Advanced Mathematics for All?

Posted on April 28, 2013 by coreeducation

Mathematics education in the U.S. has always been a complicated issue: on the one hand, there is a general consensus that mathematics is a fundamental skill that all students should possess, yet there is also the common – and false – perception that not all students are “good at math” and that it is unfair to expect all kids to take advanced mathematics in order to graduate.

Michael Cohen, president of Achieve, told the Houston Chronicle earlier this month that “people worry that if you make kids take more rigorous math, then you’ll lose them.” But he also asked: “What kind of technical training doesn’t require some kind of advanced mathematics?” Studies have found that students who complete Algebra II in high school nearly double their chances of earning four-year college degrees. “It’s not like people made up the idea, ‘Let’s all take Algebra II for the fun of it.’ It was looking at what people do after they leave high school, what kind of education and training programs you want to prepare them for.”

It was, in part, the disconnect between what is expected of some kids compared to what should be expected of all kids that led Achieve to first create the Math Works resources back in 2008. The Math Works resources – a series of Mathematics at Work brochures, fact sheets and a white paper – make the case that advanced mathematics is important for all students, no matter what their plans are after high school. Students who take advanced math have better access to college in all forms, are more likely to earn a degree, earn higher salaries and are better prepared for the workplace.

Since their release in 2008, the Mathematics at Work brochures have been requested and shared with educators and district personnel from over 200 schools and districts across 48 states and DC, reaching well over 10,000 K-12 students, as well as with nearly 50 institutions of higher education and over 20 state-level agencies. The materials have been used with learners at all ages, from middle school students to adult education students, reinforcing the importance of mathematics for ALL students, regardless of age, zip code or background.

This week, Achieve released updated and revised brochures that now make the connection between middle skills jobs and the mathematics in the Common Core State Standards. The Mathematics at Work brochures present case studies drawn from leading industries nationwide, such as information technology, advanced manufacturing and healthcare. They provide concrete examples of how advanced math is applied in these jobs and identify the prerequisite mathematical skills needed to successfully enter these jobs. In healthcare, for example, radiographers rely on geometry, spatial relations, measurement, inverse laws and problem solving to produce CT images that will allow radiologists to properly diagnosis injury and illness. Importantly, all of the jobs highlighted in the brochures are accessible to high school graduates without a four-year college degree.

Achieve also updated the seven Math Works fact sheets exploring issues such as equity, career readiness, international competitiveness and the fourth year of mathematics.

To view the updated Math Works resources, please visit: http://www.achieve.org/Math-Works

For information on proposed changes to math standards in Texas:

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/No-Algebra-II-Great-for-students-terrible-for-4359906.php

Education Department promises $15 million to School Turnaround AmeriCorps program

Posted on March 18, 2013 by coreeducation

The U.S. Education Department has announced funding for a new AmeriCorps grant program focused on School Turnaround. This action extends the Together for Tomorrow program that focuses on increased community engagement in low-performing schools. Below is the explanation from the Education Department blog:

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Wendy Spencer, chief executive officer of the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), today announced a new competitive grant program that will provide $15 million in public funds over three years to reinforce and accelerate intervention efforts in the nation’s lowest-performing schools.

The new School Turnaround AmeriCorps program will support the placement of a dedicated cadre of AmeriCorps members in persistently underachieving schools across the country. This innovative approach seeks to increase student academic achievement, attendance and high school graduation rates, and college and career readiness in those schools.

“Turning around our nation’s lowest-performing schools is challenging work that requires everyone to play a part – from teachers, administrators, and counselors to business leaders, the philanthropic sector, and community members,” said Duncan. “This interagency collaboration will align national service and turnaround efforts in schools across the country. I am looking forward to seeing innovative proposals from great organizations that will enable hundreds of AmeriCorps members to serve some of our most disadvantaged students.”

“Making sure that every child gets a quality education is a core value that unites all Americans,” Spencer said. “This partnership will expand the role of AmeriCorps members in helping students, teachers, parents, and school administrators transform schools into models of achievement. We welcome new ideas that will result in the same outcome: schools that are putting children on the pathway to success.”

A partnership of the Department and CNCS, School Turnaround AmeriCorps reflects each agency’s commitment to increasing opportunities for students in disadvantaged communities through high-quality education. The program will combine the assets and expertise of both agencies with the on-the-ground presence of AmeriCorps members in schools that are implementing a turnaround effort through the federal School Improvement Grant (SIG) program.

