The Education Gadfly Weekly

Bryan Hassel and Emily Hassel
Public Impact
June 2010

What if we could close the achievement gap in five years? The Hassels think it can be done and in this paper they explain how. It builds upon their earlier report, 3X For All, which explained how we could take better advantage of the 800,000 or so most effective teachers by extending their reach (number of children served) and touch (direct interaction with students). But while that one explained how to do that—mostly through expanded use of technology—this report explains what would happen if we did. The top 25 percent of teachers typically advance their students through a full six months more material during the course of a year than the average teacher, and as much as a year more material than a bottom quartile teacher (in whose classroom students would lose ground). Thus every two years a child spends with a top quartile teacher typically yield three years of academic growth. The average black student is two years behind a white peer. So, if you put that black student in a top quartile teacher’s classroom for four years in a row, you have eliminated the achievement gap. Five years and the black student is ahead of the curve. Unfortunately, the way we recruit, compensate, and evaluate teachers makes this nigh impossible. The Hassels explain this in considerable detail, but they stop short of saying how to actually eradicate such counterproductive practices from the system. Still, acknowledging that they exist is part of the battle. Read it here.

Jean Johnson, Jon Rochkind, and Amber Ott
Public Agenda
June 2, 2010

Americans are sold on the idea that math and science skills are increasingly important and that the future workforce will hold more jobs that utilize these skills. But don’t mistake this sentiment as a call for improved science and math education, says a new survey from Public Agenda, because more than half of parents believe their child’s math and science schooling is “fine as it is.” (The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development disagrees – it says American youngsters rank 25^th internationally in math and 21^st in science.)

Parents also expressed a general desire for their children to take more advanced math and science classes in high school (60 and 54 percent, respectively), but few want an emphasis in specific areas like physics and calculus (42 percent each). In fact, most people don’t think it’s essential for students to understand advanced science (28 percent) and math (26 percent) at all – even as 84 percent of Americans agree that students with advanced math and science skills will hold a competitive advantage over their peers in terms of jobs and future earnings.

Most troubling, says Public Agenda’s Director of Education Insights Jean Johnson, is that nearly 70 percent of Americans think science education can wait until middle or high school. “Many parents don’t realize the importance of starting children in science early on. Many think it can easily wait until high school,” Johnson laments.

The full survey asks 34 questions about the current and future state of science and math education, the current and future workforce demands for skills in these areas, and the value the public places on various issues related to math and science education. Responses are available in two groups, all respondents and parents. Check out the survey here.

Shannon Marsh and Paul Hill
Center on Reinventing Public Education
May 2010

Urban districts across the country have long been exploring alternative approaches to identifying, retaining and graduating their students most at risk of dropping out. What has emerged in recent years in a handful of districts is known as a Multiple Pathways to Graduation (MPG) approach. This working paper from the Center on Reinventing Public Education draws on interviews from several districts with MPG strategies and provides an overview for districts interested in implementing such programs.

The report provides a good overview of the three types of MPG programs: The Targeted Population approach is the most popular and is widely seen in East Coast urban districts. This approach uses data segmentation analysis to identify students most at risk and match them to a program that meets their specific needs. District-Wide and Linked Learning pathways are rarer and confined to single districts on the West Coast. Portland Public Schools has opted for the District-Wide model while Sacramento City Unified School District has opted for the Career and Technical Education-focused Linked Learning model.

The most useful aspects of the paper are short analyses that would help interested districts identify which models of MPG would best suit their needs. Also of use are the basic startup requirements, benefits, and challenges of each model.

All in all, this is a good primer for any administrator who is considering a Multiple Pathways to Graduation program. This paper would be a particularly good read for administrators in Ohio urban districts (Cleveland and Columbus are both singled out in the introduction for their high drop-out rates) that have long been struggling to boost graduation rates. Read the report here.

The State Board of Education voted unanimously Monday to adopt the Common Core State Standards for English language arts and math, an action we’ve lauded as a smart move for Ohio’s youngsters.

The Common Core standards have spurred controversy in other states, so it’s encouraging to see Ohio recognizing the importance of rigorous common standards and swiftly approving the Common Core – especially as state education leaders previously feared that Ohio wouldn’t have adequate time to adopt new standards. 

