STRENGTHENING AMERICA’S COMPETITIVENESS THROUGH COMMON ACADEMIC STANDARDS: House Committee Looks for Ways to Support State-Led Efforts to Produce Common Standards

Last week, witnesses appearing before the House Education and Labor Committee described an effort underway in states to develop common academic standards that would prepare all students to compete in today’s global economy. Most members of the committee seemed encouraged by these efforts and sought the best way for Congress to support them.

In his opening statement, House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller (D-CA) noted that state standards in the United States typically cover a larger number of topics in each grade level, compared to the highest-performing countries where standards cover a smaller number of topics in greater depth. As a result, American schools end up with a curriculum that is “a mile wide and an inch deep.”

“So far, a core of forward-thinking states has been leading the way toward stronger, common standards,” Miller said. “Let me be clear: I want this committee, and the Congress, to do whatever we can to support this state-led, bipartisan effort. That’s why we’re here today—to learn more about this work and to hear from you all about how the federal government can best support it.”

Miller said the recently enacted American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and its $5 billion Race to the Top fund would help U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan encourage states to improve standards and assessments so that they are aligned with career- and college-readiness. He said the fund will lay the foundation for the significant changes that are necessary to “truly improve our schools, make sure students graduate with the skills they need, and cultivate a workforce that can compete globally.”

Representative Howard P. “Buck” McKeon, the committee’s highest-ranking Republican, also expressed support for the state-led movement toward common standards, but he stressed that the best thing that Congress can do is “stay out of their way.” “There’s no reason why states can’t work together to create their own common academic standards, which should be high so we can see real improvement among our students,” he said. “Leadership in this issue need not—and currently does not—come from the federal government.”

In his testimony, James B. Hunt, Jr., foundation chair of the James B. Hunt, Jr. Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy and former governor of North Carolina, said that the current variability in state standards is “off the charts.” He noted that state assessments are also a problem, adding that they have remained “ineffective instruments for measuring student progress,” as evidenced by the large disparities between state test scores and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

Instead, Hunt called for a common set of state standards that are “fewer, clearer, and higher” than current state standards, internationally benchmarked, and “based on evidence about the essential knowledge and skills that students need to be prepared for college and work.” He agreed that a voluntary, state-led effort is the best way to meet this goal, but stressed that the process must be “externally validated” to ensure that the result represents the very best standards.

Hunt outlined ten steps that Congress can take to promote the implementation of common standards. Included were several ideas mentioned earlier, as well as the need for science standards, teacher-designed curriculum that aligns with the standards, state-of-the-art assessments that reflect the newly designed content standards and are available to states, and a redesign of teacher training programs to “prepare teachers to teach to the content standards and use the assessments to improve instruction.”

The second witness, Ken James, Arkansas commissioner of education and president of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), described in more detail the state-led effort to establish common standards. He said that the effort began more than two years and, most recently, featured a meeting in April composed of representatives from more than forty states who had expressed a strong interest in common standards.

James said that the state-led effort sought to establish a “common core” that would build on the work of leading states and initiatives that have focused on college- and career-ready standards. He stressed that no state will see their standards lowered as a result of this process, which is designed to “raise the bar for all states.”

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, elaborated on the problems with the current system of state standards. For example, she noted that students who change schools frequently end up with “gaps and repetitions in their schooling,” and that textbook developers try to “cover” the standards by creating books that have a “little bit of everything and a lot of nothing.”

She stressed that simply “getting standards right” would not be enough and called on Congress to fix the “fundamentally flawed accountability system” in the No Child Left Behind Act. “If we are not testing the right information, or the accountability system is flawed, or the tests are inadequate, or teachers are not supported, we will not reap the rewards a standards-based reform system offers,” she said. “As we look ahead to NCLB reauthorization, we need to address these issues in order to fulfill the promise of offering all students a high-quality education.”

Other witnesses included Greg Jones, chairman of California Business for Excellence in Education, who shared the business community’s interest in common standards and Dave Levin, cofounder of KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) schools, who described how the “current patchwork of state standards” makes it difficult to evaluate KIPP’s network of charter schools, which will grow to one hundred by 2011. Rather than judging its schools based on myriad state performance goals, KIPP administers a national, norm-reference assessment in addition to the state assessments.

Chairman Miller’s opening statement, witness testimony, and video of the hearing is available at http://edlabor.house.gov/hearings/2009/04/strengthening-americas-competi.shtml.

 

ACTION REQUIRED: New Alliance Brief Calls for New Federal Approach to Improve the Nation’s Lowest-Performing High Schools

Current approaches under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) to improve the nation’s lowest-performing high schools do not meet the needs of the students who attend these schools, the communities in which they are located, or the long-term economic health of the United States. So says Action Required: Addressing the Nation’s Lowest-Performing High Schools, a new brief from the Alliance for Excellent Education. The brief argues that ignoring the present plight in these schools and essentially abandoning the students they serve is no longer an acceptable policy. Instead, it calls on education and political leaders to provide better educational options to the students who attend these high schools; the brief also provides federal policy recommendations that are based on lessons from emerging strategies at the state and local levels.

