From: The Apple
http://www.theapple.com/careers/3373-a-guide-to-teacher-interviews
If you are preparing for an interview in the field of education, you know that teaching interviews can be comprehensive and vary different from interviews in the corporate world. In order to make a good impression on the school where you’ve applied, you’ll want to do your homework. We’ve compiled articles written specifically to help teachers in the interview process.
Teacher Interview Tips and Advice
This is the culmination of several years of hard work. You’ve finished college. You’re done with your student teaching and you’ve passed all of your teacher certification examinations. The applications, resumes, and cover letters have been sent out to every local school district.
All you can do now is sit around the house and wait for the phone to ring, right? Wrong! You should be preparing for your interview!
I’ve been to the interview table several times as a candidate and many more times as an interviewer. If there were any tricks, secrets, or shortcuts to success in the interviewing process, I haven’t discovered them. My only sound advice for candidates is to come to the interview prepared.
You should have your teaching portfolio in-hand and you should be ready to talk about anything and everything that relates to you, your background, and your philosophies on education. The best candidates know how to teach, they know how to articulate their teaching beliefs, and most of the time, they already know what types of questions will be asked before the interview even begins.
It’s easy for an interviewer to spot an unprepared candidate. Candidates who have not practiced basic interview questions beforehand are unnaturally nervous. They shift in their seats more. They begin most answers with the word, “uhhhhh.” There are long pauses while interviewers wait for the candidate to process the question and think up an answer. They get confused by basic educational jargon that they learned in college.
Almost every teaching interview includes similar, common questions. In order to be a prepared candidate, all you have to do is practice answering the most common questions before you go to the interview. (See the practice interview questions chapter in my book to review the 45 most commonly asked questions.) If you prepare beforehand, the interview questions will seem routine and familiar. There are no tricks or shortcuts; if you do your homework you will perform well.
Body language can show whether you’re a confident, qualified teacher or an unsure one. At the interview, be confident, but not cocky. Smile when you walk in. Greet the people interviewing you with a smile and a nod. Firmly shake the hand of the principal and other interviewers that are within easy reach. When you take your seat, sit up straight with your feet on the floor and your hands in a relaxed position on the desk.
Have a mild sense of humor. Prepare to make some humorous small talk when you are greeted. For example, if a principal shakes your hand and asks how you are, it’s okay to say, “A nervous wreck!” A whimsical introduction can break the ice. Be sure your sense of humor is clean and appropriate for an interview.
Have a teaching portfolio ready. Your portfolio should contain extra copies of your resume, a copy of your teaching certificate, sample lesson plans, samples of student work, and any other evidence that shows you are a qualified candidate for a teaching position. It should be bound in a neat, professional-looking leather binder. (See the teaching portfolio chapter in my book for more information.) Place the portfolio in front of you when you sit down at the interview table.
Usually, the people interviewing you will not ask to see your portfolio. They do, however, expect you to have it on-hand. Don’t wait for anyone to mention the portfolio. Instead, you should use it as a tool to describe your teaching experiences. For example, if you are asked to describe a lesson that involves teaching writing, you might say, “Yes, I can show you! I have a sample of student work that shows how I teach the writing process.”
The first question at almost every interview will be: “Tell us about yourself.” You should already know what you’re going to say. Keep your answer reasonably brief. You can talk about the college you attended and provide an overview of your teaching experience.
Always be positive. Try not to say, “I don’t know.” Avoid saying, “I’m not really good at…” Don’t say, “That’s one of my weak points.” Always tell the truth, but you don’t want to suggest that you’re not a confident, successful, qualified teacher. If you honestly don’t know the answer to a question, you might ask the interviewer to restate it in a different way, or you might want to give the best answer you can based on your knowledge and experiences.
Use lots of examples when you answer questions. When they ask how you would do something, tell them how you have already done it. This will make you seem more experienced. For example, if an interviewer asks, “How would you you use creative problem-solving in your lessons?” You might answer with, “When I was student teaching, I did a great creative problem-solving lesson when…” When you use specific examples, you’re convincing the interviewers that you’re more than just hypothetical talk.
The final question of your interview will most likely be, “Do you have any questions for us?” Be prepared with a thoughtful question ahead of time. While this is probably not the most important question of the interview, it is your last chance to leave a positive impression. Rather than answering with, “Not really,” you should ask something philosophical or complimentary. You might ask the interviewer why they are proud of their school or what the people you’ll be working with are like. Since your interviewers will probably be meeting with lots of candidates, you should use the opportunity to ask a question and make yourself stand out. And, think about it: You’ve been on the hot seat answering their questions for 45 minutes. You’ve earned the right to turn the table, even if it is just for a moment.
When you leave, the interviewers will, of course, be talking about you. They’ll be filling out little forms rating your experience, qualifications, communication skills, and personality. At the end of the day, they will have about a dozen of these forms sitting on the desk. They’ll look through them all and the chosen candidates will be the ones who were the most memorable, most qualified, and most prepared for the meeting. With some time and effort, that candidate can be you.
10 Secrets to a Perfect Teaching Interview
Are you nervous about your next interview for a teaching job? Don’t be! Just remember these 10 secrets to a perfect interview!
1. Have a teaching portfolio that is filled with lesson plans and student work samples.
I know it takes a great deal of time to assemble a teaching portfolio, but your hard work will pay off. Instead of just telling them you’re a great teacher, you can use your portfolio to show interviewers the exciting lessons you’ve used to teach children in the past.
2. Practice sample interview questions before you go to the interview.
Interview questions aren’t usually unique. In fact, the same questions will be asked at almost every interview. Do a google search to find common teacher interview questions and practice your responses beforehand. (50 common interview questions and answers are also available in my eBook, which can be downloaded from: http://www.iwantateachingjob.com )
3. Be sure you dress professionally.
You’d be surprised at how much your clothing matters. If you dress to casually, the interviewers may not believe that you’re taking the interview seriously enough.
4. Make eye contact with all of the interviewers at the table, not just the principal.
I’ve sat in on many interview committees and have noticed that many candidates look directly at the principal and seem to ignore the rest of the panel. Be sure you make eye contact with everyone at the table.
5. Project a friendly, bubbly, positive, and outgoing personality.
Interview committees are looking for friendly people to be on their staff. While your teaching credentials are important, you need to remember that the interview committee is also looking for someone with a positive person that is easy to get along with. If they can see your glowing personality shine through, they are more likely to want you at their school.
6. Research the school district beforehand.
Visit the district’s website to find out their philosophy of education. Also, research information about the types of students that you will be teaching, the community, and the subjects being taught there.
7. Be sure your educator vocabulary is up-to-date.
Be sure you’re familiar with educational jargon and teaching acronyms. All of those big vocabulary words you learned in college may come back to haunt you at the interview. If you’re asked about differentiated instruction, IEPs, Everyday Math, NCLB, or ELL students, you don’t want to be the candidate that responds with, “Huh?”
