Blog:

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.

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).

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. 

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?