Some of the News Fit to Print
ABOUT K-12
TODAY'S TESTS SEEN AS BAR TO BETTER ASSESSMENT
The use of testing in school accountability systems may hamstring the
development of tests that can actually transform teaching and learning,
experts from a national assessment commission warn. Members of the
Gordon Commission on the Future of Assessment in Education, speaking at
the annual meeting of the National Academy of Education here Nov. 1-3,
said that technological innovations may soon allow much more in-depth
data collection on students, but that current testing policy calls for
the same test to fill too many different and often contradictory roles.
The nation's drive to develop standards-based accountability for schools
has led to tests that, "with only few exceptions, systematically
overrepresent basic skills and knowledge and omit the complex knowledge
and reasoning we are seeking for college and career readiness," the
commission writes in one of several interim reports discussed at the
Academy of Education meeting. The article is in
Education Week.
TEACHERS WORRY ABOUT MORE TESTING UNDER NEW LOUISIANA EVALUATIONS
For educators who teach subjects outside the state’s longstanding
testing system, like foreign language, music, and art, the adjustment to
the new teacher evaluation system has been particularly jarring. They
are unaccustomed to worrying about high-stakes testing, much less having
the results determine whether they can keep their jobs. In English,
math, science, and social studies, teachers will be measured on their
students’ progress on existing state tests. But Louisiana school
districts have broad latitude when selecting the exams that will be used
in subjects without standard state tests. In some cases, district
officials are letting teachers choose or design the assessments on which
they will be judged. In other cases, school boards, superintendents, or
principals are picking the exams without consulting or even notifying
teachers. The article is in
The Hechinger Report.
JUDGING TEACHERS BY STUDENT PERFORMANCE
Since New Jersey first started talking about revamping teacher
evaluations, the biggest point of contention has always been the use of
student performance in the equation. The argument goes that so many
factors go into a student’s grade on a test or other assessment that it
is an unreliable gauge of a teacher’s effectiveness. Conversely, those
pushing for the greater use of student data maintain that ultimately the
goal of every teacher must be improved student learning and that
schools have been remiss in not counting it enough. That debate came to
the fore in NJ Spotlight’s Roundtable on Saturday during discussion of
New Jersey’s new teacher-tenure law and the development of a statewide
teacher-evaluation system. In a panel discussion held at Rutgers-Newark,
state policy-makers, district administrators and school staff weighed
in balancing student performance and teacher performance. Several of the
panelists work in districts that are now piloting the new evaluations,
the testing ground for when the systems will go into effect statewide in
2013-14. The article is in the
NJ Spotlight.
ABOUT HIGHER ED
STRENGTHENING THE PATHWAY TO HIGHER EDUCATION
Brian C. Mitchell, Director of the Edvance Foundation, writes this commentary in
The Huffington Post:
College access is a national imperative. Once first in the world, the
United States now ranks 12th among 36 developed nations in the
percentage of the population with a college degree. Projections indicate
that by 2018, as many as sixty million Americans will lack the skills
and credentials to join the knowledge economy. Meanwhile the pool of
applicants to four-year colleges and universities in America continues
to shrink, largely because of rising tuition costs. The cost barrier,
combined with shifting demographic needs, has increased the
attractiveness of community colleges -two-year public and private
institutions - for students wishing to continue their education beyond
high school. Enrollment at these schools as of 2009 represented 44
percent of all U.S. undergraduates. As enrollment at two-year colleges
is on the rise - and often becoming over-subscribed -there is a pool of
talent from these institutions yet to be fully utilized. The vast
majority of community college students enter with the intention of
transferring to a four-year school. Despite that intention, just 29
percent ultimately transfer - and only 16 percent of students who began
their education at two-year colleges go on to earn a bachelor's degree
or higher. Compare that with the average 60 percent graduation rate
among students who originally matriculate at four-year institutions. We
can quickly see how the dream of advancement through higher education
remains elusive for many.
