Bridging Differences: This Is Not Good Education

I said that many people who have spoken out about the recent round of NAEP scores seem not to have read the report in which the scores were embedded. I expressed the wish that the commentators would take the trouble to read the report before characterizing what they read in the newspapers, which is third-hand at best. This observation sent you into musing about how the original sources themselves are “an interpretation of data,” and how we all rely on the writers that we trust—or happen to agree with.

But that was not my point. The NAEP data are an original source for those who wish to discuss the latest round of national tests. They are not an “interpretation of data.” They are the data. I assume that you mean to say that you are unimpressed by NAEP, that you do not like the content of the NAEP frameworks or the methodology of the NAEP assessments. That is fair enough. But that is a different discussion from the one I raised.

Policymakers in Washington and the state capitols are influenced by the every-other-year reports from NAEP about state and national progress. It is your right to dismiss NAEP out of hand, but the people making important decisions about education policy are on a different trajectory. They look at the numbers and they see a reality that you dismiss as trivial and unimportant. Maybe you are right and they are wrong

Full post: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/2007/10/this_is_not_good_education_2.html

EdWeek: Spanish-Speaking Oregon Students Get Helping Hand

The Oregon Department of Education is looking beyond its borders—well beyond—to encourage Spanish-speaking students to stay in high school.

Currently, 19 high schools in the state are taking part in the Oregon-Mexico Education Partnership, a program between the Mexican government and the state education department that provides students with free Spanish-language textbooks, CDs, DVDs, and an online site, covering mathematics, science, and other subjects needed to earn a diploma.

Full story: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/10/31/10stjour.h27.html

EdWeek: English Language-learners

The lack of a national standard for how English-language learners are identified and tracked—and the lack of a uniform standard even within some states—makes it difficult for anyone to know how well such students are doing academically, a report by the Alexandria, Va.-based National Association of State Boards of Education says.

The report recommends that states establish a standard way to identify and monitor English-language learners, select and develop a system of viable and reliable assessments for such students, and require all educators to receive training on how to work with English-language learners.

Full story: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/10/31/10report-4.h27.html

EdWeek: How NAEP Works

A new guide attempts to unravel the complexities of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the federally sponsored testing program that has gauged student achievement in core subjects for nearly 40 years.

Education Sector, the Washington-based think tank that produced the report, outlines the history and purpose of the assessment program, as well as the appropriate uses and interpretations of NAEP’s test data.

The 17-page online guide says it describes “how the assessment is designed, how its scores are calculated and what they mean, and what controversies surround the reporting and use of NAEP data. It seeks to set straight what conclusions can and cannot be legitimately drawn from the NAEP assessment and examines what challenges lay ahead for the ‘nation’s report card’ in an era of increased accountability."

Full article: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/10/31/10report-5.h27.html?levelId=2300&rale2=KQE5d7nM%2FXAYPsVRXwnFWYRqIIX2bhy1%2BKNA5buLAWGoKt77XHI2terRpWBSgktLCXMT9GhM0Ffk%0AUZUZC8U2n9IAJp9rH%2BMj1nuI1h1nm00bG8UMgOitEFboRy8zQyHPASRokBka0THyWRxs8ye%2BhbTm%0AyVnXWNGh%2Fm9iR4xl6zBMgLA2PjVDb4CWG%2BEc%2FIRhBBazZEK5mK5kSKzAV6%2FZ5RsbxQyA6K0QVuhH%0ALzNDIc8X%2BI%2Fb8nt35TdU5uIuNNM9QBk55mX8ML0Gf8gsnKo2UZHII%2Fmu01CUZqeSJgz3EN888if9%0ARMgP62QhycRw6TffqszYytDh5fBahu4kxyy%2Fj%2BelRTNBUKjIc%2F7cbc2wkzm9zvkuEHOsYuT4qmpJ%0AonaHNHIG4grfnrFW6EcvM0Mhz6X9j%2BLoUNqfcyUihbuTYqliPADH6%2BFquOoRm%2F%2F5CeGAn7Wm4Fxn%0AoJ6niNhfYiCbtmI8AMfr4Wq46hGb%2F%2FkJ4YDtZ2WMqQ7t7MNvRhGKB5RjLxw4YDtlKaxm7ZeQmEHd%0Aq4Bu4FdzPjc4mIGy0Ij%2B8J7qcIopLSQkFQjDW8uOiDs7D691xJ6Xi%2BYBL4jpNHdkvJgS%2FdCdQtsH%0A5nWlYSGYj1xLvDt5SwDQTFMXh02E9av5wjGT%2B1p%2BXjTS8HobeELidWxje9gVj2tSIKmWJddW5GD2%0AmUSt7yUpAQ%3D%3D

The Science Education Myth

Business Week article arguing that US is actually doing pretty well in math and science, citing, among other things, rising NAEP scores.

Political leaders, tech executives, and academics often claim that the U.S. is falling behind in math and science education. They cite poor test results, declining international rankings, and decreasing enrollment in the hard sciences. They urge us to improve our education system and to graduate more engineers and scientists to keep pace with countries such as India and China.

Yet a new report by the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, tells a different story. The report disproves many confident pronouncements about the alleged weaknesses and failures of the U.S. education system. This data will certainly be examined by both sides in the debate over highly skilled workers and immigration (BusinessWeek.com, 10/10/07). The argument by Microsoft (MSFT), Google (GOOG), Intel (INTC), and others is that there are not enough tech workers in the U.S.

The authors of the report, the Urban Institute's Hal Salzman and Georgetown University professor Lindsay Lowell, show that math, science, and reading test scores at the primary and secondary level have increased over the past two decades, and U.S. students are now close to the top of international rankings. Perhaps just as surprising, the report finds that our education system actually produces more science and engineering graduates than the market demands.

Boston Globe (via AP): 1 in 10 schools are 'dropout factories'

-It's a nickname no principal could be proud of: "Dropout Factory," a high school where no more than 60 percent of the students who start as freshmen make it to their senior year. That dubious distinction applies to more than one in 10 high schools across America.

