I have been taking the pulse of education policy on a daily basis for over a decade thanks in large measure to the internet and the information revolution. Frankly it is depressing at times and the last two weeks have been a good example.

Consider some of the events that have unfolded: Two important court cases made the news in Connecticut: A federal judge threw out the last remaining charge in Connecticut’s suit against the federal government related to NCLB. The Connecticut State Supreme Court heard oral arguments in an appeal of a case related to access to quality education (CCJEF v. Rell). In a bizarre presentation on behalf of the defendants, the state asserted that as a constitutional matter all that is guaranteed to Connecticut students is a school to go to - quality is not within the purview of the courts. It is best left to the legislative and executive branches of government. The Legislative and Executive branches concurred on a budget this week which will very likely cause disruption of education budgets and particularly in districts with the most vulnerable populations such as Bridgeport.

The connecticut Post reported this morning that one consequence of the budget could very likely be the elimination of full-day kindergarten in Bridgeport. This will impact potentially 370 children. Bridgeport also is confronted with an extraordinary 5,500 potential foreclosures adding additional stress to the lives of untold numbers of children and their parents. The problems of school finance dramatically impact taxpayers and children. Add into the mix the increased cost of implementing the federal law which is drastically underfunded, the failure to fully fund IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities and Education Act) at the promised 40% rate and the continuing failure of the state to meet its commitment to fund 40% of local education and you have  a recurring fiscal nightmare.

These are not new scenarios the same things happened in the dramatic downturn of the late 80’s, nor is it particularly new that promises made are not kept at all levels of government. What is new, however, is that the ante for public schooling has been upped dramatically and the relentless accountability time clock  continues unabated by recession and broken promises. In the meantime more programs will be cut, more teachers will be let go and commitments to the needs of poor children before formal schooling begins will be slowed down at best.

With eight months remaining until a new administration, Secretary Spellings released a draft of far-reaching NCLB regulations for public comment this week which, as quoted in Education Week, she characterized as “bulldozers to tear down the barriers to reform.” The new regulations deal with significant areas of the law such as how districts report high school graduation rates, School Choice and Tutoring, the so-called ‘N’ Size (the minimum number of students in a subgroup required before a school is held accountable, and changes or “clarifications” to the State Testing requirements.

There will be a sixty (60) day period for public comment including regional one day hearings. The hearing for our region here in New England will be in Boston.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Hilton Boston Back Bay Hotel
40 Dalton Street
Boston, Mass. 02115
Time: 9 a.m. - noon and 2 - 5 p.m. EDT
Meeting Room: Fenway Room

If the Final Regulations were adopted in an additional sixty (60) days they would take effect in late August. Just in time to tip the 2008-2009 school year on its head increasing the burden of reporting and paperwork and further diverting the attention of school personnel from the improvement of instruction and increasing student achievement. The Proposed Regulations are available for download at the departments website.

One clarification in the regulations deserving of “A Keen Observer of the Obvious Award” is the following:

“Assessments, therefore, should include items that measure both higher order skills( e.g. reasoning, synthesis, analysis) as well as knowledge and recall items to assess the depth and breadth of mastery of a particular content domain.”

Teacher Magazine posted highlights of reaction to Seattle teacher Carl Chew’s act of protest against standardized testing by members of the Teacher Leaders Network. You can read the comments here. TLN is a professional community of accomplished educators.

Carl Chew is a sixth grade science teacher in a Seattle middle school. The WASL (Washington Assessment of Student Learning) is the state test. Each year Mr. Chew has had growing reservations regarding the value of the test and its impact on his students and the educational process. This year he decided to commit an act of civil disobedience and on April 15th he met with school administrators and indicated that he would not administer the test. As a consequence of his act of insubordination, he has been suspended without pay for nine days. 

On April 22, Mr. Chew issued a statement on the internet to explain why he refused to administer the test. While we may have varying opinions on Carl Chew’s decision, he has focused attention on the test and many of the issues he raises in his four page statement will resonate with critics of high stakes testing.

Read the statement here

Seattle Times article April 22, 2008

Twenty-five years after the release of the controversial report, “A Nation at Risk”, the sides are still drawn and many feel we are indeed at risk if we do not see fundamental change to the approach taken by NCLB.

One key figure, Rep. George Miller, Chair of the House Education Committee was quoted this week as saying: “This is exactly the right time to pause at the end of this administration and at the beginning of the next administration and rethink the federal role in K-12 education” (see David Hoff’s blog)

A report issued this week by the Forum for Education and Democracy offers what it characterizes as a “roadmap for federal policy”. Linda Darling-Hammond, of Stanford University and co-author of the report, says, While other countries have made strategic investments and transformed their schools to produce results, we have demanded results without investing in or transforming schooling.” The new role suggested by the report should include fully funding federal commitments to low-income students, investing on a “Marshall plan” for teachers and school leaders, refocusing research on educator’s needs, and deepening community ties to their schools.

