Saturday, August 24, 2013
Friday, August 23, 2013
Most Americans Unaware of Common Core, PDK/Gallup Poll Finds
Nearly two out of three Americans have never heard of the Common Core State Standards, and among those who have, fewer than half believe the new, more rigorous academic goals in English/language arts and mathematics adopted by all but four states so far will make the United States more competitive in the world, according to a new poll from Phi Delta Kappa and Gallup.
Sixty-two percent of respondents in PDK/Gallup’s annual national survey on public education hadn’t heard of the common core.
And among public school parents, 55 percent didn’t know anything about the new academic standards, despite the fact that educators have already begun putting them into practice in classrooms in the vast majority of states and school districts and have been warning that initial test scores will drop as a result. Of those who had heard of the common core, many were confused by, or misunderstood the standards and their genesis. At the same time, 95 percent of poll respondents said they think schools should teach critical-thinking skills, one of the main goals of the common standards.
The poll also found eroding support for standardized testing, with fewer than 25 percent of respondents saying they believe increased testing has helped to improve public schools. Connected to that is a sharp, one-year decline among Americans who favor using student scores on standardized tests as a measure of teachers’ job performance. In the 2012 poll, 52 percent of poll respondents said they favored using test scores to evaluate teachers. This year, support dropped to 41 percent.
Other poll findings also show that there is strong support for charter schools, opposition to vouchers, broad confidence in the safety of schools, and mixed opinions on hiring armed guards for schools.
Turbulent Time
Those findings come at a particularly turbulent time in public education as the new standards and the tests being designed to measure how well students are mastering them have become the latest focus of battles over the future direction of American public schooling. Forty-six states and the District of Columbia are putting the common standards into practice, and almost as many have signed on for the common tests being developed to replace their old state assessments. Nearly 40 states are also working on redesigning teacher and principal evaluations to include student test scores.
“This underscores the real challenge we are likely going to see, which is major pushback from the public and parents because they don’t fully understand what the standards are, and they are going to be very upset about their kids’ lower scores on the new tests,” said Pedro Noguera, an education professor at New York University who favors the more rigorous academic demands in the common core. “This is all made worse by very poor implementation.”
Deborah A. Gist, the commissioner of education in Rhode Island, said her biggest worry is the abundance of misinformation about the standards, not that more parents haven’t heard of them. Many of the respondents in the poll who had heard of the common core said—erroneously—that the federal government forced states to adopt the standards, that they would cover all academic content areas, and that they were an amalgamation of existing state standards.
“That’s what we particularly need to address,” Ms. Gist said. “There is so much misinformation out there that it could be problematic for us to carry this through. I think these results are a message to us that we need to engage our families much more in this transition,” she said.
Views on Testing
The PDK/Gallup poll, which is its 45th annual survey on public attitudes toward public schools, was conducted by telephone in May. The national survey of 1,001 respondents 18 and older has a margin of error of 3.8 percent. (Education Week partners with Gallup on a separate survey project, known as the Gallup-Education Week Superintendent Panel.)
The findings on standardized testing—that fewer than one in four of those responding believe that more student testing has led to better public schools—stand in sharp contrast to the results in another national poll published this week by the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research at the University of Chicago.
In its question on testing, the PDK/Gallup poll told respondents that there had been a significant increase in testing before asking them to answer whether they thought more testing had helped, hurt, or made no difference in the performance of public schools.
The AP survey—which polled parents and guardians with children in grades K-12—posed a different question. In asking parents how important it is for schools to regularly assess students, 74 percent said it was either extremely or very important to use tests to gauge both how their children are doing and how schools are measuring up. In the same poll, 61 percent of parents said their own children are given about the right number of standardized tests, while 26 percent said their children are overtested. Sixty percent also said that students’ scores on state tests should be included in teacher evaluations.
The PDK/Gallup survey, however, found that 58 percent of respondents oppose requiring teacher evaluations to include student scores on standardized tests. That’s a reversal of public opinion from just last year, when 47 percent of PDK/Gallup respondents opposed using test scores in evaluations.
Terry Holliday, the commissioner of education in Kentucky, said that the one-year change in the public’s view is an important data point to weigh.
“For Kentucky, where we have been slow and deliberate about how we are doing our evaluations, this tells me that we need to be even more cautious,” he said.
William J. Bushaw, the executive director of Phi Delta Kappa International, said the public and parents are likely being influenced by the teachers and principals in their local schools, for whom they have high regard.
“I think parents are listening to their children’s teachers and are hearing their concerns about these new evaluation systems that are untested and deciding that maybe it’s not fair,” Mr. Bushaw said.
