American-style understanding of people's lifestyles, needs, tastes and capacities. (Yes, Mr. Jobs dropped out of college -- but went on to study philosophy and foreign cultures.)
Pragmatic folks naturally seek direct links from skill to result, such as engineers using their technical knowledge to keep planes aloft and bridges from buckling. But what about Abraham Lincoln educating himself via Shakespeare, the Bible and other great literary works? Alan Greenspan's degrees are in economics but he plays a mean jazz saxophone. Indeed, many of today's foremost (and wealthiest) entrepreneurs, people like Warren Buffett, studied economics -- not a STEM subject -- in college. Adam Smith studied moral philosophy.
The liberal arts make us "competitive" in the ways that matter most. They make us wise, thoughtful and appropriately humble. They help our human potential to bloom. And they are the foundation for a democratic civic polity, where each of us bears equal rights and responsibilities.
History and literature also impart to their students healthy skepticism and doubt, the ability to question, to ask both "why?" and "why not?" and, perhaps most important, readiness to challenge authority, push back against conventional wisdom and make one's own way despite pressure to conform. (How will that be viewed in China?)
We're already at risk of turning U.S. schools into test-prepping skill factories where nothing matters except exam scores on basic subjects. That's not what America needs nor is it a sufficient conception of educational accountability. We need schools that prepare our children to excel and compete not only in the global workforce but also as full participants in our society, our culture, our polity and our economy.
Addressing a recent Fordham Foundation education conference, Arts Endowment chairman Dana Gioia said "We need a system that grounds all students in pleasure, beauty and wonder. It is the best way to create citizens who are awakened not only to their humanity, but to the human enterprise that they inherit and will -- for good or ill -- perpetuate."
Creating such a system calls not for a host of specialized new institutions and government programs, but for closely examining the curriculum in all our schools. It also calls for recalibrating academic standards and graduation requirements, as well as amending our testing-and-accountability schemes -- most certainly including NCLB -- by widening the definition of "proficient" to include reasoning, creativity and knowledge across a dozen subjects as well as basic cognitive skills. We need to start reconceptualizing "highly qualified" teachers as people who are themselves broadly educated rather than narrowly specialized.
Abandoning the liberal arts in the name of STEM alone also risks widening social divides and deepening domestic inequities. The well-to-do who understand the value of liberal learning may be the only ones able to purchase it for their children. Top private schools and a few suburban systems will stick with education broadly defined, as will elite colleges. Rich kids will study philosophy and art, music and history, while their poor peers fill in bubbles on test sheets. The lucky few will spawn the next generation of tycoons, political leaders, inventors, authors, artists and entrepreneurs. The less lucky masses will see narrower opportunities. Some will find no opportunities at all, which frustration will tempt them to prey upon the fortunate, who in turn will retreat into gated communities, exclusive clubs, and private this-and-that's, thereby widening domestic rifts and worsening our prospects for social cohesion and civility.
Not a pretty picture. Adding leaves and flowers to STEM and NCLB won't necessarily avert it -- but hewing to basic skills at the expense of a complete education will surely worsen it.
Mr. Finn and Ms. Ravitch, former assistant U.S. Secretaries of Education and members of the Koret Task Force on K-12 Education at the Hoover Institution, are editors of "Beyond the Basics: Achieving a Liberal Education for All Children" (Thomas B. Fordham Institute, 2007).
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118653759532491305.html
Copyright 2007 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.
RELATED ARTICLES AND BLOGS
Blog Posts About This Topic
• Dear Diane and Chester, You Can’t Get There From Here extremewisdom.com
• Design Info designinfo.tumblr.com
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Education Week: Congress Passes 'Competitiveness' Bill
Congress approved legislation Thursday that seeks to bolster mathematics and science education through improved teacher recruitment and training and promote successful classroom practices through federal grants.
The bipartisan legislation, which the House approved by a 367-57 vote and the Senate passed unanimously, had the backing of numerous business and education organizations. Members of Congress have dubbed the proposals, now consolidated into one bill, “competitiveness” legislation, because they believe it will strengthen the quality of the U.S. workforce and gird the American economy against foreign competition.
The bill now goes to President Bush, who lawmakers believe will sign the bill.
The bipartisan legislation, which the House approved by a 367-57 vote and the Senate passed unanimously, had the backing of numerous business and education organizations. Members of Congress have dubbed the proposals, now consolidated into one bill, “competitiveness” legislation, because they believe it will strengthen the quality of the U.S. workforce and gird the American economy against foreign competition.
