Ed-tech groups give candidates a wake-up call

From: eSchool News
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/?i=54183;_hbguid=c2ecd83f-00fe-41f0-8904-898f09d57cc1
By Meris Stansbury, Assistant Editor, eSchool News

New ad campaign aims to spur discussion about education and technology

As the 2008 presidential race heats up, school stakeholders are anxious to hear the candidates' views on public education. For major education and ed-tech advocacy groups, the topic is about more than just a political agenda; it could well determine the success of the United States in the new global economy.

To emphasize the importance of education to the nation's future and to drive home how much schools need to change in order to educate the children of tomorrow, the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA), and the National Education Association (NEA) have teamed up to develop a public service announcement (PSA) campaign aimed at the presidential candidates.

The campaign calls on the next president to respond to the groups' vision for a 21st-century learning environment, says Keith Krueger, CoSN's chief executive.

"We hope it will draw the attention of the presidential candidates and become something discussed and debated on the campaign trail, leading to major educational technology initiatives in the next administration. We also hope that the PSA will raise the profile of this issue in the minds of voters," Krueger said.

Although both Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and Arizona Sen. John McCain--the presumptive Democratic and Republican candidates for president--mention education on their web sites, and though their representatives have outlined some plans of action concerning No Child Left Behind and teacher salaries (see "McCain, Obama reps discuss education"), education certainly has not been a notable buzzword during the campaign ... so far.

With only 7 percent of U.S. college students currently majoring in math or science fields, and with education at the bottom of all industries that use technology, educational technology and the importance of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education must be among the major subjects discussed during the 2008 presidential campaign season, according to CoSN and the other groups.

The PSA starts out by reminding the future president that, thanks to the sound investments made in STEM education in the '60s, Americans walked on the moon, helping the nation win the coveted space race.

"Today, nearly 40 years after this historic accomplishment, we're facing new challenges--including a flattening global economy and climate change," the ad reads. "Now, more than ever, we must engage and train the next generation of scientists and innovators to address these 21st-century problems and opportunities. Student access to school technology, robust teacher technology preparation, and a renewed focus on 21st-century skills are as critical to this mission as they were to the Apollo astronauts."

This appeal to the presidential candidates comes shortly after another PSA, launched by CoSN and the Pearson Foundation, called on educators to develop contemporary classroom practices that incorporate technology to individualize and maximize student learning.

This appeal to the presidential candidates comes shortly after another PSA, launched by CoSN and the Pearson Foundation, called on educators to develop contemporary classroom practices that incorporate technology to individualize and maximize student learning.

He added that the PSA is a great way to spread this message, especially if it is spread virally and beyond local communities into mainstream conversation.

"We know that we cannot reach out ultimate goal of a thoroughly modern classroom relying solely on state and local initiatives and without federal leadership and support," Krueger explained. "The current administration has had limited interest in technology in the classroom and has stalled efforts to modernize teaching and learning. Through this PSA campaign, we hope to show the next administration that educational technology is central to improving the nation's economy and spur a reinvigoration of the federal government's investments in education technology."

Mary Ann Wolf, executive director of SETDA, said public education can improve only with a concerted effort by the next president and Congress. Besides participating in the PSA campaign, Wolf recently had the opportunity to testify before the House Committee on Education and Labor regarding the National Math Panel recommendations.

At the hearing, Wolf discussed the importance of educational technology to increasing students' engagement and achievement and pinpointing their strengths and weaknesses early and often through the use of formative assessment.

According to Wolf, committee Chairman Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., "strongly stated his frustration with the lack of use of technology in classrooms" and indicated that he would invite her back for a hearing focused on the potential of technology in the systemic reform of education.
Links:
Consortium for School Networking
State Educational Technology Directors Association
International Society for Technology in Education
National Education Association

WorldWide Telescope brings the universe to students' desktops

From: eSchool News
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/site-of-the-week/site/?i=54178;_hbguid=0297c07e-9791-4b25-a5fa-e971e8d5db21&d=site-of-the-week

Microsoft Corp. has launched its answer to Google Sky: a free, web-based program for zooming around the universe from any internet-connected computer. Developed by Microsoft’s research arm, the WorldWide Telescope—which debuted in May—knits together images from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and other labs. Computer users can browse through the galaxy on their own or take guided tours of different outer-space destinations developed by astronomers and academics. The site lets users choose from a number of different telescopes and switch between different light wavelengths. “The WorldWide Telescope is a powerful tool for science and education that makes it possible for everyone to explore the universe,” said Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman, in a statement.

http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/

10 Things to Do When You Only Have 5 Minutes Left in Class

from www.theapple.com
http://www.theapple.com/benefits/4282-10-things-to-do-when-you-only-have-5-minutes-left-in-class?referral=ta_nlet

You’ve completed your lessons for the day, but you still have some time left and a group of eager students with nothing productive to do. What can you do in this time to keep your class under control until the bell rings? Here is a list of 10 things to do when you only have 5 minutes left in class.

