Most States Funding Schools Less Than Before the Recession

This from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

States’ new budgets are providing less per-pupil funding for kindergarten through 12th grade than they did six years ago — often far less.  The reduced levels reflect not only the lingering effects of the 2007-09 recession but also continued austerity in many states; indeed, despite some improvements in overall state revenues, schools in around a third of states are entering the new school year with less state funding than they had last year.  At a time when states and the nation are trying to produce workers with the skills to master new technologies and adapt to the complexities of a global economy, this decline in state educational investment is cause for concern.
Our review of state budget documents finds that:

• At least 34 states are providing less funding per student for the 2013-14 school year than they did before the recession hit.  Thirteen of these states have cut per-student funding by more than 10 percent.  (These figures, like all the comparisons in this paper, are in inflation-adjusted dollars and focus on the primary form of state aid to local schools.)
• At least 15 states are providing less funding per student to local school districts in the new school year than they provided a year ago.  This is despite the fact that most states are experiencing modest increases in tax revenues. 
• Where funding has increased, it has generally not increased enough to make up for cuts in past years.  For example, New Mexico is increasing school funding by $72 per pupil this year.  But that is too small to offset the state’s $946 per-pupil cut over the previous five years. 

Restoring school funding should be an urgent priority.  The steep state-level K-12 spending cuts of the last several years have serious consequences for the nation.

• State-level K-12 cuts have large consequences for local school districts.  Some 44 percent of total education spending in the United States comes from state funds (the share varies by state).[2]   Cuts at the state level mean that local school districts have to either scale back the educational services they provide, raise more local tax revenue to cover the gap, or both.  
• Local school districts typically have little ability to replace lost state aid on their own.  Given the still-weak state of many of the nation’s real estate markets, many school districts struggle to raise more money from the property tax without raising rates, and rate increases are often politically very difficult.  Localities collected 2.1 percent less in property tax revenue in the 12-month period ending in March 2013 than in the previous year, after adjusting for inflation.[3]  
• The cuts deepened the recession and have slowed the economy’s recovery.  Federal employment data show that school districts began reducing the overall number of teachers and other employees in July 2008, when the first round of budget cuts began taking effect.  
• As of August 2013, local school districts had cut a total of 324,000 jobs since 2008.[4]  These job losses have reduced the purchasing power of workers’ families, in turn reducing overall economic consumption, and thus deepened the recession and slowed the pace of recovery.
• The cuts undermine education reform and hinder school districts’ ability to deliver high-quality education, with long-term negative consequences for the nation’s economic competitiveness.  Many states and school districts have undertaken important school reform initiatives to prepare children better for the future, but deep funding cuts hamper their ability to implement many of these reforms.  At a time when producing workers with high-level technical and analytical skills is increasingly important to a country’s prosperity, large cuts in funding for basic education threaten to undermine the nation’s economic future.

States Have Cut K-12 Schools’ Primary Funding Source

K-12 schools in every state rely heavily on state aid.  On average, some 44 percent of total education expenditures in the United States come from state funds; the share varies by state.
States typically distribute most of this funding through formulas that allocate money to school districts.  Each state uses its own formula.  Many states, for instance target at least some funds to districts that have higher levels of student need (e.g., more students from low-income families) and less ability to raise funds from local property taxes and other local revenues, although this targeting typically is insufficient to fully equalize educational expenditures across wealthy and poor school districts.[5]
This substantial reliance on state aid means that cuts to state formula funding force local school districts either to scale back the educational services they provide, to raise more revenue to cover the gap, or both.
In addition to the funding they distribute through general aid formulas, states may or may not use separate allocations to fund items such as pupil transportation, contributions to school employee pension plans, and teacher training.  Those allocations typically are smaller than general aid funding.

For 48 states, the necessary data are available to compare this year’s allocations for the first category of funding, general formula funding with funding before the recession hit.[6]  The 48 states included in this analysis are home to 97 percent of the nation’s schoolchildren.

State K-12 Funding in the Current 2013-14 School Year Compared With 2007-08

States made widespread and very deep cuts to education formula funding since the start of the recession, and those cuts linger in most states.  (See Figures 1 and 2.)  This survey finds that, after adjusting for inflation:

• More than two-thirds of states — 34 of the 48 states analyzed — are providing less per-student funding for K-12 education in the current 2014 fiscal year than they did in fiscal year 2008.
• In more than one-fourth of states, or 13 of the 48, per-student funding is 10 percent or more below pre-recession levels.
• The two states with the deepest cuts — Alabama and Oklahoma — each have reduced per-student funding by more than 20 percent from pre-recession levels.

School Funding in 2013-14 Compared With 2012-13

Some states continued to cut their per-pupil school funding in the last year.  These cuts generally have been modest, but they generally come on top of severe cuts in previous years, leaving state funding for schools far behind pre-recession levels.  (See Figures 3 and 4.)

• In 15 states, per-student funding is lower in the current fiscal year (2014), than it was in the last fiscal year (2013), after adjusting for inflation.  
• Other states increased funding for the current school year, but per-pupil spending generally remains far below pre-recession levels.  For example, New Mexico’s $72 per-pupil increase this year was not nearly enough to offset the state’s $946 per-pupil cut over the previous five years.  Maine increased per-pupil funding by $68 in fiscal year 2014, an increase that pales in comparison to the $465 cut the state made between fiscal years 2008 and 2013.

Why Have States Cut Funding So Deeply?

States cut funding for K-12 education — and a range of other areas of spending including higher education, health care, and human services — as a result of the 2007-09 recession, which caused state revenue to fall sharply.  Emergency fiscal aid from the federal government initially helped prevent even deeper cuts but it ran out before the economy had recovered, and states have disproportionately chosen to address their budget shortfalls through spending reductions rather than a more balanced mix of service cuts and revenue increases.  Cuts are particularly deep when inflation and other cost pressures are considered.

