EdWeek Report: U.S. Education Under Pressure From Abroad

Education Week's annual Quality Counts report is out, and it's got a great lineup of stories exploring what U.S. education can learn from other countries.

Start with the overview, which examines the swirl of issues that led the U.S. to focus on its own international competitiveness. You might want to read about how other nations professionalize teaching, how they assess students' learning, and how their curricular priorities influenced the Common Core State Standards that have been so widely adopted in this country.

You will also want to check out the multimedia features we've got that spin off from the main themes of Quality Counts, and the range of perspectives on the topic we've pulled together for the Commentary section. Plus, listen to experts discussing these issues at our Quality Counts launch event today.

Report: States Have ‘Far to Go’ in Transition to Common Core

Today brings another round of evidence that much work needs to be done to transform the common standards into practice.

A report released today by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center (EPE publishes EdWeek) and Education First concludes that states "have a long way to go" before they have solid plans to implement the standards. My story has a link to the report.

In the three key areas the researchers asked about—curriculum and instructional resources, teacher professional development, and teacher-evaluation systems—only seven states reported having completed plans in all three. Eighteen reported no completed plans in any of those three areas.

Gov.: Highland Park schools in financial crisis

Michigan Democrats developing college grant plan

School Inspections Eyed as State Strategy in Post-NCLB Era

At a time when policymakers across the political spectrum are rethinking the test-driven accountability system at the heart of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, a new case study suggests that English-style school inspections may be worth a closer look.

"Inspections offer a way to make much more nuanced judgments about school performance," writes education consultant Craig Jerald in a report just published by the think tank Education Sector. He notes that such inspections can "leverage expert judgment rather than relying solely on spreadsheet formulas."

To be clear, though, Jerald does say test scores should still be part of the accountability mix, and indeed they are factored into the determinations made under the English system.

(Full disclosure: Jerald previous served as the research director for Editorial Projects in Education, which publishes Education Week. He's also a friend of mine.)

I learned a little about school inspections in England and elsewhere when researching a story for the 2012 edition of Quality Counts, which will be released tomorrow. My story looks at how U.S. accountability practices compare and contrast with those of other nations. And school inspections, which a variety of countries use, from England and the Netherlands to Singapore and New Zealand, certainly offer one clear contrast to the approach brought by No Child Left Behind and state accountability systems.

In the new Education Sector report, Jerald suggests that inspections could be well-suited as a state strategy for accountability. He does not, however, say the federal government should conduct them or require them.

"As they begin to ponder their options for the post-NCLB era, state leaders should take a close look at England's approach to inspections," he writes, "a method that suggests there are ways to ensure rigor and consistency while not sacrificing diagnosis and feedback."

Although school inspections have taken place in England for more than a century, the inspection system as it stands today was launched in 1992, when the English Parliament created the Office for Standards in Education, Social Services, and Skills—or OFSTED. That office now oversees all inspections of English schools. The intent of the system is to give parents better information about schools and to hold them accountable for performance.

The way the system works, inspectors generally visit a school for two days. The frequency of inspections varies, but typically they occur once every three years unless a school receives a poor rating. Schools are rated "outstanding," "good," "satisfactory," or "inadequate." Test data are used in the evaluations, but so are other factors, including classroom observations to determine the quality of instruction.

To illustrate the English inspection system, Jerald tells the story of Peterhouse Primary School, in Norfolk County. The school got a dose of bad news in early 2010 when it failed to pass muster under the government's accountability scheme. In addition to getting an accountability rating, the school also got a 14-page narrative report, based on an inspection, about its strengths and weaknesses in key areas, such as classroom teaching and leadership. Fourteen months later, he says, the school boosted its rating substantially.

What's attractive about the English inspection system, Jerald says, is how it deals with the "multiple measures" issue of accountability by using on-site observations in schools.

"In England, professional inspectors consider standardized test scores when evaluating schools," he writes, "but they also gather first-hand observational evidence on a variety of other factors before judging a school's overall effectiveness and offering a diagnosis for improvement."

He then describes the 2010 report on Peterhouse Primary School.

"Written in a bracingly frank and direct style, the report left little doubt about why the school had been deemed 'inadequate' and how it needed to improve," he writes.

In fact, here's a quote from that inspection report:

"Teaching is too often pitched at an inappropriate level as assessment of pupils' attainment is not used sufficiently well to plan effective lessons. Pupils are not given adequate academic guidance to move their learning on, and the quality of feedback in marking is inconsistent across the school. Pupils' books show that, in some cases, the teachers have low expectations, especially regarding the quality of pupils' written work."