1. Journal writing:
Have your students write a journal entry to summarize the things that they learned in class that particular day. Make sure they date their entries so that they will have a record of when they wrote in their journals. This is a particular good exercise to help kids reinforce what they learned, as well as provide them with questions that they may have the following day on something they did not understand completely.

2. Conduct a poll:
With only 5 minutes left in class, this is the perfect time to have a poll for the students to vote on. You can use facts to get the kids feelings about whether or not they think something was fair, or list possible responses as ways that the kids would do something different than what actually happened. For instance, when talking about Abraham Lincoln and freeing the slaves, perhaps students would have handled the situation in a different way than Abe.

3. Writing notes:
Students are always writing notes in class, but usually get in trouble when they get caught. This time give permission for kids to write notes, but it has to be a fact that they learned in class and pass it to another student. This way the whole class is getting a fact that they might not have know about the lesson. Collect the notes as students leave the class.

4. The Toilet Paper Game:
This game is a fun way to review what kids learned in class. Because they pick up on the way the game is played very quickly, you will have to change it every time you use it. How it works is that you tell the students to pull off anywhere from 1 to 5 pieces of toilet paper from a roll, but do not tell them the rule of the game until everyone has done so. Then, use the amount of paper each student pulled off to give you that number of facts about the lesson they learned that particular day. For instance, if a student pulls of one piece of the roll, they have to give one fact about the lesson, and so on. The next time you will probably have lots of kids pull off one piece (because they think they are getting off easy), and you will need to switch the rules a bit to catch them off guard.

5. Ticket to Leave:
Give each student a ticket. Ask each student to write a fact about the lesson they learned on their ticket. As the students are leaving they must present their ticket to you. If they do not have a correct fact on their ticket, give them a chance to answer a review question that you have already prepared before they leave the classroom.

6. Read a book:
You can read part of a book to the class during the last 5 minutes. Eventually you will read an entire book.

7. Play Hangman:
Use this game to have kids guess words related to the lesson they learned that day.

8. Toss a ball:
Have the students sit in a circle. Using a small rubber ball, toss it to a student. The student who catches the ball has to give you a fact about the lesson they are learning, or ask you a question about something they do not understand. When that student is done he tosses the ball to another student, and it keeps repeating until the bell rings.

9. Pictionary:
Students enjoy the opportunity to write on the board. Make up about 3 to 5 words that have to do with a lesson the kids are learning. Give a student the chance to draw the word out on the board. When another student guess what the drawing is, they get to come up and draw the next word.

10. Puzzle worksheets:
A good teacher always has a set of puzzle sheets for students to complete when there is time left in class. You can have word searches, crossword, cryptogram, and hidden picture puzzles ready to go for any lesson that you are teaching. You can view all of classroom game worksheets.

Educators Get a ‘Second Life’

From: Education Week
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/06/18/42secondlife_ep.h27.html?tmp=1906496078
Vol. 27, Issue 42, Pages 1,17
By Andrew Trotter


For educators who think real life does not offer enough opportunities to practice their profession, there’s Second Life, an Internet-based virtual environment that counts thousands of educators among its enthusiasts.


Second Life bears a passing resemblance to an online game, with users represented by digitally drawn characters, called avatars, that can interact and engage in a vast array of activities. But a growing number of K-12 educators and groups have come to see the 3-D virtual environment as having educational potential that is very real.


“Think of Second Life as a world, an extension of the physical Earth, and a place where you will find a thriving educational community,” said Peggy Sheehy, a teacher in New York state who has become a Second Life evangelist to the K-12 community.


Linden Research Inc., the San Francisco-based company that owns Second Life, considers education to be a core function of its virtual world, according to Claudia L’Amoreaux, an official at the company, which is commonly called Linden Lab.

