Common Core spending gets approval from state House
LANSING — Without discussion, debate or a roll-call vote, the Michigan House of Representatives agreed Tuesday to changes made in legislation allowing the state’s Department of Education to begin spending money on implementing Common Core standards.Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Michigan Common Core Legislation (Update)
Friday, October 25, 2013
Common Core (Update: Michigan Legislature)
October 24, 2013 11:24 PM
Michigan Senate OKs Common Core education standards, waits on tests
LANSING — Efforts to continue putting in place more rigorous and uniform national education standards in Michigan cleared a key hurdle Thursday when the Senate chose to let the state spend money on the benchmarks again.
Left until later, though, is a legislative decision on what new standardized tests should accompany the contentious Common Core State Standards in the 2014-15 school year.
Since Oct. 1, the state has been unable to spend money to help implement the math and reading standards in K-12 schools because of a provision in the budget pausing the work until the Legislature says it is OK to proceed. The standards won approval from the state education board with little fanfare three years ago but have since divided conservatives, despite winning broad support in the business and education communities and from Republican Gov. Rick Snyder.
Reflecting the tension among Republicans, the GOP-led Senate approved a resolution, which is not a bill and does not go to the governor, on a voice vote instead of taking a recorded roll call vote. The Republican-controlled House passed a similar measure last month and is expected to OK Senate changes next week. The state Education Department immediately resumed Common Core-related activities on Thursday.
"To help all our students succeed, our collective work needs to be focused on having rigorous standards; effective and valuable assessments aligned to those standards; and high quality and effective educators," Superintendent Mike Flanagan said in a written statement.
The Common Core standards adopted by 45 states demand critical thinking and problem solving that backers say will give students an education that's competitive with other countries. But critics question the benchmarks and associated tests, calling them a national intrusion into local control of public schools.
"It's a national standard that will be increasingly referenced by our federal government as a tool to influence state education policies," said Sen. Patrick Colbeck, a Republican from Canton Township.
The U.S. government also encouraged states to adopt the standards to compete for "Race to the Top" grants and seek waivers around some unpopular proficiency requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind law.
Like the House, the Senate balked at allowing companion "Smarter Balanced" standardized tests to move forward and instead asked the state to report back by Dec. 1 on testing options. The resolution does not commit Michigan to a specific assessment, but it asks that assessments be given on computers, provide "real-time results" and be taken twice a year.
"We don't want to be told by some bigger organization what our assessment program looks like," said Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville, R-Monroe.
A criticism of the existing Michigan Education Assessment Program tests and Michigan Merit Exam is that results do not come in time to help individual students. The resolution requires the state to competitively bid for the new tests. The Legislature plans to evaluate and fund assessment options when crafting a new budget next year.
The Common Core standards spell out, grade by grade, the reading and math skills that students should have as they go from kindergarten through high school. The resolution says the standards cannot dictate curriculum and lets local school boards adopt different standards.
Flanagan's move to immediately restart Common Core-related work drew scrutiny because the House has yet to give final approval to the measure.
"The Department of Education should not proceed with Common Core until action is completed by the Legislature," said Ari Adler, spokesman for House Speaker Jase Bolger, R-Marshall.
But Education Department spokesman Martin Ackley said all that was needed was an "affirmative action" by both the House and Senate, which has occurred.
Thursday, October 24, 2013
URGENCY of the EDUCATION EMERGENCY (Update: DEEP DIVE the COMMENTS for a TREATISE on the Subject Matter)
new york times EDITORIAL
The United States, Falling Behind
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Published: October 22, 2013 760 Comments
Researchers have been warning for more than a decade that the United States was losing ground to its economic competitors abroad and would eventually fall behind them unless it provided more of its citizens with the high-level math, science and literacy skills necessary for the new economy.
Naysayers dismissed this as alarmist. But recent data showing American students and adults lagging behind their peers abroad in terms of important skills suggest that the long-predicted peril has arrived.
A particularly alarming report on working-age adults was published earlier this month by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a coalition of mainly developed nations. The research focused on people ages 16 to 65 in 24 countries. It dealt with three crucial areas: literacy — the ability to understand and respond to written material; numeracy — the ability to use numerical and mathematical concepts; and problem solving — the ability to interpret and analyze information using computers.
