Few States Cite Full Plans for Carrying Out Standards

This from Education Week:

Forty-six states and the District of Columbia have adopted a common set of academic standards, but only seven have fully developed plans to put the standards into practice in three key areas, according to a study released today.

The EPE Research Center, operated by Editorial Projects in Education, which publishes Education Week, teamed up with Education First, a Seattle-based education policy and consulting group, on a survey of states’ plans to implement the Common Core State Standards.

It found that “a handful of states are particularly far along” in their plans to transform the common standards into practice, but “most states ... still have a long way to go” before they have blueprints to take the standards from paper to practice.

“Whether the pace and quality of state planning efforts will be strong enough to ensure a smooth transition to the [standards] remains an open question,” the report says...

States that reported having plans in any of those areas were asked to characterize them as complete or in development.

[S]even states — Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, and West Virginia—said they had completed plans in all three of those areas, 18 reported no completed plans in any of them...

Kentucky First in line for National Standards

This from the Commish in his weekly KDE-mail:

On February 10th, the Kentucky Board of Education will meet to formally adopt the common core standards in English/language arts as part of revisions to the regulation titled 704 KAR 3:303, Required program of studies, and then on the evening of February 10th, an historic joint meeting of the Kentucky Board of Education, Council on Postsecondary Education and the Education Professional Standards Board will occur to adopt a resolution requiring their respective agencies to “integrate the final standards into their work and processes to ensure that all Kentucky students experience a successful and productive future”.

The adoption and implementation of the new standards meets a major requirement of Senate Bill 1 as well as highlights the leadership role Kentucky has played in adopting the common core standards.

Kentucky will be the first state to adopt the standards and our Kentucky teachers will begin to work on translating the standards into classroom and student-friendly language.

The joint meeting will occur at 5:30 p.m., local time, on February 10, at the Kentucky Community and Technical College System offices in Versailles. It will be webcasted and you will be able to access it on KDE’s website through the home page on that date. Tune in and watch history in the making!

Common Standards far from a Done Deal

This from the Christian Science Monitor:

States weigh setting one bar for students

47 States Sign on

0 Agree to Sign up

Efforts to establish national education standards have always foundered on the shoals of culture wars and fears of too much federal control. But the time may be ripe for something close: a common set of standards for K-12 math and reading that states could opt to adopt.

Forty-seven states now support drafting such standards by year's end. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has been using his bully pulpit, and the promise of federal stimulus money, to encourage states to abandon the current mishmash of individual standards.

"We've got the best shot we've ever had at getting national standards and tests in this country," says Michael Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a research group in Washington that recently hosted a discussion on internationally benchmarked standards. "But there's still a lot of peril on the road," he says. While state leaders are eager to collaborate, "not a single state has promised to adopt the standards."

Advocates see an opportunity to create stronger requirements that could put American students on better footing for pursuing college and 21st-century careers. Many complain that US standards are broad and shallow, compared with a number of top-performing countries that build around key concepts learned in depth.

But not everyone is cheering. Some teacher bloggers suggest that talk of national standards is simply a way for politicians to act tough on education, and they lump it in the same category as the unpopular No Child Left Behind Act. And three states – Alaska, South Carolina, and Texas – have not joined the "Common Core" initiative, led by the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO).

Though powerful people – including President Obama – are promoting the idea, it is by no means a done deal...

Beshear & KDE Sign Agreement to Work on Core Standards

(FRANKFORT, Ky.) – Gov. Steve Beshear and the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) have entered into an agreement to participate in an initiative that will lead to common core standards in the areas of mathematics and English/language arts for K-12 education.

Kentucky joins with the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the National Governors’ Association (NGA) in the project, which brings 49 states and territories together to develop a set of academic standards that will increase rigor and relevance and prepare all students for success after high school.

The standards will be:

• fewer, higher and clearer
• aligned with college and work expectations
• include rigorous content and application of knowledge through higher-order thinking skills
• internationally benchmarked, so that students are prepared to succeed in the global economy and society
• evidence- and/or research-based

“This is an historic opportunity for Kentucky and the other states involved in the process,” said Gov. Steve Beshear. “It’s a powerful initiative that will help our students compete in the global economy and provides Kentucky with a means to share its expertise and knowledge in the area of state-developed academic standards.”