The company offers educators a 50 percent discount on fees for using Second Life and has started the Second Life in Education listserv, known as SLED, which lists 5,000 “residents,” many of them precollegiate educators, Ms. L’Amoreaux said. Higher education institutions are there in even greater numbers, viewing Second Life, in part, as a marketing tool.


But Second Life, though it has been made more user-friendly over time, is still not for the technologically faint of heart. Getting involved requires climbing a steep learning curve.


Other caveats cited by experts include the costs of participating and the inability to transfer work from Second Life to other online environments.
Christopher J. Dede, a Harvard University education professor who is in an expert on the use of technology in education, said the older computers still common in schools are another limitation.


“Many school computers simply don’t have the video-processing capability to run Second Life,” he said. “Its footprint in schools is limited by that.”


Second-Life Sabbatical


Though hundreds of virtual worlds exist—many of them specialized for games—Second Life stands out because of its effective marketing, which has helped create a “pretty sizable population,” said Aaron E. Walsh, the director of Immersive Education Initiative of the Grid Institute, a Boston-based company that focuses on virtual worlds.


Second Life nominally has 13 million members, though only a few hundred thousand are considered actively engaged. Around 50,000 users are online in Second Life at any given time, Mr. Walsh said.


One convert is Kevin Jarrett, a teacher in the K-4 computer lab at Northfield Community School, in Northfield, N.J. He spent six months on sabbatical exploring the educational potential of Second Life, financed by a $10,000 grant from the online Walden University.


“It was amazing, absolutely amazing,” Mr. Jarrett said of the 20 to 30 hours a week he spent online. “Everyone was interesting, doing cool stuff. They were helpful, polite, and kind—all lifelong learners.”


Now back to teaching, Mr. Jarrett regularly volunteers to help newbies get started in Second Life at an education-oriented space, or “island,” run by the International Society for Technology in Education. He also blogs at http://www.storyofmysecondlife.com/.


He and other veteran educators can reel off things educators are doing in Second Life, from talking with peers from other countries, to attending concerts, to building a working volcano, to designing science-lab experiments.


Second Life’s main section, or grid, is only for adults; some parts have X-rated content; other areas are rated PG, as in the territories run by educational institutions.


Another, separate grid is reserved for teenagers; no adults are allowed without special dispensation and a background check.


Individual members, upon joining, create an avatar and can then record personal profiles, search for activities and events, and make electronic links to friends they meet there, among other activities.


Individuals or groups can purchase virtual land that can be used for marketing, training, and selling—using “Linden Dollars,” which are convertible into real currency.


Education-oriented organizations sometimes use their space for conferences about how to use Second Life. At a one-day “Stepping Into History” session last week, sponsored by the Alliance Library System, a library-support organization based in East Peoria, Ill., and LearningTimes, a New York City-based company that produces online conferences, about 60 educators and museum professionals took tours of four historical simulations that will be used with students beginning next fall.


The virtual spaces re-created aspects of ancient Babylon; New York’s Harlem in the 1920s; Springfield, Ill., and the White House at the time of Abraham Lincoln; and England at the time of Henry VIII.


ISTE Island


The International Society for Technology in Education, or ISTE, has been in Second Life for a little over a year, using it primarily as a membership-recruiting and communication tool, said the society’s chief executive officer, Don Knezek. The Washington-based group has invested in its own “island,” where it hosts meetings, activities, and events, notably a weekly speaker series and educator coffeehouse.


The group’s massive annual National Educational Computing Conference, which this year will be held June 29-July 2 in San Antonio, will feature numerous sessions in Second Life.


ISTE has three staff members working in Second Life as part of their jobs, said Mr. Knezek, who said the group got involved as “a scouting operation.”


“Basically, what we were after is figuring out how to reach more of our members and engage them with the organization in a more meaningful way,” he said.


Since January 2007, the number of ISTE members, who total about 85,000 worldwide, that also have Second Life memberships has grown from none to about 2,500.


ISTE also rents out some of its “land” to 17 other education organizations.


Classroom Potential


Some educators are interested in Second Life’s potential as an education tool with youngsters—something that currently is permitted only under tightly controlled conditions.


Some other virtual worlds are intended for children. Not Second Life, except for its “Teen Grid,” or on safely walled-in private “estates,” which some schools have established.


