- D.C. mulling Common Core test switch [FOCUS, Friendship PCS, and KIPP DC PCS mentioned]
- Should we fix schools by fixing poverty or fixing teaching? How about trying both? (Part 2)
- Cantor accuses de Blasio of waging a ‘war’ against children in N.Y. charter school debate
- Skipping a grade is rare, but it might just save the world
D.C. mulling Common Core test switch [FOCUS, Friendship PCS, and KIPP DC PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
March 2, 2014
The District is slated to begin administering new tests next year that aim to gauge students’ performance on the Common Core State Standards, new national academic guidelines that are designed to promote critical thinking instead of rote memorization.
It will be an enormous shift in states across the country, one that likely will have far-reaching reverberations at a time when tests and test scores not only drive instruction in the classroom but also play a key role in determining how teachers and principals are judged and whether schools are considered successes or failures.
Now, on the cusp of that change, some D.C. education leaders are pressing city officials to study whether the District has chosen the right Common Core test or should switch to a different one.
“There’s some concern about, are we doing this right?” said Anne Herr of the Friends of Choice in Urban Schools, an advocacy group for charter schools, whose leaders have been particularly vocal about pressing for information about the coming shift. “It’s a big investment, it’s a big change, and we don’t want to have to do it twice.”
Four years ago, states formed two groups to develop new Common Core tests: the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium. The District is committed to PARCC.
When the District chose that test in 2010, little was known about the two approaches or how they would differ. Questions still remain, but proponents of switching to Smarter Balanced tests argue that they offer a number of advantages, including shorter testing time for students and a more precise measurement of achievement.
PARCC officials disagree. But the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, the agency responsible for administering city tests, has appeared open to switching, holding February meetings with school leaders to float the issue. The behind-the-scenes discussions were first reported by the blog Greater Greater Education.
Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson opposes a switch, arguing that teachers unions would see it as an opening to attack the Common Core and testing in general. She also said her team would have to scrap preparations for a test they have long been expecting. City students are slated to field-test PARCC exams this spring.
“Let’s be frank: DCPS is never ahead of the curve,” Henderson told the D.C. Council last week. “This go-round, we actually finally did something right in preparation for something that is coming. . . . So to decide in a couple of weeks that we would potentially undo the preparation we have done causes us to ask, what changed?”
OSSE officials initially said they would decide whether to formally reopen the testing decision by March 3. Now, after gathering feedback from school leaders and national experts, they say they can’t specify a target date but hope to make an announcement soon.
“We believe that the reasons for switching must be incredibly compelling, given the significant potential disruption that a switch at this point would cause,” OSSE spokeswoman Ayan Islam said.
Both tests will be much more difficult than the tests D.C. students are accustomed to, and both will ask students to write essays and short answers in addition to answering multiple-choice questions.
Both also will be administered on computers, but they differ in an important way: Like current standardized tests, PARCC tests will be “fixed form,” which means students at each grade level will take the same exam as their peers, with a mix of questions from easy to difficult.
Smarter Balanced tests will be adaptive, which means the computer will adjust the difficulty of questions depending on each student’s abilities. Get a lot of questions wrong, and the questions will get easier; get a lot correct, and the questions will get more difficult.
Adaptive tests can offer a more precise reading of what students actually know and can do, experts say. That can hold especially true for students working behind or ahead of grade level, for whom the fixed-form test can either be inaccessibly difficult or far too easy.
That’s a powerful idea in a city like Washington, where many children are so far behind that a grade-level test doesn’t say much about what they have learned during the academic year and what they still need to be taught. Students who enter ninth grade at a fourth-grade reading level, for example, could make two or three years’ worth of progress but would still fail a ninth-grade test.
“To assess them on high school work is as close to foolish as anything, because you’re only saying, ‘Well, they don’t know,’ ” said Donald Hense, who leads the Friendship Public Charter School network and supports shifting to Smarter Balanced.
But Smarter Balanced tests likely will only be able to accurately measure performance of those students working within approximately one year above or below grade level, according to Jacqueline King, an official at the Smarter Balanced consortium.
