Vol. 2, Issue 12 December 2005    Bringing urban P-16 education resources to policymakers, parents, advocates, and district and school staff in the District of Columbia    Education News Research on DC Schools National Lessons Learned New Ideas   The State Education Office does not endorse the views expressed in the resources and reports contained in the SEO Ed Digest.	Related Links DCDOCS Subscribe to the digest. Education Center Find local information and resources. React! Share your thoughts about the digest. Research 101 Learn how to judge the quality of research. SEO_Ed_Digest@dc.gov Contact us.

 

This issue of the SEO Ed Digest covers recent research on a variety of education policy topics, including education reform, the effects of union teacher staffing rules on schools and students, diversity in schools, and the effects a high GPA has on a minority student’s popularity.  You can also read about the Department of Education’s Road Map to State Implementation and their study on graduation rates in the country.  This digest also discusses a book on vouchers and their effects on achievement.

 

 

 

 

 

 

McREL has created a new online tool called Keys to Learning, that provides educators with tools, guidance, and resources to create classrooms that are standard-based.  The online tool has six key questions that capture the challenges of making standards-based schools a reality.  The six key questions are: 1) How can we ensure our district’s standards define what students should know and be able to do? 2) How can we know what to teach at each grade level? 3) How can we decide what is essential to teach when we have too many standards? 4) How can we align our district's curriculum with our standards? 5) How can we make the curriculum engaging for all students? and 6) How can we support the most effective implementation of the curriculum?  The answers, based on McREL’s research, guide the user through a process that will ensure that teachers are teaching what students need to learn.  This includes: a typical dilemma schools and districts face when implementing standards; case studies describing how others resolved similar dilemmas; strategies for improvement that provide definitive advice on specific issues; and resources that contain more detailed information about each strategy. 

 

 

This report examines whether minority adolescents who get good grades in school enjoy less social popularity than white students who do well academically.  The author finds that within a subset of schools, “acting white,” the situation where minority adolescents ridicule their minority peers for performing well in school, is a reality.  He finds that at low GPAs, there is little difference between ethnic groups in the relationship between grades and popularity.  However, when a student achieves a GPA of 2.5 or higher, clear differences emerge.  As grades start to rise, Hispanic students lose popularity at an alarming rate.  While popularity and achievement for African American students is less apparent than Hispanic students, when compared to White students, the difference is evident.  In fact, an African American student with a GPA of 4.0 has, on average, 1.5 fewer friends of the same ethnicity than a white student with the same GPA.  This is even worse for a Hispanic student with a 4.0.  When testing for popularity and achievement in private schools, the author finds that there is no trade-off between the two.  Further, acting white is unique to those schools where African American students comprise less than 80 percent of the student population.  This means that in predominantly African American schools, there is no evidence that getting good grades adversely affects one’s popularity.  However, the effect of acting white on popularity in integrated schools is twice as large.  

 

This report, by the US Department of Education, describes how the Department, together with parents, educators, and policymakers, is making No Child Left Behind work for states, schools and students.  The road map breaks down the law into clear, commonsense principles, such as annual state assessment, dissagregation of data, and proficiency by 2014.  It also demonstrates the variety of fair and reliable methods being used to turn these principles into action.

 

Unintended Consequences: The Case for Reforming the Staffing Rules in Urban Teachers Union Contracts
http://www.tntp.org/newreport/TNTP%20Unintended%20Consequences.pdf

 

