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The Obama administration claims that its blueprint for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, now called No Child Left Behind, is grounded in research. A new book, the first major project of the National Education Policy Center (NEPC), disagrees. Or rather, it disagrees that it is grounded in quality research.
The Obama Education Blueprint: Researchers Examine the Evidence offer six reviews, one of each of the research summaries that the administration released in May as an evidence base for its blueprint. These reviews were written by independent scholars, including a woman who is now a household name: Diane Ravitch.
While each review has its own findings, overarching themes emerge, including: low quality research, extensive use of non-research and advocacy sources and a focus on problems rather than on research supporting conclusions. In addition, there were some important omissions. There was no support for the administration’s proposed accountability system, or rationale for increasing reliance on competitive grants. And support for the four intervention models that must be used when turning around struggling schools was found to be "undeveloped." Yet these three policies are among the centerpieces of the administration’s agenda--and are the subject of great debate among education stakeholders.
These findings come as no surprise to many in the education community. They have been pointing out the weaknesses in the evidence base ever since ...
Seven years ago, Washington’s Everett School District awoke to a harsh reality. A change in how the state calculated graduation rates revealed that only 53% of the district’s students graduated on-time. Officials were shocked and embarrassed. They sprang into action.
Today, Everett’s on-time graduation rate is just under 84%. Its extended graduation rate is just over 90%. And the improvement has occurred across the board, in all ethnic groups and special populations.
To what do they credit their success? Getting a group of committed adults focused on the problem and meeting regularly to try to solve it. And they also moved from numbers to names—getting personal about who is not on track to graduate and what they can do about it. Everett’s Chief Academic Officer Terry Edwards recently told us more.
Public School Insights: Your district has recently gotten some press because of its improved graduation rates. Could you tell me a bit about the success you have had?
Edwards: It is something that I call “An overnight wonder that took seven years to get here.”
About seven years ago, in 2003-2004, the state of Washington changed how it calculated graduation rates. It moved from looking at the number of graduates in the senior class plus those who dropped out over the past four years to a cohort model, the on-time model that the federal government has adopted. This model looks at the number of kids who enter in ninth grade and the number who graduate four years later.
When we converted to that model, our district’s graduation rate was 53%. That was very hard for Everett to accept, because we had always believed that we were a very good school district and doing a good job. 53% was shocking and embarrassing. And it did not seem to follow what we perceived as reality. We did not see hundreds of children standing around on street corners in ...
Could the LA Times' decision to publish teachers' value-added scores have a chilling effect on school research? That question came to me as I read about a case in Arizona. Arizona officials are seeking the names of teachers and schools that took part in a study of the state's policies on teaching English, even though those teachers and schools were promised that their names would remain confidential. Needless to say, many in the research community are none too pleased.
The UCLA study found that the state's ESL policies were doing more harm than good. The state isolates English language learners so they can study only English for several hours every day. UCLA researchers found that this practice does not narrow learning gaps but does raise the specter of segregation. State Chief Tom Horne argues that he cannot rebut those findings without full access to the data used in the survey.
His opponents counter that schools will never again open the doors to researchers if they feel their anonymity is at risk. Researchers (like many reporters, I might add) will often go to great ...
Because hope springs eternal, we still hold out high hopes for research that will lead to dramatic improvements in our most troubled schools. But much promising research will fall flat in schools if we don't give people in those schools the conditions to use it well. That's one of the insights I draw from our recent forum on education research.
On June 8, the Learning First Alliance and the Knowledge Alliance convened a forum entitled "Using Evidence for a Change: Challenges for Research, Innovation and Improvement in Education." With generous support from the WT Grant Foundation, the forum brought together some very smart people with diverse perspectives on the issue. (See our new report on the forum.)
Quite a few of the panelists' comments have really stuck with me. For example, Susan Freiman, an award-winning staff development teacher in Maryland, made a strong case for giving schools a more direct role in the whole research enterprise. We've fawned over her on this site before. The success of Freiman and her colleagues at Viers Mill Elementary School prompted a visit from President Obama last fall.