Jeff Nellhaus, director of policy, research and design at PARCC, said PARCC states made a deliberate decision not to use an adaptive test because of concerns about equity: They were afraid an adaptive test would cause teachers to lower expectations for struggling students because they knew those students wouldn’t have to answer hard questions on the end-of-year test.
“The idea of equity became very important,” Nellhaus said. “The idea is that this test would challenge all students in the same way.”
Smarter Balanced also is attractive to some advocates who argue that it will better measure progress that students make each year, rather than simply whether or not they are proficient. That could be an incentive to care about the growth of all students, rather than focusing intently on pushing a few near-proficient students over the line.
But the two tests’ ability to measure growth is far from clear, said Derek Briggs, a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder who serves on the technical advisory committee for both test consortia.
“So much has yet to be decided,” Briggs said, pointing out that both state consortia are soon conducting wide-scale field tests whose results will determine their abilities to measure growth. “Things are in flux with both of them.”
David Tansey, a math teacher at Dunbar High School, says he believes Smarter Balanced is a step in the right direction. But, he said, tests won’t improve much for students if the city does not figure out how to use test results intelligently. He said that tests are used now to judge schools, but they should be used to map what students know and inform what teachers should teach.
“The onus is still on us,” he said. “If we don’t have a dialogue on what the purpose of all this data is . . . then it doesn’t matter what test we use.”
Irene Holtzman, director of assessments at the KIPP DC charter network, said she favors Smarter Balanced in part because it appears better prepared, having begun field tests last spring, a year ahead of PARCC.
Whatever test OSSE officials choose, Holtzman said, they must solicit and listen to feedback from educators and then be able to explain why their decision is best for D.C. students. “They have this opportunity to stay the course or change the course, but that should be based on evidence and reality,” she said.
Should we fix schools by fixing poverty or fixing teaching? How about trying both? (Part 2)
Greater Greater Education
By Natalie Wexler
February 28, 2014
Turnaround for Children, a nonprofit that aims to improve schools by addressing the effects of poverty both inside and outside the classroom, is working with 5 DCPS schools this year. The goal is a calmer environment where learning can take place, and so far the results look promising.
In the first part of this post, we looked at how Turnaround for Children (TFC) partners with a school for 3 to 5 years, bringing in a team that helps coordinate social services for kids who need them and providing the staff with techniques that create order, foster social skills, and promote learning for the school population as a whole. (Disclosure: I have contributed financially to TFC.)
At Walker-Jones Education Campus, a high-poverty school near North Capitol Street in Ward 6, TFC is in its first year of a partnership. Michael Moss is the 13th principal in the past 10 years, and when he arrived the school had about 450 suspensions per year, the highest rate for any DCPS school below the high school level.
On one recent school day, the TFC instructional coach at Walker-Jones, Charlie Crabtree, led a small group of teachers through a new classroom technique: Students are given cards with questions and answers about whatever material the class is studying. They then find partners to quiz, trade their cards, and find more partners.
If a student's partner doesn't get the correct answer right away, she provides some coaching and then some praise. The exercise gets students to interact with each other in positive ways, something that doesn't always come naturally to them, and reinforces their self-esteem. At the same time, it provides a way for students to review what they've been learning.
Principal Moss says his teachers have embraced TFC techniques, even though the program requires them to attend meetings that intrude on their planning time. And while he says the difference that TFC has made is "nothing you can quantify" and more of just "an overall feel in the building," he also says that suspensions have gone down to perhaps 50 so far this year. "And we haven't had a fight in weeks," he says.
Those results seem fairly typical. A 2009 study of 5 TFC middle schools in New York found that incidents reported to the police decreased by 51% and suspensions by 32%. Overall, the schools had become calmer, happier places, the study said.
Academic achievement
As that calm is established, teachers can shift their focus from classroom management to actual teaching. While TFC's effects on academic achievement haven't been dramatic so far, the organization says that the DC schools it has been in for over a year have generally outpaced their peers in gains on standardized tests.
At Wheatley Education Campus in Trinidad, where TFC has been working for 3 years, proficiency rates on DC's standardized tests still hover in the thirties. But student achievement is growing faster than the DCPS average for similar students, by 18 additional percentage points in math and 5 in reading. It's hard to say, though, how much of that change is due to TFC, since Wheatley partners with several other programs.
