SEO Ed Digest
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Vol. 4, Issue 1
January 2007
Bringing urban P-16 education resources to policymakers, parents, advocates, and district and school staff in the District of Columbia
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.
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This issue of the SEO Ed Digest covers information on K-12 learning standards. The District of Columbia recently adopted new standards and has also been using a new test to measure student learning. The debate over the creation of national standards is a long-standing one. However, lately there has been discussion and debate over creating national standards. This month’s digest covers the debate of national standards through articles, transcripts of debates and discussions, and reports. It also has information on the new DC standards.
Articles
Transcripts and Debates
Interactive Resources
Reports
Articles
Education Week: Commentary. The Federalism Debate. Why the Idea of National Education Standards Is Crossing Party Lines (March 15, 2006)
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2006/03/15/27gordon.h25.html
Education Week: State Education Leaders Debate National Standards. Chiefs' conference renews discussion among policymakers (December 6, 2006)
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2006/12/06/14ccsso.h26.html
Transcripts and Debates
Debate on National Standards: Michael J. Petrilli vs. Neal McCluskey on National Standards (April 24-28, 2006)
http://www.edspresso.com/2006/04/day_3_michael_j_petrilli_vs_ne_1.htm#more
National Education Standards Debate hosted by the Education Sector (March 10, 2006)
http://www.educationsector.org/analysis/analysis_show.htm?doc_id=365168
Reconsidering National Standards, Curricula, and Tests: A Talk With Diane Ravitch (Jan.18, 2006)
http://www.edweek.org/chat/transcript_01_18_2006.html
Interactive Resources
District of Columbia Learning Standards
http://www.k12.dc.us/DCPS/standards2005/standardsHome.htm
The District of Columbia has adopted new, more challenging learning standards that spell out what students should know and be able to do in each subject, at each grade level and in every school. The new learning standards in reading/English language arts and mathematics are among the best in the nation, and are the cornerstone of the school system’s commitment to provide an excellent education to each student. Revised science and social studies are currently being developed. Educators, students, parents, family members and community members can access the new standards -- along with parent/family guides – through this website.
Reports
The Case for National Standards, Accountability, and Fiscal Equity (November, 2005)
http://www.americanprogress.org/kf/standards-based_framework.pdf
In 2001, the standards movement advanced with passage of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. NCLB built upon and made significant changes to the 1994 Elementary and Secondary Education Act laws, placing greater emphasis on accountability for student learning and specifying the authorization of federal dollars through fiscal year 2007. Today, all states have developed both curriculum and student performance standards and hold their districts and schools accountable for meeting yearly student achievement goals that grow tougher each year. In this report, the authors argue that these standards, which can be considered a step forward in many respects, are also an impediment—a false sense of student performance. With more than 50 different sets of standards, there is no national measure/yardstick/standard/benchmark for academic achievement at each of the grade levels. NCLB requires that states hold districts and schools accountable for getting all their students to “proficient” achievement levels, but allows them to adopt their own definitions of “proficiency.” With the pressure to increase student performance, there has been counter pressure for states to game the system by lowering both standards and proficiency definitions. Such action can lead, perversely, to weakening curriculum and lowering, not raising expectations. Only national curriculum standards and national definitions and measures of student performance at proficiency levels can prevent this behavior.
Keeping an Eye on State Standards (Summer 2006)
http://www.hoover.org/publications/ednext/3211601.html
While No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requires all students to be “proficient” in math and reading by 2014, the federal law also allows each state to determine its own level of proficiency. It’s an odd discordance at best. It has led to the bizarre situation in which some states achieve handsome proficiency results by grading their students against low standards, while other states suffer poor proficiency ratings only because they have high standards. In this study, the authors use the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the nation’s “report card.” For each state where both NAEP and state accountability measures were available, the authors computed a score based on the difference between the percentage of students said to be proficient by the state and the percentage identified as proficient on the NAEP in years 2003 and 2005. This measure allows the authors to ascertain whether states lowered the bar for student proficiency as the full panoply of NCLB provisions took effect. The authors first examined this data last year and found that only 40 states had the requisite data. This time around, 48 states were graded, including nine “new” states providing the necessary information for the first time. Among the nine, only the District of Columbia and New Mexico scored a grade higher than C. Meanwhile, Arizona, Maryland, Ohio, North Dakota, and Idaho, which previously had their accountability systems in place, are letting their standards slide. States with already low standards have done nothing to raise them, including Oklahoma, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, and North Carolina. Montana is the most improved state. Others that have significantly boosted their proficiency standards relative to the NAEP include Texas, Arkansas, and Wisconsin. A handful of states continued to impress for a second consecutive year, grading their own performance on a particularly tough curve. Massachusetts, South Carolina, Wyoming, Maine, and Missouri all once again earned As, along with newcomer Washington, D.C. The authors conclude that student proficiency has entirely different meanings in different parts of the country and that states need to not only have high standards but also to make sure that a high percentage of students reach that standard.
Key State Education Policies on PK-12 Education, 2004 (2005)
http://www.ccsso.org/content/pdfs/FINAL%20KSP%202004.pdf
This report informs policymakers and educators about the current status of key education policies across the 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico that define and shape elementary and secondary education in public schools. The report is part of a continuing biennial series by the Council of the Chief State School Officers’ (CCSSO) education indicators program of the Division of State Services and Technical Assistance. CCSSO reports 50-state information on policies regarding teacher preparation and certification, high school graduation requirements, student assessment programs, school time, and student attendance. The report also includes state-by-state information on content standards and curriculum, teacher assessment, and school leader/administrator licensure.
