 |
 |
US Education UpdateIssue 9, June 2001 Contents
The Senate has passed, by an overwhelming margin (91 to 8) the first major overhaul of US education for nearly 35 years. After only seven weeks of debate this decisive vote takes the President's top priority a step closer to enactment. A House/Senate conference will now be set up to reconcile the differences between the House and Senate bills. But since the bills core packages are virtually identical, Congress is expected to agree a final bill version by the end of August. The main highlights of the senate bill includes: Annual State Tests
First Year Review Second Year Review
Third Year Review
Failing Schools
Federal Funds The only major disappointment of the Bush initiative is the failure to win support for school vouchers. The initiative, designed to help low-income children escape from failing public schools by enrolling in private ones, failed to win support in either the House or the Senate. The Senate version of the Education bill reflects months of successful negotiations by the Bush Administration to largely get all they wanted. Democrats also claimed that they too achieved their goals by adding in new and increased spending on items such as improvements to education for disabled and disadvantaged children, libraries, technological centres and mentors for teachers. Philosophically both the House and Senate versions are very close so congressional staffers believe that eventual passage of the Bill is virtually assured, probably by the Labor Day holiday. Brief Comparison of the House and Senate Education Bills Funding Testing Accountability
School Choice
Flexibility Special Education
Class Size Reduction
Iowa Teacher Pay-for-Performance Plan Iowa is the first state to propose replacing its traditional teacher salary plan with one that rewards classroom performance, and student improvement, with higher pay. The measure, expected to pass the Iowa legislature, will begin in 2003 but will be piloted in six schools from autumn 2001. The traditional plan pays teachers according to the number of years of service and level of qualifications such as higher degrees (which do not have to be directly related to the subject taught). The proposed plan will evaluate teachers on eight standards (such as classroom discipline, and knowledge of the subject being taught). Novice teachers will be placed on a "four-step career path" with the first stage involving an induction programme and a mentor for the first couple of years. New teachers will be expected to complete the next three stages within three years. Teachers will then undergo a comprehensive evaluation at least every five years. Supporters of the plan hope that the potential to reach a higher salary more quickly will attract a pool of young talent to teaching in the state -and high quality teachers mean higher achieving students. Critics of the proposal worry that other parts of the education budget will suffer to meet the large costs of the plan (ESTIMATED AT?). Representatives of the local teaching union feel that teachers will lose out financially: the onus of comprehensive reviews on administrators will result in a slow system of compensation. For background on
research on teacher pay plans, and information on the district-wide model
currently in place in Cincinnati, Ohio, please see previous Updates: Education
Update 2, item 1; Education Update 4, item 1 respectively Source: Education Week
Across the USA school districts have set up programmes to encourage high and middle school students (young people aged between 14 and 18 approximately) to try out teaching. One of these programmes is in the Bronx, New York at the Walton-Lehman Pre-Teaching Academy. Students in the pre-teaching academy are given after-school and Saturday training in teaching techniques after which they move on to an internship as a co-teacher which includes teaching whole classes. The pre-teaching students continue their own studies towards high school graduation - their internships are in addition to normal studies. They receive a stipend - $400 for the first semester (term) and $500 for the second. Initially seen by fellow students as "teachers' pets" and by teachers as an additional burden, interns are now so much a part of the culture that any early prejudices have vanished. Benefits to staff include greater sharing of good practice. For example, pre-teachers will move from class to class picking up strategies from different teachers and applying these as they go along. Teachers normally isolated from the work of their colleagues can see new strategies in action and adopt them or modify what they are currently doing. Benefits to students have included increased confidence, increased respect for the teaching profession and a lowering of drop-out rates. An interesting bonus has been the development of a teaching manual aimed at the pre-teachers/their mentors which has been so effective that it is now on sale. Currently around 25% of their pre-teachers go on to become teachers. For more information, contact: judith.grant@worldnet.att.net
A report from the Business Roundtable looks at ten years of school reform policies in Texas and concludes that they have been, for the most part, successful. In particular, the report says that minority and low-income children have benefited from the reforms. In brief, the report states that Texas has enforced high expectations for all students, held schools accountable to the same overall standard, and kept standards within reasonable reach while raising the bar slowly. Texas was the first state to report results broken down by race, income and ethnicity with the same targets for each group. (Statistics from national assessments in writing and maths show Texas having the highest average scores for African-American students in the nation.) According to the report, higher scores have not come at the cost of higher drop-out rates (although this is disputed by critics as dependent on the way enrollment is measured). The full report, "Real Results, Remaining Challenges: The Story of Texas Education Reform" can be downloaded from the Business Roundtable site: www.brtable.org Source: Education Week