8. Use lots of specific examples when you discuss your teaching experiences.
Want to seem like an experienced professional? Whenever an interviewer asks you how you would do something, tell them how you have already been doing it. If you use words like, “I would like to…” or “I might try to…” or “I could…”, then you will seem inexperienced. Instead, say things like, “When I was student teaching, I…” or “When I taught __, I would…” or “One thing I always do is…” This will help to emphasize and highlight your expereince.
9. Prepare a good question to ask at the end of the interview.
Your questions should be complimentary to the school and open-ended. Try to prepare a question that will require the interviewer to think, rather than just provide you with a one-word answer. Thoughtful questions will leave a lasting impression.
10. Don’t forget to mail your thank you letter right away!
Whether you send a greeting card or a formal business letter, be sure you thank the interviewers for meeting with you. You letter should express your appreciation, compliment the school environment, and invite the interviewers to contact you again.
100 Teacher Interview Questions
1. First, tell us a little bit about yourself. (Almost every teacher interview begins this way.)
2. Describe your college experiences?
3. Tell us about your experiences working with students at this age level.
4. Describe your philosophy of teaching?
5. Why do you want to become a teacher?
6. List three of your strengths your strengths and explain each one.
7. Describe three of your weaknesses as a teacher.
8. In what ways do you encourage creativity in your classroom?
9. Tell us about a lesson in which you’ve used differentiated instruction.
10. How do you teach kids to utilize higher-order thinking skills in your classroom?
11. What do you do to prepare your students for state or standardized tests?
12. Do you make learning fun for students? How?
13. If I walked into your classroom on a typical afternoon, what would I see going on?
14. How do you measure student performance in your classroom?
15. Describe a successful lesson. Tell why it was successful.
16. What would you do if a student wasn’t handing her homework on a regular basis?
17. How much homework do you give?
18. Besides lecture, what methods of teaching do you use?
19. Tell us about your discipline philosophy.
20. What are your classroom rules? How do you make students familiar with the rules?
21. What daily or weekly routines would be incorporated in your teaching?
22. One student hits another student. What do you do?
23. A student throws a pencil across the room. What do you do?
24. Explain what you would do if a student was swearing in your class?
25. What would you do if a student was complaining about an assignment you’ve given?
26. What would you do if a parent complained about an assignment?
27. Describe some methods of “positive reinforcement” that you might use in your classroom.
28. Would you describe yourself as a “tough” teacher or an “understanding” teacher? Explain.
29. How would you create a behavior modification for a student with ongoing behavior problems?
30. What are some ways you can avoid behavior problems?
31. Without giving any names, describe the most challenging student you’ve ever taught.
32. What would you do to calm an angry parent?
33. Do you have an example of a parent newsletter that you can show us?
34. In what ways do you communicate with parents on a regular basis?
35. A parent calls you because they are worried about their child’s low grades. What would you say to the parent?
36. A parent writes a note and tells you that their daughter could not complete their homework assignment because she had a dance recital the night before. What do you do?
37. How do you keep parents informed of their childs’ progress?
38. How do you use technology to enrich your lessons?
39. How computer literate are you?
40. Do you think it is appropriate for children in school to be using the Internet?
41. Give an example of a time when you’ve worked on a team.
42. Describe one time when you’ve acted as a leader.
43. How do you feel about team-teaching?
44. What can you do for a student that is extremely gifted?
45. Describe a gifted student.
46. How would you recommend a child for special education services?
47. Most classes have students with a wide-range of reading abilities. What can you do to meet the needs of students with high reading abilities and low reading abilities at the same time?
48. Tell us a little about your student teaching experiences.
49. What is your least favorite age/grade/subject to teach? Explain.
50. What is your favorite age/grade/subject to teach? Explain.
51. What are some of the most important things you learned when student teaching?
52. What was the most satisfying moment throughout your student teaching?
53. What was the most frustrating thing about student teaching?
54. Describe one college course that taught you the most about being a good teacher.
55. Who influenced you to become a teacher?
56. Describe the biggest challenge you’ve ever had to face.
57. What books are you currently reading?
58. A student confides in you and tells you that his parent abuses him. He asks you not to tell anyone. What do you do?
59. What is your definition of a life-long learner? How can you promote life-long learning in your classroom?
60. Would you be willing to help out with extra-curricular activities? Which ones?
61. Have you ever been a substitute teacher in this school district?
62. What do you look for in a principal?
63. How do you communicate with administrators?
64. Would you like to be part of our new teacher mentor program?
65. What kinds of inservices would you be eager to attend?
66. List five adjectives that accurately describe yourself.
67. What professional teaching organizations do you belong to?
68. Have you ever received an award for anything in your lifetime? Describe.
69. Describe the differences between a good teacher and a great teacher?
70. What were you like as a student?
71. If you teach a lesson and your students don’t seem to be “getting it,” what do you do?
72. How do you provide support for students who are not performing as well as they should?
73. What can you do to meet the needs of students who do not speak English?
74. In what ways can you teach students to be accepting of one-another?
75. How would you teach conflict resolution to your students?
76. Name a book that you’d like to read to (or with) your students. Describe the book and tell why you chose it.
77. How do you feel about working in an inclusion classroom?
78. How do you meet the needs of a student with an IEP?
79. How would you teach the writing process?
80. Describe a high-interest project that you might assign to your students.
81. What can you offer our school that other candidates cannot?
82. Do you think you are a flexible person? Explain.
83. What do you like to do when you’re not teaching?
84. How do you incorporate writing into your curriculum?
85. Can you show us what your lesson plan book would look like?
86. How closely do you follow your lesson plans?
87. Where do you plan to be ten years from now?
88. What part of this job are you looking forward to?
89. What part of this job scares you?
90. In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges that teachers face today?
91. Why do you want to teach in this, particular district?
92. How can you make your teaching connect to students’ real-world experiences?
93. Tell me about your references. Who are they and how do they know you?
94. If I were to call your references, what might they say about you?
95. How can teachers reach out to the community?
96. How do you make sure you are teaching to the state standards?
97. What kinds of materials and supplies would you need to do your job well?
98. How do you feel about noise in your classroom?
99. Show us your portfolio.
100. What questions do you have for us?
6 Common Teacher Interview Questions
When you get a call from a school administrator inviting you to interview for a teaching job, how do you feel? Happy? Elated? Excited? Nervous? Scared stiff?
You don’t need to worry about the interview if you’re a well-prepared, qualified candidate. Preparing for a teaching interview is a lot like studying for a test. You can review commonly asked questions, think about what you’ll say beforehand, and go in to do your best. If you prepare beforehand, the interview questions will seem routine and familiar. You’ll have answers on the tip of your tongue, ready-to-go.
Below is a list of six commonly asked teacher interview questions from my eBook, Guide to Getting the Teaching Job of Your Dreams. How would you answer each question?
1. Tell us about yourself.
This will be the first question at almost every interview. Just give a brief background in about three sentences. Tell them what colleges you graduated from, what you’re certified to teach, what your teaching & working experiences are, and why you’d love the job.
2. How do you teach to the state standards?
If you interview in the United States, school administrators love to talk about state, local, or national standards! Reassure your interviewer that everything you do ties into standards. Be sure the lesson plans in your portfolio have the state standards typed right on them. When they ask about them, pull out your lesson and show them the close ties between your teaching and the standards.
3. How will you prepare students for standardized assessments?
There are standardized assessments at almost every grade level. Be sure you know the names of the tests. Talk about your experiences preparing students. You’ll get bonus points if you know and describe the format of the test because that will prove your familiarity.
4. Describe your discipline philosophy.
You use lots of positive reinforcement. You are firm, but you don’t yell. You have appropriate consequences for inappropriate behavior. You have your classroom rules posted clearly on the walls. You set common routines that students follow. You adhere to the school’s discipline guidelines. Also, emphasize that you suspect discipline problems will be minimal because your lessons are very interesting and engaging to students. Don’t tell the interviewer that you “send kids to the principal’s office” whenever there is a problem. You should be able to handle most discipline problems on your own. Only students who have committed very serious behavior problems should be sent to the office.
5. How do you make sure you meet the needs of a student with an IEP?
An IEP is an “individualized education plan.” Students with special needs will be given an IEP, or a list of things that you must do when teaching the child. An IEP might include anything from “additional time for testing” to “needs all test questions read aloud” to “needs to use braille textbook.” How do you ensure you’re meeting the needs of a student with an IEP? First, read the IEP carefully. If you have questions, consult a special education teacher, counselor, or other staff member who can help you. Then, you just make sure you follow the requirements on the IEP word for word. When necessary, you may be asked to attend a meeting in which you can make suggestions for updating the IEP. Your goal, and the goal of the IEP, is to make sure the student has whatever he or she needs to be successful in your class.
6. How do you communicate with parents?
This question will come up at almost every elementary school interview. It’s fairly common in the middle school and high school as well. You might have a weekly parent newsletter that you send home each week. For grades 3 and up, you may require students to have an assignment book that has to be signed each night. This way, parents know what assignments are given and when projects are due. When there are discipline problems you call home and talk to parents. It’s important to have an open-door policy and invite parents to share their concerns at any time.
Five Insider Tips for a Successful Interview
I have sat on the interview panel on my elementary school for several years and have witnessed some impressive and not so impressive interviews. Like many schools, our leadership team spent hours analyzing the answers and demeanor of the candidates. Our goal was to find the best teacher from the mere 45 minute meeting. Every second counts when you are under the watchful eyes of an interview team. Below are five helpful tips that may help you to impress your interviewers and secure your desired job.
Interview Tip #1: Maintain an understanding of current best practices and be ready to provide examples of how you are implementing them in your classroom. For example, you should certainly be prepared to explain how you differentiate instruction. In a recent interview, we questioned what differentiation techniques one candidate would use to reach the low-achieving students in your classroom. She responded that she would pair the low-achievers with the high-achievers who would help teach the material. First of all, this is not differentiation. Because the high-achievers have mastered the material they are now expected to take others under their wings and teach them? As smart as these children may be, they do not have a teaching degree. Secondly, if she were truly meeting the needs of all of the students in her classroom, these high-achievers should have moved on to other tasks that match their ability level, while she worked with those struggling to understand the material.
Interview Tip #2: Avoid saying anything negative about current or former colleagues. Collaboration is a must in schools today. Principals are looking for “team players” whose presence and expertise will add to the staff. I once heard an interviewee explain that her teammates were not very good teachers and their personalities clashed so she did not collaborate. This may very well be the case, but it sends up a red flag to those sitting across the table. Interviewers are left questioning was it the teammate or the interviewee who was the problem? Sugarcoat your answer or omit a few details, but remain positive. No one wants to hire someone who may bring negativity to a staff.
Interview Tip #3: Create unique answers that will stick in the minds of the interviewers. Take time before the interview to consider those questions that will likely be asked. Think about the wonderful things you do in your classroom that set you apart from others. You may even want to set up a few interviews with schools that do not interest you just to get a feel for what types are questions are currently being asked. Our interview team would often ask a candidate why he or she wanted to become a teacher or has stayed with the profession. In this situation, do not say that you love kids. This response was most frequent, and the least impressive. Of course, you do and that is wonderful, but the answer is common and predictable.
Interview Tip #4: As petty as this sounds, consider your appearance. If you have seen the latest “Tide To Go” advertisements with the “talking stain,” you understand that appearance can often speak louder than words. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that I once interviewed a candidate who was wearing a white shirt and thin bra that you could see right through. Needless to say, my memory of this interview was not how she ran her reading program. If you appear disheveled or inappropriate in an interview, a principal will be concerned about how you will present yourself in the classroom.
Interview Tip #5: Do not forget to write a thank you note. Not only will your etiquette stand out among other candidates, but it gives you one more opportunity to compliment the principal and his/her school. A well-written thank you note can go a long way.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Since NCLB Law, Test Scores on Rise
From: Education Week
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/07/16/43cep_web.h27.html?tmp=1304272582
By Sean Cavanagh
Student achievement in mathematics and reading has risen on state tests, and the gap between white and minority children has narrowed since the passage of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, though gains were stronger in elementary and middle schools than at the high school level, according to a new study.
The study, released today, found that the majority of states evaluated posted “moderate-to-large” gains in both subjects in 4th grade. In 8th grade math, most states fared well, though in reading the increases were not as great. The study looked at data from all 50 states from 2002 to 2007.
The study was generated by the Center on Education Policy, a research and advocacy organization in Washington. It follows up on a similar report released last year, and it tries to expand on that earlier analysis by supplementing it with another year of test data and more in-depth study of trends in different areas, particularly the progress of minority students.
The study addresses “a very broad question, and it provides a very broad answer,” said Jack Jennings, the president of the center, in an interview.
“Student achievement is increasing, and the achievement gap is narrowing,” Mr. Jennings said. Overall, “it’s good news,” he said of the results.
The state gains in reading and math were not as strong when compared with states’ performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the federally administered test that judges states on a common scale. That gap was most pronounced in 8th grade reading. NAEP, known as the “nation’s report card,” is used by researchers and policymakers as the standard for measuring student achievement, independent of various state testing policies and achievement levels.
But Mr. Jennings said that, on the whole, the more modest state NAEP scores did not undermine the gains reflected in individual states’ assessments. NAEP scores still “confirm the general trend,” he said.
Is Law Behind Rise?
