Lesson Plans and Classroom Resources for Teaching To Standards
K12 TESTING, EVALUATION, ASSESSMENT
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"Everyone has the right to education."
Article 26 Universal Declaration of Human Rights December 10 1948
GET OUT OF THE BOX
2007 Supplemental Education Services aren't monitered and held accountable.
Supplemental Education Services, a key component of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act, has been adopted and implemented without any systematic research or scrutiny, notwithstanding potential problems that call out for investigation, according to a new report from the Education Policy Research Unit and the Education and the Public Interest Center. The policy brief, by professor Patricia Burch of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, examines the supplemental education services (SES) provision of NCLB, which requires school districts to pay the cost of after-school tutoring services for eligible students attending schools that have failed to meet mandated Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) benchmarks three years in a row. Those schools must set aside up to 20 percent of their Title I funds to pay for tutoring services provided by state-approved operators. These operators are a mixture of for-profit or nonprofit, public or private firms. The report finds that SES programs have low participation rates and offer limited services for English Language Learners and special education students. It also finds that states and school districts lack the capacity to offer significant monitoring or accountability for SES programs-in stark contrast to the NCLB law's strict accountability measures applied to the schools themselves. But the key finding of this report is essentially a non-finding: the overwhelming absence of evidence to support (or refute) the wisdom of the SES policy. The report states, "existing research offers little information about specific conditions that support positive outcomes" from supplemental education services provided under the law. "To make well-informed decisions in the future, policy makers will require additional empirical evidence." The report recommends policy makers redesign NCLB to commission federally funded evaluations that assess the effects of SES on student achievement and the access of at-risk students to SES programs; it also offers concrete recommendations for amending NCLB to assist local school districts and state education agencies in administering SES programs. Burch also recommends that policy makers examine and reconsider "NCLB's apparent tension between the high-stakes accountability imposed on schools and the more limited measures for holding SES providers accountable for their contributions to student achievement."
RETENTION
2006 The dropout epidemic: almost one-third of public high school students drop out in America -- and nearly one-half of all African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans fail to graduate from public high school with their class. The report, "The Silent Epidemic: Perspectives of High School Dropouts," was funded by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.U.S. STATES: Urban high schools report dropout rates of 20 percent to 40 percent.
Your Chance for Success
Analysis by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center is based on the "Chance-for-Success Index," which tracks state efforts to connect education from preschool through postsecondary education and provides a perspective on the importance of education throughout a persons lifetime. The index is based on 13 indicators that highlight whether young children get off to a good start, succeed in elementary and secondary school, and hit key educational and income benchmarks as adults. Virginia, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire rank at the top of the index, while Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, Arizona, Louisiana, and New Mexico lag significantly behind the national average in descending order. The 13 indicators that make up the index capture key performance or attainment outcomes at various stages in a persons lifetime or are correlated with later success. In general, the report finds far more activity in the early years. Forty-one states and the District of Columbia report having early-learning standards that are aligned with the academic expectations for elementary schools. Thirteen states have a formal definition of school readiness; 16 require districts to assess the readiness of entering students; and 18 have interventions for children not meeting school-readiness expectations. In contrast, while many states report that they are working to better align high school graduation requirements with college- and workforce-readiness standards, many of those efforts have yet to reach fruition.
Secret to a Long Life is to Stay in School.
The one social factor that researchers agree is consistently linked to longer lives in every country where it has been studied is education. It is more important than race; it obliterates any effects of income. Year after year, in study after study, says Richard Hodes, director of the National Institute on Aging, education "keeps coming up." And, health economists say, those factors that are popularly believed to be crucial -- money and health insurance, for example, pale in comparison.
MANY STUDENTS LEFT UNCOUNTED source
How does the No Child Left Behind Act hold schools accountable for students who move from one school to another? Dallas Morning News columnist Josh Benton draws our attention to a little known fact: students who change schools after the end of October are not included in schools test scores. Significant numbers of students are not counted as a result; in some cases, up to 20% of students are excluded from schools test scores. These students are more likely to be poor, minority, and special education students. If teachers know that some kids can be safely ignored -- given all the test pressures they already deal with -- some are going to redirect their attention elsewhere. Is Texas' testing system designed to give struggling kids the attention they need? Or is it designed to make the adults look good? The current system, Benton concludes, leaves too much room for some kids to be ignored.
TESTING
Contradiction: High School Graduation Rates are actually higher than believed by the Economic Policy Institute report.
Recent reports that only half of minorities and two-thirds of all students end up with a high school diploma have been accepted as gospel is seriously inaccurate, and that a wealth of better data shows high school completion rates are much higher, with about 75 percent of black and Hispanic students receiving diplomas nationally and an overall national rate of 82 percent. Although substantial gaps remain between the graduation rates of whites and either blacks or Hispanics, the report - "Rethinking High School Graduation Rates and Trends" -- documents that
graduation rates have been growing and racial/ethnic gaps closing over the past four decades.