Since 2009, the Department has invested $4.5 billion at more than 1,300 of the country’s lowest-performing schools. Currently, CNCS programs have a presence in a quarter of schools eligible for SIG funding nationwide. School Turnaround AmeriCorps will augment these investments, expand opportunities for national service, and supply struggling schools with much-needed talent to support the implementation of school improvement plans.

The program also extends the efforts of Together for Tomorrow, a cooperative initiative among the Department, CNCS, and the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships to boost community engagement in improving outcomes at chronically under-performing schools.

The Department and CNCS intend to award School Turnaround AmeriCorps grants to engage approximately 650 AmeriCorps members each year for three years at an estimated 60 schools in urban centers and rural towns across the country. The program will be supported by an initial investment of $15 million in public funds from both agencies over three years. CNCS will seek to raise additional private funds to contribute to this effort. In addition, AmeriCorps members who complete their service in the program will qualify for the Segal AmeriCorps scholarship, which could total $1.5 million a year for all participants.

Organizations applying for grants will be encouraged to focus on strategies that increase parent and family engagement and student learning time; improve school safety, attendance, and discipline; address students’ social, emotional, and health needs; accelerate students’ acquisition of reading and mathematics knowledge and skills; and increase graduation and college enrollment rates.

Public or private nonprofit organizations, including faith-based and other community groups; schools or districts; institutions of higher education; cities and counties; Indian Tribes; and labor organizations are eligible to apply, along with partnerships and consortia of these entities.

A notice of intent to apply must be submitted to CNCS by April 2, 2013 via e-mail at:americorpsgrants@cns.gov. Applications are due on April 23, 2013. Grants will be awarded by mid-July.

For more information, please visit the following website: http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-education-department-and-corporation-national-and-community-service-announce-

10 States Face Education Funding Lawsuits

Posted on January 6, 2013 by coreeducation

10 states, with another 4 more having recently wrapped up litigation, currently face lawsuits regarding increased funding for education. This phenomenon is not new. Lawsuits supported by pro-school funding organizations have been taking place for decades, although the economic recession of the last five years has reignited a long-standing debate about school funding.

In 1973, the Supreme Court, then under the leadership of Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall, ruled that education is not a right guaranteed by the Constitution; therefore, education funding cannot be increased or guaranteed by the federal government. However, within that ruling, Marshall noted that there was no prohibition against this issue being taken up in the states and each of their state supreme courts. Since that time, only five states have not faced such lawsuits: Delaware, Hawaii, Mississippi, Nevada and Utah. This month, Texas, Kansas and Colorado face lawsuits.

Since each state has a “provision for education as a positive right”, according to Molly Hunter, director of Education Justice at the Education Law Center, these lawsuits show no sign of stopping.

Part of the confusion surrounding these lawsuits concerns the fact that some address the issue of “equity” while others address the issue of “adequacy”. At times, each argument for increased educational funding has achieved success in state supreme courts; however, Hunter argues that historically the “equity” argument—that states are not spreading education funds proportionally—has found more success. Moreover, Hunter argues that state supreme courts reviewing education funding lawsuits, even when those lawsuits argue in terms of “adequacy”, tend to still view these lawsuits through the lens of “equity”.

The emphasis in recent years on higher standards, however, may bolster the “adequacy” argument.

The other question that confuses the issue of lawsuits concerning education funding is that state supreme courts are restricted by diverse state laws concerning how state funds can be used. Some states, such Colorado, have forms of a “taxpayers’ bill of rights” which restrict funding, while others, such as Wyoming, have more consistently ruled in favor of increased funding, leading to an influx of teachers from around the country who are seeking higher salaries. Due to these diverse rules and the confused history of this issue, state supreme courts are also typically unwilling to specify any guidelines for the future regarding how education funding should be dispersed.

Ultimately, many policy analysts, such as Dan Thatcher of the National Conference of State Legislatures, argue that even if pro-funding decisions are made, the vicissitudes of state budgets over time determine that “the status quo before the litigation eventually comes back into place.”

For more information on this story, please visit: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2013/01/02/4d9a7cca-544d-11e2-8b9e-dd8773594efc_story.html

Beginning K–12 Teacher Characteristics and Preparation

Posted on November 23, 2012 by coreeducation

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) demands that “all students have access to qualified teachers, particularly in core academic subjects” and requires that “state and local policies have introduced incentives to attract well-qualified teachers to low-performing and urban schools.” The Institute of Education Sciences/National Center for Education Statistics have recently released comprehensive statistics detailing exactly who it is that is teaching students, and which teachers are teaching poor, urban students.