The authors of the study say it is impossible through their study to answer the oft-asked question among policymakers whether the NCLB law has on its own produced gains or decreases in student learning. Too many factors, particularly state and local school policies, skew that connection, they say. Yet the study seems certain to stoke debates among researchers, policymakers, parents, and others over the 6 1/2-year-old law’s impact.
President Bush, who signed the bipartisan measure into law in 2002, has steadfastly promoted it as having produced student academic gains, despite criticism from parents, teachers, and others who say the measure has produced a test-driven curriculum overly focused on math and reading. Both of the presumed nominees in this year’s presidential race, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., have voiced general support for the law, while also vowing to seek changes that will make it fairer to schools. ("Candidates at Odds Over K-12," June 11, 2008.)
The study examines student achievement on the basis of the percentage of students scoring at the “proficient” level on state-administered tests in reading and math. States are required to give exams in those subjects annually in grades 3-8 and once in high school. As a second indicator, the study looks at the “effect size,” basically the differences between test results, using a common measurement. The study also compared trends on the individual state tests with the state-by-state results of NAEP.
The center was advised in designing and implementing the study by a team of outside researchers who have studied testing policy and education research: Laura Hamilton of the RAND Corp.; Eric Hanushek of the Hoover Institution; Frederick Hess, director of education policy studies, the American Enterprise Institute; Robert L. Linn, a professor emeritus at the University of Colorado at Boulder; and W. James Popham, a professor emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles. Those panelists include both supporters and critics of the No Child Left Behind Act. ("State Tests Show Gains Since NCLB," June 6, 2007.)
The center’s researchers say they vetted test data from 2002 to 2007 and omitted results from individual states that had significantly changed their testing policies during that time. Only trends of state testing data lasting at least three years were analyzed, and subgroups that were so small that they might have skewed the results, or which had changed significantly in size, were not counted.
Elementary School Gains
Overall, in both reading and math, there were 133 categories of students making moderate-to-large gains on their state tests, and only 10 cases of students making moderate-to-large drops in achievement.
In math, 21 of 27 states with enough test data to be analyzed made moderate-to-large gains at the elementary level, as judged by the two indicators used in the study, proficiency and effect size. Only one state showed a decline in both indicators at the elementary level.
In middle school math, 22 of 27 states made moderate-to-large increases in both indicators, while only two of them had decreases in either indicator. Among high school students, 12 of 26 states produced moderate-to-large math increases, and six states saw a decrease on at least one indicator in that subject.
In elementary reading, 17 of 28 states produced moderate-to-large gains on both indicators, and three states showed a decline in one category, effect sizes. Fourteen of 28 states made moderate-to-large gains on the two indicators at the middle school level, while six states had scores that stayed flat or declined by one indicator.
At the high school level, of 27 states evaluated, just eight states made moderate-to-large gains in two indicators, seven states made at least slight gains on both, and five states saw either a moderate-to-large or slight decline in reading in both categories.
The study compared state percentages of “proficient” students against the NAEP in both reading and math in 134 total categories. It found that gains occurred on both assessments in 107 categories, and declined in both cases in just two instances. In the 25 other categories, NAEP and state test scores diverged.
While he found that the overall gains in NAEP and state tests mirrored each other, Mr. Jennings speculated that states’ weaker scores on the national assessment could be partly the result of students and school officials not seeing those tests as being as important as state exams, which carry high stakes for schools under the NCLB law. He also noted that some states’ curricula are more aligned to the content on NAEP tests than others are.
State standards for judging student “proficiency” on tests vary greatly. A federal study last year found wide discrepancies in the proficiency levels states use on their individual assessments, when judged against the NAEP, leading observers to question state claims of academic progress. ("State Tests, NAEP Often a Mismatch," June 16, 2007.)
'Hypersensitive' to Low-Achievers?
The Center on Education Policy study also found a closing of the gap between whites and minority subgroups. For instance, in elementary reading, the gap between African-American and white students narrowed in 13 states in both indicators and widened on both indicators in only one state, the analysis found.
Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, was skeptical that the racial-achievement gap shrunk as reported by the states. He said states want to recognize the gains of low-achieving students, and tend to be “hypersensitive” to relatively small test-score increases as a result, in ways that NAEP is not.
Even so, Mr. Fuller said he was encouraged by the overall state gains in reading and math.
That view was shared by Ross Wiener, the vice president for programs and policy at the Washington-based Education Trust, a Washington-based group that advocates high standards for disadvantaged students. He attributed the state advances to a host of education improvements made at the federal, state, and local levels, many of which began before the passage of the NCLB law.
Improvements have “been brought about by the standards and accountability movement,” Mr. Wiener said. “No Child Left Behind has been a part of that, but there’s no way to tease that [effect] out.”
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/07/16/43cep_web.h27.html?tmp=1304272582
By Sean Cavanagh
Student achievement in mathematics and reading has risen on state tests, and the gap between white and minority children has narrowed since the passage of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, though gains were stronger in elementary and middle schools than at the high school level, according to a new study.
The study, released today, found that the majority of states evaluated posted “moderate-to-large” gains in both subjects in 4th grade. In 8th grade math, most states fared well, though in reading the increases were not as great. The study looked at data from all 50 states from 2002 to 2007.
The study was generated by the Center on Education Policy, a research and advocacy organization in Washington. It follows up on a similar report released last year, and it tries to expand on that earlier analysis by supplementing it with another year of test data and more in-depth study of trends in different areas, particularly the progress of minority students.
The study addresses “a very broad question, and it provides a very broad answer,” said Jack Jennings, the president of the center, in an interview.
“Student achievement is increasing, and the achievement gap is narrowing,” Mr. Jennings said. Overall, “it’s good news,” he said of the results.
The state gains in reading and math were not as strong when compared with states’ performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the federally administered test that judges states on a common scale. That gap was most pronounced in 8th grade reading. NAEP, known as the “nation’s report card,” is used by researchers and policymakers as the standard for measuring student achievement, independent of various state testing policies and achievement levels.
But Mr. Jennings said that, on the whole, the more modest state NAEP scores did not undermine the gains reflected in individual states’ assessments. NAEP scores still “confirm the general trend,” he said.
Is Law Behind Rise?
The authors of the study say it is impossible through their study to answer the oft-asked question among policymakers whether the NCLB law has on its own produced gains or decreases in student learning. Too many factors, particularly state and local school policies, skew that connection, they say. Yet the study seems certain to stoke debates among researchers, policymakers, parents, and others over the 6 1/2-year-old law’s impact.
President Bush, who signed the bipartisan measure into law in 2002, has steadfastly promoted it as having produced student academic gains, despite criticism from parents, teachers, and others who say the measure has produced a test-driven curriculum overly focused on math and reading. Both of the presumed nominees in this year’s presidential race, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., have voiced general support for the law, while also vowing to seek changes that will make it fairer to schools. ("Candidates at Odds Over K-12," June 11, 2008.)