• Revenues remain below pre-recession levels.  The recession of 2007-09 and the slow recovery continue to affect state budgets and schools.  Persistently high unemployment and continued low housing values have left people with both less income and purchasing power.  So states continue to receive less income and sales tax revenue, which are the main sources of revenue states use to fund education and other services.
  State revenues are starting to improve across the country.  State tax revenues grew 8.9 percent in the 12-month period ending in March 2013.  But they remain 2.8 percent below 2008 levels after adjusting for inflation.
  
• Costs are rising.  The costs of state-funded services have increased since the recession, due to inflation, demographic changes, and rising needs.  For example, in the current school year, the U.S. Department of Education estimates that there are about 775,000 more K-12 students and 3.2 million more public college and university students than there were in 2007-08.[7] ,[8]  Some 8.7 million more people are estimated to be eligible for Medicaid in 2013 than were enrolled in 2008, as employers have cancelled their coverage and people have lost jobs and wages.[9]
• States have avoided raising new revenues.  States have disproportionately relied on spending cuts to close the very large budget shortfalls they have faced over the last several years, rather than a more balanced mix of spending cuts and revenue increases.  Between fiscal years 2008 and 2012, states closed 45 percent of their budget gaps through spending cuts, and only 16 percent of their budget gaps through taxes and fees (they closed the remainder of their
• shortfalls with federal aid, reserves, and various other measures).[10]   States could have lessened the cuts to education funding and made more progress in restoring the funding that has been lost if they had been more willing to raise additional revenue.
• Federal aid to states has fallen.  States used emergency fiscal relief from the federal government (including both education aid and other forms of state fiscal relief) to cover a significant share of their shortfalls through the 2011 fiscal year.  After the 2011 fiscal year, the federal government largely allowed this aid to expire, even though states continued to face very large shortfalls in 2012 and beyond.  The expiration of most federal aid at the end of the 2011 fiscal year is a key reason why state education funding dropped so sharply in the 2012 fiscal year and remains suspended at such low levels.
  
  Adding to states’ struggles, federal policymakers have cut ongoing federal funding for states and localities, thereby worsening state fiscal conditions.  For example, since 2010, federal spending for Title I — the major federal assistance program for high-poverty schools — is down 12 percent after adjusting for inflation, and federal spending on disabled education is down 11 percent.[11] These cuts include the automatic, across-the-board cuts known as “sequestration,” and the cuts required by the Budget Control Act of 2011.[12]  (See Figure 5.)
  

K-12 Education Cuts Have Serious Consequences

States’ large cuts in education spending have serious consequences for the economy, in both the short and long term.  Local school districts typically have little ability to make up for lost state funding on their own.  As a result, deep state funding cuts lead to job losses, slowing the economy’s recovery from the recession.  Such cuts also counteract and sometimes undermine important state education reform initiatives at a time when producing workers with high-level technical and analytical skills is increasingly important to a country’s prosperity.

Local School Districts Hard Pressed to Make Up for Lost State Funding

The precipitous decline in property values since the start of the recession, coupled with the political or legal difficulties in many localities of raising property taxes, make raising significant additional revenue through the property tax very difficult for school districts.  Indeed, property tax collections were 2.1 percent lower in the 12-month period ending in March 2013 than in the previous 12 months, after adjusting for inflation.

Beyond increasing local revenues, school districts’ options for preserving investments in education services are very limited.  Some localities could divert funds from other local services to shore up school district budgets, but this would sustain education spending at the expense of other critical services like police and fire protection.

Undermining Education Reform

State education cuts are counteracting and sometimes undermining reform initiatives that many states are undertaking with the federal government’s encouragement, such as supporting professional development to improve teacher quality, improving interventions for young children to heighten school readiness, and turning around the lowest-achieving schools.

Deep cuts in state spending on education can limit or stymie education reform efforts by limiting the funds generally available to improve schools and by terminating specific reform initiatives.  Reforms endangered by funding cuts include:

• Recruiting better teachers.  Research suggests that teacher quality is the most important school-based determinant of student success.[13]   So recruiting, developing, and retaining high-quality teachers is essential to improving student achievement.   These tasks are more difficult when school districts are cutting their budgets.  Teacher salaries make up a large share of public education expenditures, so funding cuts inevitably restrict districts’ ability to expand teaching staffs and supplement wages.

• Trimming class size.  Evidence suggests that smaller class sizes can boost achievement, especially in the early grades and for low-income students.  Yet, small class sizes are difficult to sustain when schools are cutting teachers and enrollments are increasing.  Indeed, a survey of school administrators found that 54 percent of respondents increased class sizes for the 2011-12 school year and 57 percent anticipated doing so for the 2012-13 school year.[14]  

•  Expanded learning time.  Many education policy experts believe that more student learning time can improve achievement.[15]   In a number of states and school districts, however, budget cuts are making it more difficult to extend instructional opportunities.  For example, the Los Angeles and Philadelphia school districts have significantly scaled back their summer school programs.[16]  

• High-quality early education.  Forty states provided pre-kindergarten or pre-school programs, which served 1.3 million children, in the 2011-12 school year.[17]  A number of studies conclude that such programs can improve cognitive skills, especially for disadvantaged children.[18]  In the 2011-2012 school year, 27 of the 40 states that offered state-funded pre-K reduced the per-child funding amount.  Sixteen states cut enrollment in pre-kindergarten programs, with an especially large reduction in North Carolina. 

Damage to the Economy, Now and in the Future

State education budget cuts prolonged the recession and have slowed the pace of economic recovery by reducing overall economic activity.  The spending cuts have caused school districts to lay off teachers and other employees, reduce pay for the education workers who remain, and cancel contracts with suppliers and other businesses.  These steps remove consumer demand from the economy, which in turn discourages businesses from making new investments and hiring.

