 |
Articles of Interest
|
|
During the last session, the General Assembly eliminated several tests at the elementary and middle school level, citing the high amount of tests students had to prepare for. The tests eliminated were third-grade history/social science, third-grade science, fifth-grade writing, and U.S. history I and II, which were administered from fifth to seventh grades.
But despite the standardized tests being eliminated, schools will continue to teach the subjects and develop local curriculum that have been approved by the Board of Education.
Higher education cuts likely to spare Va. students
The Washington Post
September 17, 2014
Students likely will be insulated from $90 million in cuts the McAuliffe administration is seeking this fiscal year and next from Virginia’s public colleges and universities. Instead, the state will keep unfilled positions vacant, promote energy conservation, defer maintenance and take other cost-cutting steps.
While no layoffs are expected in the first round of cuts, they can’t be ruled out next year when the second round of cuts are made, higher education officials say. Like this year, they total $45 million.
Cuts to financial aid are off the table, and Gov. Terry McAuliffe is discouraging tuition increases.
Federal Policy
PACE Act - (Promoting Apprenticeships for Credentials and Employment)
U.S. Congress
Congress finds the following:
(1) A highly skilled workforce is necessary to compete in the global economy, support economic growth, and maintain the standard of living of the United States.
(2) The registered apprenticeship program
model is a longstanding, on-the-job training and
education model that prepares workers for the skill demands of particular occupations and employers
while, at the same time, providing the workers with recognized, portable credentials, and wages while in training.
Ending Teacher Tenure Would Have Little Impact on its Own
Brookings Institute
September 18, 2014
Tenure for public school teachers is increasingly under attack, with the Vergara v. California judge ruling in June that “both students and teachers are unfairly, unnecessarily and for no legally cognizable reason…disadvantaged by the current Permanent Employment Statute.” Last year, North Carolina legislators voted to phase out tenure, although that law was later blocked by a state judge. In 2011, Florida legislators ended tenure for new teachers beginning this year.
If these challenges to tenure laws are successful, will they lead to improvements in education?
This line of argument suggests that eliminating what the California judge called “über due process” for teachers will lead to increased dismissals of incompetent teachers. That is almost surely true on the margin, but will it make a significant impact on our public education system?
I bring new evidence to bear on this question by examining the early career paths of high-quality teachers and their less-effective counterparts, as measured by the progress their students make on state tests. The Brown Center’s talented research analyst Katharine Lindquist helped me calculate value-added measures of teacher effectiveness for 2,272 4th- and 5th-grade new teachers in North Carolina who entered the classroom between 1999-2000 and 2002-03, and tracked them for the first five years of their careers.
|
|
Evaluating education in America - is it getting worse?
As we noted last week, the number of schools in Virginia who failed to achieve full accreditation rose significantly this year, in large part because the benchmark used to evaluate schools got tougher. This is one example of how measuring success always depends on the reference point used, a reality that can sometimes get lost in a quick evaluative statement such as " More than 30% of Va. schools fail to win accreditation." A reader can be excused, perhaps, for reading the headline and concluding that 30% of schools are "failing." It's also possible that some of those same schools improved significantly from their prior year performance (a success) while falling short of the benchmark (a failure).
Some commentators point out that these multiple reference points can lead to a public image of the U.S. education system that is constructed around narratives of failure, even amidst improvment. Catherine Rampell, an opinion columnist for the Washington Post, took up this question in a recent editorial. She notes that over the past four decades respondents to opinion polls have increasingly said today's students receive a "worse" education than the respondent did. At the same time, she notes, performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress test, administered since 1971, is at or near all time highs with the most marked gains being accomplished by non-white students. (Of course "at or near all time highs" can also be " nearly flat" depending on who is interpreting the data.)
Rampell also notes that in polls, 67% of parents give their child's school an A or B for performance but only 17% give "public schools nationally" the same ratings.