The study examines student achievement on the basis of the percentage of students scoring at the “proficient” level on state-administered tests in reading and math. States are required to give exams in those subjects annually in grades 3-8 and once in high school. As a second indicator, the study looks at the “effect size,” basically the differences between test results, using a common measurement. The study also compared trends on the individual state tests with the state-by-state results of NAEP.
The center was advised in designing and implementing the study by a team of outside researchers who have studied testing policy and education research: Laura Hamilton of the RAND Corp.; Eric Hanushek of the Hoover Institution; Frederick Hess, director of education policy studies, the American Enterprise Institute; Robert L. Linn, a professor emeritus at the University of Colorado at Boulder; and W. James Popham, a professor emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles. Those panelists include both supporters and critics of the No Child Left Behind Act. ("State Tests Show Gains Since NCLB," June 6, 2007.)
The center’s researchers say they vetted test data from 2002 to 2007 and omitted results from individual states that had significantly changed their testing policies during that time. Only trends of state testing data lasting at least three years were analyzed, and subgroups that were so small that they might have skewed the results, or which had changed significantly in size, were not counted.
Elementary School Gains
Overall, in both reading and math, there were 133 categories of students making moderate-to-large gains on their state tests, and only 10 cases of students making moderate-to-large drops in achievement.
In math, 21 of 27 states with enough test data to be analyzed made moderate-to-large gains at the elementary level, as judged by the two indicators used in the study, proficiency and effect size. Only one state showed a decline in both indicators at the elementary level.
In middle school math, 22 of 27 states made moderate-to-large increases in both indicators, while only two of them had decreases in either indicator. Among high school students, 12 of 26 states produced moderate-to-large math increases, and six states saw a decrease on at least one indicator in that subject.
In elementary reading, 17 of 28 states produced moderate-to-large gains on both indicators, and three states showed a decline in one category, effect sizes. Fourteen of 28 states made moderate-to-large gains on the two indicators at the middle school level, while six states had scores that stayed flat or declined by one indicator.
At the high school level, of 27 states evaluated, just eight states made moderate-to-large gains in two indicators, seven states made at least slight gains on both, and five states saw either a moderate-to-large or slight decline in reading in both categories.
The study compared state percentages of “proficient” students against the NAEP in both reading and math in 134 total categories. It found that gains occurred on both assessments in 107 categories, and declined in both cases in just two instances. In the 25 other categories, NAEP and state test scores diverged.
While he found that the overall gains in NAEP and state tests mirrored each other, Mr. Jennings speculated that states’ weaker scores on the national assessment could be partly the result of students and school officials not seeing those tests as being as important as state exams, which carry high stakes for schools under the NCLB law. He also noted that some states’ curricula are more aligned to the content on NAEP tests than others are.
State standards for judging student “proficiency” on tests vary greatly. A federal study last year found wide discrepancies in the proficiency levels states use on their individual assessments, when judged against the NAEP, leading observers to question state claims of academic progress. ("State Tests, NAEP Often a Mismatch," June 16, 2007.)
'Hypersensitive' to Low-Achievers?
The Center on Education Policy study also found a closing of the gap between whites and minority subgroups. For instance, in elementary reading, the gap between African-American and white students narrowed in 13 states in both indicators and widened on both indicators in only one state, the analysis found.
Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, was skeptical that the racial-achievement gap shrunk as reported by the states. He said states want to recognize the gains of low-achieving students, and tend to be “hypersensitive” to relatively small test-score increases as a result, in ways that NAEP is not.
Even so, Mr. Fuller said he was encouraged by the overall state gains in reading and math.
That view was shared by Ross Wiener, the vice president for programs and policy at the Washington-based Education Trust, a Washington-based group that advocates high standards for disadvantaged students. He attributed the state advances to a host of education improvements made at the federal, state, and local levels, many of which began before the passage of the NCLB law.
Improvements have “been brought about by the standards and accountability movement,” Mr. Wiener said. “No Child Left Behind has been a part of that, but there’s no way to tease that [effect] out.”
School Is Out, and Nutrition Takes a Hike
From: The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/health/nutrition/24well.html
By Tara Parker-Pope
As my 9-year-old daughter began summer day camp last week, we talked about swimming rules, sunscreen and ... cheese fries.
It was at summer camp a few years ago that she first experienced the culinary joy of cheese fries, which can pack 800 or more calories in a serving. Her camp is typical of those around the country: days packed with archery, swimming and adventure climbing; menus packed with soft drinks, burgers, chicken nuggets and, once a week, cheese fries.
Camp food is just one of the summertime nutrition challenges for parents these days. While childhood health advocates often blame schools for poor nutrition and a lack of physical activity, the problem often gets worse in the summer. Last year, The American Journal of Public Health published a provocative study showing that schools may be taking too much of the blame for the childhood obesity epidemic.
Data from kindergarteners and first graders found that body mass index increased two to three times as fast in summer as during the regular school year. Minority children were especially vulnerable, as were children who were already overweight.
Notably, even children who were too thin and needed to gain weight appeared to have better eating habits during the school year. They actually gained more weight while in school and less in the summer.
The data are far from conclusive; they are from 1998-99, the only time federal education officials gathered seasonal data on schoolchildren, said a co-author of the study, Douglas B. Downey, professor of sociology at Ohio State. Similar statistics were not collected for older children.
Even so, the findings suggest that while school nutrition may not always be ideal, children — whether overweight or underweight — may benefit from the structured nature of the school year, which includes scheduled meals, snacks and recess.
“Schools likely provide a more structured day for most children,” Dr. Downey said. “Kids’ access to food is limited to lunch and snack, and they usually receive at least some consistent exercise. When children are at home in the summer they have freer access to food, and while there’s warmer weather, there may be less consistent exercise.”
For parents, the data suggest a need to be extra vigilant about what their children eat during the summer. But that is easier said than done. While many school districts have nutritionists involved in lunch planning, relatively few summer camp programs do. Camps tend to focus on food safety — making sure the food doesn’t spoil in the hot sun. And parents who want to pack lunches struggle with the same problem, often resorting to packaged products that will hold up in the hot weather.
“Camp food is terrible,” said Susan B. Roberts, director of the energy metabolism laboratory at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. “The problem is that they are doing what is easiest — the lowest common denominator for what kids like, and on top of that usually it has to be not something that goes bad and is no work to prepare.”
Despite the food, children who go to camp at least have the advantage of daily organized physical activity. Those who do not, particularly those in low-income families, often spend summers at home with little supervision or structure to their day. They end up watching television or playing video games and grazing on food all day.
“During the year, television viewing habits are more limited because of school and homework, but in summer, all bets are off,” said Dr. David Ludwig, director of the obesity program at Children’s Hospital Boston. “They are lying around all day long with little supervision, watching TV and playing video games. The mythical childhood of summer at the beach is becoming increasingly rare, certainly for children in the inner city.”
