New Algebra 2 Test Suggests States Face High Hurdles

This from Education Week by way of KSBA:

Students across the country struggled with advanced algebra on a first-of-its-kind test in that subject, according to a report to be released this week by Achieve, the nonprofit Washington organization that helped coordinate the exam.

A dozen states had students take part in the test, the product of an unusual collaboration among states seeking to establish a common standard for judging teenagers’ ability in challenging math, as well as their preparation for college.

Achieve is part of the American Diploma Project Network, an effort among two-thirds of the nation’s states to align standards, tests, and graduation requirements. Achieve officials in 2005 began working with states to devise a test in advanced algebra, or Algebra 2. Nearly 90,000 students took part in the first test, which was given as an end-of-course exam this spring.

The Algebra 2 test is designed to be a demanding exam, the authors of the report say. Most state high school math exams, by contrast, gauge students on 9th or 10th grade math, not the skills they need to prosper in college classes, the report states.

Achieve was set to release the results of the algebra test Aug. 25. Not surprisingly, given the test’s relative difficulty, scores from the 12 participating states were low. North Carolina’s students earned the highest average of percentage points correct, 35 percent. Kentucky’s students had the lowest, at 21 percent.

Achieve officials, however, cautioned against reading too much into individual states’ results, which they said could be affected by several factors. They noted that the number of students taking the test varied enormously by state, from nearly 34,000 in Ohio to only a few hundred in Minnesota. They also pointed out that students in various grades took the Algebra 2 exam, depending on the math requirements of their states.

“We were not surprised” by the low scores, said Michael Cohen, the president of Achieve, which seeks to raise academic standards and prepare students for college and the workforce. “We knew that a rigorous algebra test, pegged at a college-readiness level, was not something a lot of students would do well on.” Even so, he added “it’s a big reminder of how much further we have to go.”

Advanced Content

Algebra 2, and high school courses with the same math content, are widely seen as vital to students’ success in college. Advanced algebra requires abstract reasoning and critical-thinking skills. Achieve’s research has shown that college faculty members regard advanced-algebra content as critical for students to survive in college math.

The goal of the Achieve exam and the report is not to emphasize state-by-state comparisons of test scores, Mr. Cohen said, but to encourage states to set agreed-upon standards for what students should know in Algebra 2.

In addition, the project can demonstrate the feasibility of states working together to craft common tests, and urge them to develop tests that measure college readiness rather than a less rigorous standard, he said.

Many states have increased their math-coursetaking requirements in recent years. California, for instance, recently mandated that students be tested in introductory algebra, or Algebra 1, in 8th grade three years from now.

One state that participated in the Achieve test, Arkansas, requires students to complete Algebra 2 to graduate from high school, unless their families opt out. Arkansas had 22,000 students take the Achieve test, one of the largest populations of test-takers of any participating state.

Arkansas’ students, on average, got only 27 percent of the questions correct—which put the state’s performance in about the middle of the pack—but the state’s commissioner, T. Kenneth James, said he did not find those results especially startling. Arkansas has made progress on state math tests at earlier grade levels, he said, and he expects it to make strides in Algebra 2 in the future, as the state commits more resources to teaching and to classroom improvement at the high school level.

Mr. James also said he expects more states eventually will join in Achieve’s Algebra 2 project, despite the initial low scores. Most state officials find the idea of having their students take part in a challenging exam, used across several states, appealing, he said.

“We’ve talking about a common standard,” he said. “What we expect students to demonstrate after completing Algebra 2 should not be that hard to come up with.”

The report shows that the largest group of Algebra 2 test-takers had taken that class in 11th grade. But those who took Algebra 2 earlier in school produced higher average scores—a result that was not surprising, because teenagers who enrolled in more-rigorous math classes earlier were more likely to have stronger math skills, the authors concluded.

The Achieve report also shows that students struggled far more on the algebra constructed-response questions, or those which asked them to formulate their own answers, than they did on multiple-choice items.

That weakness did not surprise Hank Kepner, the president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, a 100,000-member organization based in Reston, Va., who worked with Achieve in designing the test. He saw it as evidence that students were struggling with more complex problem-solving, an important skill in college math.