Americans were comparatively weak-to-poor in all three areas. In literacy, for example, about 12 percent of American adults scored at the highest levels, a smaller proportion than in Finland and Japan (about 22 percent). In addition, one in six Americans scored near the bottom in literacy, compared with 1 in 20 adults who scored at that level in Japan.
American numeracy skills were termed “very poor.” The United States outperformed only two comparison countries: Italy and Spain. Nearly one in three Americans scored near the bottom in numeracy. That Americans were slightly below average in problem solving using computers was especially discouraging.
Some countries are making progress from generation to generation. But in the United States, as in Britain, the literacy and numeracy skills of young people coming into the labor market are no better than those who are about to retire. Americans who are 55 to 65 perform about average in literacy skills, but young Americans rank the lowest among their peers in the countries surveyed. The problem is not so much that the United States has gotten worse, but that it stood still on indicators like high school graduation rates while its foreign competitors rushed forward. Beginning in the 1970s, other developed nations recognized that the new economy would produce few jobs for workers with mediocre skills.
Those countries, most notably Finland, broadened access to education, improved teacher training and took other steps as well. Other countries take these international comparisons very seriously; some use the O.E.C.D. data to set policy goals and to gauge the pace of educational progress. The United States, by contrast, has yet to take on a sense of urgency about this issue. If that does not happen soon, the country will pay a long-term price.
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
OECD Skills Test 2013 (Update: Survey of U.S. Adults)
OECD Skills Test: U.S. Adults Lag In Practical Workplace Skills
Posted: 10/08/2013 5:01 am EDT | Updated: 10/08/2013 5:12 pm EDT
The scores for what's billed as the world's most comprehensive adult skills exam are out -- and it's bad news for Americans.
Americans performed below the international average on math, reading and problem-solving on the exam, known as the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies. U.S. math skills lagged far behind top performers, including Japan and Finland. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, based in Paris, released the results early Tuesday.
"These findings should concern us all. They show our education system hasn't done enough to help Americans compete -- or position our country to lead -- in a global economy that demands increasingly higher skills," U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in a statement. "While the PIAAC study places our highest-skilled adults on par with those in other leading nations, the findings shine a spotlight on a segment of our population that has been overlooked and underserved: the large number of adults with very low basic skills, most of whom are working."
The test is designed to gauge literacy and other skills necessary in the global economy. Statisticians have called it the richest international comparison in cognitive skills and human capital. PIAAC comes from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Andreas Schleicher. Schleichler created the Program for International Student Assessment, one of the most influential tests of 15-year-old students across the globe.
The new test gauges people ages 16 to 65 on how practical skills are used at home and at work. The test surveyed 157,000 adults in 24 countries and regions. Most participants took the test at home, and could use computers to help with answers.
The median hourly wage of those who scored in the top two tiers in literacy was found to be 60 percent higher than those who scored at the lowest rung. Low scorers had a higher rate of unemployment and were more likely to report poor health and civic disengagement.
Americans scored 270 in literacy on average, compared with 296 in Japan. In numeracy, or math, the U.S. scored 253, below the international average, and far behind Japan's 288.
The oldest U.S. adults were close to the international average, but American adults in every other age group performed far worse than the world average. In a technology-based problem-solving skills, Poland performed the worst, with an average score of 274, compared with the U.S. average of 277 and Japan's 294.
Poland, which received attention for rapidly rising scores on the Program for International Student Assessment, and Korea, also a high performer, had lower literacy skills than the U.S. on the new test. Poland and Korea had numeracy scores similar to the U.S.
Younger U.S. students were found to have far fewer skills than adults ages 50 to 65 -- a group whose high skills are aging out of the workforce. In Korea and Poland, the gap went the other way -- older students had fewer skills than younger students, a sign that those countries' economies stand to be invigorated by workers who are savvier than their predecessors.
"Younger people in Poland, age 16 to 24, have significantly higher basic skills than their older peers," said Amanada Ripley, a journalist whose book, "The Smartest Kids In The World," investigates educational differences between the U.S., Finland, Poland and Korea. "That perfectly encapsulates how the U.S. hasn't gotten much worse or much better, but that's not what's happened around the world. "Other countries have changed a lot while we have stood still. That's the effect of more of these kids going to stronger education."
That may foreshadow a weakening economy, some said. "The implication for these countries is that the stock of skills available to them is bound to decline over the next decades unless action is taken both to improve skills proficiency among young people," the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development wrote, referring to the U.S. and England.
