The Power of Our Shared Science Standards

| By Susan Perkins Weston | 

Kentucky now shares the Next Generation Science Standards with 18 states and the District of Columbia--as shown in the EdWeek map below and discussed in today's Curriculum Matters post.

Over the last year, I've been studying those standards more closely and getting more excited with each round, because there are shifts so deep I didn't understand them on my first or second read.

For one thing, NGSS makes it almost impossible to think about content apart from skills or knowledge apart from active engagement.  That starts with life sciences call for kindergartners to be able to "use observations to describe patterns of what plants and animals (including humans) need to survive."  It flows all the way through to the high school engineering expectation that students will be prepared to "use a computer simulation to model the impact of proposed solutions to a complex real-world problem with numerous criteria and constraints on interactions within and between systems relevant to the problem."

Even more deeply, NGSS focuses on a short, powerful list of eight scientific practices:

• Asking questions and defining problems
• Developing and using models
• Planning and carrying out investigations
• Analyzing and interpreting data
• Using mathematics and computational thinking
• Constructing explanations and designing solutions
• Engaging in argument from evidence
• Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information

Those practices give a clear idea of the types of hands-on work students should be doing, the ways critical thinking and active problem-solving  should become tools they can use through a lifetime, and the forms of teamwork and communication that will be embedded in the work they will do as adults. We've known for decades that we need to cultivate  deeper learning and 21st century skills: the NGSS practices look to me like a specific, muscular plan for making that happen.

And at the deepest level, NGSS calls for students to be active science users and science makers.  That's about recognizing students as current participants, rather than just preparing for future engagement.  It's about seeing them as contributing and building here and now and watching for the energy and innovation they're already able to share.

Added note: there are brand new resources teachers can use to combine NGSS standards with Literacy Design Collaborative approaches to reading, writing, and thinking. Battelle Education has developed an impressive set of new resources, complete with video of the students and teachers who designed and tested them, focused on analyzing data, designing and conducting experiments, and solving engineering problems. I was honored to get an early look at these materials, and I think they offer very important illustrations of how much more students can know and do with the right opportunities. If you give them a look, I think you'll share my excitement about NGSS and the possibilities in reach for learners here and across the country.

Check out the Battelle LDC tools and videos of students at work!

Prichard Committee Statement on 2015 ACT Results

Here's the full text of the Prichard Committee statement released today:

The ACT results released today by Kentucky Department of Education show positive trends for the 2015 graduating class overall, but raise concerns about whether African American, Hispanic, and American Indian students are receiving the full support they need and deserve.

The good news is that members of the 2015 class as a whole looked stronger than their 2014 peers. In English, mathematics and reading, more of them met Kentucky’s benchmarks for college readiness. Progress in mathematics was especially strong, with an increase of more than 4% in students who are ready for credit-bearing college work.

For some student groups, however, the results were clearly not strong enough. Students from different racial backgrounds still have quite different results. Looking at ACT composite scores, 2015 African American graduates did no better than their 2014 peers, and Hispanic graduates did slightly worse. American Indian students improved just slightly faster than white students and not at a pace to close the big gap between the two groups. All three groups have results showing them less ready for college success than their white and Asian classmates.

The Kentucky Board of Education has already added important new efforts to reduce novice performance in all subgroups, signaling that it is time for deeper, more sustained work to end these gaps. To support renewed and expanding work on increasing achievement and closing gaps, a Prichard Committee study group will be working through the fall to analyze data, policy and practice, with the aim to share recommendations at the beginning of 2016.

For Kentucky to flourish, we need for Kentucky students of every background to reach their potential and join in building a strong, shared future. While progress is evident overall, important student subgroups still lag behind, demonstrating the need for more concerted efforts to close these gaps rapidly. Our goal must be for all Kentucky students to graduate from high school truly ready for adult success.

ACT Readiness Moves Forward, But With Important Gaps

The Kentucky Department of Education released ACT results for 2015 public school graduates this afternoon, showing a sturdy trend for students overall but raising concerns about how well we're serving our African-American, Hispanic, and American Indian students.

First, here's the overall good news, with upward movement on the percent of students reaching all three of the college readiness benchmarks set by the Council on Postsecondary Education.

