California: Hot Seat for Contentious Education Issues

Posted on May 7, 2013 by coreeducation

Last month, the Democratic Party in California held a three day convention. The convention, at which the California Teachers Association was prominently represented, sparked a wave of rhetoric that reveals at least a temporary rift among some members and former members of the Democratic Party in California. The rift concerns how much school choice and student testing as part of teacher evaluations should be part of the Democratic platform for education reform.

On one side, those who disagree with both of these movements, stand the younger leaders of the Democratic Party in California, such as Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris, and the California Teachers Association. On the other side, those who favor school choice and teacher evaluations that include student test scores, stand prominent education groups StudentsFirst and Democrats for Education Reform.

The first group, which had the chance to make its views known at the recent California Democratic Party Convention, charges the latter two education groups with being fronts for Republican and corporate interests because of their agenda which supposedly jeopardizes public schools and its teachers.

The second group, represented most prominently by Michelle Rhee, charges the first group with not being true to their Democratic ideals because they seek to obstruct measures that focus on helping students, especially minority students, have access to better education.

Below are some selected sections from a Los Angeles Times article about the debate:

“People can call themselves Democrats for Education Reform – it’s a free country – but if your agenda is to shut teachers and school employees out of the political process and not lift a finger to prevent cuts in education, in my book you’re not a reformer, you’re not helping education, and you’re sure not much of a Democrat,” said state Supt. of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson, a registered Democrat whose office is nonpartisan.

California Teachers Assn. President Dean Vogel argued that the organizations are working to eliminate workers’ rights and “hellbent on turning students into test-taking machines. I’ll tell you right now, they want to do that, they have to come through us,” Vogel said. ”Let’s be perfectly clear,” he added. “These organizations are backed by moneyed interests, Republican operatives and out-of-state Wall Street billionaires dedicated to school privatization and trampling on teacher and worker rights.”

Gloria Romero, a former Democratic majority leader in the state Senate who leads the California chapter of Democrats for Education Reform, called the Sunday resolution “stupid.” ”They drank some Kool-Aid that has been fresh squeezed for them by the most powerful political interest in California, the California Teachers Assn.,” she said, adding that improving schools for minorities and the poor should be a priority for the party. ”They beat their chest,” she continued, “they get some money into their campaign coffers, but they walk away having abandoned the call for quality education for children of color.”

The clash over education had been building throughout the three-day convention, underscoring a larger debate taking place in education circles. A spokeswoman for StudentsFirst said the party failed over the weekend to discuss any concrete steps to improve education.

“The heated rhetoric … is especially disappointing because it reveals an abject refusal to tackle the most important issue: ensuring that every California student goes to a great school and has a great teacher,” said the spokeswoman, Jessica Ng.

StudentsFirst, founded by former Washington, D.C., schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, has spent nearly $1.5 million since 2012 on efforts to elect Democrats. Rhee is married to Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson. An early hint of the convention controversy came when party officials, who had initially approved Johnson’s request that his advocacy group have a booth at the convention, reversed course and said no.

A spokesman for the party said the decision not to provide space for the Democratic mayor of the host city had nothing to do with his group’s message. ”We simply experienced a higher demand for exhibitor booths than initially anticipated,” Tenoch Flores said.

For more information, please visit:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-democrats-20130415,0,2919125.story?utm_source=feedly

RESPECT: The Obama Administration’s new Blueprint for Teaching

Posted on May 6, 2013 by coreeducation

Two years ago, active classroom teachers working temporarily at the U.S. Department of Education launched a national dialogue with their classroom colleagues to talk openly and honestly about the challenges and aspirations of America’s teachers. The Education Department engaged more than 5,700 educators nationwide to develop and refine a vision of teaching and leading that will help both teachers and students to meet new, 21st century demands.

The Blueprint for RESPECT (Recognizing Educational Success, Professional Excellence, and Collaborative Teaching) began as a national conversation on the teaching profession; the President has committed to support the development of a new, comprehensive teacher policy.

Recently, the Department of Education released the result of this unprecedented national dialogue in a bold and visionary blueprint for reforming the teaching profession.