The bill now goes to President Bush, who lawmakers believe will sign the bill.
August 7, 2007
IES Alert (First Economics Release Reference!)
A short notice about tomorrow's release on the blog of the National Association of State Boards of Education.
Results from the first-ever NAEP assessment in economics are scheduled to be released on Wednesday, August 8, 2007. The Nation’s Report Card: Economics 2006 reports on the economic literacy of America’s twelfth-graders. Student knowledge was measured in three areas: market economy, national economy, and international economy.
For more information on the assessment, visit:
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/economics/
On Wednesday the 8th of August, at 10 a.m. ET, view the results online at:
http://nationsreportcard.gov
and view a webcast of the report release event. Join NCES Associate Commissioner Peggy Carr for an online StatChat about the results on the day of the release at 2 p.m. Submit your questions now, and at any time until the end of the chat at 3 p.m., at:
http://nces.ed.gov/statchat/index2.asp
ED Daily - NAGB to Determine Future of Reading Trend Line
NAGB to determine future of reading trend line
By Stephen Sawchuk Staff Writer
With a new National Assessment of Educational Progress reading test scheduled to debut in 2009, the board that oversees NAEP policy must determine whether to attempt to continue the existing reading "trend line" -- used to track student performance on the test throughout time -- or end it and begin a new one.
The National Assessment Governing Board periodically revises its assessments to reflect advancements in the fields being assessed and in teachers' instructional practices.
The new reading test contains some significant alterations, including a heavier emphasis on understanding non-fictional and informational texts than the previous test, which has been used since 1992.
Because of the changes in construct, NAGB frequently restarts the trend line when it institutes a new test.
But the stakes are higher in this instance because policymakers use NAEP as an objective measure to determine whether NCLB actually has leveraged increases in students' reading and math achievement throughout time. A new trend line would prevent those types of analyses for the time being.
"We have a key subject here that's part of NCLB," said Peggy Carr, associate commissioner for the National Center for Education Statistics, while briefing the board on its options at its quarterly board meeting last week. "There is a desire to link the trend lines."
The NCLB issue has already proved serious enough for the board to modify its policy for the reading exam once. NAGB pushed back implementation of the new test from 2007 to 2009 to allow for an additional data reporting cycle using the old test.
Moving forward, NAGB is considering three main options for preserving the trend line. The most conservative option would give a portion of students the old test and a second portion the new test in 2009 and would report scores from both assessments on two "overlapping" trend lines.
Two other options involve augmenting the new test with a series of questions from the old test so that results would remain comparable and continue to be reported on the existing trend line.
NAGB heard the first feedback at its quarterly board meeting last week from a variety of stakeholders. At least two groups backed the more conservative option.
"If the [test] constructs [are] different, it would be most accurate to represent them as two separate scales," said Theresa Siskind, chair of a Council of Chief State School Officers subcommittee on education information.
Her opinion was seconded by George Bohrnstedt, chairman of the NAEP Validity Studies Panel.
But Skip Kifer, a member of the NAEP Design and Analysis Committee, supported the integrated approach, calling it more "forward looking." He cautioned, however, that the approach should allow the board to fall back on reporting the results on two separate scales if it ultimately proves technically unfeasible to link the two exams.
"No matter what decision you make, there are going to be quite a number of issues you will have to address," he cautioned the board.
NAGB's decision also could hinge on the results of two outstanding reports commissioned by NCES. One of them will attempt to establish statistical correlations between the scales on the old and new reading tests. The other will analyze the similarities between the two tests' reading passages and questions.
Those reports are due out by next May, Carr said, which means that NAGB will likely have to make a final decision by next summer in order to give officials enough time to prepare for the 2009 administration.
Though the matter is far from settled, some NAGB members predicted challenges in bridging the two exams while maintaining valid and reliable results.
"As we did our work, our assumption was that this was indeed a very different test from the one that preceded it," said Amanda Avallone, a principal and teacher who served on the committee that developed the new test framework. "They are very, very different in what they are asking of students."
August 6, 2007
By Stephen Sawchuk Staff Writer
With a new National Assessment of Educational Progress reading test scheduled to debut in 2009, the board that oversees NAEP policy must determine whether to attempt to continue the existing reading "trend line" -- used to track student performance on the test throughout time -- or end it and begin a new one.
The National Assessment Governing Board periodically revises its assessments to reflect advancements in the fields being assessed and in teachers' instructional practices.