Local school districts have eliminated 324,000 jobs nationally since July 2008, federal data show.  (See Figure 6.)  This decline has been unprecedented; normally, local education employment grows each year to keep pace with an expanding student population.  In addition, education spending cuts have cost an unknown but likely large number of additional jobs in the private sector as school districts have canceled or scaled back private-sector purchases and contracts (for instance, purchasing fewer textbooks).  These job losses shrink the purchasing power of workers’ families, which in turn affects local businesses and slows recovery.

In the long term, the savings from today’s cuts may cost states much more in diminished economic growth.  To prosper, businesses require a well-educated workforce.  The deep education spending cuts states have enacted will weaken that future workforce by diminishing the quality of elementary and high schools.  At a time when the nation is trying to produce workers with the skills to master new technologies and adapt to the complexities of a global economy, large cuts in funding for basic education undermine a crucial building block for future prosperity.

Report: Technology 'Nudges' Guide Students To and Through College

This from Inside Higher Ed:

Researchers are tapping into data on students to nudge students through college, according to a report released Tuesday by Education Sector.

Technology-driven behavioral nudges range from providing students with course recommendations based on the performance of past students to offering study advice via text messaging or counseling over the phone. “By giving students information-driven suggestions that lead to smarter actions, technology nudges are intended to tackle a range of problems surrounding the process by which students begin college and make their way to graduation,” said the report.

Some researchers found that sending reminders about placement tests, orientation and pre-college tasks via text messages to low-income high school graduates increased the likelihood students would be on campus in the fall.

The report, “Nudge Nation: A New Way to Prod Students Into and Through College,” advocated for further research on mining data for students’ benefits.

“Like many other technology initiatives, these ventures are relatively young and much remains to be learned about how they can be made most effective,” the report said.

“Already, however, nudge designers are having a good deal of success marrying knowledge of human behavior with the capacity of technology to reach students at larger scale, and lower cost, than would be possible in person.”

This from Education Sector:

When Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein took his teenage daughter to the Lollapalooza music festival during a Chicago heat wave some years ago, the huge electronic displays that typically show performance schedules also flashed periodic admonitions: DRINK MORE WATER. YOU SWEAT IN THE HEAT: YOU LOSE WATER. “The sign was a nudge,” wrote Sunstein and his coauthor Richard Thaler, one of many described in their bestselling 2008 book, Nudge.[1]Without coercing concertgoers to behave in a certain way, it provided information designed to prompt them to make wiser decisions—increasing their water intake to prevent dehydration.

Thanks in part to Thaler and Sunstein’s work, the power of nudges has become well-established—including on many college campuses, where students around the country are beginning the fall semester...

New approaches are certainly needed. Just 58 percent of full-time, first-time college students at four-year institutions complete a degree within six years. Among Hispanics, blacks, and students at two-year colleges, the figures are much worse. In all, more than 400,000 students drop out every year. At a time when post­secondary credentials are more important than ever, around 37 million Americans report their highest level of education as “some college, no degree.”[2]

There are many reasons for low rates of persistence and graduation, including financial problems, the difficulty of juggling non-academic responsibilities such as work and family, and, for some first-generation stu­dents, culture shock. But academic engagement and success are major contributors. That’s why colleges are using behavioral nudges, drawing on data analytics and behavioral psychology, to focus on problems that occur along the academic pipeline:

• Poor student organization around the logistics of going to college

• Unwise course selections that increase the risk of failure and extend time to degree

• Inadequate information about academic progress and the need for academic help

• Unfocused support systems that identify struggling students but don’t directly engage with them

• Difficulty tapping into counseling services

These new ventures, whether originating within colleges or created by outside entrepreneurs, are doing things with data that just couldn’t be done in the past—creating giant databases of student course records, for example, to find patterns of success and failure that result when certain kinds of students take certain kinds of courses. Like many other technology initiatives, these ventures are relatively young and much remains to be learned about how they can be made most effective...

Education researcher Benjamin Castleman...[conducted] a 2012 summer experiment with his collaborator Lindsay Page, a researcher at Harvard’s Center for Education Policy Research. In randomized experiments involving thousands of low-income students in the Dallas Independent School District and districts in Boston, Lawrence, and Springfield, Mass., researchers sent personalized texts to recent high school graduates in the treatment groups to remind them about tasks such as registering for freshman orientation and placement tests. The texts offered help with deciphering financial aid letters and more. The project was coordinated with the colleges that most district graduates attend, so the reminders and accompanying web links took students to the right places to complete tasks and were tailored to specific deadlines and requirements of each student’s intended school. Interestingly, although each text offered the option to connect students to live counselors for personalized assistance, relatively few students (just six percent in Dallas) sought this help. Results were strik­ing. Just 10 to 12 text messages sent to low-income students over the summer raised college enrollment by more than 4 percentage points among low-income students in Dallas and by more than 7 percentage points in Lawrence and Springfield, Mass. Castleman notes that the texting intervention had no impact in Boston, where students can access a wide range of college-planning support services, both during the school year and during the summer after graduation. The total cost of this technology nudge: $7 per student, including the cost of counselors’ time.

Why was the intervention so effective? “The summer is a uniquely nudge-free time in students’ educational trajectory,” says Castleman. Given that so many college-intending adolescents receive few reminders about completing key tasks—and that so many are prone to procrastination—well-designed prompts can fill a void...

“Every campus is sitting on terabytes of historical grade data. It’s just a matter of ... can you take that data, analyze it in the right kind of way, and communicate it?”

That’s just what [Tristan Denley, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Austin Peay State University in Tennessee] did, creating the Degree Compass system, which combines data mining and behavior nudges to match students with “best-fit” courses. It draws on data from hundreds of thousands of past students, scrutinizing their classes, grades, and majors. Then it gives current students—and their advisers—course recommendations based on how well similar undergraduates with similar course-taking histories have performed in the past. In certain re­spects, it’s similar to the you-might-also-like choices on Netflix, Amazon, and Pandora. But Degree Compass is less concerned with students’ likes and dislikes than with predictive analytics—calculating which course selections will best help undergraduates move through their programs of study most successfully—and most expeditiously.

