Search Results for: Act 10
On Louisiana School Reform
A deserved amount of controversy is generated by the state’s new vouchers for private school tuition, but it is not the only element of state law that changed this year. Significant changes are in store and new demands placed on traditional school systems by education bills championed by Gov. Bobby Jindal in this year’s Legislature.
Parts of the wide-ranging new laws — crammed together as Act 1 and Act 2 of the 2012 Legislature — affect the relationships between school boards and superintendents, giving the latter more untrammeled authority in hiring and firing. Other parts of the package include new alternative course work that might be available online for some students.
And amid all this is the looming implementation of a teacher evaluation system that could provide a significant amount of new work for principals and other supervisors of teachers, as well as paperwork demands. The state, for example, is working to assess whether computer capabilities in local systems are up to the task — for otherwise, the new demands could overwhelm the information technology that cash-strapped public schools can today afford.
Saudi Students Flood In as U.S. Reopens Door
Dressed in caps and gowns, the college students packing a graduation ceremony in suburban Washington, D.C., acted like excited graduates anywhere in the United States.
Except, perhaps, when the men broke into tribal line dances. Or when the women, wearing headscarves, burst forth with zagareet, soaring trills of their tongues, in celebration.
The more than 300 graduates gathered at a hotel overlooking the Potomac River were all from Saudi Arabia, part of a massive government-paid foreign study program to earn bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees and return home to help run their country.
Tennessee Directs Nashville to Back Charter School; Per Student Spending Comparison
The Tennessee State Board of Education has cleared the way for a charter school backed by neighborhood parents to open in middle-class West Nashville.
The board voted Friday to direct the Metro Nashville Public Schools to approve an application by Great Hearts Academies, a nonprofit that operates prep-school-like charter schools in the Phoenix area, to open a school in 2014. The group hopes to open four more schools across Nashville after that.
The Nashville school board, whose members are elected on a nonpartisan basis, approved two other charter schools last month. But it twice rejected Great Hearts’ application, claiming the school would recruit only affluent students and harm diversity efforts in the district, where 45% of elementary students passed state reading exams last year, and 33% passed math. The local teachers union didn’t take a public stand on the application.Nashville schools spent $674,034,800 [PDF] to educate 79,117 students [District Fact Sheet PDF, 71% “economically disadvantaged”] during the 2011-2012 school year ($8519.47/student), 42% less than Madison’s $14,858.
My Education in Home Schooling
I don’t know how most people spend their second morning home schooling. I spent mine hyperventilating into a paper bag. After less than 24 hours of educating my child at home, I was struck by the realization that I wasn’t up to the task and should move immediately to Plan B. Except I didn’t have a Plan B.
For two years leading up to this I had watched my daughter convince experienced, well-meaning teachers that she was incapable of mastering long division when, in fact, she simply didn’t like long division. Alice’s ploy raised a larger concern: At age 9, she appeared to be cruising along in school without actually doing any work. To my sorrow, it appeared I had given birth to myself, another pleasant slacker fated to a lifetime of successfully studying for midterms between classes until barely paying attention stopped working. Alice wasn’t learning how to learn, she was learning how to coast. Maybe I could wait and see if she came to learning on her own. Or maybe she needed a different kind of education.
Her father and I checked out a few middle-school programs known for their rigor. Each promised to challenge Alice academically but also promised hours of homework every night. I’m greedy. I want my child challenged, but I don’t want her staying up until 2 a.m. every night translating “The Aeneid.” I knew we had a small window of opportunity to teach Alice to love learning, but I also knew there was an equally small window for her to be a child. Her academic options seemed to lie on either side of a wide chasm: a fluffy pillow on one side, a jackhammer on the other. I tried home schooling because I couldn’t find a better alternative.
55 Year Old CPA With 169 LSAT Sues Baylor Over Admissions Denial, Says His 3.2 GPA Was Earned Before Grade Inflation
Following up on my previous post, Baylor Law School Sends Mass Email With Personal Data on Each of its 442 Admitted Students (Apr. 6, 2012): C. Michael Kamps, a CPA who was denied admission to Baylor Law School, has filed an age discrimination lawsuit agains the school based in part on the improperly released data, claiming that his 169 LSAT was higher than 97% of Baylor’s admitted class and that the school failed to take into account the fact that his 3.2 GPA from Texas A&M (Class of 1979) was earned in the days before rampant grade inflation.
From the complaint (2MB PDF):
Plaintiff, more than thirty years ago, graduated from a major and wel-respected university in the top quarter of his class comprising primarily his similarly aged peers.
Plaintiff first applied to Defendant Baylor University’s Law School in 2009, for the fall quarter commencing in 2010. Plaintiff also applied for a specific merit based scholarship with published and long-established qualifying criteria which Plaintiff met. The candidate pol for this class, and for the scholarship, generally consisted of applicants substantially younger than Plaintiff.
2. Plaintiff expected to be, and insists that he be, allowed to compete on an equal footing with the much younger candidates for admission to Law School and access to merit based scholarships.
Plaintiff expects, and insists, that Defendants judge and evaluate his application as one submitted by a top quarter graduate of a major and wel- respected university.
3. Defendants refuse and insist upon applying disparate standards to older vs. younger candidates. Defendants pretend that these are not disparate standards at all ,but rather one factually neutral and uniform standard.
These standards, as applied by Defendants, are biased with respect to age and are therefore in violation of the Age Discrimination Act of 1975, 42U.S.C.§6101etseq., (“the Act”) and its implementing Regulations at 34C.F.R. Part 10 (“Regulations”). Defendants persist in this practice
even while faced with overwhelming evidence of, and while actually acknowledging, the bias.
Plaintiff scored at the 97th percentile on the Law School Admissions Test (“LSAT”), with a score of 169. Plaintiffs “Baylor Index,” an index calculated by multiplying Plaintiff’s UGPA by a factor of 10 and adding that product to Plaintiffs LSAT score, is 201.
The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge
“The real enemy is the man who tries to mold the human spirit so that it will not dare to spread its wings.”
In an age obsessed with practicality, productivity, and efficiency, I frequently worry that we are leaving little room for abstract knowledge and for the kind of curiosity that invites just enough serendipity to allow for the discovery of ideas we didn’t know we were interested in until we are, ideas that we may later transform into new combinations with applications both practical and metaphysical.
This concern, it turns out, is hardly new. In The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge (PDF), originally published in the October 1939 issue of Harper’s, American educator Abraham Flexner explores this dangerous tendency to forgo pure curiosity in favor of pragmatism — in science, in education, and in human thought at large — to deliver a poignant critique of the motives encouraged in young minds, contrasting those with the drivers that motivated some of history’s most landmark discoveries.
Spokane, WA Schools Superintendent Survey
Spokane Superintendent Shelley Redinger recently posted a survey. Via a kind Laurie Rogers email.
Spokane plans to spend $316,584,805 [2012-2013 Budget Document] for 29,275 students or $10,814.17/student, about 28% less than Madison’s $15,132. Compare the community demographics here: Madison | Spokane.
Education In China Is A Sure Bet
In order to appreciate the recent explosion of business opportunities related to private education in China, we need to understand the cultural realities that have played a contributing role. Some of these factors include the traditional Chinese family structure with its emphasis on education, China’s one child policy and China’s explosive economic growth during the past twenty years. Additionally, with the rising growth of its middle class (currently at fifty-two plus million and projected to grow to over ninety-eight million people by 2015), one is far from surprised to see an education market currently valued at over $240 billion dollars and estimated to grow by 15% a year. Deloitte predicts that by 2015, the private education sector will have reached a market size nearing or in excess of $102 Billion.
In Defense of Parenthood: Children Are Associated With More Joy Than Misery
S. Katherine Nelson, Kostadin Kushlev, Tammy English, Elizabeth W. Dunn, Sonja Lyubomirsky
Recent scholarly and media accounts paint a portrait of unhappy parents who find remarkably little joy in taking care of their children, but the scientific basis for these claims remains inconclusive. In three studies, we used a strategy of converging evidence to test whether parents evaluate their lives more positively than do non-parents (Study 1), feel relatively better than non-parents on a day-to-day basis (Study 2), and experience more positive feelings during childcare than other daily activities (Study 3). The results indicate that, contrary to previous reports, parents (and especially fathers) report relatively higher levels of happiness, positive emotion, and meaning in life.
Modern evolutionary psychologists position parenting at the top of the pyramid of human needs, reflecting its central role in human life (Kenrick, Griskevicius, Neuberg, & Schaller, 2010). Yet, some research has indicated that parenting is associated with reduced well-being (e.g., Evenson & Simon, 2005; Kahneman, Krueger, Schkade, Schwarz, & Stone, 2004; McLanahan & Adams, 1987). In particular, attention has revolved around a study showing that working mothers in Texas enjoy parenting less than watching TV, shopping, or preparing food (Kahneman et al., 2004).
Although recent media accounts paint a dismal picture of parenting, the underlying scientific research is surprisingly unclear and inconsistent. Meta-analyses have linked parenthood to lower marital satisfaction on average (Twenge, Campbell, & Foster, 2003) and to decreases in life satisfaction in the months after childbirth (Luhmann, Hoffman, Eid, & Lucas, 2012). Few analyses, however, directly compare parents and non-parents on global measures of well-being. Instead, most investigations control for multiple demographic variables, which vary across studies. Some of these studies find that parents exhibit a higher prevalence of depression (Evenson & Simon, 2005), along with less positive and more negative affect (Ross & Van Willigen, 1996), than non-parents, whereas others reveal a net zero or small negative parenting effect (e.g., Blanchflower & Oswald, 2004; Di Tella, MacCulloch, & Oswald, 2003; Ferrer-i- Carbonell, 2005). Furthermore, other work suggests that parents do not experience these negative outcomes (Keizer, Dykstra, & Poortman, 2010; Kohler, Behrman & Skytthe, 2005; Rothrauff & Cooney, 2008), and, on the contrary, report relatively higher feelings of meaning, gratification, and reward (Russell, 1974; Umberson & Gove, 1989; White & Dolan, 2009). Such conflicting findings could be due to the use of divergent methods, analytical approaches, and measures, making it almost impossible to draw clear conclusions from this literature. The importance of this topic and its prominence in popular discourse demonstrates the need for rigorous examination of the link between parenthood and well-being, using multiple methods and broad well-being measures.
The Mass Production of Education
There’s been a lot of excitement in the media about Stanford’s 100,000+ student computer science courses, MIT’s open-sourced classes, and other efforts at mass, distance-education. In some ways, these efforts really are thrilling — they offer the first truly deep structural change in how we do education in perhaps a thousand years. They offer democratization of education — opening up access to world-class education to people from all over the globe and of diverse economic and social backgrounds. How many Ramanujans might we enable, if only we could get high-quality education to more people?
But I have to sound three notes of caution about this trend.
First, I worry that mass-production here will have the same effect that it has had on manufacturing for over two centuries: administrators and regents, eager to save money, will push for ever larger remote classes and fewer faculty to teach them. Are we approaching a day in which there is only one professor of computer science for the whole US?
Second, I suspect that the “winners win” cycle will distort academia the same way that it has industry and society. When freed of constraints of distance and tuition, why wouldn’t every student choose a Stanford or MIT education over, say, UNM? How long before we see the AT&T, Microsoft, or Google of academia? How long before 1% of the universities and professors garner 99% of the students and resources?
Bound Hand & Foot
In ancient China, upper-class women had their feet tightly bound as children, preventing the bones from growing normally, so that they could be hindered in their walking, and only capable of cute little “feminine” steps around the house.
We don’t do that, of course. What we do instead with all our young people is see to it that they do not read a single complete history book in school (maiming their knowledge of history) and we confine their writing mostly to fiction, compositions about themselves, or brief little five-paragraph “essays” about something else (doesn’t matter what), which cripples their ability to write.
Even when we ask them to apply to college and show us their writing, admissions officers ask only for 500-word pieces in which they talk about themselves and their lives.
In Boston the Boston Globe has a competition that asks young people to write about courage. But is it the courage of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, or John Quincy Adams, or James Otis, or Patrick Henry or John Paul Jones, or Florence Nightingale that they want to hear about? Not a chance. They want the youngsters to write about their own courage, for instance perhaps when they spoke to a fellow student who was not popular, etc.
Thus we bind their learning and their imagination, and we try to prevent their access to knowledge of history and the achievements of mankind, and we try to keep them from learning how to write a serious term paper or read a substantial history book.
Why is this happening? One example of the problem is a writing consultant from Teachers’ College, Columbia, who was given a $50,000,000 (yes, $50 million) contract to teach students reading and writing in New York City. When I asked her if she would be having the students write about history, she told me: “I teach writing, I don’t get into content that much.” So, naturally, the students her grant enabled her to “work” with probably didn’t get into content that much either.
Mark Bauerlein wrote (The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future) that on the NAEP history test 57 percent scored “Below Basic.” To score “Basic,” the student has to know who George Washington was. To score “Below Basic” the student has to know that Scooby-Doo was never President, but they probably could not name anyone who ever was President. “Of those taking the exam, a majority, 52 percent, when asked to identify a U.S. Ally during World War II selected a member of the Axis powers–Germany, Italy, and Japan–rather than the Soviet Union” [or Great Britain].
We hear lots of complaints from many quarters that our kids are ignorant of history and cannot write. It would have made as much sense to criticize upper-class Chinese women in the Imperial days because they had such poor times in the 100-yard dash.
If we continue to keep history books away from our students, and limit their writing to brief solipsistic exercises, then we can only expect that they will continue to demonstrate the damage we have done to them, when we test them and look over the writing they are able to produce for us.
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“Teach by Example”
Will Fitzhugh [founder]
The Concord Review [1987]
Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes [1995]
National Writing Board [1998]
TCR Institute [2002]
730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24
Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776-3371 USA
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www.tcr.org; fitzhugh@tcr.org
Varsity Academics®
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Students sue school district for violating their ‘right to read’
Stacy Teicher Khadaroo, via a kind reader’s email:
In a first-of-its-kind legal maneuver, students whose reading skills are below grade level are suing their state and school district. If successful, the lawsuit could spawn others nationwide
Students are suing the state of Michigan and their Detroit-area school district for violating their “right to read.”
The class-action lawsuit appears to be the first of its kind, and potentially signals a new wave of civil rights litigation in the United States to enforce laws intended to boost academic achievement, education law experts say.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan filed what it has dubbed the “right to read” lawsuit on behalf of the nearly 1,000 students in the impoverished district.
Two-thirds of 4th-graders and three-quarters of 7th-graders in the Highland Park school district are not proficient on state reading tests; 90 percent of 12th-graders fail the reading portion of the final state test administered in high school, according to the complaint. Nearly 100 percent of the district’s students are African-American.
Essential Explanations
This page comprises a list of 1009 “essentialist explanations” of the form “Language X is essentially language Y under conditions Z”. I have edited some entries for uniformity, clarity, or good English. The entries are grouped for convenience rather than correctness. In particular, fictional languages belonging to actual language families are grouped with their natural language relatives. New contributions are solicited, especially for American and African languages. No flames, please.
Note: Entries attributed to me (John Cowan) are often ones that I have heard or read somewhere, or ones that were suggested by other people’s contributions but heavily modified by me.
“[We] do but jest, poison in jest, no offence in the world.” –Hamlet
The Single Most Important Experiment in Higher Education
A dozen major universities announced that they would begin providing content to Coursera, an innovative platform that makes interactive college classes available to the public free on the web. Next fall, it will offer at least 100 massive open online courses — otherwise known as MOOCs*– designed by professors from schools such as Princeton, CalTech, and Duke that will be capable of delivering lessons to more than 100,000 students at a time.
Founded by Stanford computer scientists Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, Coursera is one of a handful of efforts aimed at using the web’s cost savings to bring Ivy League-quality courses to the masses. Its peers include the joint Harvard-MIT project edX and Udacity, a free online university created by Google executive and former Stanford professor Sebstian Thrun. (Another high-profile startup, Minerva, is attempting to create an actual “online Ivy” that students will pay to attend.)
But the deals Coursera announced Tuesday may well prove to be an inflection point for online education, a sector that has traditionally been dominated by for-profit colleges known mostly for their noxious recruitment practices and poor results. That’s because the new partnerships represent an embrace of web-based learning from across the top tier of U.S. universities. And where the elite colleges go, so goes the rest of academia.