Full post: http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2007/10/30/1_in_10_schools_are_dropout_factories/

NCLB Act II: Adaptive Tests Could Answer NCLB Accountability Problems

A new report out today suggests the law should allow new forms of assessing students, too.

The report from a Delaware-based group says that NCLB should let states use computer-adaptive tests instead of grade-level tests, which are usually given with pencil and paper.

Grade-level tests, the groups says, are unable to measure progress of students who start the year either far below or far above grade level. Students at the lower end of the spectrum are going to fail a 4th grade test, even if their academic standing improves from 1st grade level to 3rd grade level. Similarly, high-achieving 4th graders will ace their tests, even if their achievement level didn't increase during the year.
Full post: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/NCLB-ActII/2007/10/the_next_version_to_nclb.html

EdWeek: Closing the Measurement Gap

"What’s ironic is that the federal government endorses entirely different ideas about measuring performance in education. In medicine, governments recognize that hospitals should not be blamed for patients’ characteristics that they do not control. When educators make this point, they are censured for their “soft bigotry of low expectations.” In medicine, the government acknowledges that no matter how good the care is, some patients are more likely to die. In education, there is a mandate that schools should make up the difference, irrespective of students’ risk factors.

Perhaps most of us could agree that if the sole goal of accountability systems is to compare organizations, risk adjustment is the most fair and accurate approach. When patients in a hospital die, we rarely claim that the hospital is failing. By the same token, the fact that some students in a school are failing does not mean that the school is failing. Sound public policy should be able to distinguish these two conditions. "

"If we close the measurement gap, we can begin a radically different conversation about what investments in public education are necessary to give disadvantaged kids a fair shot. The likely educational dividends for these children make risk adjustment a risk worth taking."

full story: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/10/31/10jennings.h27.html

NYT: Schools Raise Bar for Classes for the Gifted

In an effort to transform the city’s gifted and talented programs, which he has long derided as a hodgepodge of offerings that have favored children in certain neighborhoods and with well-connected parents, Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein announced a plan yesterday to limit the programs to students who score in the top 5 percent on admissions tests.

At a news conference yesterday announcing his plan, the chancellor estimated that roughly half the children in gifted programs now might not meet the new standards because they did not score in the 95th percentile or above on admissions tests. There have been no standard citywide cutoffs on admissions exams; last year, available slots in gifted programs were filled by the top scorers in each school district, and before that the admissions process varied throughout the city.

“In some districts you’ll find that half the kids that got in wouldn’t have met the 95th percentile threshold, and in other districts you’ll find a much different number,” Mr. Klein said. “The number is significant, and if you talk citywide, about half, that could be certainly in the ballpark.”

Mr. Klein’s overhaul of elementary school gifted programs also includes a new test to identify the gifted, the Bracken School Readiness Assessment, which gauges students’ understanding of colors, letters, numbers, sizes, comparisons and shapes. The Bracken test replaces the Gifted Readiness Scales, a test added last year because, officials said, it was easier to administer and would be more objective.

Under the new plan, Mr. Klein said, school districts that usually have a wealth of gifted programs could lose some, while parts of the city with a dearth could gain new ones. Officials said it was hard to tell whether the total number of children in gifted and talented programs would go up or down.

Children now in gifted and talented programs will not be affected by the changes.

Full story: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/education/30kindergarten.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ei=5088&en=492b5188e19c5d7e&ex=1351483200&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

By the Mississippi Delta, A Whole School Left Behind

Lowest performing school in MS. Cites NAEP data on poor performance of MS overall.

By the Mississippi Delta, A Whole School Left Behind

By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 28, 2007; A03



COMO, Miss. -- Of all the nation's elementary schools, the one serving this poor, rural crossroads is at the bottom of the heap.

Its math and reading test scores ranked at the bottom in Mississippi last year, and Mississippi, in turn, ranked last among the states.

"We're just light-years behind," said Versa Brown, the school's new principal.

Como Elementary is, in other words, just the sort of school that was supposed to benefit from the landmark No Child Left Behind law, which is up for reauthorization by Congress.

But in Como and other poor, rural districts around the country, the law's regimen of testing and sanctions has had little, if any, effect.

Despite abysmal test scores, Como earned a passing grade under No Child Left Behind, largely because the standards of student proficiency, which are determined individually by the states, have been set so low in Mississippi. Its small size also exempts it from some standards. The resulting passing grade -- it makes "adequate yearly progress" -- has exempted Como Elementary from any of the corrective actions dictated by the law.

But the more fundamental difficulty, administrators said, is that while the law requires schools to have "highly qualified teachers," places such as Como face critical difficulties in attracting any teachers at all. The location is remote, the salaries are low, and its at-risk students are arguably more difficult to teach.

More than a third of Como's 32 teachers are new this year, and five of those have been hired with an "emergency license" because they lack full teacher training. At least three of the new teachers had been dismissed or released from other schools. One resigned after just a few weeks when he was found hiding from the third-graders in his class who were throwing papers at him.

"Has No Child Left Behind done some good things? Sure," said the state's superintendent of schools, Hank Bounds. "But in many places like the Mississippi Delta, I would have to say no."

He rejected the notion that raising test standards -- without somehow persuading legions of motivated teachers to move in -- would help students.

"It's easy to put your bow tie on every day and say, 'If Mississippi would just do X then you would see Y results,' " he said.

As Congress this fall begins considering the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, at least some of the law's effects on places such as Como Elementary are being rethought. Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House committee overseeing the reauthorization, said the law should help states recruit teachers and give them incentives to develop stronger standards.

"Unless we do those two things, it's going to be very difficult to provide kids with the quality of education they deserve," he said.

On the edge of the Mississippi Delta about 45 minutes south of Memphis, Como is a small town surrounded by fields. Its downtown consists of a strip of old brick storefronts, some empty, facing a railroad track. A rusted water tower hovers in the distance.

About 25 percent or more of the population is white, but only a handful of whites -- about 1 percent -- attend the public schools. Many instead attend Magnolia Heights, a private academy.

Como Elementary's student body is 99 percent black, and most of the students live in poverty, many in tattered mobile homes.