Principal Scott Cartland says that TFC has been particularly helpful in ensuring that students get counseling and mental health services if they need them. Cartland was already several years into a turnaround effort when TFC began working at Wheatley, and he says it would have been even more helpful to have had the organization as a partner from the beginning.
TFC and Cantor, he says, "have a very smart lens" through which to view the problems of a high-poverty school. "They know that there are certain things that will happen, that are predictable," he says. "And that there are predictable things you can do to make it better."
What are the caveats about TFC? The organization has learned from experience that it's crucial to have a strong school leader who, like Moss and Cartland, is enthusiastic about the program. In addition, there's money: partnering with TFC costs about $320,000 per year, per school.
While much of that cost is covered by philanthropy, school districts are asked to contribute as well. This year DCPS is covering only about 6% of the costs, but that proportion has been greater in the past and is likely to rise again.
Could a school achieve the same results if it got a fraction of that money and was able to hire its own additional staff to do what TFC does? Principal Cartland at Wheatley says probably not. He compares bringing TFC into a school to what a business does when it hires a management consultant.
"You need someone who is outside the day-to-day grind," he says. "When you're in the middle of it, you're often too overwhelmed" to come up with solutions.
TFC is now launching a new strategy to extend its reach: working with school districts to bring its methods to more schools and insulate itself from disruptions (two of the DCPS schools the organization was in last year fell victim to the wave of school closings). TFC recently created the position of Director of District Engagement, and that person is currently working with DCPS to expand the organization's methods to high-poverty schools throughout the school system.
Clearly there are advantages to that path, and having school districts take on the work themselves should reduce the cost. But if the TFC approach is embedded within a district bureaucracy, will schools lose the advantage of having that outside consultant's eye that Cartland said has been so helpful at Wheatley?
Time will tell. The jury is also still out on whether the TFC schools in DC will fully achieve the desired outcomes—and sustain them after TFC leaves. But given the slow pace of progress at DCPS's lowest-performing schools and the promising results TFC has achieved so far, this is one experiment that seems worth pursuing.
Cantor accuses de Blasio of waging a ‘war’ against children in N.Y. charter school debate
The Washington Post
By Lyndsey Layton
February 28, 2014
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) accused New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio of waging a “war” against children after the mayor announced Thursday that he will rescind approvals for three public charter schools to be located inside traditional public schools.
Cantor, who tangled with de Blasio last month over the issue, has been promoting charter schools and public vouchers for private schools around the nation for the past two years. In a statement Thursday night, Cantor said that New York’s new Democratic mayor has “decided to continue his war against kids, most of whom live in poverty, by forcing charter schools to relocate or cancel scheduled openings. Poor and minority children deserve the best education opportunity possible, not to be stuck in failing schools because of the mayor’s hostility towards helping them.”
When he was campaigning to succeed Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I), de Blasio said he would reconsider Bloomberg’s charter-friendly policies, including decisions to allow public charter schools to share space inside traditional city schools.
Charter schools are funded by the public but are privately run and often staffed by non-unionized teachers.
The rent-free space inside traditional city schools has been a boon to the charter movement in New York, where steep real estate costs would otherwise price many out of existence. Under Bloomberg, the number of public charter schools jumped from seven to 123 in 12 years. About 70,000 students, or 6 percent of the city’s student population, attend public charter schools.
But the co-locations policy created conflicts within school buildings, and traditional city schools complained that they had to fight with charters over the use of cafeterias, gymnasiums and classrooms. City officials said they reversed some of the approvals because they called for elementary students to use the same buildings as high-schoolers.
De Blasio has questioned why some charters that receive significant funds from wealthy donors should occupy public buildings rent-free.
The de Blasio administration reviewed 49 co-location proposals that had been approved by officials under Bloomberg and decided to reverse nine. Of those reversals, six were for new city schools that wanted to open inside other traditional public schools and three were public charters.
All three of the public charters affected by the new policy reversal are run by Success Academies, a chain of 22 high-performing schools created by Eva Moskowitz.
