August 8, 2008
Problem: Boys Don't Like to Read. Solution: Books That Are Really Gross
July 16, 2008
NAEP Heresy
July 11, 2008
Testing Officials Again Tackle Accommodations And Exclusions for Special Student Populations
July 2, 2008
Psychometrics 101 from Eduwonkette's blog
July 1, 2008
Skoolboy: An Immodest Proposal
June 26, 2008
Ladner on Arizona's performance on NAEP and international comparisons
June 25, 2008
Cavanagh likes State Mapping Study
Report: Racial gap narrows, but what did No Child law do?
At the briefing someone from AFT asked if the compared trend lines from before NCLB to after NCLB, which they weren't able to do because of the dearth of data pre-2002.
Maria Glod's story ran A2 in the Post.
June 24, 2008
Matthew Yglesias on TUDA
The Truth About Urban Schools
23 Jun 2008 11:41 am
Conversations about urbanism always eventually end up going in the direction of education policy. After all, absent better schools, the city will always be a place for poor people, very rich people, and young people rather than for the mainstream of American life. To that end, it's worth noting that a lot of people's ideas about the quality of urban schools are mistaken, as you can see from a look inside the results of the NAEP mathematics test as revealed in the Trial Urban District Assessment from 2005. First off, consider the number of eighth grader who rate as "below basic" (this is bad):
June 23, 2008
Mayor Sees a Test Scores Triumph
Mayor Sees a Test Scores Triumph
Or is it a case Of inflation of results?
By ELIZABETH GREEN,
June 23, 2008
http://www.nysun.com/new-york/mayor-sees-a-test-scores-triumph/80476/
Mayor Bloomberg will announce an education victory today: Test scores are up across the city, by double digits at some schools. But a cloud is already gathering, as education experts are raising the possibility that these gains and others across the country could suggest score inflation and not real learning gains.
The scores being released today show a nine-percentage-point gain in math citywide versus last year, and a seven-point gain on the reading test. The gains are even more remarkable when viewed over the six-year timeline since Mr. Bloomberg took office: Three-quarters of city students now score proficient at math, up from 37% in 2002.
June 10, 2008
if you read this please email me
Report on Asian-American Achievement
May 21, 2008
Ideas on Creative and Practical IQ Underlie New Tests of Giftedness
May 13, 2008
No Child Left Behind Lacks Bite
Lisa caught this article in the WSJ. The article is on how NCLB hasn't really resulted in a lot of restructuring for the most persistently-troubled schools.
The troubles in the restructuring arena reflect broader questions about whether NCLB is a strong enough tool to bring about the overhaul of American education. In many ways, the law was an outgrowth of "A Nation at Risk," a pivotal 1983 federal report that warned that a "rising tide of mediocrity" in education could undermine the nation's competitiveness. That report ushered in the era of accountability and testing, which eventually spawned NCLB.
Supporters maintain the law is helping to fuel learning gains. In the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress tests, reading and math scores for fourth and eighth graders rose compared to 2005, albeit only by a few points.
But NCLB gave states -- not the federal government -- authority to set the academic standards for local schools. And so, while NCLB requires all students to be proficient in reading and math by 2014, states determine what proficiency is and how they will test for it. A 2007 federal study found states don't exactly agree on proficiency.
May 8, 2008
Asian-American Students Struggling Under NCLB, Group Says
A group is arguing that data for Asian Americans needs to be further disaggregated, because the wide-ranging cultures and languages of Asian Americans makes that designation fairly meaningless, and can hide low-performing Asian groups. If I remember correctly, several Southeast Asian-American groups do have much lower performance than the Asian American Average when data are disaggregated to that level.
Schools are failing to identify struggling Asian-American students under the No Child Left Behind Act and to get them the academic interventions they need, a report says
.
“Contrary to stereotypes that cast Asian-Americans as model students of academic achievement, many Asian-American students are struggling, failing, and dropping out of schools that ignore their needs,” says the report, released last week by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund.
May 5, 2008
What Do Children Read? Hint: Harry Potter's Not No. 1
April 30, 2008
Ed Daily:
AFT report finds vague, repetitive content standards across states
Union: Federal government should underwrite consortia on standards, curriculum, assessment
With evidence in hand that states' academic content standards lack specificity and depth, the American Federation of Teachers is renewing its call on the federal government to fund efforts by state consortia to develop model standards, curricula and assessments.
