The ESEA Rewrites in the Works

Posted on June 18, 2013 by coreeducation

Originally signed into law by President George W. Bush on January 8, 2002, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) technically expired in 2007. On several occasions over the last few years, various attempts have been made by both political parties in Congress to rewrite the law, but they ultimately fell short. Since 2012, President Obama has granted waivers to thirty-seven states and the District of Columbia from some of NCLB’s requirements, including the one requiring that 100 percent of students be proficient in reading and math by 2014. Although Republicans and Democrats alike have expressed concerns about the waivers, they have been unable to pass legislation to replace them.

As this blog has posted about before, many education professionals are concerned about the fact that ESEA waivers give the Education Department unprecedented powers in lieu of any formal Congressional update to ESEA, of which NCLB is the most recent iteration.

During a May 7 U.S. House of Representatives Education and the Workforce Committee hearing titled, “Raising the Bar: Exploring State and Local Efforts to Improve Accountability,” both Chairman John Kline (R-MN) and Representative George Miller (D-CA), the Committee’s top Democrat, gave a glimmer of hope to education advocates hoping for an NCLB rewrite when they expressed a willingness to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, currently known as NCLB.

Since that time, the effort has gotten off the ground. In the Senate, Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, a Democrat and chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, who also will be retiring at the end of the current term, introduced a 1,150 page bill at the beginning of June known as the “Strengthening America’s Schools Act of 2013.”

For more information on the initiation of the bill, please visit this website: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/04/no-child-left-behind-harkin-bill_n_3381875.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003&ir=Education

Essentially, the bill tones down some of the more extreme punitive measures of NCLB and continues a focus on “continuous improvement” and “college and career academic content.” States who have received NCLB waivers would be allowed to continue under those conditions, provided that states adopt a provision that imposes consequences on schools with students in poverty that didn’t improve. Other components of the bill include a requirement that states implement teacher and principal evaluations that rely in part on student achievement, as defined by states. According to a bill summary, it aims to “ensur[e] … disadvantaged students get the supports they need to succeed” and establishes a more balanced state-federal partnership to make sure that happens. States would also each identify their lowest-performing 5 percent of schools with poor students as “priority schools,” and “focus schools” would consist of the 10 percent of schools with poor students and the largest achievement gaps.

The “Strengthening America’s Schools Act of 2013″ has been rejected by the Republican members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, led by Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander. The Senate Republican rejection of the proposed law follows the expected partisan divide over education. The Republicans see the new bill merely as an extension of NCLB. “Sen. Harkin’s bill is No Child Left Behind on steroids,” said Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C. “This is absolutely the wrong direction.” Despite this ill-feeling toward the bill, there were not enough Republicans on the Senate Education Committee to prevent its being passed on a party-line vote. For more on the bill’s passage of committee, please visit: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2013/06/senate_committee_passes_democr.html?qs=harkin

For more on the partisan wrangling that will continue beyond the committee passing of the bill, please visit this website: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/06/11/617218usnochildleftbehind_ap.html?qs=harkin

There is also a House Republican ESEA re-write currently underway, which differs from the Senate Democratic Bill along the partisan divide mentioned above: Democrats want more accountability from the federal government as a means by which to measure progress for underprivileged students, while Republicans want to give more control back to the states.

For more information, including a side-by-side breakdown of the differences among the three plans currently being discussed, please visit this website: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/06/12/35esea.h32.html?qs=harkin

In conclusion, while some feel that the wide differences between the Democratic and Republican visions of ESEA reform indicate a low likelihood of any law being passed this year (as happened in 2011), others feel that the arguments are now on the table and will allow for fruitful debate towards a mutually acceptable plan. There is at least agreement from both Republicans and Democrats that a reauthorization bill needs to be completed.

For an analysis of where things stand right now, please visit: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2013/06/five_questions_as_nclb_reautho.html?qs=harkin

Does Value-Added Work Better in Elementary than Secondary Grades?

