|
IN THIS ISSUE: |
September
2006
Copyright
© 2006 Queue, Inc.
FREE STUDENT WORKBOOKS AVAILABLE FOR PREVIEW (Advertisement)
Queue, Inc.'s latest Test Preparation Catalogue features many new titles. We would be delighted to send catalogues and/or free review copies of any of the student versions of these books at no cost to you. Call, fax, or email your request.
In addition, we’re offering a wide array of curriculum-based materials in our New Curriculum Catalogue. We welcome you to request free review copies of these books as well as a copy of the curriculum catalogue.
We think you will find Queue’s test preparation materials to be great tools to prepare your students for state assessment tests. In addition, we encourage you to sample our curriculum workbooks to help engage and challenge your students.
For further information on Queue, Inc. and our product line, visit http://www.qworkbooks.com.
To order free previews, please visit: http://www.qworkbooks.com/samplerequest.html
or call: 800-232-2224
or fax: 800-775-2729
or write: Queue, Inc., 1 Controls Dr., Shelton, CT 06484
For back issues of this newsletter, as well as current and back issues of our state newsletters and U.S. Education News, please go to: http://www.queuenews.com/
For the latest education research news on a daily basis, please visit our Education Research Report Weblog: http://queuenews.typepad.com/education_research_report/
NATIONAL GOVERNORS ASSOCIATION GRADUATION COUNTS COMPACT PROGRESS REPORT
In 2005, all 50 governors made an unprecedented commitment to provide educators, policymakers and the public with much-needed information about one of the most critical indicators of success for our public education system—high school graduation rates. But a report out today updating the public on the implementation of that agreement is a reminder of how much work remains to accurately account for the students who graduate from American high schools.
The report, issued by the National Governors Association, reveals three serious problems with the way states are carrying out their commitment to improve high school graduation data:
First, most states have not moved to make the graduation-rate definition agreed to by their governors part of official state policy.
Second, most states aren’t taking the necessary actions to start reporting more accurate graduation rates right now. Instead, most are waiting for more sophisticated longitudinal data systems—which in some cases are years away from being up and running—before taking any steps to improve graduation-rate data.
Third, even among states where better data are being produced, some still plan to use inaccurate numbers for accountability purposes under the No Child Left Behind law.
Codifying the Compact
Since the Compact was signed, only two states have moved to formally adopt the Compact’s graduation-rate definition into state policy. Led by a coalition of African-American and Latino legislators, Maryland adopted comprehensive new legislation to carry out all of the commitments of the governors’ agreement. In Colorado, the state board of education issued new regulations adopting the Compact’s graduation-rate definition. More states should follow the lead of Maryland and Colorado.
Postponing Progress
Development of longitudinal data systems that track individual students over time is critically important—not just for graduation-rate purposes but for understanding, evaluating and improving public education.
Unfortunately, many states are waiting until they have these systems in place before providing more accurate data. This approach ignores states’ ability (and their obligation under the Compact) to begin immediately reporting better estimates. States can and should use school-level data that is already collected—on enrollment, diploma recipients, and transfers in and out—to start calculating graduation rates according to the Compact definition. Colorado and South Carolina are doing just that. Other states should follow their lead and not let the pursuit of ever-better data systems serve as an excuse to postpone reporting better data.
In addition, states also need to take immediate steps to train local officials in proper data collection and reporting techniques and to establish auditing protocols to catch problems in local reporting.
To see the full report, please go to:
http://www.nga.org/portal/site/nga/menuitem.9123e83a1f6786440ddcbeeb501010a0/?vgnextoid=9
MISSING THE MARK: STATES' TEACHER-EQUITY PLANS FALL SHORT
A new Education Trust analysis of teacher-equity plans prepared by all 50 states and the District of Columbia finds that most states failed to properly analyze data that would determine whether poor and minority children get more than their fair share of unqualified, inexperienced, and out-of-field teachers. Only two states, Nevada and Ohio, fully complied with the requirements and offered specific plans to remedy inequities.
As a result, the Ed Trust report released today recommends that the U.S. Department of Education reject the overwhelming majority of plans and require states to start over—this time with clearer guidance from the federal government on what is required by the law.
“Research is clear that teachers make the difference in how much students learn," said Heather Peske, the Education Trust senior associate who directed the analysis. “We can’t close achievement gaps without confronting the gaps in access to teacher quality for low-income and minority students.”
The No Child Left Behind Act not only requires states to guarantee that 100 percent of core academic classes are taught by “highly qualified” teachers, but also to “ensure that poor and minority children are not taught at higher rates than other children by inexperienced, unqualified or out of field teachers.”
After years of ignoring this provision of the law, the U.S. Department of Education required that state leaders submit data on the distribution of teachers by July 7—along with their plans to fix it.
Sadly, most states missed the mark.
To comply with the law, each state had to look at inequality in four areas:
Unfortunately, the majority of states did not look at all four areas of inequality. Only three states—Ohio, Nevada, and Tennessee—
examined all four components. New York also offered some analysis of the four measures.
But most states simply didn’t comply with the law—and had little guidance from the U.S. Department of Education to help them do so.
Of the plans submitted, 34 states only focused on one area of the equity analysis—the percentage of classes taught by highly qualified teachers in high-poverty schools compared to low-poverty schools. Only 10 states appropriately analyzed whether minority students were taught disproportionately by teachers who were not highly qualified. Only four states examined whether students from low-income families were taught by inexperienced teachers, and only three looked whether minority students were taught disproportionately by inexperienced teachers.
More than half of the states (27) asserted that by simply meeting the highly qualified teacher (HQT) requirements of NCLB, they would also meet the teacher-equity requirements. This is insufficient because it ignores inequality in whether poor and minority students are more likely to be assigned to inexperienced teachers.
Furthermore, some states failed to acknowledge that merely complying with HQT provisions does not address the problem of out-of-field teaching in schools that serve low-income children and children of color. For example, a teacher who is only highly qualified in social studies might be assigned to teach math classes.
Two states—Nevada and Ohio—stand out for examining all four measures of inequality and for devising strategies targeted at fixing the inequitable distribution of unqualified and inexperienced teachers.
Nevada did what no other state did and submitted three equity plans: a state plan, and plans from the state’s two districts that serve the most low-income and minority students, Clark (Las Vegas) and Washoe (Reno) counties. All three of Nevada’s plans include specific, targeted strategies for the equitable distribution of teacher talent.
Additionally, Clark County’s plan includes innovative strategies, such as giving principals in high-need schools two extra months to consider teacher-transfer requests before principals in other schools can recruit them.
Ohio describes 68 specific strategies to balance the distribution of highly qualified and experienced teachers. Further, each of these strategies is supported by data and analysis conducted by the state and includes progress measures, public-reporting mechanisms and state monitoring plans.
While many states mentioned interesting programs, no other state’s submission amounted to a plan for ensuring that poor and minority students get the teachers they deserve.
“Concentrating inexperienced teachers in schools with poor and minority students puts these students at an educational disadvantage. States have to accept responsibility on this issue in order to close achievement gaps,” Peske said. “This is fundamentally about fairness and equality of opportunity.”
Three states—Missouri, New Mexico, and Utah—have yet to submit a plan. Instead, they informed the Department of Education that they would submit plans in the future.
Other states, among them Iowa and North Dakota, determined that they had no inequities in the distribution of unqualified and inexperienced teachers, but based their decisions on flawed methods of analysis.
“While it’s clear the states put a lot of time and energy into these submissions, it’s also clear that we don’t yet have real plans to achieve equity,” said Ross Wiener, Education Trust policy director. “If these plans are accepted by the Department of Education, then we will have gone through an exercise that purports to address inequality, but injustice will persist,” he said.
