Hey, Young Americans, Here's a Text for You

Naomi Wolf wrote an op/ed for WaPo, lamenting young people's disengagement with and ignorance of democracy. Cites NAEP history results, but not by name.


"Is America still America if millions of us no longer know how democracy works?

When I speak on college campuses, I find that students are either baffled by democracy's workings or that they don't see any point in engaging in the democratic process. Sometimes both.

Not long ago, I gave a talk at a major university in the Midwest. "They're going to raze our meadows and put in a shopping mall!" a young woman in the audience wailed. "And there's nothing we can do!" she said, to the nods of young and old alike."

Bridging Differences: National Tests Keep the Districts Hones

National Tests Keep the Districts Honest

Dear Deborah,

I note with pleasure that The New York Times endorsed (again) the principle of national testing. My guess is that the latest NAEP results for New York City prompted them to do so....


...When NAEP's urban district scores were released on November 14, it contained a heap of bad news for New York City. The reports compared progress in 11 cities and showed that NYC's public schools had made "no significant gains" from 2003-2007 in 4th grade reading, 8th grade reading, or 8th grade math. The only subject and grade where there was a significant improvement during these years was in 4th grade math. However, doubt has been cast even on that gain because (as an article in the New York Sun pointed out), 25 percent of the city students received accommodations (e.g., extra time), a rate far higher than in any other urban district and double the rate for the city's students only four years ago. Los Angeles, which has a far higher proportion of English-Language Learners than NYC, assessed with accommodations only 8 percent of its 4th graders on the math test, compared with NYC's 25 percent. Giving such a large number of accommodations presumably would give the city an extra boost in scores in 4th grade math...


...If one sees significance in the national tests, which have similar standards for all states and cities that take it, then the clear winner among the cities over the past five years is Atlanta. Atlanta has an enrollment that is more than 90 percent African-American; it has a superintendent, Beverly Hall, who has been on the job for eight years. Its NAEP scores in math and reading at both 4th and 8th grades have trended steadily upward over the past five years. Something is happening in Atlanta that the nation should pay attention to. Too bad the Broad Foundation didn't notice.

Full post: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/2007/11/national_tests_keep_the_distri.html

NYT: Test and Switch

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November 26, 2007
Editorial
Test and Switch

Congress hoped that if it required the states to give annual tests in return for federal education aid, state politicians would be encouraged — or at least embarrassed — into improving dismal schools and closing the achievement gap between rich and poor children.

That’s not how things have worked out. Many states have gamed the system — and misled voters — devising weak tests, setting low passing scores or changing tests from year to year to prevent accurate comparisons over time. The charade will continue, and children will continue to be shortchanged, until the country develops a rigorous national test keyed to national standards.

This problem is highlighted in a recent study by Policy Analysis for California Education, a research center run by Stanford University and the University of California, that analyzed the testing practices of a dozen states between 1992 and 2006. States that performed swimmingly on their own weak math and reading tests tended to score dismally on the more rigorous federal National Assessment of Educational Progress, often referred to as NAEP.

In nearly all of the states studied, students did noticeably worse on federal tests than on state tests. In Oklahoma, the gap in scores was a shocking 60 percentage points in math and 51 percentage points in reading. In Texas, that gap was 52 percentage points in math and 56 points in reading. The state that came closest to the federal standard was Massachusetts, where there was a modest 1 percent gap in math and 10 percent gap in reading.

New York was not included in this study. But the same issue emerged here earlier this month when NAEP scores for the state’s students turned out to be strikingly lower than scores achieved on the state-level test.

Advocates of the mediocre status quo will oppose any requirement for a national test. Congress could get the process started by instructing the NAEP board, an independent body created by the federal government, to create a rigorous, high-quality test and offer it to the states free — if they use federal scoring standards. Congress might push things further if it published a list of states that still insisted on using their own weaker tests. Americans need an accurate picture of how this country’s students are doing.

EdWeek: Students in Urban Districts Inching Forward on NAEP

Atlanta’s middle school students were just starting their academic careers when the district began rolling out efforts to improve reading and mathematics instruction. Now, the district’s 8th graders are gaining faster than much of the nation and many other cities in raising achievement in those subjects, according to the urban district results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Full story: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/11/28/13naep.h27.html

WaPo: 'No Child' Law May Slight The Gifted, Experts Say

Some scholars are joining parent advocates in questioning whether the education law No Child Left Behind, with its goal of universal academic proficiency, has had the unintended consequence of diverting resources and attention from the gifted.

