LFA's Education Week blog, Transforming Learning, will explore how to transform public education to support student achievement for lifelong success in the global community.
Assessment
Blog Entries
When it comes to high stakes testing, of any kind, its purpose should always be questioned. What is the value-add of a high school exit exam? Should it test students’ basic skills? College and career readiness? Do today’s tests do either?
A few weeks ago, a school board member in Florida took a version of the state’s 10th grade high school test, the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. Students must pass this test to graduate, and they have five opportunities to do so. The school board member averaged a D on the reading section, noting that: “In our system, that would get me a mandatory assignment to a double block of reading instruction.” This individual has two masters’ degrees and a successful professional career. He admits that while the material tested wasn’t fresh in his mind, he also didn’t use it in his work, thereby making him wonder how relevant it really was for the average student’s success after leaving school. ...
Have we hit a plateau in student achievement in this nation? In a paper released today, Mark Schneider suggests that yes, we have.
Schneider was asked to study student achievement in Texas over the past few years, at the time their Governor Rick Perry was a leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. Education Secretary Arne Duncan had suggested that Perry ran an inadequate school system, and the Fordham Institute wanted to determine whether or not that was true.
As Schneider reviews, Texas’ performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) over the past few years has been relatively flat, after a few years of rapid improvement. But in his research, Schneider uncovered a larger trend. And rather than blame stagnant performance on the governor, he suggests that it’s somewhat inevitable.
There’s a concept in biology known as punctuated equilibrium. It posits that systems typically exist in a steady state (equilibrium) in which little change occurs. Occasionally there is a shock to a system from ...
Recently I was looking through old paper files in the Learning First Alliance (LFA) office and happened upon a successful grant application that LFA had received some years ago to gather, record, and disseminate the knowledge, skills, and approaches successful school districts use to ensure their students achieve to their highest abilities. The project resulted in a publication called Beyond Islands of Excellence that, indeed did chronicle what goes into an effective public school system and profiled districts whose students had benefited from their wise, effective leadership. I was struck by how much the scope of work described in the successful grant application articulated the concepts and big ideas that LFA organizations and their leaders still work diligently to implement today. ...
Last week I had the interesting and mostly pleasant experience of attending two events showcasing issues in public preK-12 education on the same day: one sponsored by the Institute for a Competitive Workforce (ICW), the education arm of the United States Chamber of Commerce, and the second hosted by the National Association for Elementary School Principals (NAESP) honoring America’s National Distinguished Principals. As one would expect, the two organizations have very different perspectives on the status of public schools and the people who work in them.
With the exception of Steve Brill’s closing luncheon speech, the ICW meeting was generally balanced and featured interesting panel discussions around the event’s theme, “Race to the Top: Are We There Yet?” (Never mind that we’re barely a year into the competitive, federally funded, state administered large scale initiative. It’s lucky the first checks are in the mail much less that we’re “there”, wherever that might be.) A couple of the panelists, Dan Cruce from the Delaware Department of Education and Pat Forgione from ETS in particular, provided reality based presentations on state department collaborations that work towards effective change management. ...
Last week, the LFA held its annual Leadership Council meeting for our member organizations. The meeting featured a presentation by Mona Mourshed—a partner and researcher at McKinsey and Company—on a great resource for school improvement. Clearly many people feel they have winning formulas for school success, but this McKinsey research presents a truly compelling set of recommendations based on extensive research.
In the report, "How the world's best performing school systems come out on top,"—a follow-up to the 2007 publication by the same name—researchers examined the common attributes of school systems that exhibited continued performance. To do so, they conducted hundreds of interviews and gathered a large body of statistical data to create a comprehensive analysis of global school system reform. From this, they identified reform elements that they feel are replicable for school systems everywhere.
Diverse Case Studies ...
We all know that reading and math standardized test scores do not truly represent how good a school is. But thanks to No Child Left Behind (NCLB - the current iteration of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, ESEA), that is just about all we consider when judging a school’s performance. Under current accountability systems, whether a school promotes civic-mindedness, good physical health or social or behavioral outcomes like self-regulating behavior or an ability to work in teams – or any of the other outcomes that society expects of its public schools – doesn’t actually count towards anything.
So of course, schools focus their efforts on the things that matter. Research confirms that since implementation of No Child Left Behind, curriculum in many places has narrowed. Schools are spending more time teaching basic reading and math at the expense of the arts, social studies, physical education and science.
We at the Learning First Alliance have long called for a broader approach to assessment and school accountability. Individually, many of our member organizations do as well. So we were very privileged to have the opportunity to co-host, with the Sandler Foundation, an event to release a new report by RAND Education that examined expanded measures of school performance.
In this report, RAND examined what measures of school performance that states currently use in accountability systems, trends outside the accountability context in ...
Back in January, the College Board announced major upcoming revisions to AP courses and tests, and The New York Times currently features a couple of articles (here and here) in their education section about these plans.
In light of critiques of the federally-mandated overemphasis on standardized testing that narrowly targets rote memorization, the College Board’s decision to change AP courses to address these sorts of concerns from high school teachers, among others, is heartening. High school teachers have been involved in the actual planning of the revisions and in feedback polling on proposed changes (and vast majorities approve of the new emphases).
According to the College Board website, new curriculum is slated for the 2011-2012 school year in World History, German Language, and French Language; biology, Latin, and Spanish Literature will debut in 2012-2013; and U.S. History is projected for the 2013-2014 school year. Changes to the other courses will follow later. ...
Yesterday I had the extremely good fortune to be in the audience for President Obama’s remarks on education. It was my first time being so close to a President, an experience that was much more exciting than I expected it to be. Of course, it helped that this President is extremely charismatic. And when he bounded off stage to start shaking hands with the students and others in the audience, his enthusiasm was catching, regardless of whether you agreed with his policy positions or not. Though to be honest, I did agree with many of the points he made in this speech.
For example, the President pointed out (as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan did last week) that more than 80% of public schools could be labeled as failing for not meeting their goals under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) this year. But we (the broad we – the public, politicians and education community alike) know that 80% of schools aren’t failing. And when you look at which schools would be labeled as ...
On Monday, Slate featured an excellent article by Richard Kahlenberg that focused on the 
problems with Michelle Rhee’s credo and his dismay at the continued media endorsement of her efforts. In critiquing Rhee, the article also provides cogent arguments dealing with anti-union fervor (a timely topic in light of current events in states like Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio) and how this can serve to push into the background the singly most problematic element the education industry deals with: disadvantaged prospects and likelihood for achievement among students, stemming from race and income inequalities
While Kahlenberg acknowledges that Rhee made some significant improvements to DC public schools—such as ensuring that students got textbooks on time and making efficient use of space by closing under-used schools—he asserts that contrary to popular claims, “she didn’t revolutionize education in DC.” ...
One strategy I’m using to get up-to-speed in my position as the new executive director at the Learning First Alliance (LFA) is to delve into the LFA member publications that land on my desk almost daily. It is true that each publication is a wealth of thoughtful articles that examine the challenges and rewards professional public educators across the nation deal with on a regular basis. I’m reminded that some of my favorite thought-leaders continue to seek new information, explore alternate approaches, and share their observations in ways that remind me that we know a good deal about how to make schooling better, we just lack the will or if not that, the systems thinking approach that could help us do what we know will make us better.
An example of that reality is the article authored by Linda Darling-Hammond, Professor of Education at Stanford University and supporter of teachers par excellent, in the Winter 2010-2011 issue of the American Educator, published by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Dr. Darling-Hammond’s article “Soaring Systems” looks at three nations’ public education system, each of whom started with very little and purposefully built highly productive and equitable systems in the space of only two to three decades. Before considering what those three countries, Finland, Singapore, and South Korea, did to ...
SIGN UP
Sign up for our e-newsletter on public school success.
A VISION FOR GREAT SCHOOLS
On this website, educators, parents and policymakers from coast to coast are sharing what's already working in public schools--and sparking a national conversation about how to make it work for children in every school. Join the conversation!