Jerald anticipates some of the concerns about states embracing school inspections to help drive accountability, and tries to address them.

Perhaps the most obvious: Can inspections be relied on to provide fair and consistent judgments?

"Of course, relying on human judgment rather than strict rules and formulas can carry risks," he writes. "Successful inspection systems minimize these risks by taking steps to ensure that judgments are guided by common standards, informed by rigorous training, and steeped in professional expertise."

Another question: Won't these be really expensive?

To answer this, Jerald actually came up with "back-of-the-envelope" estimates of how much they would cost, state by state. His 50-state estimate ranges from a low end of about $635 million per year to $1.1 billion at the upper end, depending on how the system was structured and how frequently inspections would occur.

I should note that England's inspection system is not universally embraced in that country. In my reporting, I heard complaints that the inspections cover far too many issues and are seen by some critics as "formulaic." I also heard complaints that actual time for classroom observations has declined significantly in recent years. (To address some of these concerns, OFSTED last fall announced a new inspection framework that would narrow the scope of inspections and allow more time for classroom observations.)

Peter Tymms, an education professor and the head of the education school at Durham University in England, told me in an interview last fall that he believes the verdict is still out on the value of England's inspections.

"The question is: Does the inspection system improve schools?" Tymms said. "And actually, I think we don't know the answer to that, because serious investigations have not been carried out."

For his part, Jerald says American schools "deserve the same kind of diagnostic guidance and feedback that Peterhouse Primary School enjoyed on its journey to improvement."

He continues: "If American policymakers expect U.S. schools to make vigorous efforts to improve, they must develop accountability systems that can diagnose, inform, and encourage schools rather than merely 'rate' them."

Education Sector has invited a variety of experts next week to explore the merits of school inspections through a series of guest posts on its blog, The Quick & the Ed. I expect the subject will spark a lively debate.

NCLB Waivers Could Undermine Graduation Rates, Group Contends

You've probably heard a lot already about the applications that 11 states have made to waive the major requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. We've written about their common-core implications, and our federal beat reporters have brought you many details in blog posts and stories.

Now a Washington group that focuses on secondary schools is warning that some of those applications—and legislation under consideration in Congress—could weaken high schools' accountability for improving graduation rates.

In a policy brief issued this week, the Alliance for Excellent Education says that "the treatment of high school graduation rates in many state accountability indexes may reverse progress made in recent years to ensure accurate graduation rates are fully included in school accountability systems."

Some states' waiver applications propose accountability systems that would give high school graduation rates much less weight than they currently carry under NCLB, the policy brief says. The intention—to create a fuller picture of college and career readiness—is honorable, but the effect could undermine the pressure to produce good graduation rates, the policy brief argues.

The alliance singles out Kentucky and New Mexico for giving particularly light weights to high school graduation in the accountability systems they propose as part of their NCLB waiver applications. Kentucky's system would give high school grad rates only 14 percent of the total index, while New Mexico's would assign such rates 17 percent. Most states applying for waivers offered plans that would give high school grad rates less than one-quarter of the weight of their total accountability indexes, the brief says.

"If test scores in earlier grades or other indicators count far more for measuring a school's progress than whether a student actually graduates, the fact that high school graduation rates count for so little in the proposed indexes could create an incentive for schools to 'push out' low-performing students in order to increase scores on standardized tests," alliance President Bob Wise, the former chief executive of West Virginia, said in a statement accompanying the policy brief.

"States are moving in the right direction by creating accountability systems that provide a more complete view of whether students are ready for college and a career, but this cannot come at the expense of holding states accountable for graduation rates."

The alliance calls on the federal education department to make sure that states' proposals for NCLB waivers don't contradict federal regulations issued in 2008 that require high schools to use a tough, uniform way of calculating graduation rates and mandate setting ambitious graduation-rate goals. It shouldn't approve waiver applications unless the proposed accountability systems give equal weight to high school graduation rates and student achievement, while also allowing states to use additional measures of college- and career-readiness, the alliance argues.

Wise expressed concerns about the effects on high schools of NCLB legislation under consideration on Capitol Hill, also.

Curriculum the Missing Ingredient in School Reform, Book Says

Higher standards. Better assessments. Accountability. Merit pay for teachers. Charter schools. These are among the familiar strands of education reform that have dominated the national dialogue in recent years.