Such funding, AFT officials say, would not only improve instruction in low-income schools but also rejuvenate the standards-based reform movement by putting better curricula in the hands of teachers. The funding would also improve test quality, therefore decreasing the pressure on teachers to resort to "drill and kill" multiple-choice test preparation.
"A federal funding stream would be a very helpful way of avoiding the political controversy over national standards," AFT Executive Vice President Antonia Cortese said. "For our poorer students in urban areas, we believe strongly that good state standards would help them get the same kind of education that a suburban child would get."
AFT's position reflects that of several national groups, notably The Education Trust, which has lobbied Congress to put $750 million annually into curricula -- suggesting that the issue could receive more attention when Congress resumes NCLB reauthorization.
Findings
AFT's Sizing Up State Standards 2008 examines whether states have strong standards in place in elementary school through high school in the core subjects of English, math, science and social studies. Strong standards, the report says, are grade- and course-specific and define content and skills so that the standards can be used to underpin a common curriculum. Standards that failed to meet AFT's criteria were repeated from grade to grade, articulated for grade spans rather than for each grade, or were vague and missing content.
April 29, 2008
States lack tools to meet federal reporting mandate
Since 2002, states have been required under NCLB to ensure that all students become technologically literate by eighth grade. However, this is the first year the Education Department is requiring states to report students' proficiencies -- a task most states are not yet equipped to execute, experts say.
In fact, most states do not have a formal assessment in place, experts say, adding that the resource is costly and complicated to construct. Further, education stakeholders question how much weight the new provision will have, given that technology literacy is not a component of schools' adequate yearly progress requirements.
April 25, 2008
USA Today: SAT writing portion good predictor of grades
The controversial new writing portion of the SAT is actually a better predictor of grades for freshmen college students than the older, more-established, critical reading and mathematics portions, according to preliminary results of two new studies.If I recall correctly, the "older" SAT was never a great predictor of college GPA (and that it over-predicted the GPA of white males and under-predicted that of everybody else).
April 23, 2008
Ed Week: Spellings Proposes New Rules For Graduation Rates
Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings issued proposed federal regulations today that touch on core aspects of the No Child Left Behind Act, requiring states to provide more and better information about high school graduation rates, student test performance, and the availability and quality of tutoring under the federal law.
In a speech before the Detroit Economic Club, Ms. Spellings described the new policy tools as “bulldozers” designed to “tear down barriers to reform.”
She said that many of the proposed actions “have gained broad support” in conversations about how to strengthen the federal law, whose reauthorization is stalled on Capitol Hill.
April 22, 2008
Bob Herbert: Clueless in America
We don’t hear a great deal about education in the presidential campaign. It’s much too serious a topic to compete with such fun stuff as Hillary tossing back a shot of whiskey, or Barack rolling a gutter ball.The nation’s future may depend on how well we educate the current and future generations, but (like the renovation of the nation’s infrastructure, or a serious search for better sources of energy) that can wait. At the moment, no one seems to have the will to engage any of the most serious challenges facing the U.S.
An American kid drops out of high school every 26 seconds. That’s more than a million every year, a sign of big trouble for these largely clueless youngsters in an era in which a college education is crucial to maintaining a middle-class quality of life — and for the country as a whole in a world that is becoming more hotly competitive every day.
Ignorance in the United States is not just bliss, it’s widespread. A recent survey of teenagers by the education advocacy group Common Core found that a quarter could not identify Adolf Hitler, a third did not know that the Bill of Rights guaranteed freedom of speech and religion, and fewer than half knew that the Civil War took place between 1850 and 1900.
AP - "No Child Left Behind faces changes"
By NANCY ZUCKERBROD, AP Education Writer
WASHINGTON - Unable to push education fixes through Congress, the Bush administration is taking its own pen to the No Child Left Behind law.
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings says she plans to make a host of changes to the education law through regulations being unveiled Tuesday.
Among the biggest changes will be a requirement that by the 2012-13 school year, all states must calculate their high school graduation rates in a uniform way.
States currently use all kinds of methods to determine their graduation rates, many of which are based on unreliable information about school dropouts, leading to overestimates.
States will be told to count graduates, in most cases, as students who leave on time and with a regular degree. Research indicates students who take extra time or get alternatives to diplomas, such as a GED, generally don't do as well in college or the work force.
While states will no longer be able to use their own methods for calculating grad rates, they will still be able set their own goals for getting more students to graduate. Critics say that allows states to set weak improvement goals.
The six-year-old education law is President Bush's signature domestic policy initiative. The law requires testing in reading and math in grades three through eight and once in high school. The stated goal is to get all kids working at grade level by 2013-14.