Second, here's a look at the trends for subgroups, this time showing composite scores (combining English, math, reading, and science) rather than percent meeting benchmarks. Highlighted, you can see that:

• African American students made no gains compared to last year
• Hispanic students lost one-tenth of a point
• American Indian students gained three-tenths of a point, growing a bit faster than students overall, with results still far behind their white classmates

Results for students with disabilities and students who receive free or reduced-price meals were not included in the press release but will be included in the 2014-15 school report cards now scheduled for release in early October.
.

How People Learn: Learning That Transfers To New Contexts

Continuing my summer book study...

"Transfer from school to everyday environments is the ultimate purpose of school-based learning."  That's the kind of statement that seems obvious and turns out to be important. In How People Learn, the transfer process gets close attention--and now it's got mine as well.

Here, transfer is about ability to use knowledge in multiple contexts. For example, veteran shoppers can be very good at figuring out cost per unit and identifying bargains, but struggle with related division when dropped into a formal classroom.  Conversely, most of us have watched kids part way through elementary school who aren't at all sure which bit of "school math" to use in stores. The studies in the book give examples like seeing if Latin or computer programming develops logical reasoning for other kinds of work and sorting out which kinds of simulations create lasting and useful understanding. If you've learned something that you can only used in the situations that are most like being in school, it isn't going to be a lot of help for other kinds of challenges.

With research citations for each claim, the chaper looks at what scientists know about when transfer is and isn't likely to succeed. Some major points:

• Time spent on understanding how a process works and when it matters yields better transfer than memorization.
• Teaching a set of knowledge in multiple contexts makes the learners more able to transfer it.  
• Transfer is also improved when students are equipped to monitor their own understanding and evaluate their own progress (with "metacognition" as the power word for that process of learning about their own learning.)

All through this section, I was haunted by images students doing worksheets and computer drills to prepare for a math assessment. 

The research in this study gives support to parent concerns that a certain kind of "teaching to the test" creates knowledge that will be only useful on the test. That can be learning for a single context, focused on procedural accuracy, with little insight into how or why the same knowledge could be put to work elsewhere.

Plus, what happens if the school's response to early difficulty is more of the same kind of drill, and more, and more and more again? On this understanding of learning, students may succeed on this year's test, but not be able to transfer that knowledge to next year's work or future challenges. 

That "learning that doesn't transfer" may be central to what's going on when middle school teachers say kids come from elementary school lacking key skills, and high school teachers say that about middle school, and college teachers and employers say it about high school graduates. The folks at the lower level know they worked on that exact skill, but don't know why kids can't put it to use as they move on. The issue may be quality of learning, with students needing to move well past memorization into understanding why the knowledge matters, using it in multiple contexts, and joining in evaluating their understanding as the work goes on. Adding to the quantity of work a student turns in may not change the long-term results much at all.

One final connection: Kentucky has committed to standards that are "fewer, higher, and deeper." Learning that can transfer may take more intensive study, and that's part of why it matters to have a shorter list of expectations with deeper demands about putting understanding to active use.  This chapter adds to my sense that we're on the right track in that approach, and we'd be moving in the wrong direction if we added lots of detailed demands to our standards documents.

Maker Space: Already Live in Northern Kentucky!

When a recent PrichBlog post explained the maker space concept, it missed a pretty important fact: Northern Kentucky already has one!  Last fall, students in Boone County convinced the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce Leadership Northern Kentucky Class of 2015 that a maker space was worthy of their support as an approach to STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math) learning.  In April, the space opened in Burlington, complete with website, Facebook conversation, and Twitter connections. (Thanks to Julia Pile, GCIPL Fellow, for sharing news of this exciting development!)

Ms. Lemily's Lesson: Looking Closer at Math Excellence (With Elves!)

Last week, PrichBlog shared some of the “Finding Solutions” account of Christa Lemily’s eighth grade students working on figuring out whether classic Corvettes make good investments. The question can be answered with several different mathematical strategies, so it's a great example of the fluent, flexible problem-solving called for by Kentucky's academic standards.

To explain that, let’s start by spending a minute with the Brothers Grimm and their tale of “The Shoemaker’s Elves.” The first night, the elves turned one piece of leather into a pair of shoes so fine that, after selling them, the shoemaker could afford to leather for two pairs. The second night’s two beautiful pairs brought in enough money to buy leather for four. The third night? You know the answer: enough for eight pairs.