“We have the full support of the Kentucky Board of Education and Education and Workforce Development Cabinet Secretary Helen Mountjoy in this project,” said Interim Education Commissioner Elaine Farris. “From this work, Kentucky will be able to meet the requirements of Senate Bill 1 to develop new standards, with mathematics being the first to be ready by next December. We’ll work closely with partners such as the Council on Postsecondary Education and the Education Professional Standards Board as we move through the process.”

CCSSO and NGA will bring together experts in the field and state partners to determine the basic core components, using relevant work from the American Diploma Project, ACT, the College Board and others. A national validation committee will be formed to sign off on end-of-course expectations, lead the development of standards, certify state adoption of the common core and more.

States’ adoption of the standards is voluntary, but those states involved in the project have indicated that they are willing to adopt. States will review and give feedback as the project progresses.

In June, the high school expectations in reading and mathematics are set to be released, and public comment will be encouraged. Grade-by-grade break-outs of the common core standards are expected to be released in December.

SOURCE: KDE press release

46 States, D.C. Plan to Draft Common Education Standards

For a couple of years now, KSN&C has been tracking a relatively small number of school leaders who have advocated in favor of national standards.

Margaret Spelings said "No."

But Arne Duncan says "Yes."

In August of 2007, the National Conference of State Legislatures took a hard line against any form of national academic standards, declaring that any national attempt to unite school curricula across states would be unacceptable until perceived flaws in the federal No Child Left Behind Act are fixed.

Republicans have tended to oppose such moves when federally imposed. (I know. The bush administration's No Child Left Behind legislation certainly intruded into state affairs.) But the idea of states voluntarily agreeing to submit has much broader support.

I'm not sure NCLB has been fixed in any significant way, but the number of folks supporting the idea certainly has. The last I heard, Achieve Inc., had been working with 36 states to develop voluntary standards. The number of states thinking seriously about national standards has now jumped to 46.

The hold outs: three conservative states Texas, Alaska, and South Carolina, plus the more moderate Missouri.

This from the Washington Post:

Forty-six states and the District of Columbia today will announce an effort to craft a single vision for what children should learn each year from kindergarten through high school graduation, an unprecedented step toward a uniform definition of success in American schools.

The push for common reading and math standards marks a turning point in a movement to judge U.S. children using one yardstick that reflects expectations set for students in countries around the world at a time of global competition.

Today, each state decides what to teach in third-grade reading, fifth-grade math and every other class. Critics think some set a bar so that students can pass tests but, ultimately, are ill-prepared.

Led by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, the states, including Maryland and Virginia, are aiming to define a framework of content and skills that meet an overarching goal. When students get their high school diplomas, the coalition says, they should be ready to tackle college or a job. The benchmarks would be "internationally competitive."

Once the organizers of the effort agree to a proposal, each state would decide individually whether to adopt it.

Strengthening America’s Competitiveness through Common Academic Standards

An official chat on national standards took place this morning in the House Education and Labor Committee. The hearing was intended to examine how states can better prepare their students to compete in a global economy by using internationally benchmarked common standards.

Congressman George Miller, Chairman, opened the hearing with the following comment:

Today our Committee will examine the great momentum that is building for improving our schools and our competitiveness though internationally-benchmarked common academic standards.

Our nation faces unprecedented challenges that threaten our competitiveness. We face an achievement gap within our schools but we also face an achievement gap between the U.S. and other countries whose educational outcomes are surging while ours are stagnating.

President Obama and Secretary Duncan recognize that our economy’s fate is directly linked to addressing both achievement gaps.

They know we won’t be able to build the world-class education system our economy needs and our children deserve unless all students are taught to rigorous standards hat prepare them for college and good jobs.

We all know the statistics – we’ve fallen to 21st in math achievement, 25th in science, and 24th in problem solving. We used to be number one in college completion. Now we are 18th...

... Let me be clear: I want this committee, and the Congress, to do whatever we can to support this state-led, bipartisan effort. That’s why we’re here today – to learn more about this work and to hear from you all about how the federal government can best support it.

