Curriculum

Want Algebra by 8th? Start With Proficiency in Foundational Skills by 4th

Sara Mead — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:26:00 -0400

A new report from the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution finds that 120,00 students nationally are enrolled in algebra as eighth graders even though they have math skills comparable to those of the average second grader. That may not sound like a lot of students, but it's nearly 8 percent of all American eighth graders enrolled in algebra courses, and to the extent that these underprepared students are spread across algebra courses with students who are better prepared, their presence may have a negative impact on the quality of algebra instruction offered to a much larger population of students.

Report author Tom Loveless suggests that this finding calls into question the recent policy push, particularly in some high-poverty urban school districts, to enroll increasing numbers of eighth graders (in some cases, all eighth graders) in algebra. But it also highlights the need to get much more serious about improving the quality of math instruction provided to students in the elementary grades. Students arrive in eighth grade doing math at a second grade level only when their elementary schools have seriously failed in teaching them basic math knowledge and skills.

The National Math Panel recommends that children achieve proficiency in whole number operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) by fourth grade. Mastering these skills by the end of fourth grade is an essential prerequisite for students to be able to understand algebra by eighth grade. The substantial number of ill-prepared students in eighth grade algebra classes is a case study in the need for alignment that ensures the standards, curricula, and teaching strategies (as well as teacher trainign and professional development) we use in the early grades are designed to build seemlessly towards the accomplishment of goals we have for children to master in later years. In other words, if we want kids to master algebra by eighth, we need to focus at least as much energy on getting them proficient in whole number operations by fourth. That's a lot harder than simply mandating algebra for all eighth graders, but in the long term the results will be much better.

Photo by flickr user SoulCookie used under a Creative Commons license.

What Works in Pre-k Curriculum?

Sara Mead — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:29:00 -0400

Last month the Institute of Education Sciences released a major new study that evaluates the impact of 14 common pre-kindergarten curricula on pre-k students’ learning and pre-k classroom quality. Results suggest that some pre-k curricula are more effective than others in improving children’s literacy and math skills.

Pre-kindergarten experts generally agree that high-quality pre-k programs must have a clearly articulated curriculum that guides instruction and spells out expectations for what children will learn over the course of the year. They also tend to agree that good pre-k curriculum should be comprehensive—developing children’s literacy, language, early math, and social and emotional skills. And, as we’ve previously argued, good pre-k curriculum should be aligned with the curriculum that will be used in kindergarten and early elementary grades.

But beyond that, there’s relatively little consensus on what a good pre-k curriculum should look like. In fact, pre-k curriculum is the subject of heated ideological debates between those who favor different pedagogical approaches. There’s also relatively little systematic research on the effectiveness of different types of curricula currently being implemented in pre-k classrooms around the country. And the evaluations that have been conducted are often not well-publicized or accessible for policymakers and the public. That’s left policymakers adrift: We know that quality pre-k programs should use quality curricula, but if we don’t have solid research on the effectiveness of different curricula, how can we ensure that the curricula publicly-funded pre-k programs implement are effective?

The federally-funded Preschool Curriculum Evaluation Research Initiative seeks to address that problem, by evaluating the effectiveness of 14 common pre-k curricula. The study focuses on three questions:

What is the impact of each of the 14 preschool curricula on preschool students’ early reading skills, phonological awareness, language development, early mathematical knowledge, and behavior?
What is the impact of each of the 14 preschool curricula on these outcomes for students at the end of kindergarten?
What is the impact of each of the 14 preschool curricula on preschool classroom quality, teachers-child interaction, and instructional practices?

Twelve research teams from universities across the country implemented the 14 curricula in randomly selected samples of local pre-k classrooms; measured child outcomes at the end of pre-k and the end of kindergarten, for both children in treatment classrooms and a control group; and observed the quality of classrooms in both treatment classrooms and the control group.

Researchers found evidence that four programs had positive impacts on child outcomes, compared to a control group, either at the end of preschool or at the end of kindergarten:

DLM Early Childhood Express Supplemented with Open Court Reading Pre-K had positive effects on reading, phonological awareness, and language at both the end of pre-k and the end of kindergarten.
Pre-K Mathematics supplemented with DLM Early Childhood Express Math software had positive effects on math at the end of pre-k.
Curiosity Corner, developed by the Success for All Foundation, had positive effects on reading at the end of kindergarten (but not pre-k).
Early Literacy Learning Model had positive effects on language at the end of kindergarten (but not pre-k).

