Class 3: 09/01/2011-Ethics & Field Observations

Today Dr. Petrosino joined the class via Skype for a while and led a discussion over the Eratosthenes problem and how it related to us as future teachers. He explained that problems and information come in three types or levels: factual, conceptual, and innovation or transfer. The factual information, contained in the pre-quiz we took online, is an area that the United States is very good at teaching and assessing. Conceptual information involves synthesizing ideas from several sources, making inferences and applying ideas within a field. Innovation or information transfer involves taking information learned in one field and using it in different ways in another field. Factual information is very critical to know, but it has been shown that experts have conceptual and transfer abilities that we need to pay more attention to and encourage.

The Eratosthenes problem synthesizes math and science concepts and requires innovative, creative transfers between the fields. Dr. Pertosino explained that the reason he introduces these complex problems to us as students it so get us use to using all three levels of problem solving and information. These creative problems are difficult, even if the factual information is already known, as many groups found out in Tuesday’s activity. This semester, our goal will be to move from consumers to producers of complex problems, coming up with ways to design, assess, and form lessons around them.

We spent the remainder of the class period discussing the safety and ethical standards of teachers. Prudie, our  UTeach master teacher, led a discussion using the below “Ethics and Resoponsibility presentation.  Below is a summary of what we discussed in class (3.1-3.7), but you can also review the entire Texas Teacher Code of Ethics here.

Ethics and Responsibilities

3.1: The educator shall not reveal confidential information concerning students unless disclosure serves lawful professional purposed or is required by law. We decided that confidential information included everything from grades, learning disabilities, and behavioral or medical issues to personal contact information.

3.2 The educator shall not knowingly treat a student in a manner that adversely affects the student’s learning, physical health, mental health, or safety. This means knowing the individual needs, considerations, personalities, and boundaries of your students. It includes being fair with participation and not picking favorites. Sara and Tara also pointed out that most students do NOT understand sarcasm and to resist using it until you are absolutely certain the student(s) can handle it.

3.3 The educator shall not deliberately or knowingly misrepresent facts regarding a student. Do not assume things about your students’ lives or abilities. If necessary, approach another teacher who interacts with the student or a counselor with questions or concerns, but do make sure that you are looking for solutions and not just gossiping about problems.

3.4 The educator shall not exclude a student from participation in a program, deny benefits to a student, or grant an advantage to a student on the basis of race, color, sex, disability, national origin, religion, or family status. This means making sure accommodations are met for ESL students and students with disabilities during field trips and other activities to assure they can participate. We also noted that athletes should not be given special treatment and to stand your ground against inevitable pressure from family, coaches, and others to make sure things remain fair to all of your students.

3.5 The educator shall not engage in physical mistreatment of a student. This seems really obvious (don’t hit your students, duh!), but as Tara pointed out, you are legally not allowed to touch students even if you are being attacked, students are fighting, or a special ed student has an episode. In these cases, get an administrator or person who is trained to handle these problems! In more general, less severe cases where you just get frustrated take a time out and think before you yell or act.

3.6 The educator shall not solicit or engage in sexual conduct or a romantic relationship with a student. This one also seems really obvious, but the point is to not even allow a situation to occur where these types of behaviors might be inferred. That means, don’t Facebook friend your students, text them, or be alone with them in a place that could not be observed by another adult.

3.7 The educator shall not furnish alcohol or illegal/unauthorized drugs to any student or knowingly allow any student to consume alcohol or illegal/unauthorized drugs in the presence of the educator. Again, another one that seems obvious, but “unauthorized drugs” includes everything from the illegal ones to benign ones like Advil and cough drops. We also took this opportunity to point out that tobacco products are not allowed on school grounds whether you’re a teacher or student. If you smoke, leave your cigarettes at home!