MOOCS AND HYPE AGAIN
Educator Larry Cuban writes in his blog,
Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:
MOOCs have soared in popularity as the “disruptive innovation” that
will revolutionize higher education. Called the “Most Important
Educational Technology in 200 Years” by the head of a new consortium of
Harvard and MIT offering MOOCs, forecasts of fundamental changes in
higher education are as common as iPads in a Starbucks. Stanford
University President John Hennessey says “there’s a tsunami coming.”
Right before our eyes we are experiencing the very beginning of the hype
cycle. For many academic entrepreneurs deeply dissatisfied with the
cost of higher education and the traditional teaching that occurs, the
onset of MOOCs is exhilarating. It is an unexplored frontier where
plunging into the unknown and taking risks could lead to exciting
returns. The promise of a college education taught by stellar teachers
delivered free to anyone in the world who has the smarts and grit drives
higher education reformers. In 2012. MOOCs are at the very beginning
of the Hype Cycle.
GETTING GRITTY WITH PAUL TOUGH
In
How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character,
Paul Tough argues that “non-cognitive” skills are just as—if not
more—important than IQ in determining a child’s success. Armed with a
litany of academic research from fields as diverse as economics and
psychology along with vivid storytelling, Tough makes a convincing case
that before we invest in Baby Einstein products, we might want to focus
on teaching our kids how to cope with stress, how to secure healthy
relationships, and how to persevere past failure. It’s a message that
should be fascinating to parents, educators, and students alike. In the
following interview with
The Santa Barbara Independent, Tough discusses his new book.
THE NEW FLAVOR OF MATH INSTRUCTION
In a presentation filmed at a locally organized TEDx conference in
Costa Mesa, Calif., last month, former Los Angeles teacher Nigel Nisbet
explains how he turned chocolate bars into geometry problems to get kids
hooked on math. Nisbet says he spent his first few years as a teacher
struggling to engage students who "had switched off to math." While
standing in a supermarket checkout line, it hit him that he might be
able to capture students' interest by creating problems based on more
relatable (and even universally loved) topics—such as chocolate. He then
picked up several chocolate bars in the Toblerone-style packaging and
devised a lesson around a single question: "Why make a chocolate bar in
the shape of a triangular prism?" Forced to think critically, the kids
eventually joined forces to investigate the shape, and discovered that
manufacturers used it to get a package that looked large but contained
little chocolate. "The kids realized they were paying more but getting
less—and that got their attention. I hadn't told them how to find the
answer," Nisbet says. The article is in
Education Week Teacher’s Teaching Now blog.
ABOUT K-12
PRINCIPALS, TEACHERS WRESTLING WITH HOW TO CARRY OUT NEW TEACHER EVALUATION RULES
Louisiana’s plan to intensify teacher job reviews to focus on better
identifying top-notch instructors and ushering out nonstarters is
causing a lot of heartache, particularly for those who teach subjects,
such as drama, in which student achievement is difficult to quantify.
The change has three main prongs: principals making more frequent and
rigorous classroom observations; teachers in core subjects like math and
English receiving ratings based on how their students perform on
standardized tests; and teachers in grades and subjects where those
tests don't apply devising other ways to chart student growth. The
formula is a half-and-half mix of principals' evaluations and student
progress, each meant to balance the other. So if testing data fail to
reflect a teacher's energy and dedication, for example, the principal's
review is a chance to give the teacher more credit. And if a principal's
assessment is too rosy or harsh, the data could counter it. The article
is in
The Times-Picayune.
TEACHER EVALUATION ARCHITECT WARNS OF LAWSUITS AGAINST LOUISIANA’S NEW SYSTEM
The new teacher evaluation system Louisiana launched this fall may be
too simplistic, according to the architect of one of the most widely
used evaluation systems in the country – and the one on which
Louisiana’s new system is based. Charlotte Danielson is the creator of a
method of observing and rating teachers based on their performance in
the classroom known as the Framework for Teaching. Louisiana has adopted
part, but not all, of her framework for use in classroom observations,
which will factor into a teacher’s annual score and which will
ultimately determine whether educators can keep their jobs. Although
Danielson helped the state create a shortened version of her system at
its request, she’s worried her truncated observation checklist could
create problems for teachers and evaluators. The article is in
The Hechinger Report.
