Threats to the Common Core

Posted on May 22, 2013 by coreeducation

Anne Hyslop at the New America Foundation has pointed out the new partisan tone of debate that has emerged around the Common Core Standards. Hyslop makes clear that the Common Core state initiative is just that—a state led initiative. While the Obama Administration has indeed supported Common Core and has tied its Race to the Top Grant money to college- and career-ready standards in states, Hyslop believes this is hardly enough to justify right-wing attacks on Common Core.

While many of the attacks have come from the usual suspects of conservative media, some of the critiques have come from more publicly recognized sources. The Republican National Committee recently adopted an anti-Common Core resolution, and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Ia) is calling for the federal government to eliminate all Department of Education funding that supports or prioritizes the Common Core.

Hyslop does not buy these arguments; however, she does admit that a possible upcoming law might add more credence to conservative arguments against Common Core:

The problem may be about to get worse. As noted in our Key Questions on the Obama Administration’s 2014 Education Budget Request, federal funding for the assessment consortia is set to expire before the tests are fully launched. To provide continued support, President Obama’s latest budget includes a $9 million competitive grant initiative that could finance some of their ongoing work. The other $380 million of the “Assessing Achievement” program would provide states with formula grants for their current assessment programs, although leftover funds could go toward Common Core implementation.

However, a significant change would occur in fiscal year 2015: Assessing Achievement formula funding would be available “only to States that have adopted college- and career-ready standards that are common to a significant number of States” (emphasis added). While Race to the Top included a similar requirement, that program was a competition, where states could opt-out. NCLB waivers also require states to adopt college- and career-ready standards, but they do not have to be common ones. The Assessing Achievement program would mark the first time federal formula funding – typically available to all states – required adoption of common standards. If enacted, this requirement will undoubtedly add fuel to the “Obamacore” fire.

Hyslop concludes:

The important difference between the practical (those… who are concerned about successful Common Core implementation) and political (conservatives who see Common Core as a big-government move) critiques is that states deciding to use the ACT system are not necessarily backing away from their commitment to the Common Core altogether. Yes, the assessment consortia should do as much as possible to allay the concerns of wavering states. And yes, policymakers and stakeholders should closely monitor all of the emerging for-profit and non-profit ventures to ensure their assessments, curricula, textbooks, and other resources accurately reflect the new standards. But in the end, any damage done to the Common Core from these pragmatic objections to the consortia is far less severe than what would happen in the unlikely, but not out of the question, case that “Obamacore” goes mainstream. Common Core supporters would do well to distinguish between the two.

For more information, please visit these websites:

http://edmoney.newamerica.net/blogposts/2013/college_ready_wars_assessing_threats_to_the_common_core-82595

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/04/24/is-the-common-core-standards-initiative-in-trouble/

Coursera to Offer Free Teacher Development Classes

Posted on May 22, 2013 by coreeducation

Coursera, one of the larger MOOC’s (massive open online courses), will begin offering free online teacher development courses this summer. And for a set of courses that are just beginning, a rather impressive list of traditional universities including the College of Education at University of Washington and John Hopkins University School of Education as well as non-traditional educational institutes such as the American Museum of History, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Exploratorium have all agreed to take part.

Here is a description of the new set of courses from edSurge:

[I]n addition to covering the 101 basics of teaching, classes will allow teachers to explore more niche topics like “Tinkering Fundamentals: Integrating Making Activities into Your STEM Classroom.”

The cost to run these PD MOOCs are expected to be lower than what Coursera’s “mainstream” college partners pay, which typically range from $10K-$50K for each 10-week course. One reason may be that the duration of these PD courses will likely be shorter, lasting only three to four weeks. The company also plans to issue statements of accomplishment for teachers who finish the classes.

“We are particularly excited about the opportunity to offer professional development for teachers that are more targeted and differentiated, based on their skills and experience,” says Julia Stiglitz, who oversees business development and partnerships at Coursera, and who was previously a teacher and Program Director at Teach for America.

This “first foray into early childhood and K-12-level education” raises an obvious question: will Coursera move deeper and, say, partner with prestigious high schools to offer MOOCs for K-12 students?

The company says there are currently no plans, but adds that it has already seen many high school students take MOOCs as part of their college prep work. Still, we wouldn’t be surprised if Coursera changes its mind somewhere down the line.

Following is a link to the list of professional development courses being offered:

https://www.coursera.org/courses?cats=teacherpd

Will the Common Core assessment consortia wither away?

Posted on May 21, 2013 by coreeducation

Chester E. Finn, Jr. of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute believes that Smarter Balanced and PARCC, the two federally-backed Common Core assessment consortia, will lose their place over the next few years to the comprehensive testing apparatus of College Board/ETS and ACT/Pearson.

