Feedback for students, feedback for teachers

Yes, American public education can deliver student achievement at higher levels, with smaller achievement gaps, in the years ahead--and it won't depend on a strange visitor from another planet who comes to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men.

For students, what matters most is classrooms where they get frequent, usable feedback on their progress.  They need a solid understanding of the main standards they're trying to reach, a clear picture of the next rung they need to climb on the way toward the standard, and effective tasks that let them build the skills that will get them to that next rung.  In the literature, that goes by many names, from "differentiated instruction" to "assessment for learning.  The most helpful feedback is not a grade or a score, but a concrete description of improvement seen in recent work and manageable improvement targets for the work the student will do next.   That sort of feedback produces a virtuous spiral in which success in each effort builds confidence for the next effort.  That kind of instruction has a powerful record of raising achievement for all students, but it has the biggest impact on students who are the most likely to fall behind in other settings.

For educators working to create that kind of classroom, what matters most is something very similar:  a team of colleagues who provide each other with frequent, usable feedback.  That kind of collaboration creates a "professional learning community" or a "PLC."  In those settings, teachers can analyze students' work, talk through which teaching approaches have produced improved results, and figure out next steps to raise the results even higher.  The most helpful feedback comes steadily, over many weeks and months, as part of the ongoing collaboration of a strong team: formal evaluations matter, but they alone cannot provide the steady, persistent, reliable conditions for all teachers to grow in their craft.

Notably, both the student version (assessment for learning) and the teacher version (PLCs) depend on sustained, local effort.  Whether in neighborhood schools, regional schools, magnet schools, charter schools, large schools, small schools, and even virtual schools, live people have to do the work in small teams.

Crucially,  these approaches cannot work because a legislature, a superintendent, or a principal orders them to happen.  They work only when teachers understand and commit enough to get first results, and then develop further understanding and commitment because the results keep coming.

That is why, like bloggers around the country, I'm not waiting for Superman.

Our children's academic futures will depend on dedicated, able teachers pulling together in teams that provide the feedback they need to find the ways to give students the feedback that they, too, need to achieve at the high levels they will need for adult success.  In that equation, I'm confident that an overwhelming majority of American teachers have both the commitment and the capacity needed to succeed: if they can also receive consistent collegial support, I'm confident that both they and their students can achieve truly great things and deliver results more exciting anything D.C. Comics can dream up.

Hypothetical: Could keeping students in school mask progress?

Since 1992, we know that Kentucky high schools have managed to keep more students in school, and we know they've shown sluggish progress on raising proficiency, especially compared to the lower grades.  Recently, it occurred to me to wonder if the two patterns might interact.  Here's an illustration of something that could happen:

Version 1 and Version 2 both show 100 students entering ninth grade.  

In Version 1, 40 of the students are gone by eleventh grade, either as official dropouts or as students the school only knows are no longer there. In Version 2, only 20 are gone.  

Now look at proficiency on eleventh grade testing.  15 of the remaining 60 students in Version 1 get there, or 25 percent.  20 of the remaining 80 percent get there in Version 2, also 25 percent.

And yet, I hope it's obvious that Version 2 is noticeably better.  More students are still in school, and more students are proficient or distinguished.  

I've added a wrinkle by showing that of the students who are not proficient, many more are in the apprentice category in Version 2: that's another way results can be better while percent proficient and above is unchanged.

The main idea I want to share, though, is that if a school simultaneously increases the number of students reaching proficiency and the number of students staying in school, the percent proficient could stay exactly the same.  The report could be "no progress," when the reality was better results for an important number of students.  

Ans the main thing I wish I could figure out is: what approach to the data would allow us to see if that, indeed, is a factor in the sluggish improvement of high school achievement defined in percentage terms?

The ESS program: One-sixth of original size

Extended school services provides added instructional time who needed added support to reach state standards.  Created by KERA, it was originally budgeted to receive $53 million to support the program in fiscal year 1992.   That money was meant to support not only after-school tutoring, but strong summer school options.  Instead, we started pulling back almost immediately: faced with recession in 1992, the General Assembly pulled way back on that commitment and slashed the program to $29 million.  That lost funding never came back, and the robust intentions of the original program never came back either.

If we'd sustained that original buying power and kept up with inflation, the program would now have received $81 million in FY 2009, the most recent year for which we have a final spending figure.  Instead, ESS received just $14 million that year, a tiny fraction of the original plan for the program.

Source note: ESS funding numbers come from the annual supplemental information to the state's financial reports.  1992 to 2005 amounts were published in "A Glass Half-Empty or Half-Full? An Overview of the State School Funding Landscape in Kentucky, 1990-2008," a white paper Stephen Clements and I prepared for the Prichard Committee in 2008. 2006 to 2009 amounts were taken from online reports available here. The buying power of the original $53 million was worked out by adjusting upward by the Consumer Price Index each year.

Achievement gaps and formative assessment

Formative assessment is a core gap-reduction strategy.  Fairly often, my shorthand summary of the method is that it's "the kind of teaching that raises achievement and shrinks achievement gaps."

The formative assessment approach organizes classroom work around teachers and students (and often parents) understanding how current work compares to important learning standards and planning next learning steps based on that information.  The research behind that approach shows that, in addition to providing the largest gains for the students who struggle most.

In what I've call the "sunlit vision" of that kind of classroom, that strong, shared approach allows a virtuous cycle of rising results, in which students, teachers, and parents, see results that build confidence, develop confidence that promotes further results, and are able to generate impressively higher levels of achievement.

In situations where the ugliest gaps persist and deepen, I suspect an alternative, far less healthy cycle is at work.  In that version, teachers doubt that students can succeed, students and parents doubt that teachers intend to help students succeed, everyone can smell everyone else's despair, and every round of student work becomes further evidence that there's little point in hoping and aiming any higher.  

I've heard too many educators and citizens say too easily that "some kids" or "our kids" or "you know, those kids" won't be able to meet any higher standards than their current grim level of achievement.  Often, the kids in question are from minority backgrounds,  but the same phrases are applied to children from low-income homes, children with disabilities, and even children who live in "urban" settings.  Often, the people saying those things would be terribly upset to hear their words described as prejudiced, hurtful, and ignorant--but they really believe there is no basis to believe anything better is possible, and they really are mistaken in that belief.

Formative assessment, understood as a rich classroom process, is the practice I think has the best chance of breaking that cycle, stopping that talk, and sustaining the work needed to deliver on each and every child's birthright to learn and grow into adult success.

Formative assessment's basis in research

As "formative assessment" becomes an increasingly central concept in Kentucky education, we should be asking where to find the research on the strategy.  Here are some of the main sources that could help anyone looking for either basic evidence that the approach is effective or for a nuanced understanding of which approach delivers those important results.

Margaret Heritage's new report for the Council of Chief State School Officers provides a potent summary of the research on formative assessment, beginning with a research synthesis by Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam:

From their review, Black and Wiliam (1998b) proposed that effective formative assessment involves
• teachers making adjustments to teaching and learning in response to assessment evidence;
• students receiving feedback about their learning with advice on what they can do to improve; and
• students' participation in the process through self-assessment.
They concluded that the student learning gains triggered by formative assessment were amongst the largest ever reported for educational interventions with the largest gains being realized by low achievers (1998b). This was, and remains, a powerful argument for formative assessment.