Weight gain aside, even brief exposure to certain foods can shape tastes and preferences for the rest of the year. Not only do children eat more when watching television, for instance, but they are also exposed to numerous commercials for sugar- and fat-laden foods and snacks.
“They’re being exposed to a huge number of food commercials for highest-calorie lowest-quality products,” Dr. Ludwig said. “Those effects have been demonstrated to alter food choice.”
Parents concerned about those choices can take a lesson from the schools. Ask baby sitters to create more structure in the summer day, schedule lunches and snacks at regular times when possible and encourage children to take a “recess” outdoors a few times a day. And parents of children in day camp still have control over breakfast and dinner and all meals on weekends.
“There’s not a lot of data on children’s summertime activities,” said Paul von Hippel, a former Ohio State researcher who was the lead author of last year’s study. “But I think what our data show is that it’s good to keep kids busy during the summer — just busy enough so they’re not eating all the time.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/health/nutrition/24well.html
By Tara Parker-Pope
As my 9-year-old daughter began summer day camp last week, we talked about swimming rules, sunscreen and ... cheese fries.
It was at summer camp a few years ago that she first experienced the culinary joy of cheese fries, which can pack 800 or more calories in a serving. Her camp is typical of those around the country: days packed with archery, swimming and adventure climbing; menus packed with soft drinks, burgers, chicken nuggets and, once a week, cheese fries.Camp food is just one of the summertime nutrition challenges for parents these days. While childhood health advocates often blame schools for poor nutrition and a lack of physical activity, the problem often gets worse in the summer. Last year, The American Journal of Public Health published a provocative study showing that schools may be taking too much of the blame for the childhood obesity epidemic.
Data from kindergarteners and first graders found that body mass index increased two to three times as fast in summer as during the regular school year. Minority children were especially vulnerable, as were children who were already overweight.
Notably, even children who were too thin and needed to gain weight appeared to have better eating habits during the school year. They actually gained more weight while in school and less in the summer.
The data are far from conclusive; they are from 1998-99, the only time federal education officials gathered seasonal data on schoolchildren, said a co-author of the study, Douglas B. Downey, professor of sociology at Ohio State. Similar statistics were not collected for older children.
Even so, the findings suggest that while school nutrition may not always be ideal, children — whether overweight or underweight — may benefit from the structured nature of the school year, which includes scheduled meals, snacks and recess.
“Schools likely provide a more structured day for most children,” Dr. Downey said. “Kids’ access to food is limited to lunch and snack, and they usually receive at least some consistent exercise. When children are at home in the summer they have freer access to food, and while there’s warmer weather, there may be less consistent exercise.”
For parents, the data suggest a need to be extra vigilant about what their children eat during the summer. But that is easier said than done. While many school districts have nutritionists involved in lunch planning, relatively few summer camp programs do. Camps tend to focus on food safety — making sure the food doesn’t spoil in the hot sun. And parents who want to pack lunches struggle with the same problem, often resorting to packaged products that will hold up in the hot weather.
“Camp food is terrible,” said Susan B. Roberts, director of the energy metabolism laboratory at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. “The problem is that they are doing what is easiest — the lowest common denominator for what kids like, and on top of that usually it has to be not something that goes bad and is no work to prepare.”
Despite the food, children who go to camp at least have the advantage of daily organized physical activity. Those who do not, particularly those in low-income families, often spend summers at home with little supervision or structure to their day. They end up watching television or playing video games and grazing on food all day.
“During the year, television viewing habits are more limited because of school and homework, but in summer, all bets are off,” said Dr. David Ludwig, director of the obesity program at Children’s Hospital Boston. “They are lying around all day long with little supervision, watching TV and playing video games. The mythical childhood of summer at the beach is becoming increasingly rare, certainly for children in the inner city.”
Weight gain aside, even brief exposure to certain foods can shape tastes and preferences for the rest of the year. Not only do children eat more when watching television, for instance, but they are also exposed to numerous commercials for sugar- and fat-laden foods and snacks.
“They’re being exposed to a huge number of food commercials for highest-calorie lowest-quality products,” Dr. Ludwig said. “Those effects have been demonstrated to alter food choice.”
Parents concerned about those choices can take a lesson from the schools. Ask baby sitters to create more structure in the summer day, schedule lunches and snacks at regular times when possible and encourage children to take a “recess” outdoors a few times a day. And parents of children in day camp still have control over breakfast and dinner and all meals on weekends.
“There’s not a lot of data on children’s summertime activities,” said Paul von Hippel, a former Ohio State researcher who was the lead author of last year’s study. “But I think what our data show is that it’s good to keep kids busy during the summer — just busy enough so they’re not eating all the time.”
Since NCLB Law, Test Scores on Rise
From: Education Week
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/07/16/43cep_web.h27.html?tmp=2955030
Vol. 27, Issue 43
By Sean Cavanagh
Student achievement in mathematics and reading has risen on state tests, and the gap between white and minority children has narrowed since the passage of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, though gains were stronger in elementary and middle schools than at the high school level, according to a new study.
The study, released today, found that the majority of states evaluated posted “moderate-to-large” gains in both subjects in 4th grade. In 8th grade math, most states fared well, though in reading the increases were not as great. The study looked at data from all 50 states from 2002 to 2007.
The study was generated by the Center on Education Policy, a research and advocacy organization in Washington. It follows up on a similar report released last year, and it tries to expand on that earlier analysis by supplementing it with another year of test data and more in-depth study of trends in different areas, particularly the progress of minority students.
The study addresses “a very broad question, and it provides a very broad answer,” said Jack Jennings, the president of the center, in an interview.
“Student achievement is increasing, and the achievement gap is narrowing,” Mr. Jennings said. Overall, “it’s good news,” he said of the results.
The state gains in reading and math were not as strong when compared with states’ performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the federally administered test that judges states on a common scale. That gap was most pronounced in 8th grade reading. NAEP, known as the “nation’s report card,” is used by researchers and policymakers as the standard for measuring student achievement, independent of various state testing policies and achievement levels.
But Mr. Jennings said that, on the whole, the more modest state NAEP scores did not undermine the gains reflected in individual states’ assessments. NAEP scores still “confirm the general trend,” he said.
Is Law Behind Rise?
The authors of the study say it is impossible through their study to answer the oft-asked question among policymakers whether the NCLB law has on its own produced gains or decreases in student learning. Too many factors, particularly state and local school policies, skew that connection, they say. Yet the study seems certain to stoke debates among researchers, policymakers, parents, and others over the 6 1/2-year-old law’s impact.
President Bush, who signed the bipartisan measure into law in 2002, has steadfastly promoted it as having produced student academic gains, despite criticism from parents, teachers, and others who say the measure has produced a test-driven curriculum overly focused on math and reading. Both of the presumed nominees in this year’s presidential race, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., have voiced general support for the law, while also vowing to seek changes that will make it fairer to schools. ("Candidates at Odds Over K-12," June 11, 2008.)