Ms. Sheehy, a middle school teacher in the 4,800-student Ramapo school district, in Hillburn, N.Y., said the the Teen Grid has 22 educational establishments. She oversees Ramapo Island, a private area there used exclusively by the district’s teachers and students.


Ms. Sheehy has trained 40 Ramapo teachers on how to hold learning activities, which she said “gets students invested and engaged.”


In a science class, for example, a group of 8th graders built an avalanche. Math classes have used shopping to teach “market math.”


“It’s not about the technology; it’s about the learning,” Ms. Sheehy said. “I’m supporting a standards-based curriculum that is authentically translated in the virtual environment.”



Another major provider on the Teen Grid is Global Kids Inc., a nonprofit group based in New York City that runs after-school programs and hosts activities on Teen Second Life for teenagers at the city’s schools as well as other places.


Activities include service projects, such as raising money for humanitarian aid to the Darfur region of Sudan, and making short movies, called “machinima,” that are filmed on locations and movie sets on the Teen Grid.


But Second Life also offers challenges to educators, experts say. One is that the virtual environment is often affected by service slowdowns, which can wreak havoc on classes being conducted there.


Mr. Walsh predicted that school districts will use virtual worlds widely for classes only when they can host them on their own computer servers, for reasons both of performance and student safety and privacy.


Mr. Dede of Harvard contends that the high-fidelity imagery used by Second Life may appeal to adults, but that it is not needed for youngsters to enjoy using it, and yet it unnecessarily increases the technical demands on users’ computers and networks.


Another problem is the expense. “It costs a considerable amount of money to use Second Life, compared to using other [virtual world] shells that are not as well publicized,” Mr. Dede said.


A more fundamental problem, according to Mr. Dede, is the “basic belief of almost everyone working in Second Life, that, like Coca-Cola, everything goes better with it.” He said many features can be added to make Second Life and other virtual worlds more suitable for education: “I am convinced the potential is there, in terms of virtual worlds and game engines.”


For now, educators should proceed thoughtfully. “If you’re doing a lecture, there’s no reason to believe that listening to the lecture as an avatar in Second Life is any better than in the real world,” he said.


Secondary Education


Participants in Second Life and other “virtual worlds” say the use of avatars and seemingly 3-D environments add a different dimension to their online lives. Popular uses of Second Life among educators include a range of communication, networking, and learning activities.


Meeting
Education groups, some of which exist outside of Second Life and others that operate there exclusively, offer lectures, seminars, and demonstrations that draw in participants from around the world. Less formally, virtual coffeehouse chats, concerts, and balls create settings for relaxed online contacts among educators.


Social Networking
Educators can choose from many of the hundreds of education-focused user groups that share conversations, resources, and activities.


Sharing Resources
Educators engage in professional development by passing around text documents, short videos, animations, and audio. While most of Second Life is barred to children, some schools have bought space for hosting student activities and instructional demonstrations on Second Life’s Teen Grid, which is off-limits to most adults and where access can be further limited to a school’s teachers and students.


Constructing
Participants are encouraged to create structures in 3-D that mimic real-life spaces and buildings, both in current and historical settings, or novel structures that help learners visualize data and concepts, such as science experiments or geometric shapes that users can manipulate. Second Life is full of designers and builders who tackle such projects, for hire and sometimes for free.


Filmmaking
The making of short videos, called machinima, has flourished in Second Life, especially on the Teen Grid, where students write scripts and film on virtual locations and sets.

Advocates Say NCLB’s ‘Comparability’ Provision is in Need of Fine-Tuning

From: Education Week
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/06/18/42compare.h27.html?tmp=727903533
Vol. 27, Issue 42, Pages 22-23
By David J. Hoff

Washington
When Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, it rewrote much of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, increasing the amount of testing required and demanding that states hold schools accountable for results on those tests.

Although the changes were intended to hold school officials accountable for the educational experiences of disadvantaged children, Congress left intact a short clause in the main K-12 education law that, in practice, has failed to ensure that money from the federal Title I program only supplements state and local money, researchers and advocates said at a conference here last week.

“Title I is not having its intended effect,” Marguerite Roza, a research associate professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, said at the one-day conference sponsored by the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank. “It’s filling in the holes left by state and local funds.”

With Congress behind schedule in its work to renew the NCLB law, now most likely in 2009, advocates for poor and minority children are lobbying for lawmakers to change the ways school districts allocate $13.9 billion in Title I money among the schools in their systems.