Democracy at Risk:The Need for a New Federal policy in Education

Imagination is no mere ornament, nor is art. Together they can liberate us from our indurated habits. They might help us restore decent purpose to our efforts and help us create the kind of schools our children deserve and our culture needs. Those aspirations, my friends, are stars worth stretching for.

Elliot Eisner

The Hartford Courant this week sponsored an important discussion: “A Colloquium: Equity of Access to Arts in Education.” They are to be applauded for this. I was unable to attend, but fortunately have received notes on the discussion. As a former arts educator and advocate I have participated in many such discussions in the last thirty years or so and it is both heartening and discouraging to see so many of the same themes emerge. And yet I cannot think of a more perilous time for the arts in education, nor can I imagine a time when a reinfusion of the arts is more critical.

Apparently the public agrees. In a poll commissioned by a national coalition called ImagineNation of 1000 voters:

• 91% of voters indicate that arts are essential to building capacities of the imagination.
• 73% of voters believe that building capacities of the imagination is just as important as the “so-called basics” for all students in public schools.
• 82% of voters want to build imagination and creativity in schools.

These are compelling numbers. It seems that at least one intention of the poll was the possibility of impacting the education policy debate in the approaching presidential election.

• 57% of voter say they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who came out in support of more funding for development of skills of the imagination in schools.
• 57% of voters say they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who votes to cut funding for building capacities of imagination in public education, and 36% of voters say they would be much less likely to do so.

Unfortunately, public education has barely made it onto the radar screen in the presidential race. The economic climate and the constricting climate of NCLB constitute a “perfect storm” for the arts in education. And yet it seems clear that the winners in the global economy of the 21st century will be those with the greatest capacity for innovation. This will apply from the nation-state down to the individual.

The United States has always seen itself as a world leader in the arena of innovation. Our status in this regard is eroding. Other emerging nations are strategically pursuing an increase in their capacity to innovate. The challenge for educators, as Howard Gardner so aptly describes it, “.. is to keep alive the mind and sensibility of the young child.” A disciplined mind and a creative mind are not contradictory, but complementary. (see earlier post)

There is much to talk about in this realm and I hope that members of the arts community will join the conversation.

Three days after Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings announced that the department will ensure all states use the same formula to calculate how many students graduate from high school, the Inspector General released a report highly critical of the department for failing to enforce a requirement of the law related to the reporting of graduation rates.

ESEA (Elementary and Secondary Education Act) has five performance goals. Goal 5 is that all students will graduate from high school. This requires knowing at any given time just how many students are completing high school. This is one area where the federal government would serve the future of the nation well by establishing and monitoring a uniform and rational system of reporting high school graduation. Essentially the Inspector General has said that they have botched this completely.

In the case of high school graduation every state was allowed to develop its own formula for reporting and consequently it is very difficult to get a picture that is even close to accurate. Secretary Spellings made her announcement at a press conference hosted by America’s Promise to release a report “Cities in Crisis: A Special analytic Report on High school Graduation”. The report debunks the myth that the nation’s overall graduation rate is around 85% and places it at slightly less than 70%. The report documents the importance of geography with a detailed analysis of America’s fifty largest urban districts and examines regional differences. There are a number of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas where an urban student has double the chance of becoming a dropout than his peers in the suburbs. The report concludes that the 50 city graduation rate is 52%.

The Inspector General’s report says, “If the department had been more assertive in requiring states to implement a longitudinal student-tracking system shortly after the enactment of NCLB, all states could now have four years of student data. Instead, less than a quarter of the states are using a system that complies with the requirements of the law.”

Tracking high school completion is not a simple matter, but it is absolutely vital that we find an agreed upon methodology to document the extent of the problem. More importantly are we willing, as a nation, to confront the issues that underlie the statistics and place our nation’s urban minority youth at such disadvantage almost from the time of conception? Will we provide adequate access to pre-natal care, early care and preschool, safe and drug-free neighborhoods and schools, and an economic revitalization strategy for our nation’s great cities?

At the close of her remarks on April 1st, Secretary spellings said, “As the president likes to say, you can’t solve a problem until you diagnose it. By shining a light on which students drop out, when, and where, we will not only better diagnose the dropout crisis, we’ll be on our way to ending it.”

I disagree.

It is worth repeating that there is no question that assessment/testing will continue to be a central element in our public education system. But can we at least agree that the most important assessments are those that are closest to and contribute directly to the teaching /learning process. All too frequently these so-called formative assessments get lost in the debate and yet they provide the most immediate feedback to students about the degree to which they are learning what is being taught and to teachers about the effectiveness of their teaching. Of even more importance formative assessments provide information necessary to tailor instruction to the needs of individual students.

Statewide tests such as the CMT (Connecticut Mastery Test) serve as a vehicle for benchmarking the school’s performance against state standards. In the hands of a well-trained instructional leader and an equally well-trained teaching staff this data can be a rich source for analysis of the effectiveness of instruction and identifying strengths and weaknesses. It is hard to see any benefit that the individual student derives from taking the CMT. The comparison is between this year’s 4th graders and last year’s 4th graders. NCLB focuses on the performance of schools and districts and by adding sanctions into the mix dramatically elevated the stakes attached to the CMT.  