The new reading test contains some significant alterations, including a heavier emphasis on understanding non-fictional and informational texts than the previous test, which has been used since 1992.
Because of the changes in construct, NAGB frequently restarts the trend line when it institutes a new test.
But the stakes are higher in this instance because policymakers use NAEP as an objective measure to determine whether NCLB actually has leveraged increases in students' reading and math achievement throughout time. A new trend line would prevent those types of analyses for the time being.
"We have a key subject here that's part of NCLB," said Peggy Carr, associate commissioner for the National Center for Education Statistics, while briefing the board on its options at its quarterly board meeting last week. "There is a desire to link the trend lines."
The NCLB issue has already proved serious enough for the board to modify its policy for the reading exam once. NAGB pushed back implementation of the new test from 2007 to 2009 to allow for an additional data reporting cycle using the old test.
Moving forward, NAGB is considering three main options for preserving the trend line. The most conservative option would give a portion of students the old test and a second portion the new test in 2009 and would report scores from both assessments on two "overlapping" trend lines.
Two other options involve augmenting the new test with a series of questions from the old test so that results would remain comparable and continue to be reported on the existing trend line.
NAGB heard the first feedback at its quarterly board meeting last week from a variety of stakeholders. At least two groups backed the more conservative option.
"If the [test] constructs [are] different, it would be most accurate to represent them as two separate scales," said Theresa Siskind, chair of a Council of Chief State School Officers subcommittee on education information.
Her opinion was seconded by George Bohrnstedt, chairman of the NAEP Validity Studies Panel.
But Skip Kifer, a member of the NAEP Design and Analysis Committee, supported the integrated approach, calling it more "forward looking." He cautioned, however, that the approach should allow the board to fall back on reporting the results on two separate scales if it ultimately proves technically unfeasible to link the two exams.
"No matter what decision you make, there are going to be quite a number of issues you will have to address," he cautioned the board.
NAGB's decision also could hinge on the results of two outstanding reports commissioned by NCES. One of them will attempt to establish statistical correlations between the scales on the old and new reading tests. The other will analyze the similarities between the two tests' reading passages and questions.
Those reports are due out by next May, Carr said, which means that NAGB will likely have to make a final decision by next summer in order to give officials enough time to prepare for the 2009 administration.
Though the matter is far from settled, some NAGB members predicted challenges in bridging the two exams while maintaining valid and reliable results.
"As we did our work, our assumption was that this was indeed a very different test from the one that preceded it," said Amanda Avallone, a principal and teacher who served on the committee that developed the new test framework. "They are very, very different in what they are asking of students."
August 6, 2007
August 6, 2007
Ed Week: NCSL Panel Fails to Reach Consensus on National Standards
After nearly a year of debate, the education committee of the National Conference of State Legislatures today failed to reach a unanimous decision on where the panel stands on national standards—setting up a debate and likely vote on Wednesday by the national group’s entire legislative body.
Full story: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/08/06/45ncsl_web.h26.html
Full story: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/08/06/45ncsl_web.h26.html
Russo: Education is Like Global Warming 10 Years Ago
"Where's the consensus? There isn't one. And until there is -- which may never happen -- it's going to be mighty hard for anyone to push for, much less take, bold action towards improving schools."
August 4, 2007
Cool Infographic
I found a cool infographic that compiles a "search font" for NAEP, composed of books about NAEP, as pulled from Amazon.com. Check it out.
http://amaztype.tha.jp/US/Books/Title?q=naep
http://amaztype.tha.jp/US/Books/Title?q=naep
August 3, 2007
Managesmarter.org: Generational Series 3 on Biz Kids
The National Assessment of Educational Progress is more informally known as the Nation's Report Card. It's an ongoing assessment of what American students know and can do in various subjects, such as civics, geography, mathematics, and history. The program assesses the performance of 4th, 8th, and 12th graders and compares that performance to the results of the last assessment in that topic. The 2006 report card for history results, for example, shows that overall knowledge of history among students improved since the last assessment in 1994. Of those students, 66 percent of 4th graders understood the symbolism of the Statue of Liberty, but only 14 percent of 12th graders could explain why the U.S. was involved in the Korean War.
Maeroff says the history scores are dismal. And in comparison with students around the world, American students just don't perform at the same level. For example, American students scored poorly in mathematics compared to most of the other nations in the 2003 Programme for International Student Assessment, a three-year study of the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds in most of the industrialized nations.