Later in the paper, Heritage summarizes research before and after that Black and Wiliam piece on the central role of usable feedback in accelerating student learning, giving further support to her argument that the classroom process is what allows formative assessment to make a difference in student achievement, including John Hattie and Helen Timperley's 2007 review of the research literature on the crucial role of feedback in students' learning process.

Rick Stiggins' Balanced Assessment Manifesto draws from the same body of research:

When assessment for learning practices like these play out as a matter of routine in classrooms, as mentioned previously, evidence gathered from dozens of studies conducted around the world consistently reveals a half to a full standard deviation gain in student achievement attributable to the careful management of the classroom assessment process, with the largest gains accruing for struggling learners. (Black and Wiliam, 1998; Hattie and Timperley, 2007).

For those who want the short version, there are two main takeaway points. First, there is indeed serious research behind the formative approach.  Second, that approach is rightly understood as supporting formative assessment understood as "a process used by teachers and students during instruction that provides feedback to adjust ongoing teaching and learning."  (Thanks to Gene Wilhoit's "Foreword" to the Heritage paper for that especially succinct definition.)

For those who want to go a step deeper, into the original articles, the relevant citations are:

• Black, P. J., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy and Practice, 5, 7-73
• Black, P. J., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Inside the Black Box: Raising standards through classroom assessment. Phi Delta Kappan, 80, 139-48.
• Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77, 81-112.

Lexile and Quantile data coming our way

Kentucky parents, teachers, and students will soon receive new and helpful insight into students' reading and math skills.  According to the Department of Education press release, the new data will feature:

• Lexile measures for students' reading levels, which can be matched to Lexile measures of the difficulty of different texts, allowing both home and school reading activities focused on books that keep a child moving from current skill to the next level.

• Quantile measures for math skills that use "a scientific approach to measurement that locates a student’s ability to think mathematically and solve problems in an orderly classification of math skills, concepts and applications." Like the Lexile information, the Quantile data will make it easier to provide tasks that keep each student moving upward in math work.

Lexile measurements will also help with our push toward college and career readiness.  One of the key ideas behind the Common Core Standards is that high school reading assignments, even in grade 12, have used much easier texts than students will face in college and in skilled jobs.  MetaMetrics  has revised its recommended reading range for each grade to ensure that students finish high school prepared for the real demand they'll face later on:

Having Lexile data available for each child will make it much easier to check progress against these goals and plan follow-up steps.  (MetaMetrics is the company that provides Lexile data, and the chart above is from Appendix A to the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects. Thanks to Robyn Oatley of ReadyKentucky for alerting me to the chart.)

A KIPP charter school struggling to deliver

The KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) is one of the most successful charter models nationally, making reports of trouble in its Indianapolis outpost worth attention.

The Indianapolis Business Journal account describes a program that may have embraced the KIPP vision and then missed other key elements of school operations.  The school has struggled with financial requirements, from misusing Title I funds to  poor record keeping and an imbalanced budget.  Staffing stability has also been a major problem, with five school leaders in seven years and a 55 percent staff turnover rate last year.  In past years, student performance also fell short of expectations.

The Indianapolis school may have turned a corner in the last year or two, with yet another leadership change, new financial guidance, and test scores that rose impressively last year. This year, the city's mayor will decide whether that's enough to justify another seven year charter.

The key truth under this story could be that creating a great charter school is a huge undertaking, requiring skill at recruiting staff, supporting staff, recruiting students, leading instruction, managing budgets, tracking paperwork and many other aspects of a complex endeavor.  Even the KIPP network can't guarantee that every branch it opens can combine all those skills well.

Actually, I think the key truth is that creating any great school is a huge undertaking.  

Charter legislation may make the effort slightly easier, but the main hard work of creating excellence is the same no matter who organizes, authorizes, and owns the school in question.

Getting formative assessment right

Yesterday's post shared Margaret Heritage's report, Formative Assessment and Next-Generation Assessment Systems: Are We Losing an Opportunity? She argues that the formative assessment that produces greater student learning is a process embedded in ongoing instruction, and that the testing instruments being proposed by the new multi-state assessment consortia will yield much weaker results.

Today, I want to link that argument to three running PrichBlog themes.

THE SUNLIT VISION OF CHANGED CLASSROOMS
In Rick Stiggins' Balanced Assessment Manifesto, there's a powerful concept of students, teachers, and parents all seeing a clear path the student can climb to success on important learning standards.  That understanding creates a virtuous spiral in which students master one step, gain confidence, reach for another step, and cycle upward with growing knowledge, skill, and certainty that they can succeed.

When Margaret Heritage argues for a formative assessment process, I think she's arguing for the approach that can create that positive growth.

THE LEVERAGE OF PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITIES
The professional learning community approach focuses on teachers working together to analyze student work in relation to standards and to figure out ways to keep each student moving forward.  The PLC environment is central to what works in raising teaching quality and developing consistent strong instruction for all students.

Formative assessment as a process also looks to me like the approach that will most help PLCs develop, flourish, and change student results.

THE LITERACY AND MATHEMATICS STRATEGIES 
NOW LAUNCHING IN KENTUCKY
Over the last year, Kentucky teachers have been developing capacity to use new mathematics resources, and another group of Kentucky educators are now exploring an innovative approach to equipping students to handle the complex texts they'll need for college and careers.  Both efforts are being supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation through grants to the Prichard Committee, and I'm honored to have a role in coordinating and supporting that work.

The math effort uses formative assessment lessons designed to help reorient class work around deeper, richer, more engaged understanding of mathematical concepts and practices.  The literacy work models teaching tasks and instructional strategies for use across science, history, literature, and other classes, always focused on ensuring that students climb steadily toward higher levels of skill and confidence.

Both versions are explicitly rooted in the research Heritage cites, and both offer strong examples of the kind of formative assessment process she advocates.

Seeing those three connections, I think it's going to be important to figure out whether the consortia really are working toward the effective version of formative assessement. If not, it's going to be important to discuss whether that can be changed, and especially important to build the formative approaches that really work into the ways we teach and learn here in Kentucky.

Are the testing consortia getting formative assessment wrong?

Effective formative assessment gives students and teachers feedback they can use immediately to steer further learning.  The key is providing descriptive evidence right in the middle of the classroom learning process and putting it right to work.

Are the new multi-state consortia working on Common Core State Standards Assessments building that kind of formative capacity? Maybe not.

Margaret Heritage argues that both consortia are instead proposing much more conventional testing that will yield much less important achievement results. Dr. Heritage is Assistant Director for Professional Development at the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing at UCLA.  In a new report to the Council of Chief State School Officers she argues that:

despite the pioneering efforts of CCSSO and other organizations in the U.S., we already risk losing the promise that formative assessment holds for teaching and learning. The core problem lies in the false, but nonetheless widespread, assumption that formative assessment is a particular kind of measurement instrument, rather than a process that is fundamental and indigenous to the practice of teaching and learning. This distinction is critical, not only for understanding how formative assessment functions, but also for realizing its promise for our students and our society.