One consequence of moving quickly toward adoption has been surprisingly little public discussion of what state-level implementation of these standards will entail. Yet this topic should concern everyone in the Buckeye State who wants to see the new standards actually drive improvements in student performance.

To date, most of the discussion around implementation of the Common Core has consisted of simple platitudes such as “we will, of course, need to adequately support teachers by providing rigorous new curricula and targeted professional development and training.” That’s simplistic and glib, for it masks innumerable specifics that will make the difference between these standards being a primary driver of student achievement or little more than laudable goals.

The next steps in implementing the Common Core are creating model curricula and instructional guides based on the standards, and a system of assessments tightly aligned to them. These are no small tasks to be looked past, but ones that will likely be best achieved by groups of states working together, not by each state individually. As that work progresses, and hopefully Ohio can be a leader in this effort, there is much that an early adopter state like ours can be doing to be in the best position possible to roll out the new standards.

After all, as we’ve learned from those states that already have rigorous standards accompanied by persistently poor student achievement, adopting great standards is no quick fix for student achievement woes. California is the best example of this fact – excellent standards, but weak achievement. Setting great standards is hard work, but implementing them well is even harder.

Fortunately, we have models of excellence from which to learn. And we’ve learned that translating rigorous standards into stronger student achievement normally demands that at least four key elements be in place from the start. Ohio has some of these in place, but has work to do in others:

1. Data-driven instruction. Standards drive student achievement only if they are used every day to drive planning and instruction. In practice, that means teachers must use the standards as the foundation on which to build their short- and long-term instructional plans. They must frequently pause to assess student progress toward mastery of each standard and use the data from those assessments to drive whole-class and small-group instruction, and to identify individual students who need targeted intervention in particular areas.
   
   While Ohio gets high marks for its education data systems from the Data Quality Campaign, the state still has much room for improvement when it comes to making the system fully operational, particularly in planning short-term instructional goals.
2. Ownership of results. Instructors who successfully drive student achievement in their classrooms are those who “own” their students’ outcomes. They actually believe not only that it is their responsibility to ensure students master essential content, but also that it is within their power to guide students toward significant achievement gains. (This also happens to be one of ten key traits we found in the high-performing urban schools we examined in our Needles in a Haystack report.) It is crucial for teachers to recognize that they—and not other external or family forces—are the main drivers of those results.
3. Accountability. Belief and ownership aren’t the whole story. Teachers and schools who successful use rigorous standards to drive achievement are also held to account for what their students learn. If you look, for example, to successful charter school networks, student achievement (measured in multiple ways) is always a factor—generally the most important factor—in judging a school’s effectiveness. Such accountability is essential. It helps keep the conversation focused in these schools and classrooms where it should be: on student learning.
   
   Accountability at the individual level remains a challenge for the Buckeye State. While Ohio’s data system has some ability to match student performance data with individual teachers, collective bargaining agreements and other barriers make it difficult to use student data to evaluate teacher performance.
4. Flexibility. The most powerful way to ensure that ownership of student achievement results is held at the school level—rather than the district or state level—is to pair accountability with flexibility. At the school level, this means giving school leaders authority over their budgets and staffing decisions. We all know that great leaders can be creative in allocating scarce resources—dollars, time, personnel, etc. They should be given the chance to do this. At the classroom level, this means holding teachers accountable for student outcomes. 

Ohio should continue the momentum of adopting the Common Core and aggressively examine an implementation process and remove any hurdles that stand in the way of making the Common Core standards successful here.

A change has been made to a provision of Ohio’s school rating system that caused otherwise high-performing districts to see their ratings plummet when they failed to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) with particular student subgroups. Case in point: Kettering City Schools met 29 out of 30 academic indicators last school year but didn’t make AYP in reading with students with disabilities and those that are limited English proficient. This was the third year in a row the district failed to make AYP with any two subgroups, so the state bestowed a “C” or Continuous Improvement on it. (Without the AYP provision, Kettering would have earned an A+.)

By comparison, Ohio’s rating system also awarded a “C” to Marion City Schools, even though that district met none of the state’s 30 academic indicators. In order to restore legitimacy and fairness to the rating system, State Senator Gary Cates proposed a bill (SB 167) last fall that intended to provide a safeguard to those districts, like Kettering, against falling swiftly from great heights.