Because of the difficulty of garnering statistics from various school districts, a survey was conducted to track teachers based on graduation from undergraduate education/teacher certification programs. The result was the 2008/2009 Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study (BB:08/09), the first follow-up of a nationally representative cohort of 2007-08 baccalaureate graduates. Findings focus on the experiences of recent graduates who entered K-12 teaching. Data include graduates’ demographic, educational, and employment characteristics, as well as the characteristics of the schools in which they are teaching, especially with a view towards schools with greater need, such as schools with higher percentages of FARMS students.

As an example, while 31.8% of teachers teaching in a school with a poverty level less than 10% were required to complete remedial level courses in college, 36.4% of teachers teaching in a school with 50% or more students with Free and Reduced Meal eligibility were required to do so. This statistic reveals a disparity in teaching quality that puts more affluent students at an advantage.

No conclusions are included with the data; however, these data are useful in evaluating the success/lack of success of NCLB in bringing about its stated goals and the need for further work in attracting high quality teachers to our most needy schools.

For more information and a link to download the extensive Web Tables, please visit this link: http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2013153

2010 Census Statistics and Education: Enrollment, Cost, and Outcomes

Posted on November 8, 2012 by coreeducation

The United States Census Bureau has released educational statistics that have been compiled as part of its “How Do We Know?” initiative. The statistics are broken down into three categories: enrollment, cost, and outcomes and displayed in a visually appealing infographic.

For enrollment, the Census Bureau focuses on showing the similarities and differences between educational enrollment in 1970 (during the peak period of baby boomers in school) and 2010.

The Census Bureau evaluates Americans between the ages of 3 and 34 and finds that in all but the grade school level (elementary and middle school), there are more students than there were in 1970.
The largest differences were in nursery school (.9 million in 1970 to 4.9 million in 2010) and college (7.0 million in 1970 to 18.9 million in 2010). In other words, the largest increases in terms of who is receiving education in America concern its youngest and oldest students.
In 1970, only 27% of 3 to 5 year olds were receiving education whereas 60% of that age group were receiving education in 2010.
Most of those young children in school are in public, whole day education, an increase of over 40%.
In 1970, only 32% of 18 to 24 year olds were receiving education whereas 52% of that group were receiving education in 2010.
More specifically, the gender of those in college and graduate school has shifted: in 1970, 27% of men and 20% of women were enrolled but in 2010, 38.6% of men and 47.5% of women were enrolled. Nearly half of American women between ages 18 and 24 are enrolled in college or graduate school.

In terms of the cost of education, the U.S. government spent $602.6 billion on education in 2010, out of which 52.7% was for instruction, 29.7% was for support services, 9.8% was for capital outlays, and 7.7% was for other. Only four states, New York, New Jersey, Vermont, and Connecticut, spent over $9,000 per year per pupil. Twenty three states, mostly those in the Northeast and upper Midwest, spent between $6,000 and $8,999 per year per pupil. The rest spent between $3,000 and $6,000 per year per pupil.

Finally, in terms of outcomes, the 2010 census strongly supports the known connections between level of education gained and income as well as the continuing discrepancy between what men and women of equal educational level earn per year. Starting at the level of those with graduate/professional degrees, who on average make $62,618 per year, those with bachelor’s degrees make roughly $15,000 less per year, those with some college or associate’s degrees make roughly another $15,000 less per year, those with only a high school degree make roughly another $5,000 less per year, and finally those without high school diplomas make roughly another $8,000 less than that per year. For those same respective categories, the men made more money per year than women did by roughly $28,000, $17,000, $12,000, $10,000, and $7,000.

The full breakdown of these statistics can be found at http://www.census.gov/how/infographics/education.html

Education at a Glance 2012

Posted on September 23, 2012 by coreeducation

At 69 percent, the United States ranks twenty-eighth in the percentage of four-year-olds in early childhood education, according to Education at a Glance 2012: OECD Indicators, released earlier this month by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The report also finds that the odds of a young person in the United States continuing through to postsecondary education if his or her parents do not have a high school diploma are just 29 percent, ranking the United States twenty-fifth out of twenty-seven countries.

The good news is that the United States does fairly well in both high school and college graduation rates, although its ranking in each has slipped in recent years, the report finds. For number of high school graduates, the United States ranks first in the world among 55 to 64-year-olds, with 90 percent of the population having earned a high school diploma. Among 25 to 34-year-olds, however, the United States slipped to eleventh.