The Ed Trust recommends:
“We can’t close the achievement gap without squarely confronting and remedying disparities in teacher quality,” Wiener said. “These equity plans were supposed to be a first step toward honestly facing up to the problem. Unfortunately, they don’t even come close.”
For the full report, please go to:
http://www2.edtrust.org/EdTrust/Press+Room/Teacher+Equity+Plans+Embargoed+Release.htm
CAN DISTRICT OFFICES HELP SCHOOLS IMPROVE? THREE-YEAR STUDY SAYS YES
A new WestEd book offers practical advice for districts engaged in continuous school improvement. Building on a three-year study, the authors have created a district action guide with concrete activities designed to help district personnel understand whether they are on track to help—and not hinder—their local schools’ efforts to raise student achievement.
WestEd researchers concluded that leaders in successful districts:
"We provide technical assistance to central office administrators in implementing this inquiry process, and we see firsthand how urgently schools need district support to close persistent achievement gaps," says Kim Agullard, Program Associate in WestEd’s Comprehensive School Assistance Program.
Coauthor Dolores Goughnour adds, "The good news? If district leaders take a coherent, consistent, research-based approach in both their improvement-related communications and their improvement structures, then they will foster school improvement."
Schools working to raise student achievement need the help of an organized, focused central office. Yet many districts lack unified direction, agreement on the central office role in supporting school improvement, and coherence and alignment between goals and strategies. Drawing on the findings of a three-year study of several districts focused on improving their schools, Central Office Inquiry: Assessing Organization, Roles, and Functions to Support School Improvement is intended to help central office leadership and staff examine their organizational arrangement, their enacted roles, and their day-to-day activities, critically questioning both their theories of action and how their work is concretely helping the schools they serve.
For more information, please go to: http://www.wested.org/cs/we/view/rs/814
RESEARCH FINDS SCHOOL PHYS-ED CLASSES DO LITTLE TO PROMOTE EXERCISE, FIGHT OBESITY
Increasing the number of required physical education (PE) courses in school has no detectable effect on weight or the likelihood of obesity among students, according to a new study in the fall issue of Education Next. These findings come as state legislatures grapple with concerns over how best to address increasing rates of childhood obesity.
In 2005 alone, 44 states introduced bills to increase or reform school PE. Increased PE requirements, however, have no impact on the overall levels of physical activity among boys, report John Cawley of Cornell University, economist Chad Meyerhoefer of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and David Newhouse of the International Monetary Fund. And, among girls, the researchers found that although increased PE can lead to more time spent exercising vigorously, it actually decreases the number of days in which girls engage in light physical activity.
"Apparently, when girls exercise in class, they become more sedentary during the discretionary hours of their week," the study's authors explain. "This propensity occurs predominantly among girls who are less active in the first place."
The study's findings suggest that the effect of increased state PE requirements is minimal at best. The researchers report that increased PE requirements had no effect on weight for either gender. And, although increased active PE time does raise the number of days that girls report at least 20 minutes of vigorous exercise, the positive effect on girls' behavior is tempered by a decrease in the number of days girls engage in 30 minutes or more of light physical activity. Notably, the researchers found that this offsetting behavior is most prominent among girls who are not otherwise active in team sports.
To measure the impact of PE, Cawley, Meyerhoefer, and Newhouse compared the self-reported PE activity times, overall physical activity levels, and body mass index (BMI) of students who are subject to different state PE requirements. They gathered information on state PE requirements from "The Shape of the Nation Report," a 2001 survey conducted by the National Association for Sport and Physical Education, and data on the activity and weight of almost 37,000 high school students from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, a nationally representative survey that was established by the CDC to monitor the prevalence of risky youth behaviors.
In general, estimated active time in PE class is low, with an average reported level of 16 minutes per day and only 2 minutes per day for the median student. Median active time is much lower than the average time because a smaller number of programs actively promote exercise; many more do little to facilitate much actual exercise. Many schools offer PE class fewer than five days per week, and many districts only require PE for one or two years of high school.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that since 1970 the fraction of adolescents who are overweight has more than tripled, from under 5 percent to more than 15 percent.
Read "Not Your Father's PE: Obesity, Exercise, and the Role of Schools" now available in early release online at http://www.EducationNext.org.
A CLOSER LOOK AT CHARTER SCHOOLS
A sample of charter schools, conducted as part of the 2003 fourth-grade NAEP assessments, permitted a comparison of academic achievement for students enrolled in charter schools to that for students enrolled in traditional public schools. The school sample comprised 150 charter schools and 6,764 traditional public schools.
After adjusting for student demographic characteristics, charter school mean scores in reading and mathematics were lower, on average, than those for traditional public schools. The size of these differences was smaller in reading than in mathematics.
Results from the second analysis showed that in reading and mathematics, average performance differences between traditional public schools and charter schools affiliated with a public school district were not statistically significant, while charter schools not affiliated with a public school district scored significantly lower on average than traditional public schools.
Online Availability:
Browse the Executive Summary of this report: http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard//pubs/studies/2006460.asp
Download, view, and/or print the report as a pdf file: http://nces.ed.gov/naep/pdf/studies/2006460.pdf
From the pollsters:
After Four Years, the Public Judges the No Child Left Behind Act To Be “In Need of Improvement”
Nearly six in 10 Americans believe the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act has had no effect on our schools or has actually harmed them, according to a nationwide poll released today. “This finding is significant and disturbing given that the nation’s schools are spending virtually all of their available money and resources on an effort to meet the demands of this law,” remarks Lowell Rose, co-author along with Alec Gallup of the 38th Annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools.
In probing the public’s opinions of NCLB, the PDK/Gallup poll finds that there is widespread support for the law’s goals—closing the achievement gap between African-American and Latino students and their white peers and improving educational outcomes for all students—but broad disagreement with its specific strategies. When asked whether testing students in only English and math, as currently required by NCLB, can give a fair picture of a school, 81% of the public say no. And 78% are worried that the law’s focus on these two subjects will mean less emphasis on other subjects.
The poll finds that two-thirds of those surveyed oppose measuring school success by the percentage of students passing a single statewide test, while 81% prefer measuring the improvement that students make during the year. In contrast to the public’s pessimistic view of NCLB, the poll finds strong support for the public schools. When asked where we should focus efforts to improve education, 71% of those surveyed say that they prefer improvement to come through the existing public school system, rather than through an alternative system. The public is consistent in this view—60% oppose the use of public funds for children to attend private schools, 80% prefer that students who attend schools that fail to meet NCLB performance requirements receive help in their own schools rather than offers to transfer to another school, and 69% oppose contracting out to private companies the operation of local school systems.
In addition to this vote of confidence for the existing school system, the poll finds that there is strong public support for local schools—49% of those surveyed give the schools in their community A’s or B’s—and that level of support increases to 56% when respondents are public school parents.
“The fact that the public’s support of its local schools is unaffected by the criticism directed at public schools in general should send a clear message to those interested in improving our schools that change proposals should be built on the assumption that the people like the schools they have,” remarks Dr. Rose. “Proposals based on the assumption that the schools are failing are unlikely to gain the public support needed to make them effective.”
The PDK/Gallup poll also sought out the public’s views on the challenges the nation’s schools face as well as on potential solutions. When asked about those challenges, such as the achievement gap and high dropout rates among poor and minority students, 77% of Americans blame societal factors and only 16% fault the performance of the schools. Perhaps in recognition of the societal origin of these problems, 81% of those surveyed believe that preschool programs for at-risk children have the potential to improve their long-term school performance. More important, two of three Americans indicate their willingness to pay higher taxes to fund these programs.
“The views expressed in this year’s PDK/Gallup poll should serve as a wake-up call to our nation’s policy makers as they begin the process of reauthorizing NCLB in 2007,” cautions William Bushaw, executive director of PDK International, an association of education professionals that has been advocating for highquality education for all since 1906. “The public rejects the punitive approach found in NCLB, favors a broad curriculum, prefers more appropriate measures of school performance than a single high-stakes test, and supports efforts targeted at helping our most vulnerable students.”
