[Ohiogift] Public Education NewsBlast — February 18, 2015

[Gifted and Talented in Ohio Discussion List]

                     NewsBlast?will be taking next week off while we move office. See you March 5

                      
           ?                February 18, 2015 - In This Issue:
       How 'portability' jeopardizes Title I
  The bigger picture for the ESEA
  Suburbia and its Common Core discontent
  That Common Core price tag
  The shadowy grip of Pearson
  Getting real about data security
  What drilling kills
  Math bias against girls
  BRIEFLY NOTED CALIFORNIA
  BRIEFLY NOTED
  GRANTS AND FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES
                                            How 'portability' jeopardizes Title I
A new brief from the Center for American Progress demonstrates that Senator Lamar Alexander's proposed reauthorization bill for the ESEA would dismantle its Title I provisions for poor children. Instead of following current Title I formulas, the proposal allows states to distribute the same amount per student to all districts, based only on total number of children in low-income families, an approach known as "portability." Using FY 2014 allocations for districts, the brief analyzes the impact portability would have had on students last year. It compares what districts would have received under portability with what they received under current policy. It finds portability drives resources from high-poverty districts into more affluent ones, and that nationally, districts with high concentrations of poverty could lose an average of $85 per student, while the most affluent could gain more than $290. If all states opt into portability, districts with a poverty rate of more than 30 percent lose money, while districts with a poverty rate of under 15 percent see dramatic increases. In all, the poorest districts would lose over $675 million, while the lowest-poverty districts would gain over $440 million. The nation's largest districts could lose tens of millions of dollars. Portability would redistribute vast amounts from students with high needs to provide marginal new funding to other, better-off students. More
 The bigger picture for the ESEA
A new brief from the National Education Policy Center argues that despite an anti-testing backlash from parents demanding changes to NCLB, and new evidence-based ways forward, lawmakers are repeating the mistakes of NCLB as they consider reauthorization of the ESEA. The brief points to a broad research consensus that standardized tests are ineffective and even counterproductive when used to drive educational reform. Thirteen years of intense focus on test-score improvement have yielded few, if any, benefits. Negative, unintended consequences continue to mount: narrowed and less-engaging curricula, constrained instruction, and de-professionalized teachers and teaching. The clear trend is an abandonment of arts, music, social studies, and science; and marginalization of values and skills that develop cooperation, problem-solving, reasoning, judgment, and democratic citizenship. Test scores can be increased many ways, some of which focus on learning, many that do not. An incremental increase in reading or math scores means almost nothing, particularly if student engagement decreases. Test-prep often comes at substantial cost to enrichment. "The ultimate question," the authors write, "isn't whether test scores are good measures of learning, whether growth modeling captures what we want it to, or even whether test scores are increasing. It is whether the overall impact of the reform approach can improve or is improving education." More
Suburbia and its Common Core discontent
The anti-Common Core world now has an unlikely subculture: suburban parents, writes Laura McKenna in The Atlantic Monthly. Their wrath is based largely on misperception and fear-mongering by Tea Party skeptics and anxious state policymakers. McKenna is herself a "white suburban mom" (a group Arne Duncan derided for obstructionism last year), and reports that friends post links daily on Facebook to articles claiming the Common Core "curriculum" is destroying American youth, has single-handedly taken recess away, and demoralizes kids and teachers. Its tests are an assault on an idyllic world where kids learn naturally -- like those lucky children in Finland. McKenna concedes these hold some truth, but protests have developed an irrational bent, with real implications for state and local policy. She finds "no evidence that one set of standards, that a single standardized test, will alter the basic school experience of children." Students will still do book reports on Abraham Lincoln and To Kill a Mockingbird, joke around on the playground, and be evaluated by exams and rubrics. But the blurring of Common Core fact and fiction demonstrates a major flaw in implementation: No one group or individual took the lead in informing parents what the standards look like in the classroom and how they'll affect their kids. Absent political and education leaders giving fact-based justifications for the new system and a jargon-free explanation of new teaching strategies, misperception has flourished. More
That Common Core price tag
This spring, millions of American kids will take a new kind of computer-based test aligned to the Common Core, reports Amy Scott for NPR Marketplace. They'll use online tools like highlighters and calculators, drag and drop answers into boxes, and respond to video. These tests are expensive. Each question must be written, reviewed for bias and age-appropriateness, then field-tested and possibly revised or discarded. Nine grade levels, all with different tests in math and English, require thousands of questions, a single multiple-choice question costing $1,000 to develop. Open-ended questions cost between three and five thousand dollars, according to Scott Marion of the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment, since it's harder to write questions that demonstrate different levels of ability. Development costs don't include the expense of scoring, which requires trained and monitored humans?if the questions are open-ended. Questions must be changed every year or so. Under pressure from states, the two testing consortia have endeavored to keep costs down through technology, such as having students type in math equations that can be scored by a machine, and use of multiple choice. PARCC is testing technology to score essays by computer. Still, states have withdrawn from testing consortia as a result of unexpectedly high prices. More
The shadowy grip of Pearson