Coursera has previously teamed with Stanford, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, and University of Michigan to offer 43 courses, which according to the New York Times enrolled 680,000 students. It now adds to its roster Duke, Caltech, University of Virginia, Georgia Tech, University of Washington, Rice, Johns Hopkins, University of California San Francisco, University of Illinois Urbana-Champagne, University of Toronto, University of Edinburgh, and Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.
Tyrany of Low Expectations: Will lowered test scores bring about broader change in Madison schools?
Chris Rickert via several kind readers:
Wisconsin has a “long way to go in all our racial/ethnic groups,” said Adam Gamoran, director of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at UW-Madison.
My hope is that, given Wisconsin’s overwhelmingly white population, proficiency problems among white students will spur more people to push for policies inside and outside of school that help children — all children — learn.
“I hate to look at it that way, but I think you’re absolutely right,” said Kaleem Caire, president and CEO of the Urban League of Greater Madison. “The low performance of white students in our state may just lead to the type and level of change that’s necessary in public education for black and other students of color to succeed as well.”
Indeed, Gamoran said Massachusetts’ implementation of an evaluation system similar to the one Wisconsin is adopting now has been correlated with gains in reading and math proficiency and a narrowing of the racial achievement gap in math. But he emphasized that student achievement is more than just the schools’ responsibility.
Madison has known for a while that its schools are not meeting the needs of too many students of color.The issue of low expectations and reduced academic standards is not a new one. A few worthwhile, related links:
- April 2004 West High School Math Teacher Letter
Moreover, parents of future West High students should take notice: As you read this, our department is under pressure from the administration and the math coordinator’s office to phase out our “accelerated” course offerings beginning next year. Rather than addressing the problems of equity and closing the gap by identifying minority math talent earlier, and fostering minority participation in the accelerated programs, our administration wants to take the cheaper way out by forcing all kids into a one-size-fits-all curriculum.
It seems the administration and our school board have re-defined “success” as merely producing “fewer failures.” Astonishingly, excellence in student achievement is visited by some school district administrators with apathy at best, and with contempt at worst. But, while raising low achievers is a laudable goal, it is woefully short-sighted and, ironically, racist in the most insidious way. Somehow, limiting opportunities for excellence has become the definition of providing equity! Could there be a greater insult to the minority community?- 2009: 60% to 42%: Madison School District’s Reading Recovery Effectiveness Lags “National Average”: Administration seeks to continue its use
- 2006: Math Forum audio, video and links
- 2005: When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before
- “They’re all rich, white kids and they’ll do just fine” — NOT!
- 2006: Connected Math
- 2005: English 10
- 2009: Action Needed, Please Sign on…. Math Teacher Hiring in the Madison School District
- Madison will spend $374,700,000 to educate 24,861 students during the 2012-2013 school year. $15,071/student.
- wisconsin2.org.
How can you know if it’s *really* “research-based?”
My new book, When Can You Trust the Experts: How to Tell Good Science from Bad in Education is now available. (There’s a link for a free download of Chapter 1 on this page.) EDIT (7:17 pm 7/18) I just saw that it’s listed as “Recommended,” with a micro-review on the Scientific American website.
I wrote the book out of frustration with a particular problem: the word “research” has become meaningless in education. Every product is claimed to be research-based. But we all know that can’t be the case. How are teachers and administrators supposed to know which claims are valid?
It’s notable that this problem exists in many other fields. However good your training, research doesn’t stand still. So how does a pediatrician who has been in practice 10 years know that what she learned in medical school as the optimal treatment for, say, croup, is still the best treatment?
Wisconsin’s Achievement Stagnation: 1992 – 2011
Eric A. Hanushek, Paul E. Peterson and Ludger Woessmann, via a kind Chan Stroman-Roll email:“Yet when compared to gains made by students in other countries, progress within the United States is middling, not stellar (see Figure 1). While 24 countries trail the U.S. rate of improvement, another 24 countries appear to be improving at a faster rate. Nor is U.S. progress sufficiently rapid to allow it to catch up with the leaders of the industrialized world.”
“Meanwhile, students in Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, and Indiana were among those making the fewest average gains between 1992 and 2011. Once again, the larger political climate may have affected the progress on the ground. Unlike in the South, the reform movement has made little headway within midwestern states, at least until very recently. Many of the midwestern states had proud education histories symbolized by internationally acclaimed land-grant universities, which have become the pride of East Lansing, Michigan; Madison, Wisconsin; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Lafayette, Indiana. Satisfaction with past accomplishments may have dampened interest in the school reform agenda sweeping through southern, border, and some western states.”
Underlying study: “Achievement Growth: International and U.S. State Trends in Student Performance“Related:
- Student scores slip with new proficiency benchmarks by Erin Richards
The results: Only 35.8% of Wisconsin’s WKCE test-takers in third through eighth and 10th grade in fall 2011 scored proficient or better in reading, and just 48.1% scored proficient or better in math.
Compare that with March, when the state released 2011 WKCE results that showed 78% and 82% of students scored proficient or better in math and reading.
Under the new benchmarks, just 41.9% of white students scored proficient or advanced in reading, and 55.2% met that mark in math on the latest state test. Previously, more than 87% of white students were considered proficient or better in reading, and 84.3% were considered to have scored proficient or better in math in 2011.
As for the state’s black students – many of whom attend Milwaukee Public Schools – 13.4% are considered proficient or advanced in reading, down from 58.7% using the old grading scale.
Rep. Steve Kestell, a Republican from Elkhart Lake who chairs the Assembly’s Education Committee, called the revised picture of student performance a “necessary and long-delayed wake-up call for Wisconsin.”
“We’ve been trying to tell folks for some time that we’ve been looking at things through rose-colored glasses in Wisconsin,” he added. “It was a hard thing to communicate, and it was largely ignored. This is a new awakening.”
State Sen. Luther Olsen (R-Ripon), who chairs the Senate Education Committee, said: “We’ve known for years that our proficiency-cut scores are way below where they should be, and really, this shows that we have got to do a better job.”
Under the past decade of No Child Left Behind, Wisconsin had been criticized for having a more lenient bar for proficiency than other states.- Less than half of state’s students measure proficient under new national standards by Matthew DeFour:
Still, the new results should be a “smack in the face” for Wisconsin, said Adam Gamoran, director of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at UW-Madison.
“It’s going to be a wake-up call,” Gamoran said. “It’s a more honest reckoning of where Wisconsin students stand relative to other students across the nation and relative to the goals we want for all of our students.”
The old results were based on whether students were meeting Wisconsin’s definition of being at grade-level, whereas the new results reflect more rigorous standards of what it means to be prepared for college or a career used for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the nation’s report card.
About 3,000 4th and 8th graders in Wisconsin take the NAEP every other year. In 2011, 32 percent of Wisconsin 4th graders scored proficient on NAEP’s reading test and 39 percent scored proficient on the math test.
The data released Tuesday marks the first time DPI has converted results of the state test, which more than 430,000 students in grades 3-8 and 10 take in the fall, to the NAEP benchmarks.
DPI won’t release recalculated results for individual schools and districts until the fall, when it also plans to release individual school report cards with ratings on a scale of 0 to 100.
Kim Henderson, president of the Wisconsin Parent Teacher Association, said parents pay closer attention to state test scores than NAEP scores, so the results could “bring up a lot of good questioning.”- State sets new, tougher standards for student tests by the Associated Press:
To get the waiver, Wisconsin had to develop its own accountability system in addition to teacher and principal evaluations, among other things.
The scores will be included on new school report cards to be released in the fall. How well individual students in grades 3-8 and 10 do on reading and math tests they take in November will be released next spring.
The new school report cards were developed in conjunction with Gov. Scott Walker, legislative leaders and others over the past year. They will include a numerical rating for individual schools from 0-100 based on student achievement, growth, graduation rates and closing of achievement gaps between different groups of students. The scores will generate an overall total that will place each school into one of five categories ranging from “Fails to Meet Expectations” to “Significantly Exceeds Expectations.”
“This new system will empower parents, allowing them to make education related decisions based on reliable and uniform data,” Walker said in a statement.
Sample report cards, without actual school data, are posted online to solicit feedback through Aug. 12.- Numerous notes and links on the oft-criticized WKCE, here.
- wisconsin2.org
Down in Lower Education
In 1893, when the Committee of Ten published its recommendations for high school education, Upper Education and Lower Education academics were still talking to each other. Harvard president Charles William Eliot was the chairman, and the committee, Diane Ravitch reported in Left Back (Simon & Schuster, 2000), included four other college presidents, three high school principals, and a college professor. In 1918, when the NEA Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education issued its report, the chairman was, as Diane Ravitch wrote, “Clarence Kingsley, a former social worker, former teacher of mathematics at Brooklyn Manual Training High School, and–at the time of the report–supervisor of high schools in Massachusetts.” (Ravitch, pp. 42,123)
The main objectives for high school students in the NEA report were: “1. Health, 2. Command of fundamental processes, 3. Worthy home membership, 4. Vocation, 5. Citizenship, 6. Worthy use of leisure, and 7. Ethical character.” These “became famous among educators as ‘the Seven Cardinal Principles,’ the seven objectives based on the needs of life.” (Ravitch, p. 124)
With this new set of objectives in view, and with the transformation of the Normal Schools
into psychobabbling Graduate Schools of Education hostile to academic content, perhaps it is not surprising that college professors and other academics were increasingly estranged from the goings on in Lower Education. What professor of history or physics or Romance languages or nanotechnology could find common ground with those at the Lower Level who were dedicated to teaching secondary students the “worthy use of leisure”?
Nevertheless, as the number of high schools grew, along with the number of colleges, one Upper Education group formed a growing interest in what people were doing in sports at the Lower Level. This would be college coaches, who saw in the strong interest in athletics at the high school level a vital breeding ground for the athletes they would need to recruit for their college programs. As a consequence, college coaches began to keep track of the progress of especially promising high school athletes in a variety of sports, and in their Lower Education Level coaches. In fact, friendly relations were often formed between high school coaches and college coaches, so that news about really good athletes could get to the Upper Level in time to enable recruiting to begin (now at about the 10th grade).
Coaches in colleges recognized that success in their jobs depended in part on their ability to locate good candidates and persuade them to come to their place of work to be athletes after high school. Lower Education coaches understood that their work and their opinions were valued by those in the Upper Education reaches of their sports.
Meanwhile, among teachers of academic subjects in Lower Education, a very different situation could be found. Teachers who identified and prepared promising students of history or physics or literature realized that their counterparts in Upper Education did not want to know them or to hear about their students. Upper Education professors left recruitment of great candidates in their disciplines completely up to the Upper Education Admissions Committees.
By contrast, Upper Education coaches have decided not to depend on the Admissions people to find the best athletes for them. In fact, they typically bring the Admissions Committees lists of the athletes who they would like to have admitted to meet the needs of their teams. Upper Education professors rarely, if ever, come to the Admissions Committees with names of scholars from the high schools they wanted admitted to strengthen their academic departments.
Of course there are many differences in the reward systems for Upper Level coaches and for Upper Level professors. If the coaches do not get good athletes they will not be able to win games, matches, or other athletic competitions and before long their jobs will be in jeopardy. On the other hand, most Upper Education professors believe they lose nothing by simply ignoring their Lower Education colleagues, their students, and their curricula. Their jobs depend on their research and publications, for the most part, and they are content to let the Admissions Committees select their students for them. When the students arrive in their courses, they often complain that these recruits are ignorant and unable to do serious Upper Education academic work, but that never seems to increase their interest in meeting Lower Education teachers or finding out what academic work is being done at that Lower level.
One result of this situation is that Lower Education teachers and scholars are aware that Upper Education academics don’t much care about what they do, while Lower Education coaches and athletes (often the same people) are quite sure that Upper Education coaches are very interested in what they are doing, to the extent, in some cases of forming good relationships between them. It is understood that Upper Education coaches may even wish to visit promising high school athletes in their homes in an effort to recruit them for their programs. It is beyond imagination that an Upper Education professor would do anything like that.
In their battles against anti-intellectualism, Lower Education people can expect little or no interest or assistance from their Upper colleagues, and the professors in Upper Education will no doubt continue to bemoan the level of preparation of their students, especially in reading and writing, without wondering, it seems, if that is the result in part of anything they have failed to do.
Will Fitzhugh
The Concord Review
17 July 2012
Teacher Evaluation in Tennessee
Tennessee Department of Education:
In July 2011, Tennessee became one of the first states in the country to implement a comprehensive, student outcomes-based, statewide educator evaluation system. This implementation was a key tenet of Tennessee’s First to the Top Act, adopted by the General Assembly with bipartisan support during 2010’s extraordinary session under the backdrop of the federal Race to the Top competition. This landmark legislation established the parameters of a new teacher and principal evaluation system and committed to implementation during the 2011-12 school year. The act required 50 percent of the evaluation to be comprised of student achievement data–35 percent based on student growth as represented by the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS) or a comparable measure and the other 15 percent based on additional measures of student achievement adopted by the State Board of Education and chosen through mutual agreement by the educator and evaluator. The remaining 50 percent of the evaluation is determined through qualitative measures such as teacher observations, personal conferences and review of prior evaluations and work.
An important component of the First to the Top Act was the creation of the Teacher Evaluation Advisory Committee (TEAC), a group of teachers, principals, superintendents, legislators, business leaders, and other community members, which met 21 times over the course of the following year to review and discuss various issues related to policy and implementation. The committee reviewed field tests of four different observation rubrics, which were conducted in the 2010-11 school year in approximately 125 schools across the state. The TEAC supported use of the TEAM (Tennessee Educator Acceleration Model) rubric as the state model and also voted on a number of key components of implementation, including the number and structure of observations for the year. By law, those recommendations were made to the State Board of Education, which was charged with adopting the final guidelines and criteria for the annual evaluation of all teachers and principals. The board ultimately unanimously adopted the TEAC endorsed TEAM model and, in addition, approved three alternative models – 1) Project Coach in Hamilton County; 2) TEM (Teacher Effectiveness Measure) in Memphis City; and 3) TIGER (Teacher Instructional Growth for Effectiveness and Results) in 12, mostly municipal, school systems statewide. The board also approved a menu of achievement measures that could be used as part of the 15 percent measure.
In the summer of 2011, the Tennessee Department of Education contracted with the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching (NIET) to provide a four-day training for all evaluators across the state. NIET trained more than 5,000 evaluators intensively in the state model (districts using alternative instruments delivered their own training). Evaluators were required to pass an inter-rater reliability exam, in which they viewed video recordings of teachers delivering lessons and rated them to ensure they understood the distinction between differing levels of performance.
Wisconsin and National School Spending Growth Perspectives
Andrew J. Coulson, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, has an editorial in the Wall St. Journal this week assailing the “explosive growth” in America’s public school work force. Since 1970, he charges, student enrollment has “flat-lined,” yet the number of teachers and instructional aides has doubled, from 3.3 million to 6.4 million, with concurrent increases in costs.
Coulson writes, “America’s public schools have warehoused three million people in jobs that do little to improve student achievement–people who would be working productively in the private sector if that extra $210 billion were not taxed out of the economy each year.”
But there’s a panacea readily available: create state voucher systems to send all our kids to private schools. (Also, elect Mitt Romney because President Obama’s education agenda is an “expensive and tragic failure.”)
Whoa, Nellie!
While it’s no doubt a challenge to squish a radical paradigm shift within the confines of the WSJ’s 600-word limit, that’s no excuse for specious logic or casual disregard for facts. Worse, this sort of inflammatory rhetoric gives education reform a bad name.
For example, let’s look at Mr. Coulson’s claim that American public schools hire too many teachers and aides (i.e., have too low a teacher/student ratio), and that private schools are cheaper and produce higher-achieving students.
He writes, “If we returned to the student-staff ratio of 1970, American tax payers would save about $210 billion in personnel costs.”
Madison School Board member Ed Hughes:There is no mystery about the size of the overall pie. The last budget under Governor Doyle appropriated $5,025,190,300 for elementary and secondary school aids for 2009-10 and $5,271,555,900 for 2010-11. Under Governor Walker’s budget, this total was cut to $4,845,083,000 for 2011-12 and $4,913,986,100 for 2012-13. So Governor Walker slashed general state aid to schools by about $538 million over the biennium. This is hardly cause for celebration.
How next year’s $4.9 billion in general state aid is split up among the state’s 424 school districts is determined by the school funding formula. I describe how the formula works here. This year, to just about everyone’s surprise, the formula has turned out to be Madison’s friend.
