Linda Darling-Hammond, State credentialing leader: system ‘challenged’ not broke :: SI&A Cabinet Report

State credentialing leader: system ‘challenged’ not broke :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

State credentialing leader: system ‘challenged’ not broke

(Calif.) Just as Mark Twain famously corrected reports of his death, the head of California’s teaching certification and professional standards agency rejects the notion that the state’s once vaunted educator preparation system is in crisis.

“I know we have challenges – but I’m pleased that we are working on them,” said Linda Darling-Hammond, chair of the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, in an interview last week.

“We should not have a state where there are any low-quality training programs,” she said. “We should not have a situation like we do where there is a supply-and-demand imbalance. We do have a five-alarm fire with respect to recruiting teachers into special education, math and physical sciences. And it’s frustrating that the state isn’t yet ready to take action or put incentives in place, like service scholarships or forgivable loans, to help recruit.”

Darling-Hammond, also a professor of education at Stanford University with a national following for her research on teacher quality, equity issues and school reform, said the challenges facing the teacher preparation community are significant. “We’re going to have to face up to them,” she said. “But I think we are doing a better job than we have in the past.”

Her optimism stands somewhat in contrast to the array of troubles that appear to be plaguing the system.

Enrollment in teacher preparation programs statewide fell almost 74 percent between 2001 and 2013, while the number of teachers earning credentials during that period dropped more than 50 percent.

Although the 2008 recession played a big role in prompting the slide, state and union officials have noted a negative change in perception about the teaching profession among college-age students, prompting some calls for an end to so-called “teacher-bashing” policies that place too much of the burden for student performance on classroom instructors.

The result has been a shortage of teachers in many parts of the state – especially for special education and STEM positions (science, technology, engineering and math).

Although Darling-Hammond acknowledges a degradation in the status of teachers among the public, she said the biggest problem in getting young people to enter the profession had to do with the economy.

“Many, many more people were trained to be teachers and then couldn’t get a job,” she said. “The word went out as it does in any labor market. Now that’s changing and changing rapidly as there’s been an uptick in demand.”

Darling-Hammond said the elimination of incentive grants to help pay college tuition for incoming teachers has also played a part – something she hopes will be addressed soon by the Legislature.

“Once the economics turn around and it is clear there are jobs and there are incentives in place, history suggests that the supply of teachers can go very quickly from inadequate to adequate,” she said.

University preparation programs have also received some criticism for contributing to the decline in the professional status of teaching by not holding the line on high standards.

Darling-Hammond said that isn’t the case in California, where as many as four-fifths of graduates State credentialing leader: system ‘challenged’ not broke :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

Eleven civil rights groups urge Obama to drop test-based K-12 ‘accountability’ system - The Washington Post

Eleven civil rights groups urge Obama to drop test-based K-12 ‘accountability’ system - The Washington Post:

Eleven civil rights groups urge Obama to drop test-based K-12 ‘accountability’ system

Eleven national civil rights groups sent a letter Tuesday to President Obama, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and congressional leaders saying that the current standardized test-based “accountability system” for K-12 education ignores “critical supports and services” children need to succeed and discourages “schools from providing a rich curriculum for all students focused on the 21st century skills they need to acquire.”  The groups make recommendations on how to revamp the system in a way that would improve educational opportunity and equity for students of color.

The letter comes a time of growing resistance to accountability systems based on standardized test scores among educators, parents, principals and superintendents. The Obama administration has expressed some support for the idea that districts and states should review their testing systems but has not said it would change federal mandates that help drive what districts and states do.

The groups signing the letter, which includes a list of recommendations on how to create a new accountability system, are: Advancement Project, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, National Opportunity to Learn (OTL) Campaign, National Urban League (NUL), NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), National Council on Educating Black Children (NCEBC), National Indian Education Association (NIEA) and Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC).



Here’s the letter:



Re: Improving Public Education Accountability Systems and Addressing Educational Equity

President Obama, Secretary Duncan, Congressional and State Educational Leaders:

On behalf of millions of students and families, and civil rights organizations, communities of color, and organizations that reflect the new, diverse majority in public education, we write urging implementation of a set of strong recommendations for advancing opportunity and supporting school integration, equity, and improved accountability within our nation’s systems of public education.

Background

We believe that improved accountability systems at the local, state, and federal levels are central to advancing and broadening equal educational opportunity for each and every child in America. The current educational accountability system has become overly focused on narrow measures of success and, in some cases, has discouraged schools from providing a rich curriculum for all students focused on the 21st century skills they need to acquire. This particularly impacts under-resourced schools that disproportionately serve low-income students and students of color. In our highly inequitable system of education, accountability is not currently designed to ensure students will experience diverse and integrated classrooms with the necessary resources for learning and support for excellent teaching in all schools. It is time to end the advancement of policies and ideas that largely omit the critical supports and services necessary for children and families to access equal educational opportunity in diverse settings and to promote positive educational outcomes.

