Prichard Rethinks 21st Century Education Reform

There’s rising concern that our 
test-based accountability system is broken…

Some experts argue that key elements of the US system,

especially annual testing and tying consequences for low scores

to schools and increasingly to teachers - and you know that’s

just a huge mess - are a far cry from the practices embraced

by these leading countries… I’m not sure it’s a particularly

healthy way to look at [teacher evaluation.] In many cases,

top performing countries do not test annually, and their approach

to accountability rests on gateway exams in high school with clear

consequences for students. 

--Virginia Edwards

The keynote speaker at Friday’s Prichard Committee Fall meeting was Virginia Edwards, Editor-in-Chief of Education Week the nation’s top source for national education news. She spoke on the topic: 21st Century Education Reform: A National Perspective. Edwards, was a long-time friend of Bob Sexton’s, having met him as a freshman at UK in 1973 when he was the new-ish head of UK’s Office of Experiential Education. She double majored in journalism and political science and became the editor of the Kentucky Kernel. Edwards went on to report and edit for the Courier-Journal before a brief stint with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning.

Now as President of Ed Week’s parent group, Editorial Projects in Education – where Sexton served as a board member - she says she has the perfect job, one that combined four “important-to-me things:” journalism that helps build political will through communication; a chance to improve education for kids; she gets to “run something;” and is part of the nonprofit sector.

From her unique perspective Edwards tells a familiar tale, that “Kentucky has been a national beacon of education reform” over the past quarter century, after languishing at the bottom of the heap for so many years. But, Edwards has been uniquely positioned to see education reform in other states mirror Kentucky’s efforts.

Edwards’s topic was “21st Century Education Reform: A National Perspective,” and she zeroed in on six “big picture” themes for the current year:

1. A difficult academic transition is taking shape: The common-core standards are different and hard, and the move to a new generation of assessments will be a challenge. The new standards and tests have implications across the board for everyone but it remains to be seen how well the supporters of the common core can sustain the momentum of the past year as the “real work” gets going.

2. Early Literacy: by which Edwards means early childhood education up to the third grade. Education Week will focus on cradle-to-career coverage, Edwards said. She underscored the importance of community support and parental involvement.

3. Tough budget times are getting tougher: The “funding cliff” was real; the end of most of the stimulus aid that “partly cushioned the blow of the Great Recession for states and districts.” In many states, the budget squeeze has reduced school funding and cost jobs while districts are challenged to offset significant losses with greater efficiencies.

4. Watershed political and policy changes are still being assimilated (or resisted) as the 2012 election looms. The K-12 system already had a full plate with the Bush-era No Child Left Behind Act; the competitive-grant and school improvement initiatives of the Obama years have introduced another driver of policy; and schools in many states are now being whipsawed by dramatic changes enacted by a resurgent GOP. Against this backdrop, educators face the unknown timing and provisions of a new ESEA and the uncertainties of an election year with control of the White House, Congress, (most other states’) governorships, and state legislatures in play.

5. A conjunction of new entrepreneurship and new forces for innovation is reshaping the “education industry” and - maybe – education itself. “New programs, products, and services are emerging through the efforts of private investors, a new generation of philanthropists, and retooled older companies (with a nudge, in some cases, from federal dollars). New technologies are enabling much of this ferment, which could be “disruptive” as well as “sustaining” innovation in the field. Many educators are eyeing these developments warily; others see opportunities to rethink a century-old K-12 system.

6. The international dimension in education is more significant than ever: The financial and economic crisis of the past three-plus years has only heightened the urgency of seeing American education in its global context. How well the United States performs academically compared with overseas competitors is a first-tier concern in policy circles.

Edwards then shared a partial list of issues Ed Week is following:
• Teaching and Learning
     o Standards and Assessment (a favorite focus of business and policy circles)
     o Teacher Effectiveness
     o Teacher Preparation
     o Expanded learning (out-of-school)
     o College access
• Leadership, Districts, Research & Special Needs
     o Leadership development
     o Get-tough management
     o Zero-tolerance (questioned)
     o Nutrition standards
     o ELLs and Common Core
     o Special education and charter schools
     o Special education expenses
     o Neuroscience in the classroom
     o Research and entrepreneurship
• Government and Politics
     o Whither ESEA?
     o RTT, SIG, i3 implementation
     o The impact of state policy change and cuts
     o The new players (PIE Network, Stand for Children, Students First, DFER, others… flex muscles in state policy)
     o Campaign 2012 (See Politics K-12)
• Technology and E-Learning
     o Online learning goes mainstream
     o Bring your own device (portable digital technology)
     o Games and education
     o Research questions remain
• Education Week Priorities
     o Develop and launch a business and innovation/ “education ventures” channel
     o Expand the presence of Commentary online through our evolving “opinion channel”
     o Build on our 2011-12 successes by disseminating even more of our work to new audiences through content partnerships or other means
     o Build on our recent advances in social media by making more effective use of Facebook or Twitter to promote our work and engage readers
     o Increase our skills and content knowledge by attending PD events and beat-area conferences

