U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos kicks off a “Rethink School” back-to-school tour today at select locations across the country.
The tour is designed to highlight standout examples of innovation in K-12 and higher education settings and leadership.
“It is our goal with this tour to highlight what’s working. We want to encourage local education leaders to continue to be creative, to empower parents with options and to expand student-centered education opportunities,” DeVos said Monday. She will kick off the trip in Wyoming, where she plans to start the day at Woods Learning Center in Casper and make a visit to St. Stephens Indian High School in St. Stephens that afternoon. The events will focus on ways local educators are meeting the needs of their students. From there, the tour will continue to Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri and Indiana before wrapping up on Friday.
All 50 states and the District of Columbia offer K-12 students a variety of choice options. To learn more about state-led innovation on school choice, visit NCSL’s interactive guide to school choice. This page provides a comprehensive look at what options are available to students in each state, as well as an analysis of the unique and varied components of the school choice landscape. NCSL also offers a guide for state legislators, “Comprehensive School Choice Policy: A Guide for Legislators.”
States are also leading other education innovations and student-centered learning policies. The NCSL Student-Centered Learning Commission is a bipartisan group of state legislators studying policy options, obstacles and recommendations to help states support student-centered learning. Among the commission’s guiding principles are that learning is personalized, competency-based, takes place outside traditional classroom settings, and gives students ownership over their education.
Happy Back to School!
Lucia Bragg is a policy associate in NCSL’s Education program.
Education must be governed by standards to achieve the learning goals that all parents seek for their children, said Dr. Reagan Flowers, a noted trailblazer in the field of STEM and the founder and CEO of Houston, Texas-based C-STEM Teacher and Student Support Services. C-STEM supports the engagement of pre-kindergarten to 12th grade students in hands-on, project-based learning experiences that expose them to workforce opportunities in related areas of Communication, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.
“Through the history of public education, academic standards have evolved and have been governed by many [laws]. In our current reality, there are 44 states that have adopted Common Core State Standards (CCSS), 40 states with expressed interest in adopting the New Generation Science Standards, and six states including Texas following their own standards,” Flowers said.
In comparing “Common Core” to “State Standards,” there are some who might say there is no difference, she continued. Others point out that requirements are similar, but the wording of the guidelines is different.
“I would say that ‘Reading’ is ‘Reading,’ ‘Math’ is ‘Math,’ and ‘Science’ is ‘Science.’ [Common Core and State Standards] emphasize college and career readiness and there is overlap,” Flowers said.
As states struggle to implement the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), an ongoing and underlining debate pits Common Core standards versus State Standards, particularly as states are given the lion’s share of authority under ESSA.
“I see very little difference between Common Core and State Standards outside of 44 states speaking a common language about learning. In using Texas as an example, the difference between the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) and Common Core Math Standards is that TEKS requires students to learn personal finance,” Flowers said.
Flowers said that ESSA can’t be compared to Common Core standards or State Standards.
“ESSA is an act designed to enforce the adopted standards, whether they are ‘Common Core’ or ‘State Standards,’” she said, noting that in practical terms it makes more sense to compare ESSA to the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and, “from where I am sitting, there appears to be a big difference,” between ESSA and NCLB.
Flowers continued: “I see the biggest difference between ESSA and NCLB resting with the allowances and flexibility provided to states and schools with selecting student learning interventions and not being mandated to implement something that does not work with their student population. There is no one-size-fit-all answer to public education and that is what NCLB enforced and we can all see where that has landed us.”
States that have not adopted CCSS include Texas, Missouri, Nebraska, Virginia, Indiana and Kansas.
The Constitution has made it clear that states have control over their school systems, so Common Core standards aren’t federally mandated and each state does enjoy the option to adopt CCSS, standards that are indicators of college and career readiness that provide teachers, curriculum developers, and states significant flexibility.
Further, Common Core standards are research-based and internationally benchmarked, said Michelle Krumholz, the CEO of Evolved Educator, which develops easy-to-use software solutions to help teachers design and implement course instruction; according to Evolved Educator, this specialized course instruction drives sustainable growth in student achievement.
The greatest impact of ESSA concerning Common Core is that the federal government can no longer make a state’s adoption or maintenance of standards a funding incentive as NCLB and Race to the Top mandated, Krumholz said.
“In fact, the new law prohibits the federal government from encouraging the adoption of any particular set of standards—including Common Core,” said Krumholz. “The only requirements regarding standards existing now are that they have to be challenging—which states are left to interpret what is challenging, connected to college and career readiness, and that the assessment tool such as standardized tests, chosen by the state for accountability aligns with the selected state standards.”
In short, states have a lot of flexibility when it comes to implementing education standards, Krumholz said.
The Atlanta-based Skubes spends a lot of time analyzing the state standards for every state and the company has had plenty of experience with Common Core, said Bryan Wetzel, the COO of Skubes, which creates educational videos, quizzes and other resources for K-12 students and teachers.
“One of the little-known facts, and a deceptive fact at that, is that most states didn’t change from Common Core standards, they only erased the name Common Core from the title,” Wetzel said. “In many states, where politicians ran for office on getting rid of Common Core standards, they only changed the name and some of the nomenclature.”
One curriculum supervisor estimated that maybe three percent of the state standards have been rewritten or have been changed from Common Core, he said.
“ESSA is not a curriculum standard as much as it is rule for how federal money is spent and how it can be used,” said Wetzel. “It places more emphasis on research based solutions and/or tested interventions.”
A little-noticed change in the country’s main federal education law could force many states to lower their high school graduation rates, a politically explosive move no state would relish.
Indiana is the first state to be caught in the crosshairs of the law’s new language, but other states are likely to be affected soon. The resulting debate could throw a sharp spotlight on a topic that’s been lurking in the wings: the wildly varying levels of accomplishment signified by a high school diploma.
“This is about to become a national issue,” said Phillip Lovell, the policy director of the Alliance for Excellent Education, an advocacy group that focuses on high school issues.
In Indiana, the state faces the prospect of having to lower its graduation rate from 89 percent to 76 percent, a move its state superintendent fears could harm its economy and reputation.
The state’s in a bind because it offers several types of high school diplomas, and some are easier to earn than others. Half of Indiana’s students earn the default college-prep diploma, known as the Core 40. Thirty-eight percent earn the Core 40 with honors, and 12 percent earn the “general” diploma, which has lesser requirements.
Diplomas with less-rigorous requirements are the target of new language in the Every Student Succeeds Act. The law requires states to calculate their graduation rates by including only “standard” diplomas awarded to a “preponderance” of students, or diplomas with tougher requirements.
For Indiana, that means the state might not be able to count its general diplomas. State officials are in talks with the U.S. Department of Education about that prospect. Indiana Superintendent of Schools Jennifer McCormick also reached out to Indiana’s congressional delegation for help, saying in a letter last month that the lower graduation rate will put Indiana “at a national disadvantage” and would “not reflect well upon our state and could negatively impact our economy.”
Officials from the federal Education Department declined to discuss how they would interpret the ESSA language. In an email to Education Week, a spokesman said only that the department would provide “technical assistance” to states as they complied with the law, and that states can consult federal guidance issued in January on the law’s graduation-rate provisions.
The preponderance language in ESSA is only now beginning to creep onto states’ radars. The exact number that could be affected isn’t clear, although a recent report found that 23 states offer multiple pathways to a diploma. Many states offer multiple types of high school diplomas, though most don’t track—or publicly report—how many students earn each type.
In Arkansas, two-thirds of students graduate with the state’s “smart core” diploma, and one-third earn its less-rigorous “core” diploma.
