Thomas B Fordham Institute - Advancing Educational Excellence

The Gadfly Daily's week in review

The Education Gadfly / May 12, 2012

What had Fordham's bloggers buzzing this week? Take a look back commentary from across the Gadfly Daily blogs:

• Summarizing a push by Connecticut lawmakers to study the “feasibility” of an opt-out plan for charter schools on the Choice Words blog, Adam Emerson warned, “This might be an agile way to retreat from a bad idea, but legislators should have killed the plan before committing state resources to its study.”


• When California announced it would apply for a NLCB waiver on its own terms, Mike lauded the state’s move on Flypaper. As he wrote, “While Jerry Brown, Tom Torlakson, and Mike Kirst deserve plenty of criticism for their indifference to education reform—kicking charter supporters off the state board, cozying up to the teacher unions—on this one they deserve nothing but kudos.”


• In a guest blog post for Board’s Eye View, National School Boards Association Executive Director Anne L. Bryant acknowledged the value of assessment and accountability before cautioning, “we’ve gone too far—we are currently too focused on testing and teaching rote memorization rather than inspiring creativity.”


• On the Ohio Gadfly Daily blog, Terry Ryan announced that, in its role as a charter authorizer, Fordham “would willingly be the first to go through a vetting process led by the Transformation Alliance” proposed by Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson.


• “Illinois lawmakers should resist the urge to kick the can

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  The Gadfly Daily's week in review

The Nation’s Report Card: Science 2011 (Grade 8)

yes Daniela Fairchild / May 10, 2012

It’s a big week for science geeks: Achieve is slated to release the long-awaited draft Next-Generation Science Standards (NGSS) tomorrow. Until then, we have the just-released nation’s report card for eighth-grade science to keep us occupied. Overall trends are positive: Scale scores ticked up two points since 2009. (Due to framework changes, we can’t compare data any further back than that.) The black-white achievement gap dropped one point, and the Hispanic-white gap narrowed by three points. All racial subgroups saw bumps in achievement. At the state level, sixteen jurisdictions improved their scale scores since 2009; no states averaged scores significantly lower than their 2009 marks. Further, we learn that those students who engage in hands-on science activities at least once a week and those who participate in science activities outside the classroom fair better on NAEP—an encouraging find for programs like Project Lead the Way. But there’s also cause for concern. Notably (staffers at PLTW and elsewhere should take note), we have not shown the ability to boost outcomes for our best and brightest. The percentage of students scoring “advanced” on the eighth-grade NAEP science test stagnated between 2009 and 2011—at a dismal 2 percent. (Compare this to the 8 percent of eighth graders scoring advanced in math.) All achievement groups are making gains save our top performers: The bottom quartile of students bumped three scale-score

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The Nation’s Report Card: Science 2011 (Grade 8)

Common Core critics want ALEC to tell states what to do

yes Michael J. Petrilli / May 10, 2012

A clique of conservative groups is pushing the message that tomorrow’s ALEC vote is part of a “growing movement” against federal intrusion vis-à-vis the Common Core standards. There’s a problem with that line of reasoning: ALEC is already on record against federal intrusion into education vis-à-vis the Common Core standards.

In December, the organization of conservative state lawmakers adopted two Common Core resolutions in its education committee. One—the subject of the vote tomorrow at the board of directors level—calls on states to back out of the common standards initiative altogether. The second—which has already become ALEC policy—focuses instead on the federal role in the initiative, and tells Uncle Sam to back off.

Here’s the first resolution:

The State Board of Education may not adopt, and the State Department of Education may not implement, the Common Core State Standards developed by the Common Core State Standards Initiative. Any actions taken to adopt or implement the Common Core State Standards as of the effective date of this section are void ab initio. Neither this nor any other statewide education standards may be adopted or implemented without the approval of the Legislature.

And the second:

BE IT RESOLVED, that the {legislative body} vigorously opposes any effort by the federal government to deny the authority of any state to set its own education academic content standards or to attempt to overturn decisions made duly by a state regarding any education standards deemed by the constitutionally-designated authorities in

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Common Core critics want ALEC to tell states what to do

Supersize my education? Not in Singapore

yes Chester E. Finn, Jr. / May 10, 2012

Boarding my plane from Singapore after a fascinating, whirlwind reacquaintance with that small nation’s remarkable education system, I encountered this Wall Street Journal headline: “Education Slows in U.S., Threatening Prosperity.” Reading on, I learned that Harvard economists Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz have performed a provocative—and seemingly alarming—set of calculations to answer the question: How much more education are Americans getting than their parents did?

There’s still an increment, it turns out, but it’s been shrinking: from two years more schooling (by age thirty) for those born in 1955 down to just eight months more for those born in 1980. The implication, quoth the Journal reporters: “Without better educated Americans, economists say, the U.S. won’t be able to maintain high-wage jobs and rising living standards in a competitive global economy.”

America's tendency to supersize may not be a good recipe for education.  Photo by velkr0.

This isn’t exactly news. Nor is the Goldin-Katz analysis the first time we have observed that the U.S. is no longer leading the planet when it comes to the quantity of education that its population receives. But is more education—more hours and days, more years and degrees—the cure for what ails us? Or are we already pigging out on the educational equivalent of fast food—fattening but not nutritious—and

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Supersize my education? Not in Singapore