The Gist

America’s leaders and much of the public have come to realize that an education system born in the Industrial Age can no longer effectively serve students in a complex, rapidly changing Information Age…Students need a combination of content knowledge, cognitive strategies and learning behaviors…high-quality education will increasingly become a necessity for building a successful adult life…must think creatively and critically…adapt…leverage technologies…work collaboratively… communicate clearly…

Yet, in 19th century fashion, we continue to rely on tests, and textbooks that are poorly conceived and inconsistently taught… This can be traced to teachers’ inadequate subject-matter knowledge… PD does little to make up for teachers’ deficits… too many students are unprepared as innovators, creative thinkers, problem solvers or leaders…

Recent years have seen unprecedented developments in the policy environment…growing momentum toward a very different educational experience… Most states have aligned with common core and high expectations… federally funded consortia developing next generation assessments…

“If the past two years can be characterized as a time of massive movement on the policy front, we believe the coming years will be occupied by the hard work of implementing these ambitious policies, bringing the new vision to the classroom, and making it real through curriculum, instruction and assessment, both formative and summative.”

Edwards told the Prichard gathering that Quality Counts 2012 will take on an international theme, and that the trips she joined to Finland, Toronto, Singapore and Shanghai were “not junkets.” Her observations taught her that high quality education was an important goal in those places, and that educators were held in high regard for civic and economic reasons.

Quality Counts will feature

• Career: focusing on college readiness
• Testing: “A recent report by the National Research Council suggests there’s little evidence to date that the current approach – with its high stakes for teachers and schools, but little for students – will produce the kind of academic gains hoped for.” …and they are not the practices of our leading competition
• Testingbox: An infographic with PISA and TIMSS
• Teaching: Teachers are universally seen as crucial but “in the US continue to be viewed largely through a pink-collar lens…”
• Curriculum: how international schools approach curriculum

Ed week is launching a new “channel” of coverage looking at innovation in a rapidly-evolving high tech education industry. Well established players, like Pearson, are aggressively staking new claims in the market, and Ed Week hopes to be an independent national resource to chronicle and analyze the changes in “the business world of K-12 education.

The idea is being shaped by the notion of “disruptive innovation,” change that alters the fundamentals of how we look at teaching and learning.
~

Snippets

Ed Week online: 

25 million page views last year

Edwards on the reauthorization of ESEA: 

“I don’t think any of us think it’s going to happen quickly.”

“We’ve got to start telling our story better – 

about why good schools are needed…” 

“Education has suffered and continues to suffer from people 

who are telling the story in a negative way.”

I’m a big fan of the democratization of information. 

The internet is not going away. 

Social media’s not going away…

so trusted media brands are more valued than ever.”

I think there is a common vision of where we are going 

to the extent that the political ends have come around to meet 

(on the possibility of other forms of education 

that don’t have to be the cookie cutter of one teacher to 22 kids).

If four things could happen tomorrow, 

here’s what I think could change the education system over night:

1. If we got rid of seat time

2. If we got rid of textbook adoption 

(to help teachers become more creative 

about the curriculum materials)

3. If we could figure out how to deploy 

our human resources differently 

(Who says you can’t sit with a 150 kids in a classroom, 

particularly in AP?)

4. The technology piece. 

(There are tons of teachers doing innovative things…

and people are not fretting over the possibilities as they were two years ago.)

“We’re on the verge of big change in education.”

National Graduation Continues Decline, While Kentucky Improves

Decline from a high of 77% in 1969

to 68.8% in 2007

It's time once again for Ed Week's annual Diplomas Count report on nationwide trends in high school graduation.

This year's report, titled "Graduation by the Numbers—Putting Data to Work for Student Success" shows that today’s graduation climate is a tough one, particularly for minority students.

