Standards

Drafting Common Standards: What's Ahead -- And What's Missing

Sara Mead — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:00:00 -0400

Last week the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and National Governors’ Association (NGA)—the two organizations leading efforts to develop “common core” state standards—released a first draft of their “college- and career-ready” standards. The overall reaction from education groups, policy wonks, and other observers has been pretty positive so far, although some critics say the standards devote too little attention to specific content knowledge.

These standards articulate what students should know and be able to do in English language arts and math by the time they graduate from high school, in order to succeed in college or the workforce. But as regular Early Ed Watch readers know, the path to college and career readiness begins much earlier than that—in preschool and the early grades. “College and career-ready” standards define end goals for public schooling. The real meat of the “common core” effort will lie in a series of grade-by-grade academic standards, which will define what students need to learn each year in K-12* schools in order to stay on track to reach the “college and career ready” goalposts.

As experts convened by CCSSO and NGA work to develop those grade-by-grade standards, they need to make sure that they provide clear expectations for the content and skills children should learn each year, and that those standards are aligned from grade to grade. This will be especially important in the early grades, which are often an area of particular weakness in existing state standards. Many states’ early elementary standards are too vague to provide useful guidance to teachers and repeat the same standard over multiple grades (NOT helpful for alignment!). In a few states, the expectations for grades K-3 or K-2 are clustered into a single standard (even less helpful!).

Discussions about the CCSSO-NGA effort often emphasize the need for standards that are “common” and “rigorous.” But for standards to serve as tools educators can use to drive real improvements in student learning—and that’s what we want, right?—“clarity” and “alignment” are just as important. When the grade-by-grade standards come out, we’ll be paying very close attention to ensure that they provide the clarity and alignment necessary to support high-quality, aligned educational experiences for children in the early grades.

*Note that we say “K-12.” As we’ve previously noted—with disappointment and disapproval—CCSSO and NGA have declined to include pre-k standards in their efforts—even though pre-k is increasingly becoming part of the public education system in a number of states. This omission is particularly problematic because it does not allow for easy integration with the Obama administration’s efforts, through the Early Learning Challenge Fund, to raise standards for early childhood programs and help states build more coherent early childhood systems. A clear definition of what children should learn in pre-k, in order to be on track for college readiness by the end of high school, would be very helpful to these efforts. Since the CCSSO-NGA effort isn't going to provide that, someone else needs to.

Looking Forward to NCLB

Jennifer Cohen — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 14:53:00 -0500

We've previously written about both presidential candidates' unwillingness to talk about No Child Left Behind (NCLB). That's changed a bit - especially since the Teacher's College debate between Obama spokesperson Linda Darling-Hammond and McCain advisor Lisa Graham Keegan brought it back into the public eye. Regardless, it's impossible to deny that whoever wins the election will have to tackle NCLB head-on. It's not going to be an easy battle.

Reauthorizing NCLB will likely be a long process that demands the next President's leadership and guidance. The list of topics that is likely to make or break the reauthorization process is extensive and overwhelming. But in honor of this Election Day, we have selected a few that are near and dear to our hearts for the future President-elect to look forward to.

First and foremost is the looming 2014 deadline for 100 percent proficiency on academic tests. As we've read in the headlines time and again, schools, districts, and states are struggling to reach intermediate goals, let alone approach 100 percent proficiency in all subjects for all student subgroups.

Accomplishing such levels of proficiency could take a miracle. Many states set low initial annual achievement goals in their trajectory towards 100 percent proficiency. As a result, their schools are expected to make double digit leaps in proficiency between now and 2014. This type of growth is near to impossible.

Given the limitations of reasonable growth, maintaining the 100 percent requirement in a new iteration of the law will result in more Schools In Need of Improvement (SINIs). States and districts barely have the capacity to turn around the number of low-performing schools they already have. Imagine the strain on their capacity should the list of SINIs grow.

Some stakeholders have suggested that the reauthorized version of NCLB focus on student academic growth, rather than static levels of achievement, and allow more flexibility for schools, districts, and states to reach those growth goals. Moving away from 100 proficiency may present a political obstacle, but directing federal accountability towards realistic expectations could mean real, positive change for low-performing schools.

Speaking of Schools In Need of Improvement, the current version of NCLB is short on guidance and funds for improving or restructuring schools that haven't made Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) for at least two years. Drastically improving schools takes ample time, money, and planning, and many districts and states lack the dollars, infrastructure, or expertise to do so.

Currently, little research exists to guide school improvement and restructuring - an area where federal investment could make a big difference. Hopefully, a new NCLB will include provisions for research and development on school improvement strategies, direction for schools and districts undergoing the process, and financial support for, well, "supporting" schools.