Posted on June 17, 2013 by coreeducation

Value-added methodology is being applied to the evaluation of teachers in tested grades and subjects, but the vast majority of the research on value-added measures focuses on elementary schools only. Secondary grades differ from elementary grades in ways that are meaningful for the validity and reliability of value-added measures for secondary teachers.

In a new report, “Does Value Added Work Better in Elementary than Secondary Grades?”, Carnegie Panelist Doug Harris, Associate Professor of Economics and University Endowed Chair in Public Education at Tulane University, addresses the question, how do differences between elementary and secondary schools affect the validity and reliability of value-added for teacher evaluation?

Following is the introduction to the report:

There is a growing body of research on the validity and reliability of value-added measures, but most of this research has focused on elementary grades. This is because, in some respects, elementary grades represent the “best-case” scenario for using value-added. Value-added measures require annual testing and, in most states, students are tested every year in elementary and middle school (grades 3-8), but in only one year in high school. Also, a large share of elementary students spend almost all their instructional time with one teacher, so it is easier to attribute learning in math and reading to that teacher.^[1]

Driven by several federal initiatives such as Race to the Top, Teacher Incentive Fund, and ESEA waivers, however, many states have incorporated value-added measures into the evaluations not only of elementary teachers but of middle and high school teachers as well. Almost all states have committed to one of the two Common Core assessments that will test annually in high school, and there is little doubt that value-added will be expanded to the grades in which the new assessments are introduced.^[2] In order to assess value-added and the validity and reliability of value-added measures, it is important to consider the significant differences across grades in the ways teachers’ work and students’ time are organized.

As we describe below, the evidence shows that there are differences in the validity of value-added measures across grades for two primary reasons. First, middle and high schools “track” students; that is, students are assigned to courses based on prior academic performance or other student characteristics. Tracking not only changes our ability to account for differences in the students who teachers educate, but also the degree to which the curriculum aligns with the tests. Second, the structure of schooling and testing vary considerably by grade level in ways that affect reliability in sometimes unexpected ways. The problems are partly correctable, but, as we show, more research is necessary to understand how problematic existing measures are and how they might be improved.

In conclusion, the fact that secondary students are often placed in different tracks or groupings based on various factors such as students’ previous academic records means that the way value-added evaluations function is different than is the case for primary students, who are usually grouped heterogeneously. This, combined with the fact that primary students often take standardized state tests that can be used to show year over year gains means that value-added is generally stronger for primary than secondary, where sequential courses sometimes have little overlapping content. However, other factors at the secondary level such as higher number of students and growing prevalence of standardized tests for secondary students could strengthen the value-added measure at the secondary level.

For more information, please visit: http://www.carnegieknowledgenetwork.org/briefs/value-added/grades/

Caution on Next Generation Science Standards

Posted on June 16, 2013 by coreeducation

A new set of science standards to complement the Common Core has been touted as crucial reform to a crucial subject, but the Thomas B. Fordham Institute has recently urged states considering the “Next Generation Science Standards” to “exercise caution and patience.”

Chester Finn and Kathleen Porter-Magee at the Common Core Watch, part of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, suggest that there are three key reasons why caution is needed considering the new “Next Generation Science Standards.” The Core of Education blog discussed the new science standards here.

First, Achieve, one of the key organizations in charge of creating the new standards, has not yet completed or released some important ancillary documents related to the science standards. Finn and Porter-Magee elaborate as follows:

These are promised over the next month or so and will address both the alignment of NGSS with the “Common Core” ELA and math standards and a discussion of high school “course sequences” in science that could be crucial in determining the extent to which NGSS itself will sufficiently impart “college and career readiness.” While these documents are not expected to add any science content to the recently released standards, they will provide context for states about the overlap between the Common Core and the science expectations, and they will help articulate content and course expectations and requirements for high school students, including advanced STEM students. This is manifestly important for the entire country, and we hope the promised document does the job.