“Our nation’s educators are entrusted with a responsibility that’s impossible to overstate – which is nothing less than to prepare their students, and our children, for the future,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. “We heard from thousands of teachers from across the country who contributed their time and creative ideas to help the RESPECT blueprint reflect their own vision for the teaching profession. With this blueprint, together we can work to elevate the profession through competitive salaries, transforming professional development and career opportunities, and relying on the expertise of teachers to advance educational practice and improve outcomes for students.”

The RESPECT Blueprint embraces seven critical components of a transformed teaching profession jointly identified last spring by ED and seven other national organizations, including American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Association of School Administrators (AASA), Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS), Federal Mediation and Conciliation Services (FMCS), National Education Association (NEA), and National School Board Association (NSBA). It further identifies ways that this work will continue to be integrated into the Department’s existing policies and calls the field to take action to work toward the RESPECT vision.

President Obama is continuing to ask for a $5 billion investment from Congress to support a RESPECT grant program outlined in the RESPECT blueprint, including salaries for the teaching profession competitive with professions like architecture, medicine and law, more support for novice teachers, and more career opportunities for accomplished teachers.

In tandem with the release of the blueprint, the Department has re-launched ED’s educator homepage to include new information about the RESPECT initiative, including the blueprint document (both PDF and e-book formats), a description of how educators provided input, and video of teachers describing their connection with the RESPECT vision. The site also includes resources to help stakeholders take action, including a self-inventory to assess one’s own school or district on the seven critical components of RESPECT.

For more information, please visit the following websites. Watch educators discuss what excites them about the RESPECT vision, how teacher voice played a key role in shaping it, and why we must begin implementing it today:

http://www.ed.gov/teaching

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=lIQaRXua9OY

Last Chance to Comment on PARCC Draft Grade- and Subject-Specific PLDs

Posted on May 5, 2013 by coreeducation

The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) released the draft grade- and subject-specific performance level descriptors (PLDs) in English language arts/literacy (ELA) and mathematics, and they are available for public comment through May 8, 2013. Performance levels, sometimes referred to as “achievement levels,” are the broad, categorical levels used to report student performance on an assessment, and the PLDs further describe what that performance means.

The draft grade- and subject-specific PLDs were informed by the College- and Career-Ready Determination Policy (CCRD) and Policy-Level Performance Level Descriptors (PLDs) adopted by the PARCC Governing Board and Advisory Committee on College Readiness (ACCR), which established five performance levels for the PARCC assessments.

The policy-level PLDs included policy claims, which describe the educational implications for students who attain a particular performance level on the PARCC assessments, as well as general content claims, which describe in broad terms the knowledge, skills, and practices students performing at a given performance level are able to demonstrate at any grade level.

These new draft grade- and subject-specific PLDs further articulate the knowledge, skills, and practices that students performing at a given level should be able to demonstrate in each content area at each grade level and to be on-track for college and career readiness.

“The draft PLDs are a collaborative product of K-12 and higher education content experts from across the PARCC states. An innovative approach was used to develop the PLDs,” said Dr. Maridyth McBee, Assistant Superintendent of Accountability and Assessment for the Oklahoma State Department of Education, who helped lead the development of the PLDs. “We eagerly anticipate the comments made by the public so that we can refine the PLDs.”

The PLDs will look different than from those in the past in order to accurately reflect the innovations in the Common Core State Standards. Like the standards, the ELA/Literacy PLDs place emphasis on a student’s ability to find text-based evidence for generalizations, conclusions or inferences drawn. The Mathematics PLDs emphasize the integration of mathematics content and practices.

Groups of PARCC stakeholders, including state leaders and K-12 and postsecondary content experts, served on writing panels over the past several months to develop the draft grade- and subject-specific PLDs.

Vinnie Segalini, ELA PLD Panelist and Office Director for English Language Arts at the Mississippi Department of Education, described the process in more detail. “The exciting part of the PLD process was to bring such a divergent group of people, including content specialists, assessment specialists, and classroom teachers, together for this project. We worked extremely hard to ensure that the Common Core State Standards were reflected in the PLDs in a holistic way.”