CAPT (Connecticut Academic performance Test) the high school test is one whose role and stakes are in transformation. For the state and NCLB, CAPT is the benchmarking instrument for CT’s high schools, until recently there were no real stakes for students then the state required local districts to make CAPT a factor in their high school graduation requirements. This must truly be a confusing time for parents and I have not mentioned NAEP (National Assessment of Education Progress) - the “nation’s report card” nor the international tests.

All these tests have a role and each contributes to the policy and political debate, but contribute less (some would say little or nothing) to the day to day struggle of the teacher and his/her students.

Rick Stiggens, the founder of the Educational Testing Service’s Assessment Training Institute in a commentary for Education Week captures the heart of the problem succinctly:

America has spent 60 years building layer upon layer of district, state, national and international assessments at immense cost - and with little evidence that our assessment practices have improved learning. True testing data have revealed achievement problems. But revealing problems and helping fix them are two entirely different things.

As a member of the measurement community. I find this legacy very discouraging. It causes me to reflect deeply on role and function. Are we helping students and teachers with our assessment practices or contributing to their problems?

from Five Assessment Myths and Their Consequences Education Week Oct. 17, 2007

 

Yesterday I was flying home from a brief vacation in the Sunshine State. While waiting for our plane to depart, a young woman across the aisle was making a last minute call. She spoke in Russian. At the end of the flight we had a brief conversation and she spoke in flawless English. I was reminded once again of something I continue to regret that I have never reached fluency in a second language. As an American I am not alone of course. Three years of Latin and two years of French met my academic requirements, but little else.

In a recent article in the Greenwich Times the Board of Education in Greenwich, CT reaffirmed its commitment to offering world languages to its students at an early age. Unlike most districts they have realized along with most of the nations with whom we compete that the earlier second languages are introduced the more likely the student will reach fluency.

The state Department of Education will be importing a number of teachers from China to encourage the teaching of Mandarin in Connecticut. A member of the department is quoted as attributing the program in part to the need to know other languages in this “new era of terrorism”. Interestingly, the College Board recently announced that it is dropping a number of world language AP tests due to lack of interest. In its high school reform effort here in Connecticut, the department is considering adding either a fluency requirement or a two years of study of a world language to its list of graduation requirements.

This is another cyclical issue in American public education and yet another equity issue. Whatever the state introduces as a requirement in world language, it is likely that the overwhelming majority of Greenwich students will already have met it. At the same time urban districts and poorer rural districts are forced to compress curricular offerings to meet the required focus of the federal law. Given what we now know about neurological development, perhaps the greatest advantage for Greenwich students (and students in the nations with which we compete in the much-touted global marketplace) is that they are introduced to a second language at an early age.

One of the recurring themes in the contemporary discussions of education reform is the notion of “21st century skills”. What is not always so clear is exactly what these skills are. I think that most of us who have been around for a while would readily admit that our lives have become increasingly complex. For some this complexity is overwhelming, for others empowering, but few can deny that technology, telecommunications, and globalization alone have drastically changed our lives.

In these discussions of the purpose or role of public education, I often think back to my own school days growing up in the Boston area. The high school I attended had its mission carved in stone above the entrance to its most prominent building - Dedicated to the Preparation of Youth for the Responsibilities of Life. Interestingly enough this building was the gymnasium. We could easily make an argument that many of the skills necessary for survival in the new economy could be nurtured in the gym - teamwork, cooperation, the self-discipline necessary to acquire and hone skills both physical and mental. We could, and probably should, talk about that, but I was more focused on the notion of “preparation of youth for the responsibilities of life”, and how we meet this commitment when confronted with revolutionary societal and economic change.

If you think about these things at all, particularly as an educator, I have a book to recommend. In 2006, Howard Gardner, the distinguished cognitive psychologist who gave us the theory of multiple intelligences, published his latest work, Five Minds for the Future. The book is a new tack for Gardner since he shifts from descriptive to predictive. Or as he describes it in the introduction, “I concern myself with the kinds of minds people will need if they - if we- are to thrive in the world in eras to come.” In his previous work, as a psychologist, he identified and described a series of distinct congnitive abilities or “intelligences” that humans have in varying degrees. In this effort he describes five broad uses of the mind, each of which may require use of multiple intelligences or computational capabilities. He believes that we could cultivate the uses of these “minds” at school, in the professions, or at the workplace.

The five minds he describes are: the disciplinary mind, the synthesizing mind, the creating mind, the respectful mind, and the ethical mind.

I think you would find this very accessible and provocative book a worthwhile read. Beyond that you might agree with me that Gardner’s five minds for the future would provide an excellent framework for a more authentic look at where we should be placing our focus in public education for the 21st century.