No IDEA Protections for Students Misplaced in Special Education, Court Rules

This from The School Law Blog:

Children mistakenly identified by their schools as having disabilities may not bring claims under the main federal special education law, despite a recognition by Congress of the problem of overrepresentation of minorities in special education, a federal appeals court has ruled.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, in Philadelphia, said that a Pennsylvania family made "emotionally compelling" arguments about the problem of misidentification of minority children for special education.

But there is no indication that the definition of "child with a disability" in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act "includes children who are mistakenly identified as disabled, but who are, in fact, not disabled," the court panel said in a unanimous opinion.

"Therefore, under the act's plain language, it is clear that the IDEA creates a cause of action only for individuals with disabilities," the court added.

The ruling came in a case brought by an African-American student and her mother in the Lower Merion, Pa., school district. The student, identified as S.H., and her mother had numerous interactions with school officials over the child's school progress. By 5th grade, S.H. was placed in special education for a perceived learning disability. Her mother went along with an Individualized Education Plan despite her daughter's objections to receiving services.

By the time S.H. reached high school, her mother began to question whether she still belonged in special education, court papers say. The student tested at grade level and had even made the Honor Roll in middle schools. The family's suit alleged that a school district psychologist evaded the mother's request to see a copy of an evaluation document by claiming that it had been destroyed.

An independent evaluation administered when S.H. was in 10th grade concluded that the student's designation as learning disabled was, and always had been, erroneous. S.H. was not in special education for her last two years of high school.

The family sued the school district seeking compensation under the IDEA, as well as claims of intentional discrimination under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

The suit alleged that S.H.'s mistaken placement in special education had kept her from taking certain electives in middle school and high school and had damaged her self-confidence and academic progress. The suit sought $127,000 in damages, which would go for tutoring, psychotherapy, and two years of college tuition.

A federal district court dismissed the family's IDEA claim and granted summary judgment to the school district on the other claims.

In its Sept. 5 decision in S.H. v. Lower Merion School District, the 3rd Circuit court panel affirmed, holding that the IDEA allowed claims to be brought only on behalf of students with disabilities.

The family pointed to the IDEA's legislative history, including congressional findings in more recent reauthorizations of the statute that expressed concerns about misidentification of minority students for special education.

For example, the federal law's "findings" section says: "More minority children continue to be served in special education than would be expected from the percentage of minority students in the general school population. African-American children are identified as having intellectual disabilities and emotional disturbance at rates greater than their white counterparts."

The family argued that such language suggests that after a child has been misidentified for special education, that child should enjoy the same protections of the IDEA hearing process and other remedies.

But the 3rd Circuit court said the IDEA's plain statutory language answered the question of whether the law applied to students without disabilities, so there was no need to consult legislative history. In any event, the legislative history sought only to draw attention to the problem of overidentification of minority students for special education, but did not support the notion that Congress wanted to create a legal cause of action for such students, the court said.

The court also held that the family did not face intentional discrimination under the Rehabilitation Act or the ADA. The court rejected the family's arguments that S.H.'s good grades and pattern of improved test scores should have put the district on notice earlier that she did not belong in special education. First, much of the testing data was inconclusive, the court said.

"Additionally, [the family] offered no evidence that high test scores are an indication that a student likely does not have a learning disability, nor [has it] offered evidence that children in special education usually do not receive good grades."

Fundraiser List, Emails Raise Questions About Former Indiana Schools Superintendent Tony Bennett

This from WFPL:

Former Indiana schools chief Tony Bennett faces scrutiny over the discovery of lists of Republican fundraisers on Department of Education servers and emails he sent directing staff to dissect a speech by Democrat Glenda Ritz.

An election law attorney says the fundraiser lists and an August 2012 email to aides including chief of staff Heather Neal appear to violate election and ethics laws prohibiting state employees from engaging in political activity while on duty. The rules also bar them from ordering others to do so and using state resources for political purposes.

Bennett denies any violations and says the fundraising lists were used to make "thank you calls" after the election.

Inspector General David Thomas says his office is investigating Bennett but won't discuss the nature of the probe.

Bennett lost his bid for re-election as Indiana superintendent of public instruction last year. He was later named Florida's education chief, but he resigned in August after questions were raised about actions during his tenure in Indiana.

Bennett was a longtime Southern Indiana educator. In recent years before taking state office, he'd served as an assistant superintendent for New Albany-Floyd County schools and as the superintendent for Greater Clark County Schools.

Lack of Time, Resources, and Tools Puts RTTT Goals Out of Reach

 Let's Reverse the Damage From Race to the Top, EPI Report Says

This from Politics K-12:

A new report by the Economic Policy Institute finds big flaws in the Race to the Top program and questions how much the $4 billion spent to spur education improvements in the states will actually narrow achievement gaps and improve student outcomes.

The report was released today by the American Association of School Administrators and the Broader Bolder Approach to Education, a national campaign launched by the left-leaning EPI. The Race to the Top is the Obama administration's signature education-improvement tool, funded originally with $4 billion in economic-stimulus money provided by Congress in 2009. It led to a fierce competition among states, who provided supposedly ideas to improve data systems, standards and tests, low-performing schools and teacher-evaluation systems. Eleven states and D.C. shared the original $4 billion.

Now, three years later, the report found that states:

• Set goals for improving student achievement that will be nearly impossible to make. (In a story I did for EdWeek two years ago, many other experts agreed the states' Race to the Top goals would be hard to reach.)
• Have encountered numerous delays in implementing teacher-evaluation systems.
• Have focused on the tested subjects at the expense of others, particularly when it comes to evaluating educators who work in nontested subjects, such as the arts.