The study examines student achievement on the basis of the percentage of students scoring at the “proficient” level on state-administered tests in reading and math. States are required to give exams in those subjects annually in grades 3-8 and once in high school. As a second indicator, the study looks at the “effect size,” basically the differences between test results, using a common measurement. The study also compared trends on the individual state tests with the state-by-state results of NAEP.
The center was advised in designing and implementing the study by a team of outside researchers who have studied testing policy and education research: Laura Hamilton of the RAND Corp.; Eric Hanushek of the Hoover Institution; Frederick Hess, director of education policy studies, the American Enterprise Institute; Robert L. Linn, a professor emeritus at the University of Colorado at Boulder; and W. James Popham, a professor emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles. Those panelists include both supporters and critics of the No Child Left Behind Act. ("State Tests Show Gains Since NCLB," June 6, 2007.)
The center’s researchers say they vetted test data from 2002 to 2007 and omitted results from individual states that had significantly changed their testing policies during that time. Only trends of state testing data lasting at least three years were analyzed, and subgroups that were so small that they might have skewed the results, or which had changed significantly in size, were not counted.
Elementary School Gains
Overall, in both reading and math, there were 133 categories of students making moderate-to-large gains on their state tests, and only 10 cases of students making moderate-to-large drops in achievement.
In math, 21 of 27 states with enough test data to be analyzed made moderate-to-large gains at the elementary level, as judged by the two indicators used in the study, proficiency and effect size. Only one state showed a decline in both indicators at the elementary level.
In middle school math, 22 of 27 states made moderate-to-large increases in both indicators, while only two of them had decreases in either indicator. Among high school students, 12 of 26 states produced moderate-to-large math increases, and six states saw a decrease on at least one indicator in that subject.
In elementary reading, 17 of 28 states produced moderate-to-large gains on both indicators, and three states showed a decline in one category, effect sizes. Fourteen of 28 states made moderate-to-large gains on the two indicators at the middle school level, while six states had scores that stayed flat or declined by one indicator.
At the high school level, of 27 states evaluated, just eight states made moderate-to-large gains in two indicators, seven states made at least slight gains on both, and five states saw either a moderate-to-large or slight decline in reading in both categories.
The study compared state percentages of “proficient” students against the NAEP in both reading and math in 134 total categories. It found that gains occurred on both assessments in 107 categories, and declined in both cases in just two instances. In the 25 other categories, NAEP and state test scores diverged.
While he found that the overall gains in NAEP and state tests mirrored each other, Mr. Jennings speculated that states’ weaker scores on the national assessment could be partly the result of students and school officials not seeing those tests as being as important as state exams, which carry high stakes for schools under the NCLB law. He also noted that some states’ curricula are more aligned to the content on NAEP tests than others are.
State standards for judging student “proficiency” on tests vary greatly. A federal study last year found wide discrepancies in the proficiency levels states use on their individual assessments, when judged against the NAEP, leading observers to question state claims of academic progress. ("State Tests, NAEP Often a Mismatch," June 16, 2007.)
'Hypersensitive' to Low-Achievers?
The Center on Education Policy study also found a closing of the gap between whites and minority subgroups. For instance, in elementary reading, the gap between African-American and white students narrowed in 13 states in both indicators and widened on both indicators in only one state, the analysis found.
Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, was skeptical that the racial-achievement gap shrunk as reported by the states. He said states want to recognize the gains of low-achieving students, and tend to be “hypersensitive” to relatively small test-score increases as a result, in ways that NAEP is not.
Even so, Mr. Fuller said he was encouraged by the overall state gains in reading and math.
That view was shared by Ross Wiener, the vice president for programs and policy at the Washington-based Education Trust, a Washington-based group that advocates high standards for disadvantaged students. He attributed the state advances to a host of education improvements made at the federal, state, and local levels, many of which began before the passage of the NCLB law.
Improvements have “been brought about by the standards and accountability movement,” Mr. Wiener said. “No Child Left Behind has been a part of that, but there’s no way to tease that [effect] out.”
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/07/16/43cep_web.h27.html?tmp=2955030
Vol. 27, Issue 43
By Sean Cavanagh
Student achievement in mathematics and reading has risen on state tests, and the gap between white and minority children has narrowed since the passage of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, though gains were stronger in elementary and middle schools than at the high school level, according to a new study.
The study, released today, found that the majority of states evaluated posted “moderate-to-large” gains in both subjects in 4th grade. In 8th grade math, most states fared well, though in reading the increases were not as great. The study looked at data from all 50 states from 2002 to 2007.
The study was generated by the Center on Education Policy, a research and advocacy organization in Washington. It follows up on a similar report released last year, and it tries to expand on that earlier analysis by supplementing it with another year of test data and more in-depth study of trends in different areas, particularly the progress of minority students.
The study addresses “a very broad question, and it provides a very broad answer,” said Jack Jennings, the president of the center, in an interview.
“Student achievement is increasing, and the achievement gap is narrowing,” Mr. Jennings said. Overall, “it’s good news,” he said of the results.
The state gains in reading and math were not as strong when compared with states’ performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the federally administered test that judges states on a common scale. That gap was most pronounced in 8th grade reading. NAEP, known as the “nation’s report card,” is used by researchers and policymakers as the standard for measuring student achievement, independent of various state testing policies and achievement levels.
But Mr. Jennings said that, on the whole, the more modest state NAEP scores did not undermine the gains reflected in individual states’ assessments. NAEP scores still “confirm the general trend,” he said.
Is Law Behind Rise?
The authors of the study say it is impossible through their study to answer the oft-asked question among policymakers whether the NCLB law has on its own produced gains or decreases in student learning. Too many factors, particularly state and local school policies, skew that connection, they say. Yet the study seems certain to stoke debates among researchers, policymakers, parents, and others over the 6 1/2-year-old law’s impact.
President Bush, who signed the bipartisan measure into law in 2002, has steadfastly promoted it as having produced student academic gains, despite criticism from parents, teachers, and others who say the measure has produced a test-driven curriculum overly focused on math and reading. Both of the presumed nominees in this year’s presidential race, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., have voiced general support for the law, while also vowing to seek changes that will make it fairer to schools. ("Candidates at Odds Over K-12," June 11, 2008.)
The study examines student achievement on the basis of the percentage of students scoring at the “proficient” level on state-administered tests in reading and math. States are required to give exams in those subjects annually in grades 3-8 and once in high school. As a second indicator, the study looks at the “effect size,” basically the differences between test results, using a common measurement. The study also compared trends on the individual state tests with the state-by-state results of NAEP.