In today's climate public school districts are collecting a variety of student-performance data, in an effort to predict who is most likely to drop out and how to prevent it.

Following a decade of solid improvement this year's report shows the national graduation rate at 68.8 percent for the class of 2007, the most recent year for which data are available. That represents a four-tenths of a percentage point drop from the class of 2006; which followed the nearly point-and-a-half drop from 2005 to 2006. Graduation gaps between students in different demographic groups persist.

While three-quarters of white and Asian students earn diplomas, that percentage drops to , 56 percent for Latinos, 54 percent for African-Americans and 51 percent for Native Americans. Females graduate at a higher rate than males, about 66 percent for males to 73 percent for females. Historically disadvantaged minority males graduate at or below the 50 percent mark.

The news for Kentucky is better. 71.8 percent of the Class of 2007 graduated - three points higher than the national average - an improvement of 2.2 points over the prior decade.

Subgroup graduation rates for Kentucky:

Males = 68.2

Females = 76.2

Asian = 80.8

Hispanic = 56.9

Black = 60.5

White = 73.2

An Interview With Arne Duncan

"I just want to make this clear.
We've never said charter schools
are the magic answer.

I went to the charter school community

and said third-rate charter schools

are part of the problem.

But successful charter schools

are part of the answer."

--Arne Duncan

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on ESEA from Education Week on Vimeo.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan sat down with Education Week reporters on Nov. 30 for a wide-ranging interview. Carmel Martin, the assistant secretary for planning, evaluation, and policy development, also attended. Click here for an edited transcript of the hour-long interview.

Live Debates: Education and the Next President

Education Week is hosting a couple of education events related to the upcoming presidential campaign.

Live Debate: Education and the Next President

Exclusive webcast, Tuesday, October 21, 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Eastern time

Live from Teachers College, Columbia University: "Education and the Next President," a debate between Linda Darling-Hammond, education adviser to Democratic nominee Barack Obama, and Lisa Graham Keegan, education adviser to Republican nominee John McCain.

Register now to watch the live debate.

THEN

Analyzing the Election: What’s at Stake for Schools?

Available online Wednesday, Oct. 22, 12 p.m. Eastern time

Education Week’s David J. Hoff moderates a post-debate discussion with leading education analysts.

Watch this exclusive Ed Week video here.

Thanks to Dorie and the NASSP.

A brief response to Mike Rebell in Education Week

Today's Education Week has an article from Mike Rebell titled "Sleepless after Seattle" where a connection is made between recent state "adequacy" lawsuits and the US Supreme Court decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education. (Online yesterday here: subscription req'd) (I had written to Rebell on this issue several months ago but did not hear back.)

In the article, Rebell proposes the Adequate Education Remedial Oversight model. The model argues an approach that "adopts and regularizes the best practices" that state courts have used. He suggests that following his model will "promote effective cooperation among the three branches of government."

Wouldn't that be great?

Rebell suggests 5 planks to the model: Challenging standards, Adequate funding, Effective program implementation and accountability systems, A supportive political culture, and Improved student performance - all good stuff.

I resisted the temptation to assert that with a supportive political culture the rest of the problems can be quickly resolved. But I did not resist a response on the one piece of advice that appeared to be - at least for Kentucky - bad advice. Rebell's model states,

Courts must order states to, first, undertake detailed costing-out studies of the resources required to provide all students the opportunity to meet state standards, and, second, revise the state’s education finance system to ensure that this amount is actually made available to all school districts.

I posted the following retort:

I love Mike Rebell's ideas on adequate funding. I wish they all worked.

If state courts continue to be where the action is, then the language of each state's constitution will make it difficult to develop one model that will serve all states well.

For example, in Kentucky - a state whose constitution contains relatively strong separation of powers language - one of Rebell's suggestions actually got a case thrown out of court. The summary judgment in Young v Wiilliams (2007) underscores the state court's own doubt that it can direct the legislature to do much of anything.

In the Kentucky landmark case Rose v Council for Better Education (1989) plaintiff's counsel Bert Combs was careful to seek only a declaratory judgment. Once that opinion was handed down the political culture and other factors kicked in. As Rebell correctly asserts, Kentucky children benefitted greatly.

Of course, trusting the General Assembly is disquieting for action-oriented plaintiffs who have witnessed years of legislative neglect. But there seems to be little alternative.