Another hot-button issue for NCLB reauthorization is the comparability provision for Title I funding. Comparability is intended to prevent school districts from systematically spending less on students in their highest-poverty schools and ensure that Title I funds supplement, not supplant, services to those students. Districts can demonstrate comparable funding by issuing written assurances of comparability or comparing student-instructor ratios, per pupil teacher salary spending, or per pupil expenditures across Title I and non-Title I schools.

But comparability is subject to a series of loopholes that gut the provision. For example, when calculating per pupil teacher salary spending, districts can exclude salary differences due to years of experience. As a result, two schools in the same school district can be deemed "comparable" even if teachers in one school are far more experienced, and therefore higher paid, than those in another. Typically, high-poverty schools lose out in this game, employing primarily inexperienced teachers.

Comparability regulations currently allow districts to remain "comparable" while unevenly distributing experienced teachers and putting low-income students at a disadvantage in the classroom. If the next President wants to ensure that all children are given the tools they need to succeed, comparability regulations must be strengthened to resolve inequities in teacher distribution.

There's also a growing list of special programs the next President will have to negotiate and pare down. Various stakeholders have been fighting for universal pre-K, school construction funds, national standards, and all manner of pet projects. Some programs have more merit than others, but there will not be enough money to pay for them all. It will be impossible to please everyone with the reauthorization bill, and we wish the new President luck as he works his way through it.

Finally, there is the need for a new, snappy title for the law. Surely "No Child Left Behind" has worn thin on the public's patience and a new name could be just what the doctor ordered. But given the problems detailed above, that's probably the least of the President-elect's education concerns.

Performance Based Assessments Take the Stage

Jennifer Cohen — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 20:03:00 -0400

Today on the Diane Rehm Show, Obama spokesperson Melody Barnes mentioned that if elected, Barack Obama would like to consider portfolios as a form of NCLB assessment. This news is both surprising and timely - yesterday the Forum for Education and Democracy held an event focusing on the benefits of performance based assessments (PBAs) in a standards-based and accountability-focused world.

Like portfolios, performance based assessments ask students to demonstrate their learning through open ended prompts, projects, presentations, and papers rather than in the multiple choice format commonly found in today's K-12 accountability system. A few states and localities like Rhode Island and the New York Performance Standards Consortium have implemented such systems with some success.

The educators and advocates advancing these assessments believe that they are a better indicator of 21^st Century Skills - problem solving, decision making, communication, teamwork, and self management - than those consisting primarily of multiple choice questions. While multiple choice questions test memorization and basic skills, PBAs have the potential to examine a student's ability to adapt knowledge to new contexts, think creatively, and initiate ideas.

In sum, PBAs can provide a more complete picture of a student's academic achievement than one score on a standardized multiple choice test. As one presenter suggested: "You wouldn't ask a doctor to give a diagnosis based on temperature alone."

Supporters cite similar testing systems in New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Hong Kong as evidence of promise for PBAs in the United States. These countries score high on PISA tests in math and provide models for innovative applications of quality PBA programs. For example, some countries use the outcomes of PBAs as part of a school's accountability score (often more than 50 percent of the score), leaving room for basic assessments like multiple choice tests, to be used as well. In these systems, PBAs augment accountability and drive school improvement, while benefiting from high grader reliability.

It is also believed that PBAs encourage student engagement by including students in assessment formulation and allowing them to take ownership of their projects. Performance based assessments can also be sensitive to good teaching by freeing teachers from the confines of a test-centered curriculum and allowing them to innovate.

Of course, performance based assessments, like portfolios, have significant implications for the cost of accountability programs like NCLB. Performance based assessments are more costly and more time consuming to implement on a broad scale. They require good planning and preparation to ensure grader reliability, proper implementation, and alignment to standards.

Many states and districts claim that current testing regimes are too demanding. As a result, federal enforcement of a PBA system could be met with great resistance. But perhaps states are up to the challenge given the potential benefits to learning.

Regardless, it's difficult to imagine such a policy change without increased federal funding to support it. The federal government spent more than $408 million on state assessment development and implementation grants in 2008, averaging almost $8 million per state. We don't know how much a good PBA system would cost to get up and running and it's hard to predict what federal involvement in such a system would be. But asking states to develop whole new performance based assessment systems from scratch, even in an efficient consortium-style organization, would not be a simple undertaking.

However Barnes' comment plays out in the campaign and in a potential Obama administration, we are excited to hear that politicians are considering alternatives to status quo multiple choice assessments. The need to focus accountability and standards on real 21^st Century skills is more apparent than ever in today's economy.

Let the Funding Debate Begin!

Jennifer Cohen — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 20:34:00 -0400

Now that Republican and Democratic presidential candidates Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama have both released their education agendas, Ed Money Watch has decided to examine the federal education funding implications of both plans. While both candidates' plans leave some questions unanswered, the differences between them on education funding are stark.

