Today's Push to Innovate Public Schools: Successes and Challenges

Last month’s Learning Policy Center Colloquium Series speaker, Richard Rothstein, suggested in his most recent book that there is and has historically been a shared understanding about what our public schools should teach. In his upcoming Colloquium talk on Thursday, April 2nd, Alan Lesgold – Dean of Pitt’s School of Education - will argue that a shared understanding about education is missing, largely because the general public has not yet grasped the major changes within the public education system that are necessary in order for all students to have a chance to succeed in today's society.

There is ample evidence regarding the lack of consensus about the future of public education. National and local opposition to “standards-based” mathematics curricula is one example. As Lesgold will discuss in his talk, one tragedy of our public education system is that critical thinking and problem-solving tasks (like those emphasized by standards-based curricula) are often ignored in favor of teaching more routine tasks, which are those same tasks often performed quickly by machines and low-paid workers outside of the United States.

Despite the lack of shared public understanding about what our schools need to do, a recent push for re-thinking teaching and learning may make some progress, not because a growing public consensus is on the horizon, but because states are coming under more and more pressure to provide innovations and adopt more rigorous, cutting-edge standards. In his speech just a few weeks ago, President Obama challenged governors and state education chiefs to create standards and assessments that measure "whether students possess 21st century skills like problem-solving and critical thinking and entrepreneurship and creativity." That national challenge is present more tangibly in new federal guidelines stipulating that states must commit to “implementing college and career ready standards and high-quality, valid assessments” prior to receiving federal State Fiscal Stabilization Fund money.

True, it is hard to know how much the federal government will be able to hold states accountable for making progress in implementing such standards, and it’s even harder to know whether those standards and assessments will result in real student learning gains. Nevertheless, initiatives like Achieve’s American Diploma Project Network are working to help states make these commitments to develop more rigorous standards, with some success.

While Achieve’s Michael Cohen and others in our Colloquium Series have discussed the need for better standards and alignment between standards and assessments, Lesgold will particularly emphasize the role of technology in doing that work. He will discuss how computers can support instructional design. He will bring up Valerie Shute’s work to develop assessments through games and virtual simulations as a way to measure the “21^st century skills” that Obama articulated. While all this technology is fascinating, it offers new challenges to our schools and teaching force. Some school districts – no doubt the ones with more resources and more skilled teaching and technology staffs – will be able to implement exciting technological innovations better than others will. Thus, as schools are forced to innovate, the greatest challenge for states may be to provide equitable support for that innovation.

Expanding Accountability

In his upcoming LPC colloquium talk on March 2nd, Richard Rothstein of the Economics Policy Institute will argue that public schools should be held accountable for much more than students' proficiency on reading and mathematics tests. Rothstein's talk is based on his new book, Grading Education: Getting Accountability Right, in which he notes that the current narrow definition of accountability as reading and mathematics performance inevitably directs resources away from the many other subjects that are part of the school curriculum.

In Jane Hannaway's LPC colloquium talk, she noted the impressive gains in hours of instructional time spent in mathematics and reading following the advent of NCLB and testing of those subjects. But, as reflected in Rothstein's work, increases in hours of instruction in one area must logically take away from instructional time in other areas. Research from the Center for Education Policy, for example, indicates that while 62 percent of elementary schools increased time spent on English and math following NCLB, 44 percent also cut time on science, social studies, art and music, physical education, lunch, or recess.

However, Rothstein's argument for accountability in subjects beyond mathematics and reading could face opposition for multiple reasons. Chief among these is a strong public perception that more testing is not the answer. The opposition to Pennsylvania Governor Rendell's recent push for graduation competency examinations in mathematics, English, science, and social studies is one example. Those who oppose Governor Rendell's plans - including the Pennsylvania State Education Association - argue that these additional tests will stretch already-tight education budgets and lead to even more instructional focus on test-taking skills.

Beyond the dilemmas of more testing that would be brought about through expanding accountability across school subjects, Rothstein's ideas also bring up deeper questions about the purpose of schooling and what students should learn. In Grading Education and a recent Education Week editorial based on that book, Rothstein writes of both the "cognitive" and "non-cognitive" skills for which schools should be held accountable, including social studies, history, science, the arts and music, character development, citizenship education, emotional and physical health, and physical fitness. He provides compelling evidence that throughout history and today, there has been consensus among educators and the general public that students should receive education in all these areas. Some might debate the presence of that historical consensus. Even if such consensus exists, the advocacy groups and organizations who influence policy push for diverse visions of what students should learn. As an example, take a look at the recent LPC colloquium talks from Michael Cohen - President of Achieve - and Kati Haycock - President of The Education Trust, or compare the ideals embraced by the Core Knowledge Foundation with Edutopia's support for project learning and social/emotional learning. These different visions make clear that defining what schools should teach is no easy thing.