Second, most states are already in the midst of preparations for Common Core, and it may be wise for them to consider how many changes can be accommodated at the same time:

States are still aligning curriculum to the ELA and math standards, assessments are in the early pilot phase, and much remains to be done by way of preparing both educators and the general public for the major changes that lie ahead. In short: States still have a long road to go to ensure full, smart implementation of their English language arts and math standards. And as yet, there is no clarity as to how or when curriculum or assessments may be developed to accompany the NGSS.

Finally, despite some improvements during the drafting process, there appear to be five similar concerns with the final draft as had been the case for the first drafts. The concerns center around the following:
-Do the standards address a broad enough field of STEM content?
-Are the standards detailed enough to avoid curriculum gaps?
-How much are the standards truly aligned with the rest of Common Core?
-Do the standards focus too much on classroom activities versus student outcomes?
-How fairly do the standards deal with controversial topics, such as climate change?

Expect a follow up as the ancillary documents are released, but in the meantime, it seems reasonable to believe that the Next Generation Science Standards have potential but will need some perfecting.
For more information, please visit the following link: http://www.edexcellence.net/commentary/education-gadfly-daily/common-core-watch/2013/science-standards-hold-your-horses.html

Spotlight on Promising Practices

Posted on June 10, 2013 by coreeducation

America Achieves has released a new series of short videos designed to show what great schools and districts are doing around the country, in hopes that more schools and districts might follow their lead.

America Achieves, an organization that “helps communities and states leverage policy, practice, and leadership to build high-quality educational systems and prepare each young person for success in careers, college, and citizenship” recently released a new series, “Spotlight on Promising Practices”. This is the first of a multimedia series celebrating great work happening across the country – and features video stories of promising practices that can be adapted for other communities.

These videos were developed from two projects led by America Achieves: the Fellowship for Teachers and Principals, and a recent pilot study focused on the new OECD Test for Schools. The fellowship provides a platform for outstanding educators to share best practices, develop resources and tools, and add their voices to the national debate on education and policy. The pilot study involved 105 American high schools that took the new OECD Test for Schools, a school-level internationally benchmarked tool that measures reading, math and science knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds.

The first Spotlight, “Common Core in Practice: Great Teachers Demonstrate Moving to Deeper Learning,” features the work of innovative teachers around the country who are embedding the Common Core State Standards into their daily lessons. Each has found exciting ways to use the new standards to go deeper with students in key subjects like math and ELA, engaging their classes in critical thinking and problem solving. The rich videos feature teachers from around the country and cover a variety of grade levels.

Our second Spotlight, “Beyond the Scores: A Close-Up Look at U.S. Schools that Are Global Leaders,” highlights schools that excelled on the new OECD Test for Schools and are using the rich, school-level data to chart a course for improvement. These video case studies provide a look at the great practices of some of America’s schools that are exceeding the average performance of all or most nations in the OECD.

Following is the link to Promising Practices: http://www.americaachieves.org/promising-practices

Choosing the Right Battles: Secretary Duncan’s speech at AERA

Posted on June 9, 2013 by coreeducation

Education Secretary Arne Duncan recently gave a speech to the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting in San Francisco, California. His remarks addressed the issue of testing, specifically with Common Core implementation becoming ever more imminent.

Here are some excerpts from the speech:

Introduction:

With federal support, 44 states plus DC are part of two large state consortia that are designing a new generation of assessments to better measure the higher-order thinking skills so vital to success in a knowledge-based, global economy.

A sea-change is underway in the state of assessment in the U.S. that few predicted in 2009. As Linda Darling-Hammond noted recently, “The question for policymakers has shifted from, ‘Can we afford assessments of deeper learning?’ to, ‘Can the United States afford not to have such high-quality assessments?’”

On Standardized Tests:

I think we can generally agree that standardized tests don’t have a good reputation today—and that some of the criticism is merited. Policymakers and researchers have to listen very carefully—and take very seriously the concerns of educators, parents, and students about assessment.

