Articles in the Educational Research category

The week in blogs

Ready for today’s “Week in Blog Question?” Here goes: “How are those weird Easter Island statues like the Obama administration’s Race to the Top competition?”

“Say what?”

Sorry, time’s up.  But because this is our inaugural, occasional, semi-monthly-on-average Week in Blog Question, the Judges have graciously offered to give you another try.  “Now take the eraser end of your pencil and open the test  booklet…” No, actually, just think real hard.

Question #2: “So. About those statues: How is the fact that their construction is said to have totally devastated Easter Island civilization as we know it (or think we know it – it was, after all, hundreds of years ago) analogous to what RTTT will do to the public schools?”

Yes, it’s a toughie, and, yes, I’m poking fun at Yong Zhao’s blog on these seemingly disparate topics (“I can’t help but make the connection between Easter Islanders’ race to erect the statues and the Obama’s Race to the Top program…” he writes) because it’s a little, well, out there; but the fact is, the University of Oregon professor writes some of the most original and provocative analyses of K12 education on the web today.

Here, to be as brief as possible, is his point: Just as Jared Diamond’s argues in Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed that the Easter Islanders exhausted their human and natural resources in a misguided competition to build ever-grander icons, so is RTTT exhausting our schools’ resources in a misguided competition for the best test scores.

“Test scores have no doubt become American’s stone statue in education…” Zhao writes. “Just like the Easter Islanders’ obsession with building statues damaged their ecosystem, America’s obsession with test scores have already begun and will continue to damage its education ecosystem.”
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Lawrence Hardy|April 1st, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Assessment, Curriculum, Educational Research, Governance, Policy Formation, Student Achievement, Teachers, Week in Blogs|

Evaluating teachers on student performance

If you try to keep up with whether teachers should be evaluated based on their students’ performance by using value-added models your head is probably spinning from all the conflicting conclusions. On one hand, researchers say value-added results are too imprecise to accurately evaluate teachers. While on the other had, another group of researchers claim using value-added results are better than how we evaluate teachers now.

So what are school board members and other policymakers to make of these conflicting findings?

Well, a report released today by NSBA’s  Center for Public Education helps makes sense of it all even for the non-researcher. Their report– Building a Better Evaluation System: Can value-added models be used in evaluations? –delves into the limitations of current teacher evaluation systems as well as into the conflicting research on using student achievement to evaluate teachers to help school board members and other policymakers make more informed decisions on how to best evaluate teachers. The report came to these general conclusions:

  • Current teacher evaluation systems are lacking: Research shows that less than 1 percent of teachers nationwide earn ‘unsatisfactory’ ratings even though by all accounts more teachers fall into this category.
  • Value-added models have their flaws but they are better than what are in place now: Value-added results may misidentify some effective teachers as ineffective and vise versa but they are more accurate than the current system that identifies both effective and ineffective teachers as ‘satisfactory’.
  • Similar statistical measures are used effectively to evaluate employees in other industries: Other professionals are evaluated based on similarly imprecise statistical measures.
  • There are ways to improve value-added models: There are tools available to make value-added results more accurate such as averaging results over multiple years.
  • Multiples measures that include value-added results provide the fullest picture of a teacher’s actual effectiveness: Value-added measures should be just one tool in determining a teacher’s true effectiveness. Other measures of teachers effectiveness should also be used as part of  comprehensive evaluation system that is not only used for personnel decisions but to help all teaches improve as well.

Of course the report provides a wealth of information for school board members when considering including student results in evaluating teachers so be sure check out the full report on the Center’s website at www.centerforpubliceducation.org.

Jim Hull|April 1st, 2011|Categories: Center for Public Education, Educational Research, Governance, NSBA Opinions and Analysis, Teachers|

The week in blogs

First, a disclaimer: Our first item is not a blog, and it was not published this week. (Other than that, the headline above is perfectly accurate.)