This report focuses on the contractual staffing rules governing “voluntary transfer” and “excessed teachers.”  Voluntary transfer teachers are incumbent teachers who want to move between schools in a district whereas excessed teachers are those cut from a specific school, often due to a decline in budget or student enrollment.  In order to understand the impact of voluntary and excess transfers, the New Teacher Project studied five representative urban districts – Eastern, Mid-Atlantic, Midwestern, Southern, and Western – and analyzed internal teacher movements and new teacher hires.  They found that transfer and excess rules undermine effective staffing in urban schools in four ways.  First, urban schools are forced to hire large numbers of teachers they do not want and who may not be a good fit for the job or the school.  Second, poor performers are passed from school to school instead of being terminated.  Third, new teacher applicants, including the best, are lost to late hiring.  Finally, novice teachers are treated as expendable regardless of their contribution to their school.  These four effects significantly impede the efforts of urban schools to staff their classrooms effectively and sustain meaningful schoolwide improvements.  Schools are forced to hire teachers who may be poor performers or ill suited for the specific school context and culture.  They are prevented from hiring many of the best new teacher applicants and cannot protect teachers they hope to keep.  Among their recommendations, the authors state that voluntary transfers and excessed teachers receive an early preferential review for available positions and numerous opportunities to receive satisfactory placements.  However, at the same time, the reforms ensure that the placements of voluntary transfers and excessed teachers are based on the mutual consent of the teacher and receiving school, permit the timely hiring of new teachers, and better protect novice teachers who are contributing to their current school.

 

 

This report sheds new light onto the San Diego school district’s program of reform, known as the Blueprint for Student Success.  The blueprint, which was adapted in 2000, was both visionary and controversial; visionary because it concentrated on improving reading skills while encompassing all the district’s students and teachers; controversial because its implementation drew both severe criticism from professional staff, parents, community organizations, and support from parent groups and the business community.  The authors conclude that the effort to improve reading skills was successful and the evidence for the program’s overall success is definitive that San Diego’s efforts are well worth a look by other school districts.  A significant percentage of elementary and middle school students who took part in the reform, which included double and triple length English classes, extended school days, and summer school reading programs, showed marked improvement on standardized reading tests. However, high school students did not receive the same test improvements.  The authors conclude that the individual programs are less important than the Blueprint’s broader principles: use reading assessment to identify students who lag behind, strongly encourage families of these students to enroll them in extra literacy classes during the year or the summer, and do everything possible to ensure that teachers are fully trained in techniques to improve literacy.

 

 

This report, conducted by National Center for Education Statistics, presents the averaged freshman graduation rate for public school students for two school years 2001-02 and 2002-03.  The averaged freshman graduation rate presents an estimate of the percentage of students who graduate on time – in four years.  Graduates include students who receive a high school diploma; however, students who are awarded alternative credentials, such as a certificate of completion or a GED are not included because they are not regular graduates.  The study found that in the 2001-02 school year, 72.6% of public school students in the United States graduated on time.  The 2002-03 national rate was 73.9%.  For the 2001-02 class, the averaged freshman graduation rate ranged from a low of 57.9% in South Carolina to a high of 85.8% in New Jersey.  For the 2002-03 class, the averaged freshman graduation rate for public schools ranged from a low of 59.6 percent in the District of Columbia to 87% in New Jersey.  Fourteen states had rates higher than 80%- Connecticut, Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin.  Ten states – Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Louisianna, Mississippi, New Mexico, New York, South Carolina, and Tennessee – and the District of Columbia had rates below 70%.  From 2001-02 and 2002-03, thirty-nine states experienced increases in graduation rates, one state experienced no change, and eleven states experienced declines in the rate. 

 

 

This report seeks to begin a new conversation about quality and diversity in our nation’s public schools.  Today, public schools are segregated by race, ethnicity, and income standards.  This is in sharp contrast to the integration of the American workplace, the armed forces, and the many civic and religious communities that make up American society.  The report states that we need to recognize that diversity in our schools is about preserving the strength of our democracy, sustaining America’s prosperity in a global economy, and protecting our vital security and other national interests.  The paper suggests that America today is not the same America of 1954, and many of the actions used to integrate our schools then should not be the same ones we use now.  Today, any new national conversation regarding quality, adequacy, and equity in our K-12 education system must create the link between achievement, citizenship, and diversity with our long-term national interests.  In order to bring about this goal, the authors’ recommendations include the following: diversity must be considered a key element in the definition of a “high quality” education in legislation and fiscal equity judicial cases; we must ensure that students have access to high-quality education and, at the same time, have opportunities for diverse learning experiences wherever possible; and in order to create new opportunities for diverse learning experiences, a new social compact and working relationship must be established between our schools and our communities.  

