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Where’s the literature?

October 1, 2012 by

Secondary teachers should stress classic works of literature, argue Sandra Stotsky and Mark Bauerlein in a paper critical of Common Core Standards. The new standards name only a few required texts, such as foundational American documents (for example, the Declaration of Independence) and a Shakespeare play, notes Ed Week.

(The standards) say that half of what students read in elementary school—and 70 percent in high school—should be informational, arguing that mastery of such texts mirrors the demands likely to be made on them in college and job training. is.

. . .  some English/language arts educators . . .  fear that literature will lose its important place in students’ studies. The standards’ architects have argued that the opposite is true: Teachers of social studies, science and other subjects will inherit new responsibilities for teaching writing and reading in their areas, freeing English/language arts teachers to dive deeply into literary works with their students.

Stotsky, a University of Arkansas professor nd a chief architect of Massachusetts’ highly regarded academic standards, and Bauerlein, an Emory English professor, believe “the analytical and critical-thinking skills developed by a deep study of literature” will prepare students for college more effectively than reading informational texts.

Private schools and public schools in affluent suburbs will teach a literature-rich curriculum, while most public school students will suffer from a “literature deficit,”  Stotsky and Bauerlein predict. That will widen the achievement gap, they write.

Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn isn’t included in Massachusetts’ new Common Cored curriculum, write Charles Chieppo and Jamie Gass of the Pioneer Institute. (It’s not banned either. It’s just not mentioned.) “These new English standards include less than half as much classic literature and poetry than the Massachusetts standards they will replace.”

 

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School funding: Quietly unequal

September 20, 2012 by

The rich districts get richer in Illinois, Texas, New York, Pennsylvania, Missouri, and North Carolina, according to a new Center for American Progress report, The Stealth Inequities of School Funding. In these states, schools in higher-poverty districts receive less state and local dollars than low-poverty districts, the report finds.

On the state level, there’s no relationship between education spending and results, according to a State Budget Solutions study, which analyzed state spending from 2009 to 2011. Spending more didn’t raise graduation rates or ACT scores. Spending less didn’t lower performance.

Massachusetts, which has the strongest academic performance in almost every subject area and the highest ACT scores, spend less of its state budget on education than 45 other states, SBS reported.

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Measuring performance by results

August 3, 2012 by

Can School Performance Be Measured Fairly? asks the New York Times‘ Room for Debate.

Testing Has Moved Beyond Filling Circles, responds Kevin Carey of the New America Foundation. Objective test scores should be just one part of measuring student success.

When No Child Left Behind was written 11 years ago, standardized tests were the only way to consistently measure student learning on a large scale. But since then, many states have developed sophisticated data systems that can calculate the percentage of high school graduates who enroll in college, enlist in the armed services and land steady, well-paying jobs. Instead of using proxy measures for successful preparation (i.e. test scores) we can use measures of the real thing. If high school graduates need to take remedial courses in college, for example, that means their high school didn’t do its job.

School evaluation should include standardized test scores and visits by “highly trained school inspectors” who can  ”observe classrooms and interview teachers and students.”

Waivers don’t go far enough in allowing states to use better measures of achievement, adds Fordham’s Mike Petrilli.

States may not, for example, use a race-neutral approach to identifying schools that are leaving disadvantaged students behind, as Florida would have liked. (In the Sunshine State’s own system, schools are docked if their lowest-performing students — whatever their race — don’t make significant gains in the course of the school year.) They can’t evaluate high schools by outcomes — like how many students go on to graduate from college — instead of by test scores. They can’t even use computer-adaptive tests, like those uses for graduate school admissions, because low-performing students would get assessed on content that is “below grade level.” (Of course, that’s the point of computer-adaptive technology — it can pinpoint exactly where students are, even if they are far ahead or behind most children their age.)

Use international benchmarks and real-world results, writes Sandra Stotsky, a University of Arkansas education professor.

We can find out if our teachers and administrators are effective by comparing our students’ performance levels on the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, which assesses knowledge of mathematics and science gained from a rigorous curriculum, and the Program for International Student Assessment, which assesses daily life skills and minimal academic content.

 

Massachusetts’ 26 regional technical/career high schools have long wait lists and high graduation rates, notes Stotsky, who helped write Massachusetts standards. “Accountability ultimately lies in their employability after high school.”

 

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Early test lets students boost skills

March 14, 2012 by

When Massachusetts high school students took a college placement pretest, most learned they were on the remedial track. After taking online classes, they reduced their need for developmental education in college.

California Latinos, who make up half the college-age population, are missing out on higher education.

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Flexibility? Not so much

February 8, 2012 by

Despite promises of flexibility on No Child Left Behind, the Education Department is micromanaging waivers, writes Mike Petrilli on Flypaper.

He cites Education Department letters to the states reported by AP, which show federal nitpicking.  Even “Massachusetts —the first-place finisher in the Race to the Top, the state with the highest achievement in the land, the one that has seen dramatic gains across all subgroups of students, a strong supporter (for better or worse) of the Common Core standards” gets no respect from the feds.

Petrilli predicts most of the 11 waiver-seeking states will be approved.

Upon closer inspection, observers will notice that the amount of flexibility granted on accountability is tiny. Approved plans will amount to minor changes away from the AYP system we’ve got today.

The number of states planning to apply for waivers by February 21 will drop precipitously, as they realize that it’s just not worth the effort.

This will raise congressional enthusiasm for rewriting No Child Left Behind, but “nothing will come of it this year.”

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Online learning expands access, cuts costs

November 25, 2011 by

An Arizona community college that pioneered online courses has expanded access and success while cutting costs substantially.

Massachusetts community college leaders don’t like a report calling for more state control of the system to facilitate job training. Connecticut is creating a state board to run both the community colleges and state universities.

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What will common standards cost?

November 11, 2011 by

It will cost $800 million for California to implement Common Core Standards, down from an earlier estimate of $1.6 billion, according to the state education department. That includes training, learning materials and testing.

Other states are starting to worry about the cost. Washington state estimates it will take  $300 million to prepare teachers and principals and buy new textbooks; updating the state’s testing system will be extra.

Massachusetts should know what it’s getting into, writes Jim Stergios on Rock the Schoolhouse. Massachusetts got $250 million over four years to implement the new standards and will require much more, even if California’s revised estimate is accurate.

Under federal pressure, both California and Massachusetts decided to trade well-regarded state standards for the Common Core.

 

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Where not to be reincarnated

November 2, 2011 by

If you’re planning to be reincarnated as a poor black child, make sure not to be born in Michigan, advises Matthew Ladner, who’s graphed state scores in fourth-grade reading on the 2011 National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP).  If you value literacy, avoid Iowa, Maine and Washington D.C. too.

Massachusetts, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Florida are relative good choices.  Low-income, black fourth-graders in Massachusetts read 2.5 grade levels ahead of similar students in Michigan, Ladner writes.

Massachusetts also is first in reading for low-income fourth-grade students of all races.  In D.C. and Alaska, the average low-income fourth-grader reads nearly as poorly as a first grader in Massachusetts.

A fourth-grader with first-grade reading skills is doomed.

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Study: Common Core aligns with leading standards

October 29, 2011 by

The new Common Core Standards are aligned to leading state and international standards, concludes an analysis by the Educational Policy Improvement Center (EPIC) in Eugene,Oregon.

Researchers compared the content and curriculum standards for California and Massachusetts; the Texas College and Career Readiness Standards, the International Baccalaureate standards and the Knowledge and Skills for University Success.

The new common standards cover the same topics and content, but demand “a bit more cognitive complexity in some topics, particularly English/language arts,” the report says.

The study checks whether Common Core’s contents matches the comparison set, but doesn’t say “whether everything in the comparison set is found in the Common Core,” writes  Ze’ev Wurman in the comments.

This is akin to writing a bunch of fragments on a paper and then claiming that since most of the fragments are found among Shakespeare’s works, hence that page is “aligned” with, and “as rigorous as” Shakespeare’s works.

. . . Yet another example Common Core sponsored advocacy research, paid for by Bill Gates.

Also in comments, Sandra Stotsky, who led Massachusetts’ standards initiative, quotes a critique by the Massachusetts Department of Education, which questioned the rigor of Common Core’s high school math and English standards.

 

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Study: U.S. students lag in math, reading

August 19, 2011 by

Are U.S. Students Ready to Compete? asks Harvard’s Paul E. Peterson and colleagues in Education Next.  In math, 32 percent of U.S. students test as proficient. Students in 22 countries perform significantly better.

. . .  58 percent of Korean students and 56 percent of Finnish students performed at or above a proficient level. Other countries in which a majority—or near majority—of students performed at or above the proficiency level included Switzerland, Japan, Canada, and the Netherlands.

Massachusetts is the only state in which (slightly) more than half of students are proficient in math.

Fifty percent of Asian-American students, 42 percent of whites, 15 percent of Hispanics and 11 percent of blacks test as proficient in math.

All students in 16 countries outperform U.S. whites, the study finds. In addition to the usual suspects, that includes Germany, Belgium, and Canada.

I’d like to see more analysis of Canadian schools. The culture is a lot closer to ours than Korea or Finland. If Canadians can learn math, Americans should be able to learn math.

The U.S. does better in reading.  Whites read about as well as all students in Canada, Japan and New Zealand. Once again, Massachusetts’ students are the most likely to be proficient.

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