The report comes with detailed research citations explaining why and how the formative assessment process can significantly raise student results, and raises an alarm about whether the two groups now working on multi-state assessments are focusing on testing instruments that cannot deliver that kind of impact.

Check out EdWeek's Curriculum Matters for a further summary or read the full argument by downloading Formative Assessment and Next-Generation Assessment Systems: Are We Losing an Opportunity?

For background on the assessment consortia, start with these earlier PrichBlog posts on Smarter/Balanced and PARCC.

Correcting a very bad headline

Earlier today, I posted the list of districts that have missed AYP for eight years running too quickly and so with a wrong headline that read "weakest districts."

Here's why I was wrong.  In the table below, the first two columns are the chart I shared in the earlier post, but I've added how the districts rank when sorted by that "combined percent proficient or distinguished in reading and math."

Covington and Jefferson are weak overall, in the bottom 30 of Kentucky's 174 districts when sorted by the combined reading and math statistic.

Campbell and Fayette, though, are in the top 30 overall, and thus strong in a pretty important sense, and Grayson, Bourbon, Simpson, and Bullitt are in the top half by the same statistic.

The sense in which all these districts are weak is that they've missed at least one NCLB goal in each of the last eight years.  It's possible, and I know it's possible, and the numbers above show that it's possible, to fall short for one group while delivering at relatively high levels for most students.

I've added an update note to that post, and I'll try to do more careful work in the future.

Districts slated for NCLB intervention [UPDATED]

UPDATE: I initially posted this information under the heading "weakest districts," but after a closer look, that was a bad choice.  My reasons for changing the headline are explained in my post here.

Thirteen Kentucky districts have fallen short of the adequate yearly progress required by the federal No Child Left Behind legislation for eight or more years.  Here's that list, sorted by each district's combined 2010 proficiency level in reading and mathematics:

According to this morning's press release from the Kentucky Department of Education, the weakest five (highlighted in pale orange above) will "receive district-level leadership assessments and targeted assistance from KDE and will work in partnership with Educational Recovery Directors and other KDE staff to develop and implement corrective action plans."

For the other eight, KDE will provide technical assistance as they "develop their corrective action plans and deferred programmatic funds budgets" and "submit quarterly progress reports to KDE."

2010 persistently-low achieving schools

Ten additional Kentucky schools will undergo a major leadership review and then implement a major school change process to raise scores.

• East Carter County High School
• Christian County High School
• Greenup County High School
• Martin County's Sheldon Clark High School
• And six Jefferson County High Schools: Doss, Fairdale, Iroquois, Waggener, Southern, and Seneca

That news is from a Department of Education press release issued this morning.  

Schools identified as persistently low achieving have fallen short of adequate yearly progress for multiple years and then have the weakest scores this year.  

(More exactly, the list includes the five weakest schools that receive Title I money based on high enrollments of low-income students, and the five weakest schools that do not receive that funding.  On the list above, Seneca High and the four schools outside Jefferson County are in the non-Title I group, while the other five Jefferson schools compose the Title I set.)

More college students meet readiness goals

Kentucky higher education is seeing a clear decline in the percent of entering students who come with  ACT scores that could place them in developmental, rather than credit-bearing courses.   The chart above reflects recent Kentucky high school graduates (from public and private schools alike) entering Kentucky colleges and universities (both public and non-profit) in recent years.  The Council for Postsecondary included this news in a great set of high school feedback reports released today.

As an added plus, that trend happened in a period when the number of students going on to college was growing steadily: the students who met the readiness standards were a growing share of a growing group.

As an important caution, the 2010 entering class will face higher readiness standards at our public institutions.  The chart above reflects students who fell short of an 18 score on the English, mathematics, and reading portions of the ACT.  The new standards require and 18 in English, a 19 in mathematics, and a 20 in reading.

The same CPE website page now offers high school feedback reports for each school, district, and region of the state, and readers should definitely check these fresh results.

Fall Perspectives

The Prichard Committee's newest Perspectives newsletter is available now, featuring these headlines:

• KY Moving Toward Top 20 in Many Areas
• 'ReadyKentucky' Promotes Standards
• Words & Influence: Robert F. Sexton, 1942-2010
• Groups Publish Transition Index Data
• Gates Foundation Hears Prichard Lessons
• CIPL Institutes Enlist 57 to Start 13th Year
• Institutes In Other States Building Traditions
• Districts Launch Gates-Backed Literacy Work
• Two Prichard Members Named to State Board
• Heine Named Prichard's Interim Director
• TEK Task Force Gathers Input at Forums
• Business Leaders Joining Council Focused on Pre-K
• How to Donate to the Robert F. Sexton Legacy Fund

Quick guesses about election impacts

Here are my rapid thoughts on how the election results will affect Kentucky education.

The overall federal push to raise achievement as measured by standards-based assessments and make major changes in the very weakest schools will be sustained, but the NCLB rules will be replaced by somewhat more workable expectations.  The pressure to revise those rules is growing rapidly as the 2014 deadline approaches, and it will be strong enough to break the deadlock of the last several years.  In Kentucky and other states, the adjustments will be greeted as a constructive step as we move forward on developing our own new assessment and accountability methods.

Additional federal incentives to adopt Common Core Standards are less likely with added Republican power in Congress, and states that decide to slow down implementation may be under less pressure to move ahead.  The federal push for Common Core has been seen by a number of the winning candidates as a federal intrusion on local control.   In Kentucky, we've made our commitment, and we're using Common Core to implement Senate Bill 1, which originated under Republican sponsorship.  That change won't alter our course.  Enough other states are on board that the main momentum will continue, and opportunities for collaboration will grow.


Federal incentives to allow and expand charter schools will probably continue with the changed federal balance of power, because that strategy has strong Republican backers.  In Kentucky, where no charter bill has ever been reported out of committee, where no group of educators or parents have announced that they are working on a concrete concept for a first such school, and where no donor group has offered to provide start-up funds to get even one charter off the ground, the charter prospects will remain weak.


Federal funding to bridge another year of slow economic growth will not happen.  The 2009 stimulus bill and the 2010 EduJobs bill prevented devastating education cuts, but there won't be another installment like that.  In Kentucky, next school year will be the toughest financially in a long time, with boosted federal support running out, state SEEK funding slated for only tiny growth, and local districts very wary of voting for any additional revenue.  Used to low funding, we may not see as much disruption as some other states, but there is still significant pain ahead.  


Apart from federal initiatives, Kentucky will stay the course on implementing higher standards, supported by stronger assessments and more focused accountability rules, while struggling to provide state-level assistance for schools and districts to implement the new standards and take other steps to equip teachers with stronger skills to support students. The financial limitations on that state support will come in part from the economy and in part from state political leadership unconvinced of the need for further investment.  The election results have changed neither the strong parts of our statewide vision nor the weak parts of our commitment to make that vision into reality.