In New York state, 4 percent of graduates get a “local” diploma, which isn’t as rigorous as its “regents” and “advanced” diplomas. In Oregon, 3.7 percent of students earn a “modified” diploma, which is intended for students with a “demonstrated inability” to meet all the state’s academic expectations.
“The idea is to create a pathway toward a diploma for students with significant challenges,” Jennell Ives, a program specialist with Oregon’s department of education, explained in an email.
Diplomas that signify less-than-rigorous academic preparation, however, were the express target of the new requirement in ESSA. No such language was in the previous version of the law, the No Child Left Behind Act.
“We were trying to address concerns about those weaker diplomas, to put a signal in there to drive states to make sure that diplomas were really preparing students for success,” said a Senate aide who helped draft the Every Student Succeeds Act.
‘Make the Most Difference’
Advocates for lower-income and minority students, and those with disabilities, were key voices at the table when that section of the bill was being drafted. Those students tend to earn disproportionate shares of the lower-level diplomas.
“We wanted the language in ESSA to make the most difference for those students,” said Laura Kaloi, who participated in the talks on behalf of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, a special-education advocacy group.
By inserting the preponderance language into ESSA, its authors pushed federal law into a new area: linking graduation rates to the quality of the diplomas, not just to how many diplomas are awarded.
A 2008 regulation broke new ground by requiring all states to calculate graduation rates the same way: by counting the proportion of entering freshmen who completed school four years later.
That regulation also ventured into new territory by tackling the related idea of which diplomas should be counted. It said states could count only “regular” diplomas, not alternative or equivalency credentials.
The concept of diploma quality was on policymakers’ minds as they sat down to write the accountability section of the Every Student Succeeds Act. There was “a lot of bipartisan agreement” that the idea of counting only regular diplomas should finally be written into federal law, the Senate aide said.
“You could see this as being about states that have to lower their graduation rates, or about trying to be honest about our graduation rates.”Phillip Lovell, Alliance for Excellent Education
“This is new. For a long time, federal officials have been focusing on graduation rates without caring what a diploma actually means,” said Michael Cohen, who was the assistant secretary of elementary and secondary education under President Bill Clinton and now heads Achieve, a group that has researched the wide variety in states’ diploma requirements.
Allowing states to report graduation rates based only on regular diplomas, and diplomas that require more rigorous study, is long overdue, according to Lovell of the Alliance for Excellent Education.
States could well feel the sting of public disapproval if they have to revise their graduation rates downward, but the resulting shift in message justifies the discomfort, he said.
“The statute calls for honesty,” he said. “We’re finally being honest about what a diploma means.”
But Lovell also worries that an unintended consequence of the law is that states could lower their regular-diploma requirements to keep their graduation-rate numbers high.
‘Perverse Incentives?’
Other consequences are already unfolding, showing up first in Indiana.
The state has long been recognized as a leader in getting students to complete college-prep courses of study: 88 percent take the four years of English and three years of math—through Algebra 2—that are widely viewed as a “college-ready” curricula.
Yet Indiana might have to pay the price of lowering its graduation rate because it chose not to require college-prep study for all. That situation strikes Cohen as creating “perverse incentives” for states to award less-rigorous diplomas to a “preponderance” of their students.
“States that do the best job of getting kids to take advanced coursework could be the ones at greatest risk under this policy,” he said. “They’ve succeeded their way into trouble.”
Lovell begs to differ. “You could see this as being about states that have to lower their graduation rates or about trying to be honest about our graduation rates,” he said. “Indiana is stepping up and being honest.”
Activists may differ on whether the preponderance requirements in ESSA are a step in the right direction. But they agree on another, more ironic truth, which is that the law will fall short of ensuring that all high school diplomas mean students are ready to do well in college.
Even among the many states that offer only one type of diploma, what students achieved to earn that diploma can vary wildly. Still, those states are unlikely to be affected by the preponderance requirement of ESSA, since all students earn the same diploma.