Full story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/24/AR2007112401420.html?nav=rss_education

N.Y. Gave the Most Breaks for School Exam

Yet another potential salvo in the New York testing wars. New York state gave the most students accommodations, and NYC did the most for the TUDA districts. One analyst is quoted as saying so many students got accommodations because they had been excluded previously.

So many New York City students received extra time and other accommodations on a respected national test this year that several testing experts are saying the results should be considered invalid.

On the test known as the nation's report card, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, New York state gave accommodations to more fourth-graders than any other state in the nation, and New York City gave more help than any of the ten other major cities that participate in a separate city-by-city comparison. On three of four tests the accommodation rate hovered around 20%. On the last — a fourth-grade math exam city officials are trumpeting as evidence the Bloomberg administration's schools program is working — the rate was 25%.

The math test this year showed the city's fourth-graders making record gains, with 79% of students reaching the basic level, up from 73% in 2005 and 67% in 2003. At the same time, the number of students receiving legally allowed accommodations, such as extra time to take the test, having the test read out loud, and receiving a translation into the student's native language, more than doubled, to 25% this year from 12% in 2003.

LAT: California schools are failing all our kids

LAT Opinion article on how NAEP scores reveal problems with California students compared to the nation as a whole.

State schools Supt. Jack O'Connell hosted a summit in Sacramento last week of 4,000 educators, policymakers and experts. He asked them to confront California's "racial achievement gap" -- the persistently lower test scores of California's African American and Latino public school students compared with their white and Asian peers. In 125 packed sessions, participants probed causes of the gap and offered strategies to close it. O'Connell asked them to "honestly and courageously face this pernicious problem," and for two days, the capital was abuzz with ideas, energy and even some hope.

Strikingly, the state's other "achievement gap" was barely mentioned at the summit; this is the gap between California and the rest of the nation.

The most recent results from the National Assessment of Education Progress test (popularly known as "the nation's report card") place California's fourth- and eighth-graders below those in nearly every other state in math and reading achievement. (Although California's math scores have improved over the last decade, so have the scores in the rest of the country.)

Ed Week: Core Subjects in Danger of Being Axed From National Assessment

Lindsy sent this out to NCES already, but at last week's NAGB meeting, there was discussion about cutting many future assessments due to budget constraints.

National tests in several core subjects could be eliminated or scaled back over the next five years without more federal funding, the officials who set policy for the National Assessment of Educational Progress said last week.

Scheduled exams in economics, foreign language, geography, and world history could be canceled if funding remains flat, as is projected.

Moreover, some grade levels would not be tested in civics, U.S. history, and writing, and the next administration of the NAEP long-term trend tests in mathematics and reading, which have been conducted regularly over the past 40 years, would be given in 2008, but not in 2012.

Impression Management, or: How I Learned to Stop Hating Press Releases on Test Scores

Eduwonkette posts on the divergent takes on the TUDA results by different cities.

Once upon a time in a land far, far away, district leaders did not live and die by their students' test scores. When I peered back into the educational debates of the 1980s and even the early 1990s, I found that the release of state and federal test scores was not an occasion for carefully orchestrated media stunts.

Sure, there was spin then, too - but district leaders were just as likely to decry poor test results to build political momentum to infuse additional resources or make needed changes.

Not so last week, where almost every district publicly releasing scores from the Trial Urban District Assessment spun a fabulous yarn around the NAEP results. Indeed, some of the results were promising. But many of the results that district leaders swaggered about were not. Instead, district leaders cherry-picked the results, up-playing positive news while ignoring or discounting negative news.

TUDA and the DOE Response

More coming from the war between the NYC DOE and the UFT/people like Diane Ravitch/everyone else. This time about TUDA.

The DOE’s press release on NAEP is among the most misleading I have seen from them in the past five years. Touting “impressive gains” – especially for Black, Hispanic and low income students – Klein bragged that the NAEP results “confirm that our reforms have helped raise performance to an historically high level.” But, again, there has been no progress in three out of four categories during the Klein years.

WaPo: A Troubling Case of Readers' Block

Americans are reading less and their reading proficiency is declining at troubling rates, according to a report that the National Endowment for the Arts will issue today. The trend is particularly strong among older teens and young adults, and if it is not reversed, the NEA report suggests, it will have a profound negative effect on the nation's economic and civic future.