"President [Barack] Obama would like to leave as part of his legacy substantial improvements in U.S. education," the report states. "Recognizing the flaws inherent in Race to the Top, reversing the damage it has done, and enacting more comprehensive education policies in the administration's second term could make that legacy a proud one."

In many ways, the report is a critique of the general direction of education-improvement efforts across the country. It faults states for focusing on developing teacher evaluations and not as much on using those results to improve instruction. It faults Race to the Top and federal officials for setting tight timelines and providing not nearly enough money to help districts with heavy concentrations of poor and minority students. And, it faults states and the feds for providing limited funding and a lack of professional development linked to the common-core standards.

In a more-sweeping sense, the report faults federal and state officials for failing to address through Race to the Top what the groups view as the root causes of achievement gap—societal factors such as poverty.

Governor to Reverse Legislative Panel's Rejection of Science Standards

On a 5-1 vote this afternoon conservative members of the Administrative Regulations Review Subcommittee rejected the new Kentucky Next Generation Science Standards finding them deficient. That was quickly followed by an announcement from Governor Steve Beshear that he would use his authority to put them in place anyway.

Commissioner Terry Holliday praised Beshear and told the Herald-Leader that he didn't think there was any meat to the objections raised by NGSS opponents. Earlier this week he called the concerns

"valid." Go figure.

Beshear to implement science standards in wake of panel's rejection

This from H-L:

Gov. Steve Beshear plans to implement the new Kentucky Next Generation Science Standards under his own authority, after a legislative review panel rejected them as deficient during a meeting Wednesday.

That would let the standards move forward, but the regulation could be killed by the full General Assembly when it returns in January.

Terry Sebastian, Beshear's deputy press secretary, said in a statement that the governor "views these standards as a critical component in preparing Kentuckians for college and the workforce. Therefore, as provided by law, he will implement the regulations notwithstanding the finding of deficiency."

Members of the Administrative Regulations Review Subcommittee said they'd been bombarded by a groundswell of opposition to the standards from all across Kentucky over recent days. They also said they were troubled that some basic scientific concepts weren't specifically spelled out in the standards.

An obviously disappointed Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday left the meeting room immediately after the vote, which he described as "political." He also dismissed arguments against the standards.

"I think it was pretty much a political vote," Holliday said outside in the hallway. "I don't think there is any meat to these issues that we haven't fully addressed."

Holliday said that if the standards aren't implemented, Kentucky schools would be left to continue working under the state's existing science standards, which he called "woefully inadequate."

Holliday estimated that if the state ultimately has to start over and write new standards, it could cost millions of dollars and take three to five years to put them in place.

Robert Bevins, president of Kentuckians For Science Education, a group that backs the standards, said the subcommittee's vote would be an embarrassment for Kentucky.

"I wouldn't be surprised if we're on the Daily Show tomorrow," he said.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2013/09/11/2816570/legislative-panel-finds-science.html#storylink=cpy

This from KDE:

COMMISSIONER PRAISES GOVERNOR’S SWIFT ACTION ON SCIENCE STANDARDS

            Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday praised Gov. Steve Beshear’s swift action to implement new science standards today despite a legislative committee’s rejection of them earlier in the day.

            “We appreciate the Governor’s courage and wisdom in executing his legal authority to implement the Kentucky Core Academic Standards in science,” said Holliday. “This is good for Kentucky teachers and it’s good for Kentucky students.  As mandated by Senate Bill 1, these new science standards will ensure our graduates are prepared for college and that they will be able to compete with those from around the country and the world.”

           Senate Bill 1, passed unanimously by the 2009 General Assembly, directed the department to develop new standards in science and other subject areas that were more rigorous and aligned with college expectations.

        The commissioner said he was disappointed that the Administrative Regulation Review Subcommittee did not give the Department of Education an opportunity to refute the misinformation shared by opponents of the standards at today’s hearing.  He said that the committee was led to believe that there was little support across the state for the new science standards and “that’s just not the case,” he said.

          “There were multiple opportunities for public feedback on the Next-Generation Science Standards (NGSS) during the development and adoption processes and support was overwhelming,” he said. “During our public comment period, we had more than 3,700 comments in favor of the standards, and less than two hundred opposed.”

        The Kentucky Academy of Science, the Kentucky Science Teachers Association, the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, and thousands of Kentuckians have endorsed the adoption of the KCAS, in their present form and without modification.

         In addition, more than 70 state and national groups have endorsed the NGSS, including The Bayer Corporation, Chevron, CISCO Systems, Comcast, Corning, Inc., Dell Inc., Dupont, Eaton, Eli Lilly, ExxonMobil, IBM, Intel, Merck, Prudential, Raytheon, State Farm, Symantec, and the Travelers Companies, Inc. 

         A few weeks ago, Toyota donated more than $550,000 to Northern Kentucky University to provide professional development on the NGSS to 1,100 teachers and administrators, and by extension to at least 26,000 students, the commissioner said.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2013/09/11/2816570/legislative-panel-finds-science.html#storylink=cpy

Kentucky's proposed science standards for schools face another hurdle

Commissioner Holliday Calls BIPPS & Family Foundation concerns "valid"

This from Jim Warren at the Herald-Leader:

Kentucky's proposed Next Generation Science Standards face another hurdle Wednesday, when members of the legislature's Administrative Regulation Review Subcommittee will consider the complex proposal.

The standards lay out the science content that all Kentucky students would be expected to master to be fully prepared for college and careers.

A coalition of 26 states, including Kentucky, developed the science standards during the past two years. They would take effect for the 2014-15 school year if approved.

In recent years, Kentucky has adopted new education standards in other subjects — such as math and English — with little in the way of drama. But the science standards have become increasingly controversial as they've moved slowly through the approval process this summer.