College completion puzzle (southern states edition)

Does Alabama have 14 percent or 32 percent college completion among young adults?  The State of the South 2010 report offers both numbers, just four pages apart, each time reflecting both associate's and bachelor's degrees.   For Kentucky, the choice is 18 percent or 34 percent, and the numbers for all states are shown below:

The pipeline column shows data presented using the familiar method, pioneered by Tom Mortenson, that begins with "Out of 100 ninth graders" and works through who completes high school, goes directly to college, and finishes college within 150 percent of expected time.

The adults 25 to 34 column shows data taken from the Census Bureau, and the final column shows the difference that I think genuinely deserves to be puzzled over.

Since I've been puzzling over the mismatched numbers for several years, I'll share the best clues I've found.  I think the pipeline method misses key issues in its first and last steps:

• At the beginning, it uses the state's total reported ninth grade enrollment, including those repeating the grade. A student who is held back is counted as enrolled in two different years, but can only be counted as graduating from high school once.
• At the end, it uses each state's reported college completion rate, which is the percent of full-time students who graduate from the school where they first enrolled.   That means that students who transfer at any point in their undergraduate careers are not counted as graduating, no matter how quickly they actually complete their degrees. 

Without saying that either column offers results I like, I think the difference matters: two respected sources produce quite different evidence about educational outcomes for young adults across the South.

Cincinnati's Taft High School (it happens in teams there, too)

EdWeek is sharing commentary by Laura Pappano on big change at what was once what one of Ohio's most troubled schools:

In 2001, Anthony G. Smith became the principal of the renamed Taft Information Technology High School and began turning it around. Over the past decade, Taft’s graduation rate has risen from 25 percent to 95 percent. In 2010, the percentage of 10th graders scoring proficient or higher in math is up from 33 percent to 96 percent, and from 68 percent to 96 percent in reading. The school, once in “academic emergency,” the state’s lowest designation, has moved to “effective”—and, just recently, to “excellent,” Ohio’s highest rating.

This is real progress. How did Smith do it?

There were the obvious fixes, like ending chaotic two-hour-long lunch periods and a badly organized tutoring program. But what has defined Smith’s success is his focus on the value of relationships. When he took the job, he went door to door in the neighborhood and asked for residents’ support. “My covenant was with the community, not necessarily with the board of education,” Smith said, explaining that, yes, the school is technically part of the district, but it is more powerfully a part of a neighborhood and of people’s lives.

Smith also did something counterintuitive: He kept the staff he inherited. Old teachers, the thinking goes, resist change and prevent transformation. In many turnarounds, much of the staff is let go as a “fresh start” message. Instead, Smith met individually with teachers in their classrooms and spent an hour hearing from each of them about what was working and what wasn’t. At his first staff meeting, he laid out the reality. “I asked them, ‘How do you feel about possibly being the worst school in the entire state?’ ” he recalls.

Real turnaround may require more labor intensive relationship-building than advertised.

Before a midday break, Smith told teachers that if they weren’t ready to sign on to do what was needed to help kids succeed, they shouldn’t come back after lunch. To his surprise, they all returned. “I believe they were good teachers,” he says. “They had lost their confidence. They had lost their spirit.”

The tale from that moment of committing to try is about work in progress, yielding clear evidence of impact on student success from educators who are pulling together to make it happen.  Pappano argues from the Taft success that "real turnaround may require more labor-intensive relationship-building than advertised."

Teachers don't do this sort of great work alone, following instructions to avoid consequences.  They do it together, thinking through problems and finding solutions and building one another's skills on the way to building student performance.  Without relationships that sustain that kind of lasting effort, change will be small, fragile, and easily undone.  With those relationships and the courage to invest in them, children's lives and community possibilities flourish and grow.

Teachers from the top third? Third of what?

McKinsey & Company's new report, Closing the talent gap: Attracting and retaining top-third graduates to careers in teaching, asserts that the world's top-performing nations "recruit 100% of their teacher corps from the top third of the academic cohort." The support for that claim comes from Exhibit 3 in the report, which shows that:

• Finland has "all teachers recruited from top 20% of high school academic cohort."
• South Korea has "Primary school teachers recruited from top 5 percent of high school academic cohort."
• Singapore has "All teachers recruited from top 30% of high school academic cohort.

Notice the word "high school."  The data on other countries is about high school graduates.

However, McKinsey & Company may be suggesting that the U.S. should try to recruit from the top third of college graduates.  I say "may be" because the report systematically simply says "graduates" in each place that it makes a recommendation.  That could mean high school or college.

One reason to think college graduates are meant is that the report says that in the United States,"only 23% of new teachers overall –and about 14% of those in high-poverty schools– come from the top third of graduates."  That finding is "derived from the US Department of Education, NCES, 2001 Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Survey," which only included college graduates, In my first attempt to figure out how the report used the survey, I could not find any data that was gathered about high school rank or GPA.  Though I may learn more and have to revise this post, I think the the 23 percent finding is about U.S. teachers as a percent of college graduates.

A second reason is that the report bases an entire chapter on "McKinsey's market research with 900 top-third college students."  That, too, suggests that the report's proposal is that the United States should recruit its teachers from the college top third.

Going beyond the report itself, I did some additional looking at key numbers.

To use only the top third of college students to fill teaching vacancies, the U.S. would need for 24 percent of those students to go into teaching –and that is assuming they would stay for an average of 25 years.  Kentucky, with a lower rate of college graduations, would need 27 percent of top-third college graduates to go into teaching.  By comparison, filling the same jobs from the top third of high school graduates, both the country and the state would need roughly 12 percent of those students to enter teaching.  Drawing from high school's top third seems much easier to accomplish, and since that seems to work for Finland and Singapore, it might work for us, too.

It is also worth asking what puts a student in the top third of high school graduates.  To think about that, I checked ACT results for the six states that test 100 percent of their students and found that for 2010:

• 31 percent of Kentucky high school graduates had an ACT composite of 22 or higher, as did 33 percent of Tennessee graduates,  34 percent of Michigan graduates, and 35 percent of Wyoming graduates.
• 35 percent of Illinois graduates and 36 percent of Colorado graduates had ACT composites of 23 or higher.

So, if Kentucky teacher preparation programs regularly require a 21 composite for admission, it is possible that we are already within shooting distance of the top third of high school graduates becoming our teachers –not there, but in reach with moderate effort.  Naturally, there are other ways to figure out who's in the top third in high school, and it would be great to have our new longitudinal data system give us an idea of how close our teachers already are based on those other measures. 

All of which leads me to end with these core questions:  Is McKinsey & Company recommending that we  aim to draw all teachers from the top third of college graduates?  If so, what evidence does the firm offer to support their recommendation?  

Sources: Digest of Education 2009 statistics provided the numbers for my estimates of needed teachers. The high graduate counts are for 2006-07, combining public school data  from Table 104 and private school data from Table 62.  The college graduate count is 2007-08 data from Table 321, and the 2007-08 teacher counts are from Table 65.  ACT composite percentages come from the 2010 state profile reports.