So, how did you figure out that it was eight? Here are five respectable options:

1. Maybe you used addition.
2. Maybe you multiplied.
3. Maybe you’ve worked or played with numbers enough that you just know what happens as you double a small number. 
4. You probably didn’t use percentages, but you could. If the story was trickier, with two pairs yielding revenue to buy leather for three, multiplying by 150% each morning might be a good choice.
5. You probably didn’t use an exponential function either, but if the growth was 20% each night, and you wanted to know the result after 10 nights, you might end up using a formula like 
   

Fortunately, we don't need to unpack that formula to see the point about mathematical options.

Instead, let's swing back to Ms. Lemily's class at South Warren Middle and their question about Corvettes. If the shoemaker story is about growing (appreciating) value, the car story turns out to be about the opposite: depreciation or value going down. On average, Corvette convertibles lose 15% of their value the first year, and between 8% and 10% each year after that. With a $60,000 car, that’s going to produce values like this over time:

Under Kentucky's standards, Ms. Lemily’s students should be ready to work out those numbers by multiplying percentages, figure out that Corvettes are better as transportation than as investments, and notice that the graphed results do not look like a line. Kentucky's math standards for grade 8 call for students to be able to:

•  "Interpret the equation y = mx + b as defining a linear function, whose graph is a straight line; give examples of functions that are not linear.” [Emphasis added]

From the “Finding Solutions” description, Ms. Lemily's students may have reached that standard and also be closing in on some high school expectations, like being able to:

• "Recognize situations in which a quantity grows or decays by a constant percent rate per unit interval relative to another," and
• "Construct linear and exponential functions, including arithmetic and geometric sequences, given a graph, a description of a relationship, or two input-output pairs (include reading these from a table)."

Do notice that the standards are not asking students to remember every formula they see in a math class. The goal is for them to recognize the kind of change involved and construct a function that works for that situation. That's one reason the Prichard Committee report came with a subtitle about how “Standards Push Students Toward Real-Life Problems.”

Overall, South Warren Middle School's strong focus on the math standards seems to be paying off. With Ms. Lemily in the lead, South Warren was one of the first middle schools in the country to join the work of the Mathematics Design Collaborative, and as of last year, their K-PREP scores impressively outpaced the state average for most groups:

One more thought. An even deeper goal in our standards is for students to master these key mathematical practices:

1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively.
3. Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.
4. Model with mathematics.
5. Use appropriate tools strategically.
6. Attend to precision.
7. Look for and make use of structure.
8. Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.

The work happening in Ms. Lemily's classroom embodies those practices, and equips her students to use all eight in high school, in college, and across their careers. It's an impressive step up in how Kentuckians teach and learn math!

Maker Spaces: A Rising Idea for Deeper Learning?

"Maker space" is a term for our decade, proposing flexible access to up-to-date technology, including the chance to explore 3-D printers and other tools and to work with others who are also figuring out what those new technologies can do.

Can school libraries become maker spaces? EdWeek is reporting on school libraries working to promote "education through tinkering and creating" through maker spaces for student use.

For example, a Missouri elementary school has stocked its space with "craft supplies, sewing machines, snap circuits, Lego sets," as well as a 3-D printer for student use.  A Michigan effort is developing after-school opportunities for students to develop technology skills and finding, according to a faculty coordinator, that "there is a real hunger; there is a sense that there's something about this that's powerful for them."

On a first read, this looks like a savvy new approach to familiar challenges. To use these tools, students will have  to apply and develop problem-solving and critical thinking skills.  To complete their projects, they'll need to use math and science skills in systematic, productive ways. And if we want to see students engage with their full energy, these kinds of resources certainly seem likely to draw them in.

On a second read, it's clear that the approach is in its early days. So far, there's not much formal research to confirm or disconfirm learning results.  Still, that's how engineering is supposed to work. A sound design process identifies a need, proposes solutions, and tests them out, check to see which ones best meet the criteria for meeting the need and revising many times to find an approach that fully succeeds. 

Here, there are two clear needs: developing students' STEM understanding and developing those capacities to participate effectively that we often call "21st century skills."  Maker spaces look credible as possible solutions to both needs, and definitely worth multiple, vigorous trials.