Accountability - value-added assessment Bill Sanders, formerly of the University of Tennessee, has developed a system for measuring the performance of school students and teachers. For assessing students, the system looks at gains made by individual students; students' performance is compared to their own past performance. This allows schools to demonstrate success even where their results may not be at the higher end of any league table. It can also expose those schools which are showing good exam results but where there is no improvement. Sanders-based research has concluded that teachers are a greater influence on student achievement than socio-economic factors. For more information, contact: judith.grant@worldnet.att.net
Suburban Experiment with Smaller Schools School districts in New York, Chicago and Philadelphia have led the way in creating smaller school environments to help stem the rise of violence, anonymity and apathy in large urban schools. In contrast, the middle-class suburban district of West Clermont, Ohio, is experimenting with breaking up its two large high schools into 3-5 "themed" schools. The high schools are not failing - they enjoy a good graduation rate and average test scores - but the perceived "mediocrity" is enough to make the school district look to change. Studies on smaller schools suggest that students play truant less, drop out less, bond more with their teachers, and have a better sense of belonging. The effect on achievement is less clear although studies suggest that students from low-income families tend to perform better in smaller schools. Teachers, students, parents and community members are all involved in the design of the new schools in West Clermont - students will choose which one they will attend in 2002. For the schools to succeed, researchers emphasise that size is not enough - focused teaching and curriculum must be in place, especially as one disadvantage of a smaller environment can be the loss of a wider curriculum available at larger high schools. Information on the ongoing development of the small school design at West Clermont district can be found at: www.westcler.k12.oh.us For more information:
Source: part of a special Education Week series "High School: The Shifting Mission" which can be read in full under "Special Reports" at: www.edweek.org
Additional Findings on Class Size Research Updated findings from
Project STAR (Student-Teacher Achievement Ratio), an ambitious class-size
experiment undertaken by the state of Tennessee in the 1980s have been
published by Columbia University's Teachers College. As part of Project
STAR, primary school pupils were randomly assigned to either a small class
(13-17 children), a regular class (22-26) or a regular class with a teacher's
aide. Previous publications from the study affirm that the students in
the small class performed at a higher academic level, especially minority
children. This publication looks at academic achievement in kindergarten
through third grade (5-8 years old) and the effects of class size related
to the number of years participating in that environment. It also looks
at the long-term effect of smaller classes. The study of data concludes
that previous publications may have understated the academic gains of
smaller classes. It also suggests that earlier participation in a small
class (from kindergarten), for at least three years, results in a greater
academic gain. The gains were smaller when students were later to join
a small class. The results also indicate that the presence of a teacher's
aide in the classroom does not have a significant effect on students'
academic achievement - suggesting that it is a small class that counts
rather than pupil to teacher ratio. An Alternative
to Class Size Reduction Source: Education Week
Based in Concord, Massachusetts, the Virtual High School (run by The Concord Consortium) offers 155 one-semester (term) courses to 2800 high school students in 32 states. Each teacher at the high school has a "class" of 20 and lessons are taught/assignments received over the Web. Virtual High School classes are in addition to normal school work and, with time-zone differences, little is done in real time (except for some Web-based discussions). The Virtual High School teachers are full-time staff at normal schools. The Concord Consortium estimates that it takes one and a half to three times more time to do virtual classes compared to face-to-face. The teacher's role is to prepare lessons, check assignments, stimulate discussion, monitor progress etc. Any student who is "silent" during discussions or is late with an assignment will be followed up. As classes are relatively small and all work is easily retrievable by name/time/mark etc, it is hard for a student's performance to go unnoticed. To enrol on a virtual course students must attend a school which has signed up to the Virtual High School (and paid a fee). There are currently no cases of students doing this solo. At the beginning of a course each class is introduced over the Web - usually with a short biography and a photograph. Students and teachers can post genuine photos of themselves or post, for example, a cartoon; students can also go by a nickname thus making it possible for little or nothing to be known about their ethnicity, gender, looks etc. As well as a Virtual High School teacher all students have a mentor in their actual school. What's in it for students? According to the Concord Consortium: greater access to a wider range of courses, lots of hands-on IT work, the chance to collaborate online with peers in other locations/cultures, and working outside the traditional classroom. In addition, it allows students to choose their own pace, it helps them to develop the skills needed for independent as well as collaborative learning (a lifelong skill) and it is egalitarian (the anonymity the Web provides can produce a more level playing field for shy, self-conscious or less confident students. It is also colour/disability blind). Finally (and perhaps surprisingly) the students develop an intimacy with their teachers which means they feel far from isolated. For the teachers,
feedback suggests they feel part of a community of teachers with far more
collaboration and peer support than would be usual across most schools.