In a new opinion piece for the Fordham Institute’s education blog, the Flypaper, Finn admits he may of course be wrong in his prediction, but feels that there have been enough indicators recently that he feels “obligated” to make his prediction known.

Essentially, he argues that the process of implementing testing on such a wide scale as will be demanded by the Common Core will be a very difficult one. Currently, Smarter Balanced and PARCC are “struggling with organizational structures, governance, post-federal financing, test-development agonies, uncertain costs, conflicting views of ‘cut scores,’ and all manner of other puzzles.” Since College Board/ETS and ACT/Pearson are already so well placed in terms of “infrastructure, relationships, and durability” in the testing game across the nation, Finn believes that they will have a much better chance in the long run of being the ones to manage Common Core testing.

He does not speculate on whether these two testing services will be a part of creating computerized testing that truly institutes “ ‘next-generation’ tests that probe deeper understanding and more sophisticated (‘higher-order’) skills in more revealing ways.” He also does not suggest that Smarter Balanced and PARCC will vanish from the scene; he instead offers the possibility that they would become advisory boards that work with College Board/ETS and ACT/Pearson to implement and interpret Common Core tests.

He concludes as follows:

If I’m right that ACT and College Board scarf up much state business, there won’t be a lot left for the consortia—and they may founder. That would, of course, represent a considerable waste of federal dollars. On the other hand, it would remove from the Common Core debate (at least until NCLB-reauthorization time, if that day ever comes) the specter of Arne Duncan and Barack Obama clutching those standards to the federal bosom.

For more information, please visit:

http://www.edexcellence.net/commentary/education-gadfly-weekly/2013/april-18/will-the-assessment-consortia-wither-away.html

Assessments for the 21st Century

Posted on May 20, 2013 by coreeducation

After two-plus years of work, the Gordon Commission recently released a public policy statement designed to “stimulate a productive national conversation about assessment and its relationship to teaching and learning.” The Gordon Commission believes that now is a “remarkable opportunity to re-conceptualize the purposes of educational assessments.”

The Gordon Commission on the Future of Assessment in Education (the Gordon Commission) is comprised of “a group of outstanding educational leaders who will produce a vision for assessment that is fair and beneficial to improving U.S. education and which will advance technology to improve educational measurement and student achievement. The members of the Gordon Commission are distinguished scholars in the fields of education sciences, psychometrics and public policy, and thoughtful leaders in the arena of public affairs.”

The Gordon Commission believes that now is the time for change because of the adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in mathematics and English language arts; development of the Next Generation Science Standards, and work focused on developing assessments aligned to the CCSS by the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC).

“These developments have heightened awareness among educators and state and federal policymakers of the critical relationships among more rigorous standards, curriculum, instruction, and appropriate assessment, and have created an opportunity to address issues of long standing,” the statement notes.

The statement also stresses that assessments are not useful for the sake of assessments: they must be tied to the needs of 21^st century students, students who will certainly need to be proficient in using digital technology, and include both assessment of learning and assessment for learning.

Finally, recognizing the role that policymakers will play in the future of assessment, the public policy statement includes three recommendations directed at policymakers:

States should create a council on educational assessments, modeled on the Education Commission of the States, to monitor how well assessments are working and recommend improvements. The council would evaluate the effects of PARCC and SBAC on teaching and learning, conduct research on changes in assessments, and inform states as they make purchasing decisions. The council would also mount a public information campaign to explain the need for better assessment, examine issues of equity, and study policies to ensure the privacy of assessment data.
President Obama and the U.S. Congress should encourage states to experiment with different methods of assessment and accountability and use the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to create incentives for new forms of assessment, such as performance tasks.
Federal agencies and the philanthropic community should launch a ten-year effort to strengthen the capacity of assessments to measure the full range of competencies students need to develop. Additionally, the government and private funders should expand the number of scholars dedicated to developing expertise in assessment.

More information on the Gordon Commission and its work is available at http://www.gordoncommission.org/.

For the complete public policy statement, see: http://www.gordoncommission.org/rsc/pdfs/gordon_commission_public_policy_report.pdf

TEACHED films bolstered by $50,000 grant from TFA

Posted on May 19, 2013 by coreeducation

Teach For America (TFA) announced the winners of its annual Social Innovation Award, including education advocate-turned-filmmaker Kelly Amis, who was one of the first 500 college graduates to be accepted into this national teacher recruitment program.