In Massachusetts, for instance, 77 percent of students complete a course of study that reflects the expectations of the University of Massachusetts. The rest finish high school with other assortments of courses. Yet all students earn the same diploma, said state education department spokeswoman Jacqueline Reis.
The same situation holds true in Maryland, where most students finish coursework geared to state university requirements, and the rest don’t, but all walk across the graduation stage with the same type of diploma.
In Oklahoma, students are automatically placed in the college-ready curriculum and remain there unless they opt into a less-rigorous one. But only the tougher course of study requires three years of math—through Algebra 2. And all Oklahoma students earn the same high school diploma, a state education department spokeswoman said.
Yesterday, a twelve-member task force, convened by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), released a report on “Quality Education.” The task force was formed in December 2016 after the NAACP’s October 2016 call for a national moratorium on expanding charter schools until a set of conditions were met.
The charge of the task force was to bring forward “practical recommendations that respond to the urgency of this resolution and the inequities undermining public education.” In order to fulfill their charge, from December 2016 to April 2017, the task force held public hearings in seven cities—New Haven, Memphis, Orlando, Los Angeles, Detroit, New Orleans, and New York.
The report acknowledged that, from testimonials at the public hearings, they found some positive aspects of charter schools. However, the report ultimately concluded that “even the best charters are not a substitute for more stable, adequate and equitable investments in public education in communities that serve all children.”
Criticism of Public Hearings
According to NAACP task report report, the “hearing format [for the public meetings] ensured testimony” from all of the following stakeholders: educators, administrators, school policy experts, charter school leaders, parents, advocates, students, and community leaders. However, some have questioned the authenticity and fairness of these meetings, claiming that they did not include groups and individuals who were charter supporters.
For example, in Tennessee, members of Memphis Lift, a parent-activist organization, voiced disapproval when they were only allowed 12 minutes at the end of a four-hour meeting. Additionally, in Orlando, Minnesota education activist Rashad Anthony Turner was ushered out of the meeting by police after he interrupted a speech by Randi Weingarten, American Federation of Teachers President, because opponents of the moratorium were kept waiting.
Task Force Provides Five Recommendations Based on Public Hearings
According to the report, the testimonials illuminated the “perceived” benefits and problems with charter schools. Using those testimonials, the task force created five recommendations, summarized below, that would improve the quality of charter schools.
Recommendation #1: Provide more equitable and adequate funding for schools serving students of color. The task force argued that education funding has been “inadequate and unequal for students of color for hundreds of years.” In order to remedy the problem, the task force recommended that states should implement weighted student formula systems and model them after the systems that Massachusetts and California have pursued. They also recommended that the federal government should “fully enforce” the funding equity provisions within the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).
Recommendation #2: Invest productively in low-performing schools and schools with significant opportunity and achievement gaps. In order to ensure that all students receive a high-quality education, the task force recommends that federal, state, and local policies need to “sufficiently” invest in three things: creating incentives to attract and retain teachers, evolving instruction to be more challenging and inclusive, and providing more wraparound services for students such as health and mental services.
Recommendation #3: Develop and enforce robust charter school accountability measures. There were five parts within this recommendation. They are as follows:
Create and enforce a rigorous chartering authorizing and renewal process. The task force recommends that states should only allow districts to serve as authorizers. This is significant since, of the 44 states that allow charter schools, only four—Wyoming, Virginia, Iowa, and Kansas—have district-only charter authorization.
Create and enforce a common accountability system.
Monitor and require charter schools to admit and retain all students. This recommendation calls for open enrollment procedures, and asserts that charter schools should not be allowed to counsel out, push out, or expel students that they “perceive as academically or behaviorally struggling, or whose parents cannot maintain participation requirements or monetary fees.”
Create and monitor transparent disciplinary guidelines that meet students’ ongoing learning needs and prevent push out. The report recommends that charter schools should be required to follow the “same state regulations regarding discipline as public schools,” and use restorative justice practices.