With the release of the PLDs to the field, K-12 educators will be able to better understand how students should be performing against the Common Core State Standards and eventually apply feedback from the PARCC assessments in their classrooms. Jessica Lavallee, ELA PLD Panelist and Elementary Intervention Specialist at the Providence School Department, commented, “In the PLDs, there is recognition of the variations in students’ level of command of the standards. A close look at the variations from level to level may help guide us in the development of rubrics to collaboratively study student work, to consider how student performance on a daily basis may be indicative of their performance on PARCC, and to develop appropriate scaffolds for students not yet meeting the standards.”

Furthermore, the PLDs provide yet another opportunity for both K-12 and higher education to come together to create an assessment that will serve the needs of educators in both sectors and show whether or not students are on-track to be college and career ready.

“In my estimation, the PLDs provide a useful tool to help teachers understand how PARCC will be interpreting the standards as they develop the assessment. Given that PARCC aims to serve as a demonstration of college and career readiness, I was glad to see PARCC include members of the higher education community throughout the process. Such a partnership continues to contribute to the overall quality and strength of PARCC,” said Dr. Ted Coe, Mathematics PLD Panelist and Chair of Scottsdale Community College Department of Mathematics.

Until May 8, 2013, the draft grade- and subject-specific PLDs are posted on the PARCC website. Interested parties can provide feedback through a survey posted on the PARCC website, answering questions specific to the PLDs for both ELA/literacy and mathematics.

All feedback will be reviewed by the state representatives and Achieve, PARCC’s project management partner. Revisions will be made accordingly. The PARCC Governing Board and Advisory Committee on College Readiness will vote on the adoption of the final PLDs during their joint session on June 26, 2013.

For more information, FAQs or to view the PLDs, visithttp://www.parcconline.org/ela-plds

and http://www.parcconline.org/math-plds

Final Next Generation Science Standards Released

Posted on May 2, 2013 by coreeducation

In case you missed it, the final Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), a new set of voluntary, rigorous, and internationally benchmarked standards for K-12 science education, have been released.

Twenty six states and their broad-based teams worked together for two years with a 41-member writing team and partners to develop the standards which identify science and engineering practices and content that all K-12 students should master in order to be fully prepared for college, careers and citizenship. The NGSS were built upon a vision for science education established by the Framework for K-12 Science Education, published by the National Academies’ National Research Council in 2011.

The lead state partners include Arizona, Arkansas, California, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, Washington and West Virginia.

“The NGSS aim to prepare students to be better decision makers about scientific and technical issues and to apply science to their daily lives. By blending core science knowledge with scientific practices, students are engaged in a more relevant context that deepens their understanding and helps them to build what they need to move forward with their education -whether that’s moving on to a four-year college or moving into post-secondary training,” said Matt Krehbeil, Science Education Program Consultant, of Kansas.

The creation of the NGSS was entirely state-driven, with no federal funds or incentives to create or adopt the standards. The process was primarily funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, a leading philanthropy dedicated to improving science education in the U.S. The NGSS are grounded in a sound, evidence-based foundation of current scientific research-including research on the ways students learn science effectively-and identify the science all K-12 students should know.

“The Next Generation Science Standards are going to pull together inquiry and practice, and recognize the role of engineering. Pulling together the cross-cutting concepts is going to be a challenge, but it’s really effective pedagogy,” said Ellen Ebert, Washington State’s Director of Science for Teaching and Learning at the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction. “In Washington State we’re looking at the NGSS to propel students into 21st century-we’re looking at college and career readiness. This is a real opportunity to help students see the potential of science in their lives.”

“The Next Generation of Science Standards promise to help students understand why is it that we have to know science and help them use scientific learning to develop critical thinking skills-which may be applied throughout their lives, no matter the topic. Today, students see science as simply a list of facts and ideas that they are expected to memorize. In contrast to that approach education researchers have learned, particularly in the last 15 to 20 years, that if we cover fewer ideas, but go into more depth, students come away with a much richer understanding. Unlike previous standards, where you have separation of inquiry and ideas that students should know, in the NGSS they are now together,” said Joseph S. Krajcik, Professor of Science Education in the College of Education at Michigan State University and a member of the writing team.

