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Get those pencils ready: It's MEAP time
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Kids, it's MEAP time. So sharpen those No. 2 pencils. Make sure you get enough sleep and eat nourishing breakfasts. And get ready to test just how much you remember from last year. Starting Monday, schools statewide will begin giving the Michigan Educational Assessment Program test to about 900,000 children in grades 3-9. They have three weeks to get the kids tested.
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Bid to Waive Middle School Scores Rejected
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Superintendents Fear That Surprisingly Low Pass Rates Will Hinder Accreditation
The Virginia Board of Education denies requests from local officials to shield middle schools from fallout from unexpected low math scores.
EdResources and EdJobs at EdNews coming soon!
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Parents dismiss schools' ratings: Education YES! grading by state draws criticism
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By Susan Vela and Nicole Geary
The state's Education YES! Report Cards are supposed to be a friendly overture that informs parents about a school's quality and performance.
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Some schools pass up bonuses
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By TERRENCE STUTZ
Critics say merit pay plan fosters inequity, but most campuses take the cash
AUSTIN – More than two dozen Texas schools have rejected state grants to set up a merit pay program for their teachers, deciding it was unfair to pit teacher against teacher in dividing up thousands of dollars in bonus money.
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Norton pupils continue to underperform, report says
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By PHILIP MARCELO
CUMBERLAND -- After a visit by state educators found that writing instruction at B.F. Norton Elementary School was "inconsistent," district administrators last night said that the school would assign students a minimum of 45 minutes of writing per day and assure that teachers give students more challenging writing assignments.
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Don't teach for tests: Learning takes connecting dots
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By JEFF LANTOS
I'm beginning my 20th year of teaching in the Los Angeles Unified School District, and if I've learned anything, it is that good teaching cannot be measured quantitatively.
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Cheating hasn't hurt Wilmer-Hutchins teachers
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Panel to study how well state is running schools
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Mayor Street yesterday announced the formation of a task force to determine how well public schools have performed since they were taken over by the state for academic and financial reasons nearly five years ago.
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NASDSE Explains Response to Intervention
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This FOCUS on Results document provides the reader with a basic understanding of Response to Intervention (RtI). Part one of a two-part series on RtI, this document provides RtI guidance and technical assistance to Michigan school districts. This document shares the national perspective on RtI, as provided by the National Association of State Directors of Special Education (NASDSE) in its book, Response to Intervention: Policy Considerations and Implementation, published in 2005.
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School evaluations come out today
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For the first time ever, the state today will simultaneously release federal Adequate Yearly Progress reports for individual schools and the results of Utah's own evaluation system, letting parents and teachers know whether schools are making the grade.
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3 of 10 middle schools fall short
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Four Virginia superintendents asked the state Board of Education to throw out the most recent SOL math test scores for middle schools.
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Davis: Limit FCAT role in schools
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Democratic candidate Jim Davis said Wednesday that if elected, he would junk much of the FCAT-centered educational plan that has become the signature policy of term-limited Gov. Jeb Bush.
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Chandler Middle School mandated to improve
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Chandler Middle School is struggling to survive. Chandler failed for six years to get enough students to pass the state's English SOL tests, the federal government stepped in, requiring restructuring.
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IPS set to adopt weighted-grading policy
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Students who take advanced classes at Indianapolis Public Schools will receive weighted grades in exchange for challenging themselves, under a policy the School Board is expected to adopt this week.
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Latest school test results a mixed bag
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Sixty-two percent of schools in Rhode Island ranked as high-performing; 15 percent, all in urban areas, weren't making the grade.
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When students evaluate themselves, it’s harder to hide
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Last spring, sprinklings of Ponaganset High School students were waiting in the halls for their annual appointment to discuss their “digital portfolios.” Over the course of the year, they’ve put certain of their classroom assignments into an electronic sampler.
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TEST-SCORE BLUNDER PUTS KIDS IN LIMBO
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Scores of city fifth-graders spent the weekend wondering if they should be sixth-graders. Educators admitted Friday they overestimated how many fifth-graders should not be promoted - after basing their estimate on preliminary, rather than actual, statewide exams scores from January.