The demand for our schools to meet new college-and-career-ready standards is happening in the wake of a record number of children living in poverty and an increasingly diverse student population. Students of color represent more than 50 percent of youth and are more than twice as likely to attend segregated schools. Second language learners whose first language is not English now represent 10 percent of all public school students nationwide, and students living in poverty represent virtually half of all US public school students.[1] [2]

Recognizing the challenging backdrop in which our students, schools, and communities are expected to thrive, we are committed to adhering to the civil rights laws of this country that require that all children be educated equitably and effectively based on their needs. This reality must be matched with the learning opportunities, preparation, knowledge, services, supports, and skills that will enable them to lead healthy and successful lives in the world and workforce. From early education to the postsecondary years, we believe that the federal government continues to play a critical role in helping states, districts, and tribes to achieve educational excellence through equity.

While the need for accountability is almost universally agreed upon, there have been concerns raised about overly punitive accountability systems that do not take into account the resources, geography, student population, and needs of specific schools. In particular, the No Child Left Behind law has not accomplished its intended goals of substantially expanding educational equity or significantly improving educational Eleven civil rights groups urge Obama to drop test-based K-12 ‘accountability’ system - The Washington Post:

Teach for America Seeks Help Promoting Itself on Capitol Hill | deutsch29

Teach for America Seeks Help Promoting Itself on Capitol Hill | deutsch29:

Teach for America Seeks Help Promoting Itself on Capitol Hill

Teach for America (TFA) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1991 by Princeton graduate and noneducator, Wendy Kopp. TFA was granted nonprofit status in June 1993. According to its 2013 990, TFA’s end-of-year total assets were $494 million, with $73.5 million of its 2013 revenue designated as “government grants” and $31.6 million of its 2013 revenue earmarked as “service fees revenue.”

Interestingly, TFA’s 2013 990 also includes $4.7 million tagged as “bad debt expense” as part of its total functional expenses.

For eight hours of work per week, TFA chair Wendy Kopp drew a 2013 salary of $176,657. Co-CEOs Matt Kramer and Elisa Villanueva Beard drew salaries of $381,946 for 42 hrs/wk (Kramer) and $342,134 for 40 hrs/wk (Beard).

TFA began as a Peace Corps-like temp agency that sends college graduates outside of the field of teaching into classrooms for usually two years. However, by 2001, TFA had established a second goal: To move former TFA corps members into positions of influence in education, business, and politics in order to solidify and expand TFA’s influence over public education.

Louisiana is an excellent case of TFA in action. The current state superintendent,John White, was in TFA in a New Jersey classroom teaching English for a couple of years. He eventually became TFA executive director of the Chicago area; did a stint as an assistant superintendent in New York under Joel Klein, and then moved on to cosmetically become superintendent of the New Orleans Recovery School District (RSD) before being politically placed into the position of Louisiana state superintendent.

(In this May 2011 nola.com article reporter Andrew Vanacore writes that three days after becoming RSD superintendent, White– who had zero school administration experience– was already being considered for state superintendent.)

In January 2012, with the help of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and former Chiefs for Change leader, Jeb Bush, White did indeed become Louisiana state superintendent. Moreover, in March 2013, White took over as leader of Chiefs for Change so that Jeb! could run for president.

One of White’s key aims is to expand the TFA presence in Louisiana, and especially Teach for America Seeks Help Promoting Itself on Capitol Hill | deutsch29:

Even If NCLB Is Reauthorized, States Push On with Punitive School Policies and Privatization | janresseger

Even If NCLB Is Reauthorized, States Push On with Punitive School Policies and Privatization | janresseger:

Even If NCLB Is Reauthorized, States Push On with Punitive School Policies and Privatization

In an important piece last week for the Education Opportunity Network, Jeff Bryant looks at the way the dynamics are shifting in punitive education “reform.”  Even if Congress reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to take away No Child Left Behind’s federally prescribed turnarounds for schools in the lowest scoring 5 percent across the states, the punitive culture has been absorbed into the states themselves.  Reform that emphasizes sanctions, rather than state investment in education for equity, is particularly appealing to legislators in these times of tax cuts and austerity budgeting.  After all, more than half the states are not yet even investing as much as they were in public education prior to the Great Recession in 2008. Test-and-punish for the lowest-scoring schools is a popular strategy, because people outside the communities where it is imposed don’t feel the pain.  The flavor of the day as far as test-and-punish goes, according to Bryant is the state “Recovery School District,” as it is sometimes called, or state “Achievement School District.”

Bryant comments, “(T)here is a danger punitive ‘accountability’ policies from the federal government are about to pivot to even more unreasonable measures from states.  The danger, in particular, comes in the form of new policies being taken up by an increasing number of states to create special agencies—usually made up of non-elected officials—with the power to swoop into communities, take over local school governance, and turn schools over to private management groups often associated with large charter chains.  These appointed boards often take on the guise of a shining knight—using names like Recovery School District or Achievement School District.  But they are anything but gallant soldiers coming to the rescue.”

