The Sacramento (CA) Bee (3/30, Kalb) reports that the Sacramento City Unified School District, which is one of the California CORE districts granted a NCLB waiver, “has begun ranking campuses and sending educators to other schools to coach their colleagues” at low-performing schools. However, the Sacramento City Teachers Association “objects to a promise that Sacramento City Unified and seven other districts made to link student test scores to teacher evaluations” and is fighting the accountability plan. The piece notes that the California Teachers Association “has been providing support to the SCTA,” and quotes state union President Dean Vogel saying, “We have been really, really clear in California ever since (federal grant competition) Race to the Top that we did not believe using student test scores to evaluate teachers was a good idea.”
Study: Parents’ Help With Homework Counterproductive
The San Francisco Chronicle (3/28, Graff) reports that researchers studying NCES data have found that “parent help is mostly inconsequential, and sometimes can even hurt.” Researchers “looked at 63 measures of parental involvement in children’s lives, including helping with homework, volunteering at school, punishing kids with bad grades” and other factors, and found that “most had little affect on a child’s academic success.” Moreover, in middle school, “parental homework help had a negative effect, bringing down test scores.” The study found that “reading out loud to young kids and talking with teenagers about college” were the only factors that seemed to help academic achievement.
Final Arguments Heard In California Teacher Tenure Lawsuit
The Los Angeles Times (3/28, Blume) reports that both sides made final arguments Thursday in “a groundbreaking, two-month trial challenging teacher job protections in California,” with both sides claiming to be representing the best interests of students. Noting that the lawsuit “seeks to overturn a set of laws that affect how teachers are fired, laid off and granted tenure,” the Times reports that the plaintiffs allege that those laws “hinder the removal of ineffective teachers,” resulting in “a workforce with thousands of ‘grossly ineffective’ teachers.” The plaintiffs argue that this impacts low-income and minority students disproportionately and violates the state constitution. Attorneys for the state’s teachers unions “countered that it is not the laws but poor management that is to blame for districts’ failing to root out incompetent instructors.”
Common Core Writers: Controversial Math Problem Not Common Core-Aligned
The Hechinger Report (3/27) reports on the recent “viral” response to a Common Core-inspired math question posted by a frustrated father, noting that “critics say the problem takes a simple one-step subtraction problem and turns it into a complex endeavor with a series of unnecessary steps, including counting by 10s and 100s.” The article notes that Jason Zimba and William McCallum, lead Common Core writers, said that “a poorly written curriculum” is to blame, quoting McCallum saying, “It’s a complete reversal of the truth to call this a Common Core problem.”
ED Releases Report Touting Race To The Top’s Success
USA Today (3/26, Jackson) reports that Education Secretary Arne Duncan released a report on Tuesday saying that the Race to the Top program “benefits 22 million students and 1.5 million teachers in more than 40,000 schools.” Noting that ED’s report says that “eighteen states and Washington, DC, have received a total of $4.35 billion in grants,” USA Today quotes Duncan saying, “The most powerful ideas for improving education come not from Washington, but from educators and leaders in states throughout the country.”
Teacher Evaluations Take Up Lion’s Share Of Principals’ Time
Education Week (3/26, Maxwell) reports that “principals’ time is too often strained by other requirements of the job to make room for substantive instructional coaching,” even as the job increasingly demands that principals “be inside classrooms, watching and studying teachers, and helping them improve as part of new teacher-evaluation systems.” The article cites a study published a few months ago in the journal Educational Researcher, which “found that the amount of time that principals spent on a broad range of activities related to instruction was not associated with gains in student performance” on standardized tests.
NEA Report Compares State Per-Student Spending
The Dallas Morning News (3/25, Stutz) reports that according to a new report comparing state per-student education spending compiled by the National Education Association, “Texas has moved up slightly” but “still ranks in the bottom five states.” The piece notes that the national average is $11,674, while Texas spends an average of $8,998 per student. The article suggests that the report could provide ammunition for the plaintiffs in the state’s school finance lawsuit, who claim that “the current Texas school finance system is unconstitutional because funding is inadequate to meet state standards and is distributed unfairly.” The Dallas Observer (3/27) also covers this story.
New American Foundation Calls On Congress To Boost Teacher Prep Accountability
Stephen Sawchuk writes at the Education Week (3/25) “Teacher Beat” blog that the New American Foundation has released a white paper urging Congress to “require the states to include outcomes-based measures of program quality” when reauthorizing Title II of the Higher Education Act, which “currently requires all colleges preparing teachers to submit ‘report cards’ on teacher preparation and to designate programs as ‘at risk’ or ‘low performing.’”
Field Testing Of Common Core Exams To Begin This Week
The AP (3/22, Hefling) reports that over four million students will participate in field testing of Common Core exams beginning “this coming week in 36 states and the District of Columbia” and ending in June. The field tests “will give education officials a chance to judge things such as the quality of each test question and the technical capabilities of schools to administer the tests.”
The AP (3/23, Blankinship) reports that in Washington state, “nearly 40 percent of children in grades three through eight and about 10 percent of ninth, 10th and 11th grade students will be participating in a field test,” and 24 states with “about 3 million students” will participate in “the Smarter Balanced coalition test” of the exams. There will also be “a shorter sample test online.”
NY1-TV New York (3/23) reports that New York City students “will serve as a testing lab for the new Common Core exams” in June as “students in 36 states will take a trial test based on the new math and English standards.”
