MAKING THE GRADE - New Standards in Teaching Science

"In elementary education, ‘doing science’ rather than just memorizing it" PBS NewsHour 6/21/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  The battle over Common Core education standards is playing out across the country, but a new set of requirements for teaching science is creeping into curricula without the same fanfare.  Some states are voluntarily adopting the practices, which emphasize more consistent science instruction as well as hands-on experimentation.  Special correspondent John Tulenko of Education Week reports.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  For years, Common Core academic standards for math and English have been the subject of battles all over the country.

But there’s also a move afoot to set new standards for science as well, and a number of states are starting to adopt them voluntarily.

Special correspondent John Tulenko of Education Week reports.

JOHN TULENKO, Education Week:  It takes just 10 minutes to cross through Gillette, Wyoming.  This small city sits in the northeast corner of the state, surrounded by hundreds of miles of prairie.

But schools here in Campbell County are on the edge of something big, the next generation science standards.

CHRISTY MATHES, Sage Valley Junior High School:  You are going to build a strand of DNA, and you are going to decode it and figure out what that DNA actually says.

JOHN TULENKO:  For Christy Mathes at Sage Valley Junior High School, the new standards are about learning to think like a scientist.

CHRISTY MATHES:  There’s a lot of really good stuff in them.  Every standard is a performance task.  It’s not, 'the child needs to memorize these things.'  It’s the student needs to be able to do some pretty intense stuff.  We are analyzing, we are critiquing, we are creating, we are actually doing the science.

JOHN TULENKO:  Take today’s lesson on genes.  Mathes had her students pick fictional 'Character Cards' with the name, height, hair and eye color, of each character.

CHRISTY MATHES:  This is a secret.  Just you and your group know.

JOHN TULENKO:  In teams, they built a genetic model of their character’s traits and then the groups traded models.

CHRISTY MATHES:  And then they’re going to figure out who you had based on what you code for.

EDUCATION - The Every Student Succeeds Act

"New education law shifts federal influence over public schools" PBS NewsHour 12/10/2015

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SUMMARY:  After years of debate, President Obama and Congress have finally agreed on a new education law.  The Every Student Succeeds Act, the successor of No Child Left Behind, still requires annual testing of some students, but it does not give the federal government the power to impose penalties on underperforming schools.  Alyson Klein of Education Week joins Judy Woodruff for a closer look.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  After years of criticism and debate over the federal law known as No Child Left Behind, the president and Congress have finally agreed on a new education law, one that aims to shift some of the federal government’s influence over 100,000 public schools.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA:  A Christmas miracle, a bipartisan bill signing right here.

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

JUDY WOODRUFF:  President Obama praised the new bill called the Every Student Succeeds Act as he prepared to sign it into law at the White House.

It still requires annual testing of students between third and eighth grade, as well as once during high school.  But, unlike the prior law signed by President George W. Bush in 2002, it doesn’t give the federal government power to impose penalties on underperforming schools.

President Obama, who had waived those penalties, but had backed many features of the law for years, acknowledged the shortcomings of No Child Left Behind.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA:  It didn’t always consider the specific needs of each community.  It led to too much testing during classroom time.  It often forced schools and school districts into cookie-cutter reforms that didn’t always produce the kinds of results that we wanted to see.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  The new law passed with unusually large bipartisan margins in the Senate and the House, a point made yesterday by one of its sponsors, Republican Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee.

SEN. LAMAR ALEXANDER (R), Tennessee:  Not many things this important pass the U.S. Senate 85-12.

(LAUGHTER)

SEN. LAMAR ALEXANDER:  And we’re — this is a big Christmas present from the Senate and the House, and it’s going down to the President, and I hope he wraps a big red ribbon around it and sends it out to 100 million students and 3.4 million teachers in 100,000 pubic schools.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  States and school districts will now have more responsibility for judging how schools are doing and how to utilize testing.  Teacher evaluations, long a subject of intense debate, will not necessarily be tied to tests.

EDUCATION - Debate on Common Core Standards

As I have said before, the ONLY problem with Common Core Standards is the TEST, which when used to tie school funding to the results, which in turn forces some schools to spend time teaching to the test to get money.  The results should ONLY be use as a benchmark to see how each school is doing compared to others.