The public would endorse federal efforts to provide extra aid to poorer schools and “would be surprised to find out that the school districts spread their [federal] money around right now,” said Ross Wiener, the vice president for programs and policy at the Education Trust, a Washington-based group that advocates for policies to improve the education of poor and minority students. “We should acknowledge that this means changing the deal.”

Salaries Not ‘Comparable’

In several research projects studying school district budgets, Ms. Roza has documented how districts establish policies that distribute funding among schools­, with those serving middle-class and affluent children often receiving more state and local funds than schools serving the most disadvantaged populations. ("Study: District Budget Practices Can Siphon Title I Aid From Poor," Aug. 31, 2005.)

In a paper she prepared for the June 10 conference at the Center for American Progress, she cited data from California schools showing that low-poverty schools had almost $800 per pupil to spend in their annual budgets. What’s more, the average teacher salary in the low-poverty schools was $57,242—almost $10,000 more than in high-poverty schools.

In tracking Title I money, Ms. Roza says that teacher salaries account for most of the disparity in funding between schools, and those differences undermine the NCLB law’s requirement that Title I schools receive shares of state and local money that are comparable to those that don’t qualify for the program.

The section of the NCLB law that defines comparability requires districts to allocate Title I money based on the average teacher salary in that district, rather than the actual total spent on salaries in each school, in determining whether a district gives Title I schools state and local funding that is comparable to non-Title I schools.

The law makes it easier for districts to qualify as having comparable funding. Even though they usually spend more than average for teacher salaries in low-poverty schools—which attract experienced teachers—and less in high-poverty schools, districts are allowed under the law to calculate comparability as if their salaries are the same. That misrepresents the money actually spent in the school, Ms. Roza said.

“It doesn’t make any sense to leave teacher salaries out of the equation,” said Mr. Wiener of the Education Trust, which is lobbying to remove the clause requiring the use of the average teacher salary from the NCLB law.

If Congress eliminated the salary rule, high-poverty schools would receive between 5 percent and 15 percent more money in total aid per year, Ms. Roza’s paper said, citing her 2005 research on Texas school funding.

No Easy Solution

Such a change would free up discretionary money for principals at Title I schools, Ms. Roza said. It also might draw experienced, and presumably more effective, teachers to such schools, she said.

But such changes wouldn’t guarantee that effective teachers would move to Title I schools, said Kate Walsh, the president of the National Center on Teacher Quality, a Washington-based nonprofit group that advocates for policies at all levels to increase the number of effective teachers.

Changing the comparability rules “is not going to change whether schools are more attractive to teachers,” Ms. Walsh said at the conference. Some experienced teachers would retire rather than accept an assignment to a school where they don’t want to teach, she said.

Even if the changes were made, they wouldn’t have dramatic effects in the urban districts that receive the largest grants under Title I, added F. Howard Nelson, the lead researcher for the American Federation of Teachers, the 1.3 million-member union.

In Chicago, three-quarters of schools have at least 82 percent of their students living in poverty, Mr. Nelson said. Changing the teacher-salary rules would not make a substantial difference in the quality or experience of teachers for students in poverty, Mr. Nelson said.

Changes Coming

Title I’s comparability rules have been in place since 1970, but Congress may be ready to change them, said Mr. Wiener.

Last summer, the House Education and Labor Committee issued a discussion draft of a bill to reauthorize the NCLB law that would have eliminated the requirement that districts rely on average teacher salaries in determining whether state and local funds are distributed comparably to Title I schools.

The reauthorization process stalled last year when Democrats and Republicans couldn’t reach a consensus on issues such as changing the law’s testing-and-accountability requirements and supporting local efforts to offer merit pay for teachers. Although Senate education leaders say they are intent on re­authorizing the law this year, most political observers predict that President Bush and the Democratic Congress are unlikely to reach an agreement on the law.

Once Congress does take up the law, Mr. Wiener predicts changing the comparability rules will be the subject of much debate.

“This is the first serious attempt to strengthen the comparability provisions in the law,” Mr. Wiener said.

Breaking the Logjam on Teacher 'Value Added'

From: Education Week
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/06/18/42harris-com_web.h27.html?tmp=1192456610
Author: Douglas N. Harris

Annual student testing has become a mainstay of the U.S. K-12 education system under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, but there remains a sticking point: We haven’t figured out what to do with the results. One of the most hotly contested recent debates is whether to link student test scores to individual teachers, calculate teachers’ apparent contributions to student learning—called “value added”—and use this number as a basis for teacher hiring, tenure, and compensation decisions.