Require charter schools to hire certified teachers. Many states allow charter schools to hire uncertified teachers at higher rates than traditional public schools, however Minnesota is not one of them.
Recommendation #4: Require fiscal transparency and equity. The task force recommends that all charter schools be held to the “same level of fiscal transparency and scrutiny as other public schools.”
Recommendation #5: Eliminate for-profit charter schools. This recommendation not only states that all for-profit charter schools should be eliminated, but that all for-profit management companies that run nonprofit charter schools should be eliminated as well. Approximately 13 percent of U.S. charter schools are run by for-profit companies. Additionally, at least 15 states allow virtual schools, with many of them operated by for-profit organizations.
Report Elicits Scrutiny from Education Advocates
In response to the NAACP report, Nina Rees, CEO and President of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS), issued a statement where she indicated that NAPCS was glad to see the NAACP recognize the value of charter schools and agreed with them that “whoever oversees a public school should take that responsibility seriously, have the highest expectations, and hold educators in the school accountable” for educating students.
However, Rees also asserted that the NAACP’s policy resolution and report failed to “acknowledge that Black parents are demanding more and better public-school options,” citing a nationally representative survey which found that found 82 percent of Black parents favored allowing parents to choose their child’s public school.
She also cited a 2015 CREDO Urban Charter Schools Report, which found that Black public charter school students gained 36 days of learning in math and 26 in reading over their non-charter school peers.
Chris Stewart, based in Minnesota and former director of outreach and external affairs for Education Post, asserted that “the NAACP has lost its way,” claiming that they have become an “unwitting tool of teacher unions” due to the union’s significant contributions to the NAACP over the years. He also claimed that the unions are “threatened by the growth and success of non-unionized charter schools.”
District-Charter Collaboration: Hope in a Time of Political Tension
The growing and contentious disagreements between education organizations and advocates regarding the merits of charter versus traditional district schools are not new and will likely continue to dominate the news cycle.
However, in recent years, a growing number of districts and charter schools have put aside their political differences and worked together in order to do what’s best for students. Our next two blog posts will examine the cities where some of those collaborative relationships are taking place, as well as provide history on district-charter collaboration in Minnesota.
There were few fireworks Wednesday as Education Secretary Betsy DeVos testified before a House appropriations subcommittee on the Trump administration’s 2018 budget proposal. DeVos deflected much of the skepticism she received and continued to push the administration’s support of school choice.
President Trump’s proposal, which has drawn sharp criticism from educators and lawmakers alike, calls for $1.4 billion to expand school choice — namely vouchers and charter schools — but slashes $10.6 billion from after-school programs, teacher training and federal student loans and grants.
In her opening statement, DeVos said Trump’s budget proposal would return power to states and school districts and give parents a choice in their child’s education.
Democrats, including New York Rep. Nita Lowey, accused DeVos of taking money from public schools to fund school choice.
“We’re not proposing any shifting of funding from public schools to private schools,” DeVos responded. “In fact, all of the proposals set forth in the budget commit to fully funding public schools as we have.”
“If you’re pouring money into vouchers, the money is coming from somewhere,” Lowey said.
Many Republicans, while upset about proposed cuts to career and technical training programs, expressed support for DeVos.
“We are beginning to see the early stages of a much-needed, robust discussion about how we begin the process of getting our federal budget under control,” Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas said.
Democrats questioned DeVos about whether she would allow federal funds to go to private schools that discriminate against particular populations.
Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts brought up Lighthouse Christian Academy, a school in Bloomington, Indiana that receives $665,000 in state vouchers and denies admission to children of LGBT parents.
“Is there a line for you on state flexibility?” Clark asked.
“You are the backstop for students and their right to access quality education. Would you in this case say we are going to overrule and you cannot discriminate, whether it be on sexual orientation, race, or special needs in our voucher programs?” Clark added. “Will that be a guarantee from you to our students?”
DeVos sidestepped the question.