"Bill and Melinda Gates on the political debate over Common Core standards" PBS NewsHour 10/7/2015

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SUMMARY:  Bill and Melinda Gates, two of the world’s leading philanthropists, sit down with Gwen Ifill in Seattle to discuss their efforts to support education reform and the political battles over the Common Core standards.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  They have spent $35 billion so far tackling malaria and AIDS and Ebola abroad.

But here at home, their laser focus has been on education reform, which has catapulted them into the middle of a 2016 political debate.

I sat down today in Seattle with Bill and Melinda Gates.

Melinda, Bill Gates, thank you for joining us.

MELINDA GATES, Gates Foundation:  Thanks for having us.

GWEN IFILL:  For better or worse this year, education is a campaign issue.  You can say that is good news, that’s bad news.  How do you see it, Melinda?

MELINDA GATES:  I think the fact that education is part of the public discourse in an election year is incredibly important, because education for us in America is the bridge to equal opportunity.

And so, if it’s not working for everybody, we need to be discussing that as a nation.  So, in that sense, it’s actually a good thing.

GWEN IFILL:  But the discussion is all about Common Core and about whether standardized testing, and however you choose to define Common Core, is the right idea.

Do you worry that the whole issue that you have pushed to support, this idea of raising achievement through standardized testing and other ways, do you worry that politics is obscuring Common Core arguments?

BILL GATES, Gates Foundation:  Well, it is concerning that the facts about Common Core are often obscured.

The Common Core sets high standards for what math, reading and writing kids should learn in high school, and it helps get the progression down, so that even if a kid is moving from state to state, if they’re using online material, it’s all benchmarked the same way.  And if a kid graduates from high school, they will know that they don’t have to go and take remedial classes.

So, it’s a very important advance.  It’s a standard that is allowing for a lot of innovation, where people build elements that connect up to the Common Core.  So, we’re seeing great results.  Kentucky was the first state to go ahead with it.  They’re actually the state that’s seen the most improvement in a lot of their test scores, and even in their high school graduation rates.

So, it’s rolling out.  It’s a foundational piece that will help improve things.

GWEN IFILL:  How did the worm turn on this debate, from so many states adopting it so quickly, to so many people, especially Republicans, saying, if you endorse this, it’s a disqualifying feature?

MELINDA GATES:  Well, I think it’s important to look back.

It was the state governors and the state superintendents who, in 2006, said, this is right for each of our states.  This is what we want, because if these are standards are set properly, we know that our kids are on a learning trajectory to learn what they need to know to be part of the knowledge economy.

So, that’s when it was set.  There has been a lot of political debate about — and people have confounded it with, is it federal control vs. state control?  No, it’s states who are deciding this.  A few states have actually rolled back the Common Core, but it’s interesting.  What they have put in, in place of it is 95 percent the Common Core.  It just is a different word.

But 42 states and the District of Columbia are still doing the Common Core, because they know it’s right.  And more important, quite honestly, than the political debate that goes on is what’s happening with teachers in the schools.

When you survey teachers across the nation whose states have Common Core in place, they say, we like it.  It’s hard to implement, but we know it’s the right thing for our students.  Our students are learning the things that they need to learn.

EDUCATION - Anti-Standardized Testing Movement

"What galvanized standardized testing’s opt-out movement" PBS NewsHour 5/26/2015

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SUMMARY:  As the school year draws to a close, many students are taking standardized tests tied to the Common Core.  But in some communities there has been a strong backlash, with parents deciding to opt out of having their children participate.  The NewsHour’s William Brangham talks to special correspondent for education John Merrow and Motoko Rich of The New York Times.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour):  Parents, in fact, are deciding to opt out.  More specifically, their children are simply not taking year-end standardized tests, such as the PARCC exam or another one known as Smarter Balanced.

The movement has been relatively small in total numbers.  But it picked up a lot of support this year in places like New York State, where as many as 165,000 students opted out.  In New Jersey, 15 percent of the high schoolers who were slated to take the tests chose not to do so.  It’s also been an issue in Florida and elsewhere.

We fill in the picture with John Merrow, our special correspondent for education, who reported on this earlier this spring, and Motoko Rich, a national education reporter for The New York Times who has been covering this.

Motoko Rich, I would like to start with you.

I wonder if you could tell me, this movement seemingly came out of — somewhat come out of nowhere.  We have had standardized testing for a fairly long time.  I wonder, why this moment?  What are the concerns, and why have they sprung up now?