Last year, application of the school funding formula resulted in MMSD qualifying for about $15 million in general state aid. This amount was increased to about $43 million by virtue of the hold-harmless provision of the law that capped each school district’s reduction in state aid at 10% of the previous year’s total.
How could it be that the same formula that calculated that MMSD was entitled to $15 million in state aid in 2011-12 would determine that the district was in line for $53 million for 2012-13?
Wisconsin State Tax Based K-12 Spending Growth Far Exceeds University Funding
The Most Important Writing Lesson I Ever Learned
My first real job was in advertising. I worked as a copywriter for an agency called Benton & Bowles in New York City. An artist or entrepreneur’s first job inevitably bends the twig. It shapes who you’ll become. If your freshman outing is in journalism, your brain gets tattooed (in a good way) with who-what-where-when-why, fact-check-everything, never-bury-the-lead. If you start out as a photographer’s assistant, you learn other stuff. If you plunge into business on your own, the education is about self-discipline, self-motivation, self-validation.
Advertising teaches its own lessons. For starters, everyone hates advertising. Advertising lies. Advertising misleads. It’s evil, phony, it’s trying to sell us crap we don’t need. I can’t argue with any of that, except to observe that for a rookie wordsmith, such obstacles can be a supreme positive. Why? Because you have to sweat blood to overcome them-and in that grueling process, you learn your craft.
Here it is. Here’s the #1 lesson you learn working in advertising (and this has stuck with me, to my advantage, my whole working life):
School Is ‘Too Easy,’ Say American Students
NPR Many students in American classrooms don’t feel challenged enough. That’s according to new analysis of federal data (pdf) conducted by the Washington think tank American Progress. The organization, which promotes “progressive ideas and action,” came to that conclusion when it analyzed surveys given to students by the Department of Education for its National Assessment […]
Literary classics rebooted as children’s tales
Lisa Samson is not yet up in the literary firmament with the likes of J.K. Rowling. But the Kentuckybased children’s author, who writes as L.L. Samson, is in the midst of writing a wonderfully arch yet educational series, The Enchanted Attic. It’s based on what might happen if some of literature’s greatest characters wandered into modern times.
In the process, she is sending a message to young readers and their parents that the classics get that designation for a reason. When you pause to consider the characters and themes at their most basic, you learn quite a lot.
In the latest book in series, Saving Moby Dick, Ahab trades his whalebone leg for a comfortable prosthetic and garners a few lessons in internet etiquette. Young readers learn new words, the definitions of which are delivered gently and with humour.
In Their Own Words: ‘Study Drugs’
A 16-year-old, determined to succeed on her own merits, who finally bends under the pressure. Students with legitimate prescriptions who are hounded for their pills. Young men and women whose use of stimulants spirals out of control.
After inviting students to submit personal stories of the abuse of prescription drugs for academic advantage, The Times received almost 200 submissions. While a majority focused on the prevalence of these drugs on college campuses, many wrote about their increasing appearance in high schools, the focus of our article on Sunday. We have highlighted about 30 of the submissions below, almost all written by current high school students or recent graduates.
In often vivid detail — snorting their own pills, stealing pills from friends — the students described an issue that they found upsetting, valuable, dangerous and, above all else, real. Most of them claimed that it was a problem rooted not in drugs per se, but with the pressure that compelled some youngsters to use them.
More U.S. Business Programs Add Specialized Degrees, but Whom Does It Benefit?
U.S. business schools are trying to master a new corner of the market: specialized master’s degrees.
The courses in topics such as management, accounting and analytics, generally lasting one year and aimed mainly at college graduates with little or no work experience, have a decadeslong history at many European and other international schools.
But the programs have gained particular traction in the U.S. recently, more than doubling student enrollment to 52,014 in the 2010-2011 academic year, compared with the 2006-2007 year, according to the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. (Demand is still higher outside the U.S., where member schools enrolled 84,134 in the 2010-2011 year.)
The benefit for schools is obvious–more tuition revenue and a critical mass of students to entice recruiters when interest in traditional M.B.A. programs is declining. But the long-term value for students remains unclear, as graduates’ salaries and job titles often look very similar to those assigned to new hires coming straight from undergraduate schools.
Liberal studies leave no room for thinking
Our public education system may be beyond reform. Every attempt at reform either ends up accentuating the very features we were trying to change or making life worse for teachers and students. Take, for example, the new liberal studies curriculum, a signature programme of the government’s dismal, decade-old education reform.
A new study by University of Hong Kong academics has found that liberal studies, introduced in September and compulsory for all pupils in forms four to six, has achieved the opposite of the government’s original intention.
Most teachers, the study found, admitted they just spoon-fed students with liberal studies materials taken directly from textbooks, a practice they were explicitly told to avoid. Predictably, many of the 70,000 students who sat the first liberal studies exam in May simply repeated answers they had learned from textbooks. Nearly 90 per cent of 300 teachers said their main source of teaching materials came from textbooks. Only a small number of teachers believed pupils should be encouraged to explore new ideas through critical thinking. And while more than 200 teachers said bringing different perspectives to students was vital in liberal studies, only 50 of them said they would do so.
LA Teachers Face New Evaluations
Erica Phillips & Stephanie Banchero:
In the past three years, at least 30 states have begun to use student achievement to evaluate teachers, spurred in part by President Barack Obama’s Race to the Top education initiative as well as by some Republican governors. California isn’t one of them.
That could change after a ruling by a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge. At a hearing Tuesday, Judge James Chalfant said the Los Angeles Unified School District, one of the nation’s largest, violated California’s Stull Act, a 41-year-old law that requires teacher evaluations to take into consideration the performance of students.
The current evaluation system in Los Angeles focuses on teaching methods, such as how a teacher demonstrates knowledge or guides instruction, according to the district.
In his ruling, Judge Chalfant contrasted the high rate of positive teacher evaluations in the district–97.6 in the 2009-10 school year–with low student proficiency in English and math.
Teacher Turnover in New Berlin a Cautionary Tale
State aid, curriculum, technology, school boards. All are important factors in K-12 education; none educate a single child.
That task is of course in the hands of teachers. It follows that teachers are the most important employees in schools, and arguably the most important employees in the public sector. After all, hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites send their kids to spend the bulk of their childhoods learning from these employees. It only makes sense for the public to treat teachers with respect. But, as Alan Borsuk argues convincingly in the Journal Sentinel Sunday, this is not always the case.
I have written numerous times about the increasing financial burdens placed on teachers in the Milwaukee Public Schools and across the state. In general, districts offset some or all of last year’s 5.5% per-pupil reduction in revenue limits by increasing employee contributions to health and pension benefits. This means that teachers across the state received a cut to their take-home pay totally unrelated to their performance. It is easy to see why teachers felt they were being disrespected.
Young Americans get the shaft
There’s plenty that divides the parties in this pivotal election — from taxes to drones, from public workers to private equity. But there’s one uber-policy that brings Democrats and Republicans together that doesn’t get the attention it deserves.
That policy involves you, younger Americans. You’re in big trouble. You don’t even know it. You’re busy trying to get a degree, land a job, start a family, save for a home. You don’t follow the news. But trust me — you’ve been taken for a ride by your elders.
The question isn’t whether such talk will stir up generational war. That’s already being waged — and you’re losing. The question is whether you’ll wake up and engage in a little generational self-defense. Let me see if I can motivate you.
How are you being swindled today? Let me count just some of the ways:
As many as 100 million Americans live in households today that are earning less than their parents did at a similar age. And this is happening well before we feel the full impact of global economic integration with rising economies like India and China.
Valuable lessons in world awareness
My son is in Primary Five and doesn’t seem to take any interest in world affairs. I try to encourage him to read the newspaper and watch the news on television with me, but he’d rather play video games or watch television. Any ideas?
Computers and other electronic entertainment media have a very strong pull on children and can easily distract them from other interests. Research tells us that the pros and cons of spending a lot of time with them are complex and vary by the individual. In the short term, at least, you could limit your son’s time in front of a screen so that he has the opportunity to take an interest in other things.
(1985) Al Shanker on Education Reform, Working Together
“It is idiotic to have an internal war when we are threatened with extinction from the outside,“ said Shanker. “We have to work together to improve public schools or the American taxpayers, in their wisdom, will simply go elsewhere.“
Shanker said public educators must do a better job of heeding the warning signs than automakers did.
“American car manufacturers went to Japan 10 years ago and saw what was happening, but they came back and did nothing,“ said Shanker. “They said that labor and management would have to make too many sacrifices to compete with the Japanese-style factories and predicted that no one would buy those little cars the funny names anyway.“
“We can`t make the same mistake,“ Shanker said. “Labor and management have to make significant changes, significant sacrifices to keep public education alive. Tinkering will no longer help.“
Shanker, head of the nation`s second largest teachers union for 10 years and its chapter in New York City for 20 years, has reversed several traditional labor stands since a number of national reports criticizing education spawned an education reform movement.
Summer programmes can add a lot of fun to the long holidays, but only if they fit the child
With the long summer holidays upon us, many parents will be hoping to keep themselves sane and their children entertained by signing them up for summer classes. But with a plethora of programmes to choose from, selecting one that will entertain and educate your child can be a daunting task.
“One of the most important considerations when selecting a summer programme for your child is their interest,” advises Dr Caleb Knight, an educational and child psychologist at the Child and Family Centre in Central. “It is not productive to push a child into a programme of activity in which they show little motivation.”
New Hampshire Legislature passes ‘school choice’ over Lynch veto
After months of debate, the “school choice” bill is now law.
The Legislature on Wednesday voted to override the governor’s veto of Senate Bill 372, which allows businesses to receive tax credits for donations to scholarship funds to help low- and middle-income students attend private and religious schools.
The Senate voted 16-7 on Wednesday to override the veto of SB 372 – the exact margin needed to overrule the governor.
The House voted 236-108, also surpassing the two-thirds margin necessary for an override.
Republican leaders in both chambers have considered the “School Choice Scholarship Act” one of their highest priorities this session.
Democrats, including Gov. John Lynch, are roundly opposed to the bill, which they say would undermine public schools and downshift costs to local districts and property tax payers.
Socialist Sweden spends more on education than us? Nope.
Teacher Sharon Collins’ letter selflessly calls for higher taxes for education, citing socialist Sweden as her shining light.
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/jun/21/letters-sd-schools-teachers-labor-pact/?print&page=all
She didn’t do her homework.
She thinks Sweden values education more than America because they have a 25 percent sales tax (actually a VAT tax). But that high tax tells us nothing.
For a meaningful comparison, look at education spending per student. Of the 32 OECD counties (the economically advanced countries of the world) providing data, in 2008 Sweden ranks 6th in primary school per student spending, the U.S. 5th. Sweden ranks 9th in secondary school spending, the U.S. ranks 4th.
Sweden spent $9,080 per primary school student. The U.S. spent $9,940. Sweden spent $9,940 per secondary school student — the U.S. spent $12,007.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/888932463593
A Little More on MPS’ Fiscal Situation
I was a little surprised by the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS)’ response to my recent Wisconsin Interest piece on the district’s long-term fiscal challenges. Specifically, I was confused by the following two paragraphs in a blog item posted yesterday by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel education reporter Erin Richards:
MPS officials on Wednesday objected to the assertion that the district is headed toward financial insolvency. They reiterated that they have raised the minimum retirement age, raised the number of years needed to reach retirement, and increased future retiree contributions, all of which should make a significant impact on legacy costs.
MPS Spokesman Tony Tagliavia reported there is a report coming out in the coming months that will reflect the impact of the changes made.
First off, my article makes clear that I took MPS’ aggressive actions to address their legacy costs into account (Incidentally I have also blogged about these actions and applauded MPS as they have been taken). In the article I write:
Is IQ in the Genes? Twins Give Us Two Answers
These days the heritability of intelligence is not in doubt: Bright adults are more likely to have bright kids. The debate was not always this calm. In the 1970s, suggesting that IQ could be inherited at all was a heresy in academia, punishable by the equivalent of burning at the stake.
More than any other evidence, it was the study of twins that brought about this change. “Born Together–Reared Apart,” a new book by Nancy L. Segal about the Minnesota study of Twins Reared Apart (Mistra), narrates the history of the shift. In 1979, Thomas Bouchard of the University of Minnesota came across a newspaper report about a set of Ohio twins, separated at birth, who had been reunited and proved to possess uncannily similar habits. Dr. Bouchard began to collect case histories of twins raised apart and to invite them to Minneapolis for study.
By 1990, he, Dr. Segal and other colleagues were ready to publish their results in Science magazine. By then they had measured the IQ of 48 pairs of monozygotic, or identical, twins, raised apart (MZA) and 40 pairs of such twins raised together (MZT). The MZA twins were 69% similar in IQ, compared with 88% for MZT twins, both far greater resemblances than for any other pairs of individuals, even siblings. Other variables than genetics, such as material possessions in the home, had little influence, nor was the degree of social contact between the twins in each pair associated with their similarity in IQ.
Level of Expectations
It has become an educational cliché to say that “students will rise to the level of expectations.” But how do we explain the students whose work rises well above our level of expectations? Mostly, we just ignore them. In the local media, coverage of high school sports “blanks” any and all accounts of exemplary academic work by high school students.
In the mid-1980s, when I was teaching (as I thought) United States History to Sophomores at the high school in Concord, Massachusetts, I assigned, following the advice of my colleagues, history papers of just 5-7 pages, but I did tell the students that the title page did not count as one of the pages.
One quiet student, who I did not know at all, turned in a 28-page paper on the current balance of nuclear/thermonuclear weapons between the United States and the USSR. He later graduated summa cum laude from Tufts in economics. Why did he do that paper? He didn’t need to, and he didn’t do it for me. He was “rising” to the level of his own expectations. As Laurence Steinberg wrote in Beyond the Classroom: “Within a system that fails (flunks) very few students, then, only those students who have high standards of their own–who have more stringent criteria for success and failure–will strive to do better than merely to pass and graduate.”
In the last 25 years I have published more than 1,000 history research papers by crazy motivated secondary students like that from 46 states and 38 other countries. (I am happy to provide pdfs of some of these exemplary history research papers on request to fitzhugh@tcr.org).
Since the 1960s, the International Baccalaureate has been expecting students to complete a 4,000-word Extended Essay to qualify for the Diploma. In 2011, I published an 11,000-word (Emerson Prize) paper on the stagnation in science and technology in China for five centuries after 1500, and the student had to cut it down to 4,000 words to meet the expectations for the Extended Essay and the IB Diploma. ACT and the College Board have not yet included an expectation for that sort of academic expository writing.
Often we work to limit what students do academically. Several years ago, when The Concord Review was receiving submissions of high school history research papers of 6,000, 8,000, and 10,000 words, I asked the Executive Director of National History Day, which has as one option for competitors a 2,500-word history paper, if they had considered accepting essays that were longer. She said that no, they didn’t want any paper that took more than 10 minutes to read.
Recently when I published a 108-page (Emerson Prize) paper on the War of Regulation in North Carolina in the 18th century by a student from an independent school west of the Mississippi, I found out that she had to reduce it to 9 pages, without endnotes, to enable her to win first place nationally in the National History Day competition.
One student whose (Emerson Prize) work I published went to her teacher and said: “My paper is going to be 57 pages, is that all right?” And the teacher (may his tribe increase) said, “Yes.”
Five or six years ago I received a paper (Emerson Prize) on the history of economic reform in China in recent years from a student at a public high school in Ohio. Like high schools generally, hers expected her to complete their requirements in four years. Instead she did it in two and spent the next two years as a full-time student at The Ohio State University before applying to Harvard as a freshman. She recently graduated from there with high honors in mathematics, with an economics minor.
I should say that, even though Asian students have the highest academic achievement of any group in the United States, not all of the students I have published have been Asian, nor did the high level of expectations for their own academic work all come from the Confucian influence of their parents.
When it comes to academics, we seem to give the vast majority of our attention to, and spend the bulk of our efforts on, students whose efforts fall far below our expectations, those who, if not among the 25-30% who fail to finish high school, may enter community college reading at the fifth-grade level, and more than half of whom will drop out from there. Naturally we want to help those who are doing poorly in school. Still, we do want our most brilliant students to start companies, become scientists, be our judges, diplomats, and elected officials, teach history, write good books, and otherwise work to sustain and advance our civilization. But our basic attitude is–let them manage on their own.