NEW ISSUE BRIEF: HIGH PERFORMING SCHOOL SYSTEMS
Today, several prescriptions exist for enabling schools and districts
to effectively fulfill their missions to systemically improve outcomes
for students. Systems thinking helps organizations identify the
inter-relationship of the factors that impinge most directly on success
and failure, and learning organization structures and processes help
organizations to adapt in the face of evolving influences or exigencies.
Our newest Issue Brief, "High Performing School Systems to Close
Achievement Gaps in NEA Foundation-Funded Communities," highlights
several of these processes in two NEA Foundation-funded sites—Columbus,
OH and Seattle, WA. The report is available from the NEA Foundation.
ABOUT HIGHER ED
MAKING THE MOST OF MOOCS
William H. Weitzer writes this commentary for
Inside Higher Ed’s Higher Ed Mash Up blog: Today more than ever,
Inside Higher Ed
and other daily higher education reports are replete with new ways of
using technology that purportedly will transform colleges and
universities. Truth be told, many are not so new, others are not really
scalable, and most are not transformative. As Alexandra Logue argues in
her recent essay in
Inside Higher Ed, “it is not the existence
of the latest technology or its potential uses that will help us to
maximize student learning, but using what we know and have.” To be sure,
there will be major technological innovations that contribute to the
shape of higher education. The expanded use of MOOCs (massive open
online courses) may rise to the top of the new ideas and have a very
significant impact on higher education.This rapid rise of MOOCs and
their endorsement by the most prestigious institutions in the country
suggest that all institutions of higher education need to examine
whether and how this innovation will change the way they operate. The
question for
Mash Up is: what impact does the growth and broad
institutional acceptance of MOOCs have on institutions which blend the
liberal arts with professional training?
COLLEGE OF FUTURE COULD BE COME ONE, COME ALL
Teaching Introduction to Sociology is almost second nature to Mitchell
Duneier, a professor at Princeton: he has taught it 30 times, and a
textbook he co-wrote is in its eighth edition. But last summer, as he
transformed the class into a free online course, he had to grapple with
some brand-new questions: Where should he focus his gaze while a camera
recorded the lectures? How could the 40,000 students who enrolled online
share their ideas? And how would he know what they were learning? In
many ways, the arc of Professor Duneier’s evolution, from professor in a
lecture hall to online instructor of tens of thousands, reflects a
larger movement, one with the potential to transform higher education.
Already, a handful of companies are offering elite college-level
instruction — once available to only a select few, on campus, at great
cost — free, to anyone with an Internet connection. The article is in
The New York Times.
ABOUT K-12
TEACHER QUALITY: INVESTING IN WHAT MATTERS
Arthur L. Costa, Robert J. Garmston, and Diane P. Zimmerman write this commentary for
Education Week:
Spurred by awards of federal funding under the Race to the Top
competition, many states are adopting teacher-evaluation systems with
student achievement as the ultimate goal. This drive to create robust
evaluation systems places far too much emphasis on inspecting and
testing. A system of quality control founded on the belief that
inspection and multiple-choice tests are valid measures of effectiveness
is flawed. The investment in external measures hides our most valuable
assets—the cognitive resources of teachers. Too often, standards are the
basis for inspection, with minimal dialogue and little attention to
teachers' intellect, wisdom, intuition, and creativity. Quality matters.
How we assess it is important. However, the idea that the complex
processes of teaching can be easily inspected or measured by answers on a
bubble test is erroneous. As educators, we are puzzled that more people
are not voicing concerns about this trend toward an oversimplified
system of quality control. A few in the field have become outspoken and
urge a more thoughtful approach. Policymakers ought to heed the
collective wisdom of these thought leaders.