Many current state assessments tend to focus on easy-to-measure concepts and fill-in-the-bubble answers. Results come back months later, usually after the end of the school year, when their instructional usefulness has expired.

And today’s assessments certainly don’t measures qualities of great teaching that we know make a difference—things like classroom management, teamwork, collaboration, and individualized instruction. They don’t measure the invaluable ability to inspire a love of learning.

Schools today give lots of tests, sometimes too many. It’s a serious problem if students’ formative experiences and precious time are spent on assessments that aren’t supporting their journey to authentic college- and career-readiness.

In short, I agree with much of the critique of today’s tests. Now, the essential question is where do we go from here?

Despite the flaws of today’s tests, we can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. I don’t believe that the problems of assessing student growth are so unsolvable that we should take a pass on measuring growth—or bar the consideration of student progress in learning from teacher evaluation.

Standardized assessments are still a needed tool for transparency and accountability across the entire education system. We should never, ever return to the days of concealing achievement gaps with school averages, no-stakes tests, and low standards.

The fact is that no one is more damaged by weak accountability measures than our most vulnerable students. We must reliably measure student learning, growth, and gain.

On Teacher Evaluations:

I have said repeatedly and consistently that teacher evaluation should never, ever be based only on test scores. Just as Campbell urged, it should always include multiple, albeit imperfect measures, like principal observation or peer review, performance-based assessments, student work, student surveys, and parent feedback.

I’m not just giving lip service to using multiple measures for accountability. I’ve always been convinced it is the best way to go.

All 35 states we have approved for waivers to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act are required to use multiple measures to evaluate teachers, and 33 of the states are including individual student growth.

States with waivers are also including multiple indicators for school accountability. Twenty-seven states are using their flexibility to include measures that go far beyond the reading, math, and graduation rates required under No Child Left Behind in their accountability systems.

On the U.S. in comparison to global benchmark testing:

The U.S. should never adopt the practice of high-performers who use high-stake tests to track students. I absolutely reject that mindset. But we can learn a great deal about how to do assessment from our high-performing competitors.

Whether it is Singapore’s PSLE and GCE assessments, China’s GaoKao college entrance exam, the French “bac,” South Korea’s CSAT, Germany’s Abitur, or the British A-levels, assessments linked to high standards propel good instruction and higher-order learning around the world.

In virtually all of these high-flying systems, teachers and students spend lots of time preparing and studying for these gateway assessments. In fact, rigorous assessments actually take more time to complete than today’s bubble tests, many of which just measure basic skills.

Yet test preparation for assessments in these nations is not so much time out from learning but rather part of the learning process itself. It provides valuable learning opportunities and feedback for instruction.

High-performing countries tend to have assessments that are worth teaching to—and that is a core aim of the Race to the Top Assessment competition.

On Testing for Common Core:

The next generation of assessment systems includes diagnostic or formative assessments, not just end-of-the-year summative assessments. The two state consortia must assess student achievement of standards, student growth, and whether students are on-track to being college and career-ready. And the new assessment systems must be effective, valid, and instructionally useful.

As I listen and meet with teachers across the country, I never hear them say that they want to get rid of assessments—or give up on assessing student growth in their classrooms.

In fact, the overwhelming majority of teachers hunger for good assessments that ask students to demonstrate what they have learned—whether it is writing a persuasive essay, solving complex problems, or working collaboratively.

The new assessments from the consortia will be a vast improvement on assessment as it is done today.

The PARCC consortium, for example, will evaluate students’ ability to read complex texts, complete research projects, excel at classroom speaking and listening assignments, and work with digital media.

The Smarter Balanced consortium will assess students using computer adaptive technology that will ask students questions pitched to their skill level, based on their previous answers. And a series of optional interim evaluations during the school year will inform students, parents, and teachers about whether students are on track.

The use of smarter technology in assessments will also change instruction in ways that teachers welcome.

Technology makes it possible to assess students by asking them to design products or experiments, to manipulate parameters, run tests, and record data. Problems can be situated in real-world environments, where students perform tasks or include multi-stage scenarios and extended essays.