Perhaps in other states the court is on firm ground and can tell the legislature how much revenue to raise for education. But that sure doesn't seem to be the case in the Bluegrass state.

One plan does not fit all.

History strongly suggests that left to its own devises, the Kentucky legislature will not adequately fund the schools. Even when, as defendants, legislative leaders were aware that the schools were underfunded, the constitutional mandate was unpersuasive. Absent a public outcry for school support, the General Assembly will happily content itself with the status quo - and call it a victory because it isn't worse.

If the Council for Better Education turned around and sued the state again today, it would not be too soon in my opinion. They are right on the facts. But they need a new legal approach; one that differs from Rebell's model in that it seeks no specific remedy.

But still burned from their summary smackdown at the hands of Judge Thomas Wingate, I'm sure the CBE is giving the new Democratic majority some time to make things right - without litigation.

How's that looking by the way?

HONEY! Our Little Scholar is Home with his Report Card !

The folks over at the Bluegrass Institute drew my attention to the fact that Junior's Report Card is out. And there's a bad mark.

B+
B-
3 Cs
and a D+

D+ ! Wait until your mother gets home!

So the Bluegrass Institute's research guy reached out and gave a little tweak to those of us who have noted Kentucky's increasing rank among the states in student achievement in recent years.

The inference is that those of us who engaged in the hoopla, were somehow misleading the public -and we all know how bad that would be. As Austin Powers might say, "Ouch, Baby. Ouch."

The facts are these:

• Kentucky has made progress in recent years relative to the 50 states.
• Three separate 2007 reports showed Kentucky at 34th, 31st and 34th.
• But in-state data is also unequivocal - Kentucky's student achievement progress is not yet sufficient.

Those are the facts. But what is the spin?

Now, Quality Counts is the kind of cobbled together assessment BGI might otherwise criticize, if the results were less to their liking - but true to its mission one supposes - BGI went straight for the lowest score and dismissed the rest.

Now, I may not like it, but that's actually OK with me. Whatever data Kentucky produces, I say, let's see it. But let's not misinterpret the meaning.

As BGI knows whenever the states are ranked in any category, it it teaches us nothing about the strength of a score. Arguably, every state in the union is lacking in student achievement. In fact, the 2007 NAEP student achievement leader, Massachusetts, scored - B for student achievement.

All a rank does is to compare relative standing.

So how does the Quality Counts (subscription required) report card deal with that? Why, for every score Kentucky gets, Quality Counts tells us the the national average score.

Chance for Success: Kentucky = C; Nation = C+

K-12 Achievement: Kentucky = D+; Nation = D+

Stnds, Assesmt & Accountability: Kentucky = B+; Nation = B

Transitions & Alingmt: Kentucky = C; Nation = C

Teaching Prof: Kentucky = B-; Nation = C

School Finance: Kentucky = C; Nation = C+

Now, we're able to compare (if very roughly) Kentucky's relative standing in student achievement. And since we know our student achievement score matches the national average - low as that may be - in terms of state rank, Kentucky falls among those states at the 50th percentile?

Isn't that wonderful news?

So here's my new headline:

Quality Counts Report Shows Kentucky now tied for 25th
in K-12 Student Achievement !!!

BGI applauds the jump from 34th.

But seriously folks...

It is readily apparent that one should not place too much weight on any one study. Better to set up as good a system as one can, and let it work. The trending data over time teaches us much. The important thing is that we are all working to make the schools better - not abandon them.

What I see from the study is some confirmation that our ultimate chances for success aren't on par with our competition (neither are they out of reach) and that less than optimal support for the system probably contributes to that circumstance.

For a more serious assessment of Kentucky's situation check out, "Substantial And Yet Not Sufficient: Kentucky's Effort to Build Proficiency for Each and Every Child," By Susan Weston and Bob Sexton. It was presented at Columbia University's conference, Campaign for Educational Equity, in November.

Philadelphia to Keep Outside School Managers One More Year

The Philadelphia school district will allow six outside groups to continue operating some of the city’s lowest-performing schools for one more year, a decision that was immediately questioned in light of studies showing that the five-year, $107 million investment has not delivered overall academic results any better than the district’s own efforts.

The June 27 decision by Philadelphia’s School Reform Commission reverberated in the city, where critics said it was driven by politics and money, as well as elsewhere in the nation, where experts who have been closely monitoring Philadelphia’s experiment with outside management were divided on exactly what lessons it is yielding for educators.