Those complex questions allow teachers to understand “the thinking the student put into the problem,” Mr. Kepner said, and “where a student made a misstep.”

New Report Shows States Taking Lead on Developing Rigorous, Common Core Standards

WASHINGTON – July 31, 2008 – A new report released today by Achieve shows that individual state efforts to set college- and career-ready standards for high school graduates have actually led to a remarkable degree of consistency in English and mathematics requirements. This “common core” is detailed in "Out of Many, One: Toward Rigorous Common Core Standards from the Ground Up."

The report tracks the voluntary standard-setting efforts in 16 early-adopter states, including Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Texas. Together, these states educate 38 percent of U.S. public school students. All of the states discussed in the report are members of Achieve's American Diploma Project (ADP) Network.

“States are leading the way in identifying and setting real-world standards for student success,” said Mike Cohen, president of Achieve. “A common core of college- and career-ready expectations in 16 states is a positive development. Rigorous state standards, anchored in real-world demands, are important because they can—and should—drive the rest of the education reform agenda.” Cohen went on to add, “This is not about national standards or the federal government, it’s about state leadership.”

Specifically, the report found that across the board:

• States increased the rigor of their English and mathematics standards;
• State standards have a clear, well-defined common core in English and mathematics; and
• The common core was a byproduct of aligning standards to real-world demands.

“The common core that emerged from this work is no surprise. All graduates must have core knowledge and that core is not bound by state lines,” said Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, who is vice chair of the Achieve Board. “Setting standards is not a one-time-only exercise, and we need to make sure our state standards are not only the best in the nation, but the best in the world.”

Governor Phil Bredesen of one of the early-adopter states discussed in the report, Tennessee, explained the importance of adopting college- and career-ready standards to his state. “Not only did this effort help us to raise the bar and increase the rigor of our English and math coursework in Tennessee, it spurred other key education reforms that will help guarantee our students better lives and ultimately enhance the future competitiveness of our state and nation.”

The leadership role that the report shows states have displayed in setting common English and math standards has implications for the role of the federal government in education policymaking and has the potential to change the way education issues are viewed at the state and national levels.

Gene Wilhoit, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, stated, “As this report shows, a state-led effort is the fastest, most effective way to ensure that more students graduate from high school ready for college and career, a universally accepted goal.”

Achieve has been helping states align graduation requirements with real-world demands since its founding. In 2005, it launched its ADP Network, which helps state policymakers collaborate with K-12 public education, postsecondary education, the business community and other state partners to identify the skills and knowledge required for their graduates to succeed after high school.

For a copy of the report, click here.
To learn more about Achieve, visit http://www.achieve.org/.

Thanks Jon & Dorie.

Teachers and Rights Groups Oppose Education Measure

WASHINGTON, Sept. 10 — The draft House bill to renew the federal No Child Left Behind law came under sharp attack on Monday from civil rights groups and the nation’s largest teachers unions, the latest sign of how difficult it may be for Congress to pass the law this fall.

At a marathon hearing of the House Education Committee, legislators heard from an array of civil rights groups, including the Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights, the National Urban League, the Center for American Progress and Achieve Inc., a group that works with states to raise academic standards.

All protested that a proposal in the bill for a pilot program that would allow districts to devise their own measures of student progress, rather than using statewide tests, would gut the law’s intent of demanding that schools teach all children, regardless of poverty, race or other factors, to the same standard.

Dianne M. Piché, executive director of the Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights, said the bill had “the potential to set back accountability by years, if not decades,” and would lead to lower standards for children in urban and high poverty schools.

“It strikes me as not unlike allowing my teenage son and his friends to score their own driver’s license tests,” Ms. Piché said, adding, “We’ll have one set of standards for the Bronx and one for Westchester County, one for Baltimore and one for Bethesda.” ...

This from the New York Times.

Spellings argues against national standards, national test

In an Op-Ed in Saturday's Washington Post, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings argues that news from the recent CEP study may be encouraging, but an Education Department report released this week found that state standards for reading and math assessments were generally lower than those of the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

In most cases, the knowledge required to reach the "proficient" level on state tests was comparable to the "basic" level on NAEP.

