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February 21, 2012

Making sure students read by 3rd grade

Filed under: Pre-k,Reading — Tags: , , , — Jim Hull @ 1:38 pm

As I discussed in the Center for Public Education’s Starting Out Right report, third grade reading is essential to a student’s future success. Recognizing this, policymakers around the country want to make sure all students do in fact know how to read before moving onto the fourth grade by proposing policies to retain third graders who fail their state reading exams.

These policymakers are correct to point out the need to ensure students can in fact read before entering the fourth grade. But research is also clear that students who are retained are much less likely to graduate, among other negative outcomes. So are policymakers simply stomping out the flames or pouring gas on the fire?

Unfortunately, there is no clear answer. Similar retention policies have been used in the past, with limited success at best. Yet, such policies always seems to come into vogue every decade or so.

Looking at past attempts at similar policies doesn’t provide a clear answer on whether retaining students will boost their future achievement or not, but I’d have to agree with John Wilson, a reading specialist, who wrote in EdWeek that interventions are the way to go, not retention. Of course, Wilson advocates for interventions by reading specialists when a third grader is unable to read adequately; that is, a response when there is already a problem. The best solution is to not just provide interventions when there is already a problem, but to prevent a problem in the first place.

Research is clear that expanding access to high-quality pre-k programs is one of the most effective solutions to improving third grade reading scores and other student outcomes. Unfortunately, many of our most disadvantaged students, who would benefit most from pre-k, have the least access to such high-quality programs. And while access has been improving over the past decade or so, the current recession has put a damper on the expansion of high-quality pre-k programs.

However, school districts around the country are still pushing hard to provide high-quality pre-k programs to their students, especially their neediest students. But budgets are tight. Many school board members are struggling to determine what would be best for their students: offering pre-k and retaining their half-day kindergarten programs, or expanding their half-day kindergarten programs to full-day programs?

The findings from our Starting Out Right report point to the fact that including pre-k along with half-day kindergarten provides a better chance for disadvantaged students to be able to read by the third grade than providing full-day kindergarten alone. Of course, offering both pre-k and full-day kindergarten is best, but when budgets are tight providing pre-k along with half-day kindergarten can be an effective intervention solution to increase the chances students know how to read when they start the fourth grade. Providing pre-k is a much more effective solution than simply retaining a third grader who can’t read.—Jim Hull





February 7, 2012

A full-K campaign

Filed under: Pre-k,school organization — Tags: , , — Patte Barth @ 3:46 pm

The Children’s Defense Fund wants everyone to understand that the “K” in “K-12” isn’t a sure thing. As CDF points out, most states require school districts to offer kindergarten to families who want it, but children in six states aren’t guaranteed that opportunity. And only 10 states and DC require kindergarten to be a full-school-day experience.  

The most current enrollment data shows that about 70 percent of children are in full-day (FDK) programs.  To be sure, some of the children who don’t participate don’t because of parental choice, but many families who want FDK lack access.  Some early ed advocates fear that the absence of strong state policy makes existing FDK programs vulnerable to the budget ax, meaning even fewer seats for children who stand to benefit most from full-day programs.   

In response, CDF is going full throttle to advocate for making FDK an expectation for kids as much as 1st grade already is.  Last week, they released a resource center to make this case. It includes, among other things, an interactive map where you can access FDK fact sheets for every state.

There are good reasons to give FDK a close look:

  • FDK produces results. As Jim Hull showed in his CPE study, children who have both pre-k and FDK had stronger 3rd grade reading skills than their peers who did not. The results were particularly dramatic for children from low-income families.  Other research also shows that children with FDK outperform children who have only half-day K.
  • New demands and the common core state standards. To date, 45 states and DC have adopted the CCSS. Some experts believe that meeting the kindergarten benchmarks in the CCSS may demand a full-day program.
  • Working parents like it. FDK is especially helpful for low- and middle-class families who are struggling to find good afterschool services that they can afford. 

As with pre-k, merely expanding access to full-day kindergarten won’t produce results in itself. We have to pay attention to quality. It took over a decade of nagging and cajoling from the early childhood experts to finally get us elementary-secondary folks to simply understand the meaning of “developmentally appropriate.”  Now that we get the importance of paying attention to children’s social and emotional development as well as academic, we have to be sure that a full-day program serves the unique needs of little ones and resist the pressure to turn kindergarten into junior 1st grade.   