Sen. Obama's platform would increase federal funding for K-12 and early education programs by $18 billion annually. The largest share of that new funding-$10 billion-would go to Obama's "zero to five" early education plan to improve the quality and availability of childcare, preschool, and Head Start programs. Obama's proposal would more than double the current federal investment in early childhood programs such as Head Start and the Child Development Block Grant.

Fewer details exist on where the additional $8 billion intended for K-12 education reforms would go, however. Obama proposes significant investments in improving teacher preparation and quality, including $100 million to stimulate school-university partnerships for teacher education, $1 billion for teacher mentoring programs, and an unspecified amount to provide college scholarships of up to $25,000 to recruit 40,000 new teachers. But the campaign hasn't provided a price tag for many other teacher quality proposals, including the most significant ones.

Obama's proposal also includes $200 million for state grants for extended learning time, and would double the current funding level ($1.08 billion) for the 21^st Century Community Learning Centers afterschool program. Obama has also proposed doubling the current $260 million federal investment in education research and development. According to the campaign, these investments will be paid for by cutting programs and utilizing tax loopholes elsewhere in the federal budget to funnel money into education.

Sen. John McCain, in contrast, has said that he will freeze all federal discretionary spending until his administration determines which programs are actually working. Within that set funding amount, he will provide $250 million in grants to states to develop new virtual learning curricula and programs, and provide $250 million in scholarships for low-income students to take online coursework or tutoring. These programs would be paid for in part by repurposing the $267 current federal investment in Education Technology State Grants. McCain would also increase funding for DC's Opportunity Scholarships to $20 million, and reallocate 65% of the $2.9 billion in NCLB Title II teacher quality funds to teacher recruitment and performance pay bonuses.

McCain's platform also talks about providing school principals greater autonomy in their use of federal funds, but is unclear about how he would do that. Senator McCain has voted against fully funding No Child Left Behind and has not yet said whether he will support increases in funding for education programs to keep up with increased student population or inflation.

We look forward to seeing more details on both McCain's and Obama's education funding plans, particularly which programs they plan to cut to make new program spending possible. This is just a taste of the education debate that's yet to come. And if our event last Thursday was any indication, the audience for a conversation on education is large and ready and waiting for more.

Scandal is Easy, Curriculum is Hard

Sara Mead — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 20:44:00 -0400

Sol Stern seems to be in a bomb-throwing mood lately. Earlier this year he set the school choice world abuzz with a City Journal piece arguing that “school choice isn’t enough,” because improving student performance demands better curriculum and instruction, too—a sentiment with which we couldn’t agree more, but one that alienated lots of Stern’s pro-voucher friends. Now Stern’s written a fiery report on the Reading First program for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

For those of you who’ve been living under a rock the past year—or who simply aren’t education policy junkies like we are: Reading First, created as part of the 2001 No Child Left Behind legislation, is a federal program that provides funding to states and school districts to support early elementary reading programs grounded in “scientifically-based reading research” (SBRR). As defined under NCLB, SBRR programs must include explicit instruction the five components of effective reading instruction—phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary development, reading fluency, and reading comprehension strategies—identified by the National Reading Panel. Last year the program came under intense media and Congressional scrutiny following allegations of management problems and conflicts of interest on the peer review panels evaluating state Reading First applications.

Stern’s report seeks to offer the “other side” of the story—the one that didn’t get reported in the press but deserves to be heard. Stern argues that Reading First’s problems began even before the program was enacted, when Congressional drafters decided to not to require programs funded with Reading First dollars to be “scientifically proven”—ie, to have evidence from rigorous experimental trials that they improve children’s reading skills—as the program’s architects initially proposed. Instead, Congress adopted a “scientifically based” standard, which allowed programs to pass muster if they reflect scientific evidence on how children learn to read, but did not require the programs themselves to have undergone experimental evaluations. It did so because only two reading curricula—Direct Instruction and Success for All—met the “scientifically proven” standard (since then, the Reading Recovery program has also met this standard). Stern argues that this “softer” standard made problems inevitable, because it required the Reading First program office to apply discretion in determining whether or not programs were scientifically based, and created an opening for purveyors of ineffective curricula to attempt to label their wares.

There’s plenty to take issue with in Stern’s report—In particular his attacks on the Education Department’s Office of Inspector General and House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller for performing the oversight functions that are a part of their jobs. Stern and Fordham are clearly and, to their credit, forthrightly aligned with one pole of the ongoing wars over curriculum and pedagogical approaches. And their defense of Reading First director Christopher Doherty may be too personal to gain credibility beyond their immediate sphere.