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Principal back on job after probe over grades
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A Liberty City middle school principal who had been under investigation after five teachers said she changed students' grades without their knowledge has been reinstated at the school, officials confirmed Friday.
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Ethical Lapses in Reading Program
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Audit finds that the billion-dollar-a-year reading program has been beset by conflicts of interest and willful mismanagement.
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Optimism, but little headway so far on college readiness effort
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TEST SCORES FLAT, BUT STUDIES SHOW PROGRESS
California's ambitious effort to better prepare high school students for college hasn't budged test scores yet, but educators say they believe it will eventually cut the percentage of freshmen who arrive at the state's public universities needing remedial classes.
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Why we need a national school test
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We need to find better and more efficient ways to produce an educated population and close the achievement gaps in our education system. Americans do ultimately get themselves educated - at work, after school, online, in adulthood - but a lot of time and money are wasted in the process.
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English test scores decrease as kids age
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First-ever results from a massive round of English tests released by the state Thursday show that scores get progressively worse as students move from elementary to middle schools.
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Testing blamed for rise in primary school truancy
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Truancy rates have soared to a record level, government figures show. A total of 1,399,197 pupils, one in five of all state school children, skipped lessons last year a rise of 433,797 in 10 years.
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A closing of the achievement gap
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By Scot Lehigh
IT'S RARE that good news becomes so routine that it's almost ho-hum, but we may just have reached that point with education reform.
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Students Rebel Against Turnitin
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At McLean High School, members of the Committee for Students' Rights collected more than 1,100 signatures against mandatory use of a California plagiarism monitor. Among the committee members are Leo Brett and Ben Donovan, front, and Jonathan Gayer, left rear, Nicolas Kaylor, Jon Ende, Daniel Freudberg and Brooks Powell. (By Katherine Frey -- The Washington Post) Group objects to service's adding their essays to the massive database, calling it an infringement of intellectual property rights.
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4th-graders keep up passing fancy
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The city's fourth-grade reading and writing scores are holding steady, maintaining the historic gains that helped Mayor Bloomberg win reelection last year, the Daily News has learned. More eighth-graders also passed the crucial state exam.
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Why We Need a National School Test
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William J. Bennett and Rod Paige
We need to find better and more efficient ways to produce an educated population and close the achievement gaps in our education system. Americans do ultimately get themselves educated -- at work, after school, online, in adulthood -- but a lot of time and money are wasted in the process.
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Parents call for one way to rate U.S. schools
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Tiffany Davis thought she had found the perfect school for her daughter. Pilgrim Elementary was fewer than three miles from her office, and on Aug. 1, the state declared it "exemplary" based on student test scores.
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High School Seniors Need to Knuckle Down, Test Finds
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By Mitchell Landsberg
Most high school juniors in California are probably not ready for college courses, and need to hone their skills in their senior year, according to results of a voluntary statewide test released Wednesday.
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Unfair Advancement
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By RODNEY LABRECQUE
Colleges and universities should return Advanced Placement courses to their original purpose, which was not college admission, but as the name says, advanced placement.
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Boston is 'best' at boosting urban ed
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High test scores, gains for African Americans, and expanded college preparation won Beantown the Broad Prize for Urban Education. By Stacy A. Teicher
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State to explore abandoning No Child Left Behind law
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Momentum is building across the political spectrum in Kansas to give No Child Left Behind a failing grade.
President Bush’s major public school initiative is getting lambasted as unrealistic and counterproductive.
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Closing the Gap: Keeping Students in School
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Data suggest that most dropouts are students who could have succeeded in school. Of even more concern is the fact that positive life outcomes for dropouts have changed significantly. This issue of Infobrief focuses on the dropout rate and is the third in a series designed to examine factors that contribute to the achievement gap.
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High School Reform: What Will It Take to Engage Teens?
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By Gene R. Carter, Executive Director, ASCD
It\'s no secret that our nation has a problem keeping kids in school. The graduation rate hovers below 70 percent, jeopardizing the future of millions of young people. What\'s more, many of the problems facing students are present before they set foot in high school, and a third of dropouts exit school without making it past 9th or 10th grade.