Other rules and standards include:
* Showing up when you’re supposed to be there and being early so you can deal with any unforeseen circumstances.
* Dressing professionally: ladies, watch your neckline and remember leggings are not pants. Field trip attire will be discussed at a later date.
* Being respectful to your supervisors, peers, students and mentor teachers.
* Making your personal webpages private and removing inappropriate material from the web.
* And more! Again, check out the powerpoint for lots of important extra information.
* (For our experience at MNTH) DO NOT EAT PEANUTS OR HAVE PEANUTS ON YOU OR EVEN THINK ABOUT PEANUTS (okay, maybe you can think about them...) at MNTH because a student there is super highly allergic to them.

Last minute things: Prudie passed out our teaching assignments and a field observation form. We need to observe our mentor teacher, obtain a roster and note any attention getters and procedures the teacher uses during class sometime in the next week or so. Figure out what technology is available to you and how to work with it (set it up, practice with it, and talk to your mentor teacher about special glitches). It is also encouraged to go around seeing other classrooms and teachers to get a feel for the project based learning environment.

Each day in PBI a different student takes responsibility for blogging about what goes on in class.  Today’s blog is brought to you by ­­Katye.

Class 2: 08/30/2011-Introduction/ Eratosthenes Problem

Class began with everyone giving a short introduction to the class.  The introductions included majors, what lead to us Uteach, plans after graduation, and interesting facts. 

After this, we watched the first five minutes of video clip in which Carl Sagan discussed the ancient academic Eratosthenes.

Dr. Sagan related the story of how Eratosthenes deduced that the Earth was curved, and was able to calculate the circumference of the earth based on the observations of shadows made by upright sticks in two different African cities.  Before he explained how this was accomplished over two millennia ago, the clip was paused so that the class could try to solve the problem: Given the observations that the distance between Alexandria and Syene was approximately 800 kilometers, and that an upright stick in Syene will cast no shadow and a stick in Alexandria casts a shadow of about 0.1219 meters, how would one calculate the circumference of the Earth?

The class broke up into eight groups of three, and each group was given one copy of the problem to solve (I note this because Tara pointed out that giving a group only one copy of a problem encourages collaboration, otherwise each member would simply read their own copy independently).    After working on the problem in groups, we had a class discussion about how our groups came to a solution. 

One group presented their solution to the class and illustrated it on the board; one group member explained that since the Sun is so large in relation to Earth and is so far away, rays of light that reaches the Earth from the Sun travels parallel to each other.   Also, if two parallel lines are cut by a transversal, the corresponding angles are congruent.   The two sticks (the one at Alexandria and the one at Syene) both point to the center of the Erath, where they form and angle (Angle A).  Based on this information, one can know the value of Angle A based on the value of its congruent angle, namely the angle formed by the hypotenuse of the triangle formed by the stick at Alexandria and its shadow (Angle B).  One can get the value of Angle B by solving for the inverse tangent of the ratio of the stick length over the shadow length (which is about seven degrees).  Since there are 360 degrees in a circle, it stands to reason the ratio of 7/360 is the same as the ratio of 800 and the value of the Earth’s circumference.

Most of the groups solved the problem in the same way. When asked if anyone got stumped anywhere the groups who had not reached a solution said that they just needed more time (that other groups had gotten to the solution before they had).  Some groups said that when they were setting up the problem, they drew a diagram with a small sun shown next to a large Earth. They said this was misleading because, even though many of them knew that the rays of light from the Sun strike the Earth parallel to each other, their picture made it seem that they would strike at different angles.

In solving this problem, it was necessary to know certain factual information (which was in fact tested in the online Diagnostic Test from our homework).  Conceptual information and problem-solving skills were also needed.  These three prerequisites are also called facts, concepts, and transfer, but these were not discussed in any detail.

Each day in PBI a different student takes responsibility for blogging about what goes on in class.  Today’s blog is brought to you by ­­­Joan.

Why won’t Michelle Rhee talk to USA Today?- By MICHAEL WINERIP NY TIMES

Michelle Rhee has refused to talk to USA Today reporters about a schools scandal.
Related

Ms. Rhee, the chancellor of the Washington public schools from 2007 to 2010, is the national symbol of the data-driven, take-no-prisoners education reform movement.