We forged a good start by making historic investments in education in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

We created an unprecedented, $5 billion Race to the Top fund that will allow Secretary Duncan to encourage states to innovate. This includes improving standards and assessments so they are aligned with career and college-readiness.

This fund will lay the foundation for the significant changes we’ll need to make to truly improve our schools, make sure students graduate with the skills they need, and cultivate a workforce that can compete globally...

As NAEP shows us year after year, the unintended consequences of a system that varies vastly from state to state is rather than striving for excellence, states are camouflaging poor performance.

The result is a generation of students without the complex skills and knowledge needed to succeed in the jobs of the future...

This from former North Carolina Governor James B. Hunt, Jr:

Let me be clear from the very beginning. We need a set of common state standards that are rigorous and relevant, and we must stop fooling around. Today, the variability in state standards is off the charts. There should not be 50 different versions of algebra I across the nation. It’s just not logical; students in California learn the same as students in North Carolina.

We must be vigilant in our development of common standards that are fewer, clearer, and higher. The process for getting there must be based on evidence of what’s necessary and sufficient for students to succeed in college and in work—not on including everyone’s, or every interest group’s, opinion. It should be a tight common core that teachers can teach and students can understand and master.

This from former drive-by Fayette County Superintendent and current Educatin Commissioner of Arkansas, Ken James.

First and foremost, this is a voluntary, state-led effort to establish a common core of standards across the states. Let me be clear, this is not an effort to establish federal standards. The effort to establish a common core will build directly on the recent work of leading states and initiatives that have focused on college- and career-ready standards. Leading states will be called upon to participate and add their knowledge to the standards setting process, and it is expected that leading states, based on their prior work, will be furthest along toward adoption of the common core. Furthermore, no state will see their standards lowered as a result of this collaboration. Rather, the purpose of the common state standards initiative is to raise the bar for all states by drawing on the best research and evidence from leading states and experts regarding, among other things, college- and work-readiness, rigorous knowledge and skills, and international benchmarking.

KIPP co-founder David Levin testified:

When the KIPP network reaches 100 fully grown schools, it will serve the same number of students as the public school district in Atlanta, Georgia. And yet, as a national network the lack of common standards makes it difficult to gauge how well KIPP is meeting its ultimate goal: preparing all of our students with the character and academic skills for success, self-sufficiency, and happiness in college and in life.

Currently, states set their own standards and determine how hard or easy it will be for students to pass. The result? We have passing hurdles that are very high in some states and close to the ground in others. According to Education Next, which reviews the rigor of state standards each year, only three states—Massachusetts, South Carolina, and Missouri—have established world class standards in reading and math. Some states, like Georgia and Tennessee, have established such mediocre expectations that nearly every student is considered to be on grade level.

With states held accountable for meeting the standards they set, there’s an unfortunate incentive for states to set the bar low...

President of the American Federation of Teachers Randi Weingarten said

We should start with standards. The AFT supports the development of rigorous common state standards. Our reasons are straightforward. We live in a highly mobile, instantly connected world in which knowledge travels on highways we can’t even see. Our students need to be able to navigate through that world—to study, work and live in states other than the one in which they were educated, if they so chose or if circumstances demand it. Their ability to do that, and to do it well, will be limited if we don’t change our current patchwork of varying state standards.

Politics K-12 conducted a little Live Blogging: The Common Standards Hearing here.

NCLB 2.0?

Don't Forget the National Standards.

Recently, Arne Duncan told folks at the American Council on Education Annual Meeting to get their minds right when it comes to National Standards.

I am hopeful because of the incredible progress in school districts, colleges and universities all across the country—developing new learning models—new educational approaches—and bringing new energy and ideas to the field of education...

...I am very excited about a $15 billion "Race to the Top" fund approved by the House. The Senate version is somewhat smaller but it is still significant.

The President is deeply committed to this program because it will enable us to spur reform on a national scale—driving school systems to adopt college and career-ready, internationally benchmarked standards...

...And the question is... What can we do together—not only to make college more accessible—but to boost our overall success rate?

We have to start by recognizing that our system of education is not aligned. Every state has different high school standards.

If we accomplish one thing in the coming years—it should be to eliminate the extreme variation in standards across America.