Delays on additional standards

With 2009's Senate Bill 1, Kentucky committed to clearer, higher standards in all subjects.   Reading, writing, and mathematics are addressed by the Common Core standards we now share with most states in the country.  What about the other subjects?

For science, work is underway to develop a shared multi-state approach.  A draft framework of key issues, developed by the National Research Council was released and gathered public comments this summer.   The planned steps ahead include:

• A second framework draft for more comments.
• A final framework draft this winter.
• At least two drafts of a full standards document, with opportunities for vetting and comments.
• A final standards document in December 2011.

For social studies, the process to develop a multi-state document looks slower.  The Department's ISN newsletter reported last week that the timetable may take two to three more years.

With new assessments scheduled to start in May 2012, it's probably time to discuss whether the Core Content will have to be the basis for that testing.

"Superman" offers right question, fractions of the answer

Beau and I (and five other people) saw "Waiting for Superman" this afternoon in Lexington.  Like David Guggenheim's earlier "An Inconvenient Truth," the film aims to convert a giant policy issue into a giant popular mobilization, this time focusing on public education.  I'll share my thoughts as pluses and wishes, hoping that both can be helpful in thinking about the movie and the issues.

THREE PLUSES
As a reflection of children's potential and parents' concerns, "Waiting for Superman" does quite a good job.  It tracks a set of children hoping to be admitted to charter schools, four to avoid deeply troubled urban schools and one to avoid the hazards of tracking in a functioning suburban high school.

As a presentation of great teaching, it also does a good job.  In fact, it makes it clear that the founders of the famous KIPP academies got some of their best strategies from their public school colleagues, and Bill Gates' brief interview includes a clear statement (wish I had that sentence on tape) about the role of teachers pulling together to figure out how to deliver.

As a statement of a civic issue, it's also sturdy: how do we provide stronger schools for all students in a situation where nearly all current schools fall a bit short of what we need and some are alarmingly weak?

THREE WISHES
"Waiting for Superman" makes it too easy to imagine that most elementary schools have teachers who overlook students' actual reading success and ignore parent phone calls and that most high schools are dropout factories that fail to graduate 40 percent or more of their entering students.  I wish that there had been a clearer distinction between the relatively rare calamity schools and the vast majority of schools that need to pick up their game to meet rising economic challenges.

The film doesn't quite say "the solution is to have many more charter schools."  It does say that only one in five charter schools delivers great results.  But all the schools it holds up as worth attending are charter schools.  I can only remember only one model of innovation inside existing public schools--and that consisted of calling for an end to tenure.  The main emphasis is, in fact, on escaping from places where current teaching is not strong enough.  That's a shame.  I deeply wish the film had been more interested in how individual teachers grow in their craft.

Finally, the film simply didn't see what strikes me as the most important piece of the whole education puzzle: creating the shared cultures in which all teachers develop fully effective skills.  You could ask me to design a bridge and give me a stack of engineering books--and you know perfectly well I'd need years and classes and coaches and colleagues to be able to do it.  Same thing for setting bones or removing gall bladders.  Same thing for creating 3-D computer animations.  No one masters any profession without ongoing learning, and no one reaches excellence in any craft without sustained support.  The educators in Kentucky's schools that beat the poverty odds deliver by working together and being that support for one another.  I'm willing to bet the one in five charter schools that make a big difference do it the same way.  Most of all, I wish the film had gotten to that key point: the work that raises achievement and closes gaps happens in teams, or it does not happen at all.

As a nation, we've tried less money, more money, teaching subjects separately, teaching them in combination, open classrooms, closed classrooms, tests with no stakes, tests with high stakes, state mandates, and local options.  What works is direct, hands-on, in-school commitment to teachers who collaborate to study student results, figure out instructional solutions, and develop their skills together.  The key issue is figuring out how to ensure that it happens in one, two, one hundred, one thousand, and eventually every school in the country.

Preparing teachers for standards (or not)

In Cracks in the Ivory Tower, the Fordham Foundation recently published results of a mayor survey of education professors, including one set of the questions that, "Teacher education programs can impart different qualities to their students.  Which of the following qualities do you think are most essential and which are least essential?"  Here are the rates at which respondents ranked some qualities "absolutely essential," as highlighted in a new Flypaper post:

• 82 percent for "teachers who are themselves life-long learners and constantly updating their skills"
• 69 percent for "teachers who will have high expectations of all their students"
• 42 percent for "teachers trained in pragmatic issues of running a classroom such as managing time and preparing lesson plans"
• 37 percent for "teachers who maintain discipline and order in the classroom"
• 24 percent for "teachers who understand how to work with the state's standards, tests and accountability systems"

That last item makes me ache.  Remember that I'm convinced that what works for students is teaching to standards by checking each student's current work and adjusting instruction to keep every student moving forward.  That's the model that raises achievement and shrinks achievement gaps.  It's what "balanced assessment" is all about.

Seeing that approach as essential for students, I hate to see evidence that professors don't see capacity to use that approach as essential for teachers. 

Do note that the survey reflects a national sample, rather than a Kentucky sample.  I'm hopeful that Kentucky programs are already better focused, and even more hopeful that Senate Bill 1 will add further strength to our teacher preparation efforts. 

Limits of value-added teacher evaluations

In the debate over how (and whether) to use student test scores in evaluating teachers, the "value-added" approach calls for looking not simply at how students score, but at how much they improve from year to year--at what value having a particular teacher seems to add to a student's academic performance.

The idea has some intuitive appeal, but it comes with some serious problems.

The largest may be that it's hard to get enough student results to be sure we're seeing a fair representation of teacher impact.  The big Sanders studies in Tennessee were, among other things, big studies.  The findings reflect data from many teachers and many many students.  Trying to convert the method to give credible information on individual teachers will be a tougher challenge. Back in July, a report from the National Center for Education Evaluation highlighted how big the challenge could be:

The simulations suggest that, if three years of single classroom data per year are available for each teacher and the system aims to identify low performing teachers, then 1 in 4 teachers who are truly average in performance may be erroneously classified as performing significantly below the district average. They also suggest that 1 in 4 teachers whose true performance is lower than the district average by 3 to 4 months of student learning per year may be overlooked. In contrast, with 10 years of classroom data per teacher (or, for example, two years of data for teachers who teach five classrooms per year), the error rates fall to 11 percent. Similar error rates would be observed if the system aims to identify high performing teachers.

And then, here are three more challenges to consider:

■■ Not all subjects and grades currently have mandated tests. As a result, if teacher effectiveness measures were limited to a score based on teachers’ contributions to student performance on standardized tests, the feedback would exclude the majority of teachers— all of whom have an important role in student learning. This issue could be resolved by additional tests, but tests are resource- and time intensive (for both students and teachers) and are highly variable in quality.

■■ Value-added measures, which determine a teacher’s unique contribution to each student’s performance, offer fair comparisons among teachers within a system, but they do not and cannot help teachers understand why one teacher is more successful than another. Teachers with the highest and lowest value-added scores are both left to speculate about what they did to merit their scores. More important, the scores do not suggest what a teacher would have to change to improve his/her effectiveness in the classroom.