Her staff have the luxury of applying and adapting the research it receives from her district. She and her colleagues study it, test the strategies it supports, review their outcomes, adjust their approach when they need to, and then begin the cycle again. “It’s the whole plan, do, study, act, use [cycle].”
But none of this can happen if people in schools lack the conditions for doing it well, she said. They need time to study the research, collaborate with their colleagues and review the results of their work. They need staff development to build ...
Louisiana’s Greenlawn Terrace Elementary is a small school achieving big things. It is one of the top-performing schools in its district, a feat made even more impressive given the high rate of poverty of its student population. In fact, the school was recently named a High-Performing High-Poverty School by the Louisiana Department of Education, one of a very few neighborhood schools in the greater New Orleans area to receive the honor.
We recently spoke with members of the Greenlawn community to learn how they do it. Two major themes emerged: their school environment, which is caring and safe for students, parents and staff, and their focus on data.
Principal Katherine “Kitty” Croft, special education teacher and department chair Marguerite Hymel and Title I extension teacher Amy Lang told us more.
Public School Insights: How would you describe Greenlawn Terrace Elementary?
Croft: At Greenlawn, everyone in the school, from the custodial staff to the principal, shares the same vision.
I have been at the school almost 25 years, and that stability, of course, adds to what goes on here. And we are a small neighborhood school, with about 370 students. But when I first came, this was a large school. We were almost 700 children. I took home the yearbook so I could memorize the teachers. But now we are a small, suburban school tucked in Kenner, Louisiana, behind a very busy street. I love it.
Our population…When I first came to the school it was about 66% white, 33% black. Today it is about 41% white, 33% black and 25% Hispanic. We have always been a Title I school, which means that we are always “at-risk.” We have right now about 85% free or reduced price lunch students.
I have always loved psychometry. I figured when I was in graduate school that there would always be ...
As the debate about school reforms heats up, it's getting tougher to have reasoned, thoughtful conversations about specific reform strategies. You're either a wild-eyed zealot pushing for scorched-earth change or a dour obstructionist doing all you can to defend the status quo. There is little room for doubt in this super-heated environment.
I see this dynamic at work in the growing crop of opinion pieces urging states to give no quarter on teacher evaluation and merit pay reforms. The standard for many pundits seems to be 50 percent. If you don't base at least half of a teacher's evaluation on test scores, you must be a weak-kneed servant of special interests. An editorial in yesterday's Washington Post offers just the latest example of this argument.
But aren't there some questions we should ask before we base most of our pay and evaluation decisions on test scores? Do we know how this will affect teacher morale? Do we know how it will influence teacher recruitment? Do we know how many teachers would stick around under the new regime? Are we sure ...
When Melissa Glee-Woodard became principal of Maryland’s Lewisdale Elementary School four years ago, it was struggling. The school was in the dreaded “school improvement” process because of the performance of multiple subgroups of students, and it needed change.
Change is what it got. But not the dramatic “fire-all-teachers” change that has been making the papers. Rather, Glee-Woodard inspired teachers, parents and students with a new vision. The staff began focusing on student data in a meaningful way. Targeted professional development addressed areas of weakness in the instructional program. And new summer programs ensured that students kept their academic success going even when school was not technically in session.
As a result, Lewisdale has made AYP every year Glee-Woodard has been principal. The National Association of Elementary School Principals recently honored her for her transformational leadership.
She joined us for a conversation about the school and its journey.
Public School Insights: How would you describe Lewisdale?
Glee-Woodard: Lewisdale Elementary School is located in an urban setting in Prince George's County, Maryland. We are in the backyard of the University of Maryland, College Park. It is a working-class neighborhood. 80% of our students are Hispanic. 17% are African-American.