As has been the case for decades, confidence levels in teachers who work in local schools is high. In the PDK/Gallup survey, 70 percent of respondents said they have trust and confidence in the men and women who teach in public schools, while 65 percent said the same of principals.
Basket of Issues
Besides the common core, testing, and teacher and principal quality, the survey delves into the public’s views on school safety, charter schools and vouchers, home schooling, education funding, and overall school quality.
The vast majority of public school parents surveyed—88 percent—said they do not worry about their child’s physical safety at school. Eighty percent said they are more concerned about the actions of other students, rather than the threat of outside intruders in the school. And 59 percent of respondents favor increasing mental-health services as the better approach to promoting school safety; 33 percent of those polled said hiring more security officers would be the most effective. When it comes to the need to hire armed security guards, especially in elementary schools, those polled were split, while the majority rejected the idea of providing teachers and administrators with guns.
“I think parents have clearly identified that providing mental-health services is the most productive way to promote safe schools,” said Otha Thornton, the president of the National PTA. “And while public opinion is more mixed on arming guards in elementary schools, we at National PTA believe the most effective day-to-day safe school environment is one that is gun-free.”
On school choice issues, respondents to the PDK poll continued to hold charter schools in high regard, with 68 percent saying they support charters and 67 percent reporting they would support the opening of new charter schools in their communities. Fifty-two percent also said that they think students receive a better education at public charter schools than at traditional public schools.
There was also a sharp, one-year drop in support for using public money to pay for private school expenses. Seventy percent said they oppose allowing families to attend a private school at public expense, compared with 55 percent last year.
Communications Challenge
The major takeaway from this year’s survey, said Mr. Bushaw from PDK, is that educators have their work cut out for them to mount an effective communications campaign about the common-core standards.
“The best ambassadors to tell the public about what is happening with the standards and the new assessments as well are teachers and principals,” he said. “But I think because some of these same people have very real concerns about how the results will be used, that may be causing them to hold back.”
Sandra Boyd, the chief operating officer and senior vice president at Achieve, the Washington nonprofit that coordinated the state-led effort to write the common core, said she was not surprised by the lack of familiarity with the standards. In 19 states, she said, they are known by a name other than Common Core State Standards. She also said she thinks the public awareness of the common core is higher than its awareness of the academic standards states had been using prior to switching to the common standards.
“I think 100 percent of the public didn’t know what their previous state standards were,” she said. “What’s most important for states and local districts to communicate is that the expectations for students have been raised and to explain to parents what that will mean in terms of putting their child on a trajectory to make sure they are ready for college and career.”
In a third national poll also published this week, by the journal Education Next, 65 percent of respondents said they support to some degree states’ adoption of the common standards, up slightly from the previous year. But the survey of 1,138 adults in June by the polling firm Knowledge Networks also found a near doubling of opposition to the standards’ adoption from last year, with 13 percent now saying they were opposed. Education Next is published by the Hoover Institution, at Stanford University, and has as additional sponsors the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University and the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.
Vol. 33, Issue 02
Thursday, August 22, 2013
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
College Board Enters Expanding Common-Test Market
The College Board is redesigning four of its testing programs so they reflect the Common Core State Standards and can be used for accountability, a project that adds yet another player to the list of companies seeking to take on new roles in a shifting nationwide assessment landscape.
The New York City-based nonprofit announced last year that it would align its college-entrance exam, the SAT, to the common standards. But its plans have expanded to include three other products: ReadiStep, aimed at 8th and 9th graders; the PSAT, typically taken by 10th and 11th graders; and Accuplacer, used by colleges to determine course placement for incoming students.
Test redesigns are still largely in the discussion stage, according to David Coleman, who took over as the College Board’s president last October after serving as a chief writer of the common standards in English/language arts. The organization is talking with policymakers and educators in states at the K-12 and higher education levels, he said.
But the idea is to create a suite of tests that could serve as indicators of how well students are progressing toward mastering the college-readiness skills outlined in the standards in literacy and mathematics. States could use those tests as part of their accountability systems by 2014-15, Mr. Coleman said.
He wants the tests to play other roles, too: as an early-warning system, facilitating interventions for students who are behind; and as door-openers, identifying promising but under-recognized students and connecting them with more-challenging coursework and with supports that will aid them in applying for college.
In revising and repositioning a group of its tests, however, the College Board appears to be working—at least in the upper grades—on some of the same turf as the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, the two big groups of states that are using federal funds to design tests in grades 3-8 and high school for the common standards.
And the College Board isn’t the only one working that territory: ACT Inc. announced last year that it would produce a brand-new suite of common-core tests that will span elementary through high school, include not only math and literacy but science, and be ready to use a year earlier than the consortium tests, which are slated for debut in 2015.