I know that talking about standards can make people nervous—but the notion that we have 50 different goal posts is absolutely ridiculous.

A high school diploma needs to mean something—no matter where it's from.

We need standards that are college-ready and career-ready, and benchmarked against challenging international standards.

Randi Weingarten, American Federation of Teachers president, is pushing for national education standards as well, saying common, rigorous standards are the key to student success. The countries that rank higher in education than the U.S. have national standards and a unified approach to assessments, professional development and curriculum.

The long held assumption is that the federal government has no business meddling with education due to the Constitution's "reserve clause" - which reserves to the states issues not mentioned in the Constitution. Education is one such issue.

Others have more recently opined that federal intrusions into education are perhaps permissible in order to "promote the general welfare" of Americans.

So the feds should stay out - unless, of course, they bring lots of money to buy the state's affection. Then, we'll surrender the states rights to take the money and whatever comes with it.

Actually, NCLB would have been a much smarter bill if it had provided national standards, a national assessment, and accountability that took growth into consideration - but turned states loose to innovate and meet those standards the best way they knew how.

Hat Tip to Justin Bathon at EdJurist.

Lessons From 40 Years of Education 'Reform'

Here's a big government solution to the problems of education reform from former IBM CEO Louis V. Gerstner Jr. He seems to worry that following significant reform efforts the relative performance of American students hasn't performed any better than IBM stock.

His solution?
Dismantle local School autonomy and establish national standards.
National standards can be created quickly from existing national and international programs.
Pay for it by consolidating school governance. He says,

"This is a complex problem, but countless experiments and analyses have clearly indicated we need to do four straightforward things to bring fundamental changes to K-12 education:
1) Set high academic standards for all of our kids, supported by a rigorous curriculum.
2) Greatly improve the quality of teaching in our classrooms, supported by substantially higher compensation for our best teachers.
3) Measure student and teacher performance on a systematic basis, supported by tests and assessments.
4) Increase "time on task" for all students; this means more time in school each day, and a longer school year."

This from the Wall Street Journal:

Let's abolish local school districts

and finally adopt national standards

While the economic news has most Americans in a state of near depression, hope abounds today that the country may use the current economic crisis as leverage to address some longstanding problems. Nowhere is that prospect for progress more worthy than the crisis in our public education system.

So, from someone who realized rather glumly last week that he has been working at school reform for 40 years, here is a prescription for leadership from the Obama administration.

We must start with the recognition that, despite decade after decade of reform efforts, our public K-12 schools have not improved. We can point to individual schools and some entire districts that have advanced, but the system as a whole is still failing. High school and college graduation rates, test scores, the number of graduates majoring in science and engineering all are flat or down over the past two decades.

Disappointingly, the relative performance of our students has suffered compared to those of other nations. As a former CEO, I am worried about what this will mean for our future workforce.

It is most crucial for our political leaders to ask why we are at this point -- why after millions of pages, in thousands of reports, from hundreds of commissions and task forces, financed by billions of dollars, have we failed to achieve any significant progress? ...

First, Kill All the School Boards

Why is local control such a failure when applied to our schools?

• We’re two decades into the standards movement in this country, and standards are still different by classroom, by school, by district, and by state.
• If you thought President Bush’s 2001 No Child Left Behind legislation was fixing these problems, think again.
• The lack of uniform evaluation creates a “tremendous risk of delusion about how well children are actually doing.
• Local control has kept education from attracting the research and development that drives progress, because benefits of scale are absent.
• While teachers’ unions have become more sophisticated and have smarter people who are better-equipped and -prepared at the table, the quality of school-board members, particularly in urban areas, has decreased.
• The dirty little secret of local control is the enormous tax advantage it confers on better-off Americans: communities with high property wealth can tax themselves at low rates and still generate far more dollars per pupil than poor communities taxing themselves heavily.
• What of school boards? In an ideal world, we would scrap them—especially in big cities, where most poor children live.
• We need to give schools one set of national expectations, free educators and parents to collaborate locally in whatever ways work, and get everything else out of the way.