“Trying to address a dropout crisis that claims over one million students each year without having focused solutions for the nation’s lowest-performing high schools is like trying to fill a leaking bucket without first plugging all of the holes,” said Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia. “And while NCLB has sparked national awareness about the need for systemic school improvement by pointing out shortcomings in the performance of individual schools, it does not have remedies that successfully address the lowest-performing high schools.”

Consider the nation’s 2,000 “dropout factories” where almost as many students will drop out as graduate. According to the brief, many of these schools have been seemingly impervious to improvement. They are often “staffed with the least-experienced, least-qualified, and least-effective educators and lack adequate resources.” In addition, the existing systems of which they are a part—the school district and the state—are not responding with the necessary support and strategies to turn these schools around and improve student outcomes.

“Just about everyone in the country can point out a low-performing high school,” Wise said. “If there’s a high school in your neighborhood where you wouldn’t send your kids, there is a compelling reason to take action.”

According to Action Required, NCLB attempts to improve lowest-performing high schools through its Title I accountability and school improvement process, and its most intensive strategy for the lowest-performing schools, termed “restructuring.” However, these provisions—and the results of their implementation—are not working.

Specifically, the brief finds the following flaws with NCLB’s approach:

• NCLB’s mechanism for measuring all schools’ performance—Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP)—is inadequate for high schools.
• NCLB’s one-size-fits-all method of intervention does not recognize individual school’s needs, nor does it target the lowest-performing high schools.
• NCLB’s limited approach to intervention does not bring fundamental improvements to teaching, learning, and student outcomes in the lowest-performing high schools.

Action Required: Addressing the Nation’s Lowest-Performing High Schools says new federal legislation, including the upcoming reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, must provide better options for the students in the lowest-performing high schools—either through transforming schools, closing them, or replacing them. The school improvement process must involve educators, education leaders, and policymakers at all levels; be led by states and districts; and depend on detailed information about student and school performance.

As stated in the brief, the goal of federal policy should be to create a comprehensive high school improvement strategy that will assist all of the nation’s lowest-performing high schools and it offers several recommendations for federal policymakers. It calls for the replacement of the existing federal accountability and school improvement system with data-driven state and district systems that are tailored to meet the particular needs of students and schools, and is designed to prioritize and respond to the lowest-performing high schools. The brief also calls for improved national indicators for measuring high school performance; an investment in the ability of states and school districts to address the lowest-performing high schools; and increased research activities related to providing the lowest-performing high schools with effective school options for students.

The complete brief is available at http://www.all4ed.org/files/ActionRequired.pdf.

 

“CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?”: Nation’s Seventeen-Year-Olds Make No Progress in Reading or Math Since Early ’70s

Although nine- and thirteen-year-olds have made significant gains in both reading and math, recent results from a national test indicate that the average scores for seventeen-year-olds have remained flat since the early 1970s. Such were the findings from National Association of Educational Progress (NAEP) long-term trend assessments in reading and math, which were released on April 28. The report, The Nation’s Report Card: NAEP 2008 Trends in Academic Progress, makes it possible to chart educational progress since 1971 in reading and 1973 in math because it largely relies on the same assessment decade after decade.

“The results at ages nine and thirteen are encouraging, but the lack of improvement by high school students provides little comfort,” said Darvin M. Winick, chairman of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees and sets policy for NAEP. “Clearly, we need to do more to ensure that students are continuing to learn throughout elementary, middle, and high school and are prepared for higher education and the workforce.”

According to the report, the average reading score for nine-year-olds was four points higher than in 2004 and twelve points higher than in 1971. Thirteen-year-olds showed some improvement, gaining three points since 2004 and five points since the test was first given, but seventeen-year-olds, even with a three-point uptick since 2004, fared no better than their peers in 1971, as indicated in the chart below.

Trend in NAEP Reading Average Scores from 1971–2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“If you end up in the emergency room with an EKG that shows this kind of flat line, someone should be putting electrically charged paddles to your chest,” said Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia. “Some student gains are being made in the elementary and middle schools, but if our high schools were cell phones, these NAEP results are a massive cry of ‘can you hear me now.’”

The report also finds that large percentages of high school students struggle to understand complicated information. According to the report, only 39 percent of seventeen-year-olds can “understand complicated literary and informational passages, including material about topics they study at school,” it reads.

In math, nine- and thirteen-year-olds made more significant gains, posting higher average scores in 2008 than in all previous assessments. But again, the average scores of seventeen-year-olds were essentially flat.

Margaret Spellings, who served as Secretary of Education under President George W. Bush, told the New York Times that the results were a vindication of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which was enacted in 2002. “It’s not an accident that we’re seeing the most improvement where NCLB has focused most vigorously,” she said. “The law focuses on math and reading in grades three through eight—it’s not about high schools. So these results are affirming of our accountability-type approach.”