Recovery School District.  Achievement School District. They are the very same thing.  Though Bryant’s review of this trend doesn’t go back ten years, the latest wave of state school takeovers began in the winter after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans.  Naomi Klein describes the birth of the Louisiana Recovery School District in her 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine:  “In sharp contrast to the glacial pace with which the levees were repaired and the electricity grid was brought back online, the auctioning off of New Orleans’ school system took place with military speed and precision.  Within nineteen months, with most of the city’s poor residents still in exile, New Orleans’ public school system had been almost completely replaced by privately run charter schools.  Before Hurricane Katrina, the school board had run 123 public schools; now it ran just 4… New Orleans teachers used to be represented by a strong union; now the union’s contract had been shredded, and its forty-seven hundred members had all been fired… New Orleans was now, according to the New York Times, ‘the nation’s preeminent laboratory for the widespread use of charter schools’…. I call these orchestrated raids on the public sphere in the wake of catastrophic events, combined with the treatment of disasters as exciting market opportunities, ‘disaster capitalism.’” (The Shock Doctrine, pp. 5-6)

Today’s school takeovers through Recovery School Districts or Achievement School Districts do not follow hurricanes or floods or earthquakes.  Instead the sense of catastrophe that is Even If NCLB Is Reauthorized, States Push On with Punitive School Policies and Privatization | janresseger:

Is There A Pension Crisis? | Shanker Institute

Is There A Pension Crisis? | Shanker Institute:

Is There A Pension Crisis?

Our guest author today is David Cay Johnston, a distinguished visiting lecturer at the Syracuse University College of Law and a former Pulitzer prize-winning financial reporter at The New York Times. This article is adapted from his remarks to an ASI-sponsored conversation on the topic in March, which also included remarks from Chad Aldeman, Teresa Ghilarducci, and Dan Pedrotty. A video of this event can be found here.

So the question is whether there is a pension crisis. The answer is yes, absolutely. It’s just not the one that politicians always talk about.

Contrary to that you hear about on TV, in market economics, defined benefit pensions are the second most efficient way to provide for income in old age. The most effective way would be a national program that spreads risks to everyone. The least efficient way to do it is through defined contribution plans.

There is abundant evidence for this. Defined contribution plans work very well, but only as supplements for prosperous people such as me and my wife, who is a public charity CEO, they are not at all effective for most people. That’s be because defined contribution plans violate specialization, one of the most basic tenets of market economics as taught to us by Adam Smith, the man who first explained market economics.

How many of you would perform surgery on yourself or your spouse? Or dentistry? How many have learned the hard way that doing your own plumbing makes for inefficiencies and creates a mess? But when we move to defined contribution plans, if retirees have any plan at all, we make the assumption that everyone is competent to be an investment manager, and they are not.

In fact, retirees managing their own plans tend pay higher prices than necessary and their investing performance is atrocious. In down markets, defined contribution plans lose about 25 percent more than professionally managed defined benefit pension plans. And in up markets, they earn about 25 percent less. To think that most people can be specialists in every field is to defy one of the defining principles of modern wealth creation.

So why are defined benefit pension plans being described everywhere as being in a state of crisis? The answer is very simple: systematic theft.

Pensions and other retirement benefits are nothing more than wages. They are wages that could have been taken today, but instead are deferred for old age. We often hear politicians talk about “contributions” to the plan, and this creates the misimpression that they are a gift or a gratuity. They are not. Workers receive a certain level of compensation, often referred to as a package. How that package is divvied up – how much is paid immediately in cash wages, how much goes for vacations, how much goes for sick leave, how much goes for health insurance, and how much goes into a retirement plan – is mere semantics, it’s not economics (for more on this, see here).

As both a legal and an economic principle, all the money in any pension plan has been earned by the workers. Now, I’ve talked about this before and people immediately respond “But the taxpayers put the money in for teachers, now didn't they?” No, they did not.

Taxpayers exchanged their dollars for the work of the teachers and, once the teachers are paid, it is their money. They earned it. This is true for bridge engineers and state troopers and everybody else who has a job. Pensions are earned. If they were not the system would be a huge criminal enterprise in which gifts of public money were made to the workers.

Accounting systems are often set up to disguise this fact. Congress participates in this confusion through how it handles the payroll tax – people believe that there is a matching contribution to their Social Security fund. The law is even called FICA, the Federal Insurance Contributions Act. But in fact, that is Is There A Pension Crisis? | Shanker Institute:

More on the Importance of the Teacher Supply - Paul Bruno

More on the Importance of the Teacher Supply - Paul Bruno:

More on the Importance of the Teacher Supply

Last week the Brookings Institution’s Chalkboard blog published a piece of mine on the importance of the teacher supply to education reform. It’s really an elaboration of a point I’ve made at various times in the past, with California as an illustrative example:

[M]any teacher evaluation reform efforts may be focused too heavily on the demand side of teacher evaluation. That is, many reform efforts tend to assume that principals are overly generous with their evaluations because they lack either the motivation or the information to demand better performance from their teachers. There may be something to this, but it is important not to ignore the supply side of the teacher quality problem. After all, the extent to which a principal is willing to dismiss (or give a poor evaluation to) a teacher will likely depend in part upon her beliefs about the probability of finding a superior replacement in a reasonable period of time.

