Tag Archive for ‘state standards’ at The Core Knowledge Blog

Tag Archive for 'state standards'

Top-Achieving Nations Beat Top U.S. States in Math and Science

Published by CKF on November 14, 2007 in Research and Reports. 0 Comments

Sean Cavanagh of Education Week reports:

Students in the highest-performing U.S. states rank well below their peers in the world’s top-achieving countries in mathematics and science skill, according to a new study that judges American youths on an international scale.

The study, published Nov. 14 by the American Institutes for Research, compares the performance of 8th graders in individual American states not against each other, but against students in top-performing foreign nations, such as Japan and South Korea, as well as against children in recent lower-scoring ones, such as Bulgaria, Jordan, and Romania.

The analysis found that, on the one hand, most American states are performing as well as, or better than, most foreign nations in the study in math and science.

But it also concludes that even students in states such as Massachusetts, Minnesota, and North Dakota, which have scored well on recent U.S. exams, do not match students in top-performing foreign countries.

Read the complete Education Week article

Read the complete American Institute for Research press release

Read the complete American Institute for Research report

The Pangloss Index: How States Game the No Child Left Behind Act

Published by CKF on November 13, 2007 in Educational Policy, Podcast and Video and Research and Reports. 0 Comments

Author: Kevin Carey

Despite the poor performance of Birmingham City Schools,

The Alabama Department of Education … says everything is fine, that Birmingham City Schools made “adequate yearly progress” last year under the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). And only five of the district’s 65 schools are “in need of improvement.” The serious consequences and strong interventions that NCLB’s authors envisioned for chronically underperforming districts like Birmingham are nowhere to be found.

The reason is simple: While NCLB was designed to raise achievement standards … , the Alabama Department of Education has lowered standards annually, to the point where even abjectly failing districts like Birmingham make the grade. And it’s not alone — every one of the accountability-avoidance gambits used in Alabama has been adopted in many other states. Indeed, the most noteworthy thing about Alabama’s elaborate plan to avoid NCLB accountability, and the impact of those actions on Birmingham, is how mundane they really are. Similar stories could be written about states and districts across the nation.

Collectively, these states and districts provide a case study in how determined states can undermine even tightly constructed laws like NCLB. And, as importantly, they provide a cautionary tale for members of Congress working to write the next version of the nation’s most important education law.

Download the full report

Read the full article on Education Sector’s website

Interview with Kevin Carey, author of The Pangloss Effect: Download (136)

Education Sector: Explaining NCLB policy issues

Published by CKF on November 1, 2007 in Assessment and Testing, Educational Policy and Research and Reports. 0 Comments

From an Education Sector newsletter:

Education Sector’s Explainer series unpacks key school accountability issues!

Current education news and debates all seem to revolve around the federal No Child Left Behind Act and school accountability. Education Sector’s Explainer Series will help you make sense of these confusing education policy issues.

Education Sector’s Explainer series gives lay readers insights into important aspects of education policymaking. Explainers are designed to bring clarity to key, but complex, concepts and terms within the education landscape that often are misunderstood by the public. They are straightforward, cut-through-the-jargon guides that can be used alone, or as a reference when reading education news stories or research on related topics.

Recent Explainers have focused on deciphering some of NCLB’s fundamental features including how states set “cut scores” on their tests, what it means for states to make “adequate yearly progress” under the federal law, and how the controversial National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) works.

Read, reference, and share these Education Sector Explainers:

Making the Cut: How States Set Passing Scores on Standardized Tests

Passing or “cut” scores are a key factor in determining the rigor of state tests, which matter more than ever before under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Yet, when states and the media report student results on exams, they rarely include information on passing scores or the process by which they are determined. This Explainer describes how states set cut scores and why they matter.

States’ Evidence: What It Means to Make ‘Adequate Yearly Progress’ Under NCLB

Under NCLB, states must set performance targets for schools to meet, known as “adequate yearly progress,” or “AYP.” And those schools that do not meet these goals or “make” AYP face considerable consequences. But what does it really mean for a school to make AYP? This Explainer describes how NCLB’s complex accountability system works overall and in different states and discusses the basics of “making” AYP and the multiple routes schools can take to get there.

Understanding NAEP: Inside the Nation’s Education Report Card

The National Assessment of Educational Progress is one of the most trusted resources for comparing student achievement across states and demographic groups. But it is also one of the most complex tests in existence, leading to difficulty in interpreting and reporting its results. This Explainer is a guide to understanding NAEP’s complex features and the challenges ahead for the test in an era of increased accountability.

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Person County schools top North Carolina average in reading

Published by CKF on October 31, 2007 in School News. 0 Comments

By Phyliss Boatwright, C-T Staff Writer

… At Bethel Hill Charter School, 93.8 percent of students in grades three through six were at or above grade level in reading and 75.8 percent of BHCS students were proficient at math, well above the state averages in both categories.

BHCS Principal John Betterton said, “If you look across the spectrum, our students are from five to 10 points above state, but at fourth grade, they are 15 points higher. And our reading is generally about 10 points above state,” he said. “I think we’re beginning see the effects of a strong phonics program — and I am not a phonics advocate,” said Betterton, “and also the effects of the Core Knowledge curriculum, which is very rich in classical literature.”

Phonics give kids the skills to figure out how to attack words, Betterton said, so that they can better learn new words and the Core Knowledge curriculum, he added, gives students “a broad knowledge base with which to do the reading.”

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Editorial: A Beacon in the Bronx

Published by CKF on October 8, 2007 in Opinion. 0 Comments

This article first appeared in the New York Observer on Oct. 8, 2007. It is reprinted in full, by permission.