LOUISIANA'S EDUCATORS ENTER A NEW WORLD WITH EVALUATIONS AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES
Teachers in Louisiana have all but lost the tenure rules that once
protected their jobs. Beginning this year, all 50,000 of them will be
evaluated and ranked on an annual basis, often with test scores
factoring in heavily. Soon, consistently "ineffective" teachers will no
longer be welcome in the classroom. This, depending on one's point of
view, is either the latest assault on Louisiana's educators or an urgent
step toward modernizing the teaching profession and lifting the state
out of academic mediocrity. Either way, the new evaluation system and
its consequences are redefining the roles of teacher and principal in
school buildings across Louisiana this year, as have similar efforts in
school systems across the country. The article is in
The Times-Picayune.
STATES AT A LOSS ON HOW TO USE EDUCATION DATA THEY COLLECT
In the past several years, many states have extensively invested in
building up systems to collect and analyze substantial amounts of
education-related data. Everything from student performance to teacher
assessment is collected, sifted and stored, yet while states have made
impressive strides in using the collected data to inform education
policy, according to the Data Quality Campaign, they have yet to make
serious progress in training teachers and parents in how to use the
information effectively to help students learn. In their annual
state-by-state analysis of data gathering efforts –
Data for Action 2012
– the DQC provides several suggestions on how the rich datasets
collected by states could be used to improve the quality of their
education systems. One recommendation points out that while legislatures
provide the state with the authority to collect information, they
frequently fail to provide them with permission to share this
information with those who need access to it most. People in the best
position to assure that students remain on track to graduate and prepare
to enter colleges and universities are denied tools to determine that
it is so. The article is in
EducationNews.
ABOUT HIGHER ED
THE BENEFIT OF OPEN ONLINE CLASSES
Joshua Kim, director of learning and technology for the Master of
Health Care Delivery Science program at Dartmouth College, writes this
commentary for the
U.S.News & World Report’s blog, Economic
Intelligence: Clay Christensen's theory of disruptive innovation has
captured the imagination of educational technology higher circles in
which I travel. For example, at the recent EDUCAUSE conference, the
largest gathering of academic technology professionals, the emergence of
massively open online courses, or MOOCs, was largely framed as a
disruptive innovation. But is that true? Disruptive innovations
challenge existing models by offering a service or product (education,
credentials) that is not the result of linear or incremental
improvements. This new service or product is often appealing to
nonconsumers, as initially the service/product is both of lower quality
and of much lower costs than that offered by the incumbent. Today's free
MOOCs from Harvard/MIT's edX division cannot compete with a Harvard or
MIT educational experience or degree, but edX allows the vast numbers of
learners unable to access a Harvard or MIT education to do so for no
cost (the classes) or very low cost (the future edX credential).
ABOUT K-12
SCHOOL REFORM IN NEWARK
Newark and its teachers’ union deserve praise for the groundbreaking
contract that the two sides have hammered out. The relatively calm
negotiations that led up to the union’s ratification vote this week
stood in sharp contrast to the vitriol that surrounded a similar
agreement earlier this year in Chicago that led to a polarizing strike.
The need to improve teacher performance has long been evident in Newark,
whose perennially troubled schools do a particularly poor job of
preparing its 37,000 students for higher education. According to the
district, for example, the graduation rate is nearly 62 percent. But
almost 90 percent of Newark Public School students who enter Essex
County College, a community college, need remedial help in English and
nearly all need remedial help in math. Despite this grim picture, school
officials say, the current teacher evaluation system — based on
haphazard observations by administrators — rates 95 percent of the
district’s teachers as “effective.” The new contract, which raises
starting and midlevel salaries, includes a rigorous evaluation process
that takes student achievement into account. The editorial is in
The New York Times.