The commission, an appointed panel that has been running the 173,000-student district since a 2001 state takeover, decided to offer one-year contract extensions to the providers—Edison Schools and Victory Schools, two New York City-based private companies; Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania, both in Philadelphia; and two community groups, Universal Companies and Foundations Inc. Their five-year contracts expire on June 30, and a decision had to be made about the 38 schools they would run in 2007-08.

The extensions require all the providers to offer their services for $500 more per student than what regular Philadelphia schools receive. That means a cut in pay for the four non-university providers, which had been paid $750 extra per child, and an increase for the two universities, which had been receiving $450 extra per student. Whether all six would accept new contracts on those terms was an open question.

“How do we do more with less? That is the biggest issue,” said J. Roberto Gutierrez, a spokesman for Edison Schools Inc., which is the largest outside provider, with 20 Philadelphia campuses.

Margaret Harrington, the chief operating officer of Victory Schools, said her company would accept the one-year contract. “We want to maintain our presence in Philadelphia,” she said...

This from Education Week.

Education Research Could Improve Schools, But Probably Won’t

America became a world power on the strength of its natural resources, scientific and technological advances, democracy and capitalism. The cornerstone of this growth was a system of schooling which provided a workforce that was adequately prepared to support the changes of the industrial age.

America still leads the world in the information age, but its continued dominance is not assured. That will depend on America's commitment to raise the educational standards sufficient for the next generation.

Research has something to offer in this effort. How much remains in question.

Since the very beginnings of educational scholarship, late in the 19th century, the social sciences (including education) have attempted to mirror the natural sciences. Researchers have grouped, surveyed, correlated, regressed and stretched the limits of logic in an effort to construct a science of education. It has been partially successful.

Unlike the natural sciences, the problem for social scientists is that our variables don't hold still. They are human. They are in the mind. They don't behave consistently. They are powerfully affected by uncontrolled outside factors that are often misunderstood.

And much of the research is too far removed from the classroom level - the only place where it really matters.

But yet, we continue to speak of education research as though it is all based on rigorous evidence and will produce something euphemistically called "best practice" - which is rarely the case. Too often, uttering the term "best practice" is a signal from superintendents to teachers to quit thinking - and do what they are told.

If education was a natural science...it would be like meteorology. Billions of data points constantly in flux, and highly localized. What you get - whether it's sunshine or tornadoes - depends largely on where you are.

Then, there's the issue of the misuse of science.

Let's say a foundation wants to promote a particular political point of view. They form a think tank. They hire researchers to help construct evidence in support of a conclusion they have already drawn. The researchers conduct a study. Maybe the methodology is sound, but too often it is not. In either case, when the study is done it is released to the public, through the media, without any independent review.

Rigorous evidence and pseudoscience make it into the same news cycle without differentiation - and that is where it is most likely to be encountered by principals and other school leaders who make decisions for their local schools.

This is not an ideal situation.

In yesterday's Education Week, Ronald A. Wolk, asks whether America can "deal with education’s systemic challenge. Could we identify the highest-priority questions, those whose answers would lead to better schools and improved learning, and get the education and policy community to agree? Could a carefully constructed program of strategic research priorities lead to an integrated assault on education’s systemic problems? Could government and foundations be persuaded to provide long-term funding for such an effort?
If those questions were ever to be answered affirmatively, maybe education research could improve education. Maybe, if there were more of a consensus in the research community, there would be more positive outcomes, both in legislatures and in schools.

This from Education Week.

Report Finds Lack of Economics Instruction

Even as state policymakers stress the importance of preparing students to compete in a global economy, fewer than half the states require students to take even a basic course in economics. What’s more, the number of states that test students on the concepts of economics is declining.

That’s according to the latest national report card on the state of economics and personal-finance education, released last week by the National Council on Economic Education .

“It is vital that we teach these concepts, and it’s becoming more important because of the way our society is changing, with all of the globalization we’re seeing,” said Joseph A. Peri, the executive vice president and chief operating officer of the New York City-based council. “States are continuing to make progress, but we’re still not there.”

The goal, Mr. Peri said, is for all states to require an economics course for graduation. Also important is that states test students in the subject, he said, “because if it’s going to be tested, it’s more likely to be emphasized.”

This from Education Week.

Democrats Move to Slash ‘Reading First’

House subcommittee's fiscal 2008

plan would cut program 61 percent.