Finding Solutions (New Prichard Report On Implementing Standards in Kentucky Classrooms)

Important news fresh from Tuesday's Prichard Committee press release:

A first-hand look at how Kentucky’s academic standards are spurring innovative teaching and learning in classrooms is the focus of a special report from the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence.

“Finding Solutions: Standards Push Students Toward Real-Life Problems” features eighth-grade math teacher Christa Lemily’s approach to introducing her South Warren Middle School students to mathematical formulas by determining the value of investing in a classic car. Such connections between challenging math and real-world situations have grown as a result of Kentucky’s academic standards.

“The standards focus not just on repetition, but on understanding and applying mathematic reasoning,” Lemily said. “These standards help teachers focus on how students are taught to reason and think through math as much as they focus on the skills that students are taught. The goal is math thinkers, not just math do-ers.”

Teachers at Pembroke Elementary and Millbrooke Elementary, both in Christian County, also share their experiences with the standards. Pembroke teacher Jettie Payne said the standards are prompting her fifth-grade math students to gain a solid understanding of fractions and decimals.

She also said her classroom represents a change from the way she learned to teach. “I remember sitting in class thinking, ‘When will I ever use this?,’” she said, adding that her lessons now draw clear connections between math and everyday application.

Millbrooke’s Cindy Wyatt said the standards have prompted her to select more challenging books for her second graders, leading to more interesting reflections and conversations in reading groups and stronger vocabulary development.

Kentucky's academic standards are also the focus of a second Prichard Committee report released today on “Progress in Kentucky Education: Higher Standards, Assessments and Teaching." Together, the reports provide an overview of progress in Kentucky education and how that is reflected in both policy developments and classroom practices.  Both are available at www.prichardcommittee.org.

Kindergartners Reading Closely

EdWeek is sharing a lively example of students (very small students) figuring out story details:

The book recounts how the author's grandmother taught her to manage her fear of thunderstorms by learning to tell how far away they were and hurrying to bake a cake before the rain began.

The teacher asked a cluster of questions aimed at helping the children understand that the author is also the narrator. "I wonder who's telling this story? Turn and talk to your buddy," she said.

And then: "Oh, so the character is also the author?"

When the narrator described the "sharp crackling light" that frightened her, Ms. Landahl said: "What is she scared of?"

Hands shot up. "Thunder!" some children called out.

"Well, that's the sound," Ms. Landahl replied. "She can see the light, right?"

There was a momentary pause, and then a girl said: "It's lightning."

The article on "New Read-Aloud Strategies" offers a great look at ways to take students deeper into reading.  For this kindergarten class, it's done through reading out loud to enjoy the story, then reading again to enjoy more deeply, with attention to how the parts fit together.  A video portion of the story shows students talking in pairs to figure out some of the answers and identify the specific part of the story that is the evidence for the answers they choose.

At this age, the goal is to ensure that the young learners can"with prompting and support, ask and answer questions about key details in a text."

That's laying a foundation so that in two years they'll be ready to "ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why, and how to demonstrate understanding of key details in a text," and in four years they'll be able to "refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text."

Those three italicized standards are  kindergarten, second grade, and fourth grade versions of Reading Standard 1 from Kentucky's academic standards, and they are also expectations for those three levels in Nevada, where the EdWeek article found Ms. Landahl and her students studying the book Thundercake.

Parts of Ms. Landahl's teaching plan came from designs shared by teachers across the country and shared through the Read-Aloud Project, jointly sponsored by  Student Achievement Partners (based in New York) and the Council of Great City Schools (serving students and schools in urban areas all across the country).  In turn, Kentucky teachers from Pikeville to the Jackson Purchase can draw from those resources and contribute their own teaching plans.

It's a great example of how sharing standards can contribute to excellence for individual children in local schools all over the country.

Science and Tech Integration at Jeffersontown High (and in Forbes magazine, too)

Forbes Magazine has a great new article on next-generation learning at Jeffersontown High School, integrating science, technology, engineering and mathematics in collaboration with the Ford Motor Company and the United Auto Workers.

It's a great snapshot of active students and supporting teachers that go with the deepest sort of  engagement:

Working in small groups, boys and girls are on their knees, or sitting cross-legged on the floor, cutting 30 square feet of cardboard sheet into parts they designed on the computer and then placing them at carefully planned angles before taping them into position. Their math, science and engineering teachers are circling the room, helping when needed.