In April, the New York legislature passed a law prohibiting the use of student test scores in decisions concerning teacher tenure. Also recently blocked was a proposal by U.S. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., to allow “high need” school districts to apply for federal funds that would compensate teachers based partly on student scores. In both cases, efforts to reject high-stakes applications of teacher value-added were led by teachers’ unions.

Why the concern? No Child Left Behind’s testing requirements and sanctions have increased shallow test-prep instruction, counterproductive “gamesmanship” among schools and teachers, and narrowing of the curriculum. Yet the law has had some positive effects: Because of its incentives, schools now focus more on achievement and achievement gaps, and they have better information on which to base curricular and instructional decisions. Depending on how it is used, teacher value-added might amplify both the problems and the benefits of standardized testing.

In response to the increasing interest in teacher value-added, the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, hosted a national conference on value-added modeling in late April. The papers we commissioned were written by distinguished scholars in economics, sociology, educational statistics, and psychometrics. Our goal was to put value-added to the test.

The basic problem with rewarding teachers based on student test scores is that student outcomes are affected by parents and communities as well as schools. It is common sense that educators should be held responsible for what they can control—no more, no less. Therefore, any valid measure of teacher performance has to isolate the role of the teacher from these other factors.

Because of the strong influence of students’ home environments, it was nearly impossible before No Child Left Behind to determine how much schools or teachers contributed to test scores. The shift to annual testing has—potentially—changed all that. By adjusting for where students start at the beginning of each school year, value-added helps account for much of what happens outside schoolhouse walls.

While it is far from perfect, there is good reason to think value-added modeling may fill important voids in the current strategy for improving schools.

In some respects, value-added measures seem to work well. Two economists at the conference presented results of an experiment which found that teacher value-added (measured before the experiment) was a good predictor of student learning for the same teachers when they were randomly assigned to students. Consistent with this finding, another conference paper showed that teacher value-added does not seem to vary much based on the types of students taught. Also, colleagues and I have discovered that teacher value-added scores are positively (though modestly) related to principals’ subjective assessments of teachers, and that this is true across a large number of studies. Clearly, value-added measures offer some useful information.

Problems remain, however. First, value-added models require controversial assumptions—that increasing a student’s test score by one point means the same thing regardless of where the student starts out, for example, and that students are not assigned to teachers based on factors related to their previous achievement. Several conference papers suggested that these assumptions are false. One also showed that different test-scaling methods can lead to very different teacher value-added scores.

Second, value-added measures have some undesirable properties. They are sufficiently imprecise as to make it difficult to clearly distinguish the performance of one teacher from that of another, for example. Partly as a result of this, teachers’ performance appears to vary considerably year to year, even though actual teacher performance is probably much more stable.

Yet, despite their limitations, value-added measures seem to “work”—that is, they contain some useful information about teacher performance. While it is far from perfect, there is good reason to think value-added modeling may fill important voids in the current strategy for improving schools.

But we cannot evaluate value-added in isolation, or solely in statistical terms. It is important to consider the potential uses of value-added measures compared with current uses of student test scores, and whether other options might exist. I discuss three such alternatives below.
It is important to consider the potential uses of value-added measures compared with current uses of student test scores, and whether other options might exist.

The main strategy now for improving teaching in schools is to reward credentials such as experience, certification, or formal education. Value-added, notwithstanding its flaws, is almost surely a more valid indicator of a teacher’s contribution to student test scores than any credential. If we view the objective as raising student test scores, then the test scores themselves will surely provide a better indication of progress toward that objective. This logic is confirmed by the weak statistical linkages between credentials and student test-score gains, and by the evidence cited above.

This doesn’t mean that credentials should be abandoned, however. University-based education, professional development, and mentoring can all play an important role in improving teaching. Indeed, with teacher value-added measures put into place, teachers and administrators may be more likely to make better decisions about which credentials to obtain, thereby making the credentials more useful.

A second alternative is calculating only school value-added. This would certainly be better than the current federal focus on “adequate yearly progress,” which rewards schools mainly for their success in attracting students from advantaged backgrounds, rather than for their contributions to student learning. (The so-called growth models approved by the U.S. Department of Education do little to fix the problem.)