Some teachers have to buy books and other basic supplies for their classrooms, and then take their neediest students to Wal-Mart to buy clothes and backpacks. Last week, a teacher gave an old clothes dryer to a grandmother who kept sending a student to school in wet clothes. The school itself could use a coat of paint and new linoleum floors, which have been worn through in places to the concrete.

Challenged by poverty, indifferent parents and transient teacher ranks, Como Elementary scored dismally on Mississippi's annual school tests.

According to the government tests known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or the "Nation's Report Card," Mississippi ranks last among states in combined math and reading scores for fourth-graders, the only elementary grade in the survey.

And within Mississippi, Como sits at the bottom for test scores. The combined reading and math scores for grades two through six -- the earliest grades are not tested -- were among the bottom three in the state.

The state as a result recognizes Como as a "low-performing school."

Yet under No Child Left Behind, Como Elementary is considered to be making "adequate yearly progress" because enough of its students have demonstrated "proficiency" -- a standard that the state itself gets to define, and has done so at a very low level.

A report by the Education Trust is telling: While the state has judged that 89 percent of its fourth-graders are reading proficiently, the federal tests assert that only 18 percent are.

"There are clearly some state tests that are too easy," said John Cronin, a researcher at the Northwest Evaluation Association and co-author of a recent paper on the subject called "The Proficiency Illusion."

Como Elementary's small size also makes it easier to get a passing grade under the law. The law requires measures of proficiency not just from the school as a whole but also from each of its "subgroups" -- such as low-income students, the disabled, Hispanics and African Americans. But if a subgroup at a Mississippi school has fewer than 40 students in it, the standards do not apply -- an exemption that particularly benefits small schools.

Faced with criticism over its testing standards, Mississippi is planning to raise them next year.

But a tougher standard will not resolve the challenge of attracting the "highly qualified teachers" -- with a bachelor's degree and demonstrated proficiency in class subject matter -- that places such as Como desperately need, Bounds and others argue.

The nature of the work -- bringing disadvantaged children up to speed -- is arguably more difficult, while the pay is less. Nearby jurisdictions, such as Memphis, pay roughly 30 percent more for teachers, and Mississippi cities that have casinos can also afford to pay far more than Como's district.

Some good teachers come anyway. "I know somebody has to stay here," said Chiquitha Rosemon, 31, a second-grade teacher whose students last year fared well on the tests. "You have to love the children."

"Some of the kids come in here and don't even know how to hold a book," said Lauren LaVergne, a first-grade teacher. "They hold it upside down, or they read it from the back to the front. They just haven't ever been read to."

Other teachers arrive at Como because they could not make the teacher exam scores required in Tennessee, or because they have failed elsewhere. Several struggle just to maintain order. Their students slump in chairs. Some seem to doze off. Some puff out their cheeks to make rapping sounds and shimmy in their seats. Principal Brown peered through the doorway of one classroom and watched the teacher doing paperwork as the kids romped.

One of the new teachers hushed his first-grade class over and over during a fill-in-the-blanks exercise.

"Those people who are talking are not going to know what to do," he warned.

Several times, he motioned for quiet. Soon he began his warning count. "One. . . . Two. . . . There are a lot of people who are going to get their cards full. . . . Three."

Later, he said frankly that the districts in Tennessee, where he lives, were "too picky" to give him a job.

Como wasn't.

Brown offers her own biography as a parable of what can happen without, and with, an education.

A native of the Delta, she dropped out of high school at 17 and began life as a fieldworker. She cut tobacco in North Carolina and picked celery in Florida and cotton in Mississippi. Then she worked as a prison guard.

At 33, she decided to go back to school, earning straight A's and graduate degrees.

Now, she said, she isn't waiting for No Child Left Behind to make a difference.

To pique the interest of parents, she has invited them to school breakfasts -- "If you say free food, they'll come," she said. Every Sunday she goes to a local church to plead for community support. She is arranging to have state prison inmates paint the school. She has even written to actor Morgan Freeman and talk show host Oprah Winfrey for help.

Some aid has already arrived. The Barksdale Reading Institute, funded with $100 million from Netscape founder Jim Barksdale, last year placed two teachers at the school who run a remedial reading program.

"We know we can do better," Brown said. "And if it takes my last breath, we will."

EdWeek: California Fires Shut Schools; Officials Pledge Support

EdWeek on school closings in CA due to the fires, mentions disruption to testing including NAEP:

“We are working on how to address the missed [standardized] tests right now,” she also said, referring to the California English Language Development Test, the California High School Exit Examination, and, in some areas, the National Assessment of Educational Progress for 8th graders. “We don’t have a solution now, but we’ll have one soon.”

San Francisco Chronicle: Science courses nearly extinct in elementary grades, study finds

The third-graders looked puzzled when asked what they liked best about science. No answer.

OK, then, next question: "What is science?" a visitor asked the children in a hallway at Bessie Carmichael Elementary School in San Francisco.

"Science is like art," said Manuel, 7, who let that cryptic response hang in the air as he ducked away.

He might have meant that both can open the heart to beauty. Or maybe he was saying that science, like art, is something students don't get much of these days in elementary school.

If it were the latter, a new survey of 923 Bay Area elementary school teachers would agree.

About 80 percent of those teachers said they spent less than an hour each week teaching science, according to researchers from the Lawrence Hall of Science at UC Berkeley and from WestEd, an education think tank based in San Francisco.

-- About 16 percent of the elementary teachers said they spent no time on science at all. (Most taught at schools that had missed the reading and math benchmarks of No Child Left Behind and were trying to catch up.)

-- Most kindergarten to fifth-grade students typically had science instruction no more than twice a week.

-- Ten times as many teachers said they felt unprepared to teach science (41 percent) than felt unprepared to teach math (4 percent) or reading (4 percent).

-- Fewer than half of Bay Area fifth-graders (47 percent) scored at grade level or above on last spring's California Standards Test in science. (Only fifth-graders are tested in science at the elementary level.)

"The demands of No Child Left Behind have made it almost impossible to devote enough time to science," said Melinda Dart, a fourth-grade teacher at Wilson Elementary School in Daly City's Jefferson Elementary District.