Amis will receive a $50,000 grant from TFA’s Social Entrepreneurship Initiative to support TEACHED, an innovative series of short films documenting the causes and consequences of education inequality in America, particularly as experienced by urban students of color.

Based on Amis’s twenty years of teaching, research and advocacy in K-12 education, TEACHED is intended to provoke thoughtful discussion on challenging issues, remind viewers of the civil rights struggle behind many of today’s education battles and motivate more people to engage in urban education reform. Amis explains, “The short film format is designed to be more conducive to interactive screenings–the films can be easily interspersed with guest speakers and heightened audience participation–and also intended to reach a larger, more diverse audience through online streaming and social media.”

The first three TEACHED short films, collectively titled “TEACHED Vol. I,” premiered at the Napa Valley Film Festival in November 2011 and have since won “Outstanding Achievement for Short Documentary” at the Williamsburg International Film Festival and the jury prize for “Spirit of Independence” at the Amsterdam Film Festival. They are currently available for online viewing via SnagFilms and for community-organized screenings.

Teach for America received 87 applications for two tracks within the Social Innovation Award: an Overall Track for alumni entrepreneurs like Amis who have already tested their idea and a Pre-Pilot Track for those who are in the early planning and development stage. The awards were made possible with support from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the Doris & Donald Fisher Fund, and Joyce and Larry Stupski. Full results for this year’s awards are available at http://www.tfasocialinnovationaward.com/2013-award-winners.html.

TEACHED is a non-profit film project fiscally-sponsored by the International Documentary Association. TEACHED Vol. II and Two Boys, a feature-length documentary being filmed in Washington, DC, are currently under production.

Synopses of the TEACHED Vol. I films:

The Path to Prison (7 min.)

A former gang-member from South Central, Los Angeles helps explain how so many capable and intelligent young men-especially African-American males-end up uneducated and incarcerated in the ‘land of the free.’

The Blame Game: Teachers Speak Out (16 min.)

Public school teachers speak candidly about their profession and the consequences for students-especially urban minority students-of policies that treat all teachers as equal and make it difficult to fire a teacher even in the most extreme circumstances.

Unchartered Territory (17 min.)

Featuring some of the most successful pioneers of this still-developing frontier, Unchartered Territory explains what charter schools are, why they were created and why some are performing so well and others…not so much.

For more information, please contact info@teached.org or visit this website: http://www.tfasocialinnovationaward.com/

WestEd Releases Influential Papers on Formative Assessment

Posted on May 16, 2013 by coreeducation

WestEd believes that the Common Core State Standards offer educators a unique opportunity to use formative assessment to help raise student achievement. They hope to help make this happen with the release of three new papers about formative assessment.

WestEd, an agency that works with education and other communities to promote excellence, achieve equity, and improve learning for children, youth, and adults, recently released three defining papers on formative assessment:

Formative assessment in the classroom aims to reveal not just what students are learning, but how they are learning, with results used to guide instruction. Students can use formative assessment results to better understand and advance their learning. The Common Core State Standards, and the common assessment systems being developed to support them, offer educators the opportunity to use formative assessment as part of a balanced approach to raising student achievement.

“Integrating formative assessment in the classroom appears to have great potential for improving instruction and learning,” says Glen Harvey, CEO of WestEd. “These papers are intended to build foundational understanding among teachers, administrators, and policymakers, of this important assessment process.”

Each paper stresses the idea that unless assessments are understood and implemented in the right fashion, they will lose their capacity to help teachers improve instruction.

These papers were released as part of an education policy forum convened by WestEd and the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE). The event examined the role of formative assessment in the classroom, its potential for improving student learning, and the challenges that policymakers must address as the field works to build coordinated assessment systems that can provide information useful for instruction and policy.

For more information and to access the papers, please visit: http://www.wested.org/cs/we/view/rs_press/166

Common Core Open Resources

Posted on May 15, 2013 by coreeducation

As the implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) moves ever closer, debate over them certainly has not slowed, yet that does not mean that the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and others, like the National Math and Science Initiative, aren’t doing their best to make resources available so that teachers will be prepared.

Here is their introduction to newly available resources:

The tools you need to prepare for the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and the upcoming Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) assessments are now available to all educators.

These free resources help implement the CCSS in your state and provide you with specific information to prepare teachers to equip students with the tools they’ll need to be successful on the PARCC assessments.

To access these free resources, you will need to visit the website below, click on the “Get Free Resources” button, and create a free profile. You will have unlimited access to these resources and all new open resources developed for PARCC by NMSI.

Also, all the Common Core resources created for the PARCC Educator Leader Cadre are now available to all educators to ensure improved implementation of the Common Core.