 And it also features:

• Professional development, including "teacher externships, which bring teams of teachers into Ford facilities to gain first-hand workplace experience that they can take back to their classrooms."
• Mathematics in active use: "In the welding classroom, sparks are flying while students assemble a metal security gate for a real customer. But first, they had to use quadratic equations and parabolas to design the gate’s arch."
• And a Prichard Committee voice: Sam Corbett (PC member and former chair) gets the next-to-last word in his role as director of the Jefferson County Public Schools Foundation.

It sounds like the complete picture of a big change underway, and an article not to miss.

Scientific Practices: A Big Shift in Our New Standards

Kentucky's new science standards bring a giant shift toward science and engineering practices.  Eight  major practices are to be applied across physical science, life science, earth and space science, and engineering:

1. Asking questions (for science) and defining problems (for engineering)
2. Developing and using models
3. Planning and carrying out investigations
4. Analyzing and interpreting data
5. Using mathematics and computational thinking
6. Constructing explanations (for science) and designing solutions (for engineering)
7. Engaging in argument from evidence
8. Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information

Those practices aren't an alternative to content knowledge: students will still need to read, write, study, and thing about scientific insights developed over centuries and those emerging now from current research.

Instead, the practices demand that the content knowledge move off of the textbook page (out of the lecture notes, beyond the PowerPoint slides) and into active thinking and work.  Each page of the standards begins with statements that "students who demonstrate understanding can" do specific things.  As illustrations, the middle school standards say call for students to be able to "undertake a design project to construct, test, and modify a device that either releases or absorbs thermal energy by chemical processes" and "analyze and interpret data to provide evidence for the effects of resource availability on organisms and populations of organisms in an ecosystem."

For student learning, that will require a big realignment to focus on puzzling through big issues and practical applications and building increasingly skilled use of each practice.  For example, with Practice 1 (asking questions), students may start with open-ended puzzling about phenomena they've observed, but then they'll need to learn to move smoothly into focusing their inquiries on testable questions. For Practice 3 (planning and carrying out investigations), those questions will need to be framed in terms of variables and controls.  The standards also provide progressions from grade to grade, so that students develop expertise over the years--but even the youngest are involved in regular, lively work to develop rich insight into the natural world.

In turn, for the community at large, this shift in science expectations creates a new puzzle: what kind of evidence will show us that students are developing those practices?  It seems hard, probably impossible, for machine-scored tests to give us real insight.  If we want to know how students are doing, we may indeed need to find innovative ways to check on this deeper learning.  To succeed, we may have to take on very active roles in defining problems (Practice 1), designing solutions (Practice 6), and making arguments from evidence (Practice 7).

The Internet Can't Replace Great Teaching

"When kids can get their lessons from the Internet, what's left for classroom instructors to do?"  I read that provocative question at the start of a recent Atlantic piece on "The Deconstruction of the K-12 Teacher", and I was, in fact, provoked.

Michael Godsey, the California English teacher who wrote the piece,  is bedazzled by the potential of videotaped lectures and downloaded lesson plans, to the point that he doesn't see how future teaching will require much more than fairly limited (and perhaps quite poorly paid) facilitators and cheerleaders.

I'm provoked because I think he's missed the most exciting current thought about teaching and learning.  Everything I'm hearing in Kentucky education says that live adults, actively engaged with students as individuals and team participants, will always be essential to the kind of learning that matters most.

For example, I've been listening to teachers who are participating in the work of the Mathematics Design Collaborative and using the MDC tools known as "classroom challenges" or  "formative assessment lessons."  Each challenge starts with a rich math task and organizes a learning process that draws students into "a productive struggle with the mathematics essential for college readiness."  There are standard handouts and tools, and the lesson follows a carefully designed set of directions, and yes, all those items are downloaded from a website.  The main steps work like this:

1) Students are given an easily administered initial assessment task. This provides teachers with a qualitative sense of their students’ grasp of the targeted mathematics, and that evening, the teacher uses the student's first responses to decide which activities will be most appropriate for the net day's work.

2) Students are immersed in the mathematics of the initial assessment task through a set of collaborative activities. This part is designed as a guided inquiry. Students work in small groups, engage in discussion, take responsibility for their own learning, and learn from each other, often by examining one another’s work. Teachers circulate as the students work, asking questions or offering small suggestions when needed, deciding minute by minute which help can best move their students’ learning forward.