But this article on high-flying high school students being flummoxed by an SAT essay prompt involving  …. Gasp! TV reality shows! .. was too good to pass up. Yes, it’s from the New York Times. And, yes, I tend to cite them a lot. And, yes that’s because I really like Times. And no, I’m not getting paid by them to say this.

Back to the story: It seems an SAT question on just how real the “reality” is on reality TV shows like American Idol and Real Housewives of New Jersey — which all high school kids know something about, right? — was too much for those high achievers who don’t have time for the tube.  

“I ended up talking about Jacob Riis and how any form of media cannot capture reality objectively,” one frustrated student wrote on the Web site College Confidential, referring to the 19th century reformer. “I kind of want to cry right now.”

The irony, unmentioned in the article, is how for years SAT opponents have criticized the tests for being culturally biased toward affluent white students and against minorities and the disadvantaged. A famous example from years ago was the analogy that required students to know the meaning of “regatta,” which could be tough for children who’ve never seen a sailboat or a racing shell.

I don’t begrudge the high-achieving, non-TV watching students their complaint, but it seems to me that, if anything, the tests favor students with their life experiences over kids from disadvantaged backgrounds.

While we’re on the subject of standardized tests, blogger Jennifer Fox writes in the Huffington Post about her campaign “to stop the testing trend.” One suggestion: “Ask teachers to have their classes of students fill out the cards [postcards  to First Lady Michelle Obama asking the president ‘to end the use of high stakes standardized tests!'] and bring in a quarter to mail them as a class.” Don’t think teachers – or administrators – would relish being be put in that position.

Finally, be sure to read Joanne Jacobs on how respondents to the MetLife Survey of the American Teacher say they need more help in differentiating instruction for diverse learners.

“Ninety-one percent of public school teachers say schools need to do more to prepare ‘diverse’ learners for success after high school,” Jacobs writes.

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor

Lawrence Hardy|March 25th, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Assessment, Curriculum, Diversity, Educational Research, Policy Formation, Student Achievement, Teachers, Urban Schools|

Hiring teachers late in the year works against building a quality faculty

stockvault_7718_20070525Chances are, if you’ve paid even passing notice to the national education debate, you’ve heard some variation of this: “If we could just get rid of bad teachers…”

There’s some truth to that statement. Many times, union contracts (which, it must be added, were negotiated, in most cases, with school board members and/or their representatives) make it difficult to fire bad teachers or reduce staff by methods other than seniority: “Last in, first out,” is the rule, in many cases.

It is a problem, of course, and it’s being debated at the national level and addressed in many districts. But it’s not the biggest staffing problem facing schools. That problem is attrition: nearly 50 percent of teachers leave the profession in their first five years.

They leave because of lack of support and guidance, and frustration with a job that, despite our pronouncements, does not convey much in the way of authority or respect.

Now a study by Nathan D. Jones at Northwestern University and Adam Maier at Michigan State provides new information about another practice that leads, inordinately, to attrition: late hiring.

Looking at data from schools in Michigan, they found that nearly 12 percent of teachers were hired after the start of the school year. But these teachers were not evenly distributed.
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Naomi Dillon|March 22nd, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Educational Research, Policy Formation, Teachers|Tags: , |

The week in blogs

Next month marks the 28th anniversary of A Nation at Risk, notes University of Oregon education school dean (and blogger) Yong Zhao, so it’s only appropriate that we quote from that ground-breaking document:

“If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the insane policies that threaten democracy, turn American children into robotic test takers, narrow and homogenize our children’s education, reward grant writing skills instead of helping the needy children and stimulate innovation (e.g., Race to the Top), value testing over teaching, and scapegoat teachers that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”

Not the Nation at Risk you knew? That’s because Zhao has taken it upon himself to edit the document in ways that more accurately reflect the state of education, and education politics, these days. Very clever — and revealing.