How different it is for our promising young athletes, for whom we have the highest expectations, on whom we keep the most elaborate statistics, and to whom we dedicate the most voluminous local media coverage, as well as nationally-televised high school football and basketball games.
If we matched for them the expectations we have for our students’ academic work, we might be asking them to run just one lap, do two pushups, and spend most of their time helping out in gym classes, or playing video games, instead of practicing their sport. But our young people, being the way they are, would no doubt “cheat,” as some do in academics, by deriving higher standards from their own ambition and from seeing the achievements of their peers, and the athletes for whom we might try to set such low expectations, like the young scholars for whom we do, would continue to rise above them, and to astonish us with their accomplishments. Dumb Lucky us.
Will Fitzhugh
The Concord Review
25 June 2012
Extra Credit: Madison ‘focus’ schools get more detailed explanation
A few weeks ago, 10 Madison schools learned they have been labeled “focus” schools under a new accountability system expected to replace No Child Left Behind.
More recently the School District has received more detailed explanations from the Department of Public Instruction for why each school received the label.
The schools are among the 10 percent of the state’s Title I schools demonstrating the largest achievement gaps or lowest performance in reading, math or graduation rates among low-income and minority groups. Title I schools receive federal funding targeted at low-income student populations.
The “focus” status replaces the old “schools identified for improvement” or SIFI status (pronounced like the cable channel that plays Battlestar Galactica reruns).
U.Va. research: Arguing kids could have benefits
Though parents have been teaching their children not to argue with adults for generations, new research from the University of Virginia shows that young teenagers who are taught to argue effectively are more likely to resist peer pressure to use drugs or alcohol later in adolescence.
“It turns out that what goes on in the family is actually a training ground for teens in terms of how to negotiate with other people,” said Joseph Allen, a U.Va. psychology professor and the lead author of the study, results of which were published in a recent edition of the journal Child Development.
Allen said that parents are often “scared to death about peer pressure,” but also frustrated by argumentative children.
“What we’re finding is there’s a surprising connection between the two,” he said. Allen noted that teens “learn they can be taken seriously” through interactions with their parents.
Madison School District Science Program Review
Lisa Wachtel & Tim Peterson [153 page PDF]:
Data Analysis and Synthesis
The analysis of the data highlighted 5 key elements: time for science, an unacceptable failure rate, teacher preparation, science in high schools, and the process for implementing the Next Generation Science Standards.
- Time for science: in trying to balance the need to close the achievement gap with regards to Literacy and Mathematics, the committee believes that science provides a context for the use of these two content areas.
- Unacceptable failure rate: too many students are failing at key transition points in their academic careers.
- Teacher professional development: where professional development has occurred, student achievement has improved. There is a lack of professional development for teachers at elementary and high school.
- Science in secondary schools: consistent 9th grade courses, improved communication with guidance, and opportunities for middle school and high school teachers to plan need to be implemented in order to respond to the new standards, focus on student achievement, and connect students to science career pathways.
- Process for implementing the Next Generation Science Standards: the new standards will require significant work in order provide the educational program envisioned by the standards.
Recommendations
The recommendations were categorized similar to the Literacy Program Evaluation from 2010-11. There are seven broad recommendations, each with several specific action steps to support the recommendation. The recommendations are below, as well as 1-2 significant action steps.
1. Consistent, culturally relevant and aligned K-12 curriculum
a. Scope and Sequence development along with core practices
b. 9th grade course development
2. Align program with the 8 Scientific and Engineering Practices of the Next Generation Science Standards; increase the use of data within the district program
a. Increase science credit graduation requirement to 3 credits
b. Ensure minutes of instruction in science are met
3. Implement science interventions and assessments that support the Response to Intervention and
Instruction process within the district
a. Implement science specific programming options available to all students
b. Implement interventions and progress monitoring to support science instruction for all
students
4. Review and purchase science program materials to achieve consistency and equity district-wide
a. Identify material that supports implementation of the Next Generation Science Standards
b. Phased implementation with strong professional development
5. Implement science assessments which provide data to drive program improvement
a. Implement a comprehensive science assessment system to include common summative assessments
b. Implement a process to ensure that data helps inform classroom instruction and overall program improvement
6. Work collaboratively to provide a culturally diverse science teaching staff across the district a. With HR, work to increase hiring highly effective, culturally aware science teachers b. Work to develop building level science expertise through teacher leadership
7. Establish a comprehensive and flexible science professional development plan
a. Develop and provide strong on-line professional development for every grade level
b. Improve classroom safety through a district-wide safety professional development program
MMSD Literacy Program Review; “Instruction in Phonics Evident”, “Coloring, cutting/pasting and copying of other printed work would not be considered quality independent literacy work and this was seen in many classrooms”. Remarkable. Reading is job #1.
Lisa Wachtel, Executive Director of Curriculum & Assessment [104 Page PDF]:
Grades K-2 Literacy Walkthroughs
Background: Observations of literacy classes, or, walkthroughs, were scheduled for seventeen of MMSD’ s highest poverty elementary schools during the months of April and May. Three administrators visited each school for a half-day for a minimum of 12 hours of observation per school. All K-2 classrooms are observed for at least an hour by one of the three administrators. Second/third grade classrooms were observed in schools with multi-aged instructional designs. When substitute teachers are present, follow-up observations were attempted.
The purpose of the walk throughs was to provide schools with a baseline of literacy practices and to communicate a district snapshot of K-2 observable literacy practices when student routines and independence are well established. Although not a complete picture, the walkthroughs provided evidence of teaching emphasis, expectations, school/district implementation efforts and additional anecdotal information that might suggest potential areas for consideration.
Timeline: April16- May 25, 2012 Observations
May 30-31,2012 Meet with principals to discuss results of the observations
Observation Tool: Please see the attached document. This is an observation protocol merging documents developed by Fountas and Pinnell and Dom. This observation tool was selected because it captured the general categories of literacy instruction that would be included in a 90-120 minute literacy lesson. Observers could capture any of the elements observed during the 60 observations. An additional section, classroom environment provides a way to document materials and classroom structures.
Preliminary Findings:
1. The majority of primary literacy environments were organized around a Balanced Literacy Model. However, within that model, there was significant variation in what the model looked like. This lack of consistency was seen both within and across all 17 schools.
2. Most classrooms were organized in a planned and thoughtful manner. Attention was given to the development and use of a classroom library, individual book boxes and areas where students could work in pairs or small groups.
3. Although classrooms in most schools were thoughtfully organized, some classrooms were cluttered and there were not optimal environments for learning. It is recommended that IRTs work with teachers to create good physical environments in all classrooms.
4. Although the majority of classrooms had at least a 90 minute literacy block, some did not. Attention to direct instruction for at least 90 minutes is crucial for the success of all learners. Principals must make this a clear expectation. The literacy block must also be implemented with fidelity.
5. There was a lack of consistency both within and across grade levels based on common core standards and best teaching practices. This should be an area of emphasis for all schools. IRTs and principals will need to develop a tight structure of accountability that supports the Common Core State Standards and the Curriculum Companion tool.
6. In most cases, instruction in phonics and phonemic awareness was clearly evident. This instruction reflected the professional development both at the district and school level around phonics instruction, phonemic awareness and word work. Instruction appeared to be more systematic, targeted and focused than in previous years.
7. Guided Reading Instruction was observed in the many of the classrooms. It should be noted that in several schools guided reading did not occur five days a week. A wide range of practices were observed during guided reading. Teaching points were often unclear. Observers noted few teachers administering running records or maintaining other types of formative assessments.
8. Targeted, focused instruction around a precise teaching point is a critical component of quality literacy instruction. Focused feedback emphasizing areas of student mastery was also inconsistent. Again, consistency related to core practices as well as ongoing specific assessment practices should be apparent within and across elementary grades.
9. Professional development work should continue around the use of assessment tools. Principals must require the practice of ongoing assessment in all classrooms.
10. The development and use of anchor charts and mini lessons are critical pieces of strong core instruction. Anchor charts and mini lessons were seen in some classrooms and not in others. Professional development should address these ideas so that there is consistency across the district.
11. In many classrooms, the quality of independent student work was of concern. Teachers in all classrooms must pay careful attention to independent student work. This work must support the structure of the literacy block, be consistent with the focus of guided reading and be at each student’s independent level. Emphasis must consistently be on authentic reading and writing tasks. Work should be differentiated. Coloring, cutting/pasting and copying of other printed work would not be considered quality independent literacy work and this was seen in many classrooms (bold added).
12. Teachers were inconsistent in giving feedback to students related to specific learning. Clear, corrective feedback and/or affirmation of solid understandings will accelerate individual student learning and help learners tie the known to the new.
13. All students should also be receiving ongoing, focused feedback related to independent work and independent reading. Regular conferencing and assessment of independent reading and writing is a crucial component of a rigorous literacy curriculum.
Madison School District Literacy Program Review’
Lisa Wachtel, Executive Director of Curriculum & Assessment [104 Page PDF]:
Grades K-2 Literacy Walkthroughs
Background: Observations of literacy classes, or, walkthroughs, were scheduled for seventeen of MMSD’ s highest poverty elementary schools during the months of April and May. Three administrators visited each school for a half-day for a minimum of 12 hours of observation per school. All K-2 classrooms are observed for at least an hour by one of the three administrators. Second/third grade classrooms were observed in schools with multi-aged instructional designs. When substitute teachers are present, follow-up observations were attempted.
The purpose of the walk throughs was to provide schools with a baseline of literacy practices and to communicate a district snapshot of K-2 observable literacy practices when student routines and independence are well established. Although not a complete picture, the walkthroughs provided evidence of teaching emphasis, expectations, school/district implementation efforts and additional anecdotal information that might suggest potential areas for consideration.
Timeline: April16- May 25, 2012 Observations
May 30-31,2012 Meet with principals to discuss results of the observations
Observation Tool: Please see the attached document. This is an observation protocol merging documents developed by Fountas and Pinnell and Dom. This observation tool was selected because it captured the general categories of literacy instruction that would be included in a 90-120 minute literacy lesson. Observers could capture any of the elements observed during the 60 observations. An additional section, classroom environment provides a way to document materials and classroom structures.
Preliminary Findings:
1. The majority of primary literacy environments were organized around a Balanced Literacy Model. However, within that model, there was significant variation in what the model looked like. This lack of consistency was seen both within and across all 17 schools.
2. Most classrooms were organized in a planned and thoughtful manner. Attention was given to the development and use of a classroom library, individual book boxes and areas where students could work in pairs or small groups.
3. Although classrooms in most schools were thoughtfully organized, some classrooms were cluttered and there were not optimal environments for learning. It is recommended that IRTs work with teachers to create good physical environments in all classrooms.
4. Although the majority of classrooms had at least a 90 minute literacy block, some did not. Attention to direct instruction for at least 90 minutes is crucial for the success of all learners. Principals must make this a clear expectation. The literacy block must also be implemented with fidelity.
5. There was a lack of consistency both within and across grade levels based on common core standards and best teaching practices. This should be an area of emphasis for all schools. IRTs and principals will need to develop a tight structure of accountability that supports the Common Core State Standards and the Curriculum Companion tool.
6. In most cases, instruction in phonics and phonemic awareness was clearly evident. This instruction reflected the professional development both at the district and school level around phonics instruction, phonemic awareness and word work. Instruction appeared to be more systematic, targeted and focused than in previous years.
7. Guided Reading Instruction was observed in the many of the classrooms. It should be noted that in several schools guided reading did not occur five days a week. A wide range of practices were observed during guided reading. Teaching points were often unclear. Observers noted few teachers administering running records or maintaining other types of formative assessments.
8. Targeted, focused instruction around a precise teaching point is a critical component of quality literacy instruction. Focused feedback emphasizing areas of student mastery was also inconsistent. Again, consistency related to core practices as well as ongoing specific assessment practices should be apparent within and across elementary grades.
9. Professional development work should continue around the use of assessment tools. Principals must require the practice of ongoing assessment in all classrooms.
10. The development and use of anchor charts and mini lessons are critical pieces of strong core instruction. Anchor charts and mini lessons were seen in some classrooms and not in others. Professional development should address these ideas so that there is consistency across the district.
11. In many classrooms, the quality of independent student work was of concern. Teachers in all classrooms must pay careful attention to independent student work. This work must support the structure of the literacy block, be consistent with the focus of guided reading and be at each student’s independent level. Emphasis must consistently be on authentic reading and writing tasks. Work should be differentiated. Coloring, cutting/pasting and copying of other printed work would not be considered quality independent literacy work and this was seen in many classrooms (bold added).
12. Teachers were inconsistent in giving feedback to students related to specific learning. Clear, corrective feedback and/or affirmation of solid understandings will accelerate individual student learning and help learners tie the known to the new.
13. All students should also be receiving ongoing, focused feedback related to independent work and independent reading. Regular conferencing and assessment of independent reading and writing is a crucial component of a rigorous literacy curriculum.
Milwaukee per-pupil spending fourth highest among 50 largest districts in nation, Madison spent 8% more; “Not geared toward driving those dollars back to the classroom” Well worth reading.
Of the 50 largest school districts by enrollment in the United States, Milwaukee Public Schools spent more per pupil than all but three East Coast districts in the 2009-’10 school year, according to public-school finance figures released by the Census Bureau on Thursday.
MPS ranked near the top among large districts by spending $14,038 per pupil in the 2010 fiscal year. It was outspent by the New York City School District, with the highest per-pupil spending among large districts – $19,597 – followed by Montgomery County Public Schools near Washington, D.C., and Baltimore City Public Schools in Maryland, which spent $15,582 and $14,711, respectively, per pupil that year.
MPS officials on Thursday acknowledged Milwaukee’s high per-pupil costs in comparison with other large districts, but they also pointed to unique local factors that drive up the cost, particularly the city’s high rate of poverty, the district’s high rate of students with special needs and other long-term costs, such as aging buildings and historically high benefit rates for MPS employees that the district is working to lower.
“The cost of doing business for Milwaukee Public Schools and Wisconsin is relatively high,” Superintendent Gregory Thornton said. “But because of legacy and structural costs, we were not geared toward driving those dollars back into the classroom.”
“What we have to be is more effective and efficient,” he said.Madison’s 2009-2010 budget was $370,287,471, according to the now defunct Citizen’s Budget, $15,241 per student (24,295 students).
Why Milwaukee Public Schools’ per student spending is high by Mike Ford:To the point, why is MPS per-pupil spending so high? There are two simple explanations.
First, as articulated by Dale Knapp of the Wisconsin Taxpayer’s Alliance in today’s story, MPS per-pupil spending is high because it has always been high. Since Wisconsin instituted revenue limits in the early 90s the amount of state aid and local tax revenue a district can raise (and correspondingly spend) per-pupil has been indexed to what a district raised in the prior year. In every state budget legislators specify the statewide allowable per-pupil revenue limit increase amount. Because MPS had a high base to begin with, the amount of revenue the district raises and spends per-pupil is always on the high side. Further, because annual increases are indexed off of what a district raised in the prior year, there is a built-in incentive for districts to raise and spend as much as allowed under revenue limits.
Second, categorical funding to MPS has increased dramatically since 2001. Categorical funds are program specific funds that exist outside of the state aid formula and hence are not capped by revenue limits. In 2001 MPS received $1,468 in categorical funding per-pupil, in 2012 it received $2,318 per-pupil (A 58% increase).
State and local categorical funding to MPS has gone up since 2001, but the bulk of the increase in per-pupil categorical funding is federal. Federal categorical funds per-pupil increased 73% since 2001. Included in this pot of federal money is title funding for low-income pupils, and funding for special needs pupils. The focal year of the study that spurred the Journal Sentinel article, 2010, also is important because of the impact of federal stimulus funding.Comparing Milwaukee Public and Voucher Schools’ Per Student Spending
Note I am not trying to calculate per-pupil education funding or suggest that this is the amount of money that actually reaches a school or classroom; it is a simple global picture of how much public revenue exists per-pupil in MPS. Below are the relevant numbers for 2012, from MPS documents:
…….
Though not perfect, I think $13,063 (MPS) and $7,126 (MPCP) are reasonably comparative per-pupil public support numbers for MPS and the MPCP.Spending more is easy if you can simply vote for tax increases, or spread spending growth across a large rate base, as a utility or healthcare provider might do. Over time, however, tax & spending growth becomes a substantial burden, one that changes economic decision making. I often point out per student spending differences in an effort to consider what drives these decisions. Austin, TX, a city often mentioned by Madison residents in a positive way spends 45% less per student.
Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman’s 2009 speech to the Madison Rotary Club:“Beware of legacy practices (most of what we do every day is the maintenance of the status quo), @12:40 minutes into the talk – the very public institutions intended for student learning has become focused instead on adult employment. I say that as an employee. Adult practices and attitudes have become embedded in organizational culture governed by strict regulations and union contracts that dictate most of what occurs inside schools today. Any impetus to change direction or structure is met with swift and stiff resistance. It’s as if we are stuck in a time warp keeping a 19th century school model on life support in an attempt to meet 21st century demands.” Zimman went on to discuss the Wisconsin DPI’s vigorous enforcement of teacher licensing practices and provided some unfortunate math & science teacher examples (including the “impossibility” of meeting the demand for such teachers (about 14 minutes)). He further cited exploding teacher salary, benefit and retiree costs eating instructional dollars (“Similar to GM”; “worry” about the children given this situation).
Finally, there’s this: Paul Geitner:
The Court of Justice had previously ruled that a person who gets sick before going on vacation is entitled to reschedule the vacation, and on Thursday it said that right extended into the vacation itself.
Should Colleges Consider Legacies in the Admissions Process?
Many colleges ask applicants if they have a parent or grandparent who went to the school. The student’s answer is often the difference between acceptance or rejection.
At some of the country’s most selective colleges, one study has shown, having an alum parent boosts the applicant’s probability of acceptance by 45 percentage points. That is, if one candidate has a 30% chance of admission, an applicant with the exact same academic record and extracurricular activities but also a parent who attended the school as an undergraduate would have a 75% chance.
MPS partnership cements scholarships to Morehouse College
A new partnership between Milwaukee Public Schools and a prominent all-male Southern college has attracted enough local business dollars to support near full-ride academic scholarships for 10 Milwaukee-area graduates.
MPS Superintendent Gregory Thornton on Tuesday announced the partnership with Morehouse College, a 147-year-old historically black institution for men in Atlanta. The kicker: $800,000 has been provided by local businesses to help pay for the 10 teenagers to attend Morehouse for four years.
The recipients included seven MPS students, one from Homestead High School in Mequon, one from Shorewood High School and one from Madison La Follette High School in Madison.
All 10 sat in Rufus King International High School’s library Tuesday morning during the announcement and subsequent ceremonial signing of letters of intent to attend the school. They all wore crisp button-down shirts and matching maroon-and-white striped ties.
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Fiscal Indulgences
Young men and women used to dream about starting a business in their garage, or discovering a way to make a living while doodling on the back of a napkin in an all-important moment of inspiration. Today, they’re more apt to dream about finding a taxpayer subsidy or low-interest, government business loan.
Subsidies are easy to find. Wisconsin’s Legislative Audit Bureau published a review of the state’s economic development programs the other day, and found that since 2007 there have been 196 of them that dispersed up to $1 billion in financial assistance.
No one, I suspect, has any real idea just what these programs accomplish.
There’s a small problem. Many of the recipients, the audit discovered, don’t always submit the reports that are supposed to help taxpayers determine whether the loans and grants and tax credits are a good investment. But there’s also a much larger problem the audit ignored. The case of Mercury Marine, the Fond du Lac engine and boat manufacturer, shows why.
In March of 2010, the Wisconsin Department of Commerce gave Brunswick Corp., the parent company of Mercury Marine, a $10 million grant. The cash, federal stimulus money actually, was funneled through the State Energy Program and was spent on new windows, HVAC improvements and energy-efficient lighting at the Mercury Marine plant, among other things.
Diversity lags at highly selective Thomas Jefferson High School
When I first heard complaints that the admissions process at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology had gone soft, I guessed that the cause of the unrest was an effort by our nation’s most selective school to become more diverse.
Of the freshmen who entered the Fairfax County public school in 2010, only 13 were Hispanic and four were black. That amounted to 3.5 percent of the class, even though 52 Hispanic and 29 black applicants had academic records good enough to survive the first cut. I assumed that the school, reacting to those numbers, had begun to admit more Hispanic and black students, which in turn might be the source of criticism for a downturn in this year’s freshman grades.
I was wrong. More freshmen this year needed remediation, but growing ethnic diversity cannot be the reason.
Pennsylvania & School Vouchers
The recent Wisconsin recall election showed that even voters in blue states are willing to reward leaders who take on entrenched government unions. Have Pennsylvania Republicans missed the memo?
The question is raised by Pennsylvania’s continued failure to enact school vouchers, even as Harrisburg has been run for two years by Republicans who campaigned on school choice. Gov. Tom Corbett has talked the talk, calling education “the civil rights issue of the 21st century,” blasting a system in which “some students are consigned to failure because of their ZIP codes,” and identifying vouchers as his top educational priority. But with legislators’ summer break approaching on June 30 (and elections dominating the calendar after that), vouchers are already off the table. Apparently the fury of teachers unions would be too much for the Keystone State to bear.
Last October, Pennsylvania’s Senate passed a bipartisan voucher bill to throw an immediate lifeline to low-income students in the worst 5% of schools, with roughly 550,000 low-income kids becoming eligible within three years. Eight months later, Speaker Sam Smith and Majority Leader Mike Turzai–both Republicans who claim to support choice–haven’t brought the bill up for a vote in the House.
Critics decry latest shrinkage of L.A. Unified’s school year
A tentative agreement to shorten the school year for Los Angeles students — for the fourth consecutive year — is almost certain to weaken academic gains, and was driven, critics said, by expediency more than the best interests of students.
The deal reached last week between L.A. Unified and its teachers union calls for canceling up to five instructional days from the 2012-13 school year. It also could reduce teacher pay by the equivalent of 10 days overall, about a 5% salary cut. This would bring to 18 the number of school days cut over four years.
All sides agree that the pact is bad for students but some insist it was unavoidable. The district had come under increasing pressure to avoid eliminating adult education and elementary arts programs and sharply increasing class sizes, among other things. The union wanted to spare more than 4,000 teachers and others from layoffs, although it still stands to lose more than 1,300 members.Related: What more time can (and can’t) do for school turnarounds, by Elena Silva.
The Kids Have Chores. Why Am I So Tired?
I fired my children. It was a cold Saturday in December, when I told them they no longer had jobs and should leave the house. I didn’t care where they went, as long as they got out of my hair for three hours so I could do their chores without bitterness.
Our detailed checklist-based system, with jobs paying from 50 cents to $3, was a failure. Every weekend I’d nag my four girls–ages 10 to 15–for a day or so to start. The girls would bicker throughout, as one tried to sweep before another had gotten around to dealing with rugs. Every time I’d turn around, another girl would have wandered off before finishing, distracted by a book or the iPad. Then they’d fail inspection.
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Federal Deficit & Debt
For all of the hemming and hawing about spending cuts in Washington, the Congressional Budget Office’s latest long-term budget forecast reflects two painful facts for Washington: How large the nation’s problems remain, and how the GOP’s 2010 surge into Washington has had only a limited impact in changing America’s fiscal trajectory. The annual report, released on Tuesday by Capitol Hill’s nonpartisan budget umpires, argues that if Congress’s current policies continue – meaning that the Bush tax cuts are renewed at year’s end and Medicare providers don’t face drastic reductions in payments, among other issues – federal debt held by the public will reach 93 percent of gross-domestic product (GDP) by the year 2022. That’s down about seven percentage points from CBO’s 2011 forecast, which saw the nation’s debt as a share of GDP rising to 100 percent by 2021. That’s thanks in large part to the Budget Control Act of last summer – also known as the debt-ceiling deal – where Congress achieved more than $2 trillion in savings over the next decade through a combination of spending cuts and discretionary spending caps.
Related: How Safe are US Treasuries?
Children go back to basics in maths
Children will be introduced to times tables, mental arithmetic and fractions in the first two years of school as part of a back-to-basics overhaul of the National Curriculum.
Ministers will this week announce key tasks pupils are expected to master at each age under wide-ranging plans to counter more than a decade of dumbing down in schools.
A draft mathematics curriculum suggests that five and six year-olds will be expected to count up to 100, recognise basic fractions and memorise the results of simple sums by the end of the first year of compulsory education.
In the second year, they will be required to know the two, five and 10 times tables, add and subtract two-digit numbers in their head and begin to use graphs.
Test scores not enough to measure success at Wings
The 10-year flight of Wings Academy will end Tuesday. The closing of the small school on the south side where the vast majority of students qualify for special education leaves me thinking that nationwide we haven’t worked hard enough on figuring out what to aim for with special ed kids and how to figure out if we’re achieving it.
To what degree should we set the same goals for at least a large portion of special ed kids as for other kids, largely measured by test scores? Is success on less measurable fronts – personal development and preparation for adulthood – good enough? Better? Settling for too little?
Wings was an independent charter school, authorized to operate by the Milwaukee School Board. It had the atmosphere of a friendly, energetic, but, as one staff member put it, squirrelly family. Its program included phonics-oriented reading instruction, individualized and project-based work in many classes, tae kwon as its physical education focus, and a lot of relationship building among staff, students and families.
Test scores at Wings were, as Nicola Ciurro, co-founder and head of the school, put it, terrible. “We always knew that,” she said. Among 10th-graders in last fall’s testing, 34% were proficient in reading, 6% in math.
About 80% of the 150 students, who ranged from first- to 12th-graders, had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, learning disorders, autism, Asperger’s syndrome, dyslexia or other special circumstances. Many of the other 20% were “gray area” kids when it came to special needs, Ciurro said.
Viewpoints: Open enrollment unlocks path to choice Share
Getting any school choice legislation passed in California is a daunting task. The Legislature, in thrall to the teachers unions, is unwilling to disrupt the moribund status quo, which has led to disastrous consequences for public education. But the Open Enrollment Act has jumped through various legal and political challenges and miraculously survived, though efforts are under way to have it weakened.
Included in California’s 2010 sweeping reform package, the Open Enrollment Act has received far less attention than its sister statute, the “parent trigger” law. But while the parent trigger provision requires the signatures of 50 percent of parents at a school designated as chronically underperforming by the California Department of Education, the open enrollment provision requires only one. It is efficient, simple and unencumbered by the political obstacles that have undermined parent empowerment under the parent trigger law – one parent can rise to the challenge and demand change.
WEAC has no regrets about failed Walker recall
Since the collective bargaining measure was enacted last year, WEAC’s membership has dropped from around 90,000 to 70,000, but the remaining membership became energized by the recall. Union leaders are hopeful that passion will continue as the union rallies around issues such as public school funding. The union is working on membership drives this summer.
“I think we will be smaller but stronger,” Bell said.
Burkhalter estimated 25% to 30% of WEAC members voted for Walker in 2010 while on Tuesday about 5% voted for the governor.
“He really united our membership,” said Burkhalter.
Bell said Walker prevailed in the recall partly because many voters don’t like recall elections and some believed recalls should only be used in cases of malfeasance. She admitted public employees were easy targets for the governor and Republican lawmakers because of generous pensions and benefits, which Bell noted were mostly a result of former Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson’s qualified economic offer law that gave better benefits in return for salary concessions to public school employees several years ago.
Madison Teachers Newsletter; Teacher & Labor Course
Register now for Teaching Labor History Course August 6 and 7
Many MTI members have asked that MTI once again sponsor a staff development course conducted by the UW Extension’s School for Workers on “Teaching Labor History Through Film and Media: Struggles from Our Past & Present, Part 2”. Using films, music and other sources (which were not shown during last year’s course) this class will look at some of the epic struggles of workers in recent and contemporary history and will discuss ideas about teaching labor history and collective bargaining in the classroom. The course will also examine the impact of economic, social and political conditions on workers and their unions, as well as the role played by business and government. The course will also examine the significance of immigration, and ethnic, racial and gender differences to the evolution of the American working class.
The ten (10 ) hour, two-day course will meet from 9:30 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. on August 6 and 7, 2012. The course is offered at no cost to MTI members, a light lunch will be provided. Space is limited to the first 40 registrants. Under the terms of MTI’s Collective Bargaining Agreement, Madison teachers may be eligible for 1.0 PAC credits, subject to approval by the MTI/MMSD Professional Advancement Credit Committee.
Contact MTI to register (257-0491 or mti@madisonteachers.org)
Forget Wisconsin, The Unions’ Biggest Loss Was in CA. And What It Means For Improving Schools
Pension reform will help cities balance budgets, but will their schools still be able to attract talented teachers?Bad news for teachers and other public-sector employees: America is more than ready to cut your pensions and benefits. While most politicos had been focusing this week on the Wisconsin recall, an election 2,100 miles away in San Jose, Calif., may be a bigger harbinger of the kind of austerity voters are developing a taste for.
In this city of about a million residents an hour south of San Francisco, voters on Tuesday approved arguably the country’s boldest pension cuts. San Jose’s Democratic mayor, Chuck Reed, has been grappling with ballooning pension costs that have increased from $73 million to $245 million in the last decade. Retirement costs already consume more than 20% of the city’s general fund, which helps explain why Reed was pushing San Jose to pass Measure B, which would give voters the power to approve increases in pension benefits and give the city the power to suspend automatic 3% annual raises during a fiscal crisis. The measure would also make workers contribute half the cost of their pensions; employees currently pay $3 for every $8 the city contributes, and the city is financially responsible for any shortfalls. Also included are provisions to curb the abuse of disability benefits. It’s a tough package — and will certainly be challenged in court because it changes benefits not only for future workers, something everyone agrees is legal, but for current ones as well. Nonetheless, voters passed it by a stunning margin of 69.5% in favor, 30.4% opposed. A pension reform measure also passed in San Diego.
Recall Day Rhetoric
A few links related to Wisconsin’s recall election:
#wirecall on Twitter
Madison Teachers, Inc Twitter Feed; Pro-Recall
Madison’s Isthmus
True School Activists Vote for Walker by “Penelope Trunk”, via a kind reader’s email.
TJ Mertz: Why Scott Walker doesn’t recall the QEO and how to help recall him
WisPolitics Elections Blog (WisPolitics is now owned by the Capital Times Company)
MacIver Institute
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel All Politics Blog.
Daily Kos
Talking Points Memo
Five Thirty Eight Blog..
National Review
WEAC Twitter Feed
AFSCME Twitter Feed
Politico
Peterson, Howell and West: Teachers Unions Have a Popularity Problem
Paul Peterson, William Howell & Martin West:
However Wisconsin’s recall election turns out on Tuesday, teachers unions already appear to be losing a larger political fight–in public opinion. In our latest annual national survey, we found that the share of the public with a positive view of union impact on local schools has dropped by seven percentage points in the past year. Among teachers, the decline was an even more remarkable 16 points.
On behalf of Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance and the journal Education Next, we have asked the following question since 2009: “Some people say that teacher unions are a stumbling block to school reform. Others say that unions fight for better schools and better teachers. What do you think? Do you think teacher unions have a generally positive effect on schools, or do you think they have a generally negative effect?”
Respondents can choose among five options: very positive, somewhat positive, neither positive nor negative, somewhat negative, and very negative.
NJ Report Cards Cause Consternation Re: “Real” Cost Per Pupil
The NJ DOE released the 2010-2011 School Report Cards yesterday, with a few new bells and whistles. One new feature is accurate graduation rates, previously self-reported by individual districts; another spotlights the cost per pupil when other costs – mandated preschools, out-of-district tuition, debt, transportation – are added to the mix.
(Weirdly, Trenton Public Schools is missing from the database.)
Here’s a rundown of local coverage, which is primarily focused on school costs.
NJ Spotlight (its interactive Report Card here) comments on the impact of NJ’s fiscal difficulties on school costs:
Revealed: How Banks Skim Millions From Student Aid Using Debit-Card-Linked Student IDs
Over 9 million students are at risk for increased educational debt, due to bank-affiliated campus debit cards that come with high fees, insufficient consumer protections, and few options. Financial institutions now have affinity partnerships with almost 900 campuses nationwide, grafting bank products onto student IDs and other campus cards to become the primary recipient of billions in federal financial aid to distribute to students.
“Campus debit cards are wolves in sheep’s clothing,” observed Rich Williams, U.S. PIRG Higher Education Advocate and report co-author. “Students think they can access their dollars freely, but instead their aid is being eaten up in fees.”