But here’s another view from The Education Gadfly:
Framing the Status Quo
Polls are focused measures of public opinion and policymakers and—especially—politicians tend to take them seriously. But a poll is like a piece of plastic sheeting: if transparent and free of bias, public opinion shines through; if colored by a particular agenda, certain wavelengths of public opinion are filtered out.
Which brings us to the 38th Annual Phi Delta Kappan/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools. Prevalent bias has been a problem with this organization's past surveys. This year is no exception.
It begins by presenting respondents with this choice—Would they prefer reforming the existing public school system or finding an alternative to it? Not mentioned is the possibility for competition or synergy between and within systems. As framed, the question suggests to poll-takers that public education is a zero-sum game. And not surprisingly, most respondents said they strongly prefer sticking with the existing system.
It's the first of many examples of how the Kappan frames questions to ensure that the educational status quo looks good.
Here's another. The report crows that people's ratings of their local public schools "are near the top of their 38-year range.... Approval ratings remain high and remarkably stable." True, but that doesn't mean the public is particularly thrilled with the performance of public schools overall. Two-thirds of respondents gave the nation's public schools a grade of C or lower. Local schools fared only slightly better, receiving As and Bs from fewer than half of all respondents. And fully one-third of parents surveyed are displeased with the performance of their oldest child's school.
Granted, two-thirds of parents give their children's schools with As and Bs (mostly Bs). But the Kappan ignores the possibility that parents inflate their grades so as not to appear delinquent in knowingly sending their children to unsatisfactory schools.
The pro-establishment spin does not end here. "Do you favor or oppose allowing students and parents to choose a private school to attend at public expense?" the poll continues, replacing the politically charged "vouchers" (so as not to distort the results, the authors explain) with "at public expense." But that's hardly better: Ask people to pony up more money, and many will oppose the idea, regardless of what it is. So it's not surprising that respondents shot down this idea.
Past polls included a more neutrally worded question describing vouchers as government-allotted money that parents may use to send their children to the school of their choice. This question, which consistently demonstrated greater public support for vouchers, has been discarded entirely. Yet nearly two out of five respondents continue to support voucher programs despite Gallup's anti-voucher framing.
It is long past time for policymakers to stop taking cues from poorly formed public opinion polls. To construe this one as anything but an ill- disguised attempt to make a poor-performing system of schools look good is irresponsible. And those who would read it as such are either self-deluded or blissfully ignorant of how they're being deceived.
The Education Gadfly is published weekly (ordinarily on Thursdays, with occasional breaks) by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.
For Ohio news, check out the Ohio Education Gadfly, published bi-weekly.
If you would like to subscribe, you may either email thegadfly@edexcellence.net with "subscribe gadfly" in the text of the message or sign up through our website, http://www.edexcellence.net. To read archived issues or obtain other reviews of reports and books, go to http://www.edexcellence.net and click on the Education Gadfly link.
For more information on the poll, please go to: http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/kpollpdf.htm
Academically Stressed Students Aren't the Country's Norm
By Jay Mathews
To see the complete article, please go to: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/20/AR2006082000528.html
Be careful when you visit Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda. It is full of unhappy, overworked teenagers. Julie went into a tailspin when her private admissions adviser told her she had no chance of getting into Stanford. Frank's mom would not let him take anything but Advanced Placement courses. Sam agonized over the fact that he liked colleges that were not on the top of the U.S. News & World Report list.
Julie, Frank and Sam—only their first names were revealed—are real people whose stories are the best part of Whitman alumna Alexandra Robbins's new book, The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids. It is well written, but also part of a spreading delusion, popular in our wealthiest neighborhoods, that the stress we see in schools like Whitman is a national problem that needs fixing right away…
Robbins is quite right about Whitman. Its students are frequently taking five or six AP courses and putting in four hours a night or more on schoolwork. What Robbins and the parents and students in such communities fail to see, however, is that they are in the uppermost 5 percent in homework, just as they are in housing square footage, money spent on vacations and stock market investments. Only about 10 percent of American high school students have Ivy League ambitions. For the vast majority, academic stress is pretty rare.
UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute regularly asks about 400,000 college freshmen how much homework they did in high school. About two-thirds say only an hour a night or less. Remember, these are the homework habits of students who went on to college. The one-third of high school graduates who weren't preparing for higher education were likely to have had an even lighter academic load.
And what of that overload of AP courses? Newsweek's annual high school rankings indicate that only 5 percent of U.S. public high schools have students averaging more than one AP test a year. The demands made on our most disadvantaged students in the inner cities, who are almost never mentioned in Robbins's book, are pitifully below even the low standards for our average suburban neighborhoods. Some educators think this lack of academic challenge is one reason why nearly half of college students eventually drop out.
If they are not doing much homework in high school, what are they up to? The University of Michigan Institute for Social Research collects time diaries from American teenagers. These documents make clear our youth are not taking long walks in the woods or reading Proust. Instead, 15- to 17-year-olds on average between 2002 and 2003 devoted about 3 1/2 hours a day to television and other "passive leisure" or playing on the computer. (Their average time spent in non-school reading was exactly seven minutes a day. Studying took 42 minutes a day.)…
We should make sure they don't harm themselves. Robbins is right to lambaste parents who insist that their children do nothing but AP and tell them they must get into Princeton. But keep in mind that our real national problem is not that we ask most teens to do too much, but too little.
GROWTH IN USE OF EXIT EXAMS STALLS
As States Adjust Existing Requirements to Create Greater Flexibility for Students
Tests Remain “A Force” in Education, Report Finds, But Gaps in Pass Rates Persist for Key Student Groups
For the first time, growth in the number of states requiring students to pass an exit exam in order to earn a high school diploma has stalled, according to a report from the independent, Washington, D.C.-based Center on Education Policy, which also tracks significant changes in how exit exams are being implemented nationwide.
According to the report, no state legislature adopted a new exit exam requirement in 2006 although Maryland, Washington, and Oklahoma are following through on plans set earlier to phase in exit exams. Of the four states scheduled to begin withholding diplomas based on exam performance this year, Arizona and California did so only after facing significant legal challenges, while Utah backed down from its earlier plans to do so. Idaho began withholding diplomas in 2006 with less conflict and controversy than other states experienced.
Meanwhile, most of the 25 states that currently require or are phasing in exit exams have moved to create greater flexibility and support to help struggling students meet the exam requirements. The report also notes that of the other 25 states, five now ask all students to take the SAT or ACT college entrance exams, reflecting the push to make college readiness a central focus of high school reform efforts.
The new report underscores that exit exams remain a force in education, currently affecting two-thirds of the nation’s 15 million public high school students. By 2012, the report estimates that exit exams in 25 states will affect 71 percent of the nation’s public high school students and 81 percent of minority high school students.
Although the research is not entirely conclusive, new studies suggest that exit exams may have a slightly negative effect on graduation rates, but these exams do not seem to rate very high on the list of factors influencing a student’s decision to drop out. Exit exams do seem to be having a significant impact on curriculum. In a survey conducted by the Center for the report, state education officials reported that students are being encouraged to take more courses in tested subjects, including reading, writing, mathematics and science.
“States at the center of the exit exam controversy are those now beginning to withhold diplomas, and they are trying to help struggling students without weakening the integrity and purpose of the assessments,” said Jack Jennings, president & CEO of the Center. “It is likely that the stalled growth in the use of exit exams is in part due to the fact that other states are waiting to see how legal and political battles play out before making their own decisions.”
Generally, the percentage of students passing exit exams on the first try ranges from about 70-90 percent in most states and has changed only slightly since 2004. And while several states have reduced the gaps in pass rates between various subgroups of students, alarming disparities in exam performance still persist for minority students, low-income students, students with disabilities, and English language learners.