Pearson's dominance in the American education market serves neither students nor taxpayers well, reports Stephanie Simon for Politico. This year, Pearson will make tens of millions in taxpayer dollars from curriculum deals arranged without competitive bids in states from Florida to Texas. These contracts set specific performance targets, but have no consequence when the company fails to meet them. Higher ed contracts give Pearson extensive access to student data with few constraints on its use. Politico examined hundreds of pages of contracts, business plans, and email exchanges, as well as tax filings, lobbying reports, and marketing materials. It found public officials buy from Pearson because it's familiar, with little proof its products and services are effective. Pearson has aggressive lobbyists, excellent marketing, and a highly skilled sales team. Until a crackdown in 2013, Pearson's charitable foundation treated officials across the nation to conferences abroad where the only education company represented was Pearson. Public subsidies -- including $98.5 million in tax credits -- have flowed to Pearson even when its products and services can't demonstrate academic gains. The company's global adjusted operating profit for 2013 topped $1 billion -- 55 percent of which came from the North American education division. Pearson's annual revenue from U.S. assessments alone is estimated at $258 million. More
     Getting real about data security
Tony Porterfield, principal engineer at a start-up in Los Altos, California and public school parent, has examined nearly 20 digital education products used collectively by millions of teachers and students, and found numerous security problems, writes Natasha Singer for The New York Times. When he alerted those makers of district-wide social networks, classroom-assessment programs, and learning apps, some companies, like Pearson, addressed issues brought to their attention. Others did not. While none of the weaknesses have been exploited by hackers, technologists say widespread lapses in student data protection are rife across the education technology sector. They warn that insecure learning sites, apps, and messaging services could expose students to hacking, identity theft, cyberbullying, or exploitation. To help schools evaluate security practices, the Consortium for School Networking has published a list of security questions schools can ask before signing with vendors. In an effort to bolster confidence, over 100 companies have signed a voluntary pledge, agreeing "to maintain a comprehensive security program that is reasonably designed to protect the security, privacy, confidentiality, and integrity of student personal information against risks -- such as unauthorized access or use." The federal government does not require companies to comply with specific security measures, nor does it prohibit weak security practices like storing user passwords in plain text. More
What drilling kills
Stanford University's Jo Boaler says teachers and parents should stop using math flash cards, drilling kids in addition and multiplication, and forcing students to perform multiplication under time pressure, writes Jill Barshay for The Hechinger Report. Boaler, an education professor and researcher, has spent her career investigating how kids learn. "Drilling without understanding is harmful," she feels. "I'm not saying math facts aren't important. I'm saying math facts are best learned when we understand them and use them in different situations." Boaler argues that flash cards, math sprints, and repetitive work sheets are unhelpful and "damaging." Some Common Core curricula misinterpret numerical "fluency" to mean rote memorization and speed. Boaler feels the key to success in math is "number sense," developed through "rich" mathematical problems. Emphasis on rote memorization inhibits the ability to think about numbers creatively, build them up and break them down. Memorization of boring math facts like times tables turns students off. The most compelling research evidence that Boaler presents is how time pressure provokes math anxiety in students. More than a third, according to one study, experience extreme stress around timed tests. A 2013 University of Chicago study found that the working memory of the brain becomes blocked in stressed students, who can't access math facts they know. Over time, their confidence erodes. More
Math bias against girls
A new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research points to the influence of unconscious bias around math and science in teachers towards girls, writes Claire Cain Miller for The New York Times. Early educational experiences have a quantifiable effect on math and science courses that students later choose, as well as jobs they get and wages they earn. The effect of bias is larger in families where the father is more educated than the mother, and for lower-income girls. The pipeline for women to enter math and science occupations narrows at many points between kindergarten and career choice, Miller writes, but elementary school is a critical juncture. Reversing bias among teachers could increase the number of women who enter computer science and engineering -- fast-growing, high-paying fields. Prior studies have found that college professors and employers discriminate against female scientists, and that even earlier, discouragement from teachers in math or science lowered student confidence in other subjects at school. In computer science in the United States, just 18.5 percent of high school students taking the AP exam are girls. In college, women earn 12 percent of computer science degrees. Last year, Google, Apple, and Facebook, among others, revealed that fewer than a fifth of their technical employees are women. More
          BRIEFLY NOTED CALIFORNIA
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Cruz v. California expands
After winning a court order to improve academic conditions at one Los Angeles high school last fall,?lawyers in a class action suit have asked for an additional order to compel the state to improve instruction at five other California high schools in the 2015-16 school year. More
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Charterland
California continues to far outpace the rest of the nation in charter enrollment and growth, a new study shows. More
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Hard core
California officials have announced adoption of new regulations allowing physical education to be taught by military drill instructors. More
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Food fight
David Binkle, LAUSD's food services director, is accused of failing to report payments from vendors to attend school conferences, as well as ownership in a private food-related consulting firm. More