I have no doubt that Assessment 2.0 will help educators drive the development of a richer curriculum at the state, district, and local level, differentiated instruction tailored to individual student needs, and multiple opportunities during the school year to assess student learning.

As I have said before, I believe this new generation of assessments—combined with the adoption of internationally-benchmarked, college and career-ready standards—is an absolute game-changer for American education.

When the two consortia roll out their new assessments in the 2014-15 school year, they will be a work in progress. I’m sure not everything will go according to schedule. There will be glitches. There will be mistakes. But we cannot let the perfect become the enemy of the good.

Assessment 2.0 will need lots of work to get to version 2.1 and 2.2. I expect that states and districts will improve implementation as they learn from pilots and field tests. And teachers will play an absolutely critical role in telling us what works and what doesn’t work.

In conclusion, I think policymakers, school leaders, educators, and researchers must remain open and committed to dramatically improving assessment.

Conclusion:

And we must also remain open to what our best research shows about high-quality assessment—even when the results are unexpected.

In the long run, I believe that Assessment 3.0 will include assessments that do even more to personalize learning, and will accelerate the shift from seat-based learning to competency-based learning.

For the full text of the speech, please visit:

http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/choosing-right-battles-remarks-and-conversation

AFT Weighs In on Common Core

Posted on June 4, 2013 by coreeducation

As arguments about Common Core abound, Randi Weingarten, the President of the American Federation of Teachers, recently called for a moratorium on “the stakes associated with Common Core assessments until the standards are properly implemented and field-tested.”

Here is more from the AFT press release:

Weingarten delivered this call in a speech sponsored by the Association for a Better New York, where she made clear that if implemented properly and in partnership with educators, the new, deeper Common Core standards for math and English language arts can transform teaching and learning and provide all children with the problem-solving, critical-thinking and teamwork skills they need to compete in today’s changing world.

“If we’re able to step on the accelerator of quality implementation, and put the brakes on the stakes, we can take advantage of this opportunity and guarantee that deeper, more rigorous standards will help lead to higher achievement for all children,” Weingarten said.

Weingarten said a moratorium is necessary on the consequences of high-stakes tests to allow for midcourse corrections, as needed, in aligning the standards, curriculum, teacher training, instruction and assessments.

Forty-five states and the District of Columbia have adopted the Common Core State Standards, but some states and districts, including New York, are giving students assessments based on the standards before they have been implemented, without giving teachers the tools and resources they need to make these instructional shifts, and based on content students may have never seen, Weingarten said.

Weingarten made clear that this is not about stopping the tests, it’s about decoupling the tests from decisions that could unfairly hurt students, teachers and schools. Right now, nationally and in New York, test scores may be used to determine if a student advances or is held back, to designate a school’s performance, to evaluate educators and even to decide school closures.

“The fact that the changes are being made nationwide without anything close to adequate preparation is a failure of leadership, a sign of a broken accountability system and, worse, an abdication of our responsibility to kids, particularly poor kids,” said Weingarten. “These standards, which hold such potential to create deeper learning, are instead creating a serious backlash as officials seek to make them count before they make them work. They will either lead to a revolution in teaching and learning, or they will end up in the overflowing dustbin of abandoned reforms.”

The AFT has also made available a form which allows individuals to tell Education Secretary Arne Duncan and their state education commissioners how they feel about Common Core: http://action.aft.org/c/44/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=6281

For more commentary about Weingarten’s speech, see:

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2013/04/halt_high_stakes_linked_to_common_core.html?qs=weingarten

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/turmoil-swirling-around-common-core-education-standards/2013/04/29/7e2b0ec4-b0fd-11e2-bbf2-a6f9e9d79e19_story.html

Schools Need State Policymakers’ Help to Enable a Better Blend

Posted on June 3, 2013 by coreeducation

Public Impact has released a new report emphasizing the potential of the combination of good teachers with technology. If school districts can incentivize good teachers who make skillful use of technology, they will achieve what Education Secretary Arne Duncan has called the “best combination.” Hiring the right teachers is the start, but from there, teachers need to be given enough autonomy to put their teaching skills to use.

