Raise your hand if you agree with me that the USA — and Colorado in particular — can do a better job preparing enough students for success in the areas science, math and technology. Don’t worry about feeling self-conscious if you are in a room with other people. If you can’t overcome it, at least mentally raise your hand. That’s right. If you agree with me, and I don’t see how you couldn’t, then you should be excited by some news I have to share.

The National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI) is a four-year-old program (younger than me!) that has demonstrated successful results in increasing the number of students who pass Advanced Placement (AP) exams in math and science, particularly among underprivileged students. The Colorado Legacy Foundation has reported similar positive results here in our state for the seven schools who participated in a less-than-fully-vamped version of the program in 2010-11.

The news? The effective math and science program is expanding dramatically in Colorado: Continue Reading »

No Comments »

With all the important results related to education in last night’s election here in Colorado — hooray, the only dominoes that toppled were the ones supporting the Prop 103 tax increase on families like mine, AND the school choice champions in Douglas County all won — it would be easy for me to overlook some other significant education news. Rather than overlook it on one hand or delve deeply into it on the other, I’m merely going to point you to some early thoughts and observations.

I’m talking about yesterday’s release of the latest results for math and reading from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), better known as the Nation’s Report Card, the gold-standard test to measure what 4th grade and 8th grade students in different states are learning about important subjects. Without further ado, here are some good reads: Continue Reading »

No Comments »

Last week I pointed you to a provocative new Rick Hess essay that asked whether education reform has paid too much attention to focusing on urban, high-poverty areas and on closing achievement gaps. Well, almost as if on cue, Jay Greene and Josh McGee write in Education Next about their new study on how suburban U.S. school districts compare internationally in math (based on most recent 2007 data):

Affluent suburban districts may be outperforming their large urban neighbors, but they fail to achieve near the top of international comparisons…. White Plains, New York, in suburban Westchester County, is only at the 39th percentile in math relative to our global comparison group. Grosse Point, Michigan, outside of Detroit, is at the 56th percentile. Evanston, Illinois, the home of Northwestern University outside of Chicago, is at the 48th percentile in math. The average student in Montgomery County, Maryland, where many of the national government leaders send their children to school, is at the 50th percentile in math relative to students in other developed countries….

It goes on, but you get the flavor. If you’re wondering about your own school district, you can check out the handy new web tool Greene and company created called The Global Report Card. All in all, it’s an interesting tool that may be worth further exploring. The findings reported by Greene and McGee do raise some cause for concern: Continue Reading »

No Comments »

How did Colorado get to be the oddball? It’s got to be more than just so I would have something to tell you about. Oddball at what? you ask. Okay, let me back up and give you a little context.

Yesterday Harvard professor Paul Peterson wrote yesterday on Education Next about a new U.S. Department of Education report rating state math and reading standards for 4th and 8th grade. Though USDOE’s report didn’t acknowledge it, Dr. Peterson and his team had published very similar research — comparing state standards to the “gold standard” National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) — just a year ago:

Every state, for both reading and math (with the exception of Massachusetts for math), deems more students “proficient” on its own assessments than NAEP does. The average difference is a startling 37 percentage points.

Interestingly, the new USDOE report concludes: Continue Reading »

No Comments »

Good thing my parents don’t have any kids enrolled in Brighton Public Schools. Nothing per se against the school district northeast of Denver. But I can only imagine my mom and dad’s reaction if they got one of those tax hike-supporting political flyers in this year’s school information packet. Probably something like what one mom told Channel 7 reporter Russell Haythorn (though maybe a bit more colorful):

“Education specific funding being used to push a political agenda — that’s not appropriate,” said concerned parent Stacy Petty.

Agreed. And credit goes to the hard-working folks at Complete Colorado for breaking this story first. They have posted a copy of the flyer sent home to Brighton parents. Continue Reading »

No Comments »

Don’t ask, because I don’t know what happened to all my time today. Rather than go in depth and expound on something profound, I will just direct you to this fascinating story in Wired magazine about “How Khan Academy is changing the rules of education”:

“This,” says Matthew Carpenter, “is my favorite exercise.” I peer over his shoulder at his laptop screen to see the math problem the fifth grader is pondering. It’s an inverse trigonometric function: cos-1(1) = ?

Carpenter, a serious-faced 10-year-old wearing a gray T-shirt and an impressive black digital watch, pauses for a second, fidgets, then clicks on “0 degrees.” Presto: The computer tells him that he’s correct. The software then generates another problem, followed by another, and yet another, until he’s nailed 10 in a row in just a few minutes. All told, he’s done an insane 642 inverse trig problems. “It took a while for me to get it,” he admits sheepishly.