The Kentucky Department of Education says several thousand comments on the standards have been submitted by individuals and organizations. Comments run the gamut, from backing the standards as an improvement in science education to blasting them as a "fascist" effort to push evolution and destroy religious freedom.

That divergence is likely to continue during the subcommittee session at 1 p.m. Wednesday in the State Capitol Annex in Frankfort.

Martin Cothran, senior policy analyst with the conservative Family Foundation of Kentucky, said he would address the subcommittee to press his contention that the standards emphasize climate change at the expense of basic concepts.

"We're not necessarily against having anything on climate science in the standards," Cothran said Tuesday. "But when a third of the science emphasis is on climate science in kindergarten, and the kids still don't know basic things about plants and animals, that seems to us to be a problem."

In the past, Cothran has questioned the prominence of evolution in Kentucky's science curriculum guides. But he said that while many Family Foundation members are concerned about the teaching of evolution, he is focusing on balance in this instance.

"It's safe to say that the vast majority of our people believe the world was created, although there is some disagreement on exactly how that happened," he said. "But we're concerned with basic educational integrity here."

Cothran contended that science education traditionally included an understanding and wonder of nature, and the technical aspects controlling nature. The Next Generation standards focus almost completely on the technological side, he said.

Another critic, Richard Innes, education analyst for the free-market Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions, said he also would testify Wednesday. He has several problems with the standards, which he called "probably one of the most controversial regulations to come up in a long time."

Among other things, Innes said, educational standards must be specific and detailed.

"That's basic stuff, and Next Generation doesn't come close to meeting that," he said Tuesday. "Real education standards are the linchpin of everything that follows."

Innes said he feared the new standards could make it unclear to site-based councils at local schools how to write curriculums to meet the new requirements. That would "inevitably result in unequal opportunity" for Kentucky students, he argued.

Whatever the review subcommittee decides, the approval process won't be over. The standards still must go before the state House and Senate's Interim Joint Committee on Education.

According to the education department, representatives of groups including the Kentucky Science Teachers Association, Kentucky Paleontological Society and American Institute of Professional Geologists have submitted comments backing the science standards.

When the Kentucky Board of Education initially approved the standards in early June, only a few people appeared to speak, and all of them backed the standards. But by the time a public hearing was held in July, there was stiff opposition.

Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday said Tuesday that he wasn't surprised by the emerging criticism.

"I'm told that the last time we adopted new science standards we had a very heated conversation, just as we are this time," he said.

While some complaints about the standards can be resolved, it's not possible to rewrite the entire package now, Holliday said.

"We certainly recognize that the Bluegrass Institute and Martin Cothran and those folks have some valid concerns," he said. "We want to address the concerns, but we can't go back and revise the standards because they are a 26-state collaboration."

Holliday said, however, that it should be possible to resolve concerns after the standards have been approved. The state could come up with a model curriculum based on concerns that have been raised, then provide it to local site-based councils for consideration as they write curriculums for their schools, he said.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2013/09/10/2815012/kentuckys-proposed-science-standards.html#storylink=cpy

"Climate Parents" Sound Alarm: Ky Science Standards in Jeopardy

A national group calling themselves Climate Parents has launched a petition drive meant to influence a Republican-controlled Kentucky legislative hearing scheduled for tomorrow in Frankfort.

When: 1pm, Wednesday 9/11
Where: Capitol Annex room 154

This from Climate Parents:

Climate science for all students

Climate Parents is leading a campaign to ensure kids across America learn the truth about climate change in school. And we’re already seeing progress. This summer, the Kansas and Kentucky the Boards of Education voted to adopt the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), which include climate science, after receiving petitions led by Climate Parents in each state. But In Kentucky, science opponents are determined to stop the new standards from being taught. Frankfort, KY grandmother and Climate Parents member Sheila Anderson is leading another petition — this time to the Kentucky legislature (which must approve the standards) — to make sure her grandchildren and other students gain the foundation in climate science they will need. As a result of our efforts, a State Board of Education member wrote, “Thank you so much for your support for the science standards which included climate change. Without people like you supporting these standards, we could have had a different outcome. Please stay involved.”

"If Kentucky votes down the NGSS, we'll be the laughingstock of the nation", says Dr. Robert Bevins, President, Kentuckians for Science Education. Bevins says,

One of Kentucky’s legislative subcommittees may vote against adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards based on not telling “both sides” of the stories of evolution and climate change. The regulatory subcommittee meets tomorrow (9/11).

Wanna join in?

The petition below will be sent to members of the state legislature's Administrative Regulation Review Subcomittee and Education Committee:

Please support the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) for the benefit of Kentucky children. Our students deserve an up-to-date science education that includes learning about climate change. NGSS will give our kids a scientific foundation that will help them navigate 21st century challenges and opportunities.

http://act.engagementlab.org/sign/climate_parents_kentucky?referring_akid=.182201.uejDjM

The Wrong Kind of Education Reform

Three new books decimate 

the case for charter schools and vouchers

This from Slate:

The case for market-driven reforms in education rests on two key premises: The public school system is in crisis, and the solution is to let the market pick winners and losers. Market strategies—high-stakes teacher accountability, merit pay, shuttering “failing” schools—are believed to be essential if public schools are ever going to get better. And these maxims underlie the commitment to charter schools and vouchers. Freed from the dead hand of bureaucracy and the debilitating effects of school board politics, the argument runs, schools are free to innovate.
 

If you follow education debates, you’ve heard that again and again. Here’s what’s new: A spate of new books undercuts both propositions, simply decimating the argument for privatizing education.