Lawmakers recently tried but were unable to pass an updated version of the law due to disagreements over how to judge schools and teachers, among other things. Without a renewal, the existing law stands.
Spellings has been taking steps in recent months to make changes from her perch. However, the proposed regulations amount to the most comprehensive set of administrative changes she has sought so far.
"The Congress, I guess because of the political and legislative climate, has not been able to get a reauthorization under way this year," Spellings said in an interview. "I know that schools and students need help now, and we are prepared to act administratively."
The regulations call for a federal review of every state policy regarding the exclusion of test scores of students in racial groups deemed too small to be statistically significant or so small that student privacy could be jeopardized. Critics say too many kids' scores are being left aside under these policies.
The regulations also call for school districts to demonstrate that they are doing all they can to notify parents of low-income students in struggling schools that free tutoring is available. If the districts fail to do that, their ability to spend federal funds could be limited under the proposal. The department estimates only 14 percent of eligible students receive tutoring available to them.
An even smaller percentage of kids who are allowed to transfer to higher-performing schools make that switch, in part because they aren't always informed of vacancies on time. The regulations require schools to publicize open spots at least 14 days before school starts.
The administration's proposal also would tighten the rules around the corrective steps schools must take once they've failed to hit progress goals for many consecutive years.
The administration is seeking public comments before finalizing the regulations in the fall.
Regulations can be overturned by a new administration. Spellings said that's unlikely in this case, because the rules she is proposing have widespread support. She said she hoped the ideas would help shape the legislative debate on Capitol Hill whenever the law is revisited there.
"I think these things will help the law work better in the field ... and I think they are ways for the Congress to have a good jumping-off place when they start on their work," she said.
Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., who chairs the Senate education committee, said the regulations "include important improvements for implementing No Child Left Behind."
___
On the Net:
Education Department: http://www.ed.gov/
April 17, 2008
Ed Daily: Students with Disabilities make little progress on NAEP
SDS gained some on NAEP Writing 2007, but didn't close the gap between students w/o disabilities.
April 11, 2008
EdWeek: Make a Science Generation
April 10, 2008
High School Seniors Get an "F" in Finance
April 4, 2008
AP Language, Computer Courses Cut
April 3, 2008
NAEP Writing Report coverage round-up
AP - http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5guahnmZPHr8GssFKtPhlkhccpkqgD8VQEA7O2
WaPo -
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/03/AR2008040301655.html?hpid=topnews
Ed Week - http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/04/09/32naep.h27.html?tmp=1563593171NYT -
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/03/education/03cnd-writing.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
Teachers in US paid less than other countries
April 1, 2008
ED to require states to use a uniform dropout formula
March 26, 2008
Ed Week releases Technology Counts report
March 21, 2008
Ed week: Poor Math Scores Posted on Unusual 3-State Exams
March 12, 2008
Ed Week - "NCLB Act III: Given Choice, Virginia Board Unlikely to Pull Out of NCLB"
David Hoff
The Virginia General Assembly has passed a bill that would give the state's board of education the option of leaving NCLB behind.
Virginia's been down this road before. In 2004, it passed a Republican-backed resolution saying it didn't have the money to comply with the law, prompting this statement from then-Secretary of Education Rod Paige. Virginia stuck with the law.
This year, Republicans raised the issue again. Throughout the legislative session, the House pushed a bill that would have required the state board to create a plan to withdraw from NCLB by 2009. Gov. Tim Kaine, a Democrat, opposed it, according to this news story, and the Senate never went along.
The compromise was to let the board of education members decide. They have 416 million reasons to stick with NCLB. That's the number of dollars the state would receive from NCLB programs under President Bush's proposed fiscal 2009 budget proposal. Gov. Kaine probably wouldn't want to forfeit that money because he has plans for universal preK and other programs, as eduflak points out. Board members know that—and that the legislature wouldn't replace lost federal money with state funds.
All Virginia lawmakers are doing is making a political statement that reinforces the assertion by Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., that NCLB is "the most negative brand in America."
Ed Week - "11 States Poised to Pilot National Test for Seniors"
By Sean Cavanagh
For the first time, a select group of states is expected to take part in a 12th grade version of the National Assessment of Educational Progress in reading and mathematics, a move that could lay the foundation for even greater state participation at that grade level on the heavily scrutinized test.
The board that sets policy for NAEP, known as “the nation’s report card,” has approved tentative plans to have 11 states voluntarily participate in the exam.