But Alexandra Starr, writing in Slate magazine, argues that the NAEP tests don't tell the story because individual students never find out how they do on these tests. They're intended to assess knowledge, so students aren't told their scores and there are no consequences for passing, failing, or even not taking the test at all. On the other hand, Starr writes, "The dubiousness of these test results becomes clear when you compare them to the results of tests that actually do matter for teenagers: high-school exit exams and college boards.…Look at Texas: In 2004, results counted toward graduation for the first time, and pass rates on both the math and English portions of the test leapt almost 20 points."
Whether or not the NAEP overstates American students' ignorance, there is a problem in American education, says Conrad Follmer, an independent education consultant in Havertown, PA. "Research suggests that, compared with other nations, our expectations haven't been high enough and we have students spend too much time on isolated computational practice," he says. "We have made too much a habit of teaching students in isolation, without interconnecting different subjects."
Iowa and Education
Washington Monthly post citing a reason why the candidates aren't talking much about ed reforms:
Two of the biggest obstacles are Iowa and New Hampshire....Both are very strong local control states, with incredibly weak charter school laws, no major urban areas, and low rates of poor and minority students. Iowa's one of the highest performing states in the country on NAEP, and Iowans don't take kindly to reforms that would mess with their system, and the caucus system gives undue weight to PTA-types, school board members, and other local leaders who tend to support the education status quo.
August 2, 2007
The Explorer: Not up to par
A select number of students also are given the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) exam.
But a controversy has arisen between the validity of TerraNova and NAEP in which critics point to the chasm that separates results from the two exams.
Last year’s TerraNova scores placed Arizona fourth-graders at 10 percent above national averages in math.
NAEP, however, placed fourth-graders in Arizona at levels well below national averages. For example, 30 percent scored below proficient in math; the national average is 21 percent.
Horne discounts the discrepancy, though. He believes the sheer number of TerraNova exams administered in the state — 600,000 — makes it a better measure than the highly-selective group of 6,000 NAEP exams.
“NAEPs are meaningless because they aren’t given under the same conditions in all states,” Horne said.
Ladner said that NAEP is the better tool because it has consistently shown since the 1970s that Arizona scores have remained flat, and because 29 different versions of NAEP have been given in Arizona since 1992, but the results always come back the same.
“Arizona scores below the national averages in nearly all areas,” Ladner said. “In Arizona 48 percent of the fourth-graders can’t read, according to NAEP.”
But a controversy has arisen between the validity of TerraNova and NAEP in which critics point to the chasm that separates results from the two exams.
Last year’s TerraNova scores placed Arizona fourth-graders at 10 percent above national averages in math.
NAEP, however, placed fourth-graders in Arizona at levels well below national averages. For example, 30 percent scored below proficient in math; the national average is 21 percent.
Horne discounts the discrepancy, though. He believes the sheer number of TerraNova exams administered in the state — 600,000 — makes it a better measure than the highly-selective group of 6,000 NAEP exams.
“NAEPs are meaningless because they aren’t given under the same conditions in all states,” Horne said.
Ladner said that NAEP is the better tool because it has consistently shown since the 1970s that Arizona scores have remained flat, and because 29 different versions of NAEP have been given in Arizona since 1992, but the results always come back the same.
“Arizona scores below the national averages in nearly all areas,” Ladner said. “In Arizona 48 percent of the fourth-graders can’t read, according to NAEP.”
New York Times: A Study Finds Some States Lagging on Graduation Rates
Dozens of states accept any improvement in high school graduation rates as adequate progress, and several set a goal of graduating fewer than 60 percent of their students, according to a study released yesterday by the Education Trust in Washington.
Full story: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/02/education/02graduation.html?_r=1&ref=education&oref=slogin
Full story: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/02/education/02graduation.html?_r=1&ref=education&oref=slogin
August 1, 2007
Ed Week: Nations Report Card Remains Fodder in Charter Debate
With the recent release of this year’s results from “the nation’s report card,” supporters and critics of charter schools have renewed their debate over charter students’ relative performance, even while acknowledging serious limitations in the data’s reliability.
Charter school students’ scores appeared to be lower in most categories on the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests given this year to a national sample of 4th and 8th graders in reading and mathematics.
But average charter scores also closed most of the gap in 4th grade reading and narrowed it slightly in 4th grade math. That was enough for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, a Washington-based pro-charter advocacy group, to hail the scores as evidence of “real progress for charter schools.”
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