What may drive some of this is obviously what agenda one wants to pursue. But even assuming an observer doesn't have an identified agenda or is trying to be even-handed, the differing reference points used to judge "success" can make clear answers difficult. For example, we can judge success against performance in prior years, against other countries, against self-defined state standards. The importance of identifying the reference point is highlighted by this graphic from a recent report from the American Institutes for Research. (Click on the link to see the full graphic.) Many states have pretty high proficiency rates when judged against their own standards and much lower rates when judged against an internationally benchmarked standard (in this case the TIMSS). Spoiler alert - Virginia is among the small number of states that are not included in the analysis.)
In keeping with a theme of evaluation and reference points, our poll snapshot this week looks back at how people have judged the performance of public schools in Virginia in our own poll.
Finally, we also share an excerpt from the 2013 final report of the Virginia Commision on Youth that evaluated achievement in Virginia against that of several other industrialized countries.
Sincerely,
CEPI
|
Poll Snapshot: Which direction are schools headed?
Over the years we've asked the following question 11 times: "Over the past five years, have the public schools in YOUR community gotten better, worse or stayed the same?"
The results for those eleven years are summarized in the chart below. In general, the percentage of respondents for each option has stayed relatively steady with almost a third saying things have improved, and slightly more than a third saying they've stayed the same. Very few respondents believe things have been getting worse.
 |
|
In 2011, the demographic breakdown provided some interesting information. While the overall rate of respondents who said things got worse was only 11%, there was a divergence between those who said they knew "quite a lot" about local schools and those who said they knew "little or nothing" - 16% of those who knew a lot said things had gotten worse while only 3% of those who knew little or nothing thought the same.
What is interesting is that parents of public school students were not significantly more likely to respond that schools had gotten worse and school employees or retirees were less likely to say things had gotten worse than those not connected by employment to the school system. This seems to imply that persons unconnected by employment or parenting a student, but who nonetheless felt they knew a lot about local schools, were driving the connection between greater felt knowledge and a higher response that schools were getting worse. Though we can't know from the survey, it could be that those who read a lot of local news and feel informed are also influenced by a steady stream of media coverage about schools failing. Or it might be something else. Further research would be necessary to tease out the relationship. In the meantime, it's good to remember that 38% of those who felt they knew a lot about local schools thought things had gotten better.
(To read the full results of the 2011 poll, visit our website. Question 3 is the question reported above - topline results are on pages 28; crosstabs are on page 39.)
|
Virginia academic achievement comparison
In 2013 the Virginia Commission on Youth released the final report on a 2-year study that looked at educational acheivement in the commonwealth compared to several industrialized countries. Dr. Bosher, CEPI's executive director, was privileged to serve on the advisory group for the report.
Excerpted from the Virginia Commission on Youth
Comparison of Academic Achievement in Virginia and Leading Industrialized Countries, Final Report
"In 2011, the Virginia Commission on Youth adopted a two-year study plan,
Comparison of Academic Achievement in Virginia and in Leading Industrialized Countries, to explore the following issues:
- Students in the United States lag in academic performance when compared with students in other industrialized countries, particularly in science and mathematics.
- The 2009 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment indicated that, of the 34 countries evaluated, the United States ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science, and 25th in mathematics.
***********
The Commission approved the following recommendations:
TEACHER PREPAREDNESS AND EFFECTIVENESS
Teacher Recruitment
Recommendation 1 - Raise the value of the teaching profession in Virginia.
a. Request the Governor and the Secretary of Education develop and implement approaches to make teaching a more attractive career choice.
b. Request the Governor and the Secretary of Education develop and implement promotional programs and marketing which addresses the value of the teaching profession.
Recommendation 2 - Develop and implement a rigorous teacher recruitment mechanism.
a. Request the Governor and the Secretary of Education develop and implement a rigorous teacher recruitment mechanism.
b. Recruit top academic achievers who are rising college freshman or are already enrolled in college."
|
|