Each of those states would have a representative sample of its high school seniors take part in a reading and math NAEP beginning in 2009, a process that would eventually allow for state-by-state comparisons of high school seniors’ scores.
The National Assessment Governing Board approved the 12th grade proposal at its quarterly meeting, held March 6-8 in Albuquerque, N.M.
The board also set in motion plans to add seven big-city districts to the special NAEP edition for urban school systems. Eleven districts took part in the most recent version of the Trial Urban District Assessment, which was given in reading and math in grades 4 and 8.
Currently, states are required to participate in NAEP reading and math every two years at the 4th and 8th grade levels in order to remain eligible for federal funding under the No Child Left Behind Act.
Those 4th and 8th grade scores, called state NAEP, typically receive widespread attention because they allow the public to judge individual states’ academic progress over time—and compare states against one another. There is no such mandate for 12th grade, though some elected officials, including President Bush, have advocated expanding the state-by-state tests to high school seniors.
Federal officials will not release the names of the states and urban districts that have voiced an interest in joining in the expanded NAEP until they go back to policymakers from those jurisdictions and make certain they want to go forward, said Charles E. Smith, the executive director of the governing board. Those agreements could become final in the next few weeks, he said.
‘The Real Meaning’
While federal officials believe the first 12th grade state NAEP will occur next year, it has yet to be determined whether those exams will take place every two years or less regularly, Mr. Smith said.
A separate NAEP, the long-term trend, is given to 17-year-old students, as well as children ages 9 and 13. It provides a nationwide snapshot of trends in reading and math performance. But policymakers in the 11 volunteer states have told federal officials they want more detailed, state-specific information about high school students’ performance than the national trend tests can provide, Mr. Smith said.
State officials have said “the real meaning comes from the state-level [exam], and what it can tell them,” said Mr. Smith, who noted that he was “very encouraged” by the state interest in 12th grade NAEP so far.
The expansion of the urban-district NAEP and the creation of new 12th grade state reading and math tests became possible with President Bush’s approval of the fiscal 2008 federal budget in December. It provides an $11 million increase for NAEP and the governing board, to $104 million, from the previous year.
In a statement explaining the 2008 budget for NAEP, members of Congress said the new money should be devoted in part to an expansion of the urban test and the addition of reading and math exams for seniors.
And if the Bush administration has its way, more 12th graders will be taking part in NAEP in the future. In his fiscal 2009 budget proposal, the president called for a 33 percent increase in spending for the assessment and the governing board, to $139 million. That spending boost would allow the “12th grade state NAEP to include all states in 2011,” according to the administration’s budget summary.
Vol. 27
March 11, 2008
VA Assembly passes NCLB opt-out, goes to Gov. Kaine
March 7, 2008
EdWeek: Study Finds Lower Math Scores in Catholic Schools
Children in Roman Catholic schools make no more progress in reading in the early grades than similar students in public schools, and make even less progress in math, a new study finds.
“I was actually surprised to find the results that Catholic schools are worse in mathematics,” said Sean F. Reardon, the study’s lead author and an associate professor of education and sociology at Stanford University. “But, if Catholic schools aren’t subject to the same accountability requirements as public schools are, then they may not spend as much time on mathematics and literacy.”
He presented the study findings March 3 during the annual conference of the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness, a professional society that focuses on “cause and effect” research and other kinds of rigorous studies. The March 2-4 event in Arlington, Va., attracted more than 250 conference-goers and featured presentations by more than 80 researchers.
Full story: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/03/12/27sree.h27.html?print=1
March 5, 2008
Report urges greater federal role in education
"It is only by transcending traditional local control, and by getting serious about a new national role in standards and finance, that we can at last create genuine autonomy for local schools," Matt Miller, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, wrote in his report, "Nationalize The Schools ( ... A Little)."
NYT: Next Question: Can Students Be Paid to Excel?
The fourth graders squirmed in their seats, waiting for their prizes. In a few minutes, they would learn how much money they had earned for their scores on recent reading and math exams. Some would receive nearly $50 for acing the standardized tests, a small fortune for many at this school, P.S. 188 on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
When the rewards were handed out, Jazmin Roman was eager to celebrate her $39.72. She whispered to her friend Abigail Ortega, “How much did you get?” Abigail mouthed a barely audible answer: $36.87. Edgar Berlanga pumped his fist in the air to celebrate his $34.50.