Since The Death and Life of the Great American School System, her 2010 best-seller, Diane Ravitch has been the most prominent critic of the market-minded reformers. Americans love apostates, and the fact that, as assistant secretary of education in the first Bush administration, Ravitch acknowledged that she had “fallen for the latest panaceas and miracle cures and drunk deeply of the elixir that promised a quick fix," has given her considerable credibility. Now she pops up everywhere, keynoting national conventions, urging on teachers at an Occupy the Department of Education rally, being profiled flatteringly in The New Yorker, deluging her supporters with emails, and sparring with ex-D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, the darling of the privatizers, about how to “fix” education.

In her new book, Reign of Error, Ravitch documents how public education’s antagonists have manufactured a crisis in order to advance their agenda. They deploy doom-and-gloom language to characterize the threat. For example, the 2012 report of a blue-ribbon commission chaired by Joel Klein, the former chancellor of New York City’s public schools, and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warns that the failure of public education “puts the United States’ future economic prosperity, global position, and physical safety”—physical safety!—“at risk.” Similar alarms have been sounded since “A Nation at Risk,” a 1983 national commission report, insisted, to great effect, that a “rising tide of mediocrity … threatens our very future as a Nation.”

Exhibit A in the sky-is-falling argument is the claim that test scores are plummeting. Ravitch shows that, quite the contrary, scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the nation’s report card, have never been higher. (The biggest gains in NAEP scores were recorded before the No Child Left Behind Act, with its fixation on teacher accountability and high-stakes testing, was implemented.) Nor do American students perform as badly as advertised on international exams—in 2011 tests of math and science, only a handful of countries did better. There’s no new dropout problem—students are staying in high school longer, and six-year graduation rates have never been higher.

Point by point, Ravitch attacks what has become the conventional wisdom about how American schools are failing and how to save them. Students’ test scores mismeasure the worth of teachers, and so shouldn’t be the basis for rewarding or punishing teachers. Merit pay for teachers has never worked. Neither tenure nor unions undermine the schools. Teach for America recruits, straight out of college, do no better, and often do worse, than teachers with credentials. Poverty isn’t an “excuse” for ineffective teaching but a fact of life that schools must take into account.

Ravitch is both a respected scholar and a gifted polemicist. While she makes a powerful argument for strengthening, not dismantling, the public schools, in a few instances she has soft-pedaled the problems. She gives unions a pass, even though in many districts it’s harder to fire incompetent teachers than to defrock doctors or lawyers. And while Ravitch acknowledges that we’ve slipped from first to 14^th in international rates of college graduation, she’s unworried by this relative decline.

Yet there is reason to fret: As Harvard economists Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz show, in their 2010 book The Race Between Education and Technology, America became the world’s richest nation during the first eight decades of the 20^th century mainly because of our shared commitment to higher education. To remain atop the heap, they argue, we need to do better.

Another new book, The Public School Advantage, which will be published later in the fall, is packed with statistics that add to Ravitch’s bill of particulars. The authors, University of Illinois professors Christopher and Sarah Lubienski, strike a powerful blow against the central premise that students at charter and voucher schools get a better education than their public school counterparts. Demographics, not quality, explain the supposed superiority of private and charter schools, they conclude. While these students record higher scores on NAEP mathematics tests than youngsters enrolled in public schools, the Lubienskis’ research shows that’s because they come from better-off families, which presumably have the time and resources to give their children an educational boost. In fact, the public school students actually fare better on the NAEP math test than their private and charter school counterparts with similar socio-economic backgrounds. Of course, performance on standardized exams isn’t the only measure of a school’s quality. But the privatizers have relied heavily on test scores to damn public schools, and the fact that they have got the analysis wrong is another reason to discount their claims.

The bible of the marketeers, Politics, Markets, and America’s Schools by political scientists John Chubb and Terry Moe, brazenly asserts that “choice is a panacea.” Yet as with the supposed crisis in public education, faith that turning education over to the private market can provide the solution doesn’t fit the facts. Perhaps the most startling finding in The Public School Advantage is that the autonomy of private and charter schools—the attribute so prized by the market advocates—may really be getting in the way of their improvement. Rather than taking advantage of their freedom by being creative in how they teach math, many private schools still use an outmoded pedagogy that stresses memorizing formulas, not problem-solving. And instead of using their autonomy to become better, they invest in marketing that’s designed to attract the easiest-to-educate students.

These are generalizations, of course, which don’t describe any particular school, and some charters, like the KIPP and YES Prep schools, are exemplary. But the clear takeaway from the Lubienskis’ research is that choice may actually cause more problems than it solves.

International tests show achievement gaps in all countries, with big gains for U.S. disadvantaged students

This from the Economic Policy Institute:

In a [recent] EPI report, What do international tests really show about U.S. student performance?, we disaggregate international student test scores by social class and show that the commonplace condemnation of U.S. student performance on such tests is misleading, exaggerated, and in many cases, based on misinterpretation of the facts. Ours is the first study of which we are aware to compare the performance of socioeconomically similar students across nations.

Some critics, disturbed by the unsophisticated way in which policymakers and pundits use international tests to condemn American student performance, have commented that American students in relatively affluent states, like Massachusetts or Minnesota, or students in schools where few students are from low-income families, perform as well or better than average students in the highest scoring countries. But while such comparisons are well-intended, they can’t tell us much because a proper comparison would be between affluent states in the U.S., and affluent provinces or prefectures in other countries, or between schools with little poverty in the U.S. and schools with little poverty in other countries. Critics have not previously had data by which such comparisons can properly be made.

MORE: Authors’ response to OECD/PISA reaction to their report (PDF)
AUDIO: Authors speak with the press about their report (MP3)

Yet both of the major international tests—the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Program on International Student Assessment (PISA)—eventually publish not only average national scores but a rich database from which analysts can disaggregate scores by students’ socioeconomic characteristics, school composition, and other informative criteria. Examining these can lead to more nuanced conclusions than those suggested from average national scores alone. 