This is the causal chain argued by Matt Miller, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and the author of The Two Percent Solution: Fixing America’s Problems in Ways Liberals and Conservatives Can Love (2003). Miller is also the host of KCRW's weekly political chat show, and one of my regular podcasts, "Left, Right and Center." Miller holds down the middle (shown far right - with Tony Blankley, Robert Shearer and Ariana Huffington).

A modest proposal to fix the schools by Matt Miller in the Atlantic Monthly:

Our system is, more than anything, an artifact of our Colonial past. For the religious dissenters who came to the New World, literacy was essential to religious freedom, enabling them to teach their own beliefs. Religion and schooling moved in tandem across the Colonies. Many people who didn’t like what the local minister was preaching would move on and found their own church, and generally their own school.

This preference for local control of education dovetailed with the broader ethos of the American Revolution and the Founders’ distrust of distant, centralized authority. Education was left out of the Constitution; in the 10th Amendment, it is one of the unnamed powers reserved for the states, which in turn passed it on to local communities. Eventually the United States would have 130,000 school districts, most of them served by a one-room school. These little red schoolhouses, funded primarily through local property taxes, became the iconic symbols of democratic American learning.

Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, nothing really challenged this basic structure. Eventually many rural districts were consolidated, and the states assumed a greater role in school funding; since the 1960s, the federal government has offered modest financial aid to poorer districts as well. But neither these steps, nor the standards-based reform movement inspired by A Nation at Risk, brought significant change.

Many reformers across the political spectrum agree that local control has become a disaster for our schools. But the case against it is almost never articulated. Public officials are loath to take on powerful school-board associations and teachers’ unions; foundations and advocacy groups, who must work with the boards and unions, also pull their punches. For these reasons, as well as our natural preference for having things done nearby, support for local control still lingers, largely unexamined, among the public...

Debating National Standards, and more

It's debate time at EKU....at least, it is in my classes.

This summer I'm back with grad students and that allows me to push for a deeper exploration of topics that are of concern to the schools. It also means helping students to develop their leadership potential by finding/refining their "voices."

I've always encouraged impromptu debates among students, but over the next two weeks I'm test-driving a formal debate format between two two-member teams.

Our topics:
EMS 850 - Curriculum for Leaders in Education

• Direct instruction v. Student-initiated instruction
• Senate Bill 1
• National Standards (See below)

EGC 820 - Professional Studies I: Teachers, Schools and Society (Special Education Cohort)

• The use of aversive techniques for behavior management
• Direct instruction v. Student-initiated instruction

KSN&C readers may not be aware...but what happens in class sometimes influences which articles get posted. Students regularly scan the news for articles that confirm, confuse, amaze and dismay. We talk about the issues in class. I'm also very pleased to learn that other professors are starting to use the blog to bring current content into their classes. With all that in mind....

This from the Principal's Policy Blog:

Has the Time Come for Voluntary National Standards?

It’s a time-honored tradition in America that states and local districts should have control over our schools. But in the age of global competitiveness and student mobility, is it time to loosen the reigns of local control in favor of something more national?

This was the question addressed in a recent report by the Center for American Progress. The report’s author, Matt Miller, a senior fellow at the Center, argues that local control of education creates several major problems, including financial inequality, inconsistent standards and inadequate data, and a lack of education research and development. Miller contends that a more national approach to education would help solve many of these problems and calls for the establishment of national standards and increasing the federal government’s share of education funding from approximately 9% to 25 – 30%, with a portion of this increased investment going toward increasing funding for education research.

Miller argues that “it is only by transcending traditional local control, and by getting serious about a new national role in standards and finance, that we can at last create genuine autonomy for local schools.” In creating this “genuine autonomy” Miller also recommends eliminating school boards, which he believes are dominated by teacher unions that heavily influence the election of board members.

Not everyone is convinced this is the correct path to follow, however. At the release of the report, Reginald Felton, director of federal relations for the National School Boards Association, urged the American people to guard against the assumption that doing away with local control of education (and school boards) would remedy decades of neglect, or that a nationalization of education would immediately result in a spike in student achievement.

“One size does not fit all” agreed former Superintendent of Schools for the Los Angeles Unified School District Roy Romer. However, he pointed out that a local school board is not able to create a national math curriculum, and later expressed his support for national standards. Romer indicated that these standards should be
voluntarily adopted by states from the ground-up, instead of forced upon states by the federal government.