March 4, 2008
Catholic leaders assured of help on schools
"We in the administration are proud of a lot of initiatives we've been working on ... but we know there's a lot of more work to do," Holly Kuzmich, deputy chief of staff at the Department of Education, told members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).
The White House Summit on Inner-City Children and Faith-Based Schools, announced by President Bush in his State of the Union address and scheduled for later this spring, will bring together private-school leaders, educators and researchers to "discuss creative solutions to this problem" of losing faith-based inner-city schools, she said.
February 27, 2008
Common Core off to a Dubious Start
February 26, 2008
NYT: History Survey Stumps US Teens
Fewer than half of American teenagers who were asked basic questions about history and literature during a recent telephone survey knew when the Civil War was fought, and one-quarter thought that Christopher Columbus sailed to the New World sometime after 1750, not in 1492.
The results of the survey, released Tuesday, demonstrate that a significant proportion of American teenagers live in “stunning ignorance” of history and literature, according to the group that commissioned it. Known as Common Core, the organization describes itself as a new, nonpartisan research and advocacy organization that will press for more teaching of the liberal arts in American public schools.
February 18, 2008
'Best and brightest' dim on history
College freshmen earned an average grade of 'F' — or just 53.7 percent — when asked a series of questions about U.S. presidents and key historical events from their times in office. After four years of college, their knowledge didn't improve.
College seniors got just 55.4 percent on the 60-question quiz given to 14,000 students at 50 colleges and universities around the country as part of a study designed to test their knowledge of America's history, government, international relations and market economy.
"In this election, we are focusing on the youth vote, and it's great that more kids are coming out to vote. But we worry that it's become a kind of cult of personality," says Richard Brake, director of the Lehrman American Studies Center at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute in Wilmington, Del., which commissioned the civic learning study, conducted by researchers at the University of Connecticut's Department of Public Policy...
February 17, 2008
WaPo: The Knowledge Connection (E.D. Hirsch)
February 12, 2008
EdWeek: U.S. ‘Dashboards’ Offer Data on State Achievement
U.S. ‘Dashboards’ Offer Data on State Achievement
More than 20 years ago, when federal officials sought to publicize data portraying the relative quality of the states’ school systems, the best statistics they could find were scores on college-admissions tests and state-reported graduation rates.
Now that states have results from their own tests and state-level results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress—as well as a wealth of other data—the Department of Education is publishing a two-page report on each state that gives a glimpse of the quality of its K-12 schools.
The reports also should answer the public’s questions about the success of the No Child Left Behind Act in promoting increased student achievement, said Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings.
The data reports show that gaps in achievement between minority and white students are narrowing, the secretary said. And they show the proportion of schools making their achievement targets under the NCLB law; nationally, the rate is about 70 percent.
“When they see in black and white what [NCLB] means in their own backyard, … I think it’s very useful for parents and policymakers,” Ms. Spellings said in an interview last week.
Data Quality Improves
The amount and quality of data available today represent a dramatic improvement over what was available in the so-called “wall chart,” a state-by-state compilation of resource inputs, performance outcomes, and population characteristics that the Education Department published for six years, starting in 1984 under Secretary Terrel H. Bell. ("E.D. Issues Study Ranking States On Education," Jan. 11, 1984.)
Educators challenged the validity of those comparisons, and Mr. Bell at the time acknowledged the limitations of the data. But he defended such a “scoreboard” as a way of raising awareness of the need for school improvement.
Since 1990, NAEP has published state-by-state results for 4th graders and 8th graders from its reading, mathematics, science, and writing tests based on a sampling of student achievement. States voluntarily participated in the NAEP tests until 2003, when the NCLB law required them to join the assessment for the reading and math exams.
In addition, the NCLB law requires states to create their own tests to measure the reading skills and mathematical abilities of students in grades 3-8 and once in high school.
Those data are the heart of the new Education Department reports, which the agency is calling “dashboards.” Like the dashboard of a car, the reports give people “pieces of information … in a way that are quickly consumable and usable,” said Secretary Spellings, who unveiled the reports last month in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington.
A chart in each state’s report compares how its students are doing on the NAEP tests and the state’s own exams. The chart also disaggregates the data by the performance of white, African-American, Hispanic, and low-income students.
Each state’s report lists the high school graduation rate as reported by the state. It compares that rate with the so-called average freshman graduation rate, which estimates the percentage of 9th graders who earn their diplomas within four years in that state.