The extent to which principals today are constrained in their evaluation and dismissal decisions by the quality and size of the teacher labor supply is not obvious and probably varies by grade level, content area, and geographic location. There are, however, reasons to suspect that teacher supply constraints are real and may be getting worse.

Feedback has generally been very positive, but I did hear a few critiques that are worth responding to. Some of this I’d have included in the original post but even as it was I was running a little over-long.

“It’s Much Harder to Use Policy to Influence Teacher Supply”

I heard from several people that the reason education reform has not targeted supply more directly is that the policy levers to influence demand are mostly at the K-12 level and for various reasons therefore easier to pull. That is, evaluation reform can be legislated or controlled much more easily than change in the higher education system (where teachers are trained).

There may be something to this, but I’m not sure I fully buy it. For one thing, teacher evaluation reform seems to me to have been enormously difficult politically in most places, and my point is precisely that for all of the political oxygen that’s been consumed the actual impacts have often been muted. So I’m not really sure what “harder” means when thinking about teacher supply reform.

Second, the K-12/higher ed dichotomy is largely false. While improving, say, teacher preparation would be hard, the teacher supply also depends a great deal on factors at the K-12 level. As I wrote in the Brookings piece, teacher compensation, working conditions, and even evaluation may all matter for the quantity and quality of the teacher supply, but seem to me have been unjustifiably neglected.

Finally, while reform at the higher education level may be difficult, it could nevertheless be worthwhile. In fact, teacher preparation reforms may be one of the best ways to improve not only the size, but the quality of the teacher supply. That promise is why I signed on as an adviser to Deans for Impact.

“Reformers Really Have Targeted the Teacher Supply”

Matt Barnum thinks I’m not giving reformers enough credit for improving the teacher supply. After all, the rise of alternative certification – which has lowered barriers to entry into teaching seemingly without sacrificing quality – is arguably one of reformers’ biggest policy wins.

I’m a supporter of alternative certification for this very reason, so I basically agree with Matt. Three caveats, however.

First, it’s not entirely obvious to me exactly how big the supply effects of alternative certification programs really are. Some programs seem to be making an effort to target geographic and subject areas that are most in need, but that’s not a universal priority and I haven’t seen a good analysis of whether these programs are meeting our greatest needs in effective ways. I also don’t know how many people who enter through alternative certification wouldn’t enter the classroom otherwise. (As one piece of anecdata, I entered the classroom through a traditional route after my application to Teach for America was rejected.)

Second, to the extent that alternative certification programs do not emphasize – and sometimes deliberately deemphasize – teacher retention, they may be More on the Importance of the Teacher Supply - Paul Bruno:

‘Parent trigger’ campaigns can continue despite lack of new test scores | EdSource

‘Parent trigger’ campaigns can continue despite lack of new test scores | EdSource:

‘Parent trigger’ campaigns can continue despite lack of new test scores

While California’s testing and accountability system is in flux, parents are allowed to attempt to force major changes at schools considered failing based on tests that are at least two years old and that measure material that’s no longer being taught.

A judge’s ruling earlier this month in an Anaheim case indicated that parent groups can continue with so-called “parent trigger” campaigns to transform schools that are low-performing, even though recent test scores are unavailable.

“The crux of this ruling is quite empowering for every parent in California,” said Ben Austin, the former executive director of Parent Revolution, who is now with the nonprofit Students Matter.

Under the Parent Empowerment Act of 2010, also known as the “parent trigger law,” parents can prompt changes at their schools, including replacing principals or turning schools into charters, if the schools fail to meet test-score goals. But California is in the middle of moving to a new testing system and produced its last standardized scores in 2013.

In Anaheim, Palm Lane Elementary School, which sits about a mile and a half from Disneyland, is proceeding with plans to convert into a charter in 2016, said Gloria Romero, the former state senator who co-authored the law and who now runs the California Center for Parent Empowerment. She helped lead the Anaheim parents. Parents complained about the removal of a principal, who they claimed was improving the school, and school administrators’ failure to address their education concerns.

Anaheim City School District officials argued in the Orange County Superior Court case that parents were ineligible to use the “parent trigger law” because no test scores were available from 2014 – the year when parents started collecting signatures for the transformation of Palm Lane Elementary School. Both sides filed legal complaints in April.

Judge Andrew Banks sided with the parents because the California Department of Education had frozen test scores, called adequate yearly progress, or AYP, so that 2013 results could count for 2014.

“The evidence clearly establishes that Palm Lane failed to make adequate yearly progress,” Banks wrote in the July 16 ruling, clarifying that the 2013 scores count.

Superintendent Linda Wagner said the district filed the suit to clarify the law because of the lack of recent test scores. She said the law creates “ambiguities” for school boards that need legislative attention.