Which all argues for the role of local school leadership in designing a more comprehensive P-3 strategy that includes a well-thought-out, appropriate role for kindergarten.  We have some tools to help you get started on the Center’s pre-k Web page. Also, check out the Pre-K Coalition’s P-3 Alignment Brief. – Patte Barth

 





December 7, 2011

Urban districts making progress, but more work needed

Filed under: Achievement Gaps,Assessments,Data,NAEP,Report Summary — Tags: , , , , — rstandrie @ 5:48 pm

Earlier today, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released the fifth installment of the Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA), which reports on the performance of fourth- and eighth-graders on NAEP reading and mathematics in participating urban districts. Overall, both math and reading results show our urban schools have made significant progress over the past decade, yet a long climb remains until they close the gap between themselves and our high performing suburban districts.

There are some important takeaways from these results. First, the data over the past decade clearly shows that urban districts can and do improve student achievement. Second, change doesn’t happen overnight. Although the data shows that in some districts students are achieving nearly two years more of learning compared to their peers a decade earlier, those gains came from long, gradual improvement. It’s important to remember that our urban schools are on the right track. Let’s not derail their successes by trying to accelerate those gains without knowing what is making the gains possible.

Below are some of the major findings from both the math and reading assessments.

Math

Fourth Grade

  • Atlanta (3 points), Austin (5 points), Baltimore City (3 points), and Philadelphia (4 points) were the only districts to significantly increase their scores from 2009 to 2011. During this same time period, scores for the nation increased by 1 point. 
  •  Boston and Washington, D.C. made the greatest gains from 2003 to 2011 by increasing scores 17 points each. Such increases are roughly equivalent to about a year and half worth of learning.
    • During this time, Cleveland was the only participating district that did not improve its performance.
  • Austin (TX), Charlotte (NC), and Hillsborough (FL) were the only urban districts to score higher than the overall national average while San Diego’s score was not significantly different from the national average.  Charlotte was the only district to do so in 2009.
  • Eight urban districts scored higher than the average for students attending schools in large cities (cities of populations of 250,000 or more). This was up from seven districts in 2009.
  • The percent of students scoring at or above Proficient varied dramatically among urban districts, from 48 percent in Charlotte to just 3 percent in Detroit.
    • Only three districts increased the percent of students reaching the Proficient level since 2009, although seven out of nine districts increased their percentages since 2003.
    • Students at the Proficient level are able to “draw a line segment of a given length.”

Eighth Grade

  • Six districts significantly increased their scores from 2009 to 2011. This was up from just two states that increased their scores between 2007 and 2009. 
  • From 2003 to 2011, nine out of ten districts made significant gains in their performance, with Atlanta (22) and Boston (20) all making gains roughly equivalent to two years’ worth of additional learning.
    • Cleveland was the only district to not make significant progress during this time period.
  • Austin and Charlotte were the only districts to outscore the nation as a whole, while Boston and Hillsborough’s scores were not significantly different from the national average.
  • Six urban districts did score higher than the 2011 average for students attending schools in large cities, which is an increase from five districts in 2009.
  • The percent of students scoring at or above proficient varied just as it did at the fourth grade level. Austin had the highest percentage at 38 percent, while Detroit once again had the lowest percentage at just 4 percent.

Reading

Fourth Grade

  • None of the 18 districts that participated in both 2009 and 2011 saw any significant changes.  During this same time period scores for the nation remained flat.
  • Austin (TX), Charlotte (NC), Hillsborough County (FL), Jefferson County (KY), and Miami-Dade (FL) scored slightly higher than the overall national average.
  • Austin, Charlotte, Hillsborough County, Jefferson County, and Miami-Dade scored higher than the average for large cities (cities of populations of 250,000 or more).  
  • The percent of students scoring at or above proficient varied dramatically among urban districts from 44 percent in Hillsborough County to just 7 percent in Detroit.
    • However, 45 percent more students in large cities were proficient in 2011 than in 2003

Eighth Grade

  • Charlotte (6 points) was the only school district to significantly increase their scores from 2009 to 2011.  During this same time period students nationally increased their scores 2 points.
  • Austin, Charlotte, Hillsborough County (FL), Jefferson County (KY), and Miami-Dade scored higher than the average for large cities.
    • A few districts had slight score decreases since the first year they participated.  The District of Columbia’s score decreased by 3 points since 2002, Fresno’s (CA) score decreased by 2 points since 2009, Miami-Dade’s score decreased by 1 point since 2009, and Milwaukee’s score decreased by 3 points since 2009.
  • Hillsborough County was the only district to outscore the nation as a whole while Jefferson County and Miami-Dade didn’t score significantly different from the national average.
  • The range of students scoring at or above proficient was wide just as it was at the fourth grade level. Charlotte had the highest percentage at 34 percent while Detroit once again had the lowest at just 5 percent.
    • However, overall 50 percent more students in large urban cities were proficient in 2011 compared to 2003.

