A recent issue of Duke Magazine featured a profile of the Media and Technology Charter High School, started by a Duke alumnus to serve students from the worst neighborhoods in Boston. Although the school lacks flat-screen LCD monitors, PDAs and functioning DSL lines-hallmarks of high-tech-it is succeeding in educating and inspiring its young charges through a combination of altruism, perseverance and common sense. "A Charter for Achievement," by Jonas Blank, Duke Magazine, May/June 2002

Fueled by an active business community, frustrated parents, reform-minded local legislators, dedicated entrepreneurs (and some assistance from the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation), charter schools have flourished in Dayton, Ohio, which some term "ground zero" of the national charter movement. But the next few years are critical to the evolution of the city's (and nation's) education landscape, as many of the city's 19 charter schools-which have proven popular with parents but have not yet produced higher test scores-undergo a state-mandated five-year review. For details see "Charter schools' first checkup pivotal point," by Scott Elliott, Dayton Daily News, July 29, 2002

The Department of Education has given the Blue Ribbon School award since 1982, but attention has recently been drawn to the fact that not all honored schools can actually claim stellar records of student achievement. Accordingly, the DOE recently announced that test scores and test score improvements will become a major component of the selection process. See "Changes afoot for Blue Ribbon Schools," by Jane Elizabeth, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 30, 2002. For an account of what was wrong with the old Blue Ribbon Schools program, see "In Praise of Mediocrity," by Tom Loveless and Paul DiPerna, Education Next, Summer 2001.

edited by George W. Bohrnstedt and Brian M. Stecher, CSR Research Consortium
August 2002

George Bohrnstedt and Brian Stecher have released their fourth and final report analyzing California's class size reduction (CSR) initiative. It provides an excellent introduction to the research in support of CSR and the mechanisms by which California implemented it. CSR's short-term effect was to increase achievement inequality among rich and poor students; some have speculated that the primary reason for this was a migration of experienced inner-city teachers into newly created suburban jobs (see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=52#783 for more information). But Bohrnstedt and Stecher view the teacher flight as a relatively minor problem. They blame the achievement inequality on the way CSR was implemented as an incentive program. (Schools were given a grant for each class of less than 20 students. Those that already had low class sizes were rewarded, and overcrowded schools struggled to attract teachers and make the grant stretch far enough to cover the program's cost.) Even after controlling for factors such as poverty, the authors say, CSR's effects are disappointing. The report contains numerous interesting policy recommendations, the most sweeping of which is that CSR and California's other stand-alone education reforms should be consolidated into a single strategy centered on state's recent push towards standards and accountability. For a copy of the report, go to http://www.classize.org/techreport/CSR_Capstone_prepub.pdf.

James E. Bruno, Education Policy Analysis Archives
July 26, 2002

This paper by UCLA professor James Bruno examines the frequency with which teachers call in sick and leave substitutes in charge of their classrooms in large urban schools. Bruno finds that in areas of "negative" (low income) geographical space, teachers are more likely to think of their sick days as entitlements and more apt to use them. More teacher absenteeism increases costs for the district, decreases the return on additional spending, and reduces the quality of education. It's not a problem for which there are any quick fixes, though Bruno does have one creative idea to help mitigate its effects: a school with a high rate of teacher absenteeism could develop a corps of regular substitutes who are better trained and more integrated into the school, so that learning doesn't come to a standstill when the teacher is away. The paper can be downloaded at http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v10n32/.

National Geographic Society and Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning
2002

The National Geographic Society commissioned Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL), formerly the Mid-continent Regional Educational Laboratory, to determine whether 8th graders taught by teachers who took part in the Society's "Alliance" training programs do better on NAEP geography assessments than 8th graders in general. The conclusion is that they do. This looks like good news for anyone who thinks that young Americans need to learn lots more geography. It's good news for those seeking evidence that staff development programs for teachers can work when gauged by improved student achievement. And it represents a rare and imaginative use of NAEP test items and national NAEP results for purposes of program evaluation. That said, I have two reservations. First, the margin by which the pupils of Geographic trained teachers surpassed their peers, while statistically significant, isn't very wide. (Neither group knows much geography.) Second, despite painstaking efforts to match the school and students samples and to make the testing circumstances similar, one large difference remains. Whereas the national NAEP is a no-stakes test administered by someone other than the regular classroom teacher, the test given to 8th graders in the McRel sample was administered by their very own geography teacher, included stakes (at least for a program the teacher was invested in), and provided plenty of warning for teachers to pep and prep their students. A better study would have the test given by disinterested persons and the students (and teachers) would not know about it ahead of time, or would not know what was being tested until it happened. Still, this paper is worth a look if you care about geography or program evaluation or in-service training. You can obtain a copy by contacting McRel, 2550 South Parker Rd., Suite 500, Aurora, CO 80014. Phone (303) 337-0990, fax (303) 337-3005, e-mail [email protected] or surf to www.mcrel.org. The text itself will soon be available at www.mcrel.org.