It’s hard to find a media outlet, big or small, that she hasn’t talked to. She’s been interviewed by Katie Couric, Tom Brokaw and Oprah Winfrey. She’s been featured on a Time magazine cover holding a broom (to sweep away bad teachers). She was one of the stars of the documentary “Waiting for Superman.”

These days, as director of an advocacy group she founded, StudentsFirst, she crisscrosses the country pushing her education politics: she’s for vouchers and charter schools, against tenure, for teachers, but against their unions.

Always, she preens for the cameras. Early in her chancellorship, she was trailed for a story by the education correspondent of “PBS NewsHour,” John Merrow.

At one point, Ms. Rhee asked if his crew wanted to watch her fire a principal. “We were totally stunned,” Mr. Merrow said.

She let them set up the camera behind the principal and videotape the entire firing. “The principal seemed dazed,” said Mr. Merrow. “I’ve been reporting 35 years and never seen anything like it.”

And yet, as voracious as she is for the media spotlight, Ms. Rhee will not talk to USA Today.

At the end of March, three of the paper’s reporters — Marisol Bello, Jack Gillum and Greg Toppo — broke a story about the high rate of erasures and suspiciously high test-score gains at 41 Washington schools while Ms. Rhee was chancellor.

At some schools, they found the odds that so many answers had been changed from wrong to right randomly were 1 in 100 billion. In a fourth-grade class at Stanton Elementary, 97 percent of the erasures were from wrong to right. Districtwide, the average number of erasures for seventh graders was fewer than one per child, but for a seventh-grade class at Noyes Elementary, it was 12.7 per student. At Noyes Elementary in 2008, 84 percent of fourth graders were proficient in math, up from 22 percent in 2007.

Ms. Rhee’s reputation has rested on her schools’ test scores. Suddenly, a USA Today headline was asking, “were the gains real?” In this era of high-pressure testing, Washington has become another in a growing list of cheating scandals that has included Atlanta, Indiana, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Texas.

It took the USA Today reporters a year to finish their three-part series. So many people were afraid to speak that Ms. Bello had to interview dozens to find one willing to be quoted. She knocked on teachers’ doors at 9:30 at night and hunted parents at PTA meetings. She met people in coffee shops where they would not be recognized, and never called or e-mailed sources at their schools.

Hari Sevugan, a spokesman for Ms. Rhee, said the reporters were “provided unprecedented time and access to report out their story,” including many meetings with senior staff members and the chief of data accountability. By last fall, Mr. Sevugan said, district officials’ patience was wearing thin. The deputy press secretary, Satiya Simmons, complained in an e-mail to a colleague, “Jack Gillum isn’t going away quietly, Uggh.”

“Just stop answering his e-mails,” advised Anita Dunn, a consultant who had been the communications director for President Obama.

The reporters made a dozen attempts to interview Ms. Rhee, directly and through her public relations representatives. Ms. Bello called Ms. Rhee’s cellphone daily, and finally got her on a Sunday.

“She said she wasn’t going to talk with us,” Ms. Bello recalled. “Her understanding was we were writing about” district schools “and she is no longer chancellor.”

On March 29, the day after the story came out, Ms. Rhee appeared on the PBS program “Tavis Smiley” and attacked USA Today.

“Are you suggesting this story is much ado about nothing, that this is lacking integrity, this story in USA Today?” Mr. Smiley asked.

“Absolutely,” Ms. Rhee said. “It absolutely lacks credibility.”

Mr. Smiley asked if she was concerned that she had put too much pressure on teachers and principals to raise scores. “We want educators to feel that pressure,” she answered.

Ms. Rhee emphasized that the district had hired a top security company, Caveon, to investigate in 2009, and was given a clean bill of health. The district released a statement from John Fremer, Caveon’s owner, saying, “The company did not find evidence of cheating at any of the schools.”

However, in subsequent interviews with USA Today and this reporter, Mr. Fremer made it clear that the scope of his inquiry was limited, and that the district had not requested that he do more. Indeed, Caveon’s report, posted on USA Today’s Web site, was full of sentences like, “Redacted was interviewed at redacted.”

Teachers described security as “excellent” and “very vigilant,” and investigators, for the most part, took their comments at face value.

It did not take Ms. Rhee long to realize she had miscalculated. Three days later, she told Bloomberg Radio she was “100 percent supportive” of a broader inquiry.

Still, she would not talk to USA Today. Mr. Sevugan gave no explanation, but pointed out that she had spoken with several other news outlets.

The reporters did not give up. On April 26, Emily Lenzner, a spokeswoman, wrote Mr. Gillum, “Michelle is willing to do an interview, but we’d like to do this in person.” She asked if they could hold their story, and arranged for a meeting on May 3 at the StudentsFirst office in Washington.

On May 2, another Rhee spokeswoman e-mailed to say the reporters were too interested in cheating and not enough in StudentsFirst. She said they could submit a list of questions.

There were 21 questions; Ms. Rhee did not answer 10 of the 11 about cheating.

Mr. Gillum, who recently took a job at The Associated Press, said he was surprised by how unresponsive Ms. Rhee has been. “She talks about how important data is, and our story is data driven,” he said.

So that people could make their own judgments, Linda Mathews, the project editor, posted the relevant public documents on the USA Today Web site.

Shortly after the follow-up story appeared, the district’s inspector general began what was supposed to be an inquiry, but in July The Washington Post reported that just one investigator had been assigned. “Basically it was one guy in a room who made 10 phone calls,” Mr. Toppo said.

Officials with the federal Department of Education have indicated that they are assisting with the investigation.

In Washington, two investigators spent five days at eight schools. In Atlanta, the state deployed 60 investigators who worked for 10 months at 56 schools. They produced a report that named all 178 people found cheating, including 82 who confessed. There was not a single case of “redacted and redacted doctoring redacted grade answer sheets at redacted.”

People in Atlanta could go to prison. Last week, a grand jury issued subpoenas seeking the names of school employees who had received bonuses for test scores. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that there were subpoenas for “signed copies” of “any and all oaths of office” taken by Beverly Hall, the former superintendent.

The three reporters still hope to interview Ms. Rhee. “Absolutely,” said Mr. Toppo.

Which brings things full circle: Why won’t Ms. Rhee talk to USA Today?

E-mail: oneducation@nytimes.com


Picture: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Hoboken - Commissioner's Placement Letter 2011

The following is the most recent report on the results from the 2011 QSAC (The Quality Single Accountability Continuum) evaluation for a school district in New Jersey. QSAC looks at five primary areas or DPR's (District Performance Reviews) including Operations, Instruction and Program, Governance, Fiscal Management, and Personnel. Also, you may want to review the original statue which initially defined and justified QSAC's creation. Recall, Hoboken (the school district used in this example) is the district in which I served as the Assistant to the Superintendent from 2007-2009. Please review this report along with reports from previous years (posted here and on my other Education blog) and identify trends, areas of improvement, areas of challenges and areas of success. How does this parallel or run contrary to experiences of your own in your district, school system or educational setting? My plan is to discuss this further during seminar.

For those interested, portions of this work along with some other related research will be discussed in a forthcoming chapter I am writing and will share in seminar and online later in the Fall.

QSAC Report SPG 2010

QSAC Report Aug 2009
Hoboken - Commissioner's Placement Letter 2011

Note: Some of this research, and other research conducted looking at educational systems, may require the utilization of the Open Public Records Act. Here is a link for your review.

Picture: An example of a NJ QSAC monitoring form used in evaluating a school district along a particular DPR.

States must cut red tape to attract more qualified teachers By Justin D. Martin | Christian Science Monitor – Mon, Aug 15, 2011

My wife has a master’s degree in education from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, has lived in four countries, speaks a good deal of Arabic and some Italian, and has been either teaching or conducting education research for the better part of a decade. She taught at a private school in Seattle so esteemed that Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos (the founder of Amazon.com) sent their children there.

Yet according to box-checkers at Maine’s Department of Education, she is not yet qualified to teach 10-year-olds in the state’s public schools. Because she studied history and art as an undergraduate and has not undergone public school certification in another state, the state of Maine denied her application for initial certification to teach, insisting that she must first complete an undergraduate English course at her own expense. This is only for initial, temporary certification, after which she must take no fewer than five additional college courses, five standardized tests, and complete a year of supervised “student” teaching.

RELATED: Education reform: eight school chiefs to watch in 2011

Just about anyone considering teacher quality in the United States laments that classroom instruction needs substantial improvement, and low teacher pay is often cited as the reason the profession doesn’t attract and retain talented candidates. This is no doubt part of the problem; in Maine, a starting public school salary pays like a full time job at a Waffle House.

Another major problem, though, is that states often make it unconscionably difficult for qualified teachers to work. The result is that would-be teachers often do something else or they work for private schools, where teachers don’t need the same bureaucratic stamp of approval. For that same reason, private schools often attract highly qualified, educated individuals who may not have the traditional teaching certification.

Four days after arriving in Maine, my wife was offered a job at a prestigious private school that is less shackled by the state’s bureaucratic vise grip. She accepted.

Maine should be sending cookie bouquets to talented teachers. The state’s 4th-graders have the lowest reading scores of any state in New England except Rhode Island, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. (Wholly related: My wife’s master’s degree is specifically in childhood literacy).

But Maine officials can take heart that other states chase good teachers away, too.

RELATED: Teacher layoffs ahead: Should seniority prevail? Six considerations.

Bureaucratic restrictions frustrate talented teachers even after they’ve gotten their foot in the door. A friend of mine eventually quit his job teaching biology at a public high school in North Carolina and as a cross country and track coach, in part because the state wouldn’t pay him the standard increase in salary for having a master’s degree. He was teaching biology courses, and was told that his master’s degree in physiology didn’t count as a graduate degree in his area of educational certification.

Not only did he have a master’s degree in the sciences from a major research university, but he had previously coached a high school cross country team to four state championships in California, where he was an "All-American" runner in college.

States should certainly have high standards regarding who can teach their children, but high standards need not be synonymous with needless restrictions. States can have a system for evaluating aspiring teachers who don’t have traditional certification, without being punitive and pushing talent away. That can and should involve case-by-case considerations.

RELATED: Persistent achievement gap vexes education reformers: Six takeaways

While alternate certification programs exist, aimed at getting talented individuals into the classroom, those programs often require candidates to jump through another set of bureaucratic hoops and demanding commitments. These programs also have limited regional scope and may demand would-be teachers spend significant money up front simply to start the ball rolling.

Maine’s Bangor Daily News ran a July editorial arguing that when it comes to demanding high-quality teachers, America's states could learn from Finland’s approach to improving its schools, where “every teacher got a master’s degree, not in education but a content area” and “[o]nly one in 10 applicants was hired to be a teacher.” But Finland’s demands worked in large part because of systemic and cultural factors that don’t exist in the US. The country’s tough standards got high quality teachers into the classroom, rather than keeping them out.

Rigid standards are fine as long as state officials have broad authority to use common sense and wave requirements for exceptionally trained applicants. Red tape will always exist, but it doesn’t have to bind and gag talented professionals eager to serve as teachers.

Justin D. Martin, Ph.D., is the CLAS-Honors Preceptor of Journalism at the University of Maine and a columnist for Columbia Journalism Review. Follow him on Twitter: @Justin_D_Martin

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photo: Erie Lackawana Station, Hoboken, NJ - Hoboken City Hall website

Project-based Learning Approaches with Technology

Intel® Teach Elements: Project-Based Approaches

http://www.intel.com/education/elements

Using specific classroom scenarios, teachers explore characteristics and benefits of Project-Based Learning (PBL). Throughout the course, teachers consider their own teaching practice as they follow a teacher new to project-based learning who discusses strategies with a mentor teacher. Planning and project design modules guide teachers through organizing the curriculum, the classroom, and students for successful 21st century projects. The assessment module demonstrates strategies for assessing students’ 21st century skills throughout an open-ended project. The course offers opportunities to apply the PBL concepts with action planning exercises. (Design)