Following is the link to the National Math and Science Initiative Common Core website: http://www.nms.org/commoncore

For the link to the webpage where you can register to gain access to the free resources, see: http://parcc.nms.org/

Getting the Best Teachers into the Toughest Jobs

Posted on May 14, 2013 by coreeducation

Even though it has been known for some time that teachers and principals play the largest role in student success, it is only recently that districts and schools have started making requisite changes to their strategic management of talent. This is the central contention of Allan Odden’s new report, Getting the Best People into the Toughest Jobs: Changes in Talent Management in Education, which delves into detail about how those changes began, just what those changes are, and how that process of change is progressing.

Allan Odden is the director of Strategic Management of Human Capital, professor emeritus of educational leadership and policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and co-director of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education. His recently authored report was written for the Center for American Progress.

The executive summary states the following:

The issue of strategic talent management in education leapt onto the policy and practice agenda quite recently. Yet in a short time period, huge changes in policy and practice have occurred. From a set of disjointed policies and even-worse practices, a comprehensive and holistic view of strategic talent management in education is developing, supported by new and ambitious federal and state policies and rapidly changing local practices. Admittedly, policy design still needs significant calibration, and local implementation is far from complete. But the landscape of how teachers and principals—the education talent—are managed is dramatically changing. A once-haphazard mix of approaches is moving toward many more strategic systems that are designed to ensure that only effective teachers and principals are recruited, tenured, retained, and well-compensated—particularly in urban and poor rural communities.

This paper examines the evolving landscape of talent management in education, broken in five sections:

Section one: Talent management, or lack thereof, in education at the close of the 20th century
Section two: Educational change that began at the dawn of the 21st century
Section three: Rumblings of change that evolved into comprehensive new federal and state human-capital management policies and local practices
Section four: Rumblings of change that coalesced into a foundation of change across the country and the new world of talent management
Section five: Why the focus on talent evolved and quickly assumed such a prominent role in the nation’s education policy and practice agendas

In part, due to positive state and local response to federal requirements for new education programs such as Race to the Top, School Improvement Grants, the Teacher Incentive Fund, and No Child Left Behind waivers, states and districts are identifying and using new channels for recruiting better talent into the nation’s schools, especially high-poverty schools in urban and rural areas. States and school districts are also developing new ways of evaluating teachers—methods that use a measure of instructional practice and evidence of student learning, and in some cases student surveys on the academic environment. States and districts are then using these new metrics to determine whether or not to tenure teachers, as a condition for promotion, to implement new salary schedules, and for dismissal—instead of seniority.

Though there is steady progress toward designing and implementing all these new policies and practices across the country, there is also opposition, and the road forward will certainly be bumpy. To be successful, these initiatives need to solve some major challenges such as making the new evaluation systems affordable; ensuring that the scores that teachers receive on their evaluations derive from “cut” scores that are set at rigorous levels in order to accurately identify the most effective and most ineffective teachers; deciding where to put the toughest requirements for entering the teaching professions so the talent that flows from the new recruitment sources are not shut off; and embedding all this in an effective school improvement strategy that is linked to the new Common Core State Standards Initiative.

Among the recommendations is adjustment of entry standards to the profession to ensure that only the top talent meets the entry standards—based on rigorous assessments of content knowledge and by implementing a rigorous “bar exam,” which should assess both instructional expertise and impact on student learning—as well as standards for full professional license to be required of every novice teacher at some point after three to five years of teaching. This approach supports both traditional and alternative pathways into the profession, while also ensuring that only demonstrably effective teachers earn the full professional license and then tenure—whatever their pathway into the profession.

For access to the full report, see: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/report/2013/04/04/58474/getting-the-best-people-into-the-toughest-jobs/

Related video from the Center for American Progress is available at the following link: http://www.americanprogress.org/events/2013/03/26/58049/getting-the-best-people-into-the-toughest-jobs/

Education Department seeks Applications for Student Test Fee Waivers

Posted on May 13, 2013 by coreeducation

The Department is currently seeking applications for the Advanced Placement (AP) Test Fee Program and the Minority Science and Engineering Improvement Program.

The AP Test Free Program awards grants to states to enable them to pay all or a portion of AP test fees on behalf of low-income students. Applications are due June 3. The grants can also apply to International Baccalaureate (IB) tests.

The Department makes awards to State educational agencies to enable them to cover part or all of the cost of test fees of low-income students who are enrolled in an Advanced Placement class and plan to take an Advanced Placement test. Funds from the Advanced Placement Test Fee program subsidize test fees for low-income students to encourage them to take Advanced Placement tests and obtain college credit for high school courses, reducing the time and cost required to complete a postsecondary degree. In determining the amount of the grant awarded to a State for a fiscal year, the Secretary considers the number of children eligible to be counted under the ESEA Title I Basic Grants programs.