3) Students are engaged in a whole-class discussion. This is designed to pull the lesson together. Students get to strengthen their understanding while teachers get to deepen their insights into their students’ learning. It provides another opportunity to structure discussion, provide feedback, and allow students to learn from each other.

4) Students return to improve their response to the initial assessment. This gives students a look at what they’ve learned as well as more feedback, while providing teachers perspective on the effectiveness of their teaching.

Here's the important point for thinking about the Atlantic column: teachers say they're working at the top levels of their content knowledge and capacity for rapid decision-making all the way through the process.  For this kind of teaching, deep content knowledge is essential, and deep engagement with each student is essential, and the two have to be combined with great flexibility right in the moment.

Now, to be sure, if we only needed students to do accurate addition, computers probably can drill kids often enough and precisely enough to get us that limited (though important) skill. But we don't just need that.  We need students who can grab a mathematics challenge, try an approach, think through its effectiveness, talk with colleagues, revise their approach, and struggle productively to an answer that works well.  And we need students who will do that, because they have learned that they can in a setting with meaningful support and meaningful challenges.

To learn all of that, students need teachers who know them, engage them, work with them, share deep expertise in the content and practices of their academic field, and help students move one by one and step by step to becoming expert practitioners in their own right.  It's personal, humane work, and it will always be done best by personal human contact.

Three quick notes for a busy morning...

1.  Student voices, teacher explanations, and learning success, are all part of this great CN2 report on Boyle County strategies!


2. "Exercise is ADHD Medication" at The Atlantic website starts from multiple studies on the brain benefits of physical activity and builds up to justified frustration with schools and communities that still aren't rebuilding students' opportunities to move and become ready to learn.

3. Current federal law mandates reading and math testing every year from grade 3 to grade 8, but recently filed legislation could give states more flexibility, requiring them to test either reading or math in each of those grades.  Representative Stephen Israel (NY) filed the bill with support from the American Federation of Teachers, and details are included in this EdWeek blogpost.

International Benchmarks for Kentucky Scoring

If Kentucky 2011 students had taken the international TIMSS and PIRLS assessments, the American Institutes of Research estimates that:

• 46% of Kentucky fourth graders would have reached the high benchmark in mathematics (in a system that gives scores of low, intermediate, high, and advanced)

• 60% of Kentucky fourth graders would have reached the high benchmark in reading

• 27% of Kentucky eighth graders would have reached the high benchmark in mathematics

AIR used a "chain linking" method to develop those estimates, reported in a new report on International Benchmarking: State and National Education Performance Standards.

The report also shares analysis of how Kentucky defined proficient work on the old KCCT assessment and the new K-PREP tests.  On the old test, Kentucky's proficient lined up with TIMSS and PIRLS scores of at the intermediate level.  In our new system, launched in 2012, AIR concludes that Kentucky proficient lines up with the high score level on the international assessments.  That's an excellent step up for helping us understand how our students' learning compares to success rates around the globe!

--Posted by Susan Perkins Weston

Which AP tests do Kentucky students take and pass?

On Advanced Placement tests, scores of 3, 4, or 5 can qualify a student for college credit, placement in advanced courses, or both.  Monday, while posting on the Leaders and Laggards report,  I realized that the subjects where students earn those credits deserve closer attention.

So, below, two additional thoughts on AP test success in Kentucky.

First, a look at the major areas where 2013 public school students received successful scores, combining multiple tests in disciplinary clusters. The green shades identify science, math, and world languages, the subjects that Leaders and Laggards included in their economic competitiveness ratings.  The very small slice for world languages stands out as a weak result in the overall picture.

Second, a look at the top 12 tests where Kentucky students succeed, showing the number of students passing each test.  It isn't really a surprise to see the English tests at the top of this list, but it would definitely be good to see the science, math, and language numbers move up.

Source note: These numbers come from the page for "AP Program Participation and Performance Data 2013" at the College Board website.

--Posted by Susan Perkins Weston

U.S. Chamber Grades for Kentucky Education

-->

The map above rates states on achievement, one of 11 grades given by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in its newest report on Leaders and Laggards: A State-By-State Report Card on K-12 Educational Effectiveness. Here come the full set of Kentucky ratings from that report, annotated with definitions from the report and a variety of quick reactions from my first reading of the document.