In that system, called Aspire, the ACT college-entrance exam will serve as the capstone, and the new middle and high school tests will replace the current Plan and Explore products, which are being phased out, ACT officials said.
Each new vendor entry into the marketplace for common-core assessments sparks debate. For some common-core skeptics and those opposed to a heavy emphasis on testing, moves like the College Board’s confirm their suspicions that the new standards will expand the assessment burden on students and serve as a vehicle to enrich assessment companies.
Proponents of the common standards worry that if private companies carve too many states out of the two consortia, key advantages of the collective work—a high, shared cutoff score and cross-state comparability—could be lost.
“If we have 10 or 15 different assessments, and states decide they’re going to set their own cut scores, we are going to be right back where we were pre-Arne Duncan,” said Andy Smarick, a consultant at Bellwether Education Partners, a Washington consulting firm. “I think people are underestimating how important common assessments are to common standards.”
The U.S. Department of Education, under Secretary Duncan, has awarded $360 million to the consortia working on common-core-aligned tests.
Some backers of the standards, though, are starting to argue that multiple tests won’t necessarily undermine the common core.
“There’s this narrative that somehow when states pull out of [a consortium], it’s a chink in the armor of the common core,” said Michael J. Petrilli, the executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washington think tank that supports the standards. But if states that leave choose assessments that are truly of high quality and reflective of the standards, then “perhaps we haven’t lost much,” he said.
Mission or Competition?
Mr. Coleman of the College Board, in recent public comments, has urged acceptance of multiple players on the common-assessment landscape. At a recent GE Foundation conference in Orlando, Fla., for instance, he encouraged business leaders to embrace the “pluralism” of the evolving marketplace, in which some states will use consortium tests and others will choose different assessments.
“I think it’s OK that we may see some variety in assessment, as long as they’re coordinated together and put on a common scheme of measurement,” he said.
Comments like those, combined with moves by the College Board to lure away top talent from ACT, have prompted some in the field to view the organization’s moves as a way to gain ground in the long-standing competition between the two big purveyors of college-entrance exams, while also gaining market share in the common-core world.
“What you hear a lot is that, like ACT, they are making a play to be the high school common-core test,” said one Washington education activist.
The College Board hired Cynthia Schmeiser, a former head of ACT’s education division, in April to oversee assessment. It has since added other key ACT players to its roster, including Sherri Miller, who was an assistant vice president in ACT’s education division and served on both the literacy- and math-writing panels for the common core; Ranjit Sidhu, ACT’s former senior vice president for strategic initiatives; and Jim Patterson, who worked on literacy content for the Plan, Explore, and ACT exams and was an influential panelist on the common-core literacy-writing panel.
The College Board has also enlisted people with strong education connections in the Midwest, where ACT has traditionally been dominant.
Todd Huston, who now oversees state and district partnerships, is a former chief of staff in the Indiana education department. Jon Gubera, the College Board’s new head of state government relations, was Indiana’s chief accountability officer and associate commissioner for policy for the state’s higher education commission.
What’s more, the College Board opened an office a few months ago in Iowa City, Iowa, only a few miles from ACT’s headquarters. Many saw that move as a bid to facilitate competition. It’s easier to recruit staff members from ACT if they aren’t forced to relocate, said one assessment insider, and it’s also “a way of slowing down a competitor when they’re in heavy development mode.”
Like most sources consulted for this article, he would not speak for attribution because of his interests in maintaining working relationships in the field.
One education activist in the Ohio Statehouse said the College Board has stepped up its lobbying efforts in Columbus.
“In my experience, they are really, really pushing their lobbying front here in a way I haven’t seen in a decade,” the activist said. “They have people reaching out not just to state officials but to districts.”
Those efforts appear to be starting to pay off in a strong ACT state. Just recently, Ohio awarded the College Board a one-year contract to administer the PSAT to sophomores in 2014.
Developments like that frustrate the common-assessment consortia, which are working hard to keep states in the fold.
“One of the consortia’s problems is we don’t have lobbyists to explain the assessments to legislators, and many testing companies do,” said one consortium official. “That puts us at a huge disadvantage in state legislatures.”
Peggy Lehner is one of the state lawmakers who have heard about the College Board’s plans through its outreach. The chairwoman of the education committee in the Ohio senate, she said that Mr. Gubera stopped by her office a few months ago and had a “fairly casual” conversation with her.
“He certainly did make a strong pitch, but I would hardly say it was a hard sell,” Sen. Lehner said. She noted, however, that the state school board, not the legislature, decides which tests will be used.
The board plans to use PARCC exams at grades 3-8, and might use them as high school end-of-course tests, but the board is examining its options at the high school level, said C. Todd Jones, who heads a board committee examining that issue.