"This is really alarming data," said NEA Chairman Dana Gioia. "Luckily, we still have an opportunity to address it, but if we wait 10, 20 years, I think it may be too late."

Full story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/18/AR2007111801415.html?sid=ST2007111900059

More on the AIR study

USA TODAY U.S. students 'middle of the pack' compared with world
Educators and politicians these days make a point of saying that U.S. schoolchildren aren't just competing locally for good, high-paying jobs — they're competing globally."

"Crunching the most recent data from a pair of U.S. and international math and science exams for middle-schoolers, Gary Phillips, a researcher at the non-profit American Institutes for Research (AIR), a non-partisan Washington think tank, finds a decidedly mixed picture: Students in most states perform as well as — or better than — peers in most foreign countries.

But he also finds that even those in the highest-scoring states, such as Massachusetts and Minnesota, are significantly below a handful of top-scoring nations such as Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan."

"He should know. Before joining AIR, he headed the National Center for Education Statistics at the U.S. Education Department, overseeing large-scale testing programs that included the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS ), the two tests he compares in the new analysis."

EdWeek: Top-Achieving Nations Beat U.S. States in Math and ScienceStudents in the highest-performing U.S. states rank well below their peers in the world’s top-achieving countries in mathematics and science skill, according to a new study that judges American youths on an international scale.

CSM: World's schools teach U.S. a lesson
For states interested in international benchmarking, a new report just added a piece to the puzzle. It takes data from each state's 8th-grade scores in math and science on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and links it to the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). The two tests were designed to be compatible, says Gary Phillips, chief scientist at American Institutes for Research (AIR, www.air.org), a nonprofit in Washington that released the data Nov. 13. Each state can see where it ranks on a scale with 45 industrialized and developing countries.

"Most [states] are doing as well as or better than most countries," Mr. Phillips says. But he's concerned because "our best states are ... lower than the best countries – so even though we're in the race, we're not winning the race."

EdWeek: Dropout Prevention

Students who are at risk for dropping out of high school can be identified as early as 6th grade by key warning signs such as low attendance, little classroom participation, and poor grades in core subjects, says a report Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader by the National High School Center, a division of the Washington-based American Institutes for Research, a nonprofit organization that conducts research on social and behavioral sciences.

Full story: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/11/14/12report-5.h27.html

Study Compares States’ Math and Science Scores With Other Countries’

NYT article on TIMSS, by Sam Dillon

American students even in low-performing states like Alabama do better on math and science tests than students in most foreign countries, including Italy and Norway, according to a new study released yesterday. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that students in Singapore and several other Asian countries significantly outperform American students, even those in high-achieving states like Massachusetts, the study found.

Union gain is pupils' loss

Education is not ordinarily thought to be in the purview of a Federal Reserve chairman. So it's striking when Alan Greenspan in his memoir, "The Age of Turbulence," raises the subject.

"Our primary and secondary education system," he writes, "is deeply deficient in providing homegrown talent to operate our increasingly complex infrastructure." The result: "Too many of our students languish at too low a level of skill upon graduation, adding to the supply of lesser-skilled labor in the face of an apparently declining demand."

So if you're concerned about widening disparities in income, Mr. Greenspan tells readers attracted to his book by its publicists' promise of criticism of George W. Bush, you need to "harness better the forces of competition" in educating kids.

AP: Calculation of graduation rates differ

WASHINGTON --If Congress doesn't get the job done, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings says she'll consider using her authority to require states to report high school graduation rates in a more uniform and accurate way.

Full story: http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2007/11/09/calculation_of_graduation_rates_differ/

Chicago Tribune: Illinois looking into record-low test scores

A few months after Illinois high school students posted the lowest scores ever on the state achievement exam, state education officials are investigating whether the test, or the scoring process, was flawed.

Illinois State Board of Education officials confirmed Friday that they plan to hire an independent auditor to delve into the drop in 2007 Prairie State Achievement Exam (PSAE) results, especially in reading, where scores plunged more than 4 percentage points.