National Standards in American Education: A Citizen's Guide (1995)
http://www.brook.edu/press/books/natlstds2.htm
This book provides an examination of the educational, historical, political, and social issues related to the development of national standards. The book examines: the historical perspective of standards, a review of the evidence, reform efforts, the politics of standards, and concludes with recommendations. A simple message lies at the heart of the book. If clear and consistent goals of learning could be set for all American children, rich and poor, gifted and ordinary, then all of these children would end up better educated than they are likely to be.
Parent Power: Why National Standards Won't Improve Education (April 2001)
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa396.pdf
For the past 150 years, states have been held accountable by the government. The authors of this report argue that this sort of artificial accountability has brought education to its present unsatisfactory condition. Teachers and administrators are theoretically accountable to school boards, which are theoretically accountable to state governments. Giving a larger role to yet a higher, more distant level of government hardly sounds promising. What America needs instead is the "debureaucratization" of education, which would make it possible for parents and education entrepreneurs to work together in a competitive marketplace to provide the best education for children. Standards in K-12 education, like standards in higher education, should be set in a marketplace responsive to parents' demands and students' needs. Parent Power, that is, freeing parents to be fully responsible for their children's education, is the only way to make schools truly accountable.
Quality Counts at 10: A Decade of Standards-Based Education (January 2006)
http://www.edweek.org/ew/toc/2006/01/05/index.html
For the 10th edition of Quality Counts, the Educational Testing Service conducted a series of special analyses of NAEP scores between 1992 and 2005. The analyses highlight how each state’s improvement over the past decade compares with the performance of the nation as a whole. The report also takes a much closer look than previous studies at which states have made significant progress in closing the achievement gaps between black and white, Hispanic and white, and poor and non-poor students. The report found that seven states had gains in mathematics that significantly outpaced those for the nation as a whole in both grades 4 and 8: Arkansas, Delaware, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas. States that saw significantly less growth than the nation as a whole at both grade levels include Iowa, Maine, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Utah. The District of Columbia scored below average for three of the four graded policy categories in Quality Counts and did not receive a grade for the fourth category, resource equity. Policy categories include: assessments and school accountability measures, school climate indicators, teacher quality, and resource equity. In standards and accountability, the District performed slightly below average, and lags behind in assessment largely because it does not have tests aligned to its academic standards in science or social studies.
The State of State Standards 2006 (August 2006)
http://www.edexcellence.net/institute/publication/publication.cfm?id=358&pubsubid=1316
Solid standards matter because they are the foundation of standards-based reform, the dominant education policy strategy in America today. They have become even more important in the NCLB era, when weighty consequences befall schools that do not rise to meet the standards (at least in reading and math). For this reason, over the past three years, expert reviewers for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute examined state standards in five subjects: U.S. history (2003), English/language arts (2005), mathematics (2005), science (2005), and world history (2006). The reviewers gave high marks to standards that are clear, rigorous, and right-headed about content. They found that while 37 states have updated or revised their state standards in at least one subject since 2000, on the whole they are just as mediocre as ever. The average grade for state standards across all subjects was a disappointing “C-minus” in 2000 and remains so today. Two-thirds of the nation’s K-12 students attend schools in states with C-, D-, or F-rated standards. While the states as a whole have not improved their academic standards, several jurisdictions have shown marked progress, especially Indiana, New York, Georgia, and New Mexico. Unfortunately, others made their standards worse, including Utah, Nebraska, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin. Three states stand out with perfect scores: California, Indiana, and Massachusetts.
To Dream the Impossible Dream: Four Approaches to National Standards and Tests for America’s Schools (August 2006)
http://www.edexcellence.net/doc/National%20Standards%20Final%20PDF.pdf
Currently, people are seriously weighing the value of instituting national standards and test in American K-12 education. Yet despite many pervasive and commonsense reasons to support such a reform, two large obstacles loom. The first is political: a winning coalition must be assembled, probably by a presidential contender. The second obstacle is substantive: until policymakers can envision what a system of national standards and tests might look like, how it would work, and how its various logistical challenges might be addressed, this idea will remain just that. This report addresses the second obstacle. To gather input on how a system of national standards and tests might be designed, the authors queried a bipartisan selection of prominent experts. This resulted in four distinct approaches to national standards and tests: 1. the whole enchilada, where the federal government would create and enforce national standards and assessments, replacing the fifty state-level sets of standards and tests that now exist; 2. if you build it, they will come, where the federal government would develop national standards, tests and accountability metrics and provide incentives to states to opt into such a system; 3. let’s all hold hands, where states would be encouraged to join together to develop common standards and tests, or at the least common test items, and the federal government might provide incentives for such collaboration; and 4. sunshine and shame, where state standards and tests would be made more transparent by making them easier to compare to one another and to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP.) This paper outlines how each model might work in practice and how likely each would: end the race to the bottom, result in rigorous standards rather than merely politically acceptable ones, expand Washington’s role in education, and prove politically feasible.
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