MOTOKO RICH, The New York Times:  Well, I think there have been — it’s sort of a perfect storm of concern, so it’s not just about testing.  A lot of people that I talked to said, it’s not the test themselves that they object to.  It’s what they’re being used for and what they’re based on.

So, we first had this movement to introduce new academic standards known as the Common Core, which were adopted by more than 40 states.  And, in general, they’re much more rigorous than the standards that came before.  And so in the development of new tests to measure whether or not students were reaching those standards and whether teachers were teaching to those standards, the tests became harder.

And when they were first administered in New York State, the proportion of students that passed these tests fell fairly drastically.  So, you used to have something like 70 percent or 80 percent of students were passing the test, and then it dropped to about 30 percent.  So, that really created a lot of concern.  And that was last year.

So, this year, when the test was administered, I think there was already a lot of anxiety out there.  And then, on top of that, Governor Cuomo here in New York decided that he wanted to make teacher evaluations more rigorous.  And he was concerned that so many teachers had been rated as effective or highly effective the year earlier.

And so he proposed that 50 percent of their evaluations be based on the student test scores.  And I think that was really the moment that galvanized a lot of parents and teachers who were talking to the parents to say, wait a minute.  That’s not what we want the test to be used for.

As it turned out, that proposal didn’t pass, but, by then, I think there had been a lot of momentum about it.  A lot of parents were concerned that these tests were being used in a way that they didn’t deem appropriate.

EDUCATION - Rebellion Against Common Core Tests

COMMENT:  The real problem with Common Core testing is HOW they are applied.  The results are linked to school funding, a VERY BIG mistake.  They should be used only so individual schools can compare how their school is doing state and nation wide.  School funding should have noting to do with it.

The other thing wrong is schools teaching to the test.  That makes the results of the test misleading if not false.  The test should be evaluating the NORMAL day to day education of students.

"Why some students are refusing to take the Common Core test" PBS NewsHour 3/11/2015

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SUMMARY:  Rebellion is brewing against the Common Core educational standards. Testing for the new standards began in March, and some students have refused to take part.  Special correspondent for education John Merrow reports from New Jersey, where he talks to Common Core critics and supporters.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Testing for the Common Core learning standards in U.S. public schools began earlier this month.  And just as a rebellion is brewing against the Common Core, there are now protests building against the national tests associated with them.

Reports of students refusing to take the tests are coming in daily, and if those numbers keep building, it could endanger the goals of the standards themselves.

Our special correspondent for education, John Merrow, has the story from New Jersey.

STUDENT:  We’re live.  We’re live.

JOHN MERROW (NewsHour):  Something big is happening in New Jersey, and it’s being broadcast on YouTube.

STUDENT:  If you’re, like, following us on Twitter or Instagram, make sure you use the hashtag #OccupyNPS.

JOHN MERROW:  In Newark, high school students occupied the superintendent’s office for three days, one of their issues, the Common Core test.

STUDENT:  This is a pretty big deal.  We’re taking back our district.

TANAISA BROWN, Newark Students Union:  Politicians actually get very nervous when they see how many people are against one thing.  They have money power.  They have political power, but we have people power.

EDUCATION - New GED, Improvement or Not?

"Is the new GED test an educational improvement or setback?" PBS NewsHour 1/6/2015

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SUMMARY:  An overhaul of the GED to meet Common Core standards has made the high school equivalency test more rigorous and more expensive.  As a result, fewer people are taking and passing it.  Gwen Ifill gets debate from Randy Trask of the GED Testing Service and Lecester Johnson of Academy of Hope about what the changes mean.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  The GED, or General Educational Development diploma, has long been an important high school equivalency credential for those hoping to make up for lost time and lost opportunity.

In a typical year, about half-a-million people pass the exam.  But the GED test is changing to meet new academic standards known as Common Core.  As a result, fewer people are taking and passing a test that has become more rigorous and expensive.  In states like Wisconsin and Rhode Island, the number of those who passed dropped more than 90 percent.  In Florida, the number of test takers fell about half.

Is this an improvement or a setback?

We look at that with Randy Trask, president and CEO of the GED Testing Service, and Lecester Johnson, CEO of Academy of Hope, an adult charter school in Washington, D.C.

Randy Trask, is it that the GED test has gotten harder?

RANDY TRASK, GED Testing Service:  Well, first off, thank you for having me.