Full article: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-test_webnov10,0,3603393.story?coll=chi_tab01_layout

EdWeek: Alexander NCLB Bill Offers Pilot Project on Flexibility

Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee proposed giving 12 states wide latitude in devising accountability systems and intervening in schools that fail to meet their NCLB achievement goals. In exchange, the states would agree to increase the rigor of their subject-matter standards

Full story: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/11/14/12nclb.h27.html?levelId=2300&rale2=KQE5d7nM%2FXAYPsVRXwnFWYRqIIX2bhy1%2BKNA5buLAWGoKt77XHI2terRpWBSgktLCXMT9GhM0FfQ%0ABpNWoD3y7MIQ%2B3918Izn1nuI1h1nm00bG8UMgOitEFboRy8zQyHPASRokBka0THyWRxs8ye%2BhbTm%0AyVnXWNGh%2Fm9iR4xl6zBMgLA2PjVDb2hyGBZVwDtjbjvztAlTWWDbks%2BEZAIgwKAIYKXnYYYbhKtU%0A06lB14ESY2IVsPuO5BthXwq%2BKkIqpGr68LOxgV9UjbMEZlYFY1boRy8zQyHPJmSpEnBfkxv%2FBe4D%0AfdeFdgLCT6b3N3uwAEm2gFZ2d51PBydnukLovP%2BE0K4TmuU9J324dLakEPP5iUTNaj1hxWfgbb3m%0Ayc%2F0CJofU4EKdvaEq1TTqUHXgdSVBzUTqwxn5NNbFJzJ0iHPK0nKI2yCTQFDXmI%2FlcT0V1vepDzk%0A1M2XIeKdsN0SOaYgWJMqY70ZAUNeYj%2BVxPTxQmVzP7FIsAEviOk0d2S8mBL90J1C2wfmdaVhIZiP%0AXEu8O3lLANBM0XuZ0OGdMSYqjlHGrKAroYOkZUa0Aom1%2FRsk4tLIgega9dPXjDLnIqr4fnU6%2BjHZ%0APQEY14GHljZOx%2BOaK1TL2aausTGg%2B1BYrwwi0i2X73Vu1wG2qxx9YBrOrpRYC%2Fyc6BMNjiOqZx0%3D

LA Times: State schools bad, L.A. worse

Thought this was relevant due to upcoming TUDA release. Also, there's a NAEP mention further down in the story

"California students are among the nation's worst academic achievers, and those in the Los Angeles Unified School District are faring even worse than the statewide average, according to a UCLA study released Thursday."

"The study also incorporated results of the 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress, which showed that California's fourth-graders rank 48th in reading and 46th in math. Meanwhile, eighth-graders ranked 47th in reading and 45th in math."

Full story: http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_7411327

WaPo: An Unlikely Partnership Left Behind

"Ten months later, the optimism has vanished and the campaign to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind education law has bogged down. Not only has it not passed, but no formal legislation has even been introduced. In an interview last week, Kennedy said it will not happen this year after all. "It's going to tip over to next year," he said -- right into the teeth of a presidential campaign with candidates on both sides denouncing the program."

"The back-and-forth came as new test results bolstered Bush's case. The National Assessment of Educational Progress showed math and reading scores rising and the gap between white children and black and Hispanic students shrinking. Bush aides saw vindication. "Obviously there have been complaints and there have been growing pains, but the proof is in the pudding," Kaplan said."

Full story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/04/AR2007110401450.html?nav=rss_education

U.S. News & World Report - Room to Improve

Room to Improve
The No Child Left Behind law is scheduled for reauthorization by the end of this year, but Congress has been slow to make that happen
By Eddy Ramírez
Posted November 2, 2007
It was expected to be one of the most contentious debates of the political year. President Bush's landmark No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 is due for reauthorization by the end of 2007. But as the calendar ticks into November, little has been heard since early summer, when U.S. House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller began circulating his proposed changes to the education law designed to combat the "soft bigotry of low expectations." The Democrat's proposal—which included allowing schools to measure how much students learn using methods other than the policy's signature standardized tests—was simultaneously criticized for potentially weakening the law and potentially making it more stringent. By both Democrats and Republicans.

Miller and Education Secretary Margaret Spellings say they are committed to getting the bill renewed this year. And even without a reauthorized version, the original NCLB law and its mandate that all students be proficient in math and reading by 2014 remain in effect. That means students, parents, and educators will grapple with its requirements for years to come.

Full article: http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/2007/11/02/room-to-improve.html

Ohio Goes After Charter Schools That Are Failing

Below-the-Fold Front Page Story on failing charters in Ohio. Over half of charters are getting a grade of D or F; apparently Ohio had a "wide-open" policy for opening charters, where lots of agencies were given authority to open schools, many of which had little educational credentials. The Attorney General of Ohio is suing to close three schools, and is investigating "dozens" of others.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio became a test tube for the nation’s charter school movement during a decade of Republican rule here, when a wide-open authorization system and plenty of government seed money led to the schools’ explosive proliferation.

But their record has been spotty. This year, the state’s school report card gave more than half of Ohio’s 328 charter schools a D or an F.

Politico: Arts educators battle No Child Left Behind

No NAEP mention, but relevant given the 2008 Arts assessment

Arts educators battle No Child Left Behind
By: Erika Lovley
November 5, 2007 06:27 PM EST

Raising school test scores in reading and math remains the biggest hurdle for No Child Left Behind, with many schools nationwide performing at less-than-acceptable levels, according to government proficiency tests.

But while districts scramble to improve on core subjects, educators say the latest subject to be left behind is arts education.

. . .

A recent study by the Center on Education Policy indicates that school time spent in art classes has decreased by nearly half since NCLB was passed in 2001. Some educators say the focus on testing is so intense that it is forcing schools to siphon time away from other nontest subjects such as music and dance.

The shift has alarmed and energized some of the nation’s largest arts groups, like Americans for the Arts, the nation’s largest arts advocacy nonprofit; American Arts Alliance, a group of 4,100 performance artists; and NAMM, a trade association representing musical instruments. NAMM spent $320,000 on lobbying last year, the most out of the three groups.

With the reauthorization of NCLB stalled on Capitol Hill, the community has time to plan its attack. In March, on Arts Advocacy Day, it plans to saturate Capitol Hill; some activists will be toting samples of professional and student artwork to show lawmakers.

. . .

Kress points to studies that show arts education hasn’t suffered dramatically under NCLB. The Digest of Education Statistics shows that 2005 high school graduates took more courses in noncore subjects like history, science and arts than 2000 graduates did. [this is HSTS data]

full story: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1107/6715.html

Baltimore Sun, Inside Ed: Glossary

"NAEP: National Assessment of Educational Progress. Also referred to as “The Nation’s Report Card.” The only standardized test administered to schools around the nation. The standardized tests administered under No Child Left Behind vary from state to state, and therefore it’s difficult to make comparisons. NAEP is considered to be a harder test than many of the statewide assessments. But NAEP does not provide scores for individual students or schools as the statewide assessments do."


Full glossary: http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/education/blog/2007/11/our_glossary_of_education_jarg.html

EdWeek: U.S. Math, Science Skills Exceed Broad

Contrary to the opinions being voiced by many business and political leaders today, U.S. schools are producing an ample supply of students with the skills necessary to work in science and engineering fields, a new paper suggests.

Full story: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/11/07/11report-b1.h27.html

EdWeek: Illinois Drops Its Alternative Test for English-Language Learners

Illinois has stopped using an alternative mathematics and reading test for English-language learners because state officials haven’t been able to convince the U.S. Department of Education the test is comparable to the state’s regular tests.

Full story: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/11/07/11brief-2.h27.html?levelId=2300&rale2=KQE5d7nM%2FXAYPsVRXwnFWYRqIIX2bhy1%2BKNA5buLAWGoKt77XHI2terRpWBSgktLCXMT9GhM0Fcq%0AB10LZqO1tKetlyaLVmc61nuI1h1nm00bG8UMgOitEFboRy8zQyHPASRokBka0THyWRxs8ye%2BhbTm%0AyVnXWNGh%2Fm9iR4xl6zBMgLA2PjVDb7RLiQbnL9OLHVGbGFf9SoErWkJHRJGKIWP3JB4D%2BltYhKtU%0A06lB14ESY2IVsPuO5BthXwq%2BKkIqpGr68LOxgV9UjbMEZlYFY1boRy8zQyHPJmSpEnBfkxv%2FBe4D%0AfdeFdgLCT6b3N3uwAEm2gFZ2d51PBydnukLovP%2BE0K4TmuU9J324dLakEPP5iUTNaj1hxWfgbb3m%0Ayc%2F0CJofU4EKdvaEq1TTqUHXgdSVBzUTqwxn5NNbFJzJ0iHPK0nKI2yCTQFDXmI%2FlcT0V1vepDzk%0A1M2XIeKdsN0SOaYgWJMqY70ZAUNeYj%2BVxPTxQmVzP7FIsAEviOk0d2S8mBL90J1C2wfmdaVhIZiP%0AXEu8O3lLANBM%2BoZIDp1H9icL1BXD8FK%2BmsU7w1HX5MsrD691xJ6Xi%2BYBL4jpNHdkvJgS%2FdCdQtsH%0A5nWlYSGYj1xLvDt5SwDQTPqGSA6dR%2FYnC9QVw%2FBSvprFO8NR1%2BTLK49dmLfskT5Sr0icOvtgh5QR%0AFXDJKaos5w%3D%3D