“ACT’s advantage is they have a name brand that people feel comfortable with,” Sen. Lehner said. “But states have had far more opportunity to engage with the development of the PARCC assessment than they ever have with ACT, which is all done behind closed doors. We have a hundred educators working on the PARCC test.”
Kentucky Commissioner of Education Terry Holliday said the College Board’s products are “certainly” one of the options he is considering, along with PARCC tests, as he looks ahead to assessing the common core.
Oklahoma state Superintendent Janet Barresi said her state will invite both the College Board and ACT to make presentations this fall to a state Senate committee charged with producing a study of testing options. Oklahoma has announced that while it’s still a member of PARCC, it will not use those assessments.
“It’s a great time to begin a conversation about where we want to go,” Ms. Barresi said. “All of us are looking for high-, high-quality assessments that will assess college and career readiness. Quality is not negotiable.”
Oklahoma will issue a request for proposals for tests in grades 3-8, she said, and will modify its current high school tests, too. She invited Mr. Huston of the College Board to Oklahoma for a meeting a few months ago and came away interested in the organization’s new emphasis on using its tests as early-warning and diagnostic tools to help students.
The prospect of giving up cross-state test-score comparability bothers her, however. Ms. Barresi said the state is looking for a way to get that benefit even as it explores using nonconsortium tests.
Opportunity Is Key Goal
Mr. Coleman disputed the view that business interests are driving the College Board’s common-core testing plans. The project, he said, is fueled by the nonprofit’s social-justice mission, something its board of directors made paramount in hiring him.
“This is about seeing assessment as a starting point for opportunity,” he said. “The measures we are watching are things like can we change the number of low-income students going to college. How many students are taking our exams is much less interesting from a mission perspective. Nothing’s worse than being a nonprofit without a social return, merely selling tests and not changing students’ opportunities.”
The hiring, in particular, of Ms. Schmeiser, who has a reputation as a passionate advocate of rigorous coursework, has prompted speculation that the College Board might move into offering middle school courses. Mr. Coleman did not rule that out.
“We need designs for good courses,” he said, guided both by K-12 and college faculty members. “The hope that assessment alone will shape instruction is wrong. As we think about courses, we may think about middle school as well.”
Revisions in the four College Board tests will be guided by emphasizing skills associated with college success, Mr. Coleman said, such as citing evidence when writing and mastery of vocabulary most commonly used in college and good jobs. The revisions are being shaped jointly with college faculty members, admissions officers, K-12 teachers, and guidance counselors, he said.
Mr. Coleman said he wants the kinds of items on the tests to mirror good classroom instruction.
The goal of the revised testing system, he said, is not just to gauge students’ learning, but also to use test data to provide supports and interventions that help them move ahead.
As an example, he pointed to a new project that sends letters directly to students who scored high enough on the PSAT to make them good candidates for Advanced Placement courses. Previously, such “AP potential” notifications went only to the schools.
The College Board has also begun following up those letters with waivers of college-application fees when those high-achieving PSAT students are juniors in high school, something that takes the support of its higher education members. That move is based on research showing that application fees can be a big deterrent when low-income students are applying to college.
Mr. Coleman sees the College Board’s role in the common-assessment world as helping to clarify what achievement measures prove most useful, a process that should culminate not in expanding the number of tests in the field, but reducing it to fewer, top-notch tools.
“It will take some time to come up with the most powerful, elegant designs for secondary assessments,” he said. “Almost no one is pleased with the current structures. It’s OK if it takes some time to find the best solutions. And I think the College Board needs to be part of that conversation.”
Vol. 33, Issue 01
Charter School Networks Share Curricular Offerings Online
A pair of California-based charter school networks are making their curricular materials freely available online through a new platform that will allow teachers anywhere to browse, rate, and share the instructional resources, according to a press release issued today.
The current content on the open platform, called Activate Instruction, has primarily been built and published by Summit Public Schools in the San Francisco Bay Area and High Tech High in San Diego, two charter networks that have drawn national attention for their schools. The new initiative is supported by the Girard Education Foundation.
The site is described as "essentially a curricular Wikipedia" by Girard President Michele Hansen in the press release, who says it will provide teachers with a professional community where they can "easily find and share high-quality lessons."
Teachers anywhere will be able to "browse, search, rate, add, share, and organize" their favorite materials and to assemble personalized "playlists" for students, the press release says.
The announcement comes at a time when the availability of such open educational resources is growing rapidly. As my colleague Sean Cavanagh explained in a recent Education Week story, such resources are being developed or supported by nonprofit groups, universities, philanthropies, individual teachers, and entire states (such as Utah, where I recently wrote about an initiative todevelop e-textbooks for the common core). Such OER resources come in many forms, but generally are defined as free resources that can be revised and redistributed by teachers and other users to meet specific needs.