Carpenter, who attends Santa Rita Elementary, a public school in Los Altos, California, shouldn’t be doing work anywhere near this advanced….

Funny, that’s what some people say about this 5-year-old’s edublogging prowess. But I digress. The article by Clive Thompson is a long and substantial one, but also engaging. If it doesn’t make you think about the current education paradigm — and whether and how we can go about it more effectively — then you’re not trying too hard. I’ve told you about Khan Academy before, but have yet to point you to anything this in-depth.

While Khan definitely has his critics, this article sure makes it look like his video-based program is having tremendous results for some students in the areas of math and science. Happy digging!

No Comments »

This week one of my Education Policy Center friends was privileged with the opportunity to visit a Denver charter school that fills a niche for 16- to 21-year olds who have dropped out and/or been neglected by the system. Life Skills Center of Denver is an alternative education campus that uses computer-assisted instruction in a teacher-guided laboratory setting to help high school students get remediation in lagging math and reading skills with the goal of graduation and success in life.

In 2007, after four years of operation, Life Skills was in danger of having its charter revoked and being shut down. The State Board intervened to save the school after the DPS board’s vote based on legitimate concerns with poor results that showed up on testing measures. As Denise at Colorado Charters noted back then, new principal Santiago Lopez had already taken steps to improve the school. And Alan at Ed News Colorado came around to seeing Life Skills as a “special case” that deserved to stay open:

If DPS had a viable alternative for these kids, one that was being drained by the existence of Life Skills, I’d favor shutting down the school. But these are kids DPS has given up on, and vice-versa. What possible harm is there in giving them another chance, even if it’s less than ideal?

Continue Reading »

3 Comments »

The first time I heard of the Colorado Growth Model, I thought maybe it would be a scientific system to help determine how tall I would grow up to be in our high-altitude environment. No, we’re talking about our state’s system for measuring student progress toward proficiency in math, reading and writing, sorted by district and school. So I was more than just a bit off. You could sue me, but it wouldn’t get you very far.

Anyway, the reason I bring up the topic is a brand-new Education Sector report titled Growth Models and Accountability: A Recipe for Remaking ESEA. The report’s hook and chief case study is Denver’s Bruce Randolph School, and a significant chunk of the report is focused entirely on (you guessed it) the Colorado Growth Model. That’s why my Education Policy Center friends gave it such close attention. Co-author Kevin Carey was kind enough to spend a few minutes on the phone with Ben DeGrow to explain a few things and answer some questions.

It’s safe to say the authors of the Education Sector reports are high on the Colorado Growth Model as exemplary for other states to follow. As the report notes, a consortium of 14 states has inexpensively done just that, thanks to Colorado’s use of open-source software to display the data for public consumption. Carey and co-author Robert Manwaring gave our state’s growth model lofty praise for user-friendliness and accessibility: Continue Reading »

2 Comments »

There’s more to creating good policy than just passing a good law. This is especially true when it comes to big changes, like Colorado Senate Bill 191’s push to update how teachers are evaluated and retained. It wasn’t that long ago I expressed my concerns about the implementation.

A couple weeks ago the co-chairs of the State Council on Educator Effectiveness presented their recommendations to the Colorado State Board of Education. One of the presenters expressed a hopeful confidence that the 50 percent of teacher and principal evaluations based on observed performance would match up with the 50 percent based on student growth.

The good news, as reported by Education Next, is that new research by Thomas Kane and colleagues shows creating such an effective evaluation system can be done — because in a sense, the Cincinnati Public Schools’ Teacher Evaluation System (TES) already has done it: Continue Reading »

3 Comments »

A few days ago I told you about the recent Denver visit from the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ)’s Sandi Jacobs, but I never really got to the interesting part: the main part of her presentation. She came to talk about the big project NCTQ and U.S. News and World Report have launched to evaluate the nation’s schools of education.

Now, naturally, I don’t write much about schools of education. At my age it’s really quite a bit trying to follow teachers and schools, without keeping frequent tabs on who’s teaching the teachers that teach in our schools. Still, it’s an important issue — a HUGE issue, really. Just as a major example, why is there such a large-scale problem with equipping elementary instructors in teaching literacy and math? It’s truly exciting to see NCTQ take on this large task.

Unsurprisingly, there has been some pushback. NCTQ explains that many education schools “do not intend to cooperate” with a national review process that — to its credit — is being conducted very transparently. Education Week Teacher Beat blogger Stephen Sawchuk has been covering the story of four states (Georgia, Kentucky, New York and Wisconsin) that have refused to “participate voluntarily” in the evaluation. The Eduwonk wisely notes that such obstruction represents “a remarkably counterproductive strategy.” Continue Reading »

2 Comments »