“We hope that the courts and the Legislature will provide the much-needed clarification and guidance to school districts throughout California on these challenging issues,” Wagner said in a statement the day after the ruling.

The district board is appealing the ruling – a decision backed by the California Teachers Association, a longtime opponent of the “parent trigger law.” Mike Myslinski, a spokesman for the teachers union with 325,000 members, said the law is disruptive, divisive and does not guarantee better learning.

“We also agree with the school district that it makes no sense to allow outdated student testing data to be used to disrupt the future of a school, as was done with Palm Lane,” said Myslinski in an email.

Senate Minority Leader Bob Huff, R-San Dimas, who co-authored the law, said he is asking what can be done to keep the “parent trigger” ‘Parent trigger’ campaigns can continue despite lack of new test scores | EdSource:

Beyond the headlines: NCLB reform's lesser-known provisions | MinnPost

Beyond the headlines: NCLB reform's lesser-known provisions | MinnPost:

MinnPost's education reporting is made possible by a grant from the Bush Foundation.

Beyond the headlines: NCLB reform's lesser-known provisions

When Congress passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in April of 1965, it opened a major front in Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty.

Earlier this month the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate each took the most concrete steps of the last 15 years toward revising the law, known most recently as No Child Left Behind. Can lawmakers deliver the president — who is opposed to one version and disappointed in the other — an acceptable rewrite?

If you followed the congressional votes, you no doubt know a few things: that the overhaul is almost a decade overdue, that the differing versions passed by the House of Representatives and Senate tackle hot-button policies concerning equity in funding, school accountability and student testing.

Both bills would require states to essentially continue the same number of annual student assessments and to report the results by race, disability and English-language-learner status and socioeconomic status. What is done about the issues illuminated by the data, including efforts to improve schools that fail large numbers of students, will be mostly left to states.

Beyond the big headlines, however, the revisions raise a number of interesting issues.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin

For starters, the Senate bill includes a several notable proposals to improve the state of student testing. An amendment by Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin would give states money to audit their testing regimes and to develop better ones.

In part because the lion’s share of the tests are add-ons required by states and districts, the idea has broad support. To give it some teeth, an amendment by Colorado’s Michael Bennet would cap the number of instructional hours that could be dedicated to testing.

There is also a provision that would give permission to up to seven states to pilot alternative assessment systems. Efforts to create better ways of demonstrating students' learning, including portfolio-style performance assessments, competency exams and other measures have been in the works for decades.

And there are researchers who believe formative assessments — the quizzes and exams that give teachers useful information about gaps in students’ understanding — can measure proficiency on state standards.

In short, the Senate rewrite — passed by an unusually bipartisan vote of 81-17 — would keep the tests but encourage fewer, smarter and more relevant ones.

Rep. John Kline

As head of the House’s powerful Education and the Workforce Committee, Lakeville Republican John Kline has been the Minnesotan with the highest education profile at the Capitol. While he lacks a title, Minneapolis Democrat Sen. Al Franken has served on the Senate Education Committee since he was first elected.

Most of the attention Franken’s efforts have garnered have concerned his dogged pursuit of legislation outlawing bullying and discrimination of gay, lesbian and transgender students.

His attempt to get those protections written into the current bill failed, but nine amendments Franken authored are in the iteration that passed. A number of them are borrowed directly from successful or long-sought Minnesota innovations.

In addition to funding for science, technology, engineering and math programs and afterschool learning, Franken’s amendments would create infrastructures to support students in foster care, mental health partnerships between schools and providers, expanded school counseling services and language-immersion programs for Native American students, among other initiatives.

Sen. Al Franken

Perhaps most directly tied to a local success, Franken would expand access to accelerated learning programs, including dual-credit high school-college coursework, as a means to ensuring college readiness.

Both bills would curtail the power of the U.S. secretary of education. He or she could no longer issue waivers from federal regulations, the Obama administration’s mechanism for dealing with congressional gridlock on NCLB. Also off limits would be academic standards, school turnarounds, tests, and states’ goals and accountability systems.

Finally, while civil rights groups are still unhappy with the Senate’s accountability policies, a group of Democrats in that chamber put forth an amendment that would require states to act when student achievement falls below certain thresholds. The measure garnered 42 votes. 

Leaders of both chambers have said they are confident they can put a compromise package on the president’s desk by fall. Beyond the headlines: NCLB reform's lesser-known provisions | MinnPost:

Jersey Jazzman: State Standards, Mapping the NAEP, & Student Performance: Who's the "Liar"? Part II

Jersey Jazzman: State Standards, Mapping the NAEP, & Student Performance: Who's the "Liar"? Part II:

State Standards, Mapping the NAEP, & Student Performance: Who's the "Liar"?

Last time, I challenged the reformy notion that higher standards a priori lead to better test-based performance. The basis for my challenge is a new report from the National Center for Education Statistics: "Mapping State Proficiency Standards Onto NAEP Scales: Results From the 2013 NAEP Reading and Mathematics Assessments."