Part of the reason higher education attainment rates have stagnated in the United States could be the increasing costs associated with getting a postsecondary degree. According to the report, the total cost for a man in the United States to pursue higher education ($116,000) is second highest in the world. Only the United Kingdom ($122,155), the Netherlands ($104,231), and Japan ($103,965) have costs above $100,000 and, unlike the United States, the majority of their costs consists of foregone earnings.

While the cost is high, the payoff for obtaining a higher education degree is much greater in the United States than in most OECD countries. According to the report, a tertiary-educated man in the United States can expect to earn almost $675,000 more over his working life than a man with no more than a high school diploma or a “nontertiary education”–far more than in any other country. The corresponding number for an American woman is nearly $390,000, an amount approached only by tertiary-educated women in Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal, and the United Kingdom. Additionally, the estimated public return on a tertiary-educated man is $232,779, which is higher than in all other countries except Hungary; for women in the United States, the return is $84,313, which ranks seventh.

In order to reduce inequality, boost social mobility, and improve individuals’ employment prospects, the report urges governments to increase investment in early childhood programs and maintain “reasonable” costs for higher education.

Education at a Glance 2012 is available at http://bit.ly/RXqgZA. Highlights for the United States are available at http://bit.ly/U3C4dG.

Executive Order Establishes Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans

Posted on July 30, 2012 by coreeducation

Last Wednesday, during his remarks at the National Urban League conference in New Orleans, President Obama announced he would sign an Executive Order to improve outcomes and advance educational opportunities for African Americans.

The President has made providing a complete and competitive education for all Americans – from cradle to career – a top priority. The White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans will work across Federal agencies and with partners and communities nationwide to produce a more effective continuum of education programs for African American students. The Initiative aims to ensure that all African American students receive an education that fully prepares them for high school graduation, college completion, and productive careers.

In the less than 60 years since the Brown v. Board of Education decision put America on a path toward equal educational opportunity, America’s educational system has undergone a remarkable transformation. Nonetheless, substantial obstacles to equal educational opportunity still remain in America’s educational system. African American students lack equal access to highly effective teachers and principals, safe schools, and challenging college-preparatory classes, and they disproportionately experience school discipline and referrals to special education.

The President has set the goal for America to have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020. To reach this ambitious goal, and to ensure equality of access and opportunity in education for all Americans, the Obama Administration is dedicating new resources, through rigorous and well-rounded academic and support services, to enable African American students to improve their educational achievement and prepare for college and career.

To deliver a complete and competitive education for all African Americans, the Initiative will promote, encourage, and undertake efforts designed to meet several objectives, including:

Increasing the percentage of African American children who enter kindergarten ready for success by improving access to high-quality early learning and development programs;
Ensuring that all African American students have access to high-level, rigorous course work and support services that will prepare them for college, a career, and civic participation;
Providing African American students with equitable access to effective teachers and principals, and supporting efforts to improve the recruitment, preparation, development, and retention of successful African American teachers and principals;
Promoting a positive school climate that does not rely on methods that result in disparate use of disciplinary tools, and decreasing the disproportionate number of referrals to special education by addressing root causes of the referrals;
Reducing the dropout rate of African American students;
Increasing college access, college persistence, and college attainment for African American students;
Strengthening the capacity of institutions of higher education that serve large numbers of African American students; and
Improving the quality of, and expanding access to, adult education, literacy, and career and technical education.

To read the full Executive Order, please visit http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/07/26/executive-order-white-house-initiative-educational-excellence-african-am

Tips for Supporting, Preparing Culturally Diverse Teaching Force

Posted on June 18, 2012 by coreeducation

Rural administrators who want to better prepare and support a culturally diverse teaching force need to vary recruitment strategies, seek partnerships, and promote a culture of collaboration, according to a new study.

Those are among a list of suggestions in “Teacher Identity in a Multicultural Rural School: Lessons Learned at Vista Charter,” published in the Journal of Research in Rural Education. The study involved over two years of research at a high-poverty, bilingual, elementary charter school in rural eastern Oregon. Seven of the 12 teachers at the school (called “Vista Charter” in the report, though not the real name) are bilingual.