          BRIEFLY NOTED?
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That's something, anyway
More American students are graduating from high school in four years than ever before, according to new data from the Department of Education. More?
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Presenting the 'Student Success Act'
The House Education and the Workforce Committee has passed a bill to reauthorize No Child Left Behind, rechristening it the Student Success Act, despite strong objections from Democratic committee members, the Obama administration, and dozens of education advocacy groups.?More
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Broad bows out
Eli Broad, the Los Angeles-based billionaire philanthropist, has suspended a prize his foundation has given annually to an urban district for more than a decade, saying he cannot find districts doing enough good work to merit the award.?More
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Reprieve
The Georgia General Assembly will now grant diplomas to 8,000 people never able to graduate high school because they failed part of the Georgia High School Graduation Test; a bill frees former Georgia high school students from having to pass the GHSGT to earn diplomas.?More?
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Less-smarter and balanced
A technical glitch means Wisconsin districts will get a less advanced version of the Smarter Balanced test instead of a more complex system that isn't working properly.?More
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No dice
The federal Department of Education has turned down Texas' most recent NCLB waiver request for numerous reasons, the most contentious being that the state ensure all districts follow a teacher- and principal-evaluation system.?More
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Testing terrorist
Authorities say a mother got so angry when told her daughter had failed a New York state exam that she threatened to bomb the school.?More
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Outside its bailiwick
The Colorado Board of Education does not have legal authority to grant waivers from parts of the state's language arts and math assessments,?Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman has ruled.?More
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Load-lightening
The U.S. Department of Education has approved a request by Oklahoma education officials to waive the requirement for grade-level math assessments for middle school students who take end-of-instruction exams in algebra I, algebra II, or geometry.?More

          
GRANTS AND FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES



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ESU: Fellowships for American High School Teachers
English-Speaking Union of the United States British Universities Summer School fellows have the opportunity to perform on the stage of the Globe Theatre during Teaching Shakespeare in Performance at Shakespeare's Globe, London, England. The University of Oxford offers a variety of English literature courses, as well as courses in creative writing and history, politics, and society. Scottish Universities International Summer School (SUISS) program, based in Edinburgh, offers Literature in Twentieth-Century Britain and creative writing. Maximum award: full or partial scholarship to study in Britain, which includes tuition, most meals, and dorm room with shared bath. Eligibility: high school teachers with five to 15 years of experience who will teach the following year. Deadline: March 1, 2015. More
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NABT: Evolution Education Award

The National Association of Biology Teachers Evolution Education Award, sponsored by the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS) and National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent), recognizes innovative classroom teaching and community education efforts to promote the accurate understanding of biological evolution. Maximum award: $1,000 cash prize;?recognition; and a one-year complimentary NABT membership. Deadline: March 15, 2015. More
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NABT: Ron Mardigian?Biotechnology Teaching Award
The?National Association of Biology Teachers Ron Mardigian?Biotechnology Teaching Award (sponsored by Bio-Rad Laboratories) recognizes an educator who has demonstrates outstanding and creative teaching of biotechnology in the classroom. The award may be given for either a short-term series of activities or a long integration of biotechnology into the curriculum. The lessons must include active laboratory work and encompass major principles as well as processes of biotechnology. Topics may include any aspect of basic DNA or protein biotechnology or immunology or applied biotechnology in areas such as medical, forensic, plant and environmental biotechnology. Criteria for selection include creativity, scientific accuracy and currency, quality of laboratory practice and safety, ease of replication, benefit to students, and potential significance beyond the classroom. Maximum award: recognition; a one-year complimentary NABT membership; and $1,500 (up to $500 toward travel to the NABT Professional Development Conference, $500 in Bio-Rad materials, and $500 toward general science supplies). Eligibility: secondary school teachers or undergraduate college biology instructors. Deadline: March 15, 2015 More
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World of Children: Education Award
The World of Children Education Award recognizes individuals making extraordinary contributions to the lives of vulnerable children in their educational development. Minimum award: $50,000. Eligibility: Nominees must do this work over and above their normal employment, or work for little or no pay, have been doing this work for a minimum of 10 years, and have an existing non-profit organization in good standing, which can receive grant funds if awarded. Deadline for nomination: April 1, 2015. More
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Quote of the Week:?
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"It used to be state boards and superintendents that [set education policy]. But now there is this politicization of education where state legislatures and governors are getting much more involved in education than historically, so that's led to these kind of tug of wars." -- Patrick McGuinn of Drew University, regarding the political firing of two "liberal" civil servants who favor the Common Core from the Arizona Board of Education. More



 

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