Intel Education: Designing Effective Projects

www.intel.com/education/designprojects

Includes models of meaningful classroom projects, along with tools and strategies for developing your own exemplary technology-supported units. Topics include project design, thinking skills, a unit plan index, and instructional strategies. (Examples and Tools)

Intel Teach: Assessing Projects

http://educate.intel.com/en/AssessingProjects

When assessment drives instruction, students learn more and become more confident, self-directed learners.Assessing Projects helps teachers create assessments that address 21st century skills and provides strategies to make assessment an integral part of their teaching and help students understand content more deeply, think at higher levels, and become self-directed learners. (Examples and Tools)

Buck Institute: PBL-Online

www.pbl-online.org

All the resources you need to design and manage high quality projects for students. Learn how to Design your Project. Plan rigorous and relevant standards-focused projects that engage students in authentic learning activities, teach 21st century skills, and demand demonstration of mastery. PBL-Online will guide you through the development of engaging, standards-focused projects. When you are ready, you can download a Project Planning Form to write down your project plan.

Project planning is organized according to five design principles. Each design principle is supported by a set of resources and advice from expert PBL teachers. (Design, Examples, and Tools)

Edutopia: Project-Based Learning

www.edutopia.org/project-learning

Project learning is a dynamic approach to teaching in which students explore real-world problems and challenges. With this type of active and engaged learning, students are inspired to obtain a deeper knowledge of the subjects they're studying.

The site includes current articles and videos to support a project-based classroom. Edutopia is one of the newest resources for examples of PBL in schools and a driving force for education reform. (Examples)

Recipes for Success Project Learn (must have an IDEAL account to access for free)

http://www.recipes4success.com The ProjectLearn process provides step-by-step assistance for designing effective classroom projects. Explore these strategies to help support the project work your students are completing. (Design)

Deep rifts over next NCLB- Consensus on what's wrong, not how to fix it - By John Fensterwald

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and President Obama are confident that members of Congress will revise and reauthorize the No Child Left Behind law this year, just as when they put aside fundamental differences to pass the law in 2001.

But Duncan and the president are deluding themselves, said two of three education insiders during a discussion of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), NCLB’s formal name, at a conference of education writers last week.

Rick Hess, an influential writer at the American Enterprise Institute, put the odds of renewal this year at 5 percent; Sandy Kress, Texas attorney and key adviser for President George W. Bush on NCLB, put it at 6 percent. The optimist among them, Bob Wise, former West Virginia governor and now president of Washington-based Alliance for Excellent Education, gave it a 50-50 chance.

It’s not that critics on the right and left disagree about many of the law’s fundamental shortcomings: the unrealistic assumption that all students will be proficient in math and English language arts by 2014; the uniform penalties on all schools if only one subgroup of students fails to make the grade; a narrowing of the curriculum caused by the excessive attention to standardized tests in math and English language arts; the failure to pay much attention to high schools.

But the bipartisan consensus that began in the Eisenhower administration and culminated with No Child Left Behind ended soon after the bill was passed, Hess said. What had been all about “moving wheelbarrows of cash” to schools now came with strings attached, and by 2003 Republicans were having buyer’s remorse. This next time, there will be no extra money to paper over differences and hold states harmless from changes in the law, so some states would lose money – one deal-breaking source of conflict, he said.

Obama’s blueprint for ESEA

A year ago, President Obama released a “blueprint” for revising ESEA. It focuses on rewarding the top-performing schools and turning around the lowest performing 5 percent while giving more latitude to the vast majority of schools in between; it would concentrate on ways of improving and distributing effective teachers; and it would require that states measure career and college readiness, either by working with their post-secondary institutions or through Common Core standards that 42 states and the District of Columbia have adopted.