EdWeek (via AP) Maine’s Laptops Found to Aid Writing Scores

Maine’s program to give every 7th and 8th grade student a laptop computer is leading to better writing. 4real!

Despite creating a language all their own using e-mail and text messages, students are still learning standard English, and their writing scores improved on the state’s standardized writing test in 2005 compared with 2000, before laptop computers were distributed, according to a new study.

Full story: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/10/31/10apmaine.h27.html?print=1

Bridging Differences: What Did the NAEP Scores Mean?

On Sept. 25, the National Assessment Governing Board released NAEP scores for 2007 in reading and math. The report was mixed, with scores up a bit in both subjects in fourth and eighth grades. As you can well imagine, the U.S. Department of Education trumpeted the gains and attributed them to No Child Left Behind, but the gains were really very modest. The report can be viewed here.

I read the reports, which I highly recommend, and this is what I found:

* Fourth grade reading scores were up by a modest 2 points from 2005 to 2007, from 219 to 221. Actually, scores for this grade on NAEP had been 219 in 2002. The biggest increase in reading scores occurred between 2000 and 2002, when the scores went up by six points. In other words, the gains since NCLB was enacted do not equal the gains recorded on NAEP in the years prior to NCLB.
* Eighth grade reading scores were up by only one point. The trend line for this grade in reading from 1998 to 2007 is a flat line. The score was 263 in 1998 and it is 263 in 2007.
* Fourth grade mathematics scores increased by two points, from 238 in 2005 to 240 in 2007. The trend line in this grade points steadily upward. The biggest gains occurred in the pre-NCLB period, when scores rose from 226 in 2000 to 235 in 2003.
* Eighth grade mathematics scores were up by two points, from 279 in 2005 to 281 in 2007. Again, the pre-NCLB gains were larger, when scores increased from 273 in 2000 to 278 in 2003.

After I read the NAEP reports, I wrote two articles. I referred to NAEP to debunk New York state's claims of historic eighth grade gains on its state tests in May and June 2007. On NAEP, the scores for eighth graders in New York state in both subjects were flat. The state assessment director wrote a letter saying that tests that sample students, like NAEP, are less accurate than those that test every single student. I suppose if the scores on NAEP had been good for New York state, the state Education Department would have been satisfied with its methodology.

Then on Oct. 3, I published an article in The New York Times arguing that NCLB was "fundamentally flawed" and should be radically overhauled. I pointed out in the opening paragraph that the test score gains before NCLB, as I showed above, were larger than those that have followed the implementation of NCLB. I also said that "the main goal of the law—that all children in the United States will be proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014—is simply unattainable," and that this had never been accomplished in any district, state, or nation. My article prompted a response from Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings....

...I have been reading the debates in the press and on the blogs about what NAEP really says and what the scores really mean. I have been struck most forcefully by the fact that so many people who argue these questions have not read the NAEP reports, which are written in plain English, and have not seen the graphs, which are intelligible. Instead, they repeat what they read and what they heard. I would feel much better about the state of our democracy if everyone who opines made a point of reviewing the facts first before uttering an opinion about them. Commentators should be ashamed to recycle what they heard, instead of checking the source for themselves.

Full post: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/2007/10/what_did_the_naep_scores_mean.html

EdWeek: Ed. Dept. Requires Changes in Race, Ethnicity Reporting

The U.S. Department of Education has pushed back implementation of controversial new requirements for classifying students by race and ethnicity, but is holding firm in the face of objections to changes requiring that institutions report some students as being members of more than one race.

Under final guidance issued by Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and published in the Federal Register Oct. 19, schools must update as needed their method of student-data reporting to the Education Department no later than the 2010-11 school year—one year later than was announced when the guidelines were proposed last year.

More here: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/10/23/09raceregs_web.h27.html?print=1

EdWeek: Report Card Time for Research Arm of Education Dept.

The Institute of Education Sciences, the research arm of the Department of Education, is the latest department program to get an “effective” rating from the White House Office of Management and Budget.

So far, only 18 percent of the programs reviewed across the federal government have gotten the coveted “effective” rating. At the Education Department, where the OMB has so far evaluated 92 programs, only four others got that distinction.

The kicker, though, is that two of the other four top-rated programs—the National Assessment of Educational Progress and the National Center for Education Statistics—are part of the IES.

More here: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/10/24/09fedfil.h27.html?print=1

Alabama: State: Locals help scores

More from Alabama. Check out the local initiatives to get kids excited -- named a flagship school for NAEP, they were ambassadors for NAEP, called NAEP Heroes and received a letter from the governor.


SOURCE: Brewton (AL) Standard (The)
AUDIENCE: 1,930 [provided by Nielsen//NetRatings]
DATE: 10-18-2007
HEADLINE: State: Locals help scores



The Brewton Standard - News

State: Locals help scores

By Lisa Tindell

news editor

Are you smarter than a fourth-grader?

The answer could be "no," according to scores seen recently by Alabama students - including those at Pollard-McCall - in the National Assessment of Education Progress.

Students, chosen randomly by the U.S. Department of Education, took a battery of tests in reading and mathematics in February. Scores were released in September and found Alabama fourth-graders among the best in the nation in both subjects for improvement.

Pollard-McCall Junior High School was chosen as the only school in Escambia County to participate in the testing.

"When we were chosen to be a part of the process, we were happy to represent Alabama," Principal Hugh White said. "We had a picture made of the students who would be taking the test and sent it in a card to Dr. Joe Morton."

White said the card asked Morton to "believe in each of us. We won't let you down." Morton responded to the card by passing a special resolution in honor of the fourth-grade students at Pollard-McCall Junior High School.

"A resolution was passed for our school naming us as a Flagship School for NAEP," White said.

"We were even named ambassadors for NAEP."

White said last year's fourth grade students who took the test worked hard on their studies and when taking the tests, and their hard work paid off.

"These students worked really hard to do their best," White said. "I'm so proud of them. In doing so well, our students here helped to make our state look good in education. We're very proud."