Cumulative pass rates, which show the percentage of students who eventually pass the exams by the end of 12th grade, range from 87–95 percent in the six states that reported this information. In addition, serious gaps for key student subgroups remain even after multiple testing opportunities. However, cumulative pass rates may not be very reliable, according to the report, because states use different methods to calculate them and may exclude students who drop out before the last exam administration.
States Offer Greater Flexibility, Support
During the last year, three states, Arizona, Maryland and Washington, expanded options for struggling students to earn a diploma by permitting students in some cases to substitute scores from tests such as the SAT and ACT; take an alternative assessment; pursue a waiver or appeals process; earn exam credit through course grades; and use other evidence of competency. California serves as a notable exception, however, by allowing no alternatives for its general education students—in part due to a concern that greater flexibility might weaken the purpose of the exams.
Idaho created multiple routes for students to meet the exam requirement and set its passing score for 2006 at an 8th grade level of performance, with the intention to raise it to the 10th grade level – the most common level of proficiency for exit exams in the U.S.—over the next two years. These policies may have helped lessen controversy about withholding diplomas this year.
Meanwhile, a pattern has emerged in state efforts to provide remediation for students, with greater emphasis being provided in states now beginning to withhold diplomas. According to CEP’s report, California has tripled its spending on remediation during the past year (from $20 million to more than $57 million) and Washington plans to spend more than $28 million on remediation in 2006–07, in advance of its plans to begin withholding diplomas in 2008. In contrast, Indiana and Massachusetts—states that have had exit exam requirements in place for several years—have recently reduced spending for remediation.
Overall, 18 of the 25 states with current or planned exit exams require their school districts to offer remediation courses for students who do not pass portions of the exit exams—while only six states actually require these students to attend remediation courses, and only 14 states provide state funding for remediation or related student support programs.
Based in Washington, D.C., and founded in 1995, the Center on Education Policy is a national independent advocate for public education and for more effective public schools. The Center works to help Americans better understand the role of public education in a democracy and the need to improve the academic quality of public schools. The Center does not represent special interests. Instead, it helps citizens make sense of conflicting opinions and perceptions about public education and create conditions that will lead to better public schools.
To see the full report, please go to: http://www.cep-dc.org/pubs/hseeAugust2006/CEPHSEEPressConference8-10.pdf
In a survey of school principals who hired Passport to Teaching-certified teachers, 95 percent of the first cohort of teachers certified through Passport to Teaching were considered to be as effective as or more effective than their peers. The finding from an independent survey conducted by the Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. (MPR), establishes the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE) certification process as an effective, efficient measure of teacher quality.
MPR asked 39 principals of ABCTE-certified teachers to compare Passport to Teaching-certified teachers with other first-year and veteran teachers. The principals rated ABCTE-certified teachers in 11 categories of teacher effectiveness. Passport to Teaching-certified teachers, as a group, were considered as effective as or more effective than first-year teachers.
MPR also asked principals to discuss whether Passport teachers were stronger candidates at the time of hire and if first-year Passportteachers were likely to become effective teachers in the long-term. Of all ABCTE-certified teachers, 75 percent were considered to be somewhat stronger to much stronger than other applicants at the time of hire, and 92 percent of principals reported being confident that first-year ABCTE-certified teachers would develop into effective teachers in the long-term.
While this survey represents a small sample of the initial cohort of teachers, the report indicates that principals find ABCTE-certified teachers to be effective in the classroom. Conducting a principal survey is important because ratings can be applied to all classroom teachers, including those in non-tested subjects and grades. Recent research has found that principals were able to predict which of their teachers produced the largest and smallest student achievement gains, which validates the importance of conducting principal surveys.
The MPR survey design, including the extent of teacher characteristics addressed and comparisons examined, represents an outstanding model for principal surveys of teacher certification or teacher licensure programs. MPR will continue to evaluate ABCTE certification programs as part of a 5-year study. A second, larger principal survey will be conducted in the spring of 2008.
Download the full report by Mathematica: http://research.abcte.org/files/2006_principal_survey.pdfJust about everyone agrees that education funding today is a mess. Most disadvantaged students don't receive the funding they need; red tape and overhead waste time and money; and new education-choice options, like charter schools, are starved for dollars.
Unfortunately, until now, so-called solutions have consisted principally of soothing slogans and gimmicks. Nothing has tackled the fundamental dysfunction and archaic nature of public school finance in today's America. In a new Fordham Policy Institute manifesto (http://www.100percentsolution.org/fundthechild/FundtheChild062706.pdf), however, a broad, bipartisan coalition urges a boldly different method of funding our public schools—one that finally ensures that students who need more receive it, that empowers school leaders to make key decisions, and that opens the door to fairly-funded school choice. It's a 100 percent solution to the most pressing problems in public school funding—and it's called Weighted Student Funding.
“To solve the problems of inequity and antiquity plaguing our system of education financing and to ensure that all children receive a quality education, dramatic change is needed. Weighted student funding (WSF) is the best solution. We believe that five principles must be embraced to reform school financing and close the achievement gaps.
Principle 1: Funding should follow the child, on a per-student basis, to the public school that he/she attends.
and
Principle 2: Per-student funding should vary according to a child’s needs and other relevant circumstances.
These two principles are the core of weighted student funding. At its heart, WSF is a simple idea: allocate dollars directly to schools on a per-student basis, and have that funding follow the child as he or she moves from school to school. The key change from traditional approaches is that money is allocated to schools not based on staffing levels or programs, or just the number of students, but on the characteristics of the students attending the school. Students with greater needs (poor, disabled, or English language learners, for example) receive more money as part of their allocation, allowing their schools to provide the education they need.
These principles advocate a significant change from the way many “per-pupil” funding systems work today, which partially adjust school budgets based on student characteristics but do not necessarily ensure that funding follows the child. Funding that truly “follows” the child means a real dollar amount moves with a specific child between school budgets as that child moves between schools and even districts—not just calculating a total based on the number and characteristics of a group of students.
Under WSF, the per-student amount varies with the characteristics of the child. Students with added educational needs receive extra funding based on the costs of meeting those needs. The amount attached to each student is calculated by taking a base amount and adding money determined by a series of “weights” assigned to various categories of students. These weights could take the form of dollar amounts: an extra $500 for a student in one category, $1,000 for a student in another. Or they could be expressed in proportional terms, with students in a high-need category generating, say, 1.4 or 1.5 times the base level of funding. Either way, the concept is the same: students with higher levels of need receive more “weight” in the funding system. As a result, the schools they attend end up with more dollars.
Each state or district using WSF needs to decide what categories to weight, and how much weight to give each one. These are tough decisions that we return to in our discussion of "Issues and Challenges" below. Most districts that have implemented weighted student funding assign higher weights for:
The idea of weighting in line with student need is the heart of Principle 2. But Principle 1 is equally important: the weighted amount must follow the child to the public school he or she attends. This principle has two important corollaries.
First, a large proportion of total education funding must be included in the weighted sum that follows the child. Some funds must be retained by central authorities at the federal, state, and district levels to discharge their responsibilities. But the more they retain, the less is available to allocate to schools according to the needs of their students. So districts need to push as much of their education funding as practicable all the way through to their schools under the WSF system. It also means that higher-level policymakers should require that federal and state funding flow to schools in the same way. In the "Issues and Challenges" section, we take up this question in more detail. For now, the vital point is that for WSF to address the inequity inherent in the current system, the proportion of money allocated according to its principles should be substantial.
Second, funding should follow children to whatever public schools they attend, including schools of choice. For charter schools and other choice options that are part of districts, districts should ensure that all relevant funds follow children into them. For charter schools and other options that are independent of districts, it’s the state’s job to direct a full share of funding to them. A family choosing a public school of choice should not have to accept a lower level of funding than other public school families enjoy.