Earlier this year, the NASSP Board of Directors proposed a position statement on National Academic Standards in K-12 Education. In the statement, NASSP calls on Congress to “appoint an independent, diverse group of researchers, practitioners, advocates, and experts to develop a set of common national standards and authentic, reliable assessments beginning with Language Arts and mathematics in grades K-12 and examine the feasibility of national standards in other subjects.” NASSP also urges states to actively participate in the development and adoption of those standards, and for the federal government to provide grants to states to assist with the adoption and implementation of those common standards. NASSP invites members’ comments on the proposed statement through April 30, 2008.

There is little doubt that America has, and continues to be going through a period of flux. As Matt Miller concludes in his report, “Once upon a time, a national role in retirement security was anathema. Then suddenly, after the Depression, there was Social Security. Once a federal role in health care would have been damned as
socialism, yet federal spending now accounts for one of every two dollars devoted to health care in the United States, with more certain to come in the years ahead. When it comes to schools, there has likewise always been a tension between the desire to improve the life chances of more children by involving higher levels of authority, and the primordial American distrust of central government. But the truth is we started down this road even on schooling a long time ago. It’s time now to finish the job.”

Now, back to the topic of debate:

In addition to the blog content, students may received support in more traditional ways as shown by this topic outline from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Direct Instruction v Child-initiated instruction

Resolved: Direct Instruction is an educationally and socially justifiable instructional method.

A longstanding curriculum debate in early childhood education centers on whether early childhood education should follow the traditional academic model of education used with older students (that is, large group, teacher-directed, formal instruction) or whether learning experiences for preschool children should be informal and consist largely of child-initiated activities. Both approaches have pros and cons.

For example, when discussing children living in poverty, Schweinhart (1997) states that an approach that is primarily teacher-directed is likely to discourage children's social and emotional development, intellectual dispositions, and creativity, while an approach based exclusively on child-initiated activities may not sufficiently support children's academic development.

What are some differences between direct instruction and child-initiated learning?

Disputes concerning curriculum and teaching methods go back a long way in the field of early childhood education. Over the years, many different terms have been used to capture the opposing positions. In recent years, the term "academic" has come to describe those parts of the early childhood curriculum intended to help children master the basic skills involved in literacy and numeracy (Jacobson, 1996). Katz (1996) suggests that from the academic, or direct instruction, perspective, the young child is seen as dependent on adults' instruction in the academic knowledge and skills necessary for a good start for later academic achievement.

This perspective is in direct contrast with the child-initiated approach, which views young children as active constructors of knowledge who are not dependent on didactic instructional cues from a teacher. Child-initiated curricular techniques may utilize learning centers within a classroom, promote learning from play-based activities, or encourage child interaction and cooperation. Academic learning may certainly occur in child-initiated learning environments. However, this learning results not from teacher-led formal didactic (seat work, lectures, etc.) instruction, but from a variety of child-initiated learning activities (Katz, 1999b).

What does the research say about the advantages and disadvantages of each approach?

Three long-term preschool curriculum comparison studies began in the 1970s: the High/Scope Preschool Curriculum Comparison study (Schweinhart & Weikart, 1997a; Schweinhart & Weikart, 1997b), the Louisville Head Start study (Miller & Bizzell, 1983), and the University of Illinois study (Karnes et al., 1983). All three included the direct instruction model, which offered scripted, teacher-directed, academic instruction, and a nursery school model, in which children initiated their own learning activities with minimal teacher support. Additionally, the High/Scope study included the High/Scope model, in which children initiated learning activities with substantial teacher support. The Louisville and Illinois studies also included several additional teacher-directed models and the Montessori model, which encouraged child-initiated activities with didactic materials.

These three studies found that children in direct instruction programs intellectually outperformed children in child-initiated activities programs during and up to a year after the preschool program, but not thereafter. In the Louisville study, the nursery school children showed higher verbal-social participation and increased more in ambition and aggressiveness than did the direct instruction children, but both groups scored lower than their peers on inventiveness. In the Illinois study, 78% of the nursery school group that engaged in child-initiated activities with minimal teacher support graduated from high school, compared with only 48% of the direct instruction group (Karnes et al., 1983).

