Caralee Adams writes at the Education Week (3/6, Adams) “College Bound” blog that that National Center for Education Statistics has released data predicting “a decline in the number of high school graduates over the next decade,” adding that the data showed that college enrollment will continue rising, “but at a much slower pace than in recent years.” She writes that the decline in high school graduation rates is largely attributable to demographic shifts and explores its revelations about how the diversity of students is expected to change.
College Board Announces Major Changes To SAT
The College Board’s announcement Wednesday that it is rolling out the first major overhaul of the SAT college entry exam in nearly a decade generated heavy coverage in major national media outlets, including nearly seven-and-a-half minutes on all three major network news broadcasts, with the changes leading the broadcast on ABC World News. Coverage is generally factual and based on the substance of the changes and, to a lesser degree, on reactions from within the education community. NBC Nightly News (3/5, story 2, 2:40, Williams) places the story within the context of “the anxiety and the cost of college entrance exams,” and reports that College Board President David Coleman says that the test will better align with what students actually need to know to succeed in college and the workplace. NBC reports that the test “is going high-tech,” and there will “be more focus on analyzing texts and asking students to refer to real world examples and documents.”
San Diego Educators Studying Preschool Best Practices
KPBS-TV San Diego (3/5) reports on the Quality Preschool Initiative being operated by First 5 San Diego and the San Diego County Office of Education, in which outside observers rate “details from proper hand washing and classroom safety to the quality of teacher-student interaction and that classrooms have the right kinds of blocks and toys.” Local Head Start officials credit the program for improving quality, and the article notes that the program is partially funded by “federal education grants targeted at improving preschools across the country.” The piece notes that the Federal grants are intended to help “create a universal understanding of what high-quality early education looks like,” quoting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Early Learning Libby Doggett saying, “Helping those disparate programs become a real system. So that eventually whether a child is in child care, head start or pre-k, they’ll all be getting a high quality education.”
NEA Criticizes Common Core Standards
Politico (2/20, Simon) reports that the NEA, the nation’s largest teachers union, is “pulling back on its once-enthusiastic support of the Common Core academic standards, labeling their rollout ‘completely botched.’” NEA President Dennis Van Roekel said that he still believes that the standards have value, but he argued that they will fail without a significant “course correction,” such as “rewriting some of the standards and revising the related tests with teacher input.” The statement “echoed a resolution passed last month by the board of the New York state teachers union, which withdrew support for Common Core as currently implemented.”
The Washington Post (2/20, Layton) reports that Van Roekel said that “after talking to about 10,000 teachers in listening sessions and focus groups over several months, he is convinced that implementation of the new standards in most of the country is chaotic.” He said, “My greatest fear for the students of America is that we may lose the promise of the Common Core standards because we screwed up the implementation.”
States Giving Teachers Too Much Material, Not Enough Direction
NPR (2/16, Greenblatt) reports that increased state, local, and school education standards are creating a situation where teachers are having to pick which material to teach and not teach, and each teacher’s choices may differ from the next. NPR reports that these decisions may affect students in later grades who were not taught the same material as their peers. NPR reports that the implementation of Common Core standards has been problematic in many states because “very few states took seriously the task of adding content on top of the Common Core” according to Kathleen Porter-Magee, a policy fellow at the Fordham Institute. NPR reports that the lack of direction from the state has led to a situation where “distant technocrats” are trying to determine what to teach.
Delaying Common Core Seen As Harming Accountability Movement
US News & World Report (2/13) reports on recent changes and postponements in states’ implementation of the Common Core Standards and aligned assessments, noting that despite criticisms of tying teacher assessments to student scores on such tests, “some say delaying the assessments could hurt school accountability.” For example, “New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a supporter of Common Core,” this week “blasted the state Board of Regents this week for approving such changes.” Meanwhile, American Enterprise Institute research fellow Michael McShane “says continuing to change Common Core implementation midstream could be detrimental to the accountability movement ‘that has been at work trying to improve schools for two decades now.’”
Business Groups Launch Website Defending Common Core
Andrew Ujifusa writes at the Education Week (2/12) “State EdWatch” blog about a new website from the Higher State Standards Partnership, “which is supported by the US Chamber of Commerce” and other business groups, intended to “counter myths” about the Common Core Standards “with facts.” The piece notes that the site refutes the claim that “the federal government created them and manages them in the states.” Ujifusa suggests, however, that the website goes too far in its assertion that ED has funded state-level standards in the past.