Following these two principles would help solve a number of problems. One is inequity, whereby some schools have many more students with special needs due to disabilities, poverty, language barriers, or lack of prior achievement, but they do not receive sufficient resources to serve them. Using WSF, unequal funding actually paves the way to equity. As expressed in the Annenberg Institute for School Reform’s report, First Steps to a Level Playing Field: An Introduction to Student-based Budgeting: “If equality is about leveling the playing field and providing all students the same opportunity, then weighting student funding to achieve this goal can be considered fair, even when it means that some students receive more dollars than others.”
It’s important to note that our call for equity via WSF is much different from the calls for “adequacy” (i.e., lawsuits seeking to define a minimum amount of local and state education funding per student necessary to provide an “adequate” education) that have become prevalent. Arguments for adequacy tend to assume that if we added more resources to the current system of schooling, somehow our schools would produce higher results. Our contention is different. We are not advocating a set level of “adequate” funding that every school should receive.
Rather, we are calling for federal, state, and district policymakers to allocate whatever level of funding they provide in a way that is fair and rational. And we are calling for changes not just in how much money different schools receive, but also in the terms under which they receive it. By empowering schools to spend funds in ways that meet their students’ needs, WSF facilitates changes in schools and classrooms, not just in budgets.
These two principles will also help solve the antiquity problem. WSF fits much better with the new landscape of expanding educational options in the U.S. Under WSF, parents can be confident that, whatever option they choose, fair funding will follow their child. And would-be providers of alternative forms of public school—educators, community groups, and school management organizations—can be confident that they will receive fair funding in return for providing public education. So on both the demand side and the supply side, WSF facilitates options and choice.
Another reason to implement WSF is to provide schools with incentives to serve challenging populations. As the system is now constructed, school administrators have powerful incentives to avoid attracting costly students to their schools. Schools with the easiest-to-serve student populations are rewarded with plenty of funding to serve them, while schools that need the most help are left to struggle with meager resources. Schools have a disincentive to enroll student populations that traditionally score poorly on achievement tests—too often poor and minority children—because of the sanctions inherent in state accountability systems and No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Federal and state accountability rankings deter schools from serving challenging populations, particularly if they don’t get sufficient funds to do so.
Under WSF, if weights are implemented properly, schools will have powerful incentives to serve more disadvantaged kids. Schools may begin to vie for these populations to gain increased funding, rather than shun them as is often the case today. By rewarding schools for attracting more students (and especially more students with educational challenges), WSF can fundamentally change the way individual schools think about their “most attractive” students. As schools change their behavior to attract a different mix of students, it is also important that students are able to attend the schools that are right for them.”
Read more at http://www.100percentsolution.org
NEW REPORT SHOWS PROGRESS IN READING FIRST IMPLEMENTATION AND CHANGES IN READING INSTRUCTION
Children in Reading First classrooms receive significantly more reading instruction and schools participating in the program are much more likely to have a reading coach, according to the Reading First Implementation Evaluation: Interim Report, released by the U.S. Department of Education. The report shows significant differences between what Reading First teachers report about their instructional practices and the responses of teachers in non-Reading First Title I schools, which are demographically similar to the Reading First schools.
"The goal of Reading First is to help teachers translate scientific insights into practical tools they can use in their classrooms," Secretary Spellings said. "The program is helping millions of children and providing teachers with high-quality, research-based support. As we push towards our ultimate goal of every child reading and doing math on grade level by 2014, Reading First is a valuable help to our efforts."
The report shows Reading First schools appear to be implementing the major elements of the program as intended by the No Child Left Behind legislation. Reading First respondents reported that they made substantial changes to their reading materials and that the instruction is more likely to be aligned with scientifically based reading research; they are more likely to have scheduled reading blocks and spend more time teaching reading; they are more likely to apply assessment results for instructional purposes, and they receive professional development focused on helping struggling readers more often than non-Reading First Title I schools in the evaluation.
The report is based on data collected from surveys completed in spring 2005 by 6,200 K-3 teachers, 1,570 principals and 1,320 reading coaches in nationally representative samples of 1,090 Reading First schools and 540 non-Reading First Title I schools and from interviews with Reading First state coordinators and reviews of states' applications for Reading First awards. As of July 2006, states have awarded sub-grants to approximately 1,600 local school districts, and these districts have provided funds to 5,300 schools nationwide. A final report in 2008 will include data on changes in student reading achievement in Reading First schools. Highlights of the report include:
The full text of Reading First Implementation Evaluation is available online at http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/opepd/ppss/reports.html#reading.
A copy of the report can be ordered by calling toll free 1-877-4ED-PUBS (1-877-433-7827) (TTY/TDD 1-877-576-7734); via e-mail at edpubs@inet.ed.gov; or via the Internet at http://www.ed.gov/pubs/edpubs.html.
What is Mathematically Sane?
We are a national grass-roots group of teachers, administrators, teacher educators, parents, and mathematicians who are concerned about the future of mathematics education. We are self-financed and have no affiliation with any other organization, either non-profit or for-profit.
Everyone interested in the reform of school mathematics is invited to join Mathematically Sane. Click on the "JOIN US" button at MathematicallySane.com or go directly to MathematicallySane.com/join.asp. Membership is free!
We are not publicizing the names of those organizing the effort in order to focus attention on the content rather than on the individuals involved.
Research Supporting
NCTM-Standards-Based Mathematics Education Reform: http://www.mathematicallysane.com/evidence/researchbase.asp
Why MathematicallySane.com?
There are at least two sides to every issue, including the so-called "Math Wars."
We have organized this information at http://MathematicallySane.com. We hope that you find this site supportive of your efforts to make mathematics work for ALL of America's students. Send us your ideas and your feedback at mail@mathematicallysane.com.
MathPanelWatch
The purpose of this blog is to keep interested people informed of the deliberations of the Department of Education's new Mathematics Panel: http://mathpanelwatch.blogspot.com/
TEACHERS TALK TECH® REVEALS TECHNOLOGY ACCESS AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT ARE DRIVING IMPROVED TEACHER AND STUDENT PERFORMANCE
The in-depth survey of more than 1,000 K-12 teachers across the country revealed that deeper integration of technology and the core curriculum enhances both teacher and student performance. The survey also indicates that with improved technology-related professional development, the gap between technology and the core curriculum shrinks, allowing near-seamless integration of the two. When teachers understand the technology tools available to them, they are more likely to integrate technology into lessons, assignments and projects, resulting in better performance and students armed with 21st century skills.
"The days of basic computer classes are nearly over," said Chris Rother, group vice president, CDW-G sales. "Today's students already know how to operate computers. They blog; they text message; they have their own Websites. We want to help students and teachers see technology as a means to improve learning and performance."
Teachers Talk Tech 2006, conducted by Quality Education Data (QED), a subsidiary of Scholastic, Inc., reveals that:
Teachers Talk Tech finds that technology-related professional development is key to understanding and integrating technology in the classroom. In 2006, 48 percent of teachers reported receiving eight or more hours of professional development in the last 12 months, yet nearly one-fifth of teachers reported receiving no technology training at all. When evaluating the data based on the number of hours of technology-related professional development received, the more training teachers received, the more they see technology as an effective classroom tool for analyzing information, addressing critical thinking skills, and learning scientific concepts. These same teachers are also more likely to teach 21st century skills and see a positive impact of technology with their students.
Teachers Talk Tech finds that four out of five teachers believe technology is a critical tool for their job. There continues to be a strong use of technology for administrative basics like grades and attendance (88 percent) and communication (86 percent). More importantly, the survey reveals an increase in teachers' use of technology for lesson preparation (81 percent) and as a tool to teach students (79 percent). The use of these tools leads to more technology integration and offers students more opportunities to reap the benefits of classroom technology.