■■ For some teachers, particularly those early in their careers, consequential performance judgments would be made based on the test performance of relatively few students. Though this concern diminishes over time, multiple measures could allow more accurate judgments earlier in a teacher’s career when they could have a significant impact on a teacher’s professional growth.

Those three points are part of the logic behind the Gates Foundation's work on Measuring Effective Teaching, and taken from the report on that work I discussed earlier in the month.

That's four problems: getting enough data for credible statistics, untested subjects, lack of information on how to improve, data that comes later than needed.

Taken together, those problems show that sound evaluation systems will need to include other kinds of information, taken from observing teachers working with students and with colleagues and from looking at student work beyond the data pulled from state assessment systems.

Value-added data is never going to be the main solution to the challenge of helping each teacher become increasingly effective over the course of his or her professional career.

Quick numbers: Public university completions and Pell grants

The College Navigator now shows 2008-09 data for all Kentucky postsecondary institutions.  Here are two quick snapshots comparing our public universities, drawn from those data files.

First, here's how the schools varied in completion rates for full-time students who began their studies in the fall of 2003--counting only students who completed at the school where they started:

Second, here's a very rough indication of students' family resources, as shown by how many were eligible for federal Pell grants awarded to those with the lowest family incomes:

Louisville's big goal (and its big name)

A new public-private partnership in Kentucky's largest city aims to raise college attainment dramatically.  Concretely, they want to see 55,000 additional degrees for adults ages 25 to 64 by 2020, and to make the goal unforgettable, they've named the effort "55,000 Degrees."

The goal reflects what will be needed to have 40 percent bachelor's attainment plus 10 percent associate's attainment, which in turn will place Louisville "in the top tier among its peer cities."

The initiative has launched its new website, but has not yet posted the data details behind its goals.  Being a numbers wonk, I naturally want to see the number they've identified as their starting point and thus the degree counts they're seeking to make up the added 55,000 result.

Overall, it looks like a serious push, with substantial institutional and financial support, to make an important difference in a very important community!

Common Core keeps growing!

Here's EdWeek's latest map, showing 38 states and the District of Columbia committed to the Common Core Standards in both literacy and mathematics, plus Minnesota being on board for the literacy alone:

Digital textbooks or hybrids?

From Tom Shelton on Twitter to a fresh article in the New York Times, I've been seeing new probing about why paper textbooks are not rapidly being replaced with on-line versions.  

My hunch is that full replacement will never happen.   The special genius of books isn't in the individual pages: any given page can be shown just about as well on a screen.  The special genius of books, and magazines, and catalogues, is in how the pages relate.  It's in the way a reader can skim quickly to find an item of interest and flip back and forth to see how the different parts relate.  That's why I can see an EdWeek headline in three different e-mails and two different Google Reader links, and only become intrigued by the story when the paper copy lands on my dining room table.

For that reason, I think students will always need books, actual books to organize the main big picture of each subject they study.  Most teachers will also value that firm organizer of the main content for a given course of study.

The key thing is that the books no longer need to stand alone, and they no longer need to be loaded down with other kinds of learning resources that can be offered better electronically.

I predict a future that uses the strengths of both.

The standard book for a course can be much shorter, designed to convey the key concepts and connections quickly.

Then, as students work their way through the book, they can use digital tools to dig into how those ideas each work.  We're already seeing software that lets students work math problems that adjust in difficulty to provide more practice where needed and more challenge where appropriate.  Think about how much clearer Newtonian physics and animal anatomy can become with interactive videos.  Imagine being able to switch at will from maps of individual battles to the full global view of World War II.

Those options can be easily indexed to the chapters of a textbook, or even to the somewhat different approaches of multiple textbooks.  They can be official parts of a given class, or items students find and use for their own added study.  Students studying the same chapter, with the same teacher, can use different supporting tools to build their understandings.  There can even be room for discussion about the textbooks themselves, so that students can consider arguments about whether any given book gives too much or too little weight to some aspects of a subject.

That hybrid approach, with the textbook still essential but smaller in scale and price, and digital resources important but still related to a core printed structure, looks to me like the the most probable future.

Thinking about Bob Sexton (two versions)

Bob Sexton spent a lot of our time together getting me to stop adding footnotes and philosophy to things I wrote and said. So when I was asked to write about him for tomorrow's celebration of his life, I left out the background thinking and did the short edition:

Think back to the late 1980s, when American civic life seemed so frail. So many voices urged us to spend little, aim lower, and expect less from our neighbors and ourselves.

In those years, Bob Sexton chose another course. While others prepared to abandon ship, Bob and his band of colleagues boldly set sail. They charted ways to change Kentucky’s schools—big strategies, to strengthen all our children. They searched out allies to help those changes happen—thousands of Kentucky citizens, hundreds of national supporters.

Over three decades, Bob proved that our civic life was ready for new growth. He cultivated leaders, nurtured understanding, and harvested results, so that today, the trees Bob planted bloom all around us. Nationally, Kentucky fourth graders rank ninth in reading and our eighth graders rank sixteenth. Kentucky colleges produced 9,000 more graduates in 2010 than in 2000. With the new Common Core standards, Kentucky has made a fresh commitment to higher student achievement, and we did it sooner and with greater confidence than any other state in the union.

Results like those are half of Bob Sexton’s legacy. Our engagement as citizens is the other half. Individually and together, we are the people that Bob taught, shaped, and empowered to live out his vision. Loving him and the work he began, we can and will continue building better schools, stronger communities, and larger lives for our next generation.

Having shared that, I adore blogging because I don't have to stop with the short version of a thought, so here's a second take on the same thinking, with both the personal and historical tucked in.

I was in high school during Watergate, the first oil crisis, stagflation and the fall of Saigon.

While I was in college, President Carter diagnosed malaise, Proposition 13 began its steady destruction of California’s public services, and President Reagan took office with promises to abolish the federal education department.

The year I graduated, Alistair MacIntyre offered his memorable prescription for a dying civilization:

What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community in which civility and the moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope. This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament. We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another – doubtless very different – St Benedict. 

The spirit of that age really seemed focused on accepting decline and finding tiny ways to get by in a time when great building was not possible.

That was 1981—my 1981.

I share all that to so you know why I marvel at Bob Sexton's approach to that same 1981:

The members of the original committee had limited faith that their recommendations would be implemented. As a result, they decided that Kentucky’s political and educational leadership should be emboldened to take daring steps for change in Kentucky higher education. Most important, their work led to a second conclusion, a conviction that, as Ed Prichard said, “Education is a seamless web running from the earliest years through the highest levels of educational achievement.” They were convinced that Kentucky education, from the years of earliest childhood through high school and vocational education, needed radical improvement.

Similarly, the view from 1990 still impresses me:

Thousands of citizens, all over Kentucky, have stepped forward. A quiet revolution has moved through communities. When educational decisions are made, the public is asserting its right to be heard. Kentuckians have made the connection between improved schools and improved jobs –between improved schools and improved lives. In hundreds of communities, our citizens have decided to do something about their own schools; they have joined on the path to a larger life.