While the data aren’t exhaustive, they are far more extensive than what the federal government was able to publish shortly after the 1983 report helped set off a wave of school reforms, said Chester E. Finn Jr. Mr. Finn was an assistant secretary of education under Mr. Bell’s successor, William J. Bennett. Lamar Alexander ceased publishing the “wall chart” shortly after he became secretary of education in 1991.
“We have had approximately two decades of movement toward state-level results data that can be compared,” said Mr. Finn, who is the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, a Washington-based think tank that supports accountability measures and school choice. “I expect we’ll see . . . the data will continue to get better, faster, more precise, more fine grained, better able to be analyzed in various useful ways by various constituencies.”
Long before the department first published its dashboards, Mr. Finn said, states, nonprofits, and companies published a variety of Web sites that allow users to find data and, often, compare schools, districts, and states on measures such as student achievement, spending, and other data.
Giving NCLB Credit
The increase in the amount and quality of data is mostly the outgrowth of the NCLB law, said Chrys Dougherty, the research director of the National Center on Educational Accountability, an Austin, Texas-based nonprofit group that supports data-based efforts to improve schools.
“It’s something people need to look at,” Mr. Dougherty said. “It gives you an idea how tough their state test is or how high the standards are.”
But Mr. Dougherty and other advocates of such use of data are laying the groundwork to help states measure whether their students are graduating prepared for college or the workforce.
ACT Inc. has developed a method for reporting such percentages based on students’ scores on the ACT college-admissions exam, which the Iowa City, Iowa-based nonprofit produces. Other states can calculate similar percentages if they benchmark their high school exams to the ACT’s standards.
“That’s an indicator that’s coming down the pike,” Mr. Dougherty said. “But somebody has to do the data analysis.”
'Troublemaker' Finn Recalls Setting 'Proficiency' Standard
In the NCLB world, Finn may be the reason why we're so concerned about "proficiency." Back in the 1980s, when he was an assistant secretary at the Department of Education, Finn complained that the National Assessment of Educational Progress didn't deliver meaningful results. The public couldn't understand, he said, the meaning of an obtuse scale score for the nation. He led the lobbying effort to persuade Congress to create a version of NAEP that delivered results for every state. Once it passed, Finn became the first chairman of the National Assessment Governing Board and served on it for eight years. He was the architect of NAEP's performance levels ("advanced," "proficient," and "basic"). When Congress was looking to set a goal for student achievement, it chose proficiency. To hold states up to a national standard, it required states to participate in NAEP's reading and math tests and increased the frequency of those tests to every other year. Today, NAEP is the most cited source for declaring states' definition of proficiency to be too easy.
Finn covers all of this in "Troublemaker," and he acknowledges that the achievement levels have been controversial. But he leaves out that their validity has been questioned by the research community. In 1991, NAGB's own consultants said it "must be viewed as insufficiently tested and validated, politically dominated, and of questionable credibility." NAGB fired the consultant, according to this Education Week story. In 1999, a National Academy of Sciences report called the process of setting them "fundamentally flawed." To this day, every NAEP report includes a footnote saying that the achievement levels are "developmental."
Economy brakes school spending
Board members in the District last week for an annual conference said shortfalls in state budgets, coupled with pessimistic predictions about local revenues, are forcing them to consider ways to trim next year's budgets, which they are working on now.
About half of the states are facing projected budget shortfalls, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a District-based liberal research group.
The downturn in the housing market has precipitated a drop in state revenue from sales taxes associated with construction materials, furniture and other goods, said Liz McNichol, senior fellow at the center. She said recent job losses around the country also could catalyze a reduction in income taxes collected by states...
January 29, 2008
Ed Week: Tests of Tech Literacy Not Widespread Despite NCLB Goals
Students with Disabilities Said to Benefit from NCLB
In the 10 states that were examined closely, students with disabilities appear to be performing better on the National Assessment of Educational Progress when they are in elementary school, but those gains seem to dissipate by the time the students reach middle school.This seems to make intuitive sense, as one of the only things even the most ardent critics of the law (e.g. Jon Kozol) and its supporters can agree on is that NCLB raised the issue of not letting marginalized groups fall by the wayside.
Study finds merit in teacher performance pay
The study, released Jan. 22 by researchers at the University of Arkansas, examined a merit pay program called the Achievement Challenge Pilot Project that was implemented in five schools in Little Rock. Under the ACPP, teachers could earn as much as an $11,000 bonus based on how much their students' test scores improved.
"Our two years of analysis of test data in ACPP schools in Little Rock reveal consistent findings: Students of teachers who are eligible for performance bonuses enjoy academic benefits. Further, many of the criticisms of merit pay programs simply have not proven true in Little Rock," said Gary W. Ritter, lead researcher and professor of education at the University of Arkansas.