The new Activate Instruction platform currently provides materials at grades 6-12 across subject areas, but eventually will expand to K-12. The press release also bills some of those as being "common-core aligned," though I'll leave it to others to judge that.
A fact sheet identifies a dozen charter school networks and school districts that are planning to use the platform this fall, including the North Monterey County Unified district in California, Intrinsic Schools in Chicago, and KIPP schools around the country.
Two other partners in the initiative are Illuminate Education Inc. and the Alvo Institute.
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
New How-To Guide for Using Facebook in the Classroom
Commissioned by Facebook, an education think tank in the United Kingdom recently created a "Facebook Guide for Educators."
As of May 2013, 1.1 billion people worldwide are using Facebook, making the social network "rich with potential for learning," states the guide by The Education Foundation.
The 20-page manual outlines the functions Facebook allows and how educators can tailor them for their own classrooms. For example, teachers can use Facebook Groups to communicate with parents. They can share information about an upcoming school trip or staff contact details. Students can also use group pages to collaborate on projects, post research, and share ideas, videos, or resources.
Acknowledging that Facebook poses privacy challenges, the guide provides an appendix that includes relevant information about how to modify settings. For instance, it shows how to use the "activity log" to select what audience can see a particular image.
As Education Week has reported, many teachers are already using social networks in their classes—including lesser-known ones that are viewed as having more protections for students. And many parents see their kids' social-media use as beneficial.
Teachers, have you used Facebook in the classroom? What are your thoughts on the new Facebook guide?
Monday, August 19, 2013
Report: States Make Headway in Aligning Curriculum to Common Core
A majority of states say they have already begun to teach a curriculum aligned with the Common Core State Standards in at least some districts or grade levels, new survey results show. In fact, nine of the states say they began to implement a new math curriculum reflecting the standards across their entire K-12 system during the 2012-13 academic year or earlier, and 12 report the same for English/language arts.
These are just a few of the findings from a new report that probes in depth the progress states are making on a variety of fronts—and the challenges they are encountering—to help bring the common core to life in classrooms.
Meanwhile, 11 of the 40 states that responded to the survey have started to recommend or require the use of specific curricular materials that have been validated by the state education agency as reflecting the standards, with six more planning to do so this coming year or later, according to the new report from the Center on Education Policy, a research and advocacy organization based at George Washington University.
You can find more analysis over at the State EdWatch blog. (Also, I recently blogged about a common-core survey that fielded views from middle school math teachers.)
Not surprisingly, nearly all the 40 states that responded to the Center on Education Policy survey report taking specific actions to prepare educators to teach the common-core standards, which 46 states and the District of Columbia have adopted. The figures below indicate the number of states reporting that they have begun these activities.
• (37 states) Develop and disseminate professional-development materials and guides aligned to the common core;
• (36 states) Carry out statewide professional-development initiatives;
• (33 states) Work with institutions of higher education to align the academic content of teacher-prep programs with the common core; and
• (33 states) Encourage school and district professional learning communities on common-core implementation.
The data in the report are based on a survey of state education agencies conducted from February to May of this year. Forty states responded, including 39 that had adopted the common core in reading and math, and one that had adopted only the English/language arts standards (presumably Minnesota, which adopted only English/language arts).
The report also delves into some of the key challenges encountered by states in implementation. In all, 22 states said finding "adequate resources" to support all activities necessary to implement the standards was a "major challenge," and another 12 called it a "minor challenge." (Three said it was not a challenge.) Also, 13 states called identifying and developing curricular materials a "major challenge" and 13 a "minor challenge."
Only 14 of the 40 states surveyed said they had "adequate fiscal resources" to support state implementation of the standards, and only 13 said they had adequate staffing levels to do so. On the flip side, a majority, 27 states, said they did have adequate staff expertise to carry out implementation. Here's a table that spells out a whole set of data on this issue, including the adequacy of staff, expertise, and money to support new assessments (a huge issue, as this new story reminds us), technology to administer online assessments, professional development, and the creation of curriculum materials.
"State education agencies' general lack of capacity, combined with concerns about adequate funding, may create greater implementation challenges as the adopting states move closer to administering the CCSS-aligned assessments in school year 2014-15," the report says. "If the common core is going to succeed, governors, state legislators, and state boards of education need to examine whether more resources are needed to implement the standards."
Although the survey is focused on common-core implementation issues, another piece of budgetary data caught my eye. Of the 40 states survey, 16 reported that K-12 education funding increased in the current fiscal year compared with the prior year, while in nine it declined. (Eleven said it stayed the same, and four said they did not know.)
There's plenty more information to mine in this report, as well as two others just issued by the Center on Education Policy. Those include a survey report focused more squarely on professional development to support the standards, and another examining states' views of the federal role in supporting the common core.