The bill stipulated two things: a district could only fall in ratings if it missed AYP with the same two subgroups (not just any two subgroups) for three consecutive years, AND it would only fall one category (in Kettering’s case, down to Effective or “B.”) These provisions were recently tucked into another piece of legislation, which has been approved by both houses of the Ohio General Assembly and awaits the governor’s signature.

While this might all sound like a lot of quibbling about details, it is hugely important for Ohio districts. High-performing districts that don’t make AYP with hard-to-reach subgroups will be happy. But whether those districts should be penalized more for not succeeding with certain students, like those who don’t speak English well or have disabilities, is another matter and one that still is not resolved with this legislation.

Shannon Marsh and Paul Hill
Center on Reinventing Public Education
May 2010

Urban districts across the country have long been exploring alternative approaches to identifying, retaining and graduating their students most at risk of dropping out. What has emerged in recent years in a handful of districts is known as a Multiple Pathways to Graduation (MPG) approach. This working paper from the Center on Reinventing Public Education draws on interviews from several districts with MPG strategies and provides an overview for districts interested in implementing such programs.

The report provides a good overview of the three types of MPG programs: The Targeted Population approach is the most popular and is widely seen in East Coast urban districts. This approach uses data segmentation analysis to identify students most at risk and match them to a program that meets their specific needs. District-Wide and Linked Learning pathways are rarer and confined to single districts on the West Coast. Portland Public Schools has opted for the District-Wide model while Sacramento City Unified School District has opted for the Career and Technical Education-focused Linked Learning model.

The most useful aspects of the paper are short analyses that would help interested districts identify which models of MPG would best suit their needs. Also of use are the basic startup requirements, benefits, and challenges of each model.

All in all, this is a good primer for any administrator who is considering a Multiple Pathways to Graduation program. This paper would be a particularly good read for administrators in Ohio urban districts (Cleveland and Columbus are both singled out in the introduction for their high drop-out rates) that have long been struggling to boost graduation rates. Read the report here.

Jean Johnson, Jon Rochkind, and Amber Ott
Public Agenda
June 2, 2010

Americans are sold on the idea that math and science skills are increasingly important and that the future workforce will hold more jobs that utilize these skills. But don’t mistake this sentiment as a call for improved science and math education, says a new survey from Public Agenda, because more than half of parents believe their child’s math and science schooling is “fine as it is.” (The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development disagrees – it says American youngsters rank 25^th internationally in math and 21^st in science.)

Parents also expressed a general desire for their children to take more advanced math and science classes in high school (60 and 54 percent, respectively), but few want an emphasis in specific areas like physics and calculus (42 percent each). In fact, most people don’t think it’s essential for students to understand advanced science (28 percent) and math (26 percent) at all – even as 84 percent of Americans agree that students with advanced math and science skills will hold a competitive advantage over their peers in terms of jobs and future earnings.

Most troubling, says Public Agenda’s Director of Education Insights Jean Johnson, is that nearly 70 percent of Americans think science education can wait until middle or high school. “Many parents don’t realize the importance of starting children in science early on. Many think it can easily wait until high school,” Johnson laments.

The full survey asks 34 questions about the current and future state of science and math education, the current and future workforce demands for skills in these areas, and the value the public places on various issues related to math and science education. Responses are available in two groups, all respondents and parents. Check out the survey here.

Bryan Hassel and Emily Hassel
Public Impact
June 2010

What if we could close the achievement gap in five years? The Hassels think it can be done and in this paper they explain how. It builds upon their earlier report, 3X For All, which explained how we could take better advantage of the 800,000 or so most effective teachers by extending their reach (number of children served) and touch (direct interaction with students). But while that one explained how to do that—mostly through expanded use of technology—this report explains what would happen if we did. The top 25 percent of teachers typically advance their students through a full six months more material during the course of a year than the average teacher, and as much as a year more material than a bottom quartile teacher (in whose classroom students would lose ground). Thus every two years a child spends with a top quartile teacher typically yield three years of academic growth. The average black student is two years behind a white peer. So, if you put that black student in a top quartile teacher’s classroom for four years in a row, you have eliminated the achievement gap. Five years and the black student is ahead of the curve. Unfortunately, the way we recruit, compensate, and evaluate teachers makes this nigh impossible. The Hassels explain this in considerable detail, but they stop short of saying how to actually eradicate such counterproductive practices from the system. Still, acknowledging that they exist is part of the battle. Read it here.