Dubbed NAEP Heroes, the school received a letter of congratulations from Gov. Bob Riley and state superintendent Morton.

In the letter, school officials were told that Alabama led the nation in reading score gains with an improvement of eight points.

"This is the largest state gain in reading ever recorded by NAEP," Morton said in the letter.

"We also made wonderful progress in mathematics in grades 4 and 8 with growth of 4 points in each while the national growth was 2 points."

(c)Copyright (c) 2007 The Brewton Standard.

Mayor Announces Plan for Teacher Merit Pay

Big news on the merit pay front: Bloomberg and Klein make deal with UFT President Randi Weingarten on offering incentives to schools for increased performance (which would then be dispersed to the teachers).

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced this afternoon what he called the biggest program of merit pay for teachers in the nation. Under the program, 200 schools — about 15 percent of all schools in the system — will be eligible this academic year for $20 million in privately financed bonuses if student performance improves by a certain amount. In the 2008-9 school year, 400 schools will be available for the bonuses.

The annual bonus would be equivalent to $3,000 per educator, but a committee at each school would have the power to decide how to distribute the money. So under the system, a teacher whose students showed particular improvements on standardized tests would not necessarily receive a greater individual bonus than another teacher at the same school whose students had not shown as much improvement.

Top charter communities

Brief Summary Report (PDF) of cities with the highest proportion of charter schools. New Orleans is by far the most, with DC tied for second.

NYT: Failing Schools Strain to Meet US Standard

LOS ANGELES — As the director of high schools in the gang-infested neighborhoods of the East Side of Los Angeles, Guadalupe Paramo struggles every day with educational dysfunction.

For the past half-dozen years, not even one in five students at her district’s teeming high schools has been able to do grade-level math or English. At Abraham Lincoln High School this year, only 7 in 100 students could. At Woodrow Wilson High, only 4 in 100 could.

For chronically failing schools like these, the No Child Left Behind law, now up for renewal in Congress, prescribes drastic measures: firing teachers and principals, shutting schools and turning them over to a private firm, a charter operator or the state itself, or a major overhaul in governance.

Letter to the Editor: Education Gap Persists

Your Oct. 9 Metropolitan article "Quarter of high-schoolers failing exit exams" quotes Columbia University's Teachers College professor Jay Heubert as saying states have set standards that are impossible for youngsters to meet. I would argue that many state standards are not set high enough to assure that our students are being prepared adequately for college or the modern workplace.

There is no question that far too many students are not receiving the supports they need to reach and surpass these benchmarks.

In particular, students of color, who make up the majority of the population in the two Maryland districts with the highest exam failure rates (Baltimore City and Prince George's County), are often subject to lower expectations and consequently tracked into less rigorous courses.

Study examines public, private schools

Low-income students who attend urban public high schools generally do just as well as private-school students with similar backgrounds, according to a study being released Wednesday.

Students at independent private schools and most parochial schools scored the same on 12th-grade achievement tests in core academic subjects as those in traditional public high schools when income and other family characteristics were taken into account, according to the study by the nonpartisan Center on Education Policy.

Ed Funding Matters: NAEP Scores Reveal, Shockingly, That Money Matters

Recent headlines have been full of the news that America’s children are scoring higher than ever in math and reading on the national NAEP tests. If your immediate reaction was skepticism, well, it’s understandable given the political hoopla around NCLB right now. But there’s reason for optimism. Let’s look a little closer.

AFT NCLBlog: Pres. Bush Invented NAEP

From yesterday's Rose Garden remarks:

"Last month, we learned that 4th graders earned the highest math and reading scores in the history of our Nation's Report Card -- and that's good news. I'm able to report that because we actually measure now in the schools."

Two points: First, scores are increasing at a slower rate since NCLB passed. Second, uh, NAEP, or "our Nation's Report Card," has been "measuring...in the schools" since the late 1960s.

Parents irked by letter on scores seek apology

BRISTOL, Va. (AP) — A letter from school administrators saying black and disabled students caused Virginia Middle School to fail to meet annual progress benchmarks under the No Child Left Behind Act has angered parents.

The one-page letter said some black students and students with disabilities didn't score high enough on their statewide reading and math exams, and the low scores prevented the school from meeting progress goals.

The letter was attached to student report cards last week. About 30 parents, outraged by the letter's wording, met Tuesday night and decided to request a meeting with school officials before the Nov. 5 Bristol School Board meeting.

"We would like an apology — that'd be nice — but we know it won't be sincere," said Kathy Bunche, one of the angry parents.

Blog Discussion on what Hispanic's NAEP scores mean

U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education Raymond J. Simon told a roomful of Latino leaders yesterday that the No Child Left Behind Act is working because it "has driven dramatic gains in math and reading achievement." Mr. Simon spoke at a meeting on Latino education held in Washington by the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund.

He cited examples of gains on the National Assessment of Educational Progress as evidence that the federal education law is working for Hispanics as well as for all students. He said scores for 4th grade reading and math, for instance, "are higher than ever, including those of Hispanic students." My colleagues Sean Cavanagh and Kathleen Kennedy Manzo have written an article citing experts on what the 2007 NAEP gains mean. The article includes the views of people who contest the Education Department's argument that the rise in scores can be attributed to the NCLB Act, or to any single education program.

Continue reading

Schools for tomorrow blog: Will the feds pony up for middle grades reform?

According to David Hoff, rumor has it that among the amendments being proposed to No Child Left Behind, one with a good chance of success is the Success in the Middle Act. The amendment comes in response to data showing that “On the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), studies show that 70% of 8th grade students score below proficient in reading and writing; in math, only 30 % of students in eighth grade perform at the proficient level, and nearly a third score below the basic level.”

Full post: http://www.headfirstcolorado.org/blog/index.php/2007-10-10/will-the-feds-pony-up-for-middle-grades-reform/

National Journal interviews Sec. Spellings: "Improving on '99.9 Percent Pure'"

As President Bush's chief domestic policy adviser, Margaret Spellings led negotiations on his signature domestic achievement, the 2002 No Child Left Behind education law. Promoted to Education secretary for Bush's second term, Spellings is urging Congress to reauthorize the law. She discussed the legislative prospects, as well as her plans for the future, in a recent interview with National Journal's Lisa Caruso. Edited excerpts follow. For previous Insider Interviews, click here.