Nation’s High Schools See Dearth Of Counselors
USA Today (3/23, Clark) reports that high school guidance counselors have “become something of a rare commodity on high school campuses these days,” noting that nationally, the average ratio of counselors to students rose from 457 to one to 471 to one between 2008 and 2011. Noting that the American School Counselors Association says that 250 to one is the “ideal” ratio, the article juxtaposes the dwindling number of counselors with the growing numbers of duties they face.
Both Parties Facing Common Core Rifts
The AP (3/24, Barrow) reports that the Common Core Standards have become “a political tempest fueling division among Republicans,” noting that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and the US Chamber of Commerce “hail the standards as a way to improve student performance and, over the long term, competitiveness of American workers.” However, “many archconservatives” and Tea Party figures “decry the system as a top-down takeover of local schools.” The AP adds that Democrats “to a lesser extent” must also deal with divisions over the standards, with teachers unions “upset about implementation details.”
Higher Education Officials: High School GPA Better Success Predictor Than Standardized Tests
The AP (3/24, Edwards) reports that higher education officials say that standardized test scores aren’t “the best predictor of college success,” but instead “a student’s high school grade point average” is. The piece notes that Dr. Thomas Calhoun of the University of North Alabama “said research indicates a student’s performance in high school tracks better with that student’s college performance.”
Educators Call For Better Use Of Student Data As Privacy Concerns Linger
The Wall Street Journal (3/24, Fleisher, Subscription Publication) reports that some educators are calling for the better use of the slew of student data that is being increasingly collected in US classrooms, describing how individualized information can help to improve instruction. The piece notes however that this push faces the challenge of parental concerns about the security of student data.
Professor Comments On Debate Over Common Core
In an op-ed for the New York Times (3/23, Subscription Publication), Jennifer Finney Boylan, an author and professor at Colby College, writes about the “debate over the adoption of the Common Core State Standards in education” and how she believes that the argument is more about what we want from want from our children’s education and how “getting an education” is defined. Boylan writes that she believes those who oppose common core standards “fear…loneliness” due to the “sadness that comes when we realize that our children have thoughts that we did not give them; needs and desires we do not understand; wisdom and insight that might surpass our own.” Therefore, Boylan suggests that “maybe what we need is a common core for families,” which will help them understand that “having a language in common doesn’t mean we have to agree with one another.”
Los Angeles Schools Preparing Students For iPad Safety
The Los Angeles Times (3/21, Blume) reports on a new initiative in Los Angeles schools to teach students how to use their iPad tablets safely. The piece notes that the move comes after students at three high schools quickly disabled security filters last year, resulting in the tablets being recalled. The Times notes that the Los Angeles iPad program has faced criticism that the district made “mistakes, squandering dollars and rushing ill-advisedly into the digital future” in its $1 billion iPad program.
ED Grant To Improve California Special Education Instruction
EdSource Today (3/20, Adams) reports that ED’s Office for Special Education has given a $200,000 grant to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing as part of its $25 million, five-year mission to “improve instruction for children with” disabilities by implementing “reforms in 20 states, including this newly announced effort in California.” The California effort will focus on “curricula at the colleges of education, credentialing standards for teachers and administrators in both general and special education, and measurements of successful educator training programs.”
Duncan’s Support For Later High School Start Times Noted
Holly Yettick writes at the Education Week (3/19) “Inside School Research” blog that a recent report from the University of Minnesota “has helped to awaken a nationwide movement to start school later so students can get more sleep,” noting that the report indicates that starting high school after 8:30 a.m. can improve academic performance, boost attendance rates, and reduce “teenagers’ car crashes in the areas surrounding schools.” The piece notes that interest in moving back high school start times got a boost from Education Secretary Arne Duncan last fall, when he suggested that “secondary schools start later so students can get more sleep.” Yettick quotes Duncan saying, “There’s a lot of research and common sense that lots of teens struggle to get up ... to get on the bus. I’d love to see more districts, you know, seriously contemplating a later start time.” The New York Times (3/14, Hoffman) also mentions Duncan’s support for the concept at its “Well” blog.
Petrilli: CTE Offers Alternative Track To Self-Sufficiency
Michael J. Petrilli, executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, research fellow at the Hoover Institution, and executive editor of Education Next, writes at Slate Magazine (3/19) that schools should be recognizing that not all students are fitted for college and that pushing as many as possible into college may harm them as so few actually graduate with a degree. He urges the development of “another pathway” for students who simply are not prepared for college, but who still need a means of preparing for employment that will allow them to support themselves. That pathway, he says, is “high-quality career and technical education, ideally the kind that combines rigorous coursework with a real-world apprenticeship, and maybe even a paycheck.”
Ali Supports California Teacher Tenure Lawsuit
In an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle (3/19), former Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Russlynn Ali, who is currently the chair of the Emerson Collective Education Fund, writes that under California law, it is “nearly impossible to remove known, chronically underperforming educators from the classroom,” and writes in support of Vergara vs. California, a lawsuit that “asserts that the state laws providing automatic lifetime employment for failing California public school teachers are unconstitutional.” Ali portrays the case as pitting “the power of teachers” against the impetus of “protecting the right of every student in California to strong teaching and a quality education.”
Book Argues School Testing Results In ADHD Diagnosis Spike
NBC News (3/19, Fox) reports that a new book by health economists Richard Scheffler and Stephen Henshaw of the University of California-Berkeley titled “The ADHD Explosion” argues that high-stakes testing is behind “a recent explosion in cases of ADHD.” The article reports that the authors say that this is “not necessarily a bad thing,” in that children must be diagnosed in order to receive “the right treatments.”