WaPo: Seven Warnings and One Mistake in High School Reform

5. Many reports say that high schools should also prepare students for the workplace, but nobody really knows how to do that either. Grubb and Oakes find this glaring weak spot in many higher standards proposals: "It's not obvious when and where anyone might need to find a tangent line or solve a quadratic equation, and so there's no help for teachers who want to motivate students by discussing the practical usefulness of academic work."

6. Amid all the talk about involving employers in high school reform, few people have good examples of this actually working. You often read in newspapers like mine about businesses forming partnerships with high schools. They sound good, but I have yet to find one that has had any significant impact on student achievement.

Full story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/06/AR2007110600549.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns

USN: The Education Secretary Talks About NCLB

Monday, November 5, 2007Subscribe Contact Us advertisement

The Education Secretary Talks About NCLB
Spellings shares her thoughts on how that law can be improved when it is renewed
By Eddy Ramírez
Posted November 5, 2007

As the U.S. secretary of education, Margaret Spellings oversees the implementation of the No Child Left Behind law. In a recent interview, she defended the original law's focus on reading and math assessments but expressed support for an improved bill that makes better distinctions between chronically failing schools and schools that just need more help with particular groups of students. A believer that "what gets measured gets done," she remains confident that schools can bring all students to grade-level proficiency by 2014 but says progress is not being made fast enough.


Some folks have criticized the law for not setting clear expectations about what children should learn. The pressure to meet federal proficiency requirements may in fact be driving some states to lower their standards. Is it time to set a single set of national standards?

For us to take x number of years to have a federal debate about intelligent design just seems like a real bad idea to me, particularly when we have a speedometer that says, "We're going too slow; we need to pick up the pace." The president has already called for us to start to report
[the results of the National Assessment of Education Progress] to parents. Let's tell the parents of Mississippi that while their state test says 80-some percent of their kids are proficient, this is how they are doing on the NAEP test. Let the good people of Mississippi take that into account and say, "You know what? We probably need to raise the bar." And they are raising the bar.... I don't think the way to do it is a one-size-fits-all national standard that morphs into a national curriculum that morphs into national textbooks. It's the wrong way to go, and it's a giant time-waster.


full article: http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/2007/11/05/the-education-secretary-talks-about-nclb_print.htm

WSJ Editorial: The Union Libel

November 5, 2007

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

The Union Libel
November 5, 2007; Page A18

Utah's children may not excel in math or English, but their teachers are very good at instructing them in how to run a political campaign. As 2007 achievement test data show another disappointing year for the state's children, the teachers union is running a multi-million-dollar campaign to insulate itself from competition.

On Tuesday, Utahns will vote on whether to proceed with a statewide voucher program enacted in February. The plan passed both houses of Utah's legislature after a rough-and-tumble debate, and was signed by Governor Jon Huntsman, Jr. But the teachers union immediately launched a ballot initiative to overturn the law and succeeded in blocking it from taking effect prior to Tuesday's vote.

A new report from the Utah Foundation shows the state's public education could certainly use a shake-up. The states most similar demographically to Utah, by measures such as student poverty and parental education, are Iowa, Montana, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wisconsin. Utah finishes last in this group, based on eighth-grade scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Utah youngsters trail the pack across the range of core subjects -- last in math, last in reading, last in science.

Full article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119422589982182044.html

USA Today: No State Left Behind

Most parents and students instinctively recognize the logic behind national education standards.

Whether they are from Maine or Montana, high school graduates who want to be nurses should know enough math to adjust medicine dosages based on the weight and age of the patient. Police officers in all jurisdictions have to be able to write a coherent arrest report. Workers on semiconductor manufacturing lines everywhere must make quick calculations about temperatures and densities.

Full story: http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2007/10/no-state-left-b.html#more

Data, 'Crises', and the Way We Interpret Them

The latest NAEP-related post in the Ravitch/Meier blog.