Walls That Teach
One subscriber wanted suggestions on classroom decorations. Don't just decorate....educate! As an elementary teacher I always put up learning charts. Charts with initial sounds and examples, number charts, alphabet charts, charts that explain the vowel sounds, charts for sentence structure etc. You can find all types of colorful charts and wall posters that teach, as well as decorate. Turn your walls into walls that teach.
Thanks for asking,
The Teacher
Thanks for asking,
The Teacher
Sunday, August 18, 2013
Saturday, August 17, 2013
Friday, August 16, 2013
Setting the Record Straight on Ability Grouping
By Paula Olszewski-Kubilius
If committed educators could be easily trained to implement a low-cost intervention that boasted consistent learning gains for all students, headlines would herald the discovery of the educational holy grail.
That low-cost intervention is here and readily available. It’s called ability grouping. Unfortunately, despite overwhelming evidence that the flexible and appropriate use of this intervention benefits learners at all levels, some have opted to smear it as an evil twin of tracking and to lament its resurgence in the nation’s classrooms.
Flexible ability grouping, when used appropriately, works. According to a 2010 meta-analysis by Kelly Puzio and Glenn Colby, students who were grouped by ability within a class for reading were able to make up to an additional “half of a year’s growth in reading.” Similarly, a 2013 National Bureau of Economic Research study of students who were grouped by ability found that the performance of both high and low performing students significantly improved in math and reading, demonstrating the universal utility of this tool, particularly as our classrooms become more academically diverse.
For years, ability grouping has been unduly criticized and misconstrued. Contrary to what some may say, flexible ability grouping is not tracking, which typically sets a far more rigid and defined path for a student to traverse and where breaking out of one track and into another often requires the skills of Harry Houdini.
Flexible ability grouping could not be more different. When used properly, ability grouping does not affix permanent labels to students and does not prevent students from moving—either up or down—during their educational careers. Rather, flexible ability grouping is a tool used to match a student’s readiness for learning with the instruction provided, delivering the right content to the right student at the right pace and at the right time.
Ability grouping should not be static. Rather, flexible ability grouping, as its name implies, is an ongoing process where student assignments can and do change based on performance, requiring teachers to be on the lookout for signs of improved competency and skill development in their students.
It must be based on student performance data so decisions are objective and not subject to bias, and it must be customized by subject, never assuming that because a student is either advanced or in need of remediation in one subject he or she would require that same level of instruction in all subjects.
Constant Reassessment
To understand how flexible ability grouping works, imagine the following scenario: A 2nd grader’s past performance, including test scores, indicates he needs some additional support in reading. As a result, at the start of the school year, he starts off in a less-advanced reading group.
Over the course of several months, as a result of instruction aimed just above his skill level, his reading ability improves markedly. Based on daily work, his teacher notes this progress and moves him to a more advanced reading group. This same process of grouping based on data and reexamining based on performance happens constantly throughout the year for all students.
As noted above, ability grouping is not an effortless panacea for all of our education woes. Teachers must be willing and able to detect signs students are demonstrating changes—hopefully for the better—in their learning abilities and thus may be ready for movement to a different group. They must also be trained on how to differentiate their instruction to learners at different levels within the same classroom. To be effective, this requires that teachers are able to add advanced content and adjust pacing for students who are ready to move ahead. It’s important to emphasize that without modified instruction, the learning gains that are possible will fail to materialize.
When flexible ability grouping is used appropriately and effectively, students win. They receive the right content at the right time from teachers better able to direct their instruction to a smaller group of students. Additionally, because the students are concentrated with others who have similar levels of knowledge and learning rates and clear learning goals, they can better challenge one another to grow further.
The latest evidence makes clear that flexible ability grouping is effective, enabling students to make the types of gains all educators should desire and expect. The time has come to dispel the myths, to stop criticizing ability grouping using disingenuous rhetoric and to redouble efforts to support teachers and others as to how to appropriately use this tool so all students can maximize their abilities and achieve their full potential.
If committed educators could be easily trained to implement a low-cost intervention that boasted consistent learning gains for all students, headlines would herald the discovery of the educational holy grail.
That low-cost intervention is here and readily available. It’s called ability grouping. Unfortunately, despite overwhelming evidence that the flexible and appropriate use of this intervention benefits learners at all levels, some have opted to smear it as an evil twin of tracking and to lament its resurgence in the nation’s classrooms.
Flexible ability grouping, when used appropriately, works. According to a 2010 meta-analysis by Kelly Puzio and Glenn Colby, students who were grouped by ability within a class for reading were able to make up to an additional “half of a year’s growth in reading.” Similarly, a 2013 National Bureau of Economic Research study of students who were grouped by ability found that the performance of both high and low performing students significantly improved in math and reading, demonstrating the universal utility of this tool, particularly as our classrooms become more academically diverse.