Teachers in the 2006 survey also say that their technology skills are improving, with 63 percent of teachers reporting that they have "somewhat advanced" to "advanced" technology skills, up from 47 percent in the first Teachers Talk Tech survey in 2003. Only 2 percent of teachers rate themselves as "beginners," down from a high of 9 percent in 2004. In addition to improving technology skills, three-quarters of teachers consider themselves "competent" or "highly competent" when using technology as an instructional tool for student assessments, evaluations and developing critical thinking skills. These skills are crucial to No Child Left Behind (NCLB) compliance and allow teachers and administrators to easily measure and react to student performance.
Half of the teachers surveyed indicated that technology access, time and budget are the top three factors holding them back from fully integrating technology into the daily curriculum. The survey indicates teachers want to spend more time with technology, have better access to computers that work and the budget to purchase reliable technology. The survey also found that elementary school teachers struggle more with finding the time to integrate technology, while middle and high school teachers struggle more with access to technology.
"Today, Teachers Talk Tech measures how much technology is changing the classroom," Rother said. "We believe that a seamless technology-enabled curriculum is within our reach and that tomorrow, we will instead measure how vital technology is to educational success."
The full report can be downloaded at www.cdwg.com/TTT.
ALMOST HALF OF STATES FAIL ACADEMIC STANDARDS TEST
Two-thirds of schoolchildren in America will return to class in coming weeks in states with mediocre (or worse) expectations for what their students should learn.
Five years after No Child Left Behind made standards-based education reform the law of the land, a new study finds that the subject-by-subject state standards that undergird this reform strategy remain inadequate in most jurisdictions. The State of State Standards 2006, the first full review of such standards since 2000, confers an average grade of "C-minus"—the same as six years earlier—even though most states revised their standards during that period.
"Strong standards have always been the key to standards-based reform and they're even more important under NCLB when schools face consequences for not meeting them," said Fordham Foundation president Chester E. Finn, Jr. "While debates over testing get more attention, a state's standards exert tremendous influence over what actually happens in its classrooms."
Chart: http://www.edexcellence.net/foundation/about/press_release.cfm?id=30
To see how each state's standards measure up, visit:http://www.edexcellence.net/foundation/publication/publication.cfm?id=358.
The Fordham report includes an account by former San Jose Mercury News journalist Joanne Jacobs explaining how three top-rated states (California, Indiana, and Massachusetts) developed "A"-rated standards for all subjects.
"These three exemplars show that, with the right leadership, every state can create world-class standards," said Michael J. Petrilli, Fordham's vice president for national programs and policy. "If it can happen in Sacramento, it can happen in Springfield, Salem, or Salt Lake City. It could even happen in Washington, D.C."
A second new Fordham report, To Dream the Impossible Dream: Four Approaches to National Standards and Tests for America's Schools, http://www.edexcellence.net/foundation/publication/publication.cfm?id=361
identifies one possible alternative to dysfunctional state standards: a rigorous system of national standards and tests. This report brings together education policy leaders across the political spectrum, including philanthropist Eli Broad, former West Virginia governor Bob Wise, and Hoover Institution fellow Diane Ravitch, to flesh out and evaluate several forms that national testing could take:
The Whole Enchilada. The U.S. moves to a national accountability system for K-12 education by tasking the federal government with the creation and enforcement of mandatory standards and assessments to replace the current state-by-state system.
If You Build It, They Will Come. A voluntary version whereby Uncle Sam develops national standards, tests and accountability metrics, and provides incentives to states (e.g., more money, fewer regulations) to opt into such a system. (A variant would ask a private group to frame the standards.) Participation is optional for states which remain free to set their own standards.
Let's All Hold Hands. Under this approach, states are encouraged to join together to develop common standards and tests. Washington would provide incentives for such collaboration.
Sunshine and Shame. This less-ambitious model makes state standards and tests more transparent by making them easier to compare to one another and to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
"Big modern countries need big modern standards from sea to shining sea," remarked Finn. "Most other nations have figured this out. In America, however, we've left standard setting to the states and most of them have bungled the job. This report takes our dialogue about standards, testing and accountability to a new level. I hope it brings closer the day when all our children and schools are held to the same rigorous expectations."
STUDY: TEACHER'S GENDER AFFECTS LEARNING
The gender gaps in achievement as students finish high school are far from trivial. In reading, 17-year-old boys score 31 percent of a standard deviation below 17-year-old girls, a deficit equal to about one grade level. This is nearly half the size of the black-white testscore gap in reading. In science and math, meanwhile, girls of that age score 22 percent and 10 percent of a standard deviation lower, respectively, also a difference worthy of concern. Drowned out by the din of public argument over the role of nature vs. nurture is a debate, far from settled, over exactly how the experience of going to school shapes learning among boys and girls. One school of thought contends that teachers, both men and women, treat boys and girls differently in the classroom. For example, some controversial evidence, based on classroom observations, suggests that both are likely to offer praise and remediation in response to comments by boys but mere acknowledgment to comments by girls. Some cognitive scientists suggest that teachers may subtly communicate different academic expectations of boys and girls and these biased expectations may become self-fulfilling.
Teacher Gender Matters
Other theories, of special interest here, suggest that much depends on the gender of the teacher. One theory asserts that the teacher’s gender shapes communications between teacher and pupil,while another says the teacher acts as a gender- specific role model, regardless of what he or she says or does. According to this second theory, students are more engaged, behave more appropriately, and perform at a higher level when taught by one who shares their gender. Tests of these theories have relied primarily on information about teachers and students in college and graduate school. Findings have been mixed, so the issue remains unresolved. Studies have not focused on young adolescents, the time when students are particularly sensitive to gender differences and when gender gaps in achievement are pronounced.
I investigated the effect of a teacher’s gender using the National Education Longitudinal Survey (NELS), which contains data on a nationally representative sample of nearly 25,000 8th graders from 1988. In addition to examining the effect of teacher gender on students’ test-score performance,
I examined teacher perceptions of a student’s performance and student perceptions of the subject taught by a particular teacher. I was especially interested in the influence of a teacher’s gender on students’ perceptions, because engagement with an academic subject may be an important precursor to subsequent achievement levels, course selection in high school and college, and also occupational choice. For example, the underrepresentation of women in fields like engineering and computer science may be due to levels of confidence and interest in related subjects in high school. Indeed, my results confirm that a teacher’s gender does have large effects on student test performance, teacher perceptions of students, and students’ engagement with academic material.
Simply put, girls have better educational outcomes when taught by women and boys are better off when taught by men.These findings persist, even after I account for a variety of other characteristics of students, teachers, and classrooms that may influence student learning. They are especially important for young men when one considers that the percentage of 6th-grade teachers who were female ranged from 58 to 91 percent across four core subjects (math, science, reading, and history). Although these percentages decline in later grades, 83 percent of the English teachers in 8th grade are female, as are more than half of 8th-grade math and science teachers.
To see the full report please go to: http://www.educationnext.org/20064/ednext20064_68.pdf
To see an article discissing the report, please go to:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2006-08-28-gender-teachers_x.htm
K-12 TEACHERS REPORT INCREASING STRESS LEVELS
Sixth-grade Kealing Middle School teacher, LaNica Failey, glanced up at the wall clock and cringed. She'd been introducing a new math concept for the past 20 minutes, and it was clear that some of her students weren't getting it. Now she had a choice to make: move on, and try to find time to work individually with the students who needed help, or keep at it and risk falling behind for the rest of the day. Failey knew that everything on her lesson plan was being covered on the statewide assessment tests at the end of the month, so she somehow needed to find time for it all.
