Those who forget the past

May 26, 2011

In the early 1990s, the National Endowment for the Humanities and Department of Education moved to create a set of national history standards, which ended up being controversial for their content and presentation of material. (NEH chairman Lynne Cheney, who helped launch and pay for this initiative, later called the resulting standards “grim and gloomy” because they favored political correctness over accurate historical presentation.) Could this happen again? A new group of experts (unnamed, as of yet) from eighteen states recently gathered to discuss common standards for social studies. And red flags are rightfully being raised. For starters, this initiative is not one borne of the states themselves—as were the ELA and math common-core standards. Further, this focus on the amorphous and interdisciplinary “social studies” is sure to block any disciplinary rigor or intellectual integrity from entering the would-be standards. As Lynne Munson of Common Core points out, the group’s “sole product so far is a one-sentence definition of social studies—so concerned with inclusiveness that it contains eleven commas.” If and when states come together to create smart and specific U.S. history, or economics, or world history, or civics standards, count Gadfly on board. But to these vague umbrella standards, he says, “Buzz

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Those who forget the past

Affirming the Goal: Is College and Career Readiness an Internationally Competitive Standard?

Marena Perkins , Amber M. Winkler, Ph.D. / May 26, 2011

In this report, ACT researchers show that “college and career readiness,” at least as defined by the ACT itself, is indeed an internationally competitive standard. (They speak of the level of preparation a student needs in order to succeed in a first-year, credit-bearing course at a two- or four-year institution.) To prove this point, researchers conducted a linking analysis of PISA scores for fifteen-year olds in reading and math and college and career readiness benchmark scores for fifteen-year-old tenth-graders taking ACT’s PLAN test. The purpose was to determine whether the standard of college readiness for U.S. students is competitive with those of other high performing nations. (In other words, if we succeed at getting our average student to college and career readiness, will we then be holding our own with the world’s academic leaders?) They find that the benchmarked scores in both reading and math fell within the average scores of most of the highest performing nations, and thus college and career readiness is in fact an internationally competitive standard. The researchers then unfortunately insinuate that, since the Common Core’s definition of college and career readiness was informed by that of the ACT, and the ACT and Common Core standards have been mapped onto one another, the Common Core standards are also internationally competitive. This conclusion might be true but it’s problematic on several levels: The ACT is attempting to compare assessment frameworks (ACT/PISA) with standards (Common Core); we don’t have tests, much less cut scores, for the Common Core yet; lots of folks (including Fordham) think that PISA leaves a lot to be

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Affirming the Goal: Is College and Career Readiness an Internationally Competitive Standard?

Reforming Districts Through Choice, Autonomy, Equity, and Accountability: An Overview of the Voluntary Public School Choice Directors Meeting

Gerilyn Slicker / May 26, 2011

A few months back, the Center on Reinventing Public Education (as part of an ED grant) assembled district, charter, and nonprofit leaders from public school “portfolio districts” for its Voluntary Public School Choice Directors Meeting. This paper offers an overview of the most pressing issues discussed at the two-day meeting—as well as some lessons pulled from it. Public school portfolio districts are those that offer students an array of diverse schools—from neighborhood to magnet to charter to contract schools—that are all held to account for performance. (Today, twenty urban districts qualify, including Denver, New York, Chicago, and New Orleans.) The paper focuses on five key issues discussed at the conference: how to manage the supply of schools, allocate resources, build fair and transparent enrollment systems, communicate effectively with parents, and invoke creative solutions for different learners. In order to frame each issue—and offer how-tos for dealing with each—panelist insights and best-practice case studies are presented. Panelists Tom DeWire from BCPS and Neil Dorosin of the Institute for Innovation in Public Schools explain, for example, how to build better assignment systems by first determining district priorities (magnet schools, socio-economic integration, geographic proximity, etc.) and then coordinating four streams of work: logistics, placement algorithm, parent communication, and system evaluation. One example of a best-practice case study comes out of Hartford, CT. The report explains Hartford’s tactics for parental communication—including community meetings and visits to libraries. Though much of this process seems straightforward, the interconnectivity of these elements makes fluid

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Reforming Districts Through Choice, Autonomy, Equity, and Accountability: An Overview of the Voluntary Public School Choice Directors Meeting

Baseline Analysis of SIG Applications and SIG-Eligible and SIG-Awarded Schools

Chris Irvine / May 26, 2011

Just weeks after Ed Sector’s “Portrait of School Improvement Grantees” comes this IES-funded report on the federal School Improvement Grants (SIGs). (For more information on SIG, look here and here.) While much of the information presented here mimics that delivered by Ed Sector, some valuable new insights emerge, especially regarding state differences. For example, Kentucky awarded funding to 105 of its 108 qualifying schools, while Illinois funded only ten of 738. Further, planned approaches to SIG evaluations vary dramatically between states. Eight plan to monitor their grants monthly, whereas thirty-three will do so on an annual basis. How states choose to evaluate their grantees range from conducting site visits, designating staff for monitoring, holding “check-in” meetings, and using electronic/online tools. As is common with many large-scale IES-funded reports, this report offers much data and little analysis, making policy implications difficult to determine. But the groundwork it lays—especially regarding state differences in funding distribution and implementation tactics—will surely provide helpful background and insight in future years as SIG begins to be evaluated.

Steven Hurlburt, Kerstin Carlson Le Floch, Susan Bowles Therriault, and Susan Cole, “Baseline Analysis of SIG Applications and SIG-Eligible and SIG-Awarded Schools,” (Washington, D.C.: American Institutes for Research, May 2011).

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Baseline Analysis of SIG Applications and SIG-Eligible and SIG-Awarded Schools