For years, ability grouping has been unduly criticized and misconstrued. Contrary to what some may say, flexible ability grouping is not tracking, which typically sets a far more rigid and defined path for a student to traverse and where breaking out of one track and into another often requires the skills of Harry Houdini.
Flexible ability grouping could not be more different. When used properly, ability grouping does not affix permanent labels to students and does not prevent students from moving—either up or down—during their educational careers. Rather, flexible ability grouping is a tool used to match a student’s readiness for learning with the instruction provided, delivering the right content to the right student at the right pace and at the right time.
Ability grouping should not be static. Rather, flexible ability grouping, as its name implies, is an ongoing process where student assignments can and do change based on performance, requiring teachers to be on the lookout for signs of improved competency and skill development in their students.
It must be based on student performance data so decisions are objective and not subject to bias, and it must be customized by subject, never assuming that because a student is either advanced or in need of remediation in one subject he or she would require that same level of instruction in all subjects.
Constant Reassessment
To understand how flexible ability grouping works, imagine the following scenario: A 2nd grader’s past performance, including test scores, indicates he needs some additional support in reading. As a result, at the start of the school year, he starts off in a less-advanced reading group.
Over the course of several months, as a result of instruction aimed just above his skill level, his reading ability improves markedly. Based on daily work, his teacher notes this progress and moves him to a more advanced reading group. This same process of grouping based on data and reexamining based on performance happens constantly throughout the year for all students.
As noted above, ability grouping is not an effortless panacea for all of our education woes. Teachers must be willing and able to detect signs students are demonstrating changes—hopefully for the better—in their learning abilities and thus may be ready for movement to a different group. They must also be trained on how to differentiate their instruction to learners at different levels within the same classroom. To be effective, this requires that teachers are able to add advanced content and adjust pacing for students who are ready to move ahead. It’s important to emphasize that without modified instruction, the learning gains that are possible will fail to materialize.
When flexible ability grouping is used appropriately and effectively, students win. They receive the right content at the right time from teachers better able to direct their instruction to a smaller group of students. Additionally, because the students are concentrated with others who have similar levels of knowledge and learning rates and clear learning goals, they can better challenge one another to grow further.
The latest evidence makes clear that flexible ability grouping is effective, enabling students to make the types of gains all educators should desire and expect. The time has come to dispel the myths, to stop criticizing ability grouping using disingenuous rhetoric and to redouble efforts to support teachers and others as to how to appropriately use this tool so all students can maximize their abilities and achieve their full potential.
Thursday, August 15, 2013
Technology in the Classroom: Helpful or Harmful?
by Samantha Cleaver
Kids gravitate towards technology—if your child heads straight for the video games or Facebook after school, you know what we’re talking about. With a world of information at their fingertips nowadays, it seems like kids should be finding it easier than ever to succeed in school. However, as more classrooms invest in the latest technology, test scores remain the same, bringing its effectiveness into question.
Technology and Teaching
“Incorporating technology into the classroom requires a double innovation,” says Shelley Pasnik, director of the Center for Education and Technology, Educators who receive new technology must first learn how to use the equipment and then decide whether or not it supports the class objectives and curriculum.
For example, an instructor may restructure a lecture into a group activity, having students conduct online research to boost their understanding. With such a vast reference tool, the students might pose questions that no one in the class, not even the teacher himself, can answer. Many teachers and schools choose to avoid this situation by discouraging the use of computers in a well-organized lesson. Their latest shipment of Smartboards, ELMOs, or iPads stays locked in a closet as they struggle to find the time to effectively incorporate them into the curriculum plan.
Despite the challenges, incorporating technology into education still has proven benefits, especially when it comes to personalized learning. From math games that adjust the level of difficulty as players progress to electronic books that talk and respond to the tap of a finger, products that personalize the learning experience for students often benefit their understanding. An interactive game is more engaging than a book, so technology often promotes more practice and review in areas requiring memorization, such as spelling, math and geography. This frees up time in the classroom so educators can focus on skills like problem solving, character development and critical thinking.
Technology also makes it easier to spend more overall time on learning. “After school and weekend time can become effective learning time with the right technology,” says David Vinca, founder and executive director of eSpark Learning, an education company that focuses on bringing iPads and iPods into the classroom. Much like how smart phones extend the workday by allowing professionals to send emails anytime, educational technology extends the school day for kids who will happily play multiplication games or review grammar on computer programs.