School value-added may also have some advantages over teacher value-added. First, as the evidence on principal evaluations suggests, most educators already know who the high-value-added teachers are in their schools. Pressure from colleagues might be more than enough to drive others to improve. Also, teacher value-added can be calculated for only a small percentage of teachers—those who teach for several consecutive years in tested grades and subjects. So, some type of school value-added may be necessary. The disadvantage would be that school-level data don’t provide much useful information to individual teachers about their own performance.

Finally, we could just give assessment data, including test subscores, to teachers, without calculating teacher value-added. The advantage of this approach would be that it provides useful information to teachers about how they and their students are doing, information specific enough to help teachers improve. Teacher value-added, in contrast, provides only a summative assessment, which is important for creating incentives but insufficient to drive improvement.
Teacher value-added may turn out to be superfluous if these alternatives are adopted, or it may instead become a complementary addition. We simply don’t know enough—not enough to start outlawing reasonable ideas. Instead, state and federal governments should provide funding to encourage voluntary experimentation with programs developed jointly by teachers and administrators. In this respect, Congressman Miller’s approach is better than New York’s. While I wouldn’t advise the use of teacher value-added as the primary basis for teacher tenure, New York’s ban goes too far by prohibiting any use of value-added in these decisions.
The new era of expanded student testing has provided an immense amount of potentially useful information. Let’s find out just how useful it can be in driving genuine school improvement.

The Fate of The Sentence: Is the Writing On the Wall?

From: Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/12/AR2008061202258.html
By Linton Weeks Washington Post Staff Writer

The demise of orderly writing: signs everywhere.

One recent report, young Americans don't write well.

In a survey, Internet language -- abbreviated wds, :) and txt msging -- seeping into academic writing.

But above all, what really scares a lot of scholars: the impending death of the English sentence.

Librarian of Congress James Billington, for one. "I see creeping inarticulateness," he says, and the demise of the basic component of human communication: the sentence.

This assault on the lowly -- and mighty -- sentence, he says, is symptomatic of a disease potentially fatal to civilization. If the sentence croaks, so will critical thought. The chronicling of history. Storytelling itself.

He has a point. The sentence itself is a story, with a beginning, a middle and an end. Something happens in a sentence. Without subjects, there are no heroes or villains. Without verbs, there is no action. Without objects, nothing is moved, changed, destroyed or created.

Plus, simple sentences clarify complex situations. ("Jesus wept.")

Since its invention centuries ago, the sentence has brought order to chaos. It's the handle on the pitcher, a tonic chord in music, a stair step chiseled in a mountainside.

To combat writer's block, Ernest Hemingway advised: "All you have to do is write one true sentence . . . and then go on from there."

A proverb "is a short sentence based on long experience," according to Miguel de Cervantes.

The sentence, Billington says, is the "greatest way to render narrative."

Over a cup of coffee recently in his best-view-of-the-Capitol office on the top floor of the Madison Building high above Independence Avenue, he sounds the warning. In complete sentences.

"The words 'community' and 'communicate' come from the same root word," the silver-haired librarian explains. "It logically follows that greater communication would lead to greater community, would bring us all together."

Great leaps in communication create an illusion, he says, that everyone is going to come together. The irony is that every major information revolution in the modern world has failed to stem misunderstanding and societal mayhem -- or even slow it down.

In the mid-15th century, Gutenberg's printing press did not forestall bloody holy wars. The multimedia revolution of the mid-19th century, which included telegraphy, photography and the steam-driven printing press, led to increased nationalist passions and wars among nations.

The Internet revolution, Billington says, creates new possibilities for people to be in touch with others, but it could also lead to a gobbledygook language without sentences and punctuation and paragraphs -- and with less understanding of the world and its meaning.

"We are moving toward the language used by computer programmers and air traffic controllers," he says. "Language as a method of instruction, not a portal into critical thinking."

A day or two after this conversation, Billington took his concerns to a group of educators at the
library. The occasion was the April release of the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, otherwise known as "the nation's report card."

According to the report, only one-third of eighth-graders in this country can write with proficiency. The New York Times reported that the crowd laughed when Billington, at the presentation of the report, sounded the alarm about "the slow destruction of the basic unit of human thought -- the sentence.''

Undaunted, he continued. Online communication is sloppily written, he said, and "the sentence is the biggest casualty.''