Moskowitz, who was a rival of de Blasio’s when both served on the New York City Council, attracted special attention from de Blasio as he campaigned last year. At an event sponsored by the teachers union, de Blasio said: “It’s time for Eva Moskowitz to stop having the run of the place. . . . She has to stop being tolerated, enabled, supported.”
Two of the three Success Academy schools whose co-locations were voided have not yet opened. The third, Success Academy Harlem 4, is operating, which means about 200 students will not be able to continue attending that school next year.
Moskowitz is organizing a protest at the state Capitol on Tuesday, canceling classes in her schools and urging parents to make the trip to Albany to ask state lawmakers for help.
Cantor called on Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D), a charter supporter, to get involved. “I hope Governor Cuomo, long an ally of charter schools, will join us in condemning the mayor’s actions,” Cantor said.
In a New York radio interview on Friday, Cuomo declined to get involved in the dustup and spoke only generally about charter schools in New York City.
“I don’t pretend to be an expert on the specifics of the co-location decision,” Cuomo said on the public radio show “The Capitol Pressroom.” “But in general I think the charter school movement has been good for the city.”
Skipping a grade is rare, but it might just save the world
The Washington Post
By Jay Mathews
March 2, 2014
When Linda McVeigh began second grade at Kit Carson Elementary School in Lawndale, Calif., her teacher saw she was far ahead. She had learned to read at age four from her 12-year-old aunt. The blonde 7-year-old from a rural Oklahoma family was funny and talkative. Her math scores were very high.
The school recommended she skip ahead to third grade. Her parents, aircraft factory workers who had not gone to college, were surprised by the suggestion but agreed. The promotion went smoothly, her lively personality and athletic talent making up for the age gap. She was co-valedictorian of her high school class and the first female managing editor of her college’s daily newspaper. The day after graduating with honors, she married the newspaper’s features editor — me.
Such grade skipping still happens, but school administrators are rarely as comfortable with it as Linda’s teachers were. This frustrates advocates of gifted children. They can’t understand why school districts won’t embrace the cheapest and easiest way to enrich a bright child’s day. Those kids can make the social adjustment, they argue. Why leave them bored and frustrated, making do with just a few gifted classes each week?
A Vanderbilt University study of the long-term effects of grade skipping has given that argument a boost as the emphasis on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education grows. Using 40 years of data from 3,467 mathematically precocious students, Gregory Park, David Lubinski and Camilla P. Benbow concluded that such students, when allowed to skip a grade, “were more likely to pursue advanced degrees and secure STEM accomplishments, reached these outcomes earlier, and accrued more citations and highly cited publications in STEM fields than their matched and retained intellectual peers.”
Many educators and scientists emphasize the discoveries of young scientists. Albert Einstein published his paper on special relativity when he was 26. The more quickly such intellects master their fields, the argument goes, the more time they will have to invent a faster-than-light drive or arrest global warming.
The hoped-for result of such acceleration is lampooned, but also celebrated, by television’s highest-rated (and my favorite) comedy, “The Big Bang Theory.” Its central character, Caltech theoretical physicist Sheldon Cooper as played by Jim Parsons, is an irritating, immature egotist. But a Nobel Prize for him seems likely. He started college at 11 and earned his doctorate from M.I.T. at 16.
Faced with children like that, gifted-student advocates say, American schools worry more about acceleration stunting their emotional growth than enhancing their genius. University of Iowa researchers have designed an Acceleration Scale to help schools decide on grade skipping, but bias against acceleration endures.
The Vanderbilt study offers hope to bright students who prefer sticking with their own age group. The control group of precocious non-skipper students did not accomplish as much as those who skipped, but their STEM achievements also were exceptional.
Some differences between the two groups, such as the age at which they first published, have narrowed in recent years. The authors said: “this may reflect the increased availability of alternative forms of acceleration, such as Advanced Placement (AP) courses, college courses in high school, summer programs and research and writing opportunities.”
The authors noticed that the differences were not as great between skipping and non-skipping females, who had a greater tendency to pursue advanced degrees in medicine or law.
Linda decided against a career in math. She majored in government and eventually graduated from law school. But like her husband, she decided on journalism as a career and pursued that for four decades. It isn’t STEM, but it needs smart people, too.