The center was advised in designing and implementing the study by a team of outside researchers who have studied testing policy and education research: Laura Hamilton of the RAND Corp.; Eric Hanushek of the Hoover Institution; Frederick Hess, director of education policy studies, the American Enterprise Institute; Robert L. Linn, a professor emeritus at the University of Colorado at Boulder; and W. James Popham, a professor emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles. Those panelists include both supporters and critics of the No Child Left Behind Act. ("State Tests Show Gains Since NCLB," June 6, 2007.)
The center’s researchers say they vetted test data from 2002 to 2007 and omitted results from individual states that had significantly changed their testing policies during that time. Only trends of state testing data lasting at least three years were analyzed, and subgroups that were so small that they might have skewed the results, or which had changed significantly in size, were not counted.
Elementary School Gains
Overall, in both reading and math, there were 133 categories of students making moderate-to-large gains on their state tests, and only 10 cases of students making moderate-to-large drops in achievement.
In math, 21 of 27 states with enough test data to be analyzed made moderate-to-large gains at the elementary level, as judged by the two indicators used in the study, proficiency and effect size. Only one state showed a decline in both indicators at the elementary level.
In middle school math, 22 of 27 states made moderate-to-large increases in both indicators, while only two of them had decreases in either indicator. Among high school students, 12 of 26 states produced moderate-to-large math increases, and six states saw a decrease on at least one indicator in that subject.
In elementary reading, 17 of 28 states produced moderate-to-large gains on both indicators, and three states showed a decline in one category, effect sizes. Fourteen of 28 states made moderate-to-large gains on the two indicators at the middle school level, while six states had scores that stayed flat or declined by one indicator.
At the high school level, of 27 states evaluated, just eight states made moderate-to-large gains in two indicators, seven states made at least slight gains on both, and five states saw either a moderate-to-large or slight decline in reading in both categories.
The study compared state percentages of “proficient” students against the NAEP in both reading and math in 134 total categories. It found that gains occurred on both assessments in 107 categories, and declined in both cases in just two instances. In the 25 other categories, NAEP and state test scores diverged.
While he found that the overall gains in NAEP and state tests mirrored each other, Mr. Jennings speculated that states’ weaker scores on the national assessment could be partly the result of students and school officials not seeing those tests as being as important as state exams, which carry high stakes for schools under the NCLB law. He also noted that some states’ curricula are more aligned to the content on NAEP tests than others are.
State standards for judging student “proficiency” on tests vary greatly. A federal study last year found wide discrepancies in the proficiency levels states use on their individual assessments, when judged against the NAEP, leading observers to question state claims of academic progress. ("State Tests, NAEP Often a Mismatch," June 16, 2007.)
'Hypersensitive' to Low-Achievers?
The Center on Education Policy study also found a closing of the gap between whites and minority subgroups. For instance, in elementary reading, the gap between African-American and white students narrowed in 13 states in both indicators and widened on both indicators in only one state, the analysis found.
Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, was skeptical that the racial-achievement gap shrunk as reported by the states. He said states want to recognize the gains of low-achieving students, and tend to be “hypersensitive” to relatively small test-score increases as a result, in ways that NAEP is not.
Even so, Mr. Fuller said he was encouraged by the overall state gains in reading and math.
That view was shared by Ross Wiener, the vice president for programs and policy at the Washington-based Education Trust, a Washington-based group that advocates high standards for disadvantaged students. He attributed the state advances to a host of education improvements made at the federal, state, and local levels, many of which began before the passage of the NCLB law.
Improvements have “been brought about by the standards and accountability movement,” Mr. Wiener said. “No Child Left Behind has been a part of that, but there’s no way to tease that [effect] out.”
Monday, June 23, 2008
Social networks 'teaching tech skills'
From: vnunet.com
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2219789/social-networks-teach-tech-skills
Ian Williams
Study claims to find educational benefits in using Facebook and MySpace
Researchers at the University of Minnesota have suggested that social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook can have educational benefits for students.
The researchers collected data from 16 to 18 year-old students in 13 urban high schools in the Midwest over six months.
Some 94 per cent of the students observed use the internet, 82 per cent go online at home and 77 per cent had a profile on a social networking site.
When asked what they learn by using social networking sites, the students listed 'technology skills', followed by 'creativity', being 'open to new or diverse views' and 'communication skills'.
"Students using social networking sites are practising the kinds of 21st century skills we want them to develop to be successful today," said Christine Greenhow, principal investigator of the study and a learning technologies researcher at Minnesota's College of Education and Human Development.
"Students are developing a positive attitude towards using technology systems, editing and customising content and thinking about online design and layout.
"They are also sharing creative original work like poetry and film and practising safe and responsible use of information and technology. The websites offer tremendous educational potential."
Greenhow claimed that the results also show that social networking sites have implications for educators, who now have a vast opportunity to support what students are learning online.
"Now that we know what skills students are learning and what experiences they are being exposed to, we can help foster and extend those skills," she said.
"As educators, we always want to know where our students are coming from and what they are interested in so we can build on that in our teaching.
"By understanding how students may be using these networking technologies in their daily lives, and where the as yet unrecognised educational opportunities are, we can help make schools even more relevant, connected and meaningful to kids."
However, the researchers also found that most students appear to be oblivious to the academic and professional opportunities that social networking sites can provide.
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2219789/social-networks-teach-tech-skills
Ian Williams
Study claims to find educational benefits in using Facebook and MySpace
Researchers at the University of Minnesota have suggested that social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook can have educational benefits for students.
The researchers collected data from 16 to 18 year-old students in 13 urban high schools in the Midwest over six months.
Some 94 per cent of the students observed use the internet, 82 per cent go online at home and 77 per cent had a profile on a social networking site.
When asked what they learn by using social networking sites, the students listed 'technology skills', followed by 'creativity', being 'open to new or diverse views' and 'communication skills'.
"Students using social networking sites are practising the kinds of 21st century skills we want them to develop to be successful today," said Christine Greenhow, principal investigator of the study and a learning technologies researcher at Minnesota's College of Education and Human Development.
"Students are developing a positive attitude towards using technology systems, editing and customising content and thinking about online design and layout.
"They are also sharing creative original work like poetry and film and practising safe and responsible use of information and technology. The websites offer tremendous educational potential."
Greenhow claimed that the results also show that social networking sites have implications for educators, who now have a vast opportunity to support what students are learning online.
"Now that we know what skills students are learning and what experiences they are being exposed to, we can help foster and extend those skills," she said.
"As educators, we always want to know where our students are coming from and what they are interested in so we can build on that in our teaching.
"By understanding how students may be using these networking technologies in their daily lives, and where the as yet unrecognised educational opportunities are, we can help make schools even more relevant, connected and meaningful to kids."
However, the researchers also found that most students appear to be oblivious to the academic and professional opportunities that social networking sites can provide.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
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
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
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/
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.
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.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
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.
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.
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.
Monday, June 16, 2008
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.
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.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)