For more information, please visit: http://www.nextgenscience.org/next-generation-science-standards

For commentary on the standards, please visit these links: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/04/09/28science_ep.h32.html?tkn=MNRFfFHQkhlEGl9Nb7fCNjDPZXx34QVP%2FORf&cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS1

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/04/03/27camins.h32.html?tkn=WYUFFZq4kqp4kxL7s7ozrm7vnb6xF4rW03nK&cmp=clp-edweek

Reflections on the 2013 International Summit on the Teaching Profession

Posted on May 1, 2013 by coreeducation

Back in mid-March, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, hosted the third International Summit on the Teaching Profession. This particular summit focused on teacher quality, including professional standards and teacher appraisal. The past two took place in New York City at the invitation of Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

Marc Tucker of the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) composed a summary of his thoughts on the event. About the purpose of the event, he said, “The aim was to provide a venue in which the top officials involved in making policy for teachers and teaching in their countries could, aided by analyses provided by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Education International (EI), compare notes on strategy and implementation, and by so doing, further improve their own education systems. Nothing quite like this had ever happened before.”

Despite not having attended himself, his comments reflect conversations with several attendees. His goal in the comments was to address some of the differing opinions of those who attended.

It was broadly agreed that teacher evaluation and appraisal is very important and that it could be effective only in systems also designed to:

Make teaching an attractive profession,
Provide very high-quality initial teacher education,
Create a school management system in which teachers could act as autonomous professionals within a collaborative culture, and
Engage teachers in developing the evaluation system.

And that was frame with which OECD and EI opened the third summit.

This is a very sensible approach. It could potentially provide a roadmap leading to sound policy that would also provide an opportunity for all parties to claim victory, but it would have been too much to expect that it would relieve all the tensions with which the second summit ended.

In the eyes of several observers, no one at the table at the third summit was advocating that teacher evaluation and appraisal be used to weed out bad teachers. And everyone agreed that teachers both needed and wanted feedback. But, with that off the table, there was still tension between those who are most comfortable with the use of evaluation for professional growth and development, on the one hand, and those who see it as a vital tool in the design and implementation of tough-minded accountability systems on the other. And, in the middle were those who were naturally inclined to the position apparently so well articulated by Andreas Schleicher at the meeting, namely that teacher evaluation is best thought of as an important component of a much larger system built around a conception of teachers as highly capable professionals, not as cogs in a Tayloristic management design.

That vision assumes that the criteria against which teachers are being judged is not limited to student performance on basic skills in a narrow range of subjects but on their ability to help students succeed against the full range of outcomes now widely referred to as 21st century skills, many of which are difficult if not impossible to measure. In Tayloristic systems, everyone assumes that management will assess the workers in any way they see fit, usually according to fairly simplistic criteria; in professional environments, the direction of accountability is at least as much to one’s colleagues as to one’s superiors in the organizational structure. So who is to devise the criteria for judging teachers and who is to decide whether an individual teacher meets them? In blue collar environments, all workers are regarded as equal, if not interchangeable. But, in a professional environment, the professionals acquire increasing responsibility, authority and compensation as they demonstrate increasing competence and skill. Perhaps, as nations move toward conceptions of teachers and teaching grounded in the idea of teacher as professional, the idea of teacher evaluation and appraisal should be inextricably connected to the development of formalized career ladders for teachers.

The third summit did indeed address these and other issues. This made for some tough conversations. It became very clear that it was going to be hard to resolve these issues without some real trust among the parties, both at this table, and, by implication, within the countries represented.

For Tucker’s full comments, see: http://www.ncee.org/2013/04/tuckers-lens-the-2013-international-summit-on-the-teaching-profession/

For the summit website, see: http://www.teachersummit2013.org/

Following is a link to a blog post about the summit from the Education Department’s website: http://www.ed.gov/blog/2013/03/third-international-summit-on-the-teaching-profession-sitting-at-our-table/

Making the Case for College and Career Readiness

Posted on April 30, 2013 by coreeducation

A newly updated and released website, The Future Ready Project, provides college and career readiness advocates with the information, strategies, messages and tools they need to effectively make the case for the college- and career- ready agenda in their states and communities. With customizable resources and fact sheets, stakeholders may take the materials available on the site and tailor them to best fit their constituent audiences.