Attend Richard Rothstein's talk next week - or tune in via live webcast - to hear and think more about these ideas.

Preparing Students for Success in Life Beyond High School

The question of how high schools can prepare their graduates to be successful in college and the workforce has received a great deal of attention lately. Bill Gates focused further attention on the subject with the 2009 annual letter he released several days ago as part of his Gates Foundation work. In the letter, Gates challenged the nation to set a goal that 80 percent of American students will graduate from high school ready to attend college by 2025.

What it means to be "ready for college" is not something that Gates defines, although he acknowledges that it will be difficult to measure. And some have already criticized Gates' challenge as unrealistic. However, a number of people besides Gates are thinking a great deal about what it means to be college-ready, including Elena Silva, whose Education Sector report, "Measuring 21st Century Skills," was released back in November. While "21st century skills" is still a slippery and not fully defined concept, Silva makes a good case for how those skills - which she defines as "the ability to think creatively and to evaluate and analyze information" - can be measured accurately and comparably, and how they can be integrated into current standardized assessments.

So too is Achieve working toward defining what it means to be college-ready through their American Diploma Project (ADP) Network, to which 34 states (including Pennsylvania) have already committed with the hope of ensuring that their high school graduates are prepared for college or careers. The ADP has done much work to consider what rigorous content and skills graduates need to master in order to succeed after high school.

Of course, I have to mention that Michael Cohen, the president of Achieve, will be talking about the ADP in his upcoming LPC Colloquium Series talk on Thursday, February 12th (which will also be transmitted via live webcast). His talk should merit some attention considering a recent Pennsylvania Department of Education study finding that one-third of recent PA graduates enrolled in a state-owned university or community college are not prepared for college-level math or English and most enroll in a remedial course. Pittsburgh Public Schools are also under pressure to produce graduates who will succeed in college after those graduates receive scholarship money through the Pittsburgh Promise.

Even after we figure out what skills prepare students for life after graduation, and how to assess those skills, new questions come to the fore. What resources do high schools and school districts need to prepare students for college and the workforce? What learning on the part of teachers and administrators is necessary to impart such skills? How can district, state, and national policy support this work? These questions will be as challenging to answer as what skills are necessary in the first place.

Narrowing the Achievement Gap: What Does The Education Trust Have to Say?

On January 15th, Kati Haycock will come to the University of Pittsburgh to give a talk as part of the Learning Policy Center's 2008-2009 Colloquium Series: Excellence and Equity in an Era of Accountability. Haycock's talk, entitled "Improving Achievement and Closing Gaps between Groups," will focus on the "equity" part of our colloquium series theme and deal with the pervasive achievement gap between minority and white students in schools.

In Lauren Resnick’s LPC colloquium series talk earlier this year, she noted that the achievement gap has been shrinking somewhat nationally, with overall rises across sub-groups happening since testing and accountability measures were instituted as part of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2002. Resnick particularly noted that average achievement for all groups - including Whites, Hispanics, and Blacks - has steadily risen since 2000 and is now above basic cut scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) for fourth-grade mathematics, which indicates that national education reform is headed in the right direction.

However, Resnick also noted that we have some way to go to achieve equity in schools, and she points out that the achievement gap has been slower to narrow in reading. Furthermore, as The Education Trust has stated in some of their publications - and as Kati Haycock will likely note - progress in accelerating achievement and narrowing the achievement gap is highly variable in state-by-state comparisons. Additionally, data from many urban districts, including reports based on data from Chicago Public Schools - headed (until now) by new Education Secretary Arne Duncan, reflects no significant narrowing of the achievement gap. According to The Education Trust, gaps have stayed the same or even widened in many states and school districts by the time students reach high school.

The unevenness in achievement progress among states is highlighted in Education Week's 2006 Quality Counts at 10 report of standards-based education over the last decade, which notes the high variation in student achievement gains and achievement gap patterns across states for fourth-grade reading from 1992-2005. In the words of one Education Trust report, "These wide differences in NAEP scores - from district to district and state to state - indicate clearly that what schools and school systems do matters. The excuses about the effects of racism and poverty simply don't hold up against data like this. In the face of this data, we must look inside the schools and school systems - at instructional policy and practice - not outside of them, in order to explain the achievement gap." This stance that schools matter is one that is echoed by many education policy experts and is also mentioned in a recent report from the National Bureau of Economics Research.

In her presentation on January 15th, Haycock will detail what the Trust has learned from schools and districts that have been most effective in raising achievement and closing gaps. If you happened to miss her presentation you can access the video recording through the Learning Policy Center colloquium page. And please share your own thoughts on the achievement gap or Haycock's talk by commenting below.