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Q: Is it still possible to reauthorize No Child Left Behind this year? What can the administration do to jump-start the process?

Spellings: I surely hope so. First, the law doesn't expire. It's a good law. It's a strong law. So to the extent we can improve it, I'm all for it. But any old anything is not necessarily worth having. The second thing I would say is that there's a ton of consensus about the areas that need to be improved. We agree that a better way to chart [a school's] progress over time might be to use a growth model. The other thing we agree about is the need to go from No Child Left Behind being a pass-fail system to a more nuanced accountability system that makes distinctions between those chronic underperformers and those schools that are within range. There's also a lot of agreement about the need to start talking about highly effective teaching -- the idea about rewarding our best people who do the most challenging work.

Q: When it comes to testing students, would the administration support going beyond annual reading and math tests to look at other measures?

Spellings: We tried for 40 years the kind of do-your-own-thing approach, and there was a lot of fungibility in that system. What I worry about is, what are these multiple measures? Are they valid? Are they reliable? Are they comparable? Can we make decisions based on them?

Q: What about the additional measures in the draft legislation by House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-Calif., and ranking member Buck McKeon, R-Calif.?

Spellings: My issue with the discussion draft is the multitude of ways that schools get over the bar of meeting the targets. It's all these variations on the theme that are confusing and mitigate against this clarion call of kids reading and doing math on grade level. I haven't met a parent -- rich, poor, black, white, or any other kind of modifier -- that didn't want that for their kid. This law says we're going to get children on grade level in a 12-year trajectory. It was signed in 2002, and by 2014 we said we are going to get the kids to grade level. This is not undoable. It's not unheard of. It's not wildly ambitious. So the idea that we have to find ways to mitigate against this basic, necessary, do-able goal is puzzling to me.

Q: But many schools and school districts say it is not do-able within that timeframe and that keeping the goal of 2014 just sets them up to fail.

Spellings: That's what the president calls the "soft bigotry of low expectations," and I surely do hope that somebody with that attitude is not in front of my child. Parents want teachers who believe their child can perform on grade level. We're not talking about nuclear physics. We're talking about basic reading and math skills. So it is a do-able deal. The second thing I would say is, I'm the one who approves plan amendments from states and who is looking at the kind of quality -- and, in some cases, lack of quality -- work that's been done on assessment systems across the country. I think the state of the art in the field is maybe a little behind where Chairman Miller might hope it is, and where I would want to get it myself.

Q: What do you think about Miller's proposal to offer teachers performance bonuses if their students are successful academically? He's taken a lot of flak from the teachers unions.

Spellings: I'm for it. I'm for things that reward the people who do the most challenging work in education. If we're going to make these great goals of grade-level achievement for kids by 2014, we're going to have to use time and people better and more effectively. The dirty little secret in education is, we often have our most experienced, most skilled personnel doing the least challenging work, and vice versa. That's how our urban districts often work. The new news about that is that Miller is a key Democrat and he's the one taking that position. Folks on my side of the aisle, including me and the president, we've been for this sort of thing for a long time. The unions obviously are fiercely opposed to it. So people expect Republicans to be for merit pay. We are. We've pushed it. People expect that less from the other side of the aisle.

Q: Politically, what do both parties need to do to move the reauthorization process forward and remain bipartisan?

Spellings: It has been a huge asset to this law and to this department for [Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Chairman Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.] and for Chairman Miller to stay strong on this policy. Obviously, they were at the birth and have continued to watch their child grow up. And so it's been important and will be important going forward. But we need to find the sweet spot here, the consensus things, and work together around those things that are in keeping with the core principles -- which are working -- and move forward in that way.

Q: Is the administration willing to put more money into the law, since the Democrats' primary criticism seems to be that the administration hasn't provided enough funding to carry it out?

Spellings: The best time to get a ramp-up in resources is when policies are affirmed and debated and refreshed or renewed. Resources and reform go together. There's a better prospect for more resources if we have a No Child Left Behind bill that is sustained for the president and lives on around these core principles.

Q: Are we better off with the existing law than with the discussion draft? If that came to the president, would you recommend that he veto it?

Spellings: That's a call for the president to make. We are so far away from any kind of decision like that. I am working in good faith, as they are, because we all know that if you care about resources, this is the time to act. If you care about perfecting the policy, making the law work better for real live educators and addressing legitimate things that they want to see fixed -- or if you care about math and science or high schools or competitiveness, all the things that business leaders around the country are on fire about -- this is the time to act. I'm also presuming that [the next president] is not going to want to come up to the Hill and work on George Bush's No. 1 domestic achievement. So this is a good time to get it done.

Q: Are you going to stay through the end of the administration?

Spellings: That's up to the president.

Q: Do you want to?

Spellings: I feel very passionate about this law and it's certainly the most important thing I've done professionally, and it's had a profound impact on education, in my humble and modest view. So, yes, I want to see it through.

Q: There's been some speculation that you'll run for governor of Texas -- is that your plan?

Spellings: I have no plans to run for anything but the city limits as soon as my time is up. All kidding aside, I am so busy I haven't had a chance -- I mean, I do hope to have some interesting, exciting something to do. I hope whatever I do will pay some money, too. So we'll have to see.

Q: Earlier this year you faced off against the state of Virginia, and your own home school district of Fairfax County, over their refusal to test English-language learners in English. The state was willing to forfeit its federal education money, and even Virginia Sens. John Warner and Jim Webb were prepared to intervene. Although the state ultimately backed down, that couldn't have been easy for you.

Spellings: I do a have a passion for poor and minority kids, and for getting them a high-quality education. That's been my life's work. And when I know that two-thirds of these kids are born in the United States and that three-quarters of them have been here for at least five years, certainly it's not unreasonable for citizens of this country to get to the end of the third grade and read on grade level.

Q: Wouldn't it have been easier for you politically to let the state have its way?