The big picture in 2004 is, to my eyes, clearly historic in scale:

These volunteers have shown that commitment, focus, and inclusiveness can produce outstanding results. They shared a deep faith in the power of high-quality education. They trusted in the possibility of progress, even against discouraging conditions. They could envision a better way and knew they and their fellow citizens could reach it. They believed they owned a big share of government and felt personally responsible for making sure it served them and other people well. They were doers, not complainers, who kept their eyes on the prize. Like General Washington, they kept their army in the field. 

While MacIntyre and my favorite college mentors argued that it was time for despair and disengagement, Bob Sexton staked out the opposite claim, marshaled his evidence and made his case.  He strengthened our shared institutions, expanded civic engagement, and accomplished large things through democratic institutions.  He changed our state and inspired new effort across our nation, at a time when many claimed such things were no longer in reach.

These decades, Bob’s decades, have been a time for new planting and fresh growth, bold plans and great building.  The doomsayers in the academy and on the air waves were wrong, and he was right.  Even as we know that there is still huge work to be done, let us celebrate Bob Sexton's vision, his effort, and his successful demonstration that we as citizens can indeed make important new things happen for our children and our communities.

Sources: The MacIntyre quote is from After Virtue (University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), page 245. The next two passages are from the second edition of the Prichard Committee's The Path to a Larger Life (University Press of Kentucky 1990), page xii and xvi, respectively. The last is from Robert F. Sexton, Mobilizing Citizens for Better Schools (Teachers College Press, 2004), page 113.

South Heights Elementary brings it on!

108 for white students and 108 for African-American students! South Heights Elementary in Henderson County has delivered both excellence and equity in full measure this year.

Those disaggregated index results use a 0-140 scale, with 100 equivalent to the average student being proficient across all subjects.  The index approach is explained here, and results for all schools and districts are available for download here.

I hope to celebrate many other scores as sweet in the years to come, and I know we're getting ready to aim for the higher, college-and-career-ready standards of the future, but thus far, I rank these South Heights results as the loveliest I've seen in my eleven years of sorting through Kentucky results.

Disaggregated index results: mostly forward, nearly all too slow

Here's today's press release:

Achievement gaps continue to impair Kentucky’s overall education progress, according to an analysis of state test scores released today by three statewide groups. Kentucky schools are falling especially short with students with disabilities, limited English proficiency, and African-American backgrounds. Low-income and Hispanic students also scored well below their peers.

The analysis, presented in a "Disaggregated Index Report," was developed by the Council for Better Education, the Kentucky Association of School Councils and the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence to monitor school performance during the three years that Kentucky is moving from the Commonwealth Accountability Testing System to a system based on new state standards and testing. The new system was mandated in legislation (Senate Bill 1) enacted by the 2009 General Assembly.

The Disaggregated Index is based on a formula similar to the one used in past years by the Kentucky Department of Education to compare student results based on race, income, and other factors. The partner groups applied the formula to state test scores results, and found that:

• Of all groups studied, only Asian elementary students and gifted students at all levels have reached proficiency.

• White elementary students are the only other group on track to reach proficiency by 2014. White results are improving too slowly in middle and high school.

• Hispanic students, low-income students, and students with disabilities showed improvement at all levels, but at rates too slow to reach proficiency by 2014.

• African-American student results are flat for middle and high school, with a small improvement at the elementary level.

• Asian student results, though high, declined at all three levels.

• Students with limited English proficiency had declining results in middle and high school levels, with slow elementary improvement.

• On the 0-140 scale used in the analysis, gaps of 17 points or more separate African-American students, students with disabilities, and students with limited English proficiency from their classmates at every level.

"The goal is to deliver proficiency for each and every child," said Ronda Harmon, executive director of the Kentucky Association of School Councils. "These disaggregated index results allow schools to evaluate strengths and tackle weaknesses until the 2012 assessment begins."

"The gaps remain painful and include some worrisome declines, reminding us that we still have major work ahead to provide an equal quality of education for all Kentucky’s children,” said Daviess County Superintendent Tom Shelton, president of the Council for Better Education. "Plus, to be competitive in the global economy, we need every single student to be learning at very high levels, preparing for when the new college-ready standards come into play."

Cindy Heine, interim executive director of the Prichard Committee, saw the report as “a call to action for all Kentucky adults on behalf of all our children.” Heine added that the point of the report was to see the trends clearly and encourage all stakeholders to keep attention on raising performance during the testing transition.

The full report on statewide data, and the file of district and school results are available for download from the KASC website.

A manifesto of lesser ideas

Sunday, the superintendents of some of the nation's largest districts, including New York City and Washington, DC, published a manifesto on "How to fix our schools." I've read it four times, and slept on it for three nights, and I still think it's more wrong than right.

The authors are surely sincere in their desire for school systems that deliver much more for students, and they're certainly right that laying off strong teachers to keep weak ones is bad practice. Likewise, better use of better technology, closer analysis of important student data, and a focus on learning results rather than seat time in class are all good ideas.

What's missing, though, is any serious discussion of the changes within schools that strengthen individual teachers. There's no hint of professional learning communities here. There's no whisper of building the collaborative cultures needed to teach in the ways that actually raise performance and shrink achievement gaps. There's concern about removing teachers who are hopeless, but no matching intensity about building up the much larger group of teachers who can and should do the main work ahead.  The core understanding that the big learning change happens with teams of teachers just isn't there.

That missing element is the essential bridge between education ideas proven in tiny studies and education changes that happen on a scale large enough to change our future.

Add that piece, and American education can reach for historic success.

Leave it out, and we can count on tiny advances, tiny retreats, and an overall legacy of stagnation.

The manifesto's authors left out what matters most.

Testing troubles (in New York)

The Times has a long report up about the assessment uproar in the Empire State.

The basics seem to be that their state department raised the bar this year, so that students who would likely have been counted as proficient on recent past tests are not counted as proficient now.  Where New York City in particular had been celebrating rapid improvement in proficiency levels, the shift came as a shock.

Behind the basics, it sounds like this year's change was driven by weakness in the earlier test design.  The state aimed for a very short and narrow assessment, where everyone knew which content would be included and students could finish quickly. The state also aimed for transparency, releasing each year's test soon after it was given.

As a result, the quick route to higher scores was to drill students on the exact items and other very similar work--and that only equipped students to succeed on that exact test.  When the state switched assessments this year, much of the apparent gain did not carry over.

The most important Kentucky lesson may be about raising standards.   New York in 2010 is working through a shift like the one we have planned for 2012: we're going to test our students against higher standards and need to expect the reports to show lower levels of success.

New Yorkers appear widely shocked by what they've learned from the process.  In Kentucky, we should be aiming for our colleagues and neighbors to be well prepared for the change, expecting for the new results to be a frank statement of the challenges we need to meet in the coming years, but entirely prepared to face those "brutal facts" and get to work changing them.

Kentuckians starting college

In the fall of 2008:

• 33,761 Kentucky residents enrolled as first-time students in Kentucky undergraduate programs that award degrees or certificates.
• 5,500 Kentucky residents enrolled in equivalent programs in other states.
• 39,261 Kentucky residents total started work toward college degrees or other postsecondary certificates.
• That's an increase of 1,837 from the matching 2006 numbers.