"I thought teaching would be a nice alternative to high-stress jobs," she noted. "But I feel rushed and pressured from the moment I wake up in the morning. I never knew that a classroom full of 11-year-olds could give me an ulcer."
Failey is not alone. A new survey released today by CompassLearning, a leading provider of K-12 education software, found that a vast majority of K-12 teachers feel significant levels of stress. These findings were consistent regardless of grade level, location of school, or amount of previous experience.
The survey, which was conducted for CompassLearning by the educational research organization Eduventures, collected 514 responses from K-12 teachers across the nation. While it may have been expected that low pay, decreased funding for supplies, or crumbling infrastructure would be the factors teachers most identified as stressors, what was most surprising about the survey results was how many of them related instead to testing and skills assessments put in place nationwide by the "No Child Left Behind" act.
The top three stressors identified by educators in the survey were "finding the time to teach everything I want/need to cover," "providing students with individualized instruction given student-teacher ratios," and "emphasis on high-stakes testing." As administrators, politicians, and parents have focused their attention on school performance in recent years, teachers have been asked time and again to do more with less, to increase test scores, introduce new curricula, and absorb more students, without additional funding or staff.
Survey results came from urban, suburban, and rural schools throughout every region of the nation. Teaching experience of respondents varied from less than one year to more than 20 years, and they taught in every grade, from kindergarten through high school. Thirty-nine percent of the respondents reported that they were under "a lot of stress"; an additional 52% reported being under "a fair amount" of stress. Only 45 of the 514 teachers who responded reported that they were "not under much" stress.
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA STUDY: GIRLS PERFORM BETTER ON TESTS WHEN FEUDING PARENTS DIVORCE
A clean break from a bad marriage is actually better for the couple's school-age daughters than a troubled union, a new University of Florida study finds.
Contrary to the expectation that marriage is always good for children while divorce is bad, the study found that the schoolwork of girls whose parents split up is better than that of girls who live with a mom and dad who don't get along, said Mark Hoekstra, who did the research for his doctoral dissertation in economics at UF.
"There is no question, as I and other researchers find, that boys and girls from two-parent intact families perform better academically than boys and girls whose parents divorced," Hoekstra said. "But I was surprised to learn that girls whose parents divorced do better in school than girls from similarly troubled families whose parents went to the brink of divorce but remained married."
In the study, girls between first and 10th grades whose parents divorced scored an average of slightly more than eight points higher on standardized reading and mathematics tests than girls whose parents filed for divorce but later requested the case be dismissed. These differences persisted four years after the divorce, he said.
No academic differences were found for boys, although they did experience a short-term increase in disciplinary problems immediately after divorce that did not last beyond three years, said Hoekstra, who is now an economics professor at the University of Pittsburgh.
One possible reason girls in families with troubled marriages are more likely to experience academic problems is that they may be more adversely affected by conflict, he said.
The opportunity for girls to have a closer relationship with their mothers when parents divorce may also explain their stronger academic performance, Hoekstra said. "Since in most cases mothers have primary custody, there may be a mother-daughter bond that forms as a result of a divorce that daughters respond to in a positive way compared to what would have happened if the parents had remained married," he said.
The results have important implications for divorce reform initiatives that have gained popularity recently because of concerns about the effects of divorce on children, Hoekstra said. Since 1996 at least eight states have considered legislation that would make it more difficult for parents to end their marriage by limiting grounds for divorce and requiring pre-divorce counseling, he said.
"My research suggests that policy-makers ought to be less concerned with whether or not parents legally dissolve their marriages and more concerned with helping them overcome the types of problems that cause them to contemplate divorce in the first place," Hoekstra said. "Unless the intervention can resolve the issues that got the family to the point of considering divorce, it will result in considerably lower academic achievement for the daughters involved."
Discipline is the issue with boys, Hoekstra said. "There has been some research suggesting that when boys lack a male role model in the home, which often happens after a divorce, they may be more affected than their sisters and act up, but my study shows that the effects are not permanent," he said.
In Alachua County, Florida, Hoekstra studied detailed student records on behavior and standardized test scores, as well as divorce records, from 1993 to 2003. By matching divorce records to student records, he was able to identify 690 students whose parents divorced and 111 students whose parents filed for divorce but later withdrew from the process.
"The typical approach used by other studies is to compare children whose parents divorced to children in traditional two-parent families," he said. "The problem is that it's hard to control for the differences between these two types of families to ensure that you're not picking up all the things that cause the parents to divorce rather than the effect of the divorce itself."
The increased incidence of divorce in American families is one of the most significant social trends of the 20th century, as more than 1 million children experience divorce every year, Hoekstra said. The number of divorces per 1,000 married women 15 and older more than doubled from 9.2 in 1960 to 19.5 in 1996, and demographers project that if current rates continue, about 50 percent of recent first marriages will end in divorce, he said.
Robert Hughes Jr., professor and head of the department of human and community development at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said Hoekstra's study builds on evidence that has been accumulating for the past 10 years that indicates the negative effects resulting from divorce are not the result of a "legal event," but rather dysfunctional family processes, particularly conflict that disrupt healthy child development.
EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT NCLB
"Everything You Ever Wanted to Know" about the federal No Child Left Behind law can be found in the various sections of a new website located at: http://www.publiceducation.org/nclb_main
The Public Education Network (PEN), working in conjunction with the National Coalition for Parent Involvement in Education (NCPIE), has developed simple, easy-to- understand materials that community leaders and parents all over the country have requested to translate the requirements and demands made by this very complex 1,000 page law.
This new NCLB web portal is especially valuable to educators, the media, policymakers, elected officials, business organizations, and civil rights and civic organizations. The purpose of providing this information is not to take a position on the law, but to encourage deep understanding the law, so that local communities are enabled to make their own judgments about how effective the law is in their own states and school districts.
In addition to empowering community and parent leaders to become more knowledgeable about the law—and to take advantage of the opportunities it provides for action, engagement, and collaboration—the new site offers more than a dozen detailed action briefs. The action briefs are written in easy-to-use language focused on specific sections of the law and include pertinent regulations, a glossary of terms, action steps, and additional resources. Examples of action brief topics include: Understanding Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP); Programs of English Language Learners; Armed Forces Recruiter Access; Charter Schools; Education of Homeless Students; State and Local Report Cards; Public School Choice; Teacher Quality; and many others written in simple language with numerous "action tips" to encourage local advocacy and education improvement.
The website also includes dozens of "best of the web" links to expertise from other national education advocacy organizations. These links provided more detailed and specific information on the history of NCLB, policy guidance, and federal regulation. While not perfect, the law provides more opportunities than any previous education law for parental and community involvement.
In addition, Open to the Public: The Public Speaks out on No Child Left Behind, identifies specific concerns voiced by more than 1500 parents, students, taxpayers, and community leaders at open public hearings from September to January of this year. The hearings were designed to gain grassroots and civic input on the law from groups often left out of the policy debate, yet profoundly impacted by its implementation. To read the national and state reports, visit: http://www.publiceducation.org/nclb_main/Public_Hearings.asp
Throughout the hearings, the public rejected a single test as an accurate measure of school improvement. Parents and community leaders indicated that discrepancies between state and federal measures of school progress have created a deep mistrust of high-stakes tests and other NCLB indicators as accurate assessments of school performance. And, they believe that accountability must be expanded to include additional measures of school and student progress, developed with the input of local educators, parents, and the community.
Americans are also angered by the labeling of schools as "in need of improvement" because they say that this label erodes public support for these schools. Rather than increasing the public's sense of responsibility for demanding additional support and resources, 'in need of improvement' labels are perceived as punitive and can result in student, teacher, and community abandonment of the very schools most in need of support.
"Americans support the goals of the federal No Child Left Behind Act and believe accountability is necessary to improve our public schools," said Public Education Network (PEN) President Wendy D. Puriefoy. "This law was written with a specific emphasis on public and parental involvement at the center of the legislation. We heard repeated testimony that the public felt uninformed and, in some cases, actively excluded from having a voice in the school improvement process."