Six years ago, in a poor, ill-served neighborhood in the South Bronx, the Carl C. Icahn Charter School opened its doors for the first time. The school, named for its founder and chief funder, is part of a nationwide attempt to create a new kind of public school, freer to innovate and experiment but with a strong sense of mission.

Fifty-nine percent of the school’s 278 students are African-American; 41 percent are Hispanic. Eighty-nine percent are eligible for free or reduced-price school lunches, meaning that they come from poor families, many of whom live in high-rise apartment buildings near the school.

The U.S. Department of Education recently discovered that those children and their teachers are working miracles in the South Bronx. Every student — every one of them — met state standards in language arts and mathematics in the 2004-05 school year. In 2005-06, 100 percent of the school’s third and fourth graders — 100 percent! — were judged proficient or better on state math tests.

Those results led the Department of Education to designate the school as one of only seven charter schools nationwide, and the only one in New York City, to receive the agency’s “Closing the Gap” award. The reference is to the stubborn achievement gap between white students and minority students on standardized tests.

At the Icahn school, the so-called achievement gap hasn’t simply been closed. It has been obliterated. No child is being left behind; indeed, the children at this charter school are surging ahead of their peers.

All credit goes to the school’s students, their families, their teachers and principal, and to Mr. Icahn, whose generosity and vision made so much of this success possible. Also deserving of congratulations are the school’s board members, including legendary school innovator Seymour Fliegel, who heads the Center for Educational Innovation and who has been a strong advocate for public school reform.

The charter school is one of many that have sprung up around the city. It is located in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, in an area, the South Bronx, that remains associated with all of the ills that add to the burdens of poverty. And yet, despite the formidable obstacles placed in the way of the school’s students, they are flourishing.

So what, exactly, is going on here?

It starts with leadership. The school’s principal, Jeffrey Litt, is a fixture in the community and a tireless advocate for his students. But he is more than an administrator: He is an educator. The school’s curriculum is based on author E.D. Hirsch’s concept of core knowledge, which identifies content in the humanities and the sciences that every American child ought to know.

Teachers are expected to hold their students to high standards, and are accountable if their students fall behind. Apparently, the students — who are chosen by lottery, except for those who have a sibling in the school — love the challenge. Many of them attend special classes on Saturday mornings to work on the skills they learn during the week.

That hard work is paying off and creating a model of achievement in the South Bronx. The Department of Education’s award is a fitting tribute to the students, faculty, staff and board members of the Carl C. Icahn Charter School.

Thomas B. Fordham Institute Report: The Proficiency Illusion

Published by CKF on October 4, 2007 in Research and Reports. 1 Comment

“The Proficiency Illusion” reveals that the tests that states use to measure academic progress under the No Child Left Behind Act are creating a false impression of success, especially in reading and especially in the early grades.

The report, a collaboration of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the Northwest Evaluation Association, contains several major findings:

States are aiming particularly low when it comes to their expectations for younger children, setting elementary students up to fail as they progress through their academic careers.
The central flaw in NCLB is that it allows each state to set its own definition of what constitutes “proficiency.”
By mandating that all students reach “proficiency” by 2014, it tempts states to define proficiency downward.
Although there has not been a “race to the bottom,” with the majority of states dramatically lowering standards under pressure from NCLB, the report did find a “walk to the middle,” as some states with high standards saw their expectations drop toward the middle of the pack.
In most states, math tests are consistently more difficult to pass than reading tests.
Eighth-grade tests are sharply harder to pass in most states than those in earlier grades (even after taking into account obvious differences in subject-matter complexity and children’s academic development).

As a result, students may be performing worse in reading, and worse in elementary school, than is readily apparent by looking at passing rates on state tests.

Read the report

Get Congress Out of the Classroom

Published by CKF on October 3, 2007 in Opinion. 0 Comments

By Diane Ravitch

Despite the rosy claims of the Bush administration, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 is fundamentally flawed. The latest national tests, released last week, show that academic gains since 2003 have been modest, less even than those posted in the years before the law was put in place. In eighth-grade reading, there have been no gains at all since 1998.

The main goal of the law — that all children in the United States will be proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014 — is simply unattainable. The primary strategy — to test all children in those subjects in grades three through eight every year — has unleashed an unhealthy obsession with standardized testing that has reduced the time available for teaching other important subjects. Furthermore, the law completely fractures the traditional limits on federal interference in the operation of local schools.

Unfortunately, the Congressional leaders in both parties seem determined to renew the law, probably after next year’s presidential election, with only minor changes. But No Child Left Behind should be radically overhauled, not just tweaked.

… No Child Left Behind can, however, be salvaged if policymakers recognize that they need to reverse the roles of the federal government and the states. In our federal system, each level of government should do what it does best. The federal government is good at collecting and disseminating information. The states and school districts, being closer to the schools, teachers and parents than the federal government, are more likely to be flexible and pragmatic about designing reforms to meet the needs of particular schools.

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Standards Get Boost on the Hill

Published by CKF on January 16, 2007 in Educational Policy. 0 Comments

Bills before Congress aim to raise the bar in states.

By Lynn Olson

The politically sensitive idea of increasing the rigor of state standards and tests by linking them to standards set at the national level is getting a push from prominent lawmakers as Congress moves to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act as early as this year.

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, the second-ranking Democrat on the Senate education committee and a newly announced candidate for president, introduced a bill with Rep. Vernon J. Ehlers, R-Mich., last week that would provide incentives for states to adopt voluntary “American education content standards” in mathematics and science, to be developed by the governing board for the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

… “Core American standards would set high goals for all students, allow for meaningful comparisons across states, and ensure that all of our students are prepared for higher education,” Sen. Dodd said at a Jan. 8 event held here to unveil his bill. Creating incentives for states to adopt such standards voluntarily is the way to go, he stressed, emphasizing “there are no mandates here.”

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