The report focuses heavily on the teachers’ backgrounds and exploring the five core beliefs they shared: all teachers were valued and valuable, all teachers expected to learn from the diverse student body and teaching staff, all expected to collaborate for professional development, that “we teach who we are,” and that the school was a safe place to grow as a teacher. In addition to these, the researchers also culled tips for both rural school administrators and teacher educators. Some of these tips include:

Vary recruitment strategies—try to “homegrow” diverse teachers, including targeting good second-career candidates from the local community, rather than pursuing more traditional routes for teacher recruitment.
Support teachers in the multiple roles they serve.
Evaluate the school mission so that it incorporates students’ multicultural competencies.
Provide teacher-selected professional development.
Know the community, the families, and get them involved. This includes tapping the vast knowledge of the paraeducator network established—many paraeducators have intimate knowledge of both the community and the students they serve.

To read the full study, please visit http://www.jrre.psu.edu/articles/27-5.pdf

Special Education Approaches Go Mainstream

Posted on May 18, 2012 by coreeducation

Instructional approaches usually associated with special education are gaining traction as states and districts are faced with implementing the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), reports Education Week. Two strategies, universal design for learning (UDL) and response to intervention (RTI), have been frequently cited in NCLB waiver requests for CCSS implementation in the section about how the state will implement the standards.

Broadly, UDL involves creating lessons and classroom materials flexible enough to accommodate different learning styles. The RTI approach can identify learning problems early and introduce focused lessons (interventions) to address those problems. The instructional methods have gained popularity because otherwise, educators are faced with narrow mandates and a broad population.

“Without a system to be responsive to student need, we’re back where we started with standards: aiming at the middle. There was going to be nothing intrinsically new unless we seized upon an opportunity to make this about every kid,” explains Emilie Amundson of the Wisconsin Education Department.

Districts already using one or both of these approaches believe they are best-suited for helping them implement the CCSS. Though new approaches to instruction won’t erase the challenges of implementing standards that are more rigorous than current state standards, it may make implementation more responsive and mitigate fears that the standards will once again turn students with disabilities into scapegoats for poor performance.

To read the full story, please visit http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/04/25/29cs-speced.h31.html?tkn=RSBFzoH5F9GTJL57UTdUa%2BcVqA06%2BesABqRF&cmp=clp-ecseclips

Preparing Teachers to Meet the Needs of ELLs

Posted on May 16, 2012 by coreeducation

As states begin to implement the Common Core, there has been an increased focus on English Language Learners, or ELLs, in the classroom. An estimated 25% of children in America live in households where a language other than English is spoken. How can “regular” classroom teachers support the needs of these students? A new report by the Center for American Progress tries to answer this question.

The report leaves aside the argument over pedagogical aspects of teaching ELLs (immersion versus native language instruction, etc.), and focuses on the “foundational knowledge about ELLs that might serve general education teachers…these include the importance of attending to oral language development, supporting academic language, and encouraging teachers’ cultural sensitivity to the backgrounds of their students.” The authors argue that these areas should be “purposefully and explicitly integrated” into teacher preparation, certification, evaluation, and development to improve ELL outcomes.

The report also summarizes key findings drawn from other literature on promising practices that all teachers can use when working with ELLs, and examines gaps in policy and practice. They compare five key states (California, Florida, Massachusetts, New York, and Texas) to help identify essential knowledge and skills that can be used to address these gaps. Specifically, the authors recommend that consistent, specific guidelines on the oral language, academic language, and cultural needs of ELLs be addressed in:

Reauthorization of ESEA
Revisions to NCATE standards
State regulations
Teacher preparation programs
State certification programs
Teacher-observation rubrics
PD linked to teacher evaluation

In a related piece of news, the U.S. Department of Education announced last week the award of nearly $24.4 million for 73 grants to improve instruction for English learners. Located in 28 states and the District of Columbia, the grants support a variety of professional development activities for teachers and other educational personnel who work in in elementary and secondary school classrooms with English learners.

The grants are awarded to higher education institutions that partner with local school districts or state education agencies, and are dispersed over five years. The majority of the grants include PD for science and math teachers of ELLs. “These funds will help upgrade the content and instructional skills of new and veteran teachers working with English learners, as well [as] provide career ladder programs for paraprofessionals,” said Rosalinda Barrera, assistant deputy secretary and Director of the Office of English Language Acquisition.

To read the report from the Center for American Progress, please visit http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2012/04/teachers_ell.html

For more information on the DOE grants, please visit http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/education-department-awards-244-million-73-grants-promising-teacher-training-pro

The "Core" of Education

Category Archives: Diversity & Equity