 

 

In their latest research synthesis, McRel researchers try to determine whether standards influence K-12 teaching and learning.  Their research found that standards-based policies do influence teaching and student learning.  However, the nature of these influences depend on how standards-based polices are perceived and implemented by teachers.  The researchers recommend that if standards-based policies are to achieve their promise of helping all students meet high standards, more resources and attention need to be focused on instructional support systems in schools, including curriculum, instruction, professional development, and interventions for struggling students.  In order to improve standards-based education, it is necessary to help teachers to better implement standards policies in their classrooms.  Further, the quality of the standards and the assessments used is vitally important.  Therefore, states should evaluate their standards and assessments to not only ensure that they are reliable and valid, but also understand the influence the tests have to induce teachers to make favorable curricular and pedagogical decisions.  

 

 

This report offers insights and lessons learned from the efforts being made by three urban districts to improve the instructional quality and performance of their schools. These districts partnered with an intermediary organization, the University of Pittsburgh’s Institute for Learning (IFL), as part of their reform strategy.  The study sought to answer four broad questions: 1) What strategies did districts use to promote instructional improvement? How did these strategies work? 2) What constrained or enabled district instructional improvement efforts? 3) What was the impact of the IFL? What constrained or enabled the district-IFL partnerships? and 4) What are the implications for district instructional improvement and district-intermediary partnerships?  The study found that in the three districts, instructional reform efforts centered on four common areas of focus: building the instructional leadership skills of principals; supporting the professional learning of teachers, with a particular focus on school-based coaching; providing greater specification and support for standards-aligned curriculum; and promoting the use of data to guide instructional decisions. The experiences of these three urban districts and their partnerships with the IFL proved positive – overall, district and school leaders reported that IFL affected the organizational culture, norms, and beliefs about instruction.  Further, The IFL helped to develop the knowledge and skills of central office and school administrators.  However, the school districts also faced challenges, which the authors discuss.  The overall findings of the study show that urban districts can facilitate wide-scale changes — in particular, greater uniformity of curriculum and use of data to inform instructional decisions — and that an intermediary organization can help districts address persistent constraints to reform by building the capacity of district staff to engage in instructional change and by facilitating policy alignment.  

 

 

This report evaluates the Edison Schools, the nation’s largest for-profit manager of public schools.  Edison distinguishes itself from most other school improvement strategies by simultaneously addressing resources and accountability systems, rather than focusing on one or the other. Together, the resources and accountability systems that constitute Edison’s design represent a coherent, comprehensive, and ambitious strategy to address key elements relevant to providing high-quality education, including capacity, motivation, and opportunities for school staff.  The comprehensive ambitions implicit in Edison’s model suggest that successful implementation requires wholehearted commitment — and hard work — from Edison, its clients, and the staff of its schools. The authors found that the best-functioning Edison schools demonstrate the promise inherent in Edison’s model. These schools have strong instructional leadership, motivated teachers, effective use of achievement data, high-fidelity implementation of the Edison curricula, and high levels of professional collaboration. However, there is also considerable variation in the extent to which the schools realized the Edison ideal.  Across Edison schools, the reading and math curricula appeared to be implemented more faithfully than were other subjects that are not regulated by state testing systems. In some schools, notable elements of the Edison program, such as common planning time and a longer school day, were sacrificed as a result of resource limitations or contractual constraints. The authors found that the effects of Edison Management on student achievement take time.  Average gains of Edison schools during the first three years did not exceed the gains of matched comparison schools.  However, many Edison schools outperform comparison schools after four or five years.  The variation in the achievement of Edison schools is extensive, with some schools exceeding the performance of comparison schools and others falling behind.  Due to data limitations, the authors lack the information to determine Edison’s net long-term effects.  However, the authors do offer two sets of recommendations: one for Edison and another for district staff and other policymakers considering hiring Edison.

 

 

This report focuses on strategies for instructional improvement in US high schools.  Specifically, this study examines how high schools that perform below average incorporate their state’s accountability goals into their own goals and identify their challenges in order to improve their performance.  The authors focus on how high schools of differing performance levels and contexts, residing in states with different forms of high-stakes accountability and support systems, identify, understand and respond to the gap between their current levels of performance and external expectations for their performance.