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Urban superintendents collaborate with charters

January 20, 2012 By

More than 20 urban districts have adopted a “portfolio” strategy, holding district-run and independent charter schools to the same performance standards, reports Hopes, Fears, & Reality, the Center on Reinventing Education’s 2011 charter school review.

In 16 cities, leaders have pledged to work together for student success by “creating common student enrollment systems, sharing facilities, equalizing funding, encouraging teachers and principals to share instructional strategies, and sharing responsibility for students with special needs.”

“Urban school superintendents across the country are realizing that a centrally delivered, one-size-fits-all approach simply is not viable, and that they need partnerships to bring in entrepreneurial talent and mission-driven teams,” writes editor Robin Lake.

Charters are expanding in rural areas, small towns and small states; and are serving a growing share of Hispanic and low-income students. Free-standing charter schools are growing faster than those run by charter management organizations.

Collaboration can sap charters’ ability to innovate, warn several analysts in the commentary section.

Don’t assume that practices and routines that “work” for one school will work everywhere, warns Rick Hess.

As I see it, the real power of charter schooling is that it presents “greenfield” in which new cultures and models can be established on fresh turf, rather than painfully injected into resistant, calcified systems. The closer charters start to work with existing districts, the more they seem bound to import norms, expectations, and routines from those systems.

Charter success 2.0 will require rethinking “long-held assumptions about the shape of teaching and schooling,” he writes.  ”Linking charters more closely to entrenched systems threatens to make that process less likely.”

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It’s the curriculum, stupid

January 16, 2012 By

Education reform has ignored curriculum, writes Beverlee Jobrack, a retired editorial director for McGraw-Hill, in Tyranny of the Textbook: An Insider Exposes How Educational Materials Undermine Reforms.

Mediocrity is the norm, according to Jobrack, writes Erik Robelen in Ed Week‘s Curriculum Matters.

• School and district committees for curriculum selection filled with teachers and others who lack the appropriate expertise, motivation, and time to make the best choices;

• State textbook adoptions focused on whether curricular materials meet state standards, line by line, with little or no attention to whether they actually are of high quality and represent a coherent and well-designed instructional approach; and

• A radically consolidated publishing industry, driven by sales and marketing tems, that has “resulted in a dearth of customer choice, a reluctance to innovate, and huge [curricular] programs that are barely distinguishable from one another.”

Graphics win favor. Innovation does not. ”A group of very experienced teachers selects the textbook that is most like what they are already doing so they don’t have to change their lesson plans or procedures,” she writes.

Common standards won’t change teaching and learning “without real and meaningful changes in the curriculum,” Jobrack believes. The industry will resist change, she says in an interview.

“They’re not changing anything in the curriculum. They are simply relabeling. … If there’s anything missing in a textbook series, the publishers will simply add a paragraph or add a lesson to address that particular standard.”

When publishers produce an incoherent, standard-stuffed curriculum, it’s not surprising that teachers cherry-pick what they want to teach and ignore the rest.

 

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Common Core rap

December 21, 2011 By

Common Core Essential Standards change how we teach, rap a group of STEM teachers in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The teachers don’t seem all that happy to be “reassigned to the pep squad,” notes Missouri Education Watchdog, which speculates it’s a professional development must-do.

Here’s the lyrics:

Chorus: Focus on student engagement
Practices communication
Relevant data, yes
Common Core Essential Standards change how we teach

No longer can a teacher be the sage on the stage
Common Core Essential Standards change how we teach
Become the guide on the side the students to engage
Common Core Essential Standards change how we teach
The other verses contain these points:

No list of algorithms to memorize
Graphing calculators and real world ties

A variety of problems, problem solving strategies
Complex texts and technologies

Hands-on inquiry with questions to promote
Analysis of data, not answers by rote

Clear and concise, rubrics (whole)* guide
students will improve the quality of work with pride

* hard to understand in the video

So, up until now, teachers haven’t tried to engage students, pose real-world problems or use relevant data? But once the new standards go into effect, they will.

In the comments, Barry Garelick notes that the new Common Core math standards, which the teachers see as cutting edge, have been criticized for being too traditional.

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Math gains show curriculum matters

December 7, 2011 By

If bad teachers are the problem, why are kids gaining in math? asks cognitive scientist Dan Willingham. His answer:  Higher standards backed by stronger curricula.

While reading scores have been flat for 20 years, math scores are up significantly. That’s true for fourth graders, who have the same teachers for reading and math.

States that aligned standards, assessments and accountability show the largest math gains, he writes.

Still, high standards are likely necessary but not sufficient to move student achievement. Standards set the goals, but they don’t tell you how to get there. For that, you need a curriculum. It may be that developing a curriculum to meet standards is easier in mathematics than in English; there is little controversy as to the subject matter to be covered, and the order in which one ought to tackle subjects is more obvious.