The fine folks at NCES look at the proficiency levels set on the various state tests across the nation, then map those levels on to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP. Since a representative sample of students across the nation take the NAEP, we can look at what a student deemed "proficient" gets as a minimum score on the national test in one state, and compare it to what a student in a different state would have to get to be "proficient" there.

Folks who complain about the "honesty gap" seem to think it's a big deal that states not "lie" to their students:

Parents deserve the truth. But unfortunately, in most states there is a significant gap between the NAEP scores and what states report as their proficiency rate. This “Honesty Gap” is not new and something many states acknowledged years ago.

We are on the right road to fixing this problem. Today, many states are mid-stream in taking the steps needed to address the Honesty Gap – mainly, the adoption of rigorous, comparable standards and high-quality assessments that give parents real information. 

We can’t go backwards. Opponents of Common Core and high quality tests want to take states and the country backward. They offer no alternative plan

- See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2015/07/state-standards-mapping-naep-student_28.html#sthash.clxiAL2s.dpuf

To get support for education bill, senators conjure lost art: Compromise - The Washington Post

To get support for education bill, senators conjure lost art: Compromise - The Washington Post:

To get support for education bill, senators conjure lost art: Compromise

Sen. Lamar Alexander walked into Sen. Patty Murray’s office and closed the door.

Alexander, a Republican from Tennessee, had just taken control of the education committee in the new GOP-led Senate and was determined to rewrite No Child Left Behind, the main K-12 federal education law. It was early February, and he had released a draft of his ideal bill, inviting lawmakers to amend it with their own ideas in committee before bringing it to the full Senate.

Murray, the committee’s ranking Democrat from Washington state, was equally serious about crafting a new law. But she bluntly told Alexander that his way wouldn’t work.

Using a Republican draft as a starting point would only lead to yet another partisan logjam that has come to define Congress, and it would doom their chances of passing an education law that was eight years overdue, she said.

As their staffs anxiously waited in an ante room, Murray and Alexander made an old-school deal —they would find common ground and together write a bipartisan bill. They would compromise.

Alexander and Murray arrive on Capitol Hill for a committee hearing to look at ways to reform the No Child Left Behind law. (Susan Walsh/AP)

“I know the general atmosphere of Congress today is ‘Whatever they do is bad’ and ‘Whatever they do is bad’,” Murray said in an interview. The only way to slice through that dysfunction, she said, is to start with a “document at the outset that both of us said we could support and live with and work from.”

It wouldn’t be easy, she told Alexander. “It takes really listening to each other, working it, member by member, line by line, idea by idea,” she said.

Alexander, 75, and Murray, 64, had never worked closely but they were suited to the task. Murray had a growing reputation as a dealmaker after negotiating a budget with Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) in 2013; Alexander had stepped down from Republican leadership in 2011, saying he wanted to focus on bridging divides rather than scoring political points.

[From the archives: How Patty Murray sold Democrats on the budget deal]

Alexander accepted Murray’s suggestion.

“And it turned out to be good advice,” he said later in an interview. “I gave up something, but I gained more — not only a working relationship with her but a lot of support from the Democratic members of the committee.”

The result was remarkable. On a Senate committee that spans the political spectrum from progressive Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on the left to tea party favorite Bill Cassidy (R-La.) on the right — and includes two declared To get support for education bill, senators conjure lost art: Compromise - The Washington Post:

Why rich kids do better than smarter, less advantaged kids: 'opportunity hoarding' | OregonLive.com

Why rich kids do better than smarter, less advantaged kids: 'opportunity hoarding' | OregonLive.com:

Why rich kids do better than smarter, less advantaged kids: 'opportunity hoarding'

Would you rather be born rich and average or poor and smart?

We like to think that in a free society a lot of the smart, disadvantaged kids will find a way to become successful, but a new report from Great Britain suggests otherwise. Researchers tracked the accomplishments of 17,000 people born during the same week in 1970 and found that family, social and institutional connections, rather than ability as expressed through cognitive tests, are the best predictors of success. The study analyzed the subjects' accomplishments up to their 42^nd birthdays.

"The empirical evidence presented here shows that there are unequal chances among children who perform relatively poorly in cognitive tests taken at age 5 and those who perform relatively well," the study authors write. They add: "Children showing early signs of low ability from better-off families largely avoid downward mobility. ... High attaining children from less advantaged family backgrounds (income or social class) are less likely to be in a high earning or top job as an adult."

The child's parents and environment appear to make the difference, the study states.

"The education of parents was found to correlate with children's career success, and the connections afforded by more educated parents were found to create an unequal playing field," The Independent newspaper writes of the research. The study's authors call this outcome "opportunity hoarding," insisting it means "less connected children" get shut out from education and career possibilities.

Great Britain is famous for its class system, with rich kids going to swank private schools like Eton and seeing doors open for them because of their accents. Think "Upstairs, Downstairs." But the old, snooty social norms in the United Kingdom have been in decline for decades, and the country's capitalist, entrepreneurial economy is in many ways comparable to that of the U.S.