WHY DO SO MANY TEACHERS QUIT THEIR JOBS? BECAUSE THEY HATE THEIR BOSSES
What's the reason so many new teachers quit the profession or move to a
different school? The heavy workload? Low salary? A paucity of
classroom resources? An absence of autonomy? The "always-on,"
continually demanding nature of the work? None of the above. The main
reason is their principals. To find out what factors influence novice
teachers' decisions to leave the teaching profession, Peter Youngs,
associate professor of educational policy at Michigan State University
and Ben Pogodzinski of Wayne State University, working with two other
colleagues at Michigan State, surveyed 184 beginning teachers of grades
one through eight in eleven large school districts in Michigan and
Indiana.
Their study was recently published in
Elementary School Journal.
The researchers found that the most important factor influencing
commitment was the beginning teacher's perception of how well the school
principal worked with the teaching staff as a whole. This was a
stronger factor than the adequacy of resources, the extent of a
teacher's administrative duties, the manageability of his or her
workload, or the frequency of professional-development opportunities.
The article is in
The Atlantic.
PROMOTING QUALITY TEACHING: NEW POLICY REPORT FROM ACCOMPLISHED CALIFORNIA TEACHERS
Approximately one-third of all new teachers in the United States leave
the profession within five years, and veteran teachers are leaving at
ever higher rates. Teacher attrition, which has grown by 50 percent in
the past 15 years, costs the nation roughly $7 billion a year for
recruiting, hiring, and inducting new teachers. With this revolving door
of teachers and the resulting hemorrhage of resources, schools suffer
from instability and students lose out on the opportunity to learn from
high-quality teachers. Among the factors behind this high turnover are
outdated teacher compensation systems and narrow career options for
professional growth, according to a new report by Accomplished
California Teachers (ACT), a teacher-leadership network based at
Stanford. The report,
Promoting Quality Teaching: New Approaches to Compensation and Career Pathways,
is written by a group of master California teachers and draws from
current research and best practices in the field to make recommendations
on how to improve teaching quality by improving the systems that
compensate them. The report is from the Accomplished California Teachers
blog, InterACT.
ABOUT HIGHER ED
ELITE ONLINE COURSES FOR CASH AND CREDIT
A consortium of 10 top-tier universities will soon offer fully online,
credit-bearing undergraduate courses through a partnership with 2U, a
company that facilitates online learning. Any students enrolled at an
“undergraduate experience anywhere in the world” will be eligible to
take the courses, according to Chip Paucek, the CEO of 2U, which until
recently was called 2tor. The first courses are slated to make their
debut in the fall. After a year in which the top universities in the
world have clambered to offer massive open online courses (MOOCs) for no
credit, this new project marks yet another turning point in online
education. It is the first known example of top universities offering
fully online, credit-bearing courses to undergraduates who are not
actually enrolled at the institutions that are offering them. The
article is in
Inside Higher Ed.
Learn from students. Embrace technology. Adapt as needed. Love what you do.
That's the key advice from the national winners of this year's U.S.
Professors of the Year awards, presented by the Carnegie Foundation for
the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support
of Education.
The four winners will receive $5,000 each. The organizations are also
recognizing winners from 30 states and the District of Columbia.
Read more from The Chronicle of Higher Education »
posted Nov 15, 2012 10:31 am
They come from fields as different as creative writing and
mechanical engineering, and they teach in distinct settings, but the
winners of this year’s Professors of the Year awards from the Council
for Advancement and Support of Education have one thing in common: they
care deeply about students and about transforming the learning
experience.
CASE’s annual awards, sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation for the
Advancement of Teaching, recognize exceptional professors for their
ability to engage and influence students. This year’s winners, selected
from a pool of more than 300 nominees, are:
-
Autar Kaw (doctoral and research universities), professor of mechanical engineering at the University of South Florida.
