Adequate Yearly Progress

Abstract: ![Figure][1] CREDIT: SUSAN RUST The United States needs a broader, more coordinated strategy for precollege education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). That strategy should include all the STEM disciplines and address the need for greater diversity in the STEM professions, for a workforce with deep technical and personal skills, and for a STEM-literate citizenry prepared to address the grand challenges of the 21st century. There have been repeated efforts to produce major improvements in such education, including the production of voluntary national education standards for science and for mathematics in the 1990s. But as a battle-scarred veteran of those efforts, I view the next decade as the time when real progress might finally be made. The term “STEM education” is now widely used, but what does it mean and how might it influence American education? For most, it means only science and mathematics, even though the products of technology and engineering have so greatly influenced everyday life. A true STEM education should increase students' understanding of how things work and improve their use of technologies. STEM education should also introduce more engineering during precollege education. Engineering is directly involved in problem solving and innovation, two themes with high priorities on every nation's agenda. Given its economic importance to society, students should learn about engineering and develop some of the skills and abilities associated with the design process. The good news is that the National Assessment Governing Board has recognized the importance of this issue and recently approved the evaluation of technology and engineering education through examinations that will be given to U.S. students in 2014. Likewise, the draft Framework for Science Education released last month by the U.S. National Academies includes technology and engineering among four targeted disciplines. ![Figure][1] CREDIT: PETER VOGEL, PHYSICS BALSA BRIDGE BUILDING CONTEST, NOTRE DAME REGIONAL SECONDARY SCHOOL, VANCOUVER BC ([WWW.BALSABRIDGE.COM][2]) To succeed in this new round of education reforms, the United States will need equal treatment for science—broadly defined to include technology and engineering—in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (currently referred to as No Child Left Behind). For the past 8 years, this legislation has had the unintentional result of reducing or eliminating science from school programs, especially at the elementary level, by not including science test scores as a significant part of the calculation for measuring Adequate Yearly Progress. The current blueprint of the U.S. Department of Education for the reauthorization fails to remedy this situation; the final legislation could and should. As stressed in the National Academies report Rising Above the Gathering Storm , students must acquire such skills as adaptability, complex communication, social skills, nonroutine problem solving, self-management, and systems thinking to compete in the modern economy. To the degree that STEM curricula incorporate group activities, laboratory investigations, and projects, they afford the opportunity for students to develop these essential 21st-century skills and prepare them to become citizens who are better able to make decisions about personal health, energy efficiency, environmental quality, resource use, and national security. Indeed, the competencies that citizens need to understand and address such issues, from the personal to global perspectives, are as clearly linked to knowledge in the STEM disciplines as they are to economics, politics, and cultural values. The STEM community responded vigorously to produce the Sputnik-spurred education reforms of the 1960s. Likewise, the United States needs a bold new federal strategy for improving education that includes the creation of high-quality, integrated instruction and materials, as well as the placement of problems associated with grand challenges of society at the center of study. It is time to move beyond slogans and make STEM literacy a reality for all students. [1]: pending:yes [2]: http://WWW.BALSABRIDGE.COM

Abstract: This reflection identifies education as the primary domestic priority for both major political parties Her commentary opens our conversation about education with an important question: How do you fundamentally change public education in a way that is not intrusive and over-reaching but, in the short-term, turns education around? Having learned his lesson from the senior President Bush, whose poll numbers plummeted when he vowed to abolish the US Department of Education in the 1992 presidential race, Senator Bob Dole (R-KS) vowed instead to "overhaul" it when he ran for president against Bill Clinton President Clinton, you may remember, actually ran as the "education president" He had been the "education governor" in Arkansas, after all, and championed policies that raised test scores and helped more disadvantaged kids get to college In the 2000 presidential election year, both candidates ranked education among their highest priorities George W Bush called himself the "real" education presidential candidate, and now President Bush still calls education his top domestic priority None of this is surprising Previous presidential election cycles have seen education emerge as the number one issue on which most Americans believe more federal dollars should be spent A 2000 survey by the University of Chicago revealed that over the preceding ten years, support for education had risen to the top of America's priority list, surpassing concerns about crime September 11, 2001, has likely skewed those conclusions for the upcoming presidential election, but, unquestionably, a presidential candidate's view of and plan for education is one of the issues voters prioritize in evaluating and picking their national leader President Bush has already begun to run on the issue Unlike in other presidential cycles, however, Bush faces opposition to his own education policies from within his party and from Democrats For the first time anyone I know in education can remember, state governors, legislators, and administrators are actually considering not taking Bush's federal education funds Imagine it The federal government offers hundreds of millions of education dollars to a budget-strapped state, and the state says, "Naaaaaaaaah--you keep it" It's extraordinary, particularly at a time when almost every state in the union has a budget deficit Ms Thornton, Patton Boggs partner, was chief of staff to the United States Secretary of Education, deputy advisor to President Clinton for the 1996 presidential debates, and associate counsel in the 1992 presidential transition She has written numerous articles in publications including Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, American Lawyer, Boston Globe, and Legal Times So, what's going on? In 2002, President Bush enacted No Child Left Behind, the signature piece of education legislation that he promised voters in his 2000 campaign and the bill he expected to propel him through a 2004 reelection Indeed, the fact that he--by his own admission--has not actually read the bill aside, President Bush has been traveling the country talking about the bill's importance and its early success The new law requires annual testing of students in grades three through eight and requires schools whose students do not meet the bill's standards for "adequate yearly progress" to take remedial action The schools could be designated as failing, and they are exposed to penalties, including forced transfer of students and being taken over by the state The complicated new law is more than one thousand pages long and attaches the availability of federal funding to successfully meeting the bill's stringent, high-consequence requirements …