Also in the fall of 2008:

• 7,388 residents of other states and 131 people whose residency could not be determined enrolled as first time students in Kentucky undergraduate programs that award degrees or certificates.
• 41,280 people total started their college studies in Kentucky.
• That's an increase of 1,279 from 2006.

Those figures come from  Enrollment in Postsecondary Institutions, Fall 2008; Graduation Rates, 2002 and 2005 Cohorts; and Financial Statistics, Fiscal Year 2008 First Look,  released by the National Center for Educational Statistics in April 2010.

Very loosely, it's worth comparing those 39 thousand Kentuckians starting college to around 46 thousand who finished high school earlier that year (41,275 public graduates, with the rest as an estimate from private schools and home-schools)

It's also worth comparing the 39 thousand enrolling to around 56 thousand who should have graduated (51,339 eighth-graders participating in spring 2004 public-school testing, and the rest as an estimate of nonpublic students that year.)

And, as always, it's worth looking forward to a longitudinal data system that will let us track student progress much more confidently starting a few years from now.

Holliday: Career-ready belongs in the mix

KSBA has shared a great write-up of thoughts that Commissioner Holliday shared with the Kentucky Board of Education yesterday, arguing for our next accountability system to value indicators of readiness of careers as well as for college.  Here's a sample to lure you into reading the whole article:

“Senate Bill 1 didn’t really say ‘career ready;’ it said ‘college ready.’ So we could leave off the whole column (on a chart of proposed scoring percentages) of career ready,” Holliday said, “but I don’t think we’re going to get a lot of support from high schools. They’ll say, ‘Well, I’ve got 34 percent of my kids who don’t go to college.’ You’ve got a lot of high schools who will push back if you don’t have career measurement.”

And here's another.

“The future of Kentucky is on the line here. This, to me, is the big one,” Holliday said. “I’m not adverse to raising the weighting on this one because this ought to be the No. 1 issue for a superintendent of schools – making sure that my K-12 system creates graduates who move on to improve their quality of life and the quality of life in the Commonwealth.”

Click here to read the entire report and consider the Commissioner's full argument.

Kentucky education rankings

Here are Kentucky's rankings on the indicators included in the Prichard Committee's new Top 20 update.

ON TRACK FOR 2020

New results show Kentucky moving up on nine indicators, either reaching the Top 20 or improving fast enough to get there by 2020. We rank:

• 9th in fourth-grade reading
• 12th in higher education funding per pupil
• 16th in eighth-grade reading
• 22nd in average teacher salaries
• 24th in family share of higher education costs
• 26th in high school graduates starting higher education
• 28th in completion of associate’s degrees
• 30th in fourth-grade mathematics
• 30th in students earning AP college credit

IMPROVING, BUT SLOWLY

On two indicators, new results show gains too slow to reach the Top 20 on time. We rank:

• 33rd in high school attainment
• 42nd in bachelor’s degree attainment

FLAT OR LOSING GROUND

New results show Kentucky stuck or losing ground on five indicators. We rank:

• 28th in preschool enrollment
• 34th in eighth-grade math
• 42nd in bachelor’s degree completion
• 45th in science, technology, engineering and math as a share of bachelor’s degrees
• 42nd in elementary and secondary funding per pupil

NO NEW DATA

Four indicators had no new data, with Kentucky still ranking:

• 9th in fourth-grade science
• 20th in fourth-grade writing
• 22nd in eighth-grade science
• 36th in eighth-grade writing

You can also download the complete report, including scores on each indicator, source information, and key strategies for moving our state all the way into national leadership here.

Pushing closer to Top 20

This afternoon, the Prichard Committee released its first update on its 2008 challenge to move Kentucky into the top twenty states in the country by 2020.  The full report is available at www.prichardcommittee.org, and here are the core findings:

Most of the new results are good, showing us on track to reach the Top 20 tier of states:

• Reading results are especially exciting, showing both fourth-grade and eighth-grade Kentucky students reaching the Top 20 for the first time.
• Student results are moving up quickly enough to reach the Top 20 by 2020 in fourth-grade mathematics, high school Advanced Placement credit, students starting higher education, and the rate of completing associate’s degrees.
• Our commitment to support student learning also looks strong as we moved forward in teacher salaries, higher education funding and family share of college costs.

However, there are clear grounds for concern in other areas:

• We improved, but too slowly, in the levels of high school and bachelor’s attainment of young Kentucky adults.
• We gained no ground in eighth-grade mathematics.
• We lost ground in preschool enrollment, bachelor’s degree completion, STEM degrees and P-12 funding.

Measuring teacher effectiveness

"Working with Teachers to Develop Fair and Reliable Measures of Effective Teaching" summarizes a huge study now in process, in which:

To help identify the best mix of teacher effectiveness measures, more than 3,000 teacher volunteers are participating in the MET project across six predominantly urban school districts: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, Dallas Independent School District, Denver Public Schools, Hillsborough County Public Schools, Memphis City Schools, and the New York City Department of Education. Participants teach math and English language arts (ELA) in grades 4–8, Algebra I, grade 9 English, and high school biology. All MET project teachers have agreed to have the following data collected and analyzed:

• students’ performance on standardized state and supplemental assessments
• video-based classroom observation (four lessons per teacher per year) and teachers’ reflections on these lessons
• teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge—an assessment of a teacher’s ability to recognize and diagnose students’ misunderstandings of the lessons
• students’ perceptions of the instructional environment in the classroom
• teachers’ perceptions of the working conditions and instructional support at their schools

As the study moves forward, there will be waves of new data on how each of the other factors connects to the core issue of student performance.  Future evaluation systems can then give teachers feedback on their use of the practices that work and more helpful ideas about how they can increase their effectiveness.

The MET study is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and moving on a fast track that calls for preliminary results of the first year's work to be released this fall and final results of the full study to be available by the winter of 2011-12.

Singapore math (good overview)

In contrast to the most common math programs in the United States, Singapore math devotes more time to fewer topics, to ensure that children master the material through detailed instruction, questions, problem solving, and visual and hands-on aids like blocks, cards and bar charts. Ideally, they do not move on until they have thoroughly learned a topic.

Principals and teachers say that slowing down the learning process gives students a solid math foundation upon which to build increasingly complex skills, and makes it less likely that they will forget and have to be retaught the same thing in later years.

And with Singapore math, the pace can accelerate by fourth and fifth grades, putting children as much as a year ahead of students in other math programs as they grasp complex problems more quickly.

That's from today's New York Times article, which also notes that while the books for the Singapore approach have costs in line with other textbooks, equipping teachers to use these methods may need a major professional development investment.

As nearly as I can follow the bidding, our new Common Core math standards share the Singapore notion of studying fewer concepts more deeply, and this approach to teaching will be a credible contender as a school strategy for moving students forward to those new expectations for higher achievement.  There may be some specific elements that do not quite align, but the main thinking truly seems compatible.