The recognition that states want a law with more flexibility and autonomy creates the possibility of a law this year, Wise said; another impetus is that states will need financial help implementing new Common Core assessments. Wise also is heartened that House Speaker John Boehner helped negotiate NCLB as chairman of the House Education Committee in 2001.

But the mood on Capitol Hill has shifted since November, when the House changed hands with the election of 80 very conservative Republicans. Republican leaders have denounced Obama’s call for a third round of Race to the Top and more incentive grants for performance pay for teachers. In his budget proposal last week, Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan proposed slashing domestic spending next year and over the next decade. And while most Republicans wouldn’t go as far as first-term Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s call for abolishing the Department of Education, many, like the new Chairman of the House Education Committee, Rep. Duncan Hunter, a San Diego Republican, would like the federal government’s role scaled back.

Republican suspicion of Common Core

In an interview in Hess’s Education Week blog this week, Hunter cited “a really high chance” of passing ESEA this year. But then he listed disagreements with Obama’s key elements: He opposes competitive grants and more federal education spending. He too is drawing a line in the sand over vouchers for Washington, D.C., public schools – a potentially make or break issue that has become the equivalent for education of what funding for Planned Parenthood has become for health care. And Hunter is distrustful of the federal role in prodding states to adopt Common Core (he says Duncan “conned” them by making it part of Race to the Top) and now in funding the assessments for it.

Under Obama’s plan, Common Core would be the glue holding a reauthorized ESEA together; it could unravel if states start pulling out of the consortia creating the assessments or reconsidering their adoption of the standards.

The Common Core coalition is “broad but very shallow,” with “huge tensions” below the surface, Hess said. “The implementation costs will be enormous; it is naïve to suggest new federal sources of revenue for this.”

Kress said that even without a national test, states will move in a common direction, with results on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) and student scores on the SAT and ACT pressuring states to gradually improve their own standards and tests, which he claimed had been the vision of those behind NCLB.

‘Making the pain go away’

Kress agreed with Hess about a lack of consensus on fundamental issues behind ESEA, but said it was critically important that Congress continue the accountability requirements that started among states in the 1980s and constitute NCLB’s chief achievement – demanding that states pay attention to educational improvement of poor and minority children. If this pressure on states is not maintained, “we’d be taking a huge step backward.”

Wise, the optimist, said that short of a home run, Congress may settle for “singles” – reauthorization through smaller pieces: reforming the School Improvement Grant process for turning failing schools around; supporting the use of data to help states with assessments; funding education research; encouraging or requiring states to establish “early warning” benchmarks to track students’ progress toward graduation.

But Hess said the “fissures are so substantial, nothing is likely to happen” on ESEA. Instead, toward the fall of 2012, Congress will likely act to get rid of the most objectionable parts of NCLB, like the 100 percent student proficiency by 2014 requirement that will label most schools as failing. Pushing the boulder down the hill “will decrease the urgency ofreauthorization,” he said. One thing that Congress is good at is “making the pain go away.”

Why We Need a National Standardized Curriculum

While most of us imagine that the federal government is not necessarily in a position to dictate what states do in their schools, the fact is the federal government can very much impose its will on state and local governments.

The impetus is, naturally, monetary. The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act is a case in point. States not adhering to the mandates of NCLB risk losing their federal Title I funds. As a result, states have endeavored to implement NCLB mandates, which were unparalleled in scope in terms of federal imposition into state educational practices.

The Obama Administration is maintaining a primary premise of NCLB—that of closing the achievement gap between disadvantaged and advantaged students, while increasing overall standards of performance for all students. In support of this goal, the Administration has voiced strong support for the Common Core State Standards, a consistent set of curriculum standards in mathematics and English language arts, by encouraging states to adopt the standards. The Administration through award of Race-to-the Top funds also supports the work of the 31-member state SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), which is working to develop student assessments, aligned with the Common Core State Standards.