Abstract: The accountability requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 place high-poverty schools and racially diverse schools at a disadvantage because they rely on mean proficiency scores and require all subgroups to meet the same goals for accountability. In this article, student achievement data from six states are used to highlight differences in the demographic characteristics of schools identified as needing improvement and schools meeting the federal adequate yearly progress requirements. School-level data from Virginia and California are used to illustrate that these differences arise both from the selection bias inherent in using mean proficiency scores and from rules that require students in racially diverse schools to meet multiple performance targets. The authors suggest alternatives for the design of accountability systems that include using multiple measures of student achievement, factoring in student improvement on achievement tests in reading and mathematics, and incorporating state acc...

Abstract: . The present study examined how teachers' psychological experiences of burnout and efficacy as well as perceptions of curriculum supports (e.g., coaching) were associated with their implementation dosage and quality of Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies, a social-emotional curriculum. Results revealed that teachers' psychological experiences and perceptions of curriculum supports were associated with implementation. Teacher burnout was negatively associated and efficacy was positively associated with implementation dosage. Teachers who perceived their school administration as more supportive reported higher implementation quality, and positive perceptions of training and coaching were associated with higher levels of implementation dosage and quality. Teachers who reported the highest levels of burnout and the most negative perceptions of curriculum supports reported the lowest levels of implementation dosage and quality. The findings suggest that both individual and organizational factors are related to self-reported implementation and may be important to address in order to maximize the effectiveness of school-based curricula. ********** The role of teachers has changed and expanded over the past few decades. As a result, teachers' rates of stress and burnout are believed to have increased, particularly in urban schools, and in turn may be influencing teachers' effectiveness (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009). When asked to implement new curricula, it is likely that teachers who have these psychological experiences in the workplace, and who perceive low levels of support for the innovation, will be the most vulnerable to poor implementation quality. Guided by an ecological systems framework (Bronfenbrenner, 1986) and recent conceptualization of individual and organizational factors that influence school-based implementation efforts (Greenberg, Domitrovich, Graczyk, & Zins, 2004), the present study examined how teachers' psychological experiences of burnout and efficacy as well as their perceptions of curriculum supports (e.g., school administration, training, and coaching) were associated with teachers' self-reported implementation of an evidence-based, social-emotional curriculum. The Changing Roles and Conditions for American Teachers Teachers' roles have evolved with new demands that result, in part, from federal legislation. Most recently, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act (2001) has placed additional pressures and accountability on teachers and schools. For instance, teachers must ensure that all students make adequate progress in core academic areas. Under NCLB, districts that fail to make adequate yearly progress for multiple consecutive years become subject to increasingly serious consequences and interventions (No Child Left Behind Act, 2001). Although many occupations require their employees to demonstrate ongoing competence in their roles and adapt to new job requirements, the recent changes for teachers are without precedent. Given the fact that students' performance is determined by a variety of factors that lie outside of teachers' control, the pressure regarding student performance can cause a high degree of stress (Huberman, 2005). Even prior to NCLB, heightened expectations, broader demands, and the implementation of multiple reforms had already led to significant job intensification in teachers' work lives (Hargreaves, 1994). In the current economy, teachers are pressed to do more work with fewer resources, and many face persistent and chronic overload (Vandenberghe & Huberman, 1999). In the most recent report of the nationally representative School and Staffing Survey (2003-2004), public school teachers reported that they were contracted to work 37.7 hr per week, but when they were asked to also take into account time spent on school-related work outside of the school day, teachers reported actually working an average of 52.8 hr per week (Strizek, Pittsonberger, Riordan, Lyter, & Orlofsky, 2006). …