Looking for data and talking points to support your advocacy? Check out Make the Case: Facts & Research, which has key fact sheets on major college- and career-ready policies and reforms, relevant research to inform your case-making, public opinion data organized by audience, great sources of local and state data and pages designed to help you jump right in and tackle common communications challenges.

Putting together a communications strategy or plan and need some help? Plan Your Strategy: Tools & Messages offers tools for planning a communications strategy including a modifiable plan template, messaging tools for communicating about college and career readiness, resources targeted at engaging business leaders, videos of current students and recent graduates talking about college and career readiness, flexible fact sheets designed to help you bust common myths about the college- and career-ready agenda and communications tools from other national and state organizations.

Want to see what materials are already out there? Find Relevant Resources is a brand new searchable database of advocacy and communications resources, tools, campaigns and materials, developed by national organizations and state and local organizations. With a growing collection of over 150 resources currently available for parents, educators, businesses and a variety of other audiences, this database has appropriate materials for any and all college- and career-ready case-making.

For more information, please visit: http://www.futurereadyproject.org/

Evaluation for Educators in Non-Tested Grades and Subjects

Posted on April 29, 2013 by coreeducation

With news that 7 teachers in Florida, with the support of the National Education Association, are suing the Florida State Education Department, the issue of how to evaluate teachers is again making headlines. The teachers in Florida assert that their due process and equal protection rights are being violated because they were given evaluation scores based on students other than their own—students with different teachers, in different grades, and in different schools.

The source of this confusing situation is the fact that the standardized tests which are linked with teacher evaluation systems do not take place in every grade. One of the litigants was given an unsatisfactory score despite being chosen as teacher of the year by her colleagues. This teacher, Kim Cook, teaches first grade, and the state education department in Florida chose to evaluate her based on 4^th and 5^th graders, who do take a state of Florida standardized test.

Another source of confusion concerns teachers of older students in classes for which there are no standardized tests. These “non-tested” subjects include art, music, science, health and social studies. School districts are currently contemplating methods by which they could evaluate these teachers, thereby avoiding lawsuits similar to those in Florida.

A researcher at the Value-Added Research Center, a research evaluation firm and contractor located at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Wisconsin Center for Education Research, offers summaries of three proposed models for evaluation that fairly include teachers in non-tested grades and subjects:

Under option 1, states expand the number of grades and subjects in which students are assessed annually. This model’s costs would come from procuring and administering commercially available standardized exams in those subjects. The development and administration of new data systems also add to the cost.

Under model 2, states would convene educators to develop assessments in the non-tested grades and subjects. Costs here would come from hiring facilitators to train educators on the process of developing the tests, the actual test development, and the cost of a platform to host the assessments so that districts can administer them.

Finally, under model 3, states would implement student learning objectives, a particular kind of goal in which each teacher sets growth goals with his or her principal, and selects a way of measuring growth on those based on some examination of student work. (For a discussion of the research on SLOs and some of the tradeoffs associated with using them, see this blog item.) This option, the paper notes, has fewer direct costs associated with procuring or developing tests, but higher indirect costs to provide districts, principals, and teachers with guidance and training on how to craft and score the SLOs.

For more information on the lawsuit in Florida, please visit: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/teachers-in-florida-sue-state-claiming-job-evaluation-system-is-unfair/2013/04/16/32fbb400-a6c4-11e2-8302-3c7e0ea97057_story.html

For more on the teacher evaluation models and their costs, download the report at the following link:

https://aefpweb.org/sites/default/files/webform/Cost%20of%20Implementation%20Draft%2003.13.13.docx

Core Education, LLC is pleased to support states and districts in the design and implementation of evaluation systems that include teachers in non-tested grades and subjects.

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

Standardized Exam Cheating Confirmed in 37 States and DC

Posted on April 25, 2013 by coreeducation

FairTest, an organization that “advances quality education and equal opportunity by promoting fair, open, valid and educationally beneficial evaluations of students, teachers and schools”, has prepared a report on confirmed incidences of schools cheating on standardized tests in recent years. The report includes discussion of multiple means through which schools manipulate results of standardized tests.