Los Angeles Columnist Argues In Favor Of Tenure
In a column in the Los Angeles Times (2/7), Ted Rall writes about the lawsuit currently taking place in California over the state’s teacher job protections, arguing that while parents may find it “easy to see why it would be good to make it easier to fire bad teachers,” tenure is an important part of attracting and retaining teachers and making them more effective. Rall suggests that much of the push to end tenure comes from the political right, and he refutes the notion that tenure makes it impossible to fire bad teachers.
Lawsuit Challenges California Tenure
Education Week (2/5) primarily covers the previous events of the Vergara v. California case that argues that California’s laws “violate students’ equal-protection rights by making it too difficult to rid schools of ‘grossly ineffective’ teachers.” The case is in part based on the “value added” method of judging teachers, a method Education Week says “has proved controversial” and has been called a “sham” by Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers. Education Week quotes Perry A. Zirkel, a professor of educational leadership at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, who argues that this case will not necessarily impact other states because “even if the state language is the same, there are always interpretations of the language.”
Retired Teacher Laments Growth Of Standardized Testing
Lisa Haver, a retired teacher and co-founder of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, writes in the Philadelphia Inquirer(2/4) that standardized testing has become too important in US schools, saying “no country in the world conducts more standardized testing,” and in response now “a growing number of parents...are refusing to let their children participate.” That “is the subject of the new documentary ‘Standardized: Lies, Money and Civil Rights – How Testing Is Ruining Public Education.’” Haver describes the film and quotes one parent calling testing “state-sanctioned child abuse.”
Professor: Common Core Must Prepare Students For College Reading
In commentary for the Chronicle of Higher Education (2/4, Bauerlein), author and Emory University professor Mark Bauerlein writes that the Common Core Standards were developed in part to address high numbers of students requiring remedial courses because they entered college unprepared, noting that part of the impetus behind the standards is a push to increase the complexity of the textual material students are capable of processing. Bauerlein concludes that standards must remain focused on preparing students for the complexity of the texts they will face in college.
California Lawsuit Aims At Teacher Job Protections
The New York Times (2/1, Medina, Subscription Publication) runs an article on the lawsuit “challenging California’s ironclad tenure system,” noting that a group of nine school students argue that the protections, which make it difficult to fire substandard teachers, violate “their right to a good education.” The piece notes that the students are backed by David F. Welch, “a Silicon Valley technology magnate who is financing the case and an all-star cast of lawyers.” On the other side are the “powerful” teachers unions, which “contend that the protections are necessary to ensure that teachers are not fired unfairly.”
Both Sides Make Hay From Deasy Testimony. The Los Angeles Times (2/3, Blume) reports that Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy “was the early star witness--for both sides.” The Times reports that the plaintiffs called Deasy first, and he “testified that he is simply unable to remove all ‘grossly ineffective’ teachers,” but notes that on cross-examination, “Deasy’s testimony also demonstrated a school system’s latitude under current law.”
Former Los Angeles Mayor Endorses Teacher Protection Lawsuit
The Los Angeles Times (1/30, Blume) reports that former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has “formally endorsed” the lawsuit in California state court seeking to reduce “job protections for California teachers that are among the most extensive in the nation.” Noting that the plaintiffs in the case say that the state’s powerful job protections violate students’ rights to having effective teachers, the Times writes that Villaraigosa stressed that “improving overall teaching and removing the worst teachers are crucial” for “increasing academic achievement and reducing the dropout rate.”
California Teachers Association Defends Current Law.The Wall Street Journal (1/31, Gershman) reports on the California Teachers Association’s role as a defendant in the case, noting that the union says that the law protects experienced teachers from being fired or laid off arbitrarily.
Several States Keep Common Core, Drop Name
The Washington Post (1/31, Layton) reports that in the face of pressure from opponents of the Common Core, Arizona, Iowa, and Florida have all moved to rebrand the standards, giving them new names or removing references to them, but leaving their content intact. The piece notes that former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee recently “urged state education leaders to ditch the ‘Common Core’ name, noting that it had become ‘toxic.’” The Post calls the changes “largely superficial,” but adds that the rebranding trend “shows how precarious the push for the Common Core has grown.”