While there may be a question as to whether or not the federal government has the authority to mandate adoption of what is tantamount to national standards (and subsequently adoption of common assessments for the those standards), to date, 43 states have adopted the standards on their own. The National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) created the standards. Their goal was to create a set of standards that described what children needed to know and be able to do, regardless of where in the nation they lived. The standards are meant to be robust and to provide all students with the knowledge and skills needed to prepare them for college or the workforce. The standards are consistent with President Obama’s advocacy for equality as a foundation of his education agenda. He has stated on numerous occasions that he wants results, and to see expectations rise so that the United States is on equal footing in a competitive global economy.

The level of inconsistency prior to development of the Common Core State Standards was a hurdle many students needed to navigate. Students moving from state-to-state potentially faced jarring inconsistencies between states with respect to expected performance to reach proficiency, and in some instances differences in content being tested. Common Core State Standards proponents claimed differences in state standards and what it meant to be proficient made it impossible to determine the extent to which national achievement goals were being accomplished.

Even so, the national standards movement has it critics. For some, having nationwide standards focused on mathematics and language arts places the broad variety of learning experiences and critical thinking so valuable in high quality education in jeopardy. Others are concerned that the standards are not rigorous enough, and are actually weaker than state standards that were in place. This was particularly the case in New Jersey, California, and Massachusetts. Still others are concerned that local autonomy will once again be taken away as states are forced to adopt standards favored by the federal government.

While states like Massachusetts may be venerated for their stringent policies and implementation of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, that level of stringency did not necessarily carry over to other states. In fact, many states were not nearly as rigorous in assessment a procedure, preferring to do only what was required to ensure that they received federal education funds, and nothing more. And to date, no federal requirement to adopt the standards has been imposed, although adoption of the standards was required by states competing for Race-to-the Top funds.

A number of states have yet to adopt the standards—which brings us to the subject of sanctions. There are questions about whether sanction models such as that native to NCLB really work. With so much pressure mounted toward schools, administrators, teachers, and students, it is important to ascertain whether sanctions are the best way to persuade schools to engage specific types of educational reforms. After examining the sanctions issue from various sides, it is apparent that the current penalty model does not convincingly provide a clear route to improved overall performance of schools systems throughout the country. In fact, if there were even a reasonable correlation between improved school performance and imposed sanctions, there would be a strong case for continuing with that system and trying to improve it. However data are too ambiguous to create confidence in the sanctions model as an impetus for change.

In short, mandatory sanctions do not allow enough flexibility to achieve an overall improvement in education. If sanctions were actually functioning as expected, many substandard schools would be moving out of their troubled status–however the Center for Education Policy finds that this has not occurred. Further, testing can lend itself to a focus on a narrow spectrum of knowledge items that can be easily assessed. These tests may not address the crucial analyzing and reasoning skills that are critical in the real world or at the college level. This may be the preferred route for states more interested in avoiding sanctions than challenging students with rigorous standards-based content.

National standards negate both of these failures. Discrepancies in content and levels of proficiency in different parts of the country would be minimized if not eradicated by having a set of common standards that are assessed across the nation, Problems associated with students’ movement from one location to another would be resolved, and the high-pressure testing atmosphere that currently exists under NCLB would be alleviated. Consequently, the punitive sanctioning suggested by NCLB becomes obsolete.



Matthew Lynch is an Assistant professor of Education at Widener University. He can be contacted at mlynch@mail.widener.edu.

Class 12 April 13, 2011- Special Visitor Emily Schroeder

Today, we had a special guest attend class. Ms. Emily Schroeder is an project based high school engineering teacher from Austin, TX. She spoke about issues related around curriculum, classroom management, assessment, and content specific instruction.

This was also the date to hand in final "field experience" reports. The rest of the class meetings will focus largely on the development of the Legacy Cycles as the end of semester project.

Day 11 3/28 Hmelo et. al. Reply to Kirschner/Kirschner

Class 10 3/30- Sweller Reply/Field Experience

In today's class we reviewed and choose one of four different field experience options for the PBI course this semester. We also read and had a 30 minute discussion on the Sweller reply to the number of commentaries on Krishner's original piece on minimally guided instruction.

Sweller Kirschner Clark Reply Ep07