As an Atlanta grand jury indicts former top school officials in a test cheating scandal and the annual wave of high-stakes standardized exams begins across the nation, a new survey reports confirmed cases of test score manipulation in at least 37 states and Washington, D.C. in the past four academic years. The analysis by the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest) documents more than 50 ways schools improperly inflated their scores during that period.

“Across the U.S., strategies that boost scores without improving learning — including outright cheating, narrow teaching to the test and pushing out low-scoring students — are widespread,” said FairTest Public Education Director Bob Schaeffer. “These corrupt practices are inevitable consequences of the politically mandated overuse and misuse of high-stakes exams.”

Among the ways FairTest found test scores have been manipulated in communities such as Atlanta, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Detroit, El Paso, Houston, Los Angeles, Newark, New York City, Philadelphia and the District of Columbia:

Encourage teachers to view upcoming test forms before they are administered.
Exclude likely low-scorers from enrolling in school.
Drill students on actual upcoming test items.
Use thumbs-up/thumbs-down signals to indicate right and wrong responses.
Erase erroneous responses and insert correct ones.
Report low-scorers as having been absent on testing day.

Schaeffer continued, “The solution to the school test cheating problem is not simply stepped up enforcement. Instead, testing misuses must end because they cheat the public out of accurate data about public school quality at the same time they cheat many students out of a high-quality education.”

“The cheating explosion is one of the many reasons resistance to high-stakes testing is sweeping the nation,” Schaeffer concluded.

For more information, including lists of schools involved in cheating scandals and more discussion on ways in which schools cheat, please visit:

http://www.fairtest.org/2013-Cheating-Report-PressRelease

Should student essays be graded by computers?

Posted on April 24, 2013 by coreeducation

The issue of whether and how much computers should be responsible for student grading has been around for decades, but the recent advent of MOOCs and the upcoming implementation of Common Core tests has brought the issue to the forefront yet again. One MOOC, edX, has recently developed software, which they will make available as freeware, that will grade student essays. edX argues that their new software is not only adequate, but that it will increase student learning because it will provide instant feedback on student essays, which will then encourage those students to rework their essays for re-submission.

Others, such as MIT researcher Les Perelman, are highly critical of computerized grading. Perelman has successfully written and tested several nonsensical essays which have been graded highly by some of the testing software. Those who agree with Perelman have recently founded a group, known as Professionals Against Machine Scoring Of Student Essays In High-Stakes Assessment, to protest computerized scoring of essays.

Most germane to K-12 education, however, is the news that Smarter Balanced and PARCC are both experimenting with computerized grading of essays in their tests leading up to Common Core implementation next school year:

Joe Willhoft, the executive director of SBAC, told Catherine Gewertz of Education Week in an email that written responses from students participating in the ongoing pilot tests will be hand-scored by the consortium’s contractor, with guidance from SBAC staff. The contractor will then use the scored responses to try to “train” artificial-intelligence software to score the papers.

Scoring, both human and artificial, will focus on three aspects of students’ writing, Willhoft explained: 1) overall organization and style (things like how well it’s written, whether the sentences are complete and coherent, and the voice and style appropriate) 2) conventions of the language, and 3) students’ use of evidence (whether the essay refers appropriately to the reading materials on which it is based). Based on what is known about computer scoring, he said, Smarter Balanced officials are more confident that it will succeed with conventions, organization, and style than with use of evidence.

They’ll divide the papers into two chunks: a training set and a validity set. Programmers will use the training set to teach the computerized scoring engine to replicate the human scores. They’ll use the validity set to see if the software actually replicates the human scores. With that feedback in hand, SBAC will get its arms around the reliability of computer scoring.

Educators, students, and parents may be willing to accept computerized grading for Common Core only if it is tested rigorously and proven to be legitimate, but MOOCs seem ready to move ahead with computerized grading right away.

For more information, please visit these two websites: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/science/new-test-for-computers-grading-essays-at-college-level.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2013/04/should_common_tests_use_computers_to_score_writing.html