Smart readers should look at the evidence and judge for themselves. But no matter what you think of its overall approach, Stern’s report illustrates several important points: First, it remains extremely rare for Congress to tie federal funding to requirements that funded programs show evidence of effectiveness—in part because there’s often too little research to guide key policy or instructional decisions, but also because some educators resist research-based practices. Second, much as we want to believe that the National Reading Panel report brought peace to the Reading Wars, they continue to rage, especially in education schools and at the local level. Third, the appearance of scandal in bureaucratic and process terms is much more salacious, and easy to write about, than the complexities of curriculum or scientifically based research.

Most important, while Reading First is still a relatively new program, all evaluations to date—by the Office of Management and Budget, the General Accounting Office, and even the liberal Center on Education Policy—suggest that Reading First is working, that it’s helping disadvantaged kids learn to read. And Congress’ response to last year’s scandals—slicing Reading First funding by nearly two-thirds—ultimately hurts these kids, not the people responsible for the programs’ problems.

The Bush administration’s fiscal year 2009 budget proposal requests a restoration of $1 billion in funding for Reading First, and recounts the steps the administration has taken to address program management issues identified by the Department of Education’s Office of the Inspector General. We believe that Congress should not only return Reading First funding to its previous levels, but should also expand the program to support scientifically based reading instruction in pre-k, as well as grades k-3. Perhaps increasing availability of Reading First funding for pre-k youngsters could even be part of a compromise to restore Reading First funding.

Ultimately, however, the Reading First controversy raises important questions for the broader debate about the federal role in setting standards and improving instruction. There’s something cart-before-the-horse about the feds advancing a national definition of quality reading programs when we don’t even have national standards for what children should know and be able to do in reading. That’s not a criticism of Reading First, but it does suggest we need to think beyond Reading First. There are two ways to respond to issues raised by the Reading First controversy: One is to advocate that the federal government remove itself entirely from trying to improve the quality of standards, curricula, or instructional approaches in public schools, and leave these issues entirely in the hands of states and local school districts. The other is to support an unprecedentedly stronger federal role in setting national standards and supporting effective curricula. We're on record in supporting rigorous national academic standards to address the disparities in expectations for children in different states under the current system. It's increasingly looking like NCLB won't be reauthorized until we have a new Congress and President--these are questions they'll have to take up then.

Forgetting Our History

Sara Mead — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Happy President’s Day! On a day that honors our nation’s history, it’s fitting to take a moment to consider how we’re passing that history down to our youngest students. When we think about the skills and knowledge children need to master in PK-3, our minds tend to go first to language and literacy--with good reason, because language and literacy are gateway skills that open to door for children to master further learning, and these are critical years for language and literacy. We also tend to think about social and emotional development and, sometimes, mathematics.

But that doesn’t mean PK-3 education should neglect children’s learning in the content areas--including history. As E.D. Hirsch argues persuasively in The Knowledge Deficit literacy isn’t simply a matter of accurately decoding text--to be truly proficient readers, children need to develop an extensive vocabulary and content knowledge, in order to understand what they’re reading and place it in the framework of what they already know. That means that elementary school students need to become familiar with basic content in science, history, geography, and so on.

Unfortunately, American public education has a poor record of teaching history to early elementary school students. Historian Dianne Ravitch writes,

“The social studies curriculum for the K-3 grades is organized around the study of the relationships within the home, school, neighborhood, and local community. This curriculum of "me, my family, my school, my community" now dominates the early grades in American public education. It contains no mythology, legends, biographies, hero tales, or great events in the life of this nation or any other. It is tot sociology.”

When elementary schools do teach history to children in the early grades, it tends to be in a scattershot “heroes and holidays” approach on occasions like Thanksgiving and President’s Day--rather than a concerted effort to introduce elementary students to an aligned history curriculum that builds knowledge on knowledge throughout the early years. And some schools are downplaying history and social studies content altogether in order to focus more time on literacy and math skills.

The result--only 17 percent of American fourth-graders are proficient in history, according to the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP--otherwise known as The Nation’s Report Card).

We can--and must--do better than this. Developing foundational literacy, math, and social and emotional skills is an essential goal of PK-3 early education, but mastery in these areas needn’t come at the expense of instruction in history, science, and other core content areas. These topics can be integrated into literacy and math instruction--for example, reading selections that build literacy skills can also emphasize history content. Aligned PK-3 curricula can also help ensure that the activities that help children develop literacy and math skills also expose children to a wide range of history and science content. In Building Blocks, Gene Maeroff profiles schools that are doing a good job integrating content knowledge into the early elementary curriculum.

Too many children--and adults--know President's Day and Martin Luther King Day, which we celebrated a few weeks ago, as little more than a day off work, and an excuse for furniture stores and used car dealers to advertise huge sales. That's a problem, and one for which the solution needs to start in PK-3.