“The bottom line is we believe that parents are the best equipped to make choices for their children’s schooling and education decisions,” DeVos said. “Too many children today are trapped in schools that don’t work for them. We have to do something different than continuing a top-down, one-size-fits-all approach.”
DeVos’s appearance before Congress was her first public seating since a rough confirmation hearing before the Senate back in January.
Earlier this week, the Brookings Institution released the fifth annual Education Choice and Competition Index, which ranks school choice in the largest school districts in the U.S.
During her address, Secretary of Education Betsy Devos claimed that “parents are the primary point of accountability.” When asked about policies that ensure that schools of choice are actually improving student performance, she answered that “the policies around empowering parents and moving the decision-making to the hands of parents on behalf of children is really the direction we need to go.” She later repeated the idea that transparency and information, coupled with parental choice, equated to accountability.
While it is indeed important to communicate information on school choice, transparency and information are only part of the accountability puzzle. In addition to these components, states also use accountability to ensure that schools that fail to meet academic or financial standards are improved or closed.
This is of particular importance for public charter schools, who have been given the authority to operate independently of school districts and many state rules or regulations. Accountability rules assure that students are learning and that public funds are spent responsibly.
While the accountability measures used for charter schools to demonstrate quality performance vary from state to state, they do exist, and they include more than just reporting information to parents.
Forty-three states had charter school laws in place when we completed this analysis (not including Kentucky, which passed a bill in March 2017 to allow charter schools). We examined four points of accountability within the charter school policies as recorded by the Education Commission of the States: annual reporting, specifications for termination, performance-thresholds, and technical assistance.
Annual Reporting
Most states require charter schools to submit annual reports as a part of their accountability obligations. Some annual reporting requirements include annual report cards, education progress reports, curriculum development, attendance rates, graduation rates, and college admission test scores. Many states that do not require annual reports still require financial reports, which speaks to the other side of accountability, appropriate usage of funds.
Some states, such as Washington, require charter schools to provide the same annual school performance reports as non-charter schools.
In Ohio, each charter is required to disseminate the state Department of Education’s school report card report to all parents.
North Carolina requires its charter schools to publish their report performance ratings, awarded by the State Board of Education, on the internet. If the rating is D or F, the charter school must send written notice to parents. North Carolina also requires specific data reporting related to student reading.
State Specification for Termination
Forty-two states specify the grounds for terminating a charter school, fostering accountability by establishing standards and consequences of failure to adhere to those standards. Failure to demonstrate academic achievement and failure to increase overall school performance are among the terms cited as grounds of termination among some states.
These state specifications for termination do not only apply to performance levels; they can be applied to a violation of any part of the charter law or agreement, such as fraud, failure to meet audit requirements, or failure to meet standards set for basic operations.
State Threshold
In addition to state specifications for termination, some states have set a threshold marking the lowest point where a school can perform before it is closed. Some states without a clearly communicated low-performance threshold have set other standards which specifically mark the lowest point of acceptable performance.
Setting a minimum threshold for performance for the automatic closure of failing schools may increase charter school accountability, and encourage high performance.
State-Provided Technical Assistance
Technical assistance to charter schools included leadership training or mentoring charter school leaders, or assistance with grant and application writing and other paperwork related to charter school operation.
In addition to holding charter schools accountable for high performance, several states offer technical assistance to ensure that charter school administrators understand how requirements are measured, and can be directed to resources to assist them with achieving performance goals, especially if they are at risk of closure due to failing to meet previously established standards.
These are clear displays of school accountability policies that help to ensure that parents have truly good schools from which to schools. Accountability relies not only on information for parents, but also consequences for schools that fail to educate students or use taxpayer dollars responsibly.
[1] The following states also require annual financial audits with their annual performance reports: Arkansas, Arizona, DC, Georgia, Hawaii, Oregon, Michigan, Texas, Utah
[2]Utah requires the most comprehensive technical assistance offerings, provided by the state charter school board which includes: assistance with the application and approval process for charter school authorization, locating private funding and support sources, and understanding and implementing charter requirements.