Teacher Prep Programs Increasingly Focusing On Technology Literacy
Education Week (1/29, Flanigan) reports that the teacher training program at Clemson University is illustrative of a “shift underway at some teacher colleges that are working to revamp their programs to improve the technology literacy of future educators,” noting that given the rise of digital technology, some observers see teachers’ lack of proficiency as “a major shortcoming in the profession.” Moreover, observers have expressed concerns about “whether schools of education are providing future teachers with the skills they need to address blended learning, and whether they’re using digital tools to improve instruction.”
California Teacher Protection Lawsuit Takes Shape
Stephen Sawchuk writes at the Education Week (1/29) “TeacherBeat” blog that as opening arguments in a California lawsuit “that seeks to overturn major elements of teachers’ seniority and tenure protections” begin this week, the form of the sides’ arguments “gradually began to emerge.” He writes that the plaintiffs argue that the teacher protection laws “put poor and minority children at a higher risk of receiving subpar instruction than their peers,” but defense attorneys representing the state “argued that the laws do not force districts to assign poor teachers to at-risk students; instead, they actually serve to keep the best teachers in the profession.”
Plaintiffs’ Attorney: Laws Protect Incompetent Teachers. In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (1/29, Subscription Publication), attorney Theodore J. Boutrous Jr. writes about the lawsuit, noting that he is one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs in the case. He argues that the teacher protection laws in question harm students by making it exceedingly difficult to fire poorly performing teachers. He argues that this violates students’ rights to an adequate education.
California Report Recommends Up To $12 Billion In School Building Funds
The Sacramento (CA) Bee (1/28, Miller) reports in its “Capitol Alert” blog that a report to the State Allocation Board concluded that “California needs as much as $12 billion in additional school-building money and almost $5 billion in modernization money.” Funds from a 2006 bond issue are “nearly exhausted.” The report also recommended that rules be adopted to “discourage the use of bond money for portable classrooms, to require districts to commit to spend money maintaining bond-funded buildings, and to conduct an inventory of all school facilities.”
Testimony In California Teacher Job Protections Lawsuit Begins
Several media reports are covering the beginning of arguments in a California lawsuit challenging state laws protecting teacher employment. The Los Angeles Times (1/27, Ceasar) reports that the lawsuit questions “the constitutionality of laws that govern California’s teacher tenure rules, seniority policies and the dismissal process – an overhaul of which could upend controversial job security for instructors.” Plaintiffs argue that since the laws “do not ensure all students have access to an adequate education,” they violate the state constitution’s equal protection guarantee. The lawsuit “seeks to revamp a dismissal process the plaintiffs say is too costly and time consuming” and to make tenure more difficult to obtain.
Los Angeles Court To Consider Legality Of Tenure
The AP (1/26, Watson) reports, “Nine California public school students are suing the state over its laws on teacher tenure, seniority and other protections that the plaintiffs say keep bad educators in classrooms.” The case will be heard in Los Angeles Superior Court starting today. The lead attorney said that tenure has led to a “dysfunctional and arbitrary” system. The California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers have requested that the court dismiss the suit. That was rejected. The case is reported in the context of moves by a number of states that “have weakened teaching job protections, including generations-old tenure, to give administrators more flexibility to fire bad teachers.” The case is backed by Students Matter.
The Washington Post (1/27, Layton) describes the case as “pitting a Silicon Valley mogul with a star-studded legal team against some of the most powerful labor unions in the country.” The suit is being pursued as legislative attempts to alter the tenure laws have failed.
States Consider Adding Cursive To Common Core
The Washington Post (1/25, Chokshi) reports in its “Govbeat” blog that Indiana’s Senate approved a cursive requirement in a vote on Thursday and that it is one of seven Common Core states considering a cursive requirement. Arguments for the cursive requirement include studies showing that it is helpful in cognitive development because “the movement tasks are more demanding,” and “the visual recognition requirements create a broader repertoire of letter representation.” In addition, it is “faster” than printing and offers “a better sense of personal style and ownership.” One study found that children in grades 2, 4, and 6 “wrote more words, faster, and expressed more ideas when writing essays by hand versus with a keyboard.” States considering a cursive requirement include: California, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Utah.