The Campus Debit Card Trap, a new report released by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund, finds that banks and financial firms now control or influence federal financial aid disbursement to over 9 million students by linking checking accounts and prepaid debit cards to student IDs. For decades, students would receive their aid by check, without being charged any fees to access their student aid. Now, students end up paying big fees on their student aid, including per-swipe fees of $0.50, inactivity fees of $10 or more after 6 months, overdraft fees of up to $38 and plenty more. Financial institutions aggressively market or default students into their bank accounts to maximize these fees.
The National History Club
Robert L. Nasson, via a kind email:
The National History Club (NHC) was formed in March 2002 to promote the reading, writing, discussion, and enjoyment of history among secondary students and their teachers by giving after school history clubs around the country a clearinghouse to share history-related activities and information with each other. We now have 445 chapters in 43 states and there are over 13,000 students involved. Each chapter sets its own course, and this has led to a wide array of activities that include: Veterans Day ceremonies involving local veterans, participation in National History Day, historic preservation outreach in their communities, and trips to such historic sites as the 16th Street Baptist Church, Valley Forge, and the Lewis and Clark State Historic Site.
This makes the organization unique. By encouraging students to take charge of the direction of their clubs, the NHC uses a bottom-up approach, where students passionate about history are doing the history activities they choose. Rather than a traditional top-down method, which often leads to apathetic students, the NHC has given an ownership stake to every chapter that has joined the organization.
History is the only topic taught in every secondary school that can engage students in learning from past to achieve understanding of, and tackling human problems in, the world today. In history there is truly something for everyone. History is political, artistic, social, economic, military, athletic, scientific, cultural, religious, technological, literary, philosophical, geographic, ethnic, and mathematical. History can be as contemporary as yesterday and as ancient as Mesopotamia, as near as the city one lives in and as far away as Andromeda. History can be seen and touched, read and written, made and remembered. Everyone is a part of history.
More importantly, the study of history builds the critical skills students need to become responsible citizens and effective leaders. Researching and discovering new information, as well as reading, synthesizing, and communicating that information effectively: these are the skills that help make someone successful in business, in civic life, and even in science.
We produce a tri-annual Newsletter that features chapter accounts from throughout the country, and run a number of award programs with various history organizations such as George Washington’s Mount Vernon and The History Channel. Chapters are frequently sharing ideas and activities with each other, and this leads to an active and involved membership. Through this interaction, students and Advisors see that they are not alone in their passion for the study of history, and this encourages more schools to join.
The work of the NHC is as important as ever considering the deteriorating history standards in our schools. A 2010 Civics Assessment administered by the National Assessment of Educational Progress displayed the lack of understanding of civics among students in our secondary schools. Among some of the key findings:
Fewer than half of American eighth graders knew the purpose of the Bill of Rights.
Only one in 10 eighth graders demonstrated acceptable knowledge of the checks and balances among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches.
Three-quarters of high school seniors were unable to name a power granted to Congress by the Constitution.
While there are many people and organizations now complaining about the historical illiteracy of the younger generation, we are one of the few actually doing something about it. The NHC has a sustainable model in place, and we are constantly adding chapters in schools from big cities and rural towns to our community. We want students, teachers, and schools that have a passion for history to join our movement. To view our latest Newsletter or to find out how to create a chapter and join the NHC please visit www.nationalhistoryclub.org
Robert L. Nasson
Executive Director,
National History Club
P.O. Box 441812
Somerville, MA 02144
www.nationalhistoryclub.org
rnasson@nationalhistoryclub.org
Measuring Teacher Effectiveness
Research and experience make this clear: Great teachers change lives. They inspire and motivate students, and set them on a path for future success. By contrast, just one underperforming teacher can have a lasting negative impact on a student.
Given this reality, significant time and attention has rightly been focused on ensuring that all children have outstanding teachers at the front of their classrooms. This includes improving how teacher performance is evaluated and using evaluations to guide a range of decisions about prepration, recruitment, training, assignment, salary, tenure and dismissal.
As states, districts and school systems across the nation work towards effective teacher evaluation systems, they must tackle difficult questions about design and implementation. This research report aims to help by offering a detailed look at the key components of 10 teacher evaluation models
Madison School District Strategic Plan Update
Madison School District 600K PDF:.
I recently attended the third annual update to the 2009 Madison School District Strategic Plan. You can follow the process via these notes and links.
I thought it might be useful to share a few observations on our local public schools during this process:
- General public interest in the schools continues to be the exception, rather than the norm.
- I sense that the District is more open to discussing substantive issues such as reading, math and overall achievement during the past few years. However, it does not appear to have translated into the required tough decision making regarding non-performing programs and curriculum.
- MTI President Kerry Motoviloff recent statement that the District administration has “introduced more than 18 programs and initiatives for elementary teachers since 2009”.
- Full teacher Infinite Campus use remains a goal, despite spending millions of dollars, money which could have gone elsewhere given the limited implementation. Unfortunately, this is a huge missed opportunity. Complete course syllabus, assignment and gradebook information would be a powerful tool when evaluating achievement issues.
- The implementation of “standards based report cards” further derailed the Infinite Campus spending/implementation. This is an example of spending money (and time – consider the opportunity cost) on programs that are actually in conflict.
- The District continues to use the oft criticized and very low benchmark WKCE as their measure. This, despite starting to use the MAP exam this year. Nearby Monona Grove has been using MAP for some time.
- Three Madison School Board members attended: Mary Burke, James Howard and Ed Hughes.
- UW-Madison school of Education dean Julie Underwood attended and asked, to my astonishment, (paraphrased) how the District’s various diversity programs were benefiting kids (and achievement)?
The only effective way forward, in my view, is to simplify the District’s core mission to reading, english and math. This means eliminating programs and focusing on the essentials. That will be a difficult change for the organization, but I don’t see how adding programs to the current pile benefits anyone. It will cost more and do less.
Less than 24 hours after I attended the MMSD’s Strategic Plan update, I, through a variety of circumstances, visited one of Milwaukee’s highest performing private/voucher schools, a school with more than 90% low income students. The petri dish that is Milwaukee will produce a far more robust and effective set of schools over the next few decades than the present monolithic approach favored here. More about that visit, soon.
Higher Education’s Online Revolution
The substitution of technology (which is cheap) for labor (which is expensive) can vastly increase access to an elite-caliber education.
At the recent news conference announcing edX, a $60 million Harvard-MIT partnership in online education, university leaders spoke of reaching millions of new students in India, China and around the globe. They talked of the “revolutionary” potential of online learning, hailing it as the “single biggest change in education since the printing press.”
Heady talk indeed, but they are right. The nation, and the world, are in the early stages of a historic transformation in how students learn, teachers teach, and schools and school systems are organized.
These same university leaders mentioned the limits of edX itself. Its online courses would not lead to Harvard or MIT degrees, they noted, and were no substitute for the centuries-old residential education of their hallowed institutions. They also acknowledged that the initiative, which offers free online courses prepared by some of the nation’s top professors, is paid for by university funds–and that there is no revenue stream and no business plan to sustain it.
Growing Education Divide in Cities
Haeyound Park, via a kind Rick Kiley email
College graduates are more unevenly distributed in the top 100 metropolitan areas now than they were four decades ago. More adults have bachelor’s degrees, but the difference between the most and least educated metro areas is double what it was in 1970. Full List of Metro Areas:
Related: Adults With College Degrees in the United States, by County.
For our schools, is blame the only certain outcome?
But both are deeply concerned about what the school district’s ability to serve children, and the achievement gap is on the front burner. In the wake of a bitter fight over Madison Preparatory Academy — a proposed but ultimately rejected charter school aimed at fighting that gap — Nerad proposed a detailed achievement gap plan of his own. Even after scaling it back recently, it would still cost an additional $5.8 million next year.
And then there are the maintenance needs. “It’s HVAC systems, it’s roofs, it’s asphalt on parking lots,” Nerad says. “It’s all those things that don’t necessarily lead to a better educational outcome for young people, but it ensures that our buildings look good and people feel good about our buildings, they’re safe for children.”
He pauses, and adds, “My point is that we have a complex set of issues on the table right now.”
Madison teachers made about $20 million in voluntary pay and benefit concessions before the anti-collective bargaining law was enacted, according to district figures. But Nerad says state school support has been in relative decline for more than a decade, long before Walker’s campaign against teacher rights.Related:
Using Value-Added Analysis to Raise Student Achievement in Wisconsin
Past attempts to improve student assessment in Wisconsin provide reasons to view current efforts with caution. The promise of additional funds, the political cover of broad committees, and the satisfaction of setting less-than ambitious goals have too often led to student assessment policies that provide little meaningful information to parents, teachers, schools and taxpayers. A state assessment system should provide meaningful information to all of these groups.
Data on student progress can make the work of teachers, students, parents, administrators and policymakers more effective. It can ensure that during the course of the school year, students make progress toward their own growth targets and those who do not are flagged and interventions are done to get those students back on track. It should not come as a surprise that to have meaningful, timely data, one must administer meaningful, timely tests, and Wisconsin is falling short in this department in a number of ways.
School-level value-added analyses of student test scores are already being calculated for all schools with third- to eighth-graders statewide by a respected institution right here in Wisconsin. This information should be used by schools and districts to raise school and teacher productivity. We should continue to explore the use of value-added at the classroom level, a necessary step to implementing the new teacher-evaluation system proposed by the DPI that is statutorily required for implementation in 2014-’15.Related: www.wisconsin2.org.
Schools with many APs but few passing
In the 30 years I have been studying the growth of Advanced Placement and other college-level courses in American high schools, no development has been more surprising or controversial than what I call the “Catching Up Schools.”
That is my label for about three dozen schools across the country in low-income neighborhoods that offer an unusual number of AP classes despite the fact that very few of their students are able to pass the difficult three-hour final exams.
Each year, I rate local and national high schools based on AP test participation. My latest rankings appeared this week. In 2008, I removed schools from the main lists of what we call the “High School Challenge” if their passing rates were below 10 percent. I put them on a separate “Catching Up” list. I calculated that once a school with high participation rates reached a 10 percent passing rate, it was producing as many successful AP students as a school with average participation and passing rates.
How to count student ‘leavers’ troubles state, school districts
Jennifer Radcliffe and Silvia Struthers:
Officially, 817 Hispanic students in HISD’s class of 2010 dropped out of high school.
That’s one in every nine Hispanic students in the Houston Independent School District, but it’s a figure experts say doesn’t begin to shed light on the actual number of Latinos who fail to graduate, often hampering their futures and burdening the city.
More than 1,400 other Hispanic students disappeared from class under the auspice of enrolling in private school, starting home school or leaving the state or country.
A stunning 8 percent of all Hispanic students in the class are listed as having returned to their “home country,” according to state records.
Are we asking the right questions?
Leon Neyfakh, via a kind reader’s email:
On a recent Friday morning, a classroom of teenagers at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School broke up into small groups and spent an hour not answering questions about Albert Camus’s “The Plague.” It wasn’t that the students were shy, or bored, or that they hadn’t done the reading. They were following instructions: Ask as many questions as they could, and answer none of them.
The kids wrote in rapid fire on sheets of butcher paper. “Why is everyone acting normal when people are dropping dead?” “Are the doctors aware of this great danger?” “Is there any benefit from the plague? Will it help anyone change or grow?” By the end of the exercise, the class had generated more than 100 questions and exactly zero answers.
Does Tom Barrett Still Support a Milwaukee Public Schools Governance Change?
Barrett first floated the idea of a mayoral-appointed MPS school board in 2003, and actually took a serious crack at making it happen in 2009 and 2010. That effort, which was well chronicled by Alan Borsuk, could politely be described as a political train-wreck. Despite the support of Barrett, Governor Doyle, the two most powerful Democrats in the Milwaukee legislative delegation, and the editorial page of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the proposal never made it to the floor of the legislature.
At the time I failed to see much point in a governance change. Predictors of the success of such reforms, such as unity of purpose among relevant actors, were absent in Milwaukee. More troubling to me was the failure of anyone to articulate what a mayoral-appointed board could do differently than an elected one. No matter how board members came to serve, they were severely constricted by state and federal mandates as well a union contracts.
Fixing the War College System
What sort of senior military officers are the U.S. military creating with its system of professional military education (PME)?
If one were to examine the curricula of the war colleges, one would likely discover three types of military professionals that they are attempting to develop: service professionals, joint professionals, and national security professionals. Unfortunately, the difference between these three types of professionals is vast and expecting an officer to master all three in 10 months is a tall order. The faculties and services ought to recognize this and use it as an opportunity to revamp the war college system, re-instituting the differentiated missions that Admirals Leahy and King and Generals Marshall and Arnold envisioned in the aftermath of the Second World War.
A military professional is an officer who is an expert in the management of violence. This is not the same as being an expert in the application of violence. Although many war college students have been “operators” and “trigger-pullers” for substantial portions of their careers, and have achieved their current rank by demonstrating their mastery of tactical engagement and command of those immediately engaged in tactical applications of force, this is not what their service expects of them once they reach the rank of lieutenant colonel or colonel.
Institute sensible grading guideposts for FCAT
On Monday, just days after the FCAT writing fiasco that forced state education officials to grade the test on a curve so that almost three-fourths of students who took the exam wouldn’t flunk it, Tallahassee launched a public relations extravaganza.
The Florida Department of Education rolled out the FCAT 2.0 Call Center for parents to call with questions. (The toll-free line is 866-507-1109). It also created an email address for parents to contact state education officials, along with a “Path to Success” website.
“The purpose of this effort is to help parents understand Florida’s assessment and accountability system, increased standards, and how these changes will help prepare our K-12 students for college, career and life,” the DOE said.
About time.
Jamie Oliver urges MPs to end academy junk food exemption
An exasperated Jamie Oliver has written to every MP demanding a U-turn over nutrition rules in schools after education secretary Michael Gove refused to act on a report that found nine out of 10 academies were selling junk food.
Announcing the move on his website, the TV chef, whose campaign for better food in state schools has lifted standards for millions of pupils, told voters that if their MPs did not act “you can safely assume that they don’t care about the wellbeing of our children and the future of our country”.
Oliver’s move came as public health officials and doctors joined a growing number of education and food organisations in criticising the education secretary. In a move that astonished experts, Gove insisted that he would not apply the nutrition standards that cover all other state schools to academies and free schools – even after a report by the School Food Trust charity found last week that many were selling sub-standard products.
SCHOOL REFORM TOWN HALL MEETING AT LAFOLLETTE H.S. SHARE THE WORD!!
Michael Johnson, via a kind email:
Madison Metropolitan School District, Verona Area School District, United Way of Dane County, Urban League of Greater Madison & Boys & Girls Clubs of Dane County is collaborating to host a town hall meeting with one of the most respected urban school superintendents in the nation at Lafollette High School on May 26th at 1pm. Paul Vallas has raised hundreds of millions of dollars to support academic achievement, he has raised test scores in urban communities, built hundreds of schools while maintaining great working relationships with community leaders, teachers and unions. His efforts has been featured in Education Week, New York Times and hundreds of other articles profiling his work in urban school districts.
Arne Duncan the current US Secretary of Education served as his Deputy Chief of Staff and the current Superintendent of Schools in Milwaukee was his former Chief Academic Officer. During Vallas time in other cities he has led the effort to build over 175 new school buildings and renovated more than 1,000 existing buildings. According to several news outlets Paul Vallas managed consecutive years of improved reading and math scores in every school district he led. During his time in Chicago he organized the largest after school and summer programs in the nation. His education reforms produced double digit increases in test scores which was some of the highest in the nation among the 50th largest school districts in the United States. His leadership efforts was cited in two presidential state of the union addresses and CBS News highlighted that he is one of the most sought out school superintendents in the country. Recently he was invited by the Government of Chile to assume responsibility of turning around and improving test scores in 1,100 of Chile’s lowest performing schools. He was invited by the Government of Haiti to advise their Prime Minister and education team. He also served as an education adviser to London- Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Paul Vallas will share best practices, talk about school reform and take questions on how we can improve academic achievement for our kids. I hope you can join us on Saturday, May 26th at 1pm for this important discussion at LaFollette High School, 702 Pflaum Rd. Madison in the auditorium. To confirm your attendance please email Sigal Lazimy at slazimy@bgcdc.org. Thanks in advance and we look forward to seeing you! Below is a documentary of his work in New Orleans.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLVpKpaYtRI
Wisconsin, Milwaukee & Madison High School Graduation Rates
The DPI released graduation rates last year using both the new and old calculation method for the state and individual school districts, and did the same again this year.