 

– Jim Hull and Mandy Newport

 

 





December 2, 2011

What would you do with more data?

Filed under: Data — Tags: , — rstandrie @ 2:59 pm

The Education Department issued a final rule yesterday allowing state and local education officials to share student data more widely without violating federal privacy laws. So what would you do with more student data?

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the new rule “also makes lenders, guarantors, and other agencies with access to student records subject to the law, known as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974, or FERPA.”

Combined with the recent report from the Data Quality Campaign that nearly all states have data systems that could allow them to track students’ progress over time, it looks like we may slowly be gaining a data infrastructure on our students’ growth. But the next question, of course, is: Would it be used?

So what would you do with more data? Are you itching to fill in some specific data gaps? Are you struggling to understand how to use it wisely? Do you, or your communities, have privacy concerns that need to be addressed? Let us know. And don’t forget to check out our data-specific Web site, Data First. –Rebecca St. Andrie





November 30, 2011

Assessing Virtual Schools

Filed under: Public education,technology — Tags: , — Mandy @ 3:46 pm

Traditionally, Americans have learned academic (and social) skills within the brick and mortar walls of a schoolhouse, but a recent push for alternatives to conventional schools have boosted the number of students who attend full-time public virtual schools. Over the weekend, Lyndsey Layton and Emma Brown took a thorough look at virtual schools in their Washington Post article, Virtual Schools Are Multiplying, but Some Question Their Educational Value.  The article raised some concerns I thought were worth considering.

According to the article, virtual schools account for a whopping 250,000 students spanning across 30 states.  Much of Layton and Brown’s attention is concentrated on the country’s “largest provider of full-time public virtual schools,” K12 Inc., which is equal in size to one of America’s most populous school districts and is headed by former Goldman and Sachs banker, Ronald J. Packard. 

Packard and other virtual school entrepreneurs recognize that, for many students, (such as “high achievers, strugglers, dropouts, teenage parents and victims of bullying”), local schools aren’t always the best option.  These students may benefit from being homeschooled, and virtual schools are designed to enhance the homeschooling experience.  But as this option continues to gain speed, critics are becoming more and more apprehensive.

Much of their apprehension stems from the fact that there is “no real evidence one way or another” of virtual schools’ effectiveness in educating students, according to Tom Loveless, a Brookings Institution scholar.  Along these same lines, the Department of Education agreed that “there wasn’t enough research to draw conclusions.” 

The lack of data the article brings up is worrisome, but the data the article does cite is even more worrisome. For instance, on the same state tests that traditional public schools are required to take, virtual schools tend to perform worse. According to the article, overall, only a third of these schools met No Child Left Behind’s achievement goals. K12’s oldest cyber school, Agora, has never met federal achievement rates.  Even when looking at other student outcomes such as graduation rates, virtual schools do not compare well to traditional public schools. For example, K12’s Colorado Virtual Academy has a graduation rate of 12 percent, compared with 72 percent statewide, and K12’s Ohio Virtual Academy has a 30 percent graduation rate compared with a state average of 78 percent. 

Supporters point out that virtual schools appeal mostly to students who were already struggling in traditional schools and that this should be taken into account, which it should.  In fact, two-thirds of Agora students are from low-income families.  Yet, Aimee Saunders, a former K12 virtual teacher, points out that “students who normally would struggle because of their home environment” are now put in their home to learn. 

Critics also have expressed uncertainty about the cost of these schools.  Layton and Brown question how “to pay for a school that floats in cyberspace when funding formulas are rooted in the geography of property taxes.”  Checker Finn, president of the Fordham Institute and former board member of K12 Inc., echoes this perplexity as he wonders why these schools, which cost less than traditional public schools to operate, are charging the taxpayer the same amount. 

Despite criticism and lack of positive data, virtual schools are spreading quickly and legislatures around the country are lifting state laws that once restricted them.  The article quotes Saunders, the former Agora teacher, as saying “Virtual schools provide an important new option for families and should be forgiven for missteps.”  But when it comes to children, do we really have time for missteps?– Mandy Newport





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