Here is more from a press release about the report:

As blended learning becomes more common, how can districts, charter organizations, and states ensure it will actually improve students’ learning? Like other reforms, technology plus today’s typical schools and range of teaching quality won’t do it: Schools need a “better blend” of high-quality digital learning and excellent teaching.

In Public Impact’s latest policy brief, A Better Blend: A Vision for Boosting Student Outcomes with Digital Learning, Public Impact, and their initiative Opportunity Culture, explains what state policy changes could enable and incentivize this better blend in large numbers of schools.

Digital instruction has the power to personalize learning, letting students work along the paths and at the pace they need. But it can also help excellent teachers reach more students with their ambitious, connective teaching methods and provide the time for them to help good teachers make the leap to excellence. At the same time, excellent teachers can help ensure that digital instruction realizes its promise, delivering tailored, high-quality learning experiences to students.

Today’s blended models will likely fall short unless they are paired with excellent teachers playing instructional and team leadership roles that maximize technology’s impact in tandem with their own.

As U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has said, “The best combination is great teachers working with technology to engage students in the pursuit of the learning they need.”

A Better Blend shows how schools should shift to blended learning while enhancing teaching effectiveness, through:

Selectivity: Hiring selectively based on indicators predictive of outstanding teaching
Reach: Extending the reach of excellent teachers to more students, directly and through team leadership
Freed Time: Scheduling to give teachers time to collaborate, develop, and analyze student learning data during school hours
Accountability: Giving excellent teachers credit and accountability for the growth of all students under their purview, including those taught by the teachers on teams that they lead
Authority: Vesting excellent teachers with control of the digital content they use, allowing them to continuously drive improvements in instructional materials in ways never possible previously
Rewards: Investing savings in paying teachers far more for achieving excellence with more students, making stronger recruitment and enhanced selectivity possible.

The report shows how state policy changes can enable and incentivize a better blend in large numbers of schools, through:

Funding that is flexible and weighted by student need, so that schools may invest in the people and technology that best advance their students’ learning
People policies that let schools hire, develop, deploy, pay, advance, and retain excellent teachers and collaborative teaching teams to reach every student with excellent teachers
Accountability, using increasingly better measures, that drives teaching and technology excellence and improvement, so that excellent teachers and their teams get credit for using blended learning to help more students, and so that schools have powerful incentives for a better blend
Technology and student data that are available for all students, allowing differentiated instruction for all students without regard to their economic circumstances
Timing and scalability, including implementing a better blend from the start in new and turnaround-attempt schools-when schools often have more freedoms to implement new staffing models that do not over-rely on the limited supply of outstanding school leaders. This also includes helping new schools develop systems for scale, and giving excellent new schools incentives to grow.

For more information and to download the full report, please visit:

http://opportunityculture.org/a-better-blend/

Reflecting on NCLB: Are States playing by the same rules?

Posted on June 2, 2013 by coreeducation

A new report from four researchers associated with Columbia University suggests that arcane rules, not any sort of objective and standardized measure of AYP (adequate yearly progress), drive outcomes under NCLB.

Matt Di Carlo at the Shanker Blog posted recently about this important new report: “Fifty Ways to Leave a Child Behind: Idiosyncrasies and Discrepancies in States’ Implementation of NCLB”, which was written by Elizabeth Davidson, Randall Reback, Jonah Rockoff, and Heather L. Schwartz.