All of our students walk to school each and every day, and we are a neighborhood school. Our parents are very actively involved. Anytime that you are outside in the morning, you will see a lot of parents either walking their children to school or dropping their children off in cars.
Lewisdale is also a Title I school. 84% of our students qualify for free or reduced meals. And 54% of our students speak English as their second language. So that gives you a general idea of ...
Don't judge schools solely by their students' test scores in math and reading. Also judge them by those students' later success in college and work. That's the thrust of a new report by Education Sector's Chad Aldeman (PDF). It's a compelling piece of work.
First, Aldeman does a better job than most of exposing flaws in current state accountability systems. He finds little correlation between a school's success in making "Adequate Yearly Progress" on state test scores and its students' later success in college.
Two Florida schools help him tell his story. The state gave the first an "A" for two years running, and Newsweek anointed it as one of the best high schools in the country. But students from the second, a D-rated school across the state, did better in college:
D-rated Manatee was arguably doing a better job at achieving the ultimate goal of high school: preparing students to succeed in college and careers. But because Florida's accountability system didn't ...
Long Beach Unified School District in California has long been recognized as a model urban school system. Winner of the coveted Broad Prize for Urban Education in 2003, it has been a finalist for that award five times.
The district hasn’t achieved this success by flitting from reform to reform or looking for silver bullets. Rather, it has spent most of the past two decades building on the same educational strategies, focusing on data, community buy-in and staff development. We recently spoke to Superintendent Christopher Steinhauser (who has spent the past 28 years in the district as a teacher, principal, deputy superintendent and, since 2002, superintendent) about the “Long Beach way.”
Public School Insights: What prompted Long Beach to undertake big reforms for its kids in the first place?
Steinhauser: We've been on this long journey since about 1992. What really prompted it at that time was a massive economic meltdown. Our city was closing its naval base. And McDonnell Douglas [a major area employer] was going through a massive shutdown. They laid off 35,000 employees over a two year period. Also, if you remember, those were the days of major civil unrest in the LA area. We were having massive flight from our system, mainly of Caucasian students.
Basically what we did was say, “Okay. We have got to stop this.” So our board adopted several major initiatives. We implemented K-8 uniforms. We were the first district in California to end social promotion. We introduced a program called the 3rd Grade Reading Initiative to help with that goal, and we also developed a policy that eighth-graders who had two or more Fs could not go on to high school. And we launched a major partnership called Seamless Education with our local junior college and ...
Long Before the Aldine Independent School District in Texas won the coveted Broad Prize for Urban Education, it was a model for school district reform. We at LFA wrote about Aldine's success back in 2003.
Since that time, Aldine has kept up its steady progress. The district has not lurched from one reform strategy to another. It has not hired on a succession of superintendent saviors. It has made progress without the knock-down, drag-out fights that the media can't resist.
Instead, Aldine has stuck with strategies it formed over ten years ago and trusted its own veteran staff to lead the hard work of school improvement. Superintendent Wanda Bamberg recently told me the story of her district's success.
Listen to our conversation on the Public School Insights podcast (~17:08)
Public School Insights: Back in 2003, we discussed Aldine’s focus on curriculum, the work you were doing to make sure you use data very well and staff development. There were a lot of other pieces to the puzzle, of course, but those were three of the big ones we noted. Do you have a sense that you are still carrying on in the same tradition now, or has there been a lot of change?
Bamberg: There really hasn't been a lot of change. I think that we have been following some of the same instructional plans that we started even before 2003. We started a lot of these things in the late 1990s.
One of the things that is different is that the system we have in place for capturing the scope and sequence [of the content we teach in our classrooms], our curriculum and lesson plans, and of course our assessment data is more sophisticated now than it used to be. Our system now has all three components together so that we are able to look at the scope and sequence, put in the [accompanying] lesson plans and then come back look at the data in the same system. So the difference might be that we have tried to become even more tightly aligned and tried to refine our processes. But there has been no major change in the ...
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