Most curricula included in the study did not improve children’s outcomes relative those of control group children, however. More of the selected curricula had positive impacts on pre-k classroom quality and teachers’ interactions with children: eight of the 14 curricula studied had positive results, relative to a control group, on these indicators.

There are some clear limitations to these findings.

First, just because researchers found no positive impacts for most of the curricula studied, that doesn’t mean they are ineffective. Children in the control groups were enrolled in the same types of pre-k programs as those in the treatment groups, and the classrooms they attended used some type of curriculum, most often (though not always) one developed by their teachers. What we can conclude from this research is that most of the curricula studied were no more effective in improving pre-kindergarteners’ learning than the various curricula that the pre-k programs would otherwise have used.

Similarly, we cannot necessarily conclude, based on this data, that the few curricula that had significant student learning impacts, relative to controls, are more effective than other curricula in the study, which did not. That’s because the curricula used in control classrooms varied across the experiments, and some control classrooms had stronger curricula than others. Variation in control classrooms is one major challenge in implementing very large, multi-site studies like this one, and the study design in this instance contributed to this program.

Finally, this study does not look at the cost-effectiveness of different curriculum models. It tells us nothing about the cost to implement each curriculum, or how it compares to the costs of teacher- and school-designed curricula, or other popular curriculum models.

Then what does this study show? First, this study’s findings show that curriculum does matter, and that some curricula can produce better learning outcomes for children than others. Specifically, it suggests that four curricula that did have significant positive student learning impacts are more effective than the, typically teacher generated, curricula most pre-k programs were using. That may not sound like much, but it’s a pretty significant finding for studies of educational curriculum, which often find no benefits relative to what schools would be doing otherwise. Policymakers should take this into account when considering curriculum requirements for pre-k programs. We clearly need further research in this area to produce more useful guidance for policymakers and practitioners going forward, however.

The Department of Education must also do a better job communicating research findings about different pre-k curricula. This study has so far received very little public or press attention, despite its importance. The Department’s What Works Clearinghouse has also reviewed evaluations of almost 20 different early education interventions or curricula, but those evaluations are also not well-publicized among early educators. As research confirms the common sense finding that curriculum models in pre-k are important, the federal government must do a much better job of supporting quality research on the effectiveness of different models and making the results accessible to policymakers, practitioners, and parents.

A Second Look at Reading First

Sara Mead — Mon, 05 May 2008 16:26:00 -0400

Last week the Institute of Education Sciences released the first report from an ongoing national evaluation of Reading First. And, as a front page Washington Post story (and plenty of other newspaper articles across the country) reported, the news wasn’t good. Researchers found no evidence of statistically significant improvements in the reading comprehension of students in Reading First schools, compared to students in similar schools that did not receive Reading First funding. Since the point of Reading First is to improve students’ literacy skills, that’s a disappointing result.

Reporters, Reading First critics, and policymakers quickly concluded that Reading First is not working and needs to be either revamped or scrapped entirely. For instance, House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.), who has been highly critical of last year’s scandals involving the Bush administration’s management of the program, stated last week that this report “shows that we need to seriously re-examine this program and figure out how to make it work better for students.”

Certainly, the research raises serious questions about Reading First’s effectiveness, but it’s worth taking a closer look before writing the program off entirely. Several points are particularly noteworthy:

First, while the researchers found no evidence that students in Reading First schools had better achievement than those in non-Reading First schools, that finding was not consistent across the whole sample of schools studied. Researchers looked at Reading First schools (and similar non-Reading First schools) from two cohorts of Reading First awards: schools that first received funding between April and December 2003, and schools that received funding between January and August 2004. The study found no evidence that Reading First improved student achievement in the schools that received earlier awards—in fact, analysis suggests that Reading First had, if anything, a negative (though non-significant) impact on children’s reading achievement in these schools. In contrast, the study did find statistically significant improvements in the percentage of students reading at grade level in second cohort of schools, those that received funding later.

Does this matter? It’s tough to say. The researchers suggest two possible reasons Reading First could have improved student achievement in the later school cohort but not the earlier one: First, schools in the later cohort received more Reading First funding per pupil than those in the earlier cohort. Second, schools in the later cohort had lower student achievement in reading to start with, so they had more room to improve. Unfortunately, the researchers didn’t have sufficient data to investigate whether either of these differences—or other potential factors—cause differences in student achievement impacts between the two sets of schools, so we have no way of knowing whether the statistically significant improvements for the later set of schools matters.

