Yong Zhao, Keynote MASC

his website is here; he comments that most of his slides are on it
great to follow the state auditor
school boards "are a unique American thing"
around the world people don't understand what it is
China "saves the money and bypasses the election process" (yes, that's a joke. There will be many)
something "that America has done very well"
"you are here to work with the people...most places, they're branches of the government"
but you've lost most of the power of the last twenty years
"I'm not a member of the Tea Party; I'm fron China, and we do have tea..."
"have lost most of the most precious control"
"in your hands is the future of Massachusetts, the future of this nation"
"not how hard you work; it's what you're working on"

NCLB waiver report

The PowerPoint isn't working but you can find it online here.
posting as we go
Boone: "what the changes are within the state, what they mean for us..."
waivers allowed to be submitted to NCLB this year
no reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, as of yet
"that gives credit for the fine work that's going on in our system"
"current" as it has not been reauthorized or redacted
100% of students proficient by 2014
AYP was determination for schools and districts
MA had rigorous standards, making excellent progress, yet not making bar
waiver granted (as it has been for all but six states)
reduce proficiency gap by 50% by 2016-17
"takes into consideration the progress that schools are making"
No more AYP
Progress and Performance Index: PPI
greater focus on subgroups
2011 is our baseline year for targets going forward
AYP gave no recognition for student growth
multiple years of data, rather than one year of data
this is partial credit model (no longer if you didn't hit one, you didn't hit it at all)
students no longer counted multiple times: everyone counts in aggregate, but there's a SINGLE "high needs" subgroup, where a student may count again; no more than that
movement beyond proficiency is now rewarded
"advanced proficiency is really what we should be targeting"
"haven't abandoned attendance" but no longer part of calculation
What is in PPI?

1. CPI (ELA, math, science)
2. MCAS growth (ELA, math)
3. cohort graduation rate
4. annual dropout rate

These last two for high schools only

Maximum number of 700 points, but points by school vary as elementary schools do not have all indicators (elementary schools have no more than 400)

Needs Improvment and Failing have two options: Low and High (different numbers of models)

new system expects 51-59 student growth percentile points OR 10-14 percentile points in growth OR if the number not proficient decreases by 10 percent

reduce by at least half the gap between a perfect score and the 2011 CPI score

dropout is that we cannot account for their enrollment elsewhere

WPS dropout rate is 3%: bring it to less than 2% in the next six years

graduation rate: the state has set federally approved targets for state to hit

Levels of schools: 

Commendation schools: high achieving, high growth, gap narrowing (all are Level 1 schools)

Title I funds: 25% of funds reserved on a sliding scale to address identified needs of lowest performing schools

Needs of lowest achieving students in lowest performing schools

"uneven performance in mathematics...revised frameworks in the Common Core"

Columbus Park had high performance but could not make AYP

We've got the waiver: now what?

I got this question from a friend on Facebook, and one the old teacher principle "If one asks, several are wondering," here's an answer:
So, we all know this waiver is a big deal, but what does it actually mean for your local school?

• The first big thing it means is that there will no longer be any schools "not meeting Adequate Yearly Progress." AYