Some states consider replacing paper textbooks with digital resources
Education Week reports that California and other states are developing long-term plans to move away from traditional paper textbooks towards digital resources, some of which are available at not cost as open source materials.
Obama Administration’s “Educate to Innovate” program seeks to ‘make science cool’
The Obama Administration has made STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) education one of its priorities. Wired News provides an excellent round-up of the various programs currently underway:
“We’re going to show young people how cool science can be.”
Those were some of the inspiring words by President Barack Obama at the launching of the new “Educate to Innovate” campaign on Monday this week. This initiative aims to increase science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) literacy amongst students to improve our national standing from average (or in some cases, below average) to the top. $4.35 billion in Federal grants will be offered to schools who can innovate in STEM education and the private sector is stepping up with an additional $260 million in related funding and programs…
Incorporating cell phones into classroom activities
The AP (via the Seattle Times) reports:
[A] growing number [of schools] around the country that are abandoning traditional policies of cell phone prohibition and incorporating them into class lessons. Spanish vocabulary becomes a digital scavenger hunt. Notes are copied with a cell phone camera. Text messages serve as homework reminders…
Much more attention has gone to the ways students might use phones to cheat or take inappropriate pictures. But as the technology becomes cheaper, more advanced and more ingrained in students’ lives that mentality is changing.
“It really is taking advantage of the love affair that kids have with technology today,” said Dan Domevech, executive director of the nonprofit American Association of School Administrators. “The kids are much more motivated to use their cell phone in an educational manner.”
New research on teacher ‘pay for performance’ schemes
Vanderbilt University’s National Center on Performance Incentives has just announced the publication of a text entitled Performance Incentives: Their Growing Impact on American K-12 Education, edited by Matthew G. Springer. The book’s Web site states:
The concept of pay for performance for public school teachers is growing in popularity and use, and has resurged to once again occupy a central role in education policy. [This text] offers the most up-to-date and complete analysis of this promising—yet still controversial—policy innovation.
In related news, the think tank Public Agenda has published a new study that finds:
Seventy-one percent of Gen Y teachers are open to rewarding teachers based on incentive pay, whereas only 10 percent of Gen Y teachers think that student performance on standardized tests is an “excellent” measure of teacher success.
I’ve posted on this topic in the past.
I’d also like to note that Dr. Ed Wiley, a quantitative research expert on the faculty of the U. of Colorado at Boulder*, has conducted research into accountability-based teacher pay programs, including Denver Public Schools’ ProComp. For an introduction to the quantitative models that underlie many ‘pay for performance’ schemes, I recommend this report by Dr. Wiley. (PDF format)
*Disclosure: I am a doctoral candidate at CU – Boulder and have studied with Dr. Wiley.
Updates on the Common Core Standards Initiative
Education Week reports that the Common Core Standards Initiative, an effort spearheaded by the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association, proceeds apace:
Academic scholars, teachers, state officials, school administrators, and at least one librarian fill the ranks of the newly announced “work groups,” for developing K-12 standards in English-language arts and math… The two teams will have the duty of completing the second phase of common state standards. The first phase was the drafting of college- and career-readiness standards, a draft of which was released a few months ago.
Meanwhile, Ed Week reports here that at least seven states have suspended or slowed their own development of state standards in an apparent attempt to take a ‘wait and see’ approach to the national standards movement.
(For some background, see my prior posts on this topic.)
College students “unimpressed” with their professors’ use of technology
While students and faculty seem to agree on the importance of technology in education, the two groups do not agree on how well it’s being implemented. According to new research released Monday, only 38 percent of students indicated that their instructors “understand technology and fully integrate it into their classes.” Students also rated that lack of understanding as “the biggest obstacle to classroom technology integration.”
Despite this, 74 percent of higher education instructors polled indicated that they “incorporate technology into every class or nearly every class,” and 67 percent said they were “satisfied with their technology professional development.”
U.S. Department of Education names new director for state ed tech grant program
After months of anticipation about who would head educational technology initiatives at the U.S. Department of Education, ed-tech advocates praised the appointment of Karen Cator yesterday, saying the former educator and Apple executive brings to the job a passion for the potential of technology to improve teaching and learning.
The long-awaited appointment comes at a time when interest in how technology can be used to improve education is growing as more K-12 schools offer online courses, use mobile technologies such as cellphones and laptops, and put in place high-tech data-analysis tools.
Schools becoming concerned about electronic communications between teachers and students
A new state law requires all Louisiana districts to implement policies requiring documentation of every electronic interaction between teachers and students through a nonschool-issued device, such as a personal cellphone or e-mail account, by Nov.15. Parents also have the option of forbidding any communication between teachers and their child through personal electronic devices.
Similar policies exist in many school districts across the country, and at least one other state has considered such legislation in recent years. But critics question the measures, saying they will likely restrict appropriate communication between teachers and students and discourage the use of new technologies.
“The motivation for the bill was growing problems with [interactions] that started relatively innocently and escalated from there,” said state Rep. Frank A. Hoffman, the Republican who wrote the bill, which Gov. Bobby Jindal signed into law in June. “It’s to head something off before it ever gets started…”
Charter schools continue to grow
The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools has published this report on the state of public charter schools in the U.S. Among the reports findings:
- There are fourteen communities where more than 20% of public school students are enrolled in charters (versus six in 2005-06)
- Seventy-two communities have at least 10% of public school students enrolled in charter schools
- The ten districts with the largest number of students in public charter schools represent 22% of the total U.S. charter school population (approximately 304,494 students out of 1.4 million)
Reasons NOT to tie teacher pay to student test scores
Gordon MacInnes of The Century Foundation has published this brief on the topic of using student test scores to measure teacher effectiveness, a proposition that has been advanced by a number of school reformers. This very controversial topic recently returned to news headlines after the New Haven (CT) teachers’ union signed a contract that includes student performance in the evaluation process tied to teacher salary.*
Among the reasons MacInnes gives for NOT using student test scores to ‘grade’ teacher performance:
- Students are not randomly assigned to teachers (nor to schools) – some teachers might only be assigned students perceived to be ‘good’ or ‘bad’
- Standardized tests are evaluated for reliability and validity based on their intended purpose, such as assessing 4th Grade math proficiency, not for evaluating teachers
- Compensating teachers according to individual performance might lessen the impetus for teachers to collaborate and share best practices
*See this New Haven Register (CT) article for more information on the contract signed by New Haven teachers.