The schools participating in ACPP are composed predominantly of black students from low-income homes.
The study comes as lawmakers are crafting a bill to renew the No Child Left Behind Act, and Republicans and Democrats are considering including performance pay systems for teachers...
January 24, 2008
Rhee: DC last on NAEP
Update: This is a part of a larger Forbes series asking people to weigh in on education. Worth checking out: http://www.forbes.com/home/opinions/2008/01/23/solutions-education-teaching-oped-cx_hpm_0123solutionsland.html
January 23, 2008
USA Today: Employers want ways to judge grads beyond tests, grades
"Too many policymakers and educational leaders are focused on the tests rather than on what is really important: whether students are learning what they need to know," says Roberts Jones, president of Education & Workforce Policy, a consulting firm based in Alexandria, Va.
January 18, 2008
Weekly Clips 1.18.08
While most of the coverage of the Quality Counts report immediately followed the release, several articles were published this week. The Messenger-Inquirer (KY) and the Daily Comet (LA) published news stories of the report, while the Honolulu Star Bulletin used NAEP data in an article comparing the roughly equal achievement in private and public schools. The Orlando Sentinel and the Opelkia-Auburn News (AL) published editorials, the first arguing that Florida needs to adopt excellent science standards as it has done for reading and math, while the second exhorts Alabamans not to accept the low grade their states received on the Quality Counts report.
The Manhattan Institute scholar Sol Stern published a long article in City Journal that repudiates his past beliefs of school choice as a panacea for educational problems in the US. While maintaining his faith in the importance of school choice, Stern writes that he has seen the importance of excellent curriculum and strong standards; the “education miracle” of Massachusetts’ growth on NAEP illustrates this for him. Stern also highlights two TUDA districts:
This may explain why, on the recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests—widely regarded as a gold standard for educational assessment—Gotham students showed no improvement in fourth- and eighth-grade reading from 2003 to 2007, while the city of Atlanta, which hasn’t staked everything on market incentives, has shown significant reading improvement.
Stern’s article generated commentary among the blogs, as well as a great deal of criticism from the Cato Institute bloggers.
The acting superintendent of Albuquerque Public Schools wants to introduce mandatory summer school for underperforming second and third graders, reports the Albuquerque Journal. New Mexico’s low scores on NAEP are cited as evidence of the state’s overall educational problems, and implicitly included as evidence for her proposal.
There were approximately 7.7 million media impressions this week, bringing the total for the year to just under 53 million. There were 29 stories this week, bringing the yearly total to 107.
Spellings Statement in Oregon
Also, check out the link to the Mapping Oregon's Educational Progress -- it puts the % Proficient on state test in a table next to %Basic and Proficient on NAEP.
U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings Discusses No Child Left Behind with Oregon State Board of Education, Visits Auburn Elementary School and Hosts Roundtable With Hispanic Leaders
Highlights six years of improvement and calls for continued support from states
FOR RELEASE:
January 17, 2008 Contact: Elaine Quesinberry
Casey Ruberg
(202) 401-1576
U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings today met with the Oregon State Board of Education and Oregon Superintendent of Public Instruction Susan Castillo in Salem, Ore. to discuss No Child Left Behind and the gains made by students in Oregon and across the country. Secretary Spellings and Superintendent Castillo also visited Auburn Elementary School, where they toured classrooms and addressed an all-school assembly. In the afternoon, Secretary Spellings and Superintendent Castillo hosted a roundtable discussion with local Hispanic leaders at the Hispanic Metropolitan Chamber in Portland, Ore.
"Six years after No Child Left Behind changed the education game in this nation, we can be proud of where it has brought us," said Secretary Spellings. "Oregon is an innovator and leader in developing assessments that help teachers get immediate results and tailor instruction. Now all 50 states and the District of Columbia have assessment systems, report disaggregated data and target federal resources to serve their neediest students. It's time to build on the momentum that No Child Left Behind helped to generate."
During her visit to Auburn Elementary School, Secretary Spellings commended students and teachers for their achievement gains. Like many schools across the country, Auburn Elementary is an excellent example of a school making strong progress under No Child Left Behind. Some 75 percent of Auburn's students are now proficient in math, up from 65 percent in 2003, and 81 percent of students are proficient in reading, up from 65 percent in 2003. Eighty percent of schools in the Auburn School District made Adequate Yearly Progress last year-up from 60 percent in 2005.