House Democrats want to put their own stamp on federal education spending by increasing Title I and other programs they favor and slashing Reading First and other priorities set by President Bush.

In the $56 billion fiscal 2008 spending bill for the Department of Education unveiled by the Democrats, No Child Left Behind Act programs would receive a $2 billion increase, with the Title I program for disadvantaged students receiving $1.5 billion of that.

But the $1.03 billion Reading First program—which the Bush administration points to as one of its biggest accomplishments under the NCLB law—would take a cut of $630 million, or 61 percent. What’s more, the administration’s latest proposals for private school vouchers and new mathematics programs would not be funded at all.

"This [Reading First] cut will not be restored until we have a full appreciation of the shenanigans that have been going on,” said Rep. David R. Obey, D-Wis., the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. Reports by the Department of Education’s inspector general and congressional investigators have outlined management and ethical questions involving the program.

Republicans voiced no objections to the Reading First cuts or other spending levels during the June 7 session of the appropriations panel’s Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee. The subcommittee approved the Democratic plan in a unanimous voice vote.

“If I were chairman,” said Rep. James T. Walsh, R-N.Y., the subcommittee’s senior Republican, “I don’t know that I would have made the bill a whole lot different.”

...Some reading experts agreed that, despite the problems with Reading First outlined in six inspector general reports since last fall, the program is worth saving.

The findings essentially supported complaints that federal officials appeared to favor the use of some commercial programs, and discouraged others, during the implementation of Reading First. The inspector general’s findings largely substantiated the allegations of conflict of interest and mismanagement in the program. A Senate education committee report last month also described alleged ethical breaches by reading experts who gained financially while assisting in the rollout of the 5-year-old program. ("Senate Report Cites ‘Reading First’ Conflicts," May 16, 2007.)

“The move to eviscerate the program by drastically cutting it is the ultimate example of throwing the baby out with the bath water,” said Alan E. Farstrup, the executive director of the Newark, Del.-based International Reading Association.

This from Education Week (subscription).

Education Would See Gains Under 2008 Budget Blueprint

The House and the Senate last week approved a $2.9 trillion budget blueprint for fiscal year 2008, which allows lawmakers to provide up to $93.8 billion for education, training, employment, and social-services programs, about a 6.5 percent increase over fiscal 2007.

The Senate approved the measure May 16 on a 52-40 vote. The House approved it the same day on a 214-209 vote.

The budget blueprint is used to guide congressional decisions on taxes and spending later on in the annual appropriations process.

The blueprint would also require the House Education and Labor Committee and the Senate, Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee to cut $750 million over five years for nondiscretionary education spending.

That language is expected to help the education committees trim federal subsidies to student lenders, a policy in which both education committee chairmen, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., have expressed interest.

This from Education Week.

House Panel Grills Witnesses on Reading First

This week's Education Week will report:

The inspector general of the U.S. Department of Education has referred some of the information gathered in a lengthy audit of the Reading First program to federal law-enforcement officials for further investigation, he said during a lengthy and contentious hearing today before the House Education and Labor Committee.

Inspector General John P. Higgins Jr. told the committee, in response to a question on whether he had recommended any criminal review, that he has made “referrals to the Department of Justice.” He declined to elaborate to reporters at the end of the hearing.

The former director of the Reading First program denied in the April 20 congressional hearing that there were conflicts of interest in the implementation of the $1 billion-a-year federal initiative. He also denied that he and other officials and consultants had overstepped their authority in directing states and school districts on the curriculum materials and assessments that would meet the strict requirements of the grants awarded under the program.

“A distorted story has been written over the past few months based on the worst possible interpretation of events that occurred during the early days of the Reading First program,” Christopher J. Doherty, who oversaw the program from 2002 until last fall, told the education committee during the hearing.

Mr. Doherty disputed suggestions by Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the committee’s chairman, that he and other federal officials had drafted the Reading First guidelines to institute “extralegal requirements”—as Mr. Doherty had once put it in an e-mail—that were not specified in the No Child Left Behind Act to essentially compel states to adopt certain commercial reading programs and assessments over others.

“We thought and think those [additional] components [written into the program’s guidelines but not outlined in the law] emanated from the guiding research,” Mr. Doherty said. “In no way was [the guidance] designed to lock in” one particular program, he added.

