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LA Times and Value Added: The Wrong Tool for the Right Job
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September 2, 2010
One of the big news stories this week was the decision by the Los Angeles Times to publish their findings from a value-added analysis of the teachers at the Los Angeles Unified School District, naming the third through fifth grade teachers included in the study, and ranking them from most to least effective.
LA Times finally posts teacher ratings!
August 30, 2010
About 6,000 Los Angeles elementary school teachers and 470 elementary schools are included in The Times' database of "value-added" ratings.
Preparing Yourself for the LA Times Analysis on Teacher Value Added Method Data
August 27, 2010
Along with everyone else I know (well, maybe not everyone…), I’ve been eagerly awaiting the publication of the LA Times data on Value Added Method analysis of teachers.
Good News from 2010 ACT Results
August 19, 2010
ACT has just released results for 2010 test takers and there seems to be some cause for optimism in the results. ACT reports that the proportion of students meeting their recommended college readiness benchmarks increased by 1% this past school year and has increased by 3% since 2006. While the proportion of students meeting all of the benchmark scores remains somewhat depressing - 24% of all tested students - the improvement is still good news.
College Non-readiness
August 18, 2010
ACT recently released its report, The Condition of College & Career Readiness 2010, summarizing college readiness nationally and by individual state for graduating high school seniors who took the ACT exam in 2010. Their report defined college readiness as an ACT score corresponding to a 50% probability of passing an entry level college course in one of four subjects: English, Reading, Math, and Science. Nationwide, 28% of students tested met none of the four college readiness benchmarks, 24% met all four, while the remaining 47% fell somewhere in between (Figure).
Now Here's A Blog!
August 16, 2010
Many of you probably already know about Rick Hess but I just want to put in a plug for his blog Rick Hess Straight Up. I receive it daily via email and I’m never disappointed; I always feel the 30 seconds I spend reading it helps me keep up with education news and makes me think about the pros and cons of education reform. For instance, last week there was a post about a New Jersey district’s policy to stop using the grade D. He says that “Mount Olive's new policy is likely to prove a pointless, distracting exercise. I'll make a series of predictions right now.” Go to his blog to see what he predicts. It’s also worth looking up his blogs from this year about the Race to the Top and i3 processes. Happy Reading!
A Crisis of Creative Proportions
August 12, 2010
This excellent article on the decline of creativity by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman in Newsweek is worth reading if you are at all interested in how we can empower our schools (and ourselves) to incite more creativity in our children's lives. The authors cite longitudinal studies (Torrence Test of Creative Thinking) with recent findings in neuroscience to portray a society in need of a jolt to its creative juices. The decline in creativity described in the piece is not surprising and the usual suspects are trotted out as to why - video games, television, etc - but the best parts about the article are the examples of the innovative ways educators and scientists are combatting the decline and actually teaching creativity.
What’s this NORMS thing? How to make use of growth norms.
August 5, 2010
Since we’re still learning this blog’s readership, forgive me if this post is preaching to the choir. Suggestions for blog topics are always welcome at kingsburycenter@nwea.org
Someone recently asked me whether this thing called NORMS they saw on our website was the same as this thing called STANDARDS they’re reading about in the paper. Every question is inherently a teachable moment, so let me put my answer in print.
The new common core content STANDARDS refer to the set of skills and knowledge that educators and policymakers feel every student should know at certain levels of education: for instance, here is one of the 5th grade math content standards:
Apply the formulas V = l × w × h and V = b × h for rectangular prisms to find volumes of right rectangular prisms with wholenumber edge lengths in the context of solving real world and mathematical problems.
The Three Cs of School Accountability
August 4, 2010
Many school administrators in New York have expressed concern over recent changes to their state test proficiency standards (see, for example, the New York Times story or David Singer’s Huffington Post blog). The New York State Education Department believed that the state test proficiency standards were too easy, so they made them harder. Consequently, there has been a dramatic increase in the percentages of students failing to “meet standards” on the state test, and a corresponding increase in the number of schools failing to make AYP.
One can applaud the New York State Department of Education for their courage to take potentially unpopular actions they deemed necessary for the well-being of New York students. However, I personally question whether their efforts will matter one whit – at least, for improving student outcomes. Earlier this year, the Kingsbury Center released a study examining the relationships between proficiency standards and academic growth across 32 states, concluding that the difficulty of the state proficiency standards made little to no difference. Students in states with easy standards tended not to show any more/less growth than students in states with harder standards. But if proficiency standards don’t really matter, then what does?
The Cost of Layoffs Based on Teacher Seniority
August 2, 2010
More and more school systems will be forced to lay off teachers as the full impact of the recession reaches education. In most cases, teacher seniority will determine which teachers are let go. While there is a fair body of research questioning this approach, a study released last week through the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER) provides definitive evidence against this approach.