In the afternoon, Secretary Spellings and Superintendent Castillo met with leaders of Portland's growing Hispanic community during a roundtable at the Hispanic Metropolitan Chamber in Portland, Ore. Secretary Spellings and more than a dozen Hispanic representatives from Portland's education, government and business communities discussed No Child Left Behind and how to help close the achievement gap, increase access to higher education and improve workforce preparation for Hispanics.
The 2007 Nation's Report Card from the National Assessment of Educational Progress shows that Hispanic students posted all-time highs in a number of categories. Hispanic fourth- and eighth-graders achieved their highest mathematics and reading scores in the history of the test.
To view Mapping Oregon's Educational Progress 2008, please visit http://www.ed.gov/nclb/accountability/results/progress/or.html.
For Mapping America's Educational Progress 2008, visit http://www.ed.gov/nclb/accountability/results/progress/nation.html.
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January 17, 2008
Sol Stern: School Choice Isn't Enough
But the new reliance on markets hasn’t prevented special interests from hijacking the curriculum. One such interest is the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project—led by Lucy Calkins, the doyenne of the whole-language reading approach, which postulates that all children can learn to read and write naturally, with just some guidance from teachers, and that direct phonics instruction is a form of child abuse. Calkins’s enterprise has more than $10 million in Department of Education contracts to guide reading and writing instruction in most of the city’s elementary schools, even though no solid evidence supports her methodology. This may explain why, on the recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests—widely regarded as a gold standard for educational assessment—Gotham students showed no improvement in fourth- and eighth-grade reading from 2003 to 2007, while the city of Atlanta, which hasn’t staked everything on market incentives, has shown significant reading improvement.
Editorial: Reforming Education
In 2008, Democrats will undoubtedly promise parents with school-age children that another round of new programs and much more federal spending will produce better local schools. Thanks to Mr. Bush, Republicans need not say "me too," as most voters can now see from NCLB's early success that more federal funding was not, and is not, the answer...
January 11, 2008
Spellings says No Child law is 'getting results'
Her comments come as administration leaders are trying to improve and solidify the much-debated 2002 law this year before President Bush's term ends.
As Mr. Bush did earlier this week, Mrs. Spellings defended the law and urged Congress to renew it soon, with some changes. But, she said if Congress fails to act, "I will move forward" and try to improve it through pilot programs and other administrative tools at her disposal. She noted the new president probably won't focus immediately on NCLB.
"Agree or disagree with this law, without NCLB, we wouldn't even be talking about how to get every student on grade level," she said. "After decades of doling out federal dollars and hoping for the best we're now expecting and getting results."
January 10, 2008
WS: Informed Reader
January 10, 2008; Page B6
EDUCATION
What Ails Schools? No National Standard
• THE ATLANTIC -- JAN./FEB.
Local control of schools is crippling education in America, says Matt Miller.
U.S. students for years have lagged far behind their international peers in reading, math and science; dropout rates are alarmingly high. The best way to fix these problems is to nationalize achievement targets, says Mr. Miller. A frequent voice on policy matters, he served in the Clinton administration and is a fellow at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank.
Local control has roots in the Colonial era, when people developed a deep distrust of distant, centralized authority. That ethos has served the country politically, but it is failing the schools, says Mr. Miller. For one, widely varying standards make it difficult to know how well students are doing. President Bush's "No Child Left Behind" program has failed to address disparities, since states can establish their own definitions of proficiency.
The fragmented nature of the education system impedes innovation. School districts typically can't afford to invest in new approaches on their own, yet they remain suspicious of federal efforts. Mr. Miller also faults what he says is widespread incompetence on school boards. Recalcitrant teachers' unions, meanwhile, block changes.
In an ideal world, school boards would be jettisoned. Since that isn't likely, Mr. Miller advocates limiting the boards' role, starting by sharply increasing the federal government's share of education spending.
Schools need national expectations, says Mr. Miller. Start by establishing national objectives, he says, while allowing schools discretion in how they meet the objectives.
January 8, 2008
Bush to veto any softer No Child law
"I believe this country needs to build upon the successes," Mr. Bush told an assembly at the Horace Greeley Elementary School in Chicago, which he touted as a school that embraced the law's accountability and raised its test scores over the past several years.
"Now is the time for Congress to reauthorize it," he said of the 2002 law, adding, however: "If Congress passes a bill that weakens the accountability system in the No Child Left Behind Act, I will strongly oppose it and veto it."