Paul Peterson, a Harvard University professor, took a similar view. "Our younger population should be doing better than our older population," he said. "The older population is better educated. And the younger population is entering the workforce."
The U.S. Education Department released a report that analyzed the information. A third report on the policy implications of the results was held up by the federal government shutdown.
Mark Schneider, a vice president at the American Institutes of Research who formerly oversaw statistics at the U.S. Education Department, said he was skeptical of the results. "Japan is the leader, but the fact is its economy has been in the toilet for 40 years," he said. "What are the lessons here?"
OECD Skills Test 2013 (PDF) http://skills.oecd.org/OECD_Skills_Outlook_2013.pdf
Monday, October 7, 2013
@MSU NSF Grants (Boost STEM Learning?)
“Students answering questions in their own words is the most meaningful way for instructors to identify learning obstacles,” said Mark Urban-Lurain, principle investigator for the $5 million grant and co-director of MSU’s Center for Engineering Education Research. “The realities of typical large-enrollment undergraduate classes, however, restrict the options that facultymembers
have for evaluating students’ writing.”
have for evaluating students’ writing.”$5.7 Million NSF Grant To MSU To Boost STEM Learning
October 1, 2013 12:50 PM
EAST LANSING (WWJ) – Michigan State University has received two National Science Foundation grants totaling $5.7 million, fundsthat will be used to look for ways to use computer software to analyze student writing in science and engineering classes.
that will be used to look for ways to use computer software to analyze student writing in science and engineering classes.
The goal is to help retain more students who are enrolled in the so-called STEM disciplines – science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
The two grants include $5 million for five years, funds that will be used to develop a website where student exam answers can be analyzed; and an additional three-year, $718,000 grant that will be used to assist instructors in the use of the software.
In typical, large-enrollment STEM courses, faculty usually use multiple-choice exams because they are easily scored by computers. But a lot of information is hidden from view with multiple-choice exams.
A team of MSU researchers will use the grants to aid in the development of computerized tools that will analyze students’ written responses to homework, quiz and test questions to predict how they would be assessed by experts.
“When students express what they know in their own words, it is deeper and a more rich view of what students know and have learned,” said John Merrill, PI of the $718,000 grant and director of MSU’s Biological Science Program. “When students write something that is untrue, now you know the challenge you need to be correcting in class. It’s a more interactive form of learning and teaching.”
The computer software is based on programs that are used in the business world to analyze surveys. It selects words and phrases written by the students that provide insight into how they understand the course material. It has the ability to analyze several sentences.
A major part of the funding is targeted for completion and public rollout of a fully automated website where instructors around the world can have their students’ open-response answers analyzed automatically.
Other collaborators on the project include faculty members at theUniversity of Colorado at Boulder, the State University of New York at Stony Brook, the University of Maine at Orono, the University of Georgia, the University of South Florida and Western Michigan University.
of Colorado at Boulder, the State University of New York at Stony Brook, the University of Maine at Orono, the University of Georgia, the University of South Florida and Western Michigan University.
Merrill said improvements to the current constructed response assessments would reveal more about student misconceptions, allowing faculty members to make small corrections throughout the semester.
“The software can analyze text and determine correctness,” he said. “But we have to train the computer to do that.”
Saturday, October 5, 2013
U.S. FIRST Robitics (Update)
Robotics: The only high school sport where every kid can go pro
Nicholas Knoch from Lake Fenton High School tightens the bolts of his team's robot at the FIRST Robotics Competition in Connie and Jim John Recreation Center on the campus of Kettering University. His team is the Lake Fenton Hazmat
FLINT - On the same day Michigan State University did battle in football with the University of Notre Dame, another game was unfolding at Kettering University in Flint.
With the focus of a quarterback at the line, senior Ben Slade of International Technical Academy in Pontiac hoped that a complex play would go as designed. The challenge: Construct a self-guided robot using designated gears, software and assorted framework that would accurately fling Frisbees into netted target slots. He and his high school teammates already had logged thousands of hours over six weeks as they applied principles of math, engineering and computer programming to the task.
Slade, 17, said it is easy to forget in the heat of competition just how much he is learning.
“This is actually loads of fun. I get up at five in the morning on Saturdays to do this,” he said.
He looked over at the somewhat battered team robot, noting with pride: “I wrote the code for that.”