While we need “a more sensible method to usher hapless teachers out of the profession” and better teacher training, we also need to focus on curriculum design, Willingham writes.

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Waiving the white flag

September 27, 2011 By

No Child Left Behind waivers are “a white flag for the kind of systemic reform needed to help all students, including poor and minority children, succeed in school and in life, writes RiShawn Biddle.

No Child Left Behind gave schools 12 years to improve, writes Steve Perry, a magnet school principal, also on Biddle’s Dropout Nation.

An entire generation to fix schools is too long, and now the president is going to extend it? Brilliant. Just freaking brilliant. Here’s a timeline tweak: Take as long as you want to fix your school. But the American people are only going to send our hundreds of millions of dollars to good schools. So holla when you feel you’re ready, in the meantime while you do your educations reforming, we’re going to make sure our kids go to good schools tomorrow.

Obama’s plan trades accountability for common standards, writes Russ Whitehurst of the Brookings Institution.

Standards and accountability go together like Sonny and Cher. Separate them and, well you know what happens. So we’re to have the same college- and career-ready standards for what children should learn in Minnesota and Mississippi, but different definitions of what schools and teachers are to be held accountable for accomplishing against those standards? Where does that get us?

In addition, it’s dangerous to take “boilerplate secretarial waiver authority” intended for minor tweaks and turn it into “a virtually limitless authority for the executive branch to substitute its preferred policies for the law of the land.”

The federal role in K-12 education isn’t working well and needs major restructuring, Whitehurst argues. While Congress is working on this, the administration could buy time by moving the proficiency deadline from 2014 to 2016, or capping the percentage of schools within a state subject to the accountability sanctions. “Gutting NCLB and setting its own policy direction using the waiver authority is misguided, confused, and will prove to be counterproductive.”

In National Journal’s discussion, the waiver plan takes hits for going too far and not going far enough.

 

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Proficient in Texas, but not in Missouri

August 12, 2011 By

Most states don’t match federal proficiency standards for elementary math and reading, a new federal report concludes.

Eight states have raised standards in recent years. South Carolina has lowered its standards, though the new superintendent pledges to raise the bar.

The National Center for Education Statistics compares state requirements to the National Assessment of Education Progress.

In fourth-grade reading, for example, 35 states set passing bars that are below the “basic” level on the national NAEP exam. “Basic” means students have a satisfactory understanding of material, as opposed to “proficient,” which means they have a solid grasp of it. Massachusetts is the only state to set its bar at “proficient”—and that was only in fourth- and eighth-grade math.

The report shows huge disparities among the standards states set when their tests are converted to the NAEP’s 500-point scale. In eighth-grade reading, for example, there is a 60-point difference between Texas, which has the lowest passing bar, and Missouri, which has the highest, according to the data. In eighth-grade math, there is a 71-point spread between the low, Tennessee, and the high, Massachusetts.

A Tennessee eighth grader could be considered proficient without being able to read a graph, while a Massachusetts student meeting the proficiency benchmark “would likely be able to solve a math problem using algebra and geometry.”

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Science or science appreciation?

August 7, 2011 By

The National Research Council’s new K-12 science framework will prepare students to be technology consumers not creators, writes Ze’ev Wurman, a high-tech engineer who’s worked on education standards and advised the U.S. Education Department.

The framework has prestigious authors in science and science education and they promise a “coherent and consistent approach” that will enable students to “actively engage in science and engineering practices and apply crosscutting concepts to deepen their understanding of each fields’ disciplinary core ideas,” Wurman writes. Furthermore, engineering is introduced as a K-12 subject for the first time.

But “the framework does not expect students to use any kind of analytical mathematics while studying science.”

By grade 12, students are supposed to be competent in “recognizing,” “expressing,” and “using simple … mathematical expressions … to see if they make sense,” but not in actually solving science problems using mathematics.

Before Lavoisier’s quantitative approach there was no chemistry, only alchemy. Before Newton’s invention of calculus, physics was more a craft than a science. Mathematics has been inseparable from science for the last 300 years, and has been largely responsible for the world we live in. Yet here we have a “21st century” science framework for our students that effectively ignores mathematics.

Wurman went back to the first page, which explained the framework’s purpose.

The overarching goal of our framework for K-12 science education is to ensure that by the end of 12th grade, all students have some appreciation of the beauty and wonder of science; possess sufficient knowledge of science and engineering to engage in public discussions on related issues; are careful consumers of scientific and technological information related to their everyday lives; are able to continue to learn about science outside school; and have the skills to enter careers of their choice, including (but not limited to) careers in science, engineering, and technology.

