Data-Sharing is Key to College and Career Readiness

Every day, we hear “data this,” and “data that,” being told “the data” will show us how to get students college and career ready. Although data is powerful, its power lies in what we do with it. Kentucky educators are discovering how data really makes a difference in the education of their students. It’s no secret that collaboration is a vessel for change, but it wasn’t until university professors and high school teachers began comparing notes about their expectations in class that real changes began to occur.

According to an article in Education Week, transition courses were developed in high schools to help lagging students avoid remediation in college. Advanced Placement restrictions were lifted to expose more students to college-level courses. As communication lines opened, other changes followed. The percentage of college-going students in Kentucky went up, and the need for remediation in college went down.

Kentucky is at the forefront of collecting and sharing P-20 data, information that spans preschool through graduate study. Since the 1990s, it had been tracking the performance of students over time. But not everyone knew it.

Sam Evans, the dean of the college of education at Western Kentucky University, in Bowling Green, was part of the group that sketched out how the new P-20 collaboration would work. "Everybody had their data sets, and they weren't speaking to one another," he said. The focus of the discussion, he said, was practical: "What do we need to know?"

The driver for everyone to work together was economic development. There was agreement that the only way it could be achieved was with more college degrees and well-prepared high school graduates, said Mr. Evans.

How can we improve the use of data in our schools?

To learn more and to read the full article, click here.

Teachers Teach Students How to Be Competent Curators

“The 21st century will not be defined by the volume or speed at which you consume information. (That was the old way of being smart.) It will be defined by how well you curate that information, translate it and contribute information back in a way that your community can understand it. Teaching students to be competent curators is our main responsibility as educators.” –Angela Maiers (education-tech expert)

Earlier this week, Julia Steiny included this quote in her article, "Most Kids Way Ahead of Us as Digital Learners, for Better and Worse." She discusses the future of earning in a digital age, giving us a new way to look at what happens in the classroom every day.

Do you agree with Angela Maiers?

How Much Do You Value Education?

No one can deny that education is important, no matter what country they live in. It’s true that every person doesn’t have the same opportunities for education as their peers across the globe, but that doesn’t mean there is a lack of dedication to learning.

Last week, Nicholas D. Kristof from the New York Times presented the story of a malnourished 14-year-old Vietnamese girl making every sacrifice possible in order to go to school and take care of her two younger siblings at the same time.

Dao Ngoc Phung is so obsessed with schoolwork that she sets her alarm for 3 a.m. every day to cook rice for breakfast while reviewing her books. She rides her bike with her two siblings for 90 minutes each way to and from school. Though she is only 14 years old, Phung takes responsibility not only for her learning, but that of her younger sister and brother—she doesn’t complete her homework until after she helps them finish theirs. Sometimes this means late nights with little sleep to start over again the next day.

Phung is not the only one who values education. Kristof explains, “Teachers in America’s troubled schools complain to me that parents rarely show up for meetings. In contrast, Phung’s father takes a day off work and spends a day’s wages for transportation to attend parent-teacher conferences.”

Then what may be most admirable is the following statement from Phung’s father. “If I don’t work, I lose a little bit of money,” he said. “But if my kids miss out on school, they lose their life hopes. I want to know how they’re doing in school.”

“I tell my children that we don’t own land that I can leave them when they grow up,” he added. “So the only thing I can give them is an education.”

Today, we might ask ourselves, “How much do I value education?”

Read the full article here.

How Much Do You Know about Implementing the Common Core State Standards?

There is no doubt that the Common Core Standards will change education. Whether those changes will be lasting and positive is largely dependent on the implementation of the Standards. How does your school plan to use the Standards? How do you plan to use the Standards? Recently in the Harvard Education Letter, Robert Rothman addressed five myths about the Common Core State Standards that may provide perspective concerning Common Core implementation.

Myth #1—The Common Core State Standards are a national curriculum.

Rothman reminds readers that “standards are not curriculum: standards spell out what students should know and be able to do at the end of a year; curriculum defines the specific course of study—the scope and sequence—that will enable students to meet standards.”

To learn more about this myth and additional myths, click here. To learn more about how to effectively implement the Common Core Standards, click here.

Parent Conference Attendance Affects Teacher Merit Pay

It’s not just about test scores.

At least 29 school districts in Idaho have developed merit plans partly based on parental involvement. Many plans also include student attendance, graduation rates, and writing assessments.

In the central Idaho countryside, Challis schools have set a goal that teachers make contact with the parents of their students at least twice every three months.

In southern Idaho, up to 70 percent of the potential bonus available to employees at Wendell High School will be based on attendance at parent-teacher conferences. More than 40 percent of parents have to attend the meetings in order for Wendell teachers to earn the maximum bonus and that goal was exceeded this fall.
  

About 50 school districts and charter schools have opted not to develop their own pay-for-performance systems but rather to comply with the state's plan, which bases bonuses on standardized test scores. In the 105 districts and charter schools that have developed or are working on their own merit pay plans, teachers will still have to meet statewide goals in order to receive their pay-for-performance bonus.

To learn more about Idaho's plans for merit pay, click here.

Is it possible to truly measure a teacher's performance? If so, how?

Do Teachers Still Wonder?

“We must remind ourselves how little we know and how much there is to know.” 

As we get older we attend more classes, have more experiences, and gain knowledge all along the way. For many of us learning becomes a means of survival, rather than an exploration of life. So where along the way do we forget to question, to wonder, to be curious?

Peter Huidekoper Jr. so clearly described the loss of wonderment and the need for its return in his article, “The Age of Wonder.” He says, “To learn, it is best to begin humble, open, unsure. Most adults know that feeling. Teachers must know that feeling. And yet, we forget. Sometimes, as we focus on convincing parents, students, principals (our evaluators), even colleagues, of how much we know, we lose touch with this quality we so hope to find in our students.” 

“Our foolish pride gets in the way as if we need to prove we know more than those darn bright kids staring back at us, who read better than we ever did and absorb new information faster than we ever could.”

Peter questions the desire teachers demonstrate to their students. Do they encourage desire and learning in the classroom? He reminds us that, “Searching invites participation. Knowing says, ‘I hope you can begin to catch up to me, here at the finish line, here with my wealth of information.’ The former fosters wonder and learning; the latter, regurgitation and boredom.”

Read the full article here.

New Research Gives Insight to Teacher Training

The academic progress of students is linked directly to where their teachers attended college.

Not to say that if a teacher went to a low-ranking school that they couldn’t or wouldn’t be successful in the classroom, but rather that all teacher training is not created equal. According to the director of the University of Washington Center for Education Data & Research, Dan Goldhaber, the new research revealing that academic progress of public-school students can be traced, in part, to where teachers went to college is just the first step toward determining what kind of training — not where the training occurred — best prepares teachers for excellence in the classroom.

Washington state schools are among the first to see which teacher-training programs seem to result in the best student test scores, but 35 states now have the means to do similar research, according to the Data Quality Campaign, a national organization formed by education and business groups to track state progress on collecting data about students and schools.

Is the future of teacher training on its way up?

To read the full article, click here.