It absolutely is more difficult, but, really, I think your introduction staged it all.  It’s a high school equivalency test.  And our last test series was tested on high school graduates of 2001.  And to the extent that high school graduates have learned a lot in the last 13 years, and they absolutely have, this test is undoubtedly higher — harder.

EDUCATION - Cursive Hand Writing vs Common Core English Standards

The problem is the misinterpretation of "Common Core."  Look up "core" in any dictionary and the overall interpretation is core being the central part of any structure or idea, it is NOT the whole thing, it is the support for things around it.

The problem is educators taking "Common Core Education Standards" as being the only thing in education, rather the core that you build your education program around.  "Common Core Education Standards" should be added and, when necessary, modified to fit local schools and their children.

In the context of this article, cursive hand writing need NOT be dropped from education.

Another comment.  The problem of time in the classroom to teach cursive highlights one of the more important problems in U.S. education, the length of our classes and K-12 education on the whole being too short to teach what our children need to know in today's world.  One of the factors in other nations that puts them ahead of the U.S. in education is they have longer class-day and longer education overall.  The U.S. needs to think about expanding class hours AND think about going to K-14 education so our children have time to learn what they need it today's world.  Note, as posted before, some states are adding Community College (2yrs) courses to their education programs.

"Why some schools still insist on lessons in elegant cursive" PBS NewsHour 5/6/2014

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GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  The writing may be on the wall for something that used to be standard fare in our elementary schools.  It turns out that the elegant script of cursive handwriting is barely being taught anymore.

The NewsHour’s April Brown reports as part of our American Graduate project, a public media initiative funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

APRIL BROWN:  For centuries, cursive was a pillar of elementary education and a crucial tool for recording and preserving history.  But the slow, yet steady decline of this handwriting technique can be traced to the 1970s.

Since then, school budgets have gotten smaller and more emphasis has been placed on both standardized testing and technology in the classroom. In 2010, 45 states and the District of Columbia began implementing what is known as the Common Core English language arts standards, a set of K-12 benchmarks that made no mention of cursive whatsoever.

STEVE GRAHAM, Education Professor, Arizona State University:  Cursive is the odd man out.  It has been left out of the mix.

APRIL BROWN:  Steve Graham is a professor of education at Arizona State University.  He says Common Core calls for handwriting to be taught in kindergarten and first grade only, meaning that, going forward, many students will learn manuscript, also known as printing, but never get to cursive.

STEVE GRAHAM:  Kids are taught how to write in cursive in most schools now in the U.S. right now at second and third grade.  With Common Core state standards, that is going to change.

APRIL BROWN:  The role of cursive in our nation’s history has often been cited as one reason to keep it.  Many founding documents were written in ink with curly-Q letters spelling out the birth of a nation.

EDUCATION - A Step Backward, States Rejecting Common Core Education

As if having a common standard to measure K-12 educations is bad.  Note that Common Core is NOT mandatory, states DO NOT have to adopt it whole-hog, which means it is state controlled.

The thing that is WRONG with Common Core is the tests and the link to education funding.  The test have long been seen NOT to measure progress of a individual child's education.  And the test should have never been linked to education funding.

"Facing bipartisan backlash, Oklahoma reconsiders Common Core education standards" PBS NewsHour 4/11/2014

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JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  This month, Oklahoma became the latest state to take a big step toward repealing the Common Core education standards.  The Oklahoma State Senate passed a bill just last week to do so, this as more than a dozen other states are considering repeal, and still others are reviewing how they use the standards when it comes to teaching and testing.

It’s a big shift from the broad and often bipartisan support that Common Core enjoyed just a few years ago.

Jeffrey Brown has the story.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  Common Core was initiated in 2009 by the nation’s governors, seeking national standards for math and English literacy.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan supported the move, spending $350 million to develop Common Core tests.

ARNE DUNCAN, Secretary of Education:  I believe this new generation of assessment is an absolute game-changer for American education.

JEFFREY BROWN:  In relatively short order, nearly every state agreed to create curricula based on the Common Core guidelines.

But more recently, a backlash has begun.  Last month, Indiana became the first state to drop the Common Core standards it had already adopted.

Governor Mike Pence explained the move in an Indianapolis radio interview.

GOV. MIKE PENCE, R, Ind.:  Hoosiers should be very proud and take every opportunity to be engaged in the fact that we’re the first state in the country that’s really going back to the principle that education is a state and local function.