But a new book from a 25-year veteran of educational publishing argues that improving the curriculum—what actually gets taught in classrooms—is all too often left off the table. And the author, who provides an insider perspective on the world of developing and selecting curricular materials, contends that this neglect is a key obstacle to increased student learning.

"Notably, and disturbingly, with all the attention paid to educational reform, there has been little, if any, focus on curriculum as part of the problem," writes Beverlee Jobrack, who retired in 2007 as editorial director for McGraw-Hill. "It has become clear to me that student achievement will at best remain static unless educational reform includes re-evaluating and improving how curriculum is developed, assessed, and selected."

The book, Tyranny of the Textbook: An Insider Exposes How Educational Materials Undermine Reforms, seems especially timely, given the ongoing challenge we've chronicled here of bringing the common standards in English/language arts and mathematics to life in the classroom. Here's the latest of many posts touching on the matter. I should also mention that, in her book, Jobrack cites the work of Grover J. "Russ" Whitehurst, who also has argued for giving curriculum greater attention in school improvement. (Whitehurst, a scholar at the Brookings Institution, was the director of the federal Institute of Education Sciences in the Bush administration.)

Jobrack offers a behind-the-scenes look at how textbooks and other curricular materials are developed, written, adopted, and sold. The author, who prior to working in publishing spent several years teaching middle school and preschool, argues that the curriculum used in most classrooms is mediocre and typically fails to reflect best practices. The core problem, as she sees it, is a system that has failed to create the right conditions and incentives to ensure that high-quality curricula designed to optimize learning are developed and reach classrooms around the nation.

As she puts it, this system is "perpetuating mediocrity in instructional materials and in American education."

Jobrack weaves a tale of:

• School and district committees for curriculum selection filled with teachers and others who lack the appropriate expertise, motivation, and time to make the best choices;

• State textbook adoptions focused on whether curricular materials meet state standards, line by line, with little or no attention to whether they actually are of high quality and represent a coherent and well-designed instructional approach; and

• A radically consolidated publishing industry, driven by sales and marketing teams, that has "resulted in a dearth of customer choice, a reluctance to innovate, and huge [curricular] programs that are barely distinguishable from one another."

With regard to local selection practices, she says textbooks with attractive covers, lots of visual appeal, and "superfluous" features tend to win favor. And she writes of experienced teachers on selection committees who often favor materials that require little change for them in their classroom practices.

"A group of very experienced teachers selects the textbook that is most like what they are already doing so they don't have to change their lesson plans or procedures," she writes.

(Jobrack emphasizes, however that she is NOT bashing teachers. "For a host of reasons," she writes, "I came to realize that hard-working teachers, who have the best interests of their students at heart, are rarely the most effective evaluators of curriculum effectiveness.")

In her book, from Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Jobrack outlines a variety of ideas to improve the quality of curriculum and instruction. One key idea is to transform the curriculum-selection process by schools and districts, as well as the state textbook-adoption process, to focus intensively on the quality of materials. In addition, she says schools and teachers should "implement that new curriculum with fidelity." She cautions that this does not mean a scripted approach, but that teachers not simply skip around and cherry-pick the elements they like and dismiss those they prefer not to teach. She also emphasizes the widely agreed belief that the quality of teachers is absolutely critical. In a nutshell, as she writes, "Quality curriculum taught by quality teachers has the most potential to improve student achievement."

Jobrack discusses the role, and limits, of standards at length in the book, including the common standards.

She is quick to note: "The standards are not the curriculum. The curriculum is what teachers do every day, introduce a concept, check for understanding, have students practice, and assess it."

She cautions that the common standards may not amount to much without real and meaningful changes in the curriculum. And she worries such change may be tough to come by.

In an interview, Jobrack shared her view of how educational publishers are responding to the common standards.

"Here's what's happening right now in textbook land," she said. "They're not changing anything in the curriculum. They are simply relabeling. ... If there's anything missing in a textbook series, the publishers will simply add a paragraph or add a lesson to address that particular standard. It's not a revamping, and even if it was, there has to be very intentional implementation of a curriculum with understanding and fidelity, so that you reap the most benefits from it."

Even as Jobrack doesn't hold back in offering criticism for the educational publishing sector—at one point she describes it as a "monolithic industry that stifles innovation, squashes competition, drastically limits choice, and creates a risk-adverse development process—she believes the publishers will respond if the marketplace demands change.

"If customers start buying materials because they're the most effective, and they don't buy things when they're not effective," she writes, "that will very quickly make effectiveness the competitive issue, and publishers are very, very competitive."