-
Todd Pagano (master’s universities and colleges), associate professor
of science and mathematics and director of the laboratory science
program at the Rochester Institute of Technology’s National Technical
Institute for the Deaf.
-
Christy Price (baccalaureate colleges), professor of psychology at Dalton State College.
-
Lois Roma-Deeley (community colleges), professor of creative writing
and poet-in-residence at Paradise Valley Community College.
posted Nov 15, 2012 10:29 am
Some of the News Fit to Print
ABOUT HIGHER ED
THE WORLD'S RICHEST COLLEGE DROPOUT URGES COLLEGES TO STOP DROPOUTS
For many months, there's been an active discussion in the press, on the
campaign trail, and over plenty of dinner tables about the cost of
education -- about the frightening growth of student loans, about
jobless grads being crushed by their debts. And as Bill Gates noted in a
talk about higher education today at the Washington Ideas Forum, hosted
by
The Atlantic, the Aspen Institute, and the Newseum, those
are real, pressing issues, especially as the federal government
considers deficit reduction measures that could cut education funding.
We need to fix college financing and to make sure the system doesn't
deteriorate further. But at most colleges, and for most students -- the
ones who don't go to schools covered in ivy -- the real problem isn't
necessarily cost; it's completion. It's our country's abysmal graduation
rates -- less than sixty percent of undergraduates finish a bachelor's
degree within six years; less than 30 percent finish two-year programs
on time -- which have fallen well behind much of the industrialized
world. We're on pace to produce millions fewer college graduates than
our economy will need in the coming decades, Gates argued, and a big
part of that is our inability to get students already enrolled in
college to graduation day. The article is in
The Atlantic.
DUKE, NORTHWESTERN TO OFFER ONLINE PROGRAM
Starting next fall, 10 prominent universities, including Duke, the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Northwestern, will form a
consortium called Semester Online, offering about 30 online courses to
both their students — for whom the classes will be covered by their
regular tuition — and to students elsewhere who would have to apply and
be accepted and pay tuition of more than $4,000 a course. Unlike the
increasingly popular massive open online courses, or MOOCs, free classes
offered by universities like Harvard, M.I.T. and Stanford, Semester
Online classes will be small — and will offer credit. The article is in
The New York Times.
ABOUT K-12
ANALYSIS SHOWS DIFFERENCES IN TEACHER EFFECTIVENESS IN LAUSD
In Los Angeles Unified, novice teachers tend to be assigned students
who are academically farther behind those assigned to experienced
teachers. Before they depart, usually after only two years, Teach for
America teachers have a bigger impact on students than that of other new
teachers. And National Board Certified teachers significantly
outperform other teachers in LAUSD. These are among the findings of an
extensive seven-year study of about a third of teachers in LAUSD by the
Strategic Data Project, which is affiliated with the Center for
Education Policy Research at Harvard University. Researchers have
conducted similar analyses of teacher recruitment, development and
retention patterns in three dozen school districts and charter
organizations nationwide, under work funded by the Gates Foundation.
LAUSD’s report, which was released Wednesday, could become a key
resource as the district and United Teachers Los Angeles negotiate
changes to teacher evaluations and other parts of the teachers’
contract. The article is from EdSource.
TEACHER-LEADERSHIP DEGREE PROGRAMS AIM TO FILL CAREER GAPS
Teacher-leadership programs generally differ from traditional
educational-administration or -leadership master's programs in focusing
more on instructional practice and less on organizational supervision
and the business and management of schools. The course offerings in
teacher-leadership programs vary from school to school, but tend to
emphasize inquiry-based instruction, coaching and mentoring, cultural
responsiveness, professional development design, curriculum development,
and technological understanding. Most programs also require degree
candidates to complete an internship or capstone project involving
collaborative work with school leaders or a practice-based research
project. School of education professors and administrators involved in
teacher-leadership degree programs say such offerings fill an important
need in K-12 education today by giving teachers the capacity to expand
their roles and exert greater influence in schools. The article is in
Education Week.