The public recommended the following changes to the law and its implementation including:
"School success is a shared responsibility and the public recognizes that their involvement is critical to improving the schools in their communities," said Puriefoy. "Now, we must engage them in meaningful ways to help us determine how we can provide our students with the support they need to succeed."
Public hearings were held in Austin, Boston, Chicago, Columbus, Detroit, New York City, Orlando, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco. The hearings represent the second of three sets of national forums to be held by PEN and regional partners to help inform the law's reauthorization in 2007. The complete national report, as well as the individual state reports, is available online at www.PublicEducation.org
ABOUT PUBLIC EDUCATION NETWORK
Public Education Network (www.PublicEducation.org) is a national organization of local education funds (LEFs) and individuals working to improve public schools and build public support for quality public education for poor and disadvantaged children in low-income communities across the nation. PEN and its 82 LEF members work in 32 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico on behalf of 11.5 million children in more than 16,000 schools, seeking to bring the community voice into the debate on quality public education in the firm belief that an active, vocal constituency will ensure every child, in every community, a quality public education. In addition, PEN's international affiliates serve more than 7 million children in Mexico, Peru, and the Philippines.
NEW MODEL CURRICULUM FOR U.S. HISTORY
Graduate students in history at the University of California, Santa Cruz have developed a new globalized model curriculum for college-level survey courses in U.S. history.
"The project provides a new lower-division curriculum for United States history that reflects cutting-edge research regarding the impact of the world on U.S. history, as well as the impact of the U.S. on the world," noted Burke, director of the Center for World History at UC Santa Cruz. "It aligns for the first time major dates in U.S. history with world historical processes."
The "Globalizing U.S. History" project is the result of the collaboration of more than a dozen UC Santa Cruz graduate students of world history over an 18-month period. It features a syllabus for each of the two parts of the U.S. history lower-division survey course, along with lecture titles and assigned readings. To encourage others to adopt this approach, there is also an instructor's syllabus that outlines each lecture, as well as a bibliography of essential readings to guide the instructor's preparation. The full curriculum will be posted in October on the UC Santa Cruz Center for World History web site http://cwh.ucsc.edu.
Burke noted that the lower-division U.S. history survey course has changed little in the last half century, despite the addition of new research and new perspectives. He added that the new UC Santa Cruz model curriculum reflects the latest scholarship in world and U.S. history and might also be useful for teachers at the high school level.
"The UCSC model curriculum, as it is refined, should prove attractive to many colleges and secondary schools seeking to broaden the conceptual scope of their existing U.S. history survey by linking it to world history," said Burke. "The course may also prove of interest to middle and high school history faculty who are seeking innovative ways of addressing history by combining U.S. and world history."
HIGH-QUALITY PRESCHOOL IS KEY TO CLOSING THE ACHIEVEMENT GAP
As our nation’s children head back to school this month, the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) urges policymakers to ensure that preschool really does prepare young children to succeed in the early school years. NCCP’s new report, Effective Preschool Curricula and Teaching Strategies (http://www.nccp.org./pub_pes06b.html, identifies ways to strengthen preschool in order to close the persistent achievement gap separating low-income children from their more affluent peers.
“We applaud that states are wisely investing more in pre-k and as a result, preschool enrollment is increasing,” said NCCP Director and report coauthor Dr. Jane Knitzer. “But something important is missing in public conversations about preschool—what research shows about the importance of high-quality learning environments.”
Making sure that preschool teachers have the tools that they need to be effective is important for all children. For the nearly 40 percent of American children who grow up in low-income families, it is especially crucial.
For many of these children, what has been called the “achievement gap” is real and significant. A review of national data shows that at age 4, children who live below the poverty line ($20,000 for a family of four) are 18 months below the developmental norm for their age group, and by age 10, that gap is still evident. Neither time nor the first years of elementary school close it.
The good news is that a body of research is emerging that has direct implications for ensuring that low-income children do succeed in preschool and beyond. NCCP’s new report calls on policymakers and educators to:
In Montgomery County, Maryland, which implemented many of these strategies, second graders, who made up the most ethnically diverse group in the district’s history, set new records in scoring above the national norms on standardized tests of reading and language.
“Back to school will not mean more than the usual and customary, unless we set high expectations for the children and invest seriously in professional development for teachers,” said Dr. Knitzer.
To read the full report, please go to: http://www.nccp.org./media/pes06b_text_2.pdf
Two interesting articles in the Washington Post on the subject:
…Alfie Kohn, the author of numerous volumes attacking get-tough education reforms, sympathetically enumerates the most common complaints against homework, from the burden it places on parents to the stress it causes kids. Most damning, he writes in the opening chapter (of THE HOMEWORK MYTH -Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing), entitled "Missing Out on Their Childhoods," homework "may be the single most reliable extinguisher of the flame of curiosity." Challenging the notion that homework may be a useful, if sometimes onerous, part of growing up, Kohn points out, correctly, that most research has found no association between homework and student learning in the elementary grades. And he is witheringly (albeit unconvincingly) critical of studies that indicate it is positively connected to academic achievement for middle- and high-school students. Nor does he believe homework leads to other desirable outcomes such as good study habits (one of the chief rationales cited by experts who believe it may be valuable in modest amounts for younger students). He proposes an assortment of reforms, the most striking of which would change the "default" position of schools to a no-homework policy unless the value of a given assignment can be clearly justified.
If Kohn is the would-be intellectual theoretician of a new war on homework, Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish have written a battlefield manual for parents: (THE CASE AGAINST HOMEWORK). While their central claims are of a piece with Kohn's (they write that "homework overload is compromising our parenting choices, jeopardizing our children's health, and robbing us of precious family time"), this duo's approach is more practical. Employing the chatty, anecdote-driven style of women's magazines, they lay out their case (even claiming that the growing homework burden fuels childhood obesity), then spell out how to lobby schools to have it reduced or eliminated. "Homework overload is not a parenting problem. It's a school problem that has been dumped in our laps," write Bennett, a criminal defense appeals attorney, and Kalish, a former editor and columnist for such publications as Child and Redbook. In the grassroots revolt they envision, more parents will say "enough is enough..."
. . . These writers have convinced themselves—and would have their readers believe—that excessive homework is a veritable national crisis. But is it?
As it happens, Brookings Institution scholar Tom Loveless took on this question in a 2003 report that persuasively refuted the notion that most American kids are academically overloaded. Reviewing an assortment of studies, he found that even in high school the typical American student spends less than one hour studying per day. While there has been a marked increase in homework among younger students in recent years, the average amounts are still modest—about two hours per week for kids ages 6 to 8, and under four hours per week for those ages 9 to 12—and the rising average is largely driven by a decline in the proportion of kids who had no homework at all. What's more, studying is far outpaced by time playing sports, and is dwarfed by—surprise—hours devoted to watching television (13 and a half per week among 9- to 12-year-olds, for example)…
Perhaps homework really is out of control in certain (generally affluent) schools and districts. But that would be a far narrower problem than the national epidemic these authors describe....
To read the complete article, please go to:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/07/AR2006090701159.html
The nation's best-known researcher on homework has taken a new look at the subject, and here is what Duke University professor Harris Cooper has to say:
Elementary school students get no academic benefit from homework—except reading and some basic skills practice—and yet schools require more than ever.
High school students studying until dawn probably are wasting their time because there is no academic benefit after two hours a night; for middle-schoolers, 1 1/2 hours.
To read more about this, please go to: http://dukenews.duke.edu/2006/03/homework.html
And what's perhaps more important, he said, is that most teachers get little or no training on how to create homework assignments that advance learning.
To read the complete article, please go to:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/11/AR2006091100908.html