She says this may provide fuel for a movement toward "national standards" and a national test, which she argues against. She says national standards are the wrong way to go because it goes against more than two centuries of American educational tradition.

Under the Constitution, states and localities have the primary leadership role in public education. They design the curriculum and pay 90 percent of the bills. Neighborhood schools deserve neighborhood leadership, not dictates from bureaucrats thousands of miles away.

Dictates from bureaucrats? Is she speaking of herself?

It is more than a little ironic that while presiding over the federal government's largest intrusion into the field of education, Spelling argues state primacy is the right way to go!

"The president's plan to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act calls on states to post their scores side-by-side with the NAEP results. This would increase transparency and drive up the political will to raise state standards," Spellings claims.

While she opposes the imposition of national standards, she applauds state's efforts to construct them from the bottom up. She praises states like Kentucky that are,

"...aligning high school coursework with college and employer expectations. Many have adopted a core curriculum of four years of English and three years each of math and science. Recently, nine states announced a common Algebra II assessment, the largest such effort ever undertaken."

During the past few years, KDE has been engaged in the process of revising state standards for mathematics (and other content areas). As KDE looked at the Program of Studies for Kentucky Schools and the Core Content for Assessment, it incorporated national standards such as those from the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). At the same time, Kentucky was involved in the American Diploma Project, and used the benchmarks for mathematics that came out of that work as part of the revision process. The standards revisions were finalized in 2006.


But KDE does not see this as a move toward national standards.

According to Kentucky education officials Lisa Gross and Michael Miller, Kentucky's involvement in Achieve's Algebra II project is intended to meet the Kentucky mandate (under KRS 158.860) for an end-of-course exam in Algebra II "to be available and piloted in selected school districts no later than the end of the 2007-2008 school year."

While it is a multi-state project (nine states), the intent in Kentucky is not related to the national conversation around a potential move toward a standard national curriculum.

Gross acknowledges news reports about the Achieve Inc., project that have alluded to this notion, and that it may very well be part of Achieve's agenda in this work.

But KDE maintains that the Kentucky standards for mathematics in the Program of Studies for Kentucky Schools and the Core Content for Assessment are for use by local Kentucky schools as they develop their curricula.

Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana join states in shared math test

The Zanesville Times Recorder in a story by Nancy Zuckerbrod (AP Education Writer)reports:

"Nine states have come together for the first time to develop a common high school math test, a move described by some as a step toward national educational standards."

The group of states includes Kentucky, Arkansas, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.

Mike Cohen, president of Achieve Inc., a Washington-based nonprofit (created by the nation's governors) that is helping design the standards told the Associated Press that the states are considering making scores on the test available to college placement offices to help determine the level of coursework freshmen are prepared to take. “This is a state-led effort to create consistent standards and assessments. It would not have happened if the federal government had tried to make that happen,” Cohen said, adding that he expects additional states to join the nine.

Since NCLB allowed states to determine their own definition of "proficient" many more students are able to achieve proficiency on the state tests than on national math and reading tests. This has prompted many to conclude that some states are setting their standards too low. Some in Congress are advocating provisions that would encourage states to voluntarily adopt common standards.

Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at the University of California at Berkeley told the AP that the law penalizes schools that don’t make adequate progress, so they are tinkering with "proficiency" to avoid penalties and meet their 2014 goals. “As this mischief is exposed out in the states, it’s going to further support this push for national standards,” he said.

While the math test is still in development, Achieve Inc. is moving ahead to other subjects.

Former Fayette County Superintendent, now Arkansas Commissioner of Education Ken James is on board. “These youngsters aren’t going to stay in our respective states for the most part,” James said. “They’re going to need portable skills, and we should be able to agree on what those portable skills are going to be.”

With states bailing out on high standards at present, it's difficult to predict how many will ultimately sign on. The percentage of participating states will have to be near 100% for the effort to be meaningful and that may put pressure on federal officials to soften penalties against states that presently fail to meet high standards, as an incentive to join. At present 29 states have agreed in principle to "prepar[e] all students for college and work."

Since the Constitution makes education a province of the states, increased federal control over the most important aspects of schooling may well give rise to new legal challenges.

And more from the Courier-Journal.