The study, from Britain's Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, even Why rich kids do better than smarter, less advantaged kids: 'opportunity hoarding' | OregonLive.com:

TeachingCenter - the latest developments in the exciting world of pro teaching | Comedy Central

TeachingCenter - Key & Peele Video Clip | Comedy Central:

TeachingCenter - the latest developments in the exciting world of pro teaching | Comedy Central

Key and Peele
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Boyd Maxwell and Perry Schmidt report on the latest developments in the exciting world of pro teaching.

Teacher-Turned-Congressman: Rep. Mark Takano's Take on ESEA Rewrite - Politics K-12 - Education Week

Teacher-Turned-Congressman: Rep. Mark Takano's Take on ESEA Rewrite - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

Teacher-Turned-Congressman: Rep. Mark Takano's Take on ESEA Rewrite

Meet Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., a two-term congressman who, prior to his election in 2012, spent more than two decades teaching middle and high school.

Takano represents some of California's valley communities in and around Riverside, just east of Los Angeles, where a large portion of the public school students he taught qualify for free- and reduced-priced lunch. The member of the House education committee is well-known for making waves during a heated immigration debate back in 2013, when he hilariously edited and graded a letter from Republicans that complained about the Senate's immigration reform bill.

Takano is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a group of the most-liberal House members. He recently chatted with Education Week about his experiences in the classroom. He began as a substitute teacher in and around Boston while earning his bachelor's degree at Harvard University, but spent nearly his entire teaching middle and high school in Rialto, Calif., one of the communities he now serves as a congressman. We also talked about the current reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act moving through Congress.

Quick take-aways? Takano favors grade-span testing, supports the federal mandate that states and schools test 95 percent of students, and thinks accountability should be entirely left up to states.

Here is an edited version of our conversation:

Talk a little bit about why you pursued teaching.

Some days I'd be off to work in Brookline [Mass.], which is a well-regarded school district, and other days I'd be taking the [subway] into inner-city Boston where I'd walk through a metal detector. That experience made me rethink going to law school right away and made me think that beginning to address the achievement gap was an important socioeconomic issue to try to gain some perspective on and try to figure out how to solve it. So that experience drove me into teaching.

I resisted initially the idea that I should go through an education school program. After all, I had just graduated from an Ivy League [school], what more did I need to know? But I discovered teaching humbled me a lot. It was far more challenging than I had anticipated.

You had the experience teaching both before Congress passed No Child Left Behind Act—the current iteration of the federal K-12 law—and after. How did things change?

The [requirement that states disaggregate subgroup] data revealed performance gaps and caused us to reassess how we were teaching kids. But as concerns about the sanctions contained in the law grew—the punishments and the accountability system and schools being put on improvement lists—it began to ratchet up the pressure to teach to the test. Initially it was a one-week or one-month type of thing, but it expanded into a semester and then expanded into a full school year that almost became entirely about test preparation.

The high-stakes nature of the annual testing, I think really did teaching and learning a disservice. That type of accountability, I just didn't think it worked. I saw the poor performers being loaded up with more hours of [English/language arts] and math and less access to the kind of subject matter that engages students and help them stay in schools. It became harder as teacher.

Let's talk about the ongoing ESEA reauthorization. How is it panning out from your perspective?

In large part, I want to see a reduced federal accountability component of ESEA. Both the House and Senate bills do that.

I would prefer to see [annual testing] ratcheted back to grade-span testing. I don't think we need to be testing every year. My concern is that some states will misuse the data and construe it to mean that annual testing can infer teacher performance, and I don't think that's right. Ultimately, I can live with the annual testing mandate mainly because the high stakes have been taken out, at least at the federal level. More than that, I am interested in clean, valid data.

What do you think about the provision in the House ESEA bill that would ensure the rights of students to opt out of testing?

 I think there is a benefit to be gained by saying at least 95 percent of your students must be tested, and if you don't we should withhold federal money from you. Parents, teachers, and students all have the right to know how well a school is doing, how well a school district is doing. We have to be more humble at the federal level and say we don't know how to do more accountability. What we can do is insist that students are assessed and states use good-quality tests, and we don't over-test.

What do you think about the demands being made by Democrats and the civil rights community to add stronger accountability language to a final ESEA rewrite?

The devil is in the details. I think it's not too unfair to say let's just clean the slate as far as what we're going to hold low-performing schools accountable for. It's all relative. I can understand parents of disabled students, students who are low-income and minority, their concerns that school districts will ignore them. But to have an entire school labeled a failure because a subgroup isn't meeting the target, that gets real tricky in terms of how we define that. I just don't know if we can get there in a conference committee.

What would a perfect ESEA reauthorization look like to you?