An example of the difference between the two calculations: The legacy rate for the most recent data shows Wisconsin’s students had a 90.5% graduation rate for 2011, instead of the 87% rate for that class under the new method the federal government considers more accurate.
Using the new, stricter method, the data shows Milwaukee Public Schools’ graduation rate increased for 2011 to 62.8%., up from 61.1% in 2010.
“We have much more work to do, but these numbers – along with ACT score growth and growth in 10th grade state test scores – show that we continue to move in the right direction,” MPS Superintendent Gregory Thornton said in a statement Thursday.
MPS officials on Thursday pointed out that the 1.7 percentage-point increase between the two years for the district was greater than the state four-year graduation rate increase in that time. The state’s four-year rate increased 1.3 percentage points, from 85.7% in 2009-’10.The annual report from the Department of Public Instruction released Thursday also showed Madison’s four-year graduation rate dipped slightly last year to 73.7 percent.
According to the data, 50.1 percent of Madison’s black students graduated in four years, up from 48.3 percent in 2010. The white student graduation rate declined about 3.1 percentage points, to 84.1 percent.
District officials and education experts said it was unclear what accounted for the changes, and it’s difficult to draw any conclusions about Madison’s achievement gap from one or two years of data.
“You need to be looking over a period of several years that what you’re looking at is real change rather than a little blip from one to the other,” said Adam Gamoran, director of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research.
The graduation rates of black and white students in Madison have been a major topic of discussion in the city over the past year.Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school, here.Standing Firm on Grad Rates
by Chuck Edwards:Even as the Obama administration is busy dismantling much of NCLB through waivers, it is standing firm on some Bush-era decisions.
One of them is to consider high school graduation to be exactly that — graduating with a regular diploma, even if it takes five or six years for kids with special barriers. For accountability decisions affecting high schools, the Bush administration would not allow states to give schools “graduation” credit for students who obtain a GED or certificate of completion — only a regular diploma would do.
In response to the Obama administration’s new “ESEA Flexibility” initiative, states have taken another run at that decision, which was enshrined in last-gasp Bush regulations issued in October 2008.
Florida, not kids, flunked FCAT testing
Proficiency under pressure — that’s what we test for. Right? That’s what public education is all about in the new Florida. Standardized tests decide whether students graduate, how much teachers earn, what performance grades schools get, how much bonus money to give to schools that excel.
So much rides on test outcomes that classroom curriculums have been narrowed to a kind of perpetual test preparation. And test taking. The Fort Myers News-Press, looking at the state’s mandatory testing regime, counted 27 standardized tests that eighth-grade students were required to jam into this school year. Students, teachers, principals, administrators, superintendents, even school board members, all know they’re judged by the outcomes of tests.
Yet the state superintendent, the state board of education and NCS Pearson, the giant testing corporation with a four-year, $254 million contract to administer the state’s standardized test regime, seem to suffer no such accountability. Their competence, their proficiency under pressure has been tested this school year. They flunked and flunked spectacularly.Statement from Commissioner Robinson on FCAT Writing
Yesterday’s vote by the State Board of Education to recalibrate the school grading scale of the FCAT Writing test was done in response to a tougher grading system that appropriately expects our students to understand proper punctuation, spelling and grammar. The Board acted after it became clear that students were posting significantly lower scores under newer, tougher writing standards.
We are asking more from our students and teachers than we ever have. I believe it is appropriate to expect that our students know how to spell and how to properly punctuate a sentence. Before this year, those basics were not given enough attention, nor did we give enough attention to communicating these basic expectations to our teachers. I support the Board’s decision to recalibrate the school grading scale while keeping the writing standards high.
Why Can’t We Talk About Differentiating Teacher Salaries?
Here’s a striking synchronicity: on May 10th (last Thursday) in a Wall St. Journal article about the recent release of U.S. students’ “deeply disappointing”; science scores on the NAEP national assessment, NJ Ed. Comm. Chris Cerf is quoted in the context of differentiating salaries for hard-to-fill positions like science and math:
The Obama administration and some state leaders, including the Republican governors of New Jersey and Iowa, in recent years have pushed districts to alter union contracts to allow higher salaries for teachers in sciences and other hard-to-staff subjects. Christopher Cerf, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s education commissioner, said the “market” for science teachers is highly competitive so schools should “use compensation creatively to maximize outcomes for kids.” Teachers have insisted that pay changes be made only as part of broader contract negotiations, giving them more input into the process
On the same day the Journal article ran, NJ Assembly Democrats Mila Jasey, Albert Coutinho, Dan Benson, and Ralph Caputo issued a press release on the passage of a new bill intended “to address teacher shortages in math and science.”
Wisconsin reworking bid to exit federal education mandates
Wisconsin is reworking its application for relief from certain elements of a 10-year-old federal education law, based on feedback received from the U.S. Department of Education last month that outlined where the state’s application was light on details.
A letter from April 17 indicates the state needs a better plan for transitioning to college- and career-ready standards in its schools, and for implementing teacher and principal evaluation and support systems. Wisconsin’s plan also needs ambitious yearly objectives for schools and better criteria for recognizing progress over time in persistently low-performing schools.
State officials on Monday said that the cycle of feedback and revision is normal as states around the country propose new accountability measures for schools that would replace the punitive system under the federal law known as No Child Left Behind.
“This is very, very common,” Lynette Russell, assistant state superintendent for the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, said in an interview Monday.Sen. Luther Olsen, R-Ripon, chairman of the Senate Education Committee, who did not see the letter before the weekend, said it affirmed concerns were raised before the application was submitted that DPI’s proposal for a new accountability system “left not much meat on the bones.”
“Folks thought they would do a cursory, general waiver and get it, and at the end of the day it would be pretty hard to be held accountable for it,” Olsen said. “The (U.S. Education) department is not letting Wisconsin get away with that at all.”
The letter commended Wisconsin for planning for a new common set of standards aligned to college and career readiness, and also for developing a teacher evaluation system based on educator practice and student test scores.
But it criticized the application for not detailing how the state would implement those new systemsState responds to concerns over No Child Left Behind application
Hong Kong Textbook Talks Collapse
It is the latest development in a long-running dispute over the bundling of teaching aids – such as manuals and CD-ROMs – with textbooks, which parents and the government say is pushing up prices.
Last year, the Education Bureau imposed a ban on publishers giving schools “free” teaching materials while adding their cost to the prices students paid for the corresponding textbooks.
But on Monday, Suen said schools should get free basic manuals for teachers in an effort to “streamline” the policy, though they not accept free CDs, statistical databases or practice exam questions, which were more expensive.
Study Damps Fears on Autism Change
Proposed new diagnostic criteria for autism don’t appear to reduce the number of children diagnosed with that condition, according to preliminary data presented at the American Psychiatric Association annual meeting on Sunday.
Those findings could damp the controversy that has surrounded suggested changes to the main psychiatric diagnostic manual in the U.S., the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, about how autism and related disorders that are characterized by social impairments and repetitive behavior are categorized.
One of the main changes, which has yet to be finished, recommends combining several disorders, including Asperger’s syndrome and “pervasive developmental delay not otherwise specified,” with autism into one broad category known as autism-spectrum disorder.
Common Core Standards – Wisconsin Guidance
Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Tony Evers via “DPI ConnectED”:
1. Common Core Standards – Wisconsin Guidance
New DPI publications help Wisconsin educators understand and implement the Common Core State Standards for English language arts and mathematics, as well as the new concept of Literacy in All Content Areas.
Wisconsin adopted the standards in 2010, but that was the easy task. Implementing them through engaging instruction coupled with rigorous learning activities and assessment is the hard work.
The first step requires that teachers know and understand the standards. The new publications provide guidance on the standards’ relationship to Wisconsin’s vision of Every Child a Graduate, supporting all students through Response to Intervention systems, and the responsibility that all teachers have for developing reading, writing, thinking, speaking, and listening skills.
A distinguishing feature of the Common Core State Standards is their emphasis on disciplinary literacy. To be career and college ready, students must know how to read and write complex informational and technical text. So, instruction in every classroom, no matter the discipline, must focus on both the content and the reading and writing skills students need to demonstrate learning.
Wisconsin educators are committed to grasping content and providing high-quality instruction. Combining helpful resources with effective practices used by quality educators leads to success for Wisconsin students.Much more on the “Common Core” academic standards, here.
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Americans Paying More in Taxes than for Food, Clothing, and Shelter
In 2012, Americans will pay approximately $4.041 trillion in taxes, which is $152 billion, or 3.9 percent, more than they will spend on housing, food, and clothing.[1] Through looking at contemporary data and examining the trend of tax collections and expenditures on housing, food, and clothing, we can compare the costs of government with the necessary costs individuals incur every year. Relative to the basic cost of living, taxes have increased considerably in recent decades. In turn, a greater share of essential private expenditures are now funded through government outlays.
Historical Perspective: Tax Growth Exceeds Spending Growth
Between 1929 and the early 1980s, aggregate tax collections were less than total expenditures on housing, food, and clothing (see chart). From 1929 to 1980, tax liabilities grew from $10 billion to $751 billion, while expenditures on housing, food, and clothing grew from $41.6 billion to $775.7 billion. In 1982, total tax collections exceeded expenditures on those items. The gap between tax collections and expenditures on essential goods reached a maximum in 2000, when Americans gave 19 percent more to the government than they spent on these items. The growth in tax collections has halted due to economic contractions, such as the collapse of the “dot-com bubble” in 2001 and the 2007-2009 financial crisis.[2]
Clark County School District to ask voters to OK six-year property tax increase for repairs and renovations
The Clark County School Board unanimously voted Wednesday to pursue a ballot question seeking voter approval for a six-year property tax increase to renovate and replace aging schools.
Although the exact wording of the question has yet to be determined, voters will be asked in November to allow the School District to launch a capital levy program that funds school maintenance on what the district is calling a pay-as-you-go basis.
Under the proposal, property taxes would increase about $74 annually on a house valued at $100,000 to begin funding high-priority school construction and rehabilitation projects.
The tax increase would generate $669 million over the six-year period, district officials said, assuming there are no further declines in property values past 2013. The property tax rate would return to its current rate after the six years.
Why College Football Should Be Banned
In more than 20 years I’ve spent studying the issue, I have yet to hear a convincing argument that college football has anything do with what is presumably the primary purpose of higher education: academics.
That’s because college football has no academic purpose. Which is why it needs to be banned. A radical solution, yes. But necessary in today’s times.
Football only provides the thickest layer of distraction in an atmosphere in which colleges and universities these days are all about distraction, nursing an obsession with the social well-being of students as opposed to the obsession that they are there for the vital and single purpose of learning as much as they can to compete in the brutal realities of the global economy.Mr. Bissinger is the author of “Friday Night Lights.” He will participate in a debate Tuesday evening at New York University, sponsored by Intelligence Squared, in which he and Malcolm Gladwell will argue that college football should be banned
The Relatively Unexplored Frontier Of Charter School Finance
Do charter schools do more – get better results – with less? If you ask this question, you’ll probably get very strong answers, ranging from the affirmative to the negative, often depending on the person’s overall view of charter schools. The reality, however, is that we really don’t know.
Actually, despite uninformed coverage of insufficient evidence, researchers don’t even have a good handle on how much charter schools spend, to say nothing of whether how and how much they spend leads to better outcomes. Reporting of charter financial data is incomplete, imprecise and inconsistent. It is difficult to disentangle the financial relationships between charter management organizations (CMOs) and the schools they run, as well as that between charter schools and their “host” districts.
A new report published by the National Education Policy Center, with support from the Shanker Institute and the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice, examines spending between 2008 and 2010 among charter schools run by major CMOs in three states – New York, Texas and Ohio. The results suggest that relative charter spending in these states, like test-based charter performance overall, varies widely. In addition, perhaps more importantly, the findings make it clear that there remain significant barriers to accurate spending comparisons between charter and regular public schools, which severely hinder rigorous efforts to examine the cost-effectiveness of these schools.
Trying to Shed Student Debt
The growth of student debt is stirring debate about whether the government should step in to ease the burden by rewriting the bankruptcy laws–again.
In 2005, Congress prohibited student debt from being discharged through bankruptcy, except in rare cases, because of concerns that many young graduates–who often have no major assets such as a house or a car–would be tempted to walk away from loan obligations.
Some lawmakers now want to temper that position, pointing to concerns that a significant number of Americans could be buried under education loans for decades. Their efforts, however, would apply only to private loans–a fraction of the market.
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: How Retirement Benefits May Sink the States
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel recently offered a stark assessment of the threat to his state’s future that is posed by mounting pension and retiree health-care bills for government workers. Unless Illinois enacts reform quickly, he said, the costs of these programs will force taxes so high that, “You won’t recruit a business, you won’t recruit a family to live here.”
We’re likely to hear more such worries in coming years. That’s because state and local governments across the country have accumulated several trillion dollars in unfunded retirement promises to public-sector workers, the costs of which will increasingly force taxes higher and crowd out other spending. Already businesses and residents are slowly starting to sit up and notice.
“Companies don’t want to buy shares in a phenomenal tax burden that will unfold over the decades,” the Chicago Tribune observed after Mr. Emanuel issued his warning on April 4. And neither will citizens.
$9,860/student vs. $14,858.40/student; Paying for Educational Priorities and/or Structural Change: Oconomowoc vs. Madison
Chris Rickert summarizes a bit of recent Madison School Board decision making vis a vis educational outcomes. Contrast this with the recent governance news (more) from Oconomowoc; a community 58 miles east of Madison.
Moreover, it’s not like Madisonians are certain to oppose a large tax hike, especially given the way they responded to Walker’s bid to kill collective bargaining.
Before that idea became law, the board voted for — and the community supported — extending union contracts. Unions agreed to some $21 million in concessions in return for two years’ worth of protection from the law’s restrictions.
But the board could have effectively stripped the union of seniority protections, forced members to pay more for health insurance, ended automatic pay raises and taken other actions that would have been even worse for union workers — but that also would have saved taxpayers lots of money.
Board members didn’t do that because they knew protecting employees was important to the people they represent. They should be able to count on a similar dedication to public schooling in asking for the money to pay for the district’s latest priorities.The changes would have a significant effect on teachers that the district retains. Starting positions – though it’s unclear how many would be available due to the staff reduction – would go from starting at a $36,000 salary to a $50,000 stipend. The average teacher in the district would see his or her pay rise from $57,000 to $71,000. It’s a move that would not only reward educators for the extra work that they would take on, but could also have a significant effect in luring high-level teachers to the district.
In essence, the district is moving forward with a plan that will increase the workload for their strong teachers, but also increase their pay to reflect that shift. In cutting staff, the district has the flexibility to raise these salaries while saving money thanks to the benefit packages that will not have to be replaced. Despite the shuffle, class sizes and course offerings will remain the same, though some teachers may not. It’s a bold move to not only retain the high school’s top performers, but to lure good teachers from other districts to the city.
Tuesday’s meeting laid out the first step of issuing non-renewal notices to the 15 teachers that will not be retained. The school board will vote on the reforms as a whole on next month.The Madison School District has, to date, been unwilling to substantively change it’s model, one that has been around for decades. The continuing use of Reading Recovery despite its cost and lower than average performance is one example.
With respect to facilities spending, perhaps it would be useful to look into the 2005 maintenance referendum spending & effectiveness.
It is my great “hope” (hope and change?) that Madison’s above average spending, in this case, 33% more per student than well to do Oconomowoc, nearby higher education institutions and a very supportive population will ultimately improve the curriculum and provide a superior environment for great teachers.
Trying to Shed Student Debt
The growth of student debt is stirring debate about whether the government should step in to ease the burden by rewriting the bankruptcy laws–again.
In 2005, Congress prohibited student debt from being discharged through bankruptcy, except in rare cases, because of concerns that many young graduates–who often have no major assets such as a house or a car–would be tempted to walk away from loan obligations.
Some lawmakers now want to temper that position, pointing to concerns that a significant number of Americans could be buried under education loans for decades. Their efforts, however, would apply only to private loans–a fraction of the market.
Comments: What’s Wrong With Education in the U.S.?
On whether a degree is necessary and importance of the choice of major:
Paul Elliott:
Like home ownership, Americans are obsessed with the importance of obtaining a college degree, and so it gets over-emphasized and over-subsidized through student loans that lead in many cases to too many people paying ever-higher tuition rates at mediocre colleges and obtaining a worthless degree. Look at Germany, whose population has a much lower percentage of college degrees than the U.S., but it still has a low unemployment rate and a solid manufacturing economy. We need to recognize that vocational occupations like mechanics, machinists, electricians, and plumbers are worthy alternatives to college.