Educators also find it easier to track and assess student progress with the help of technology. At the end of each lesson cycle in eSpark’s app, students record a video summarizing what they’ve learned, and email it to their teacher. If a student consistently misspells words of a certain pattern, the teacher will know immediately and reintroduce that specific skill. This kind of data-driven information is invaluable for teachers who want to revise and review.
Maximizing Your Child’s Tech Time
Consider these three tips when you consider your child’s daily interaction with technology
Look for Connections. When students use technology, it should be within the context of larger learning goals rather than in isolation. “Technology used in isolation is less effective than when it’s integrated into a curricular set of activities,” says Pasnik.
Don’t Assume. There are a lot of facts floating out there, and everyone has an opinion. Base your understanding of education technology on reliable sources. Pasnik suggests asking your child’s teacher about how technology is incorporated into the curriculum.
It’s All in the Application. The success of any tool depends on how it’s used. Ask how a gadget or program furthers higher thinking, basic skills, or the child’s ability to evaluate, analyze, and synthesize ideas. This way, you’ll ensure that it’s being used for more than its novelty.
Looking Ahead
Technology may be changing the experience of education, but the role of teachers and parents grow increasingly important as they become the experts and guides for new learning resources. Teachers remain the constant in an ever-changing classroom environment, which will continue to shift with the technological tides. Vinca agrees. “However technology is used in class, it has the opportunity to be a game changer.”
© Copyright 2006-2012 Education.com All Rights Reserved.
http://www.education.com/magazine/article/effective-technology-teaching-chil
Kids gravitate towards technology—if your child heads straight for the video games or Facebook after school, you know what we’re talking about. With a world of information at their fingertips nowadays, it seems like kids should be finding it easier than ever to succeed in school. However, as more classrooms invest in the latest technology, test scores remain the same, bringing its effectiveness into question.
Technology and Teaching
“Incorporating technology into the classroom requires a double innovation,” says Shelley Pasnik, director of the Center for Education and Technology, Educators who receive new technology must first learn how to use the equipment and then decide whether or not it supports the class objectives and curriculum.
For example, an instructor may restructure a lecture into a group activity, having students conduct online research to boost their understanding. With such a vast reference tool, the students might pose questions that no one in the class, not even the teacher himself, can answer. Many teachers and schools choose to avoid this situation by discouraging the use of computers in a well-organized lesson. Their latest shipment of Smartboards, ELMOs, or iPads stays locked in a closet as they struggle to find the time to effectively incorporate them into the curriculum plan.
Despite the challenges, incorporating technology into education still has proven benefits, especially when it comes to personalized learning. From math games that adjust the level of difficulty as players progress to electronic books that talk and respond to the tap of a finger, products that personalize the learning experience for students often benefit their understanding. An interactive game is more engaging than a book, so technology often promotes more practice and review in areas requiring memorization, such as spelling, math and geography. This frees up time in the classroom so educators can focus on skills like problem solving, character development and critical thinking.
Technology also makes it easier to spend more overall time on learning. “After school and weekend time can become effective learning time with the right technology,” says David Vinca, founder and executive director of eSpark Learning, an education company that focuses on bringing iPads and iPods into the classroom. Much like how smart phones extend the workday by allowing professionals to send emails anytime, educational technology extends the school day for kids who will happily play multiplication games or review grammar on computer programs.
Educators also find it easier to track and assess student progress with the help of technology. At the end of each lesson cycle in eSpark’s app, students record a video summarizing what they’ve learned, and email it to their teacher. If a student consistently misspells words of a certain pattern, the teacher will know immediately and reintroduce that specific skill. This kind of data-driven information is invaluable for teachers who want to revise and review.
Maximizing Your Child’s Tech Time
Consider these three tips when you consider your child’s daily interaction with technology
Look for Connections. When students use technology, it should be within the context of larger learning goals rather than in isolation. “Technology used in isolation is less effective than when it’s integrated into a curricular set of activities,” says Pasnik.
Don’t Assume. There are a lot of facts floating out there, and everyone has an opinion. Base your understanding of education technology on reliable sources. Pasnik suggests asking your child’s teacher about how technology is incorporated into the curriculum.
It’s All in the Application. The success of any tool depends on how it’s used. Ask how a gadget or program furthers higher thinking, basic skills, or the child’s ability to evaluate, analyze, and synthesize ideas. This way, you’ll ensure that it’s being used for more than its novelty.
Looking Ahead
Technology may be changing the experience of education, but the role of teachers and parents grow increasingly important as they become the experts and guides for new learning resources. Teachers remain the constant in an ever-changing classroom environment, which will continue to shift with the technological tides. Vinca agrees. “However technology is used in class, it has the opportunity to be a game changer.”
© Copyright 2006-2012 Education.com All Rights Reserved.
http://www.education.com/magazine/article/effective-technology-teaching-chil
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