C in Achievement

• Definition: Student performance on NAEP, including gains from 2005 to 2013.
• Clarification: The ratings use reading (where Kentucky is relatively strong) and mathematics (where we are less strong), but leaves out science, where we have shown signal successes.
• Celebration: Kentucky did receive an A for “Progress made from 2007 Leaders and Laggards.”

C in Academic Achievement for Low-Income and Minority Students

• Definition: Student performance on NAEP, including gains from 2005 to 2013; disaggregated for African-American, Hispanic, and low-income students.
• Dejection: For these students, Kentucky only received a C for"Progress made from 2007 Leaders and Laggards.”

C in Return on Investment

• Definition: NAEP scores divided by state education expenditures, adjusted for cost of living.
• Fascination: The Chamber has made an adjustment for regional cost of living, reporting that its method “was derived from the work of the Missouri Department on Economic Development.” In principle, I agree that Kentucky should acknowledge some of the lower costs faced by our families, and I hope to study this approach a bit to see if it seems like a sound way to consider that factor.

C in Truth in Advertising: Student Proficiency

• Definition: State-reported proficiency rates compared with NAEP proficiency rates.
• Frustration: The analysis comes from 2011 data, meaning it’s still reporting on Kentucky’s old tests based on our old standards.  A repeat of the same study would surely show Kentucky as notably stronger.

C in Postsecondary and Workforce Readiness

• Definition: Advanced Placement (AP) exams passed by the class of 2013, high school graduation rates, and chance for college at age 19.
• Anticipation: The second two numbers are based on estimates of the number of students starting grade 9, reflecting some of the last years the estimation step will be necessary.  Soon, soon, we'll be able to discuss these questions on the basis of much firmer actual numbers. Just as a sample of why this matters, the report shows a Kentucky 82% graduation rate, but our first graduation report tracking a full cohort shows us at 86%: better numbers will give us a better sense of where Kentucky and other states really stand.

C in 21^st Century Teaching Force

• Definition: Preparing, recruiting, and evaluating the teacher workforce
• Modification: In this list, a C does not mean a score between 20^th and 30^th.  The grades come straight from the National Center for Teaching Quality, which sets a high bar and did not give any A grades at all the most recent report.   
• Amplification: Kentucky’s C actually puts it in a three way tie for 20^th among the 50 states.

F in Parental Options

• Definition: The market share of students in schools of choice, and two rankings of how hospitable state policy is to greater choice options.
• Confirmation: Yes, this one is about Kentucky not having charter schools.
  

A in Data Quality

• Definition: Collection and use of high-quality and actionable student and teacher performance data.
• Exploration: Kentucky has implemented 9 of 10 steps recommended by the Data Quality campaign—and only two states have all ten.  The one we haven't fully applied is the one that calls on states to "Implement policies and promote practices, including professional development and credentialing, to ensure educators know how to access and use data appropriately."

D- in Technology

• Definition: Student access to high-quality computer-based instruction.
• Irritation: This rating is not about the learning technology available for students to use in varied classes across the state, and it's not about students' opportunities to use advanced technological stills. It's only about whether students can step away from existing classrooms to take classes on-line.  It’s about a second form of options for parents and students, like the Parental Options entry above. It's reasonable for to value that kind of option, but less reasonable to treat it as the main issue in technology in education.

D in International Competitiveness

• Definition: State scores on NAEP compared with international benchmarks, and AP exams passed by the class of 2013 on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and foreign language exams.
• Recognition: This measure is one Kentucky should value, moving beyond AP opportunities in general to a look at AP courses in fields where we definitely need to expand our workforce capacity. 

F in Fiscal Responsibility

• Definition: State pension funding.
• Consternation: Kentucky is hit hard, for long-term failure to fund our pension obligations to educators and also for more recent failure to take big enough steps toward resolving the problem.  

 --Posted by Susan Perkins Weston

Learning at Higher Levels: Active Learning Raises College Results, Closes Gaps

Here's a great New York Times report on how "Active Role in Class Helps Black and First-Generation College Students":

The trend away from classes based on reading and listening passively to lectures, and toward a more active role for students, has its most profound effects on black students and those whose parents did not go to college, a new study of college students shows.