Spellings: Politically for whom? In the neighborhood? But politically on behalf of Hispanic kids, it would have been a very bad call, and the wrong thing to do, and by the way, not what's on the law books. This is what is so powerful about this law. The mighty Fairfax has done a damn good job of educating Anglo students and kids from affluent families, and we say, hooray, congratulations. What this law is about is those who have been left behind. It's about Hispanic kids. It's about poor kids. It's about special-ed kids. It's about African-American kids. And that has caused discomfort in suburbia. But [only] half of our African-American and Hispanic kids are getting out of high school on time, and we just can't sustain that as a country when we're getting more diverse by the year and when most of the jobs require post-secondary education.

Q: Are you ever sorry that you used the phrase "99.9 percent pure" to describe the law? You've certainly been criticized for it.

Spellings: When I say "99.9 percent pure," these core principles -- give ourselves a deadline of 2014; [count] every kid; annual assessments are the way to do that; disaggregate the data -- I mean that those are 99.9 percent pure. And they're here to stay, and we're not advocating that they be changed. Why? Because they're working.

Q: I understand the president's nickname for you is Margarita -- how did that come about?

Spellings: It's the national drink of Texas!

Bush, rights leaders confer on education

President Bush yesterday met with the nation's leading civil rights groups and urged Congress to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act, highlighting the law's effectiveness in shrinking the achievement gap between white and minority students.

"We've come a long way since the days when children were simply shuffled through the schools, just moved grade to grade, whether or not they were learning," Mr. Bush said.

"We don't necessarily agree on every issue, but we do agree that education is a basic civil right, and that a good education is important for America."

Mr. Bush stressed that testing to measure children's proficiency must continue and said the key component of the federal education law is that "if a child is falling behind, we will provide supplemental services to help that child catch up."

The civil rights leaders have criticized the lack of funding for the law and the slow movement of government enforcement for poorly performing schools. They also are concerned with the lack of expediency in providing supplemental services or tutoring.

EdWeek: Mobility of Native American Students Can Pose Challenges to Achievement

Full story: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/10/10/07native.h27.html

But she continues to be frustrated by an obstacle to achievement that seems particularly pronounced among the Native American students who make up 61 percent of the school’s enrollment: high mobility.

The turnover rate for North Middle students last year was 50 percent overall—meaning that half the school’s 468 students came or went after the start of the school year. Many of them were Native Americans.

And instability carries a cost. Ms. Burckhard cites the steady coming and going of students as one reason the school has always failed to make adequate yearly progress, or AYP, goals under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
Statistics are limited on the mobility of Native American and Alaska Native students, who make up just 1.2 percent of public school students nationally. But an analysis of data from the National Center for Education Statistics, by an NCES researcher for Education Week, found that 15.7 percent of American Indian or Alaska Native sophomores in 2002 changed schools in their last two years of high school, compared with 7 percent of white sophomores and 8.5 percent of Asian sophomores.

EdWeek: Reauthorize NCLB With National Standards

Commentary
Reauthorize NCLB With National Standards
By Patrick Mattimore

We need national subject-matter standards, such as those represented by testing under the National Assessment of Educational Progress.



Full story: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/10/08/07mattimore_web.h27.html

Bluegrass Policy Blog: School official opens mouth, removes all doubt

Kentucky's dumbed-down and statistically distorted CATS school assessment continues to draw unwanted attention to itself. With status quo apologists like Kentucky Association of School Administrators President Roger Marcum continuing to talk, the added scrutiny is sure to continue:

"We're making much too big a deal of this change," he said. Marion County also is focusing on unadjusted scores. Marcum suggested that districts use another measure of assessment, such as the National Assessment of Education Progress, to track progress.

Marcum should know the problems with CATS are a very big deal and he should know NAEP is specifically not designed for the kind of analysis he suggests. That he would make a comment like this publicly doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the people running our schools. We really need an independent auditor measuring the progress of our schools.

New York Post: Grading the Tests

October 7, 2007 -- Diane Ravitch claims that national test results show New York's tests are flawed. She is wrong, and her attack ignores many facts and distorts others.

Ravitch claims that the state tests showed large gains between 2005 and 2007. In fact, only one test, 8th-grade English, showed a large increase. Scores on the other exams either improved modestly or declined. We reported this very publicly.

Why is there discrepancy between New York's scores and that of the National Assessment of Educational Progress? The state test is given to every student in the state, versus the two percent for NAEP.

Ravitch claims NAEP is the “gold standard," yet the National Center of Education Statistics, the federal agency that administers NAEP, says: “Scores and percentages presented on this Web site are estimates because they are based on representative samples of students rather than on the entire population and should be used with caution."

NAEP results should be viewed for long-term trends. New York is above average in 4th-grade reading and math and 8th-grade math. Since the late 1990s, New York's black and Hispanic students lead the nation in gains on NAEP.

David Abrams

NCTE: Remedying the Achievement Gap

Remedying the Achievement Gap

The recently released results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reveal a persistent achievement gap between Black and Hispanic students and their White counterparts. The data also indicate that the achievement gap has held fairly steady since the results of the first NAEP were released 15 years ago.

EdWeek: State Reading Tests Easier to Pass Than Math Exams, Study Finds

What kids have to show they can do to be labeled proficient in math is typically harder in most states than what they have to do to in reading, according to a study released Thursday by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washington-based education think tank.

The findings come a little more than a week after the federal government reported students have been making much more progress in math than in reading in recent years.

Michael Petrilli, the think tank's vice president for policy, said it makes sense that students' math skills are improving if there are high expectations of them in that subject.

"If the bar is higher, you've got to work a lot harder," he said.

The Fordham study also found many states are making it easy to score well on the tests given in elementary school but harder to pass the middle-school tests.

Cato@Liberty: So Close, Yet So Far

Cato response to Ravitch Op/Ed
So what’s the solution if not national standards? Fundamentally change the system: Get the feds out of education, and implement universal school choice at state and local levels. Then, since they won’t run the schools, public officials won’t have the same, dangerous, vested interests in the results, and schools that do a bad job will, at last, have a very strong interest in responding to parents, not running to politicians.