Schools that received awards earlier didn’t just fail to show evidence of improved student achievement, though. Researchers also found no evidence that Reading First increased the time teachers in these schools devoted to the 5 essential components of effective reading instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension—these 5 components are the cornerstone of the Reading First program. In contrast, researchers found evidence of both increased instructional time devoted to the 5 components, and improved reading comprehension test scores in the later group of schools. That makes intuitive sense: Reading First is based on the idea that implementing the 5 components of effective reading instruction will improve student reading, so the program is unlikely to improve student achievement in schools where it doesn’t also cause teachers to increase time devoted to the 5 components.

That still doesn’t explain, though, why Reading First had a greater impact on teacher behavior in the schools that received awards later than it did in those that received earlier awards. Ultimately, we just have to hope that later reports will shed more light on the differences between earlier and later award schools.

That brings us to another important point—this report is only the first one from an ongoing evaluation, and may not capture the full picture. The researchers themselves caution:

“The evaluation design calls for three years of data collection. This report presents findings based on two years of data collection. While there is no prior researcher on the among of time necessary for schools to have fully implemented the Reading First program, prior research on implementation of programs designed to improve student achievement through changing teachers’ instructional practices suggests that while changes in instruction may be evidence sooner, changes in student achievement can take several years to appear. This holds particular salience for the Reading First program, which attempts to promote a comprehensive approach to reading instruction that persists from kindergarten through grade three. Some aspects of Reading First may be easy to implement quickly (i.e., purchase of new core reading programs and assessments, providing research-based professional development). Yet other aspects may require several years to implement effectively and consistently across the entire K-3 grade span (i.e. aligning curricula, instructional practices, and support services with the underlying principles of Reading First) to yield sustained improvement in student reading performance. Further, it will take four years of implementation before any students will have been able to experience Reading First funded activities as they progress from kindergarten through third grade.” (emphasis added)

In other words, it’s too early for this to be the last word on Reading First. Impatience with the speed at which educational improvement progresses is a common issue in education reform—and one that can cause real problems for reform efforts. When the federal government is investing a billion dollars annually in a program, it’s understandable—indeed, essential—to ask how that program is doing—but we also need to be cautious about evaluating programs too early, before they’ve been sufficiently implemented to show results. Policymakers should wait for the final report before making substantial changes to the Reading First program. Since NCLB reauthorization appears to be on hold until at least 2009, they have time.

Finally, we should ask whether the person who should really be declaring victory here is not Reading First’s critics, but E.D. Hirsch. This study focused on one indicator of children’s reading performance: student reading comprehension as assessed by the Stanford Achievement Test. The researchers did not assess children’s phonemic awareness, decoding ability, or fluency, for example. That makes sense because comprehension is, in the researchers’ words “the essence of reading.” But it’s also problematic because, as Hirsch has argued passionately in recent years, reading comprehension is about much more than basic literacy skills. To comprehend, readers must also have a rich content knowledge that enables them to connect what they read to existing knowledge. (Hirsch is fond of citing an article describing a baseball game as an example here: Poor readers who know a lot about baseball will comprehend the article better than excellent readers who have never seen a baseball game.) Teachers observed in this study spent substantial time teaching children reading comprehension, but teaching comprehension strategies is not the same and equipping children with the content knowledge they need to understand what they read.

None of these points or questions reverse the fact that a rigorous evaluation has, so far, found no clear evidence that Reading First improves students reading. Policymakers, parents, and the public should be aware of this fact and should be asking questions about it. But we should also consider the entire picture—including forthcoming reports—before writing the program off or making major changes to it.

Photo by flickr user Leo Reynolds, used under a Creative Commons License.

Early Education at Risk?

Sara Mead — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:55:00 -0400

Last week's Nation at Risk anniversary spawned a boatload of commentary on the seminal report's impacts, as well as the continued shortcomings in American public education 25 years later. Thinking about Nation's impacts on early childhood and elementary education can be perplexing. As E.D. Hirsch notes in Education Week, the original report gave barely a mention to early education, focusing primarily on the need to dramatically improve academic rigor and core course-taking at the high school level. Yet it's undeniable that the standards-based education movement that emerged out of Nation has led to significant reforms in early education--and that early education reforms have actually be more aggressive, and have produced greater results, than have reforms at the high school level Nation's authors originally sought to affect.