So how’s that risky nation doing these days? Surprisingly well, writes Robert Pondiscio in the Core Knowledge Blog — not exactly a font of giddy enthusiasm for American schools.

Speaking of how education is taught, Atlanta Journal-Constitution blogger Maureen Downey quotes from a piece called “The Failure of American Teachers.” It’s not what you might expect.

And finally, this:

A Cinderella choice if there ever was one, A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy topped Pride and Prejudice, The Grapes of Wrath, Anna Karenina and a little yarn called Moby-Dick in David McCandless’ illustrated “consensus-cloud” of books mentioned most often on “Top 100 Must-Read Books” lists.  If only my bizarre March Madness picks were so lucky.

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor

Lawrence Hardy|March 19th, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Assessment, Educational Research, Governance, Policy Formation, Student Achievement, Teachers, Week in Blogs|

NSBA report shows vitality of school boards in leading school districts

ASBJRemember the 2008 Atlantic Monthly article “First, Kill All the School Boards?” The title said it all—school boards should be irrelevant in the 21st century.

But they’re not. And a new study written by researchers Frederick Hess and Olivia Meeks, commissioned by NSBA and several other groups, finds that school boards are more important than ever, given all that is on their plate.

That includes the recent and growing budget crises in states and push to finally reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, moving away from the No Child Left Behind Act’s overly punitive measures. Also, many new Republican lawmakers are eager to push some responsibilities from the federal level back to states and local districts.

“These shifts promise to make the pivotal role of school boards even more significant in coming years,” Hess writes in the March ASBJ.

So how can your board best meet these challenges? On the next page, Patte Barth, NSBA’s director of the Center for Public Education writes about the center’s recent report, “The Eight Traits of Effective School Boards.” (Be sure to check out the list of “danger signs” as well).

Joetta Sack-Min, Associate Editor

Naomi Dillon|March 14th, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Educational Research, Governance|

The week in blogs

This week, education researcher Richard Rothstein takes Bill Gates to task for claiming in a recent Washington Post column on teacher development that student achievement has remained “virtually flat” in recent decades while per-student costs have “more than doubled.”

 Looking at NAEP tests since 1980 and 1990, Rothstein concludes that “American students have improved substantially, in some cases phenomenally.” As far as a doubling of K12 funding is concerned, yes that’s true, he adds, but the statistic begs to be qualified.

“The biggest single recipient of new money has been special education for children with disabilities,” Rothstein writes. “Four decades ago, special education consumed less than 4 percent of all K12 spending. It now consumes 21 percent.”

What can high schools do to help community colleges and their astronomical drop-out rates? Blogger Dana Goldstein offers a thoughtful analysis.

 ”Why are people dropping out of community colleges en masse?” Goldstein asks. “In part, it’s the frustration of being academically under-prepared and thus being forced to pay tuition for credit-less remediation classes. But national surveys of community college drop-outs find that the most cited reasons for leaving school are work and family responsibilities.”

(Thanks to Joanne Jacobs for leading us to Goldstein’s commentary.)

Recent stories in the Washington Post have questioned zero tolerance policies in the Fairfax County (Va.) Public Schools. Read a sobering post by the Post’s Valerie Strauss on common myths about zero tolerance’s effectiveness.

 Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor

Lawrence Hardy|March 11th, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Assessment, Budgeting, Curriculum, Discipline, Dropout Prevention, Educational Research, Governance, Policy Formation, Special Education, Student Achievement, Teachers, Urban Schools, Week in Blogs|

Former school board member, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, promotes the need to invest in public education

Federal Reserve Chairman and former Montgomery Township Board of Education (N.J.) member, Ben Bernanke, gave a speech early this week about the financial challenges local governments are facing and as The New York Times observed, “explicitly advocated against cuts to education spending.”