My perfect bill would be: Let's fully fund Title I and not block grant it. I would keep in place the schoolwide program threshold so that you can't dilute the money if you have less than 40 percent of Title I students in a school. I wouldn't have portability, and wouldn't allow [Title I dollars] to follow kids into the private school setting. I would emphasize charter schools really should be returned to their original idea. They're not there to create competition more than they are to be places of experimentation from which the conventional schools are able to learn from. I would ensure we increase money for magnet schools. I would put incentives in for school districts to take a look at concurrent and dual-enrollment programs, early-college high schools, and ways in which career and technical pathways could be introduced much earlier.

What odds do you give the conference process?

I feel good because the Senate bill came out of committee with unanimous support. It's largely something I could vote for if it came straight to the House. If the Senate bill passes with large numbers and comes to conference with momentum, I think the poison pills in the House bill can be taken out. There will be a lot of Republicans that won't like a watered down bill, but I believe there is a majority coalition of Republicans and Democrats who will likely vote for the reauthorization. The more that it resembles the Senate bill, the larger the chance we have of getting ESEA reauthorization through.Teacher-Turned-Congressman: Rep. Mark Takano's Take on ESEA Rewrite - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

Why Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight blog is wrong about teacher evaluation - The Washington Post

Why Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight blog is wrong about teacher evaluation - The Washington Post:

Why Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight blog is wrong about teacher evaluation

FiveThirtyEight is a blog created by Nate Silver, a famous statistician who developed a system for forecasting player performance in Major League Baseball and accurately predicted the winner of 49 out of 50 states in the 2008 presidential election. A few years ago, he was asked during an online Q & A session at Reddit whether he believes student standardized test scores should be used to evaluate teachers. His response went like:

There are certainly cases where applying objective measures badly is worse than not applying them at all, and education may well be one of those. In my job out of college as a consultant, one of my projects involved visiting public school classrooms in Ohio and talking to teachers, and their view was very much that teaching-to-the-test was constraining them in some unhelpful ways. But this is another topic that requires a book- or thesis-length treatment to really evaluate properly. Maybe I’ll write a book on it someday.

[Teacher: How my highest scoring students actually hurt my evaluation]

He hasn’t written the book yet, or published anything at length on the topic since. But now, Andrew Flowers, FiveThirtyEight’s quantitative editor, has published a piece on the blog about teacher evaluation with this headline, “The Science of Grading Teachers Gets High Marks.”

In the July 20 post — and in a response to questions I sent him — Flowers defends controversial “value-added modeling” (VAM) research conducted by three researchers that, among other things, predicts long-term student outcomes by using student standardized test scores to evaluate their teachers. One of those outcomes is future earnings, with the researchers predicting how much more students with “effective” teachers can earn vs. students with “ineffective” teachers — with effectiveness measured by VAM.

President Obama cited the research in his 2012 State of the Union address by saying, “We know a good teacher can increase the lifetime income of a classroom by over $250,000.” And a judge in the controversial Vergara v. California case referred to it as evidence to assert that “a single year in a classroom with a grossly ineffective teacher costs students $1.4 million in Why Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight blog is wrong about teacher evaluation - The Washington Post:

With A Brooklyn Accent: Summer School Nightmare- Turning Up the Head on "Student Achievement"

With A Brooklyn Accent: Summer School Nightmare- Turning Up the Head on "Student Achievement":
Summer School Nightmare- Turning Up the Heat on "Student Achievement"

NOTE: This was written by a teacher in a high poverty district somewhere in the Midwest. Child and Teacher Abuse in full effect

 A time to maintain achievement, right? To prevent the "summer slide" and keep students engaged and excited about learning. After all, it's building relationships with our students that can extend far beyond the confines of classroom walls.

 But what happens when the school offering summer school has no air conditioning? Does that sound beneficial? Healthy? Safe? Temperatures inside the classroom reading 98 degrees on the thermostat. How about that for the student with Epilepsy who's seizures are triggered by heat exhaustion and dehydration. Sound safe? Healthy? Beneficial?

 If that doesn't have your attention, let's turn up the heat a little more. Requiring teachers to supervise lunch for the students but not allowing them to eat. Not allowing them to sit down. Oh no, teachers must waste instructional time. While students eat inside the fiery furnace called the cafeteria, their teachers are commanded to stand and do flash cards or another educational task. Teachers are expected to not only suffer these conditions themselves, but to sit by and watch their students suffer, too. Every minute counts, right? Don't waste precious time walking kids to the drinking fountain, either. The water is not only warm, it's "against district policy" to use instructional time in too many transitions.

 Yes, the fire has been lit, folks. Our kids, who deserve better, are being burned. They deserve the best and brightest education. Your highly qualified, certified teachers and their students are suffering in silence while those at the top are sitting inside their air conditioned offices on the phone with the next best corporation who's in the running for the silver bullet. The next "new program" they will demand the teachers use in the classroom to bring up those test scores. Here's an idea for administration and school boards.

 If you want to bring up the scores and raise the achievement gap, turn down the heat on your teachers. Take some of the pressure off your With A Brooklyn Accent: Summer School Nightmare- Turning Up the Head on "Student Achievement":