Blogs

All of the intense pushing and shoving about the “common core” leaves one simple question, “should we care?” Policy makers and reform advocates alike have rallied around movement toward a national curriculum, suggesting that this will break the stagnation in achievement of U.S. students. But there is little evidence that confusion about what we should teach has been a real inhibition to student achievement.
PAYING ATTENTION TO CLASSROOM REALITY 03/06/2012 The recent release of teachers' value-added scores in New York City (NYC) has kicked up a lot of dust. Regardless of the merits of publishing such data for public consumption, we shouldn't let the dust obscure the larger issue that our previous attempts to improve teacher quality were so ineffectual. Policy involving teacher quality has historically faced huge obstacles. Without direct measurement of the effectiveness of teachers, we have been reduced to trying to regulate teacher quality through proxies.
Let me try to put some of the issues raised by Mike Petrilli’s recent post in perspective. Much of the research has found substantial variation in teacher quality within all schools.
Weighted student funding has become a core idea of both liberals and conservatives. Liberals like the idea because, by their vision, it would push funding to schools that served more disadvantaged populations. These schools have traditionally engaged in less actual spending than more advantaged schools because they employ more rookie teachers, who come with lower salaries. Conservatives like the idea because, by their vision, it will push funding to charter schools that traditionally have received less than equal shares of the local funding for schools.

Gov. Jerry Brown made two important statements about K-12 education in his State of the State speech on Wednesday. First, it is very important to have a strong accountability system that makes student achievement the focal point of our schools. Second, within that accountability system, local districts should have discretion to decide how to provide a quality education. Both represent an encouraging move toward improving the embarrassing state of California schools.

Diane comes back to a simple prescription: We should pursue business as usual with a few extensions of current policy. Unfortunately that is not serving us well, because this is exactly what we have done for several decades. We have developed a system that pays little attention to students and their achievement but that supports any adult who has found a job in schools. This policy does not look good by historical evidence on student outcomes. But it is common to defend this basic lack of management by throwing in red herrings whenever any policy change is suggested.

Almost everybody concerned with educational policy agrees on two things: the U.S. has a very serious achievement problem and teachers are the most important element in our school for addressing this problem. Beyond these, agreement breaks down.

The news is full of stories about incidents of cheating on various accountability tests. The Secretary of Education has urged all state commissioners to focus on testing integrity. In response, states are asking task forces to develop new security protocols, are hiring consultants to evaluate erasure patterns on test booklets, and are contemplating how they can change the pressures for cheating.

One of the most significant changes in educational policy of the past two decades is the movement toward test-based accountability in the schools. From the beginning, this movement has elicited strongly held opinions about its design, impact, and desirability. We now have another addition to this packed field – from a distinguished panel of experts flying under the banner of the National Research Council. Unfortunately, it is unlikely to clear up the issues.
Class size is again in the media across the country, this time because of increases in class size related to fiscal cutbacks. Instead of discussing the achievement gains that would come from class size reduction, the current commentary has focused on the calamity for public schools that will necessarily follow from increases in class size. The discussions, while ever-tinged by politics, ignore the fact that increases are not symmetric to decreases. The rhetoric of class size policy has been virtually constant for the decade-and-a-half before this year.