The Minority Science and Engineering Improvement Program, which awards four types of grants, is designed to effect long-range improvement in science and engineering education at predominantly minority institutions and to increase the flow of underrepresented ethnic minorities, particularly minority women, into scientific and technological careers. Applications for this program are due May 31.

This program assists predominantly minority institutions in effecting long-range improvement in science and engineering education programs and increasing the flow of underrepresented ethnic minorities, particularly minority women, into science and engineering careers.

The program funds are generally used to implement design projects, institutional projects, and cooperative projects. The program also supports special projects designed to provide or improve support to accredited nonprofit colleges, universities, and professional scientific organizations for a broad range of activities that address specific barriers that eliminate or reduce the entry of minorities into science and technology fields.

For more information, please visit:

http://www2.ed.gov/programs/apfee/

http://www2.ed.gov/programs/iduesmsi/

Carnegie Corporation: Rethinking school design to meet demands of new standards

Posted on May 12, 2013 by coreeducation

The Carnegie Corporation of New York has committed $15 million to “catalyze district-based new school design work” that will focus on individualized learning.

To support this effort, they have also recently published a report, Opportunity by Design: New High School Models for Student Success. This report calls for a focus on how schools use teaching, time, technology, money, and other resources to bring all students to the much higher levels of achievement necessary to meet the demands of Common Core State Standards and, eventually, Next Generation Science Standards.

The report analyzes the impact of the daunting preparation shortfall many students face as they enter high school and argues that without a radical change in how school districts support high school design, it will be difficult for all students to graduate ready for college and career. As the new standards, which are designed to be “fewer, clearer, and higher” than existing state standards, are implemented, schools must hold all students to a significantly more challenging bar for graduation, while supporting and motivating students who may be further behind.

“Implementing the Common Core State Standards provides both a challenge and an opportunity to address the long-term problem of achieving both excellence and equity in public education,” said Michele Cahill, Vice President, National Program, and Program Director, Urban Education at Carnegie Corporation. “Taking on this challenge can be truly transformative if states and districts focus on the design of schools. We have enough knowledge, from both research and practical experience, about the conditions needed to enable teachers and students to reach the levels of achievement envisioned by the Common Core standards. Especially for our high schools, it is urgent that we act on what we know and redesign for success.”

The report calls for schools to take an integrated and comprehensive approach to rethinking how resources are used to both meet students where they are and accelerate their learning to develop the necessary skills for college and career. In the face of the Common Core, the report says individual interventions such as adjusting curriculum, strengthening teacher preparation and professional development, or increasing quality learning time are important, but in isolation are not likely to produce strong enough outcomes to help all students meet the standards.

However, the report points out that there is evidence that it is possible to, at some scale, to raise standards and increase student achievement simultaneously through a comprehensive school design effort. Citing examples like the New York City Small Schools of Choice reforms and the expansion of North Carolina’s early college high schools, the authors argue that a focus on school design enables districts to reach a higher bar for all students.

“Schools are the place where the Common Core will provide transformative opportunity for American students,” said Leah J. Hamilton, Program Director, Urban Education at Carnegie Corporation and co-author of the report with Anne Mackinnon. “Powerful school designs can enable students to pursue individualized pathways towards college and career readiness while ensuring a focus on equity and quality for every student. Now is the time to build on successful efforts, while integrating new tools that can do even more to empower great teaching and accelerate student success.”

The report is a call to action for the field to create a concentration of effort around school design. It defines 10 design principles that reflect the research base in youth development and academic best practices, capture the input of successful educators, and explore the potential of emerging tools. These principles, when used in a design process that assesses student and district needs, should help produce a number of school models that can help all students grow to meet the challenge of the Common Core.

Carnegie Corporation of New York has committed $15 million in this first year to catalyze district-based new school design work, using the 10 design principles in the report as a starting point. In January, the Corporation also announced a grant to launch Springpoint, a new national school design institute that will catalyze this work and provide support to districts. Partnering with Springpoint, Carnegie Corporation will source a first cohort of select districts to participate in a school design development and launch process.

For the 10 Design Principles, see http://carnegie.org/fileadmin/Media/Programs/Opportunity_by_design/Carnegie_DesignPrinciples_a.pdf

To access the full report, see http://carnegie.org/programs/urban-and-higher-education/new-designs-innovation-in-classroom-school-college-and-system-design/opportunity-by-design-new-high-school-models-for-student-success/