The EDifierAugust 26, 2010 I have been looking over the results from the 2010 Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll that were released yesterday, and there were some trends I found quite intriguing. For example, although the public is not sold on No Child Left Behind (NCLB), with nearly half having an unfavorable view of NCLB, the reason why is unclear. Maybe they have read that NCLB is ruining education as we know it by making schools into test prep factories. Or maybe they were reading others’ opinions that NCLB was designed so the public would lose faith in its public schools.
However, the answers to some of the poll’s questions provide a different picture. First off, no, the public has not lost faith in our public schools. As a matter of fact, parents have actually given their children’s schools higher grades for the first time since 2000, two years before NCLB was signed into law. In 2000, 70 percent of parents gave the school their oldest child attended an A or B, while in 2010 that jumped to 77 percent. So it does not appear that parents are losing faith in their public schools. Furthermore, the poll also shows that parents don’t believe their students are just becoming test-takers at the expense of actually learning. As a matter of fact, more parents in 2010 (63 percent) believe their schools have “caused their child to become eager learners” than parents in 1998 (50 percent). So it doesn’t appear that NCLB is making our students into test-taking robots either.
This isn’t a defense of NCLB. The legislation has a lot of shortcomings that need to be addressed, and soon. But while discussions take place on what changes should be made, we need to know exactly what the problems are. The hyperbole that NCLB has ruined public schools is overstated, and so is the rhetoric that NCLB needs no alteration.
While policymakers are figuring out how to change the law, let’s hope they use data to inform their decisions and not assumptions based on anecdotes. Without basing changes on facts, they will just wind up leaving more students behind. – Jim Hull
August 19, 2010 More high school students continue to take the ACT college entrance exam, according to the newly released ACT High School Profile Report: The graduating class of 2010. There was a particularly large increase in number of minority students in the Class of 2010 taking the ACT. However, these increases likely led to the slight decline in scores over the past five years. Yet, there has been a significant increase in the number of students completing a college preparatory curriculum over the past several years, which has led to more students graduating high school “college ready.”
The findings
College Readiness
- The percent of students who scored at or above the ACT College Readiness Benchmarks in math (43 percent) and science (29 percent) increased one percentage point from 2009 to 2010. Fewer students than last year were college ready in English (66 percent) and Reading (52 percent).
- ACT believes those who achieved these benchmarks are ready to succeed in first-year, credit-bearing college courses in the specific subjects ACT tests.
- The percent of test-takers scoring at the College Readiness Benchmarks in all four subjects increased from by one percentage point from 2009 (23 percent) to 2010 (24 percent) and was three percentage points higher than in 2006 (21 percent).
Core Course Rigor
- Seventy-one percent of ACT test takers completed the recommended “core” college-preparatory curriculum, which is a 73 percent increase from 2006.
- Nearly twice (29 percent to 13 percent) as many “core” students met the benchmarks in all four subjects as “non-core” students in 2010.
- In math, only 12 percent of students who took Algebra I and II and geometry met the math college readiness benchmark, compared to 72 percent of students who took courses through calculus.
Scores
- The nation’s graduating Class of 2010 had an average composite score of 21.0 on the ACT, which was slightly lower than 2009 (21.1) and 2006 (21.1).
- Scores declined by one-tenth of point on the English (20.5) and reading (21.3) tests between 2006 and 2010, while scores on the science (20.9) test remained the same. Math (21.0) scores in 2010 were two-tenths higher than in 2006 but the same as 2009.
- Scores by ethnic/racial groups were mixed.
- The average Hispanic student score was 18.6 in 2010, which was one-tenth of a point below the 2009 score but the same score as 2006.
- The average Black student score was 16.9 in 2010, which was unchanged from 2009 but two-tenths of a point lower than in 2006.
- The average White student score was 22.3 in 2010 which was one-tenth of a point higher than the 2009 score and three-tenths higher than in 2006.
Test Takers
- The number of ACT test-takers jumped 6 percent from 2009 to 2010 to 1.57 million students. The ACT has seen a 30 percent increase of test takers just since 2006.
- More minority students are taking the ACT. The number of African-American test-takers increased 54 percent since 2006, while the increase was even larger for Hispanic students during the same time period at 84 percent.
- Both groups also make up a large share of all test takers as well. Black participation increased from 12 percent to 14 percent of all test-takers between 2006 and 2010, while Hispanic participation increased from 7 percent to 10 percent of all test-takers.
So, overall high schools are doing a better job of preparing students to succeed in college even as a larger and more diverse student population expects to go to college. – Jim Hull
For more information on how to use ACT scores to evaluate your school, check out the Center’s Good Measures for Good Schools.
Apologies to ol’ blue eyes, but those lyrics aren’t necessarily true when it comes to charter schools. Last year, Stanford economist Caroline Hoxby released a study that found charter schools could all but close the Scarsdale-Harlem achievement gap. For those of you outside the New York City area, this is the achievement gap between students in the affluent New York suburb of Scarsdale and students in the mostly economically disadvantaged area of Harlem in New York City. The study was held up by some as proof charter schools are the remedy to our nation’s education woes. Others criticized the findings altogether.