The framework isn’t teaching students to solve science problems, Wurman concludes. It’s teaching science appreciation.  He doesn’t think a math-free, science lite curriculum will prepare U.S. students for Silicon Valley’s high-tech jobs, many of which are filled with engineers trained in India, East Asia and Israel.

 

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Next-gen science education

July 21, 2011 By

Science education should be deep, engaging and coherent, declared a National Research Council panel, which issued a new framework for science standards. Achieve, a nonprofit, will design the “next-generation” standards, which advocates hope will be adopted by most states.

Common Core Standards, now adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia, cover English Language Arts and math only, notes Ed Week.

The framework is built around three major dimensions: scientific and engineering practices; cross-cutting concepts that unify the study of science and engineering; and core ideas in four disciplinary areas—physical sciences, life sciences, earth and space sciences, and engineering, technology, and the applications of science.

Framers hope to return science to the K-3 curriculum and to add engineering and technology in the K-8 grades to “provide a context in which students can test their own developing scientific knowledge and apply it to practical problems.”

The report calls for focusing on core scientific ideas and teaching problem solving rather than “just memorizing factual nuggets,” the New York Times summarizes.

“That is the failing of U.S. education today, that kids are expected to learn a lot of things but not expected to be able to use them,” said Helen Quinn, a retired physicist from the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, Calif., who led an 18-member committee that spent more than a year devising the framework.

The committee hopes “to ensure that by the end of 12th grade, all students have some appreciation of the beauty and wonder of science,” the report states.

Do our students know too many facts? It makes sense to focus on understanding core ideas and applying knowledge to solve problems, but it sure helps to have some knowledge to apply.

Update: The computer scientists want to add computer science to the curriculum.

 

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10 big issues for ESEA

April 21, 2011 By

Fordham’s ESEA Briefing Book looks at the 10 issues that must be resolved to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (also known as No Child Left Behind).

It’s party time for Jay Greene, who has a drinking game linked to frequent mentions of  “tight-loose” regulation.

Fordham frames a debate between people who want the feds to mandate something, such as standards and cut scores, and those who want federal money without mandates, Greene writes.

Fordham takes the middle ground of saying that the feds should mandate standards, cut scores, etc… or allow states to prove to a panel of experts that their alternative approach is at least as good.

The alternative is worthless, Greene argues. “The burden of proving the merit of your alternative choices would effectively compel you to comply with the mandate.” And “more committees of so-called experts” is not what we need in education.

Fordham’s false middle isn’t the only sensible alternative, Greene argues.

I support a limited role of the federal government in education to facilitate the education of students who are significantly more expensive to educate, such as disabled students, English language learners, and students from very disadvantaged backgrounds. Only the federal government can ensure this type of “redistributive” policy in education because if localities attempted to serve more expensive students they would attract those expensive students while driving away their tax base.

Fordham is big on “college and career readiness,” Greene adds. So is the Gates Foundation.

No one knows what college and career ready means. It has no clear, technical, objective definition. It is yet another political slogan substituting for an idea with actual substance, sort of like “reform realism” or “tight-loose.”

And yet this empty slogan is the entire purpose of the nationalization project on which Fordham-Gates-AFT-U.S. Dept of Ed are embarked. Only in the D.C. bubble of power-hungry analysts who provide no actual analysis could we launch a radical transformation of our education system with little more than a series of empty slogans. It’s enough to make you drink.

Kevin Kosar is blogging on Federal Education Policy History.  Check out the graph on the use of “failing school” over time.

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A national curriculum?

February 28, 2011 By

Common Core math and English Language Arts standards aren’t rigorous enough to prepare students for college work, writes Sandra Stotsky on Jay Greene’s blog. Yet wording in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act would force all states to use tests based on the new standards.

States should be able to pick “internationally benchmarked, research-based” tests that satisfy their high school diploma requirements, argues Stotsky, who headed the writing of Massachusetts’ standards. “They may prefer objective end-of-course tests in algebra I, geometry, algebra II, U.S. history, chemistry, physics, and biology instead of ‘performance-based’ subjective tests.”

The two federally funded consortia developing tests for Common Core are creating what amounts to a national curriculum, writes Rick Hess. That will push all schools to teach the same material at the same time to give students a chance to pass the new exams.

The American Federation of Teachers wants a “common, sequential curriculum” to match Common Core standards so teachers “are not making it up every day,” reports Ed Week’s Curriculum Matters, quoting Randi Weingarten, the union president. (More here on what the test-writing consortia are working on.)

Congress banned the use of federal funds to write a national curriculum in 1979, but the consortia argue they’re just writing “curriculum frameworks, model instructional units and such” or a “clearinghouse of curriculum resources,” not a curriculum.

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