Understanding the student experience in school is critical to adults who are working in education, writes Devon Young, community lead at the K12 Lab Network in the Stanford University d.school. One way to accomplish this goal is to shadow a student, a “hack” or small experiment that can lead to big change. Born out of School Retool, the Shadow a Student Challenge is a hack to help school leaders understand the student experience.
Last year, over 1,500 school leaders and educators took off their administrator or teacher hats to truly immerse themselves in the student perspective. “This Challenge builds on this deep empathy practice and provides permission, agency, tools and resources to help understand not just how to shadow, but how to turn their insights into actions,” writes Young. Learn more about this event and the experiences of participating school leaders in this Getting Smart blog post.
Career Readiness
Adriana Martinez, a senior program associate with the Innovation Lab Network at the Council of Chief State School Officers discusses the “other C” in college and career readiness in Education Week’s Learning Deeply blog. For Martinez, this other, often neglected “C” is career.
“Too many students graduate without the skills they need to build successful careers that afford them a quality of life,” writes Martinez. “In my opinion, too many young people get funneled into low-skill, low-paying jobs, or worse, remain unemployed, while our industries continue to create high-skill, high-wage jobs that they can’t fill.”
She discusses the need to close the persisting skills gap by making education more relevant for students and to help them meet the expectations of the workforce, and deeper learning is an answer. To help provide more deeper learning opportunities for all students, Martinez shares the work of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO)’s Career Readiness Initiative. Learn more.
Making Assessment Meaningful
Assessments like the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), administered by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), ask students to apply their knowledge to real-world problems, measuring not only academic performance but their deeper learning skills. While PISA is an international assessment that provides important country-level information about the performance of fifteen-year-olds, the OECD’s Test for Schools is a school-level, PISA-based assessment that provides actionable data for superintendents, principals, and teachers to develop strategies for improving student learning outcomes.
University Academy in Kansas City, Missouri, one of many schools that have participated in the OECD Test for Schools, was featured in a new case study developed by the Alliance and the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy (the Institute) to examine how schools are using this test to monitor student academic outcomes and inform teaching practice to meet student learning needs.
“The beauty of the OECD Test [for Schools] is that it models for teachers what questions written to elicit higher-order thinking should look like,” said Dr. Clem Ukaoma, upper school principal at University Academy in a webinar about the case study. “We want to teach our students to think critically and solve complex problems, rather than give them easy cram-and-recall questions that are often popular with textbook publishers and with some teachers.”
Deeper Learning 2017, the fifth annual gathering of educators focused on creating deeper learning opportunities is coming up next month, March 29-31 in San Diego, California. Program, registration, and more information is available at http://www.deeper-learning.org/dl2017/.
Deeper Learning in Action
Twitter can be a great place to see what’s actually happening to promote deeper learning outcomes in (and out!) of classrooms across the country. Here are a few examples. Be sure to follow @DeeperLearning and check out #DeeperLearning for more!
The ‘Deeper Learning Digest’ is a bi-weekly roundup of articles, blog posts, and other content around deeper learning. Be sure to follow @deeperlearning on Twitter and like Deeper Learning on Facebook to stay up to date on all deeper learning news.
President-elect Donald Trump is not the only executive stepping in front of a podium this month. The beginning of a new year also means that the nation’s governors will be celebrating recent successes and outlining new programs and ideas in their annual state of the state addresses. Governors speaking early in 2017 have focused on education accomplishments, including raising high school graduation rates, and presented areas for improvement and transformation.
Oregon: Gov. Kate Brown Shares Top Priority: Raising High School Graduation Rates
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) was clear as bell during her January 9 inaugural speech: her top priority is improving Oregon’s high school graduation rates. Although Brown acknowledged the investments and improvements made in education during her two years in office, she was more focused on unsettling statistics that make Oregon schools “among the nation’s leaders in all the wrong categories,” including highest dropout rate.