Pre-kindergarten: Publicly funded pre-kindergarten was hardly unheard of before Nation at Risk--the federal Head Start program began in 1965. But the universal pre-k movement at the state level emerged in the 1990s in conjunction with state K-12 education reform efforts--particularly in Southern states that have led the charge in both pre-k and standards based reform--and in response to first National Education Goal: "by 2000 all children will start school ready to learn." The state universal pre-k movement further gained steam in early 2000s, and today state-funded pre-k programs enroll more than 1 million 3- and 4-year-olds nationally.

Full-day Kindergarten: As states invested resources in education reform, standards, and accountability, many prioritized full-day kindergarten investments. For example, more than half of funds from Pennsylvania's Accountability Block Grant support full-day-kindergarten. Since 1994, the percentage of children enrolled in full-day, as opposed to half-day, kindergarten has risen from under half to roughly two-thirds.

Reading Instruction: Since the mid-1990s, we have invested significant resources in improving reading instruction at the early elementary level. The National Reading Panel, which was established in 1997 and released its final report in 2000, established a new national consensus around how to effectively teach young children to read. The Reading Excellence Act, passed in 1998, and No Child Left Behind's Reading First program, which replaced REA in 2002, affirmed that consensus and have provided billions of dollars in federal funds to help states and school districts implement sound reading instruction in the early grades.

Smaller Class Sizes: Since the mid-1990s, states, school districts, and even the federal government have invested significant resources to reduce class size in the early elementary grades, in response to research linking smaller class sizes to improved student outcomes. Although some of these initiatives have been revised, and further research has refined our understanding of the connection between class size and student achievement, we are still spending more today to educate young children in smaller classes than we did a decade or more ago. Between 1993 and 2003, the average elementary school class size in the United States fell from 24 to 20.

These are significant reforms, and they all grow out of the standards-based reform movement sparked by Nation at Risk. Moreover, these and other reforms at the early childhood and early elementary education levels appear to be producing results: Since the mid-1990s 4th grade scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in reading and math have been on a steady upward trajectory. On the most recent long-term trend NAEP assessment, administered in 2004, 9-year-olds performed better in both reading and math than at any time since the assessment was first administered in 1971! That's a striking contrast to the middle and high school levels, where student achievement has stagnated and even declined.

Yet, even if the past 20+ years of education reform efforts have had their greatest success at the early education level (and we would argue that they have), that doesn't mean they've been anywhere near successful enough. Consider: Despite dramatic improvements, only 33 percent of fourth-graders were proficient in reading on the 2007 NAEP assessment, and only 39 percent were proficient in math. Moreover, the failure of elementary achievement gains to translate into better middle- and high-school achievement shows how far we continue to fall short in equipping our young students for the next level of their education. In other words: There's a lot more left to do in reforming early education.

For all their beneficial impacts, most of the early education reforms of the past two decades have been around the margins--adding a year of schooling prior to elementary school, lengthening the school day. All of these reforms are improvements, but they're about doing more of the same and getting marginal returns--not fundamentally improving the core of the early learning experience. (Improvements in reading instruction do get closer to this core, but, as research from the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation demonstrates, too many schools are still not really implementing read curricula informed by the evidence).

To get the results we want, we need to dramatically improve the core of the learning experience--the curriculum and concepts to which children are exposed, the quality of instructional interactions between teachers and children in the classroom, and the alignment between curriculum, instructional strategies, evaluation and teacher training.

Right now we're a long way from where we need to be on all these factors. State content standards in the early elementary grades are woefully inadequate, and 9 states either have no literacy and numeracy standards at all in grades K-2, or had chosen to "cluster" their K-2 standards in one, largely useless, set of standards for the entire K-2 grade range. The early elementary curriculum remains woefully devoid of content. In-depth observational studies of early elementary classrooms find that the typical American elementary school classroom offers low levels of instructional support for students' learning. And the "egg carton" structure of many public schools leads to little alignment even among same-grade class rooms--let alone across grade levels.

Changing these conditions will be incredibly difficult. But it's essential to dramatically improving early education outcomes and getting the results we want at the elementary, middle and high school levels. And the body of research that can help us address these challenges--as well as new tools based on that research--is growing rapidly. The success of the next 25 years of early education reform will depend on the extent to which we can employ that research to move beyond the margins and radically improve the core of children's early education experiences.

Curriculum

Recommended Reading: American Educator

Want Algebra by 8th? Start With Proficiency in Foundational Skills by 4th

What Works in Pre-k Curriculum?

A Second Look at Reading First

Early Education at Risk?