Andrew Black:
Um, quality and usefulness of education is being ignored here? It isn’t a fact that more education means better jobs or a better workforce. Too many kids are majoring in sociology, women’s studies, and other useless fields of study that do not equate to any measurable economic benefit.
Also, they gloss over the fact that many people choose to go to college and rack up debt, when many of them would be better served going to a professional school or a trade school.
Mathematics curriculum development in Finland – unexpected effects
Olli Martio – University of Helsinki, Marticulation Board in Finland
olli.martio@helsinki.fi, via a kind Richard Askey email:Curricula changes in the Finnish school system have taken place in 8-10 year intervals. They have been recorded in the official curricula for schools by the Finnish Ministry of Education. However, these texts do not provide a complete picture since they are rather short of details. Schools can freely choose their textbooks and there is neither an official inspection nor an official approval for the textbooks. The system is based on the free market principle. Because of this textbooks, and the practice of teaching, should also be studied in order to understand the Finnish mathematics curriculum. A similar situation prevails in many other countries.
The leading ideas, from the point of view of people working in pedagogy, from 1960 on were “New Math” (1960-1970), “Back to Basics” (1968-80) and “Problem Solving”(1978- ), see [M1] and [PAL]. These trends have appeared in many other countries as well. However, these key words do not give a proper picture what really happened in the mathematics curriculum and education.
In Finland these trends had the following effects on the mathematics curriculum.
- Mathematics at school became descriptive – exact definitions and proofs were largely omitted.
- Geometry and trigonometry were neglected.
- Computations were performed by calculators and numbers and not on a more advanced level.
“Problem Solving” and putting emphasis on calculators have taken time from explaining the basic principles and ideas in mathematics. It should be also remembered that with the invention of calculators and computers the pressure to traditional mathematics teaching increased enormously since a general believe in 1960-70 was that all the mathematical problems can be solved by computers and hence the traditional school mathematics is useless. This criticism did not come from ordinary laymen only but from well known scientists as well and this attitude was very much adopted by people working in education and didactics. These ideas had a profound effect on the changes in the Finnish school curriculum.
Public Comments on Madison’s Achievement Gap Plans
Matthew DeFour, via a kind reader’s email:
Madison community members say an extended school day, career academies, cultural training for teachers, alternative discipline, more contact between school staff and parents and recruiting minority students to become teachers are some of the best strategies for raising achievement levels of low-income and minority students.
However, some of those same ideas — such as adding an extra hour in the morning and emphasizing career training over college preparation for some students — are raising the most questions and concerns.
Those are a few of the key findings of a two-month public-input process on Superintendent Dan Nerad’s achievement gap plan.
The district released a summary report Friday. Nerad plans to revise the plan based on the public’s response and deliver a final proposal to the School Board on May 14.
Nerad said there is clearer support for more parent engagement and cultural training for teachers, than for an extended school day. He said not everyone may have understood that students who focus on a technical rather than liberal arts education might still go on to college after they graduate.Additional reader notes:
There are profound deficiencies in the methodology and attempted “analysis” in the district’s and Hanover reports (https://boeweb.madison.k12.wi.us/files/boe/Appx%2010-40.pdf), but it’s interesting to see the district’s summary of staff input on literacy (page 2 of Marcia Standiford’s memo):
“4. Literacy – Start early with a consistent curriculm [sic]
Support for an emphasis on literacy was evident among the comments. Staff members called for a consistent program and greater supports at the middle and high school levels. Several questioned why the recommendations emphasized third grade rather than starting at earlier grades. Comments also called for bringing fidelity and consistency to the literacy curriculum. Several comments expressed concern that dedicating extra time to literacy would come at the expense of math or other content areas.” And a somewhat buried lede in the Hanover report (p. 3 of the report, p. 21 of the pdf):
“Nine focus groups mentioned the reading recovery [sic] program, all of whom felt negatively about the strategy.” and (p. 10 of the report, p. 29 of the pdf) “Nine comments referred to the reading recovery plan, all of which were negative. Comments noted that ‘reading recovery has failed’ and ‘reading recovery has not been effective in Madison Schools.’ None of the comments supported reading recovery.”Madison School District related website comments includes:
https://www.madison.k12.wi.us/node/10069 specific criticism of Reading Recovery from Amy Rogers: https://www.madison.k12.wi.us/node/10069#comment-53 and this from Chan Stroman-Roll: https://www.madison.k12.wi.us/node/10069#comment-82
60% to 42%: Madison School District’s Reading Recovery Effectiveness Lags “National Average”: Administration seeks to continue its use.
Student Debt Sparks a Fight
Republican and Democratic lawmakers agreed this week to approve new subsidies for college students but clashed on how to offset the $6 billion cost of the measure so it doesn’t add to the federal deficit, setting up a potential election-year showdown over budget policy.
House Republicans plan to vote as early as Friday to freeze the interest rates on certain federal student loans at 3.4% for the year that starts July 1. The lawmakers plan to make up the unrealized revenue by tapping money that was directed by the 2010 health-care overhaul to fund investment in illness-detection procedures. Without congressional action, the rate on the loans would double on July 1 to the 6.8% level that applies to the most commonly used type of federal student loan. Loans issued before July 1wouldn’t be affected.
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: The California Exodus
For decades, California was regarded as the domestic paradise of the United States, lush with beautiful views and ample resources. This no longer seems to be the case. While many insist that those who reside in California are among the happiest in the country, studies show that Californians are increasingly pursuing happiness elsewhere.
In an interview with demographer Joel Kotkin, the Wall Street Journal found that this exodus of California residents is enormous in scale — with potentially profound impacts.
- Nearly 4 million more people have left the Golden State in the last two decades than have come from other states.
- This is a sharp reversal from the 1980s, when 100,000 more Americans were settling in California each year than were leaving.
- According to Kotkin, most of those leaving are between the ages of 5 and 14 or 34 to 45; in other words, young families.
Mr. Kotkin’s analysis has found that the driving factors behind families’ decisions to move to states like Nevada and Texas include:
Head Start Faces a New Test
Some local Head Start programs for the first time will have to compete for a share of $7.6 billion in federal funding under a plan aimed at weeding out low-performing preschool centers.
In its initial move, the Obama administration recently told 132 Head Start programs across the country that they have been identified as deficient, including the nation’s largest programs in Los Angeles County and New York City.
The targeted programs, which serve low-income three- and four-year-olds, won’t lose current funding. But instead of having their grants renewed automatically, as has been the practice, the programs now have to prove they are effective in preparing children for kindergarten before they will be given future funding.
The move is part of the administration’s broader goal to infuse competition and accountability into public education from preschool through college.
The Frozen Future of Nonfiction
hy The Net Matters: How the Internet Will Save Civilization. By David Eagleman, Canongate Books, 2010. (For iPad)
Unless you landed at Download the Universe with the mistaken impression that it’s a new torrent aggregator, chances are you’re already familiar with David Eagleman, the 40-year-old Baylor College of Medicine neuroscientist/author/futurist. Perhaps you’re one of the millions of people around the world who was dazzled by Sum, Eagleman’s breathtaking, oftentimes brilliant, collection of short stories about the afterlife–or perhaps it was Incognito, Eagleman’s exploration of the unconscious, that caught your eye. (It’s not everyday, after all, that a pop-sci book pulls off the tricky balancing act of simultaneously appealing to the cognoscenti and the hoi polloi.)
Implementation of Wisconsin’s Statutory Screening Requirement
Wisconsin Reading Coalition, via a kind email [170K PDF]:
The selection of an early reading screener for Wisconsin is a decision of critical importance. Selecting the best screener will move reading instruction forward statewide. Selecting a lesser screener will be a missed opportunity at best, and could do lasting harm to reading instruction if the choice is mediocre or worse.
After apparently operating for some time under the misunderstanding that the Read to Lead Task Force had mandated the Phonological Assessment and Literacy Screen (PALS), the Department of Public Instruction is now faced with some time pressure to set up and move through a screener evaluation process. Regardless of the late start, there is still more than enough time to evaluate screeners and have the best option in place for the beginning of the 2012-13 school year, which by definition is the time when annual screeners are administered.
The list of possible screeners is fairly short, and the law provides certain criteria for selection that help limit the options. Furthermore, by using accepted standards for assessment and understanding the statistical properties of the assessments (psychometrics), it is possible to quickly reduce the list of candidates further.
Is One Screener Clearly the Best?
One screener does seem to separate itself from the rest. The Predictive Assessment of Reading (PAR) is consistently the best, or among the best, in all relevant criteria. This comment is not a comparison of PAR to all known screeners, but comparing PAR to PALS does reveal many of its superior benefits.
Both PAR and PALS assess letter/sound knowledge and phonemic awareness, as required by the statute.
In addition, PAR assesses the important areas of rapid naming and oral vocabulary. To the best of our knowledge, PAR is the only assessment that includes these skills in a comprehensive screening package. That extra data contributes unique information to identify children at risk, including those from low-language home environments, and consequently improves the validity of the assessment, as discussed below.
Both PAR and PALS have high reliability scores that meet the statutory requirement. PAR (grades K-3) scores .92, PALS-K (kindergarten) scores .99, and PALS (grades 1-3) scores .92. Reliability simply refers to the expected uniformity of results on repeated administrations of an assessment. A perfectly reliable measurement might still have the problem of being consistently inaccurate, but an unreliable measurement always has problems. Reliability is necessary, but not sufficient, for a quality screener. To be of value, a screener must be valid.
In the critical area of validity, PAR outscores PALS by a considerable margin. Validity, which is also required by the statute, is a measure of how well a given scale measures what it actually intends to measure; leaving nothing out and including nothing extra. In the case of a reading screener, it is validity that indicates how completely and accurately the assessment captures the reading performance of all students who take it. Validity is both much harder to achieve than reliability, and far more important.
On a scale of 0-1, the validity coefficient (r-value) of PAR is .92, compared to validity coefficients of .75 for PALS-K and .68 for PALS. It is evident that PAR outscores PALS-K and PALS, but the validity coefficients by themselves do not reveal the full extent of the difference. Because the scale is not linear, the best way to compare validity coefficients is to square them, creating r-squared values. You can think of this number as the percentage of success in achieving accurate measurement. Measuring human traits and skills is very hard, so there is always some error, or noise. Sometimes, there is quite a lot.
When we calculate r-squared values, we get .85 for PAR, .56 for PALS-K, and .46 for PALS. This means that PAR samples 51 to 84 percent more of early reading ability than the PALS assessments. The PALS assessments measure about as much random variance (noise) as actual early reading ability. Validity is not an absolute concept, but must always be judged relative to the other options available in the current marketplace. Compared to some other less predictive assessments, we might conclude that PALS has valid performance. However, compared to PAR, it is difficult to claim that PALS is valid, as required by law.
PAR is able to achieve this superior validity in large part because it has used 20 years of data from a National Institutes of Health database to determine exactly which sub-tests best predict reading struggles. As a consequence, PAR includes rapid naming and oral vocabulary, while excluding pseudo-word reading and extensive timing of sub-tests.
PAR is norm-referenced on a diverse, national sample of over 14,000 children. That allows teachers to compare PAR scores to other norm-referenced formative and summative assessments, and to track individual students’ PAR performance from year to year in a useful way. Norm referencing is not required by the statute, but should always be preferred if an assessment is otherwise equal or superior to the available options. The PALS assessments are not norm-referenced, and can only classify children as at-risk or not. Even at that limited task of sorting children into two general groups, PAR is superior, accurately classifying children 96% of the time, compared to 93% for PALS-K, and only 73% for PALS.
PAR provides the unique service of an individualized report on each child that includes specific recommendations for differentiated instruction for classroom teachers. Because of the norm-referencing and the data base on which it was built, PAR can construct simple but useful recommendations as to what specific area is the greatest priority for intervention, the intensity and duration of instruction which will be necessary to achieve results, and which students may be grouped for instruction. PAR also provides similar guidance for advanced students. With its norm-referencing, PAR can accurately gauge how far individual children may be beyond their classmates, and suggest enriched instruction for students who might benefit. Because they are not norm-referenced, the PALS assessments can not differentiate between gray-area and gifted students if they both perform above the cut score.
PAR costs about the same as PALS. With bulk discounts for statewide implementation, it will be possible to implement PAR (like many other screeners) at K5, 1st grade, 2nd grade, and possibly 3rd grade with the funds allocated by statute for 2012-13. While the law only requires kindergarten screening at this time, the goal is to screen other grades as funds allow. The greatest value to screening with a norm-referenced instrument comes when we screen in several consecutive years, so the sooner the upper grades are included, the better.
PAR takes less time to administer than PALS (an average of 12-16 minutes versus 23-43).
The procurement procedure for PALS apparently can be simplified because it would be a direct purchase from the State of Virginia. However, PAR is unique enough to easily justify a single-source procurement request. Salient, essential features of PAR that would be likely to eliminate or withstand a challenge from any other vendor include demonstrated empirical validity above .85, norm-referencing on a broad national sample, the inclusion of rapid naming and oral vocabulary in a single, comprehensive package, empirically valid recommendations for differentiated intervention, guidance on identifying children who may be gifted, and useful recommendations on grouping students for differentiated instruction.
Conclusions
The selection of a screener will be carefully scrutinized from many perspectives. It is our position that a single, superior choice is fairly obvious based on the facts. While it is possible that another individual or team may come to a different conclusion, such a decision should be supported by factual details that explain the choice. Any selection will have to be justified to the public as well as specific stakeholders. Some choices will be easier to justify than others, and explanations based on sound criteria will be the most widely accepted. Simple statements of opinion or personal choice, or decisions based on issues of convenience, such as ease of procurement, would not be convincing or legitimate arguments for selecting a screener. On the other hand, the same criteria that separate PAR from other screeners and may facilitate single-source procurement also explain the choice to the public and various stakeholder groups. We urge DPI to move forward reasonably, deliberately, and expeditiously to have the best possible screener in place for the largest possible number of students in September.
There are signs that the long struggle to close the achievement gap in reading has a chance of paying off. There is a long way to go – and recent statewide test scores were disappointing – but we see some reason for encouragement, nonetheless.
Alan J. Borsuk, a former Journal Sentinel education reporter and now a senior fellow in law and public policy at Marquette University Law School, reports that black 10th-graders in the Brown Deer school district did better in reading than Wisconsin students as a whole, with 84.2% of Brown Deer’s black sophomores rated proficient or advanced in reading, compared with 78.1% for all students and 47.7% for all black 10th-graders in the state. Some achievement gaps remain in this district that is less than one-third white, but they are relatively modest.Schools are working to improve reading
As vice chair of the Read to Lead Task Force, I am pleased that Wisconsin is already making progress on improving literacy in Wisconsin.
The Read to Lead Task Force members deserve credit for making recommendations that center on improving reading by: improving teacher preparation and professional development; providing regular screening, assessment and intervention; ensuring early literacy instruction is part of early childhood programs; and strengthening support for parental involvement in reading and early literacy programs.
Across Wisconsin, districts and schools are working to implement the Common Core State Standards in English language arts and mathematics. These standards are designed to increase the relevance and rigor of learning for students. Milwaukee’s Comprehensive Literacy Plan is a significant step that defines common expectations in reading for Milwaukee Public Schools students, who now receive reading instruction through one curriculum that is consistent across schools.Learn more about Wisconsin’s Read to lead Task force and the planned MTEL teacher content knowledge standards, here.
www.wisconsin2.org.
Secondary school diploma programmes offer breadth versus depth
The American high school diploma is considered less demanding than the IB and A-level qualification because students don’t undertake an external examination at the end of a high school career. Students (usually in 11th grade) may take one or more standardised tests depending on their post-secondary education preferences; that is, the Scholastic Achievement Test (SAT) or the American College Test (ACT), which evaluate the overall level of knowledge and learning aptitude. Competitive universities also require students to take two or three SAT subject tests that focus strictly on a particular subject matter.
The A-level qualification has been arguably the most widely recognised pre-university qualification. It places emphasis on in-depth knowledge, deep understanding, strong reasoning abilities and critical thinking and allows students to select three to four subjects in any combination. There are no educational systems where students could study fewer subjects and still meet the entrance requirements for a university.