Randy Elliott Bennett, Journal of Technology, Learning and Assessment
June 2002

The Journal of Technology, Learning and Assessment, which is based at Boston College and exists only on-line, has just published this 20-page article by Randy Elliott Bennett of Educational Testing Service, arguing that "the inexorable advance of technology will force fundamental changes in the format and content of assessment." It's essentially a think piece about the future of assessment in a high-tech era. The author contends that most uses that have so far been made of technology in assessment involve taking conventional testing formats and adapting them for computer-based administration. In the future, he says, assessments will have to match the cognitive and instructional processes by which learning itself occurs. In essence, that means that, as people do more of their learning via technology, assessment technologies will have to keep pace. This raises a host of issues involving costs, fairness, test security, and validity. He poses questions better than he answers them, but the piece includes an extensive bibliography and a 2-page chart showing how eight states are currently grappling in interesting ways with technology-based assessment. It won't blow you away but may lead you to ponder some new issues at the intersection of assessment, accountability and technology. You can find it at http://www.bc.edu/research/intasc/jtla/journal/v1n1.shtml.

Sondra Cooney and Gene Bottoms, Southern Regional Education Board
2002

As a follow up to a 2000 survey of eighth graders, the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) tracked those students through ninth grade to determine which experiences in the "middle grades" (6-8) are linked to success in higher-level ninth grade English and math courses. Penned by Gene Bottoms and Sondra Cooney, director of SREB's middle school reform initiative, this report finds-perhaps unsurprisingly-that three eighth grade experiences are most apt to translate into higher achievement for high school freshmen: 1) studying algebra; 2) reading lots of books; and 3) expecting to graduate from college. SREB's most important finding is that "ninth graders who are placed in higher-level courses have a lower failure rate that students with similar characteristics who are placed in lower-level courses." View this 12-pager at http://www.sreb.org/programs/hstw/publications/briefs/MiddleGradestoHS.asp or order a copy from SREB at 592 10th St., NW, Atlanta, GA 30318.

State Council of Higher Education for Virginia
2002

Virginia is tiptoeing into the fractious world of higher education assessment and institutional comparisons. No, they're not doing what a grown-up state should, which is pushing for measures of academic value-added that can be compared from one college to another, much as K-12 education is now doing. That remains hugely controversial in higher ed and few institutions will countenance it. (I, for one, have long felt that we would learn an immense amount by simply re-administering the 12th grade NAEP tests to people in the middle, or the end, of their undergraduate years.) But Virginia's State Council of Higher Education now requires individual (public-sector) campuses to devise their own ways of measuring student learning in certain core skills (e.g. critical thinking, writing, math) as well as well as 14 system-wide "performance measures" having to do with things like retention rates, average time-to-degree, and various spending and resource utilization rates. Thus we see, for example, that the flagship University of Virginia spends 72 percent of its core budget on instruction (and "academic support") while Virginia Tech checks in at 61 percent. Virginia Tech also reports that 48% of the research papers done in first-year writing courses demonstrated "full competence" while UVA reports that 29% of its students display "strong competence." It's impossible to make meaningful comparisons so long as each institution sets its own standards and uses its own measures. But hats should be doffed to the Old Dominion for even pushing into this sensitive field. You can find a quick summary of the most recent of these annual reports-this is the second edition-and leads to individual campus reports by surfing to http://roie.schev.edu/. And you can read a helpful overview article by Amy Argetsinger of The Washington Post ("Show What Students Know, Colleges Told," July 17, 2002) at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15879-2002Jul16.html.

Teachers nationwide are scrambling to create lesson plans in observance of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, turning for help to new university workshops like "Understanding the World After September 11" and tolerance-heavy lesson plans such as a National Council for the Social Studies lesson about "Osama," a young Iraqi immigrant to the US who is teased at school because of his name. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the decline of civic education noted above, these free resources for teachers seem to dwell on understanding the Middle East and celebrating diversity, not defending and upholding America's founding principles. "Teachers make plans for Sept. 11 lessons," by Dana Hull, San Jose Mercury News, July 17, 2002