To raise the state’s high school graduation rate, which is currently about 74 percent and is the third worst rate in the nation, Brown’s agenda includes a graduation equity fund in the amount of $20 million, reports the Portland Tribune. The fund would replicate best practices from around the state to address chronic absenteeism, aid students who are experiencing trauma, expand mentoring and professional development for teachers, and invest in underserved communities.
“Let’s make sure that every student in Oregon—especially historically underserved students–has the chance to achieve their own dreams,” said Brown.
Georgia: Gov. Nathan Deal Talks Highs and Lows of Georgia’s Education Landscape
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal (R) framed many parts of his January 11 state of the state address with the theme of “accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative,” including in the area of education. He shared the state’s high school graduation rate, which has increased from 67.4 percent in 2011 to the current rate of 79.2 percent, as a great positive improvement.
Deal thanked the educators for this progress saying, “Those who are on the frontlines of this field, who mold young minds every day in the classroom and who answer such a challenging calling are the ‘everyday heroes’ that a successful society requires.”
As for the negative, Deal discussed the state’s 153 chronically underperforming schools, which have increased from 127 two years ago. These schools serve almost 89,000 students, primarily elementary age children. Deal stressed the importance of “reversing this alarming trend early on” and how eliminating this negative would improve reading and math comprehension skills and scores, graduation rates, and the quality of the Georgia’s workforce.
“It should be abundantly clear to everyone, including those in the education community who so staunchly support the status quo, that this is unacceptable,” said Deal. “If this pattern of escalation in the number of failing schools does not change, its devastating effects on our state will grow with each passing school year.”
North Dakota: Gov. Doug Burgum Calls for Modernizing Education for a 21st Century World
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R) challenged the basic education model that “dates back to before statehood” during his January 3 state of the state address.
“Most North Dakota students still study isolated subjects, sit in rows of desks for 50-minute periods and wait for the next bell to ring. Yet nearly all of the world’s information is now available online, anywhere, anytime, for free.” said Burgum. “We can’t prepare our kids for the 21st century using a 19th-century model.”
Beyond a shift in model, Burgum said that educators, parents, business people, policymakers, and students are saying that performance on traditional measures is not enough to prepare students for the future. “They need to be creative problem solvers, effective communicators, informed and responsible citizens who are strong collaborators,” he said. “The challenge for our schools is how to equip our students with these essential skills and learning mindsets.”
When it comes to school transformation, Burgum called for superintendents, principals, teachers, and students to be at the forefront, but he also acknowledged the role of parents, businesses, community organizations, and legislators.
“We must also reframe education to be a lifelong endeavor, not something that merely ends with a diploma,” he said.
Other Education Highlights
–Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) dedicated much of his January 11 Inaugural address to argue the case for fully funding education, calling on the imaginations of viewers as he painted a picture of what a fully funded education would look like in the state.
“Imagine schools that can recruit and keep great teachers, with competitive salaries. … Imagine closing the opportunity gap in our state by making sure at-risk kids have extra teaching and mentoring time. … Imagine more students graduating because we have psychologists, nurses and counselors who can help them cross the finish line. … Imagine students learning skills that employers tell us they need right now.”
…Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) is paving the way toward connectivity in the classroom through the EducationSuperHighway, so that “every student, in every classroom, will have affordable, effective, high-speed internet.” His full state of the state address.
…Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad (R) wants all K-12 students to have access to high-quality computer science and introduced legislation that encourages every high school in Iowa to offer at least one computer science course. Learn more from his January 10 state of the state address.
…Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) emphasized the importance of skills-based training opportunities both in and out of the classrooms, including high school apprenticeships, so thousands of Coloradans can acquire career-focused skills that are transferrable to different industries. More in his January 12 state of the state address.
By Lucia Bragg
The tour is designed to highlight standout examples of innovation in K-12 and higher education settings and leadership.