Such a reaction is reminder about the importance of what research really says. Although a recent critique from the Economic Policy Institute and the New Century Foundation found fault with Hoxby’s methodology, I am a bit skeptical. Even if you take their criticisms at face value, they do not necessarily debunk Hoxby’s general findings, although the extent to which the Scarsdale-Harlem gap narrowed may be overstated.
The real problem with the Hoxby study is not the methodology, but how the findings were interpreted. The study only examined charter schools in New York City, where more students applied than had seats available. New York City is diverse, but from a research perspective, it is not representative of the nation as a whole. So yes, charter schools in New York City are quite effective, but claiming that therefore all charter schools are more effective than traditional public schools is just plain wrong. The study was not designed to answer such a question.
One study, highlighted in the Center’s Charter Schools: Finding Out the Facts report, actually was designed to compare charter schools to traditional public schools across country. Although the study wasn’t able to include every state with charter schools, it was able to evaluate charter school in the 15 states that enrolled the majority of charter school students. This provided a much clearer picture of the effectiveness of charter schools nationwide.
In the study, researchers from the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) found that just 17 percent of charter schools are more effective than the neighborhood traditional public schools their students would have otherwise attended.
CREDO also provided a state-by-state breakdown of each of the 15 states included in the study. So even if the results are not representative of charter school achievement nationwide, the CREDO report still shows that charter school performance varies greatly from state to state. In some states, charter schools are typically less effective than traditional public schools; in other states, charter schools are found to be more effective.
Imagine what would have happened if CREDO had followed the pattern of the Hoxby study. They might have just examined the effectiveness of Arizona charter schools (which they found to be less effective) and then claimed that charter schools are ineffective nationwide. This would have been just as wrong as Hoxby claiming that charter schools nationwide are highly effective based on her study of New York City.
So yes, charter schools are making significant gains in New York, New York. But research shows even though charter schools are making it there, they aren’t making it everywhere. – Jim Hull
August 13, 2010 Unless you live in Minnesota or Massachusetts, you have no idea. That’s because they were the only U.S. states to participate in the most recent round of international assessments. Both states took part in 2007 TIMSS, which assessed the math and science skills of 4th and 8th graders from over 40 countries and jurisdictions. What both states found out is that their students stacked up favorably against students in the high performing countries in the world.
Massachusetts 4th graders outperformed their peers in math in all but two countries (Hong Kong and Singapore), including Japanese 4th graders. Minnesota 4th graders outperformed their peers in all countries but four (Hong Kong, Singapore, Chinese Taipei, & Japan). Each state also performed significantly above the U.S. average and well above the international average. These states know that they are preparing most of their students with the math skills they need to compete with students from almost any other country.
The TIMSS results came out almost two years ago, so why am I bringing this up now? Well, because the U.S. Dept of Education’s National Center for Educcation Statistics (NCES) just announced that every state will be able to make such comparisons in 2012, which is when the 2011 TIMSS results will be released. Since each state will participate in the the national NAEP assesment in 2011, the year TIMSS will be administered, NCES will be able to statistically link each state’s NAEP score to TIMSS to make it possible to compare each state’s performance to other countries.
In this day and age of a global economy, such information is vital. States need to know if they are preparing their students to compete with their peers from around the world. Currently, there is the assumption that our schools are doing a poor job of preparing their students to compete in a global economy, since the U.S. as a whole doesn’t score at the top of international assessments. However, we are a big country, divided up into 50 different state education systems and divided even further into 15,000 school districts, so looking at the U.S. average performance is just a piece of the story. Knowing how each of the 50 states compares provides an even larger and more important piece.
As Massachusett and Minnesota showed in 2007, we have states (some larger than most TIMMS countries) that can compete with the highest performing nations. Unfortuantely, we don’t know how many states or which ones. But in 2012 that will all change. We will see first-hand how each of our states compares internatioanlly and I’m sure the results will be a wake-up call for some states, while other states will see that their hard work has paid off. Knowing where states stand internationally won’t impact student achievement directly, but it is an important flashlight to find out exactly where any problems lie. – Jim Hull
For more information about these international assessments and how the U.S. performs, check out the Center’s More than a horse race: A guide to international tests of student achievement.
August 12, 2010 What does it take to get something done at work? It takes more than just knowing the solution. Qualities like communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity — often called “broader competencies” by those in education — are key to succeeding in the real world.
If you think schools can’t teach things like these, or that new courses have to be developed, you’re wrong. Research is showing that an education that is both broad (in terms of subjects) and deep (in terms of understanding the underlying concepts of a subject) has all sorts of benefits, from better problem-solving to increased creativity. Read all about it in “Putting it all together,” the latest installment in our 21st century education series. –Rebecca St. Andrie
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