Although TIMSS published average national results in December, it only plans to release its underlying database this week. This puzzling procedure ensures that commentators draw quick but ill-informed interpretations and that policy makers can offer inappropriate interpretations of the results without fear of contradiction. Analysis of the database takes time, and headlines from the initial release are sealed in conventional wisdom before scholars can complete more careful study.

For example, two years ago when PISA released its latest scores, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said they showed American students “are poorly prepared to compete in today’s knowledge economy. … Americans need to wake up to this educational reality—instead of napping at the wheel while emerging competitors prepare their students for economic leadership.” In particular, Duncan stressed results for disadvantaged U.S. students:  “As disturbing as these national trends are for America, enormous achievement gaps among black and Hispanic students portend even more trouble for the U.S. in the years ahead.”

Yet a careful analysis of the PISA database shows that the achievement gap between disadvantaged and advantaged children is actually smaller in the United States than it is in similar countries. The achievement gap in the United States is larger than it is in the very highest scoring countries, but even then, many of the differences are small.

What’s more, an examination of trends over the last decade, on multiple administrations of both TIMSS and PISA, shows that the achievement of the most disadvantaged U.S. adolescents has been increasing rapidly, while the achievement of similarly disadvantaged adolescents in some countries that are typically held up as examples for the U.S.—Finland for example—has been falling just as rapidly. Thus, while the reading achievement on PISA of the lowest social class students in the U.S. grew by more than 0.2 standard deviations from 2000 to 2009, it fell by an even larger amount in Finland. In math, the lowest social class U.S. students also posted substantial gains, while scores of comparable Finnish students declined. This is surprising because the proportion of disadvantaged students in Finland also fell, and we might expect this to make the task of devoting resources to them easier. Certainly, even for the lowest social class students, Finland’s scores remain higher than ours, but examination of trends as well as levels challenges the easy assumption that simply imitating Finnish education is a recipe for U.S. success.

Once aware of these data trends, it would be perverse for policy makers to conclude from international test comparisons that we should upend how we educate disadvantaged youngsters. While American schools can certainly do better with disadvantaged children, it seems that our educational system may have more serious problems with the more advantaged students, relative to other nations.

Since the last PISA release in 2010, we have been digging deeper into its database, as well as into the older databases for TIMSS and for both versions of our domestic National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). We concentrated on scores of adolescents (8th graders on TIMSS and NAEP, 15 year-olds on PISA) in the U.S., in three top-scoring countries (Canada, Finland, and Korea), in three similar post-industrial countries (France, Germany and the U.K.), and in seven American states and three Canadian provinces for which trends are available because they voluntarily participated in TIMSS more than once.

The share of disadvantaged students in the U.S. sample was larger than their share in any of the other countries we studied. Because test scores in every country are characterized by a social class gradient—students higher in the social class scale have better average achievement than students in the next lower class—U.S. student scores are lower on average simply because of our relatively disadvantaged social class composition.

This social class driven distortion has been compounded because in 2009, PISA over-sampled low-income U.S. students who attended schools with very high proportions of similarly disadvantaged students, artificially lowering the apparent U.S. score. While 40 percent of the PISA sample was drawn from schools where half or more of students were eligible for free and reduced-price lunch, only 32 percent of students nationwide attend such schools.

Our report shows that if we make two reasonable adjustments to the reported U.S. average, our international ranking improves. The first adjustment re-weights the social class composition of U.S. test takers to the average composition of top-scoring countries. The other re-weights the distribution of lunch-eligible students by the actual intensity of such students in schools. These adjustments raise the U.S. international ranking on the 2009 PISA test from 14th to sixth in reading, and from 25th to 13th in mathematics. While there is still room for improvement, these are quite respectable showings.

A unique aspect of our report is our consolidation of trend data from all four assessments—PISA, TIMSS and the two forms of NAEP. From 2000 to 2006, U.S. math scores on PISA fell substantially, causing great alarm among U.S. policymakers and pundits. But few noticed that during roughly the same period, U.S. math scores on TIMSS were rising, as they did on the Main NAEP. We cannot attribute this to an alleged superior alignment of TIMSS to the U.S. curriculum because in the next period, the pattern was reversed: from 2006 to 2009, PISA and NAEP scores both rose, while TIMSS scores were flatter. We are aware of no reasonable explanation for these erratic patterns, but they suggest that caution is called for before drawing conclusions from any single test about international comparisons—or about anything else, for that matter.

Extensive educational research in the United States has demonstrated that students’ family and community characteristics powerfully influence their school performance. Children whose parents read to them at home, whose health is good and can attend school regularly, who do not live in fear of crime and violence, who enjoy stable housing and continuous school attendance, whose parents’ regular employment creates security, who are exposed to museums, libraries, music and art lessons, who travel outside their immediate neighborhoods, and who are surrounded by adults who model high educational achievement and attainment will, on average, achieve at higher levels than children without these educationally relevant advantages.

Aware of these relationships, education analysts in the United States pay close attention to the level and trends of test scores disaggregated by socioeconomic groupings. Indeed, a central element of U.S. domestic education policy is the requirement that average scores be reported separately for racial and ethnic groups and for children who are from families whose incomes are low enough to qualify for the subsidized lunch program. We understand that a school with high proportions of disadvantaged children may be able to produce great “value-added” for its pupils, although its average test score levels may be low. We know much less about the extent to which similar factors affect achievement in other countries, but we should assume, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that they do. It would be foolish to fail to apply this understanding to comparisons of international test scores.

The database for TIMSS 2011 is scheduled for release soon, and next December, PISA will announce results and make data available from its 2012 test administration. Scholars will then be able to dig into TIMSS 2011 and PISA 2012 databases and place the publicly promoted average national results in proper context. We urge policymakers and pundits to await understanding of this context before drawing conclusions about lessons from future TIMSS or PISA assessments. We plan to conduct our own analyses of these data when they become available, and publish supplements to our report as soon as it is practical to do so, given the care that should be taken with these complex databases.