Race to Top States Dinged, But Not on Common Core

The first-round Race to the Top winners are facing the music this week, as U.S. Ed Secretary Arne Duncan delivers their year-one progress reports. Some are getting pats on the back for being on track with nice progress, while others are getting a round scolding for lagging, particularly on their efforts to design new teacher-evaluation systems based on student progress. Our Michele McNeil explains it all for you in a blog post and a story.

Those of you who track the common standards and assessments will be interested to know that this was not a big area of criticism when Duncan sized up how the RTT winners are doing. For the most part, according to the reports, states seem to be doing OK in this area. (The list of state-by-state reports is posted on ED's website.)

Take Delaware, for instance. In its report, the Education Department said that even though the state was encountering some delays in implementing a new teacher-evaluation system, it had made "significant strides" toward reaching many of its goals.

It noted, in particular, the work Delaware has done to train its teachers on the common core. (In a glowing press release, Delaware made sure everyone knew that it had reached 79 percent of its teachers with that training.) The Ed Department noted the sample units and lesson plans Delaware posted online for teachers. And it noted the state's progress transitioning to new assessments, such as its plans to embed common-core-like items in its own state tests soon, and its decision to require all 11th graders to take the SAT as a college-readiness exam.

In the not-too-surprising category, Massachusetts comes out pretty rosy in the federal report. It gets pats for curriculum frameworks and model units for the common core, and for proceeding with professional development on the new standards even though it struggled with a delay hiring a PD coordinator. The department also noted that Massachusetts' statewide assessments will be based on the common core in 2012-13, which, I'm guessing, is far earlier than most states.

Even states that are in the biggest trouble with the department over their unsatisfactory progress appeared to look pretty good to the department on their standards-and-assessment work.

Hawaii has content specialists working with all its principals across the state, who then pass along their knowledge through "tri-level" professional development, the report says. It provided training to teachers in grades K-2, and 11-12, with plans to move to all the other grades within the next two years. It also moved to online, computer-adaptive assessments, the report says.

New York, which also came in for harsh criticism, was commended for its implementation work on the common core. The department mentioned its training of "network teams" to get this job done, and its plan to "build sequenced, spiraled, content-rich statewide curriculum modules," even though procurement snafus delayed this a bit. The department did note, however, that New York continues to face challenges implementing the common core because of wide variations in the size and capacity of its districts.

Florida did get dinged for delays in some areas of common-standards implementation, such as in getting contracts for interim and formative assessments.

Gov. Signs Bill to Increase Michigan Charter Schools

New National Standards Address Sexuality Education for All Grades

From guest blogger Nirvi Shah:

A new set of standards outlines the minimum that students should learn about their sexuality from their earliest years in school until they leave high school.

The standards, developed over the last few years by dozens of health and education experts, say that by the end of 2nd grade, students should be able to use the proper name for body parts, including male and female anatomy. By the end of 5th grade, they should be able to define sexual abuse and harassment. By the end of high school, they should be able to describe common symptoms of and treatments for sexually transmitted diseases including HIV, according to the standards released today with the backing of four national health education groups.

Three groups—Advocates for Youth, Answer, and the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States—led creation of the standards. At the time the project was conceived, the hope was that federal spending on abstinence-only sexual education would eventually be extinguished (which isn't yet the case ) and something would be needed to teach sexuality, comprehensively. Still, despite the federal government's continued support for abstinence-only sex education programs in schools, a growing number of states are opting to go beyond abstinence-only and take a more-comprehensive approach to sex education in public schools. For example, many Texas schools have shifted away from an abstinence-only approach.

A 2007 congressionally mandated study found no statistically significant beneficial effect on the sexual behavior of young people participating in abstinence-based programs.

Supporters of the standards note, however, that the new standards don't recommend teaching about hot-button issues such as contraception in the early grades.

"In every other topic under the sun, you build young people's skills—whether it's math or science," said Debra Hauser, president of Advocates for Youth. "You don't have to call it sex ed in elementary school."

But elementary school students could learn about what it means to be a good friend, understand why bullying is wrong, and what good touches and bad touches are.

"That translates later when you're talking about relationships," Ms. Hauser said.

The standards also address social media, sexting, sexually transmitted diseases, and pregnancy, as well as a range of other topics, including bullying. The hope is that states, districts, and even individual schools will adopt the standards, or build their own curricula based upon them.

Sexuality education in the public schools is a perennial source of controversy. It's not clear yet how parents and the public will respond to these new standards. For more on that—and on the details of the standards themselves—watch for my story next week in Education Week.