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Schools taking longer look at extended classroom time
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WASHINGTON - Demands for more tests and more academic rigor are spurring schools to consider something that makes most students shudder: more time in class:
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Sequoyah rises from 'No Child Left Behind' burden
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Teachers last May walked into a 7:30 a.m. before-class meeting with DeKalb County officials knowing Sequoyah Middle School had failed to meet its academic goals the past seven years....
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Educators juggling their students' unique needs
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Two special-ed teachers in Chandler say ''full inclusion'' in regular classrooms is not the best solution for severely disabled students.
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A transformation for special ed
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A new day is dawning for special education, which will need to account for language and cultural differences as never before, according to an Arizona State University professor.
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Johnson 'buried primary test results'
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The Labour leadership contender Alan Johnson was at the centre of a row over spin yesterday in the wake of this year's poor primary school test results.
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Maryland School Reform Goes 'Lite'
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Using Turnaround Specialists Is Common -- and Futile, Study Says
Report says Prince George's County system consistently chooses the least drastic option available when faced with serious shakeups.
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Who Pays for Special Ed
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Parents want the best for their disabled kids. Public schools say they can't handle the cost
By JULIE RAWE
Luke Perkins has been living "two disparate lives," court documents say: one at school in Berthoud, Colo., where the autistic boy was making some progress, and the other outside school, where the 9-year-old was so unruly he could not take part in such basic activities as going to church or eating in a restaurant.
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Higher Standards Don't Always Lead to Success
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The National Center for Educational Accountability, in a February 2006 brief titled "Orange Juice or Orange Drink? Ensuring that 'Advanced Courses' Live Up to Their Labels," noted that several states are attempting to raise high school standards.
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Intervention Suggested to Fight Inflation
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The National Center for Educational Accountability said that there are no easy solutions to course-label inflation but that the best remedies focus on these eight elements:
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State board loses bid for more power over textbooks
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Abbott refuses to overrule 1995 restrictions on the education panel
AUSTIN - Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott on Monday refused to expand the State Board of Education's authority over textbook content beyond what the Legislature authorized in a 1995 law.
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Schools get more NCLB flexibility
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Feds ease rules on limited-English students, highly qualified teachers
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An Interview with Marcus A. Winters: To Socially Promote or Not to “ Socially Promote”
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CBC weighs drug testing of teachers and staff
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The high school's principal says it's about adults setting an example for students
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Law firm targeting schools on vital data
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STATE-REQUIRED REPORTS ARE NOT ALWAYS AT HAND, FIRM'S SURVEY SAYS
Behind the front counter of every public school in California is what amounts to a campus user's manual -- a printed summary of class sizes, teacher qualifications and loads of test scores.
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Taking aim at admissions anxiety
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Though just teenagers, the applicants to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are a scarily accomplished lot. They have started businesses
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Though just teenagers, the applicants to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are a scarily accomplished lot. They have started businesses and published academic research. One built a working nuclear reactor in his garage. In their high schools, they have led every extracurricular club and mastered the SAT.
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A tougher, better 2 years
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FIRST THERE was only the STAR test.
Then came No Child Left Behind.
Close on its heels came the high school exit exam.
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Critical Thinking, Not Standardized Tests
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By Jeff Lantos
Public schools should teach kids how to think, not how to master multiple choice. I'M BEGINNING my 20th year of teaching in the Los Angeles Unified School District, and if I've learned anything, it is that good teaching cannot be measured quantitatively.
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Some schools to be able to wipe out AIMS scores over glitch
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A glitch in scoring caused wild swings in the 2006 AIMS writing scores, and the state will allow some schools to wipe out the results.
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Push to curb truancy pays off in Racine
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Municipal fines, police officers help lower rate dramatically in 2 years
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Deal reached on failing schools
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Board, state reach deal on Miami-Dade's failing schools Months of stalemate over how to run Miami-Dade's lowest-performing schools appear to be over, with state and school district officials reaching a tentative agreement on Wednesday.
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Cheating for grades
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Cheating on standardized tests in Nevada schools nearly doubled last year as students relied on phone cameras, text messages and those old standbys - wandering eyes and passed notes ...
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Education needs demand attention
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There was more grim news on Massachusetts public schools this week with the release of preliminary...