Skills Gap on State, Federal Tests Grows, Study Finds

Far greater shares of students are proficient on state reading and mathematics tests than on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and those gaps have grown to unprecedented levels since the No Child Left Behind Act became law in 2002, concludes a new study.

The study by Policy Analysis for California Education, a nonprofit research group based at the University of California, Berkeley, was released during the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. The researchers compiled state and federal testing results for the period 1992 to 2006 from 12 states: including Kentucky.

In all but two states the disparity between the share of students proficient on state reading tests and on NAEP, a congressionally mandated program that tests a representative sample of students in every state, grew or remained the same from 2002 to 2006. A similar widening occurred between state and federal gauges of math performance in eight of 12 states.

Those findings call into question whether the state-reported gains are real or illusory, according to the researchers.

This from Lynn Olsen at Education Week.

Research Group Backs Alternatives to Quantitative methodology

At a time when federal education officials are holding up scientific experiments as a gold standard for studies in the field, a report by the nation’s largest education research group suggests there are also other methods that are nearly as good for answering questions about what works in schools.

The report, produced by a committee of scholars of the Washington-based American Educational Research Association, was released April 11 at the group’s 88th annual meeting here. It highlights ways in which researchers can use large-scale data sets, such as those maintained by the U.S. Department of Education, for analyzing cause-and-effect questions in education.

This from Debra Viadero of Education Week.

Most GOP Education Activists Still Sizing Up Field

Presidential candidates offer few specifics so far on K-12 policy proposals.

From Alyson Klein of Education Week.

Republican education policy advisers and advocates are divided over where Congress and the next presidential administration should take federal K-12 policy: Some applaud the 5-year-old No Child Left Behind Act for holding states accountable for student achievement, while others are put off by the major expansion of the federal role in education.

So far, it’s unclear how that debate will play out in the race for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination. Republican experts on education issues are largely uncommitted at this early stage. Some state policymakers have begun advising one of the candidates, but most are waiting to see the ideas the current candidates put forth or who else gets into the race.

The next president could oversee reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind law, President Bush’s signature initiative in education, as many observers predict the measure won’t be renewed on schedule this year or before the 2008 election.

Final Rules Offer Greater Testing Flexibility for Special Education

The US Department of Education released final regulations last week to guide the creation of tests for students in special education who are capable of learning grade-level content, but not as quickly as their peers. With such tests, some schools and districts that previously had not made adequate yearly progress under the No Child Left Behind Act might do so.

This By Christina A. Samuels of Education Week.

In Kentucky, Lawmakers Complete Quiet Session

This quick recap from Education Week:

Amanda Caldwell, a spokeswoman for the Kentucky Association of School Administrators, wrote in an e-mail last week that “nine bills relating to public schools passed and very few of those will even be noticed by educators after the laws become effective.”

Indiana Teacher Faces Dismissal Over Editorial

Free-speech groups supporting her case.

National and state free-speech groups are rallying to support a northeastern Indiana high school journalism teacher who faces firing for a dispute that began when a student newspaper published an editorial advocating tolerance of homosexuals.

This from Education Week.

Governors Enter Fray Over NCLB

The National Governors Association, which largely took a pass on the debate over the No Child Left Behind Act as it was being crafted six years ago, released recommendations this week for its renewal that aim to preserve the federal role in holding states accountable for student learning, while seeking greater flexibility in several key areas.

Under the recommendations, which were also endorsed by the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Association of State Boards of Education, states would get greater leeway in how they intervene in schools not meeting annual achievement targets, define highly qualified teachers, and measure the progress of English-language learners.

This from Education Week.

Schools Credited With Helping Some Pupils Limit Weight

Schools may play a helpful role in keeping children at a healthy weight during kindergarten and 1st grade, scholars say.

Researchers at Ohio State University in Columbus and Indiana University in Bloomington have found that children tend to gain weight during the summer between kindergarten and 1st grade.
The researchers examined information collected on 5,380 pupils in kindergarten and 1st grade as part of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten cohort. That information was gathered in the 1998-99 and 1999-2000 school years by the National Center on Education Statistics, an agency within the Education Department.

According to the report, released in the April issue of the American Journal of Public Health, the body-mass index of children was typically larger and more variable in the summer between kindergarten and 1st grade than it was during the school year.

“It’s basically a big picture of whether schools are part of the problem or part of the solution. In this case, they appear to be part of the solution,” said Paul T. von Hippel, a research statistician at Ohio State and a co-author of the study.

This from Education Week.