Full story: http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2007/10/03/so-close-yet-so-far/

WSJ: Dumbing Education Down (Checker Finn Commentary)

October 5, 2007


COMMENTARY



Dumbing Education Down
By CHESTER E. FINN JR.
October 5, 2007

President George W. Bush's signature education reform -- the No Child Left Behind Act -- is coming in for a close inspection in Congress. And, it seems, members on both sides of the aisle have plenty of ideas of how to tinker with NCLB.

But almost nobody is talking about the law's central flaw: Its mandate that every American schoolchild must become "proficient" in reading and math while not defining what "proficiency" is. The result of this flaw is that we now have a patchwork of discrepant standards and expectations that will, in fact, leave millions of kids behind, foster new (state-to-state) inequities in education quality, and fail to give the United States the schools it needs to compete globally in the 21st century.

Reduced to its essentials, NCLB works like this: Each state sets a "proficiency" bar over which it is supposed to drag all its children (grades third through eighth) by 2014; schools that fail to make steady progress toward that goal are slated for "improvement" of various sorts.

So far, so good. But while NCLB circa 2001 is rigidly prescriptive about the "improvement" part, it's vague about where to set the bar. As a result, a fourth grader living in Hamtramck or Pueblo may be judged "proficient" according to Michigan's or Colorado's low standards, yet fail by a mile to match the attainments of his or her peers in Worcester, Mass., or Columbia, S.C., places with far loftier notions of proficiency.

A new analysis of where 26 states have set their bars, conducted by Northwest Evaluation Associates (NWEA) and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, shows dizzying state-to-state variation in the math and reading skills that primary and middle-school youngsters are expected to acquire, with "passing" scores varying from the sixth to the 77th percentile on NWEA's rock-solid scale.

Unfortunately, there's more. The study also reveals that:

• Over the past few years, intentionally or not, more states have let their tests grow easier to pass than have made them harder. The evidence is student gains appearing on state test results that are not borne out by independent measures.

• Few states peg their expectations consistently across the grades. Most set up thousands of children for unexpected trouble in middle school by aiming low in primary school.

• States typically have far higher standards for math than for reading.


If "proficiency" has no stable or comparable meaning, NCLB's entire strategy for intervening in low-performing schools and districts rests on quicksand. And millions of parents are getting garbled and misleading information as to how their own children, and their children's schools and school systems, are actually doing.

Congress and the White House erred when they agreed in 2001 that each state would be obliged to set its own standards and score its own tests; no matter what one thinks of America's history of state and local control of schooling, we now see the folly of a big modern nation, worried about its global competitiveness, nodding with approval as Wisconsin sets its (eighth-grade) reading passing level at the 14th percentile while South Carolina sets its at the 71st. A youngster moving from middle school in Milwaukee to high school in Charleston would be grievously unprepared for what lies ahead. So would a child moving from third grade in Detroit to fourth grade in Albuquerque.

Yet official Washington seemingly lacks the stomach to take this on. The conventional wisdom is that "national standards and tests" are politically taboo because conservatives don't like "national" and liberals don't like standards and testing. The Gates and Broad foundations are spending tens of millions to overturn that taboo during the upcoming election, but few in the 110th Congress seem to be listening.

Nor is anybody ready to tackle the other part of NCLB's core problem: the quest for universal proficiency. No educator in America believes this can be achieved anytime soon, not with 100% of the kids and by any reasonable standard of proficiency. The truth is that boosting our students' proficiency from today's 35% to 70% or 80% would be a transformative accomplishment. But no politician dares say that, lest he instantly be skewered with "which 20% of the kids don't you care about?"

Meanwhile, the federal mandate to produce 100% proficiency fosters low standards, game-playing by states and districts, and cynicism and rear-end-covering by educators.

Tinkering with NCLB, as today's bills and plans would do, may ease some of the current law's other problems. But until lawmakers muster the intestinal fortitude to go after its central illusions, America's needed education makeover is not going to occur.

Mr. Finn is a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution and president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119154392619949671.html





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Fordham Report on "Proficiency Illusion"

The Fordham Foundation put out a report on what it calls the "Proficiency Illusion." They argue that the main flaw of NCLB is that it allows states to set their own proficiency standards, which leads to middling standards for students (instead of the high ones intended by NCLB).

Coverage in WaPo, commentary here.

WaPo: Superintendents Suggest Fixes For 'No Child'

Superintendents Suggest Fixes For 'No Child'
Some Support National Testing Standards

By Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 1, 2007; B01



The superintendents of the Washington area's two largest school systems say national standards are needed to measure achievement among public school students, a sharp contrast to other educators who are asking that the federal government have less involvement in the schools, not more.

The support for national tests from the superintendents in Fairfax and Montgomery counties, as well as the superintendent and School Board of Arlington County, is one of the most surprising messages being sent to Congress by area educators hoping to influence efforts to revise the five-year-old No Child Left Behind law.

...

Some local school leaders say they would like to expand the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federally financed sampling of student progress, to create a national learning standard. Arlington officials suggest that a revised federal law include a much larger sample of students so that the achievement tests would be given to all school systems and every school. This year's test was given to about 700,000 students.

Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/30/AR2007093001503_pf.html

Diane Ravitch Op/Ed on NCLB in NYT

Another NYT op/ed, this time by former Asst. EdSec Diane Ravitch. Argues that NCLB should be vastly overhauled, with the federal government setting standards, and the states deciding how those should be taught. She also mentions the discrepancy between state scores and NAEP.

DESPITE the rosy claims of the Bush administration, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 is fundamentally flawed. The latest national tests, released last week, show that academic gains since 2003 have been modest, less even than those posted in the years before the law was put in place. In eighth-grade reading, there have been no gains at all since 1998.

Bob Herbert of NYT: Our Schools Must Do Better

Nationally syndicated Op/Ed columnist Bob Herbert laments small gains on NAEP (doesn't mention by name, unfortunately), calls for a "wholesale transformation of the public school system." He briefly mentions a few potential fixes (raising teacher quality, further exploring alternative schools like KIPP).