EVALUATION - EVALUATING THE EVALUATORS
ASSESSMENT
Quality
Integrity
Accreditation
RESEARCH
REPORT ON INTERNET ACCESS IN U.S. PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND CLASSROOMS 1994 - 2000, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has conducted a survey of public schools' connectivity to the Internet. An annual report, "Internet Access in U.S. Public Schools and Classroom," provides "trend analysis on the progress of public schools and classrooms in connecting to the Internet, the ratio of students to instructional computers and to instructional computers with Internet access, and the types of Internet connections used." NCES is the primary U.S. agency for collecting and analyzing data related to education in the United States and other countries.
Seven Dimensions for Gauging Progress of Technology in the Schools
On-line Evaluation Resource Library
A resource of project evaluation tools (plans and instruments) and reports used by the National Science Foundation's Directorate for Education and Human Resources; topic areas focus on curriculum development, teacher education, and faculty development, including minority group representation.
Performance Assessment Links in Science
An online resource of performance assessments for students studying science in grades K-12; provides information on standards, tasks, and rubrics for evaluative purposes (US)
American Evaluation Association
Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP)
About protection of human research subjects.
Research about research methods
Selected Research on School Reform
Digital / Gender Divide
Latino Education Directory
Rural Education Directory
The Top High Schools
The full index includes all public schools in the U.S. that gave at least 200 tests. As many smaller schools as could be found with ratios above 1.000 have been included. If you know of a school to be added. I am preparing another Newsweek list to be published in spring 2003, using test data from spring 2002. If your school gave as many AP or IB tests this year as it had graduating seniors, please send the number of tests and the number of June graduates to me. Contact Jay Mathews
AP, IB to be the Next SATs?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50048-2002Aug6.html
AP/IB-to-school ratio is an indicator of a school's efforts to get students to excel. Many IB schools also give AP exams.
SRI International's Center for Technology in Learning
The Center was established within SRI's Policy Division,
where it is closely allied with ongoing education and health research programs.
Find Research Evaluation Checklist
http://evalguide.sri.com/
Policy and Articles
The Concord Consortium has published results of its research into pedagogy and technology, primarily in the areas of science education, mobile computing and distance learning.
The Center for Applied Research in Educational Technology
provides educational technology research.
** ANOTHER POINT OF VIEW **
Reality Check!! top
What will make curriculum fail, can it be the teachers?
America's High Schools Are Obsolete - Bill Gates 2005 By obsolete, I don't just mean that our high schools are broken, flawed, and under-funded though a case could be made for every one of those points. By obsolete, I mean that our high schools even when they're working exactly as designed cannot teach our kids what they need to know today.
How does the brain work?
LEAD & LEARNING The Hidden Handicap: Lead, Brain Chemistry, & Education Failure no one is putting any of this into the "no child left behind" equation, and if this is the problem behind everything, no one is solving it.
Bad Teachers
Harvard researcher Ron Ferguson found teacher quality, as measured by scores on licensing exams and level of education, to be the single strongest predictor of how a child will fare in school. Chicago Sun-Times investigation of failing teachers
THE #1 DIFFERENCE IN CHILDREN'S SCHOLASTIC SUCCESS - What they found actually does matter.
Staff Development Incentives Question & Recommendations
LEARN ABOUT YOUR STATE STANDARDS
Content Knowledge:
A Compendium of Standards and Benchmarks for K-12 Education, Second Edition is now online
is a searchable database of state and international academic standards in English language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies, organized conveniently by subject, state, grade level, topic, and keyword.
NATIONAL TECHNOLOGY STANDARDS RELEASED
Draft Accreditation Standards for Candidates in Elementary Teacher Programs
1,200 Lesson Plans Matched to State and National Curriculum Standards
1998 Digest of Education Statistics PDF file available after May 19th, 1999
NET Accessibility Standards Federal Government Requires and Enforce
School Access to Technology -- Computers and Classrooms
Technology Intitiatives in other States and territories
* Achieve
Searchable Standards Database by State - by subject, grade K - 12, and you can compare quality between the States.
The National Educational Technology Standards For Teachers (NETS) Order 1-800-336-5191
Compare your State with other States
Student proficiency results on state reading and math tests, disaggregated by grades and student subgroups, for every school, district, and state;
Student demographic information, including socioeconomic, English language learner, and special education populations at the school, district, and state levels;
District and state financial data like revenue streams, spending allocations, and staff compensation;
Community demographic data, such as income levels, household parental status, and adult educational attainment rates; and
Standard & Poor's unique ratios that examine academic and financial performance in demographic context.
Also, the web site features research tools that allow users to compare student achievement across districts, track schools' and districts' progress in attaining goals established under the No Child Left Behind Act, and identify schools and districts that may be outperforming others.