Progress in closing achievement gaps between white students and minority students, another key goal of NCLB, was mixed. In reading and math, the difference between the average white score and the average African American score has narrowed for all three age groups since 1971, but only a fraction of the change has occurred since 1999. The same was true for the achievement gap between white and Hispanic students.

Wise noted that these results come at a crucial time with the White House and Congress able to direct massive efforts to transforming high schools. “The recently enacted American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the upcoming reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act can provide the kind of genuine stimulus that America’s high schools need to provide a world-class education to all of America’s students,” he said.

The complete results on the NAEP long-term trend assessments are available at http://nationsreportcard.gov/ltt_2008/.

 

THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF THE ACHIEVEMENT GAP IN AMERICA’S SCHOOLS: Report Finds that Achievement Gaps Impose the Economic Equivalent of a “Permanent National Recession”

The achievement gaps that currently exist in the United States between certain groups of students and others impose the economic equivalent of a “permanent national recession” on the nation. So says The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools, a new report from McKinsey & Company that examines the dimensions and economic impact of the four distinct educational achievement gaps in the United States. Specifically, the report focuses on gaps in the following areas: between the United States and other nations; between black and Latino students and white students; between students of different income levels; and between similar students schooled in different systems or regions.

Internationally, the report finds that the United States already lags significantly behind other advanced nations in educational performance and is falling further behind in other areas. Even worse, the gap in performance between American students and their international counterparts widens the longer children are in school.

Even the top students in America are falling behind. According to the report, the United States has the smallest proportion of fifteen-year-olds performing at the highest levels of proficiency in math while Korea, Switzerland, Belgium, France, and the Czech Republic have at least five times the proportion of top performers as the United States. According to the report, the recurring economic cost of the international achievement gap alone is “substantially larger than the deep recession the United States is currently experiencing.” On the other hand, were the United States to close the gap between its educational achievement levels and those of better-performing countries such as Finland and Korea, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the United States could have been $1.3 trillion to $2.3 trillion higher in 2008.

The international achievement gaps only scratch the surface of how the underutilization of human potential in the United States affects the nation’s economy. According to the report, black and Latino students in the United States are roughly two to three years of learning behind white students of the same age no matter how they are measured. Indeed, the report finds large achievement gaps in both achievement (test scores) and attainment (graduation rates). Additionally, minority students are overrepresented among low-performing students and underrepresented among the highest-performing students.

The racial achievement gap is even more worrisome because black and Latino students will make up a greater proportion of the student population in coming years. “If unaddressed, [the racial achievement gap] will almost certainly act as a drag on overall U.S. educational and economic performance in the years ahead,” the report reads.

Like minority students, low-income students are also, on average, two years of learning behind higher-income students of the same age. Lacking many of the advantages of their more advantaged peers, low-income students begin school behind and struggle to catch up. According to the report, only 9 percent of freshmen in the nation’s 120 “Tier 1” colleges are from the bottom half of the income distribution.

“By underutilizing such a large proportion of the country’s human potential, the U.S. economy is less rich in skills than it could be,” it reads. “The result is that American workers are, on average, less able to develop, master, and adapt to new productivity-enhancing technologies and methods than they could otherwise have been. Also these achievement gaps have a clustering effect akin to economic dead zones, where communities of low-achieving local school produce clusters of Americans largely unable to participate in the greater American economy due to a concentration of low skills, high unemployment, or high incarceration rates.”

In analyzing the achievement gaps between school systems serving similar students, the report finds hope. Although it finds huge performance gaps between states, districts within states, schools within districts, and even classrooms within the same school, the report says these differences “prove there are substantial opportunities to improve productivity and performance via the adoption of best practices.”

“Many teachers and schools across the country are proving that race and poverty are not destiny; many more are demonstrating that middle-class children can be educated to world-class levels of performance,” the report reads. “America’s history of bringing disadvantaged groups into the economic mainstream over time, and the progress of other nations in education, suggest that large steps forward are possible.”

While the report does not devote much space to explaining why these achievement gaps exist, it does note that the United States “systemically assigns less experienced, less qualified, probably less effective teachers to poorer students of color.” Additionally, it finds that the “unique nature of school finance systems in the United States mean that poor neighborhoods tend to have far less funding per pupil than schools in wealthier districts,” adding that this degree of inequality is not seen in other advanced nations.

The complete report is available at http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/socialsector/achievementgap.asp.

 

Straight A's: Public Education Policy and Progress is a biweekly newsletter that focuses on education news and events both in Washington, DC and around the country. The format makes information on federal education policy accessible to everyone from elected officials and policymakers to parents and community leaders. The Alliance for Excellent Education is a nonprofit organization working to make it possible for America's six million at-risk middle and high school students to achieve high standards and graduate prepared for college and success in life. To receive a free subscription to Straight A's, visit http://www.all4ed.org/what_you_can_do and add your name to our mailing list.

 

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