Bernanke noted that:

Budget balance and budget stability are important fiscal issues. In the long run, though, the most important fiscal issue is whether the structure and composition of the government budget best serves the public interest. Certainly, most people would support the goal of fostering healthy economic growth. Government can contribute to this objective in a number of ways. One critical means is by ensuring an adequate investment in human capital–that is, in the knowledge and skills of our people. No economy can succeed without a high-quality workforce, particularly in an age of globalization and technical change. Cost-effective K-12 and post-secondary schooling are crucial to building a better workforce, but they are only part of the story. Research increasingly has shown the benefits of early childhood education and efforts to promote the lifelong acquisition of skills for both individuals and the economy as a whole. The payoffs of early childhood programs can be especially high. For instance, preschool programs for disadvantaged children have been shown to increase high school graduation rates. Because high school graduates have higher earnings, pay more taxes, and are less likely to use public health programs, investing in such programs can pay off even from the narrow perspective of state budgets; of course, the returns to the overall economy and to the individuals themselves are much greater.

Last year our Center for Public Education (the Center) released a report, “Cutting to the Bone: How the Economic Crisis Affects Schools,” that revealed public K-12 schools are facing severe funding conditions.

Currently, public K-12 education is suffering from declines in both state and local funding. At the same time, many also face dramatic cost increases in areas ranging from utilities to pension funds, forcing school leaders to make tough decisions between balanced budgets and student needs.

As Jim Hull, Senior Policy Analyst at the Center noted, “The current system of school funding isn’t working for our students. With no fat to cut, schools are forced to cut effective educational programs that directly impact student achievement. Such cuts will not only impair student achievement but also impede our economic competitiveness for years to come. For schools to succeed in the long run, school boards, other policymakers, and the public need to reexamine how public education is funded at the local, state, and federal levels.”

Alexis Rice|March 4th, 2011|Categories: Center for Public Education, Educational Finance, Educational Research, NSBA Opinions and Analysis, Preschool Education, Student Achievement|

Harvard suggests high schools expand focus to multiple success pathways

separate-paths-29941281454668Ush8Suppose a high school student cannot find any clear, concrete connections between prospective college studies and opportunities for jobs post-college graduation. Suppose this student is also experiencing financial difficulties and perhaps a pull between family, job and school responsibilities.

Additionally, the course work they took in high school will mean they are unprepared for college, and will most likely result have to take remedial courses.  

Should high school teachers and administrators still push this student to attain a four-year degree from a traditional university?

The answer is no, according to “Pathways to Prosperity: Meeting the Challenge of Preparing Young Americans for the 21st Century,” a study recently released by Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Intuitively, not every single high school graduate is cut out for success in a traditional college setting. So why do most U.S. high schools advocate attending a 4-year university as the only path for success?

This one-size-fits-all mentality is idealistic, and simply not realistic.
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Naomi Dillon|February 28th, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Educational Research, Policy Formation, Student Achievement|Tags: , , |

Blogging losing popularity among youth, gaining among older generation

1-1216221367ByEeFullscreen_capture_4162010_112507_AMTeens just don’t blog as much as they used to anymore, according to a study conducted by The Internet & American Life Project at the Pew Research Center. Half as many youth ages 12 to 17 keep blogs as in 2006, the results showed.

For example, High School senior Michael McDonald told The New York Times that he doesn’t bother to post his edited films on a blog anymore.

Why? Social network sites of course. McDonald posts videos on Facebook, because he can reach a wider audience, the Times reports.

As sites such as Twitter and Facebook have grown, “traditional” blogs have declined—at least among adolescents. The Pew Research Center also found that the number of blogging adults older than their mid-thirties rose to 14 percent in 2010, from 11 percent in 2008.

But social networking sites have a “darker side,” psychologist Catriona Morrison warns the University of Leeds News. Morrison is the lead researcher of a University of Leeds study about the mental health effects of social networking and chat room use, released last year in the Psychopathology journal. 
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Naomi Dillon|February 23rd, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Educational Research, Governance|Tags: , , |
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