Was the librarian just kicking it old school? Not necessarily.

Efstathia Siegel, who has been teaching freshman composition at Montgomery College for 10 years, agrees with Billington. "I'm optimistic about students' enthusiasm for learning," Siegel says. "But when it comes to how their sentences are put together, that consciousness is not there."

Love of stories hasn't vanished, Siegel says, and students who want to be writers and storytellers still care about the way sentences are created. "But what about those who don't write the stories?" she says. "That's who I am concerned about. Those who don't have a love of the language."

Being able to write clearly is essential to getting a good job, Siegel says. "I'm not seeing most students care about that," she says.

"In developing an idea," she explains, "it is essential that a paragraph begin with a clear topic sentence from which the idea is developed and expanded by the following sentences. Many students are lost because that beginning sentence lacks a driving or principal idea. What follows are disconnected sentences with little meaning."

Michael Morreau, who teaches philosophy at the University of Maryland, says: "In logic, the sentence is the basic bearer of truth or falsity. I say: It is raining. I use a sentence to provide information about what the world is like around here."

People who don't write and speak in coherent sentences, Morreau says, don't succeed in communication. He is especially concerned about "the death of the good sentence" -- one that imparts clear and concise information.

"It seems pretty obvious and uncontentious that you have got to be able to use sentences to make logical arguments," says James Cargile, who teaches logic at the University of Virginia.

Take a fragment such as: Sad, the king of France. It could mean the king is sad or it could mean it is sad to be the king. Two very different things.

Rifle through the Internet, and you find lots of examples of sentence fragging:

Mark A. Whatley, a psychology professor at Valdosta State University, posted a sampling of bad college-level writing.

"So was true in this study," wrote one student.

"Also, the study including finding out if males were more attracted to tall attractive females or short attractive females," wrote another.

University of Delaware professor Ben Yagoda has been teaching English for 16 years. Students, he says, are getting brighter. But their abilities to write clearly have deteriorated appreciably in the past four or five years.

Most prose that young people read nowadays, Yagoda says, is unedited -- blogs, text messages and instant messages. Consequently, "the things that suffer most are spelling and punctuation. They put a comma, not a period, where there is a pause."

A recent survey by the College Board and Pew Internet and American Life Project found that most students say it's important to know how to write well, but a majority also said that Internet-style language -- including abbreviations and emoticons -- is making its way into their classwork.

Some linguists are not alarmed. "Language, all language, undergoes constant change," Amelia C. Murdoch writes in an e-mail. "And technological developments that impinge on language inevitably cause changes in language, all kinds of changes." Murdoch is president of the just-opened National Museum of Language in College Park.

"I personally do not anticipate the early demise of constructions such as 'Pass the salt' or 'Thou shalt not kill,' " she says. "I believe that people want, require, applaud and revere writing that is clear, logical, forceful and beautiful for their information, their laws, their literature and philosophy."

Martha Kolln, a retired Penn State English professor and author of "Understanding English Grammar," says, "Every new thing that comes along has its naysayers. Kids who are text-messaging . . . certainly sentences are underneath those few words. We do in speech and in writing tend to use elliptical phrases that stand for the whole."

"I'm an optimist myself," she says. "We're still using sentences. Maybe they are fragments of sentences, but good writers use fragments. I would have to see more proof that the sentence is dying."

Wilson Follett, writing in Atlantic magazine, offered proof. In an essay titled "Death of the Sentence," fiction writer and literary critic Follett wrote, "To deal with the organization of thought in words is of necessity to deal with the sentence."

In all languages, he added, "it has been the great continuum."

The sentence, he declared, "is a structure inherently faithful to the pattern of consciousness." It is "an instrument inevitable and perfect for the expression of thought."

But, wrote Follett, the sentence is under attack. "To what stage of vagueness, confusion, or sheer lunacy must the English sentence be pushed to evoke any noticeable volume of outcry?"

Follett's essay appeared in Atlantic's October issue. Of 1937.

At the time, he was not concerned about millions of text-messagers and e-mailers killing the sentence. He was worried about highbrow writers -- such as John Dos Passos and Harvard University's Bernard DeVoto -- using long, looping sentences that did not adhere to the strict grammatical and punctuation rules of the day.

Back then there was concern that sentences were too complex; today, that sentences are not complex enough. And that's the way it.