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News about high school innovation
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Oct. 3, 2008
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Welcome to INNOVATOR, a bimonthly report on high school change in North Carolina from the North Carolina New Schools Project. INNOVATOR informs practitioners, policy makers, and friends of public education about high school innovation in North Carolina as well as success stories and research from across the nation.
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State Board signals support for sweeping overhaul of ABCs
North Carolina moved a step closer this week to a redesigned assessment and accountability system aimed at ensuring students are well prepared for college and careers in a time of growing global competition. The State Board of Education signaled support Wednesday for a sweeping plan to overhaul a system that has measured the performance of students and schools for more than a dozen years.
The ambitious plan from the Department of Public Instruction calls for retooling not only the year-end exams now used to assess students and schools but also for rewriting the critical, "need to know" learning standards that students are expected to meet. Once the planned overhaul is fully complete in five years, the curriculum for all students from kindergarten through high school will have been revised with an eye toward "essential standards" that reflect what students must know, understand and be able to do to be prepared to compete in the 21st century.
The accountability system would be tied directly to measuring student and school performance against those "essential standards." In addition to the summative, year-end exams now used to track student progress, the state also plans to support a more intensive use of formative assessments to help inform real-time instruction and periodic, benchmark assessments during the school year.
"The current assessment system doesn't measure or support students in a globally competitive market," said Rebecca Garland, associate superintendent for academic services and instructional support, in presenting the proposal to board members. Instead, she said, it was developed at a time when education and political leaders were focusing primarily on the basics.
State education leaders envision a set of assessments that will include written, constructed-response and performance-based items in addition to the multiple-choice questions that now comprise the state's End-of-Grade and End-of-Course tests in their entirety. In addition, the performance of high schools would also be tied more heavily to their graduation rates and student progress towards post-secondary readiness.
The plan remains largely conceptual, with years of work remaining. The first set of new tests, based on "essential standards," are slated for use no earlier than 2011. DPI is also considering a different, developmental growth model for measuring school progress that would be based on a longer term view rather than a single year's gains.
The 39-page plan outlined this week is DPI's response to the recommendations of the board-appointed Blue Ribbon Commission on Testing and Accountability that called for sweeping change in the way the state assesses students and holds schools accountable. Among the recommendations incorporated into DPI's plan are several policy changes sought by the North Carolina New Schools Project, including an emphasis on college readiness, the use of authentic assessments, more weight given to graduation rates and greater transparency to educators and the public.
The board endorsed many of those recommendations earlier this year, including a set of short-term goals that DPI will now pursue.
Among the immediate steps intended to improve the accountability system:
- Consider counting the results of retests taken by students who initially failed year-end exams. That change could be effective for the current school year for calculating the passing percentages of schools, although the board must still decide at which grade levels and for what EOC exams retests will be allowed and counted in passing rates.
- Release one form of each test every year. At the end of this school year, DPI will make public a form of the 2008-09 tests for each grade level and subject tested.
- Enact a moratorium on the cycle for revising content standards and developing new exams. New test editions will be based on "essential standards" as they are set.
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Ohio panel points to top 10 skills graduates need for 2020
As North Carolina's education leaders look ahead to an accountability system more in synch with a rapidly changing world, their counterparts in Ohio are trying to pinpoint the skills that will be demanded of students for at least the next decade.
A subcommittee of the state's board of education was given the job of answering the question: "Looking ahead to 2020, what will be the most important skills, knowledge and behaviors for students to acquire to provide Ohio with competitive advantages in the global economy?"
Here's what that panel identified, based on a review of the literature, interviews with state business and government leaders and an online survey:
- Critical thinking, problem solving and applied knowledge for practical results
- Mastery of rigorous academic content, especially in literacy, mathematics and information technologies
- Innovative and creative thinking, including entrepreneurial skills
- Communication skills, both oral and written
- Team learning and work, relationship building, and interpersonal social skills
- Personal responsibility, including good work habits, work ethic, knowing how to be flexible and continue learning, and financial literacy
- Global awareness, languages and understanding other cultures (including history, economics and geography)
Three of the 10 "skills" the Ohio committee listed have more to do with changes found to be needed in the state's educational system to help the kind of student readiness outlined above:
- Alignment of education with the needs of economic development, including better communications and cooperation between educators and business people.
- Communications and better methods of exchange between K-12 public education and postsecondary education to make high school graduates better prepared for the next stages of their education and lives
- Teacher education, preparation and professional development to support content mastery and skill development, including applied learning (or problem-based learning) across disciplines in a global context
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California research confirms bleak outlook for dropouts
A study issued last month about California's Class of 2004 provides the latest evidence that high school dropouts face an uphill struggle, while their classmates who graduated make progress.
The study, by the California Dropout Research Project, found that 34 percent of students who entered high school with the class of 2004 but dropped out after 10th grade were neither working nor in school by 2006 - two years after their classmates received their diplomas. Outside of California, 30 percent of dropouts from the same cohort of students faced similar circumstances.
By comparison, graduates were showing greater success. Among students who completed high school in California, 12 percent were either unemployed or not enrolled in post-secondary education two years after graduation, but 60 percent were still continuing their education and 28 percent had jobs. Among all states other than California, while 9 percent of graduates weren't either working or in school, 63 percent were in an educational program and 28 percent were working.
But of the majority of students who dropped out after 10th grade, only 21 percent of Californians and 18 percent of students elsewhere had succeeded in completing high school by 2006.
The California research group analyzed data from a national study that tracked 10th graders in the class of 2004 from 2002 through 2006.
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In New Jersey, students call for better high school preparation
Education leaders in New Jersey have been hearing lately from a reliable source on the need for better high school preparation: Students who feel shortchanged.
The Asbury Park Press reported last month that several students from Cumberland County College in New Jersey urged members of the state's board of education to adopt a plan that would raise graduation requirements.
The proposal calls for instruction in Chemistry and Algebra II and new assessments that measure students' readiness for work and their mastery of specific subjects.
The students told the board during a meeting on the proposal that they had to take remedial courses in college because of what they failed to get in high school.
One student, Christina Arkainno, who's now enrolled in a university after graduating from the community college, said she had to fight to get college prep English class, but still ended up being required to take remedial classes in college.
"I thought I was reading quite well," the newspaper quoted Arkainno. "After all, I was taking college-level English. ... I felt insecure. I felt stupid. I wondered what were those secret courses that I was supposed to be taking? What did I do wrong?
The newspaper story also reported that nearly 80 percent of community college students need remedial courses, and 40 percent of students need similar help in the state's public, four-year colleges. |
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INNOVATOR is produced
by the North Carolina New Schools Project, an initiative of the Office of the
Governor and the Education Cabinet with the support of the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation and other businesses and foundations. For story suggestions or to opt out of receiving
this e-mail report, please send an e-mail to innovator@newschoolsproject.org or call Todd
Silberman at (919) 277-3760.
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