 Active learning raised average test scores more than 3 percentage points, and significantly reduced the number of students who failed the exams, the study found. The score increase was doubled, to more than 6 percentage points, for black students and first-generation college students.

For black students, that gain cut in half their score gap with white students. It eliminated the gap between first-generation students and other students.

As summarized by Richard Pérez-Peña, the study looked at students in introductory Biology classes at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and compared classes taught using traditional lectures and others using methods that "demanded more participation by students," including on-line exercises to complete before and after class.

This sort of finding will be no surprise to fans of the Gates Foundation's math and literacy investments or the K-12 research behind those strategies.  Deep learning comes from wrestling knowledge hands on, in a productive struggle that lets each learner assemble a clear picture of how the content fits together and the skills can be combined to solve problems.  Lectures, even brilliant ones, rarely engage students at the level that creates strong understanding.

--Posted By Susan Perkins Weston

Reaching Top 20 Will Require Hard Push for Kentucky Improvement

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Moving Kentucky into the top tier of states in key areas of education by 2020 will require a hard push for improvement in the next six years, according to a new report from the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence.

The 2014 update of the Committee’s “Top 20 by 2020” found Kentucky’s performance in six categories to be on track to reach the goal. These include reading scores, Advanced Placement credits and teacher salaries.

But other indicators show reason for concern. The report noted that Kentucky lost ground in the math achievement of eighth-grade students and the share of higher education costs that families must pay. The state’s performance also showed no net improvement in total higher education funding or bachelor’s degrees earned in science, technology, engineering and math.

The state’s ranking in other areas showed some improvement, but not at a rate sufficient to reach the Top 20 by 2020. These include the number of adults with a high school diploma, preschool enrollment, per-pupil funding and adults with a bachelor’s degree.

The Prichard Committee began its Top 20 measurements in 2008, when it issued a challenge to the state to accelerate the improvement of its education system. The latest report is the third update of the initial measurement. The update is available here.

Education Commissioner Terry Holliday applauded the report for highlighting Kentucky’s progress in areas like reading, Advanced Placement and teacher salaries, and for also providing a clear roadmap of the areas that need further attention going forward.

“We are proud of the progress Kentucky students and educators have made the past several years as they have embraced more rigorous standards and become more focused on college- and career-readiness,” Holliday said. “At the same time, the report confirms what we already know:  there is still much work to be done. We need to be making faster gains in key content areas like mathematics and science while also continuing to close achievement gaps so that all students have the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in life. We are committed to making continuous progress, and are grateful for partners like the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence for joining us in this critical work.”

Bob King, president of the Council on Postsecondary Education, noted the state’s increase in bachelor’s degrees, from 44th to 39th in the last six years, and expressed the importance of partnerships to work toward the Prichard Committee’s 2020 goal. 

“The steady improvement in bachelor degrees or higher and adults with a high school diploma is welcome news to Kentucky’s economic future. We look forward to working alongside Prichard and our other partners to make even greater gains in the future.”

The update also noted the Committee’s three overarching priorities for Kentucky education:
·         A strong accountability system that measures the performance of students, teachers, principals and postsecondary graduates;
·         Adequate funding;
·         Sustained and expanded engagement of parents, community members and businesses in support of schools.

“It is great to see the areas where we are making good progress but we still have a lot of work to do. We will continue to monitor these areas and look forward to evidence of more forward progress in the 2016 report,” said Stu Silberman, executive director of the Prichard Committee.

--Prichard Commitee Press Release

for September 3, 2014 publication

KCAS Core Academic Challenge: How can our standards be improved?

Everyone in Kentucky is invited to provide specific feedback on the Kentucky Core Academic Standards for English language arts and mathematics.  This statewide challenge was announced this morning by Commissioner Terry Holiday and will last through April 30, 2015.

I took a first look at the comment site this evening and was pleased to see that users can sign in, start comments, and return later to complete comments on the full set of standards.  I also found it easy to zoom in on the standards that interest me most: those for "literacy in history/social studies."  Below, you can see a quick sample of the options, including space to recommend replacement language and share reasons for the recommendation.

This is a huge opportunity for public participation: please take up the Challenge!

Chess Impacts Students

Chet Sygiel, Chess teacher in the Jackson Independent school district, talks about how Chess impacts students.

http://bit.ly/1A1vhVk