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More Time Given for Grading Schools
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The Education Department gave states final permission Wednesday to leave out the test scores of newly enrolled pupils who speak limited English when grading schools.
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WHAT IS THE REALITY OF SCHOOL COMPETITION?
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By Cathy Wylie
New Zealand Council of Educational Research
Research from countries with broad school choice initiatives has become particularly relevant to the U.S. with the passage of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the potential for all students in failing schools to gain access to new schooling options.
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Biggest WASL letdown: math
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Any illusions that progress on the state's high-stakes academic-achievement test would be a steady upward trend were dashed last week.
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Appeals court hears second exit exam case
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A lawyer for a citizens' group urged a state appeals court in San Francisco today to consider ordering diplomas for 20,000 students who failed California's high school exit exam this year.
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'LOW'DOWN ON CITY HS'S
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Fewer city high schools got a failing grade from the state this year compared with last, but the dreaded roster included a handful of small schools and its first charter school — both high priorities of Bloomberg's administration.
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L.A. Unified Plan Aims for Fewer Dropouts
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The district hopes to encourage students to enroll in programs that will keep them in school. The focus is on vocational education.
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Hub schools slide on federal standards
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Ninety of Boston’s 145 public schools - up from 63 last year - have failed to show steady progress toward meeting federal No Child Left Behind...
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Charters' grade should be 'incomplete'
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WISHFUL THINKING has again triumphed over solid analysis in the Globe's rush to champion charter schools in the Commonwealth ("Where charters succeed," editorial, Sept. 6). In asserting that charter schools "just got a good report card," you have disregarded the substantive findings of a state report comparing MCAS scores of charter and public school districts.
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The Not-So-Public Part of the Public Schools: Lack of Accountability
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By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
An overarching question has emerged as to whether outside money for education initiatives amounts to efficient innovations or an evasion of the normal checks and balances of government.
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State gives teachers $7 million in bonuses
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Teachers at 76 schools serving low-income children have earned $7 million in bonuses under Gov. Rick Perry's new plan that ties pay to students' test scores.
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Proposal would require fourth year of math, science for many high schoolers
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Students entering high school next year should be able to fit a fourth year of math and science into their schedules along with their favorite electives under a proposal to increase the overall number of credits needed for graduation.
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TEA accountability ratings for Houston-area districts, schools
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The Texas Education Agency assigns ratings to the state's public school districts and campuses based on performances on the TAAS, the dropout rates and the attendance rates. Following is a list of the ratings for districts and campuses in the Houston area.
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CRESST ANALYSIS OF CALIFORNIA ACCOUNTABILITY PROGRESS REPORT
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Pete Goldschmidt, Christy Kim Boscardin, and Robert Linn
National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing
The latest release of the California Academic Performance Index (API) indicates that, overall, California schools demonstrated about an 11-point, 1.6%, improvement over last year. This result is consistent with previously released STAR results.
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CRESST ANALYSIS OF CALIFORNIA ACCOUNTABILITY PROGRESS REPORT
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Los Angeles, CA – Researchers at the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST) released today an analysis of results from the 2005/2006 California’s Accountability Progress
Report.
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In Defense of Testing Series: From Goals to Results: Improving Education System Accountability
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Southern Regional Education Board
SREB's Challenge to Lead goals call for states to encourage early childhood programs, K-12 schools, community and technical colleges, two- and four-year colleges, universities and adult education to work together as a system. This includes focusing on helping students make smooth transitions to the next education level (especially first grade, ninth grade and college), building statewide education data systems that can track individual students and teachers over time, and achieving real-dollar growth in state budgets for K-12 and higher education. This report concludes the first series of reports on each Challenge to Lead goal. It includes recommendations and an action agenda, >From Goals to Results . Making It Happen, that can help your state make progress toward all of the goals.
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Study by U of M researchers indicates that state-mandated high school exit exams reduce high school graduation rates
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University of Minnesota
MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL --A new study by University of Minnesota researchers indicates that state-mandated high school exit examinations (HSEEs) lower the high school graduation rate, denying diplomas to thousands of young people per year who otherwise would have graduated from high school.
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