Di Carlo briefly describes the five key factors responsible for widely varying AYP results across states (in 2003, the first year of results, 32% of U.S. schools failed to make AYP, but the proportion ranged from 1% in Iowa to over 80% in Florida):

Deviation from NCLB rules. During the early years of NCLB, a few states didn’t quite follow the law. (Note that this is the only one of the five factors that has been largely rectified.) In at least one case, such failure was due to simple human error – Iowa’s one percent AYP rate in 2003 seems partially to have been a result of a leave of absence taken by the staff member responsible for the data, who suffered an injury. In other cases, states bent the guidelines set forth in the legislation. Texas, for instance, petitioned the U.S. Department of Education for flexibility on a rule that permitted a maximum of one percent of a school’s special education students to use alternative assessments. Their petition was turned down, but they went ahead with the plan anyway and, as a result, 22 percent of Texas schools that would have failed to make AYP in the first year actually made it.
“Generosity” of confidence intervals. As is fairly well known, if just one of a school’s “accountable subgroups” (e.g., low-income, students with disabilities, etc.) fail to meet proficiency targets (or “safe harbor”), that entire school does not make AYP. In order to account for the inevitable fact that, in some schools, these subgroups would consist of very few tested students, NCLB allowed states to apply “confidence intervals.” Basically, these adjustments meant that smaller subgroups (i.e., those consisting of fewer tested students in a given school) would be required to meet lower targets. However, states were given flexibility in how much “leeway” they granted via these confidence intervals, and a few specified none at all. Florida, for example, did not use them, and thus a fairly large group of schools that would have made AYP had this rule been applied did not do so.
Different targets across grade levels. States had the option of either setting the same proficiency targets for all grades or letting their targets vary by grade (and subject). Using the former system – the same targets for all grades – basically meant that schools serving particular grade configurations would have an advantage in making AYP (if their starting rates were higher) whereas others would have a disadvantage (if their starting rates were lower). For example, Pennsylvania set uniform targets, but their high schools’ starting rates were much lower, on average, than those of elementary schools. The end result was that 27 percent of the state’s high schools failed to make AYP in 2004, compared with just 7 percent of elementary schools.
Number of “accountable subgroups” and minimum sample size. As mentioned above, NCLB required schools to be held accountable for the performance of student subgroups. But states were given flexibility not only in how many subgroups they chose (and which ones), but also in setting minimum sample sizes for these subgroups to be “included” in AYP calculations. For example, schools with only a handful of students with disabilities in a given year could be exempted from having this subgroup count at all. As a rule, states that chose to include fewer subgroups in AYP, or set higher sample size requirements for their inclusion, tended to have lower failure rates, all else being equal. Once again, states varied in the choices they made, and this influenced their results.
Definition of “continuous enrollment.” Finally, states had to specify the rules by which mobile students (e.g., transfers) were or were not counted toward schools’ AYP calculations. Some states set more stringent enrollment requirements than others, which meant that they excluded more students from being counted in their testing results. For instance, Wisconsin’s rules excluded students who were not enrolled in late September of 2003 (the tests were administered in November 2003). Thus, fairly large proportions of students who took the test were not counted. To the degree excluded students’ performance was different from their “continuously enrolled” peers, these choices affected failure rates.

What is essential to remember in addition to each of these five factors is that states may have been stricter with one of these five while looser with another. In other words, each state combined each of these five factors differently, resulting in “many state-level NCLB configurations . . . being complex, sometimes inconsistent webs of rules that reflected varying incentives and priorities. Making things worse, the ESEA waivers that most states have submitted will only result in more heterogeneity.”

Given that there has been more than a decade since the initiation of NCLB, educators may be inclined to think that the results of this important federal education reform would be clear, but even with the detailed analysis of this report, it is still very difficult to garner clear conclusions. If nothing else, the confusion surrounding the multiplicity of AYP measurement techniques along with the convoluted ways in which they interact with each other suggests that any reforms to teacher evaluations and testing for the Common Core must be carried out extremely carefully and implemented with a meticulous focus on detail.

For more information, please visit the following website: http://shankerblog.org/?p=8191

Following is the link to the original paper: http://www.columbia.edu/~ekd2110/Fifty_Ways_4_5_2013.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/

The "Core" of Education

Tag Archives: school reform