SOURCE: Early Childhood and Parenting (ECAP) Collaborative at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Legislators Oppose National Standards

The National Conference of State Legislatures has taken a hard line against any form of national academic standards, declaring last week that any national attempt to unite school curricula across states would be unacceptable until perceived flaws in the federal No Child Left Behind Act are fixed.

The strongly worded new policy against national standards—even voluntary ones—prompted virtually no debate and was approved on a voice vote during the Denver-based group’s business meeting at its annual conference here, which drew nearly 9,000 attendees from Aug. 5-9. NCSL policies such as the new one on national standards set the Washington lobbying agenda of the legislative group.

The policy reads, in part: “We need rigorous state standards that are anchored in real world demands. … This can be most readily accomplished through individual state refinement of standards … not through federal action—which flies in the face not only of the role of states since the inception of our system of providing education, but the historical role of states and local school districts in funding education with diminished federal support.”

Much of the group’s opposition to national standards is rooted in its dislike for the NCLB law, which is up for reauthorization before Congress. The NCSL, which has been among the most unified, vocal critics of the federal school accountability law, issued a report in February 2005 calling for more flexibility for states.

“The idea of going to national standards when we’re dealing with a system that has imposed itself on all 50 states—with the emphasis on process—would at best be premature,” New York state Sen. Stephen Saland, a Republican, said at last week’s ncsl meeting. Sen. Saland was a co-chairman of the group’s task force on the federal education law. “This would not be the time.” ...

This from Education Week (subscription).

"Yo Mama's so wimpy, she's satisfied with Mississippi's cut scores."

This from University of South Florida Education Professor, Sherman Dorn ,who looks at National Standards as Policy Machismo. He agrees. He disagrees.

Alexander Russo and I agree on National (Yawn) Standards (Again) (his title), regarding last week's CEP report on state proficiency percentage trends and the NCES comparison of state proficiency cut-scores and NAEP cut-scores and also the double-report week's politics. In a different way, I also agree with U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings in her dissing of national standards. Same (in a yet third way) with the Education Sector's Danny Rosenthal.

Alexander Russo is right on the politics of national standards: dead for now.

Spellings is right that the federal government does a better job of collecting data than telling the states what to do.
She's wrong that the federal government does a better job of telling the states what to do when it's labeled NCLB.

Rosenthal is correct that there is a difference between setting curriculum standards and setting cut scores.
He's wrong in asserting that the cut scores are what is important.

The cut-score debate would be a silly one except for the stakes involved in states and the way that cut scores frame the education policy debate inside the Washington, D.C., beltway.

As anyone who has taken elementary statistics should know, the division of an interval scale into several tiers creates an ordinal scale. Whether one labels the tiers Expert, Proficient, Basic, and Below Basic; Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, and Blue; or Venti, Grande, and Tall, tying values to ordinal tiers doesn't tell us anything about the tiers themselves other than that someone wanted to label them.

Confusing cut scores with rigor is an act of policy machismo, not common sense.

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.

Finalist Mitchell comments on multi-state effort to write national algebra II standards

The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports:

NOTE: Mitchell Chester, who is quoted in the article, is one of 3 finalists for Kentucky Education Commissioner.

Educators will soon be able to determine whether students taking Algebra II in Lakewood, Ohio, are learning as much as students taking the same class 490 miles away in Lakewood, N.J.

That's because the two states are part of a nine-state consortium that has developed a common, end-of-course Algebra II exam. It marks the largest effort a group of states has undertaken to develop a common assessment based on common standards...

The exam, which will be available to districts in May 2008, will give Ohio educators an external gauge of how their classes measure up against very similar standards in other states, said Mitchell Chester, associate Ohio superintendent for policy and accountability.

Districts do not have to administer the exam. But interest in such an assessment appears to be high, Chester said.

About 200,000 students in nine states - Kentucky, Arkansas, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, as well as New Jersey and Ohio - are expected to take the exam.

"This kind of end-of-the-course exam will provide districts with a lot of feedback on how their curriculum is matching up," Chester said. "We have to have our eyes open as to whether our students are leaving high school prepared to compete in a global economy."
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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.