Called FIRST Robotics, the all-day event on Sept. 21 convened 42 teams of Michigan high school students in a boisterous, intense, celebration of all things nerd. Later that day, a three-team alliance whooped with pride as it was named the winner.
But those behind the program say there is more at stake here than trophies or medals or even the result of a major college football game.
“We are in trouble as a nation,” said Bob Nichols, Kettering's director of alumni engagement. He was speaking to oft-cited evidence that Michigan and the United States lag behind many countries in science, technology, engineering and math – the cluster of subjects known as STEM.
Thomas Lombardi, 17, from Grosse Pointe North and South High School, is tinkering with his team’s robot at the FIRST Robotics Competition in Connie and Jim John Recreation Center on the campus of Kettering University. His team is the Gear Heads
“We just don't have enough students going into STEM careers.”
In 2010 rankings from the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, 15-year-old U.S. students scored 17th in science achievement and 25th in math out of 34 countries. A 2009 report from National Assessment of Education Progress found that just 1 percent of U.S. fourth grade and 12th grade students and 2 percent of eighth grade students scored in the highest level of proficiency in science.
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan called those findings “an absolute wake-up call for America.”
FIRST Robotics, Nichols believes, is one good way to begin to answer that call.
“I don't just think that it's true. I have proof of it. I have seen the transformation so many times,” Nichols said.
Since 1999, Kettering has awarded scholarships totaling $3.5 million to FIRST participants. Many have gone on distinguish themselves in fields like engineering and science, Nichols said.
News and Analysis from The Center for Michigan
A 2005 study by Brandeis University underlined its promise.
In an analysis of 173 FIRST Robotics participants from New York City and Detroit area high schools, it found that 99 percent had graduated from high school and 89 percent went on to college. Nearly 90 percent took at least one college math course and 78 percent took at least one science course. About half took at least one engineering course.
Nearly 60 percent reported they had at least one science or technology-related work experience, while 13 percent received grants or scholarships related to science or engineering. Of those reporting a major, 41 percent selected engineering, compared to a national average of 6 percent.
Founded in 1989 by New Hampshire inventor and entrepreneur Dean Kamen, FIRST grew by 2011 to more than 2,000 teams from around the world. Competitions challenge teams, with the help of volunteer professional mentors, to solve a common problem in a six-week time frame using a standard parts kit and shared set of rules.
Aaron Stewart, 23, competed on a high school FIRST Robotics squad in southern Michigan in 2008 and 2009. He graduated from Notre Dame University in May with a degree in mechanical engineering and was recently hired as an engineer for Whirlpool.
“I definitely learned a lot,” Stewart said of his FIRST Robotics experience. He is now a mentor for the same team that sparked his interest in engineering.
“It's hands-on. You have a real-world problem to solve. You actually go through the details of working out a problem from start to finish.”
That kind of connection is more than coincidence, in the view of another FIRST Robotics advocate.
“We have a saying, 'We are the only varsity sport where everyone on the team can turn pro,'” said Gail Alpert, president of FIRST in Michigan, a nonprofit organization that aims to see FIRST Robotics teams at every high school in Michigan.
“If can we can make FIRST Robotics a sport that gives the prestige of football, then we are significantly changing the culture in the United States.”
Ellen Green, 17, from Notre Dame Preparatory School, makes sure her team’s robot is ready for battle at the FIRST robotics Competition in Connie and Jim John Recreation Center on the campus of Kettering University.
Given that he campaigned as “one tough nerd,” it is no surprise Gov. Rick Snyder backed his enthusiasm for this endeavor with $3 million in the 2014 school aid budget to expand FIRST Robotics in Michigan. About one-fourth of Michigan high schools have FIRST Robotics teams, a portion expected to rise in 2014.
Bryan Coburn, 23, earned his FIRST Robotics stripes a few years back while a student at Schwartz Creek High School. The experience taught him about electrical engineering, how to design and build a prototype – and how to attack a problem.
“Before that, I really had no experience with engineering,” he recalled.
He earned a scholarship to Kettering University, where he was student body president. Following his graduation in March, he was hired as a structural engineer for American Airlines.
Coburn doubts he would be where he is today had he not competed in FIRST Robotics.
“With FIRST, you are given a problem at the beginning and you have to develop some sort of way to approach that problem. It showed me how much I enjoyed that process.
“It showed me where my passion was,” he said.
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