The teachers work in teams on projects and have space to communicate with
each other. Their work is peer-reviewed and evidence so far shows that
this environment is seen as a safe one. Most virtual teachers are older
and well qualified, apparently going into this as a means of personal
and professional development. To date no teachers or students at the Virtual
High School have met other than over the Web. Virtual Universities
List Update
Education Week has
released its fourth annual report on the state of technology in US schools.
The report focuses on the digital divide that persists in schools. Although
there has been some improvement in access to technology (the ratio of
students to computers in the nation's poorest schools is slightly higher
than the national average of 4.9:1), the report suggests that certain
groups do not enjoy equal access to learning via technology (poor children,
minority children, girls, students with disabilities, students learning
English as a second language, children in rural areas). The findings also
emphasise that the technology is only as good as the programme which surrounds
it. In an effort to close
the digital divide, a group of non-profit organisations has come together
to provide a directory on where to get free access to computers and the
Internet during the summer holidays. The project is aimed at low-income
teenagers who do not have access at home. The directory, ConnectNet, lists
mostly libraries and some community technology centres. A Spanish version
has been published and the service is advertised to teens through television.
Silicon Valley - growing its own workforce The employers of Silicon Valley resolved some years ago to narrow the gap between the skills of its school students and the needs of the high-performance organisations based there. Currently only 53% of Silicon Valley young people go on to further or higher education and as many as 40% drop out within the first year. Silicon Valley employers (with the kind of names you would recognise from the label on your laptop) concluded that a systematic change in education was needed - to be known as "school-to-work". Run by Workforce Silicon Valley (WSV, a not-for-profit organisation), the aim is to develop a world class workforce by mobilising all parts of the community including leaders in industry and education. WSV is working at a number of levels including a leadership institute for teachers to provide in-depth training in integrated and applied curricula; school-to-career programmes across both high schools and community colleges; implementing a school-to-work curriculum in high schools; career awareness for middle-school students; and sponsoring teachers for fellowships in high-performance firms. WSV recognises there is no "magic bullet" and has therefore focussed on a set of integrated objectives, one of which is to develop industry-specific Learning Collaboratives in which employers and educators together define curriculum and set student performance standards. Success so far? There is increasing employer involvement, for example in the form of job-shadowing (literally thousands of) opportunities and high-tech prizes for the student winners of a range of competitions linked to WSV aims. Funding initially came solely from local corporations and foundations but from 1996 WSV received a $4m five-year federal grant - the largest such grant awarded in California. For more information, contact: judith.grant@worldnet.att.net
MIT Course Materials on the World Wide Web The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announced in April that nearly all of its course materials would be freely available on the Web. MIT aims to reinforce "the concept that ideas are best viewed as the common property of us all". Prior to this, the Institute had collaborated on distance learning with Singapore, using real-time teleconferencing, video tapes and faculty exchanges, and a form of distance learning for students actually on-campus. Two years ago MIT put their freshman (first year) physics course online. The project, known as PIVOT, contains digitised lectures, textbooks and an engine to simulate certain problems. There is also an intelligent agent which can intervene when a student makes a problem-solving mistake, "understand" what concept has been misunderstood and suggest which part of the text book the student should review. PIVOT has proven popular for a number of reasons - students can study at their own pace, it is not tied to one faculty member or the schedule of a faculty member, and it can accommodate individual learning styles. Not yet formally evaluated, early observations show that PIVOT students do at least as well as traditional ones. Anecdotal evidence is that one benefit might be that any unconscious elements of racism/sexism are reduced. Another benefit predicted is that the need for huge lecture halls will reduce. PIVOT has not supplanted traditional teaching methods - the students are free to attend lectures and/or to do the digitised version; they are also free to submit course work in person. PIVOT is seen as an adjunctive resource rather than a replacement for traditional human-focussed methods. A query remains about what will be the role of the lecturer/professor if PIVOT-style methods are more widely adopted. However, MIT does not envision a rise in anti-social behaviour or student isolation resulting from additional online study on-campus. For more information, contact: judith.grant@worldnet.att.net Previous issues of the Education Update are available on the British Council's USA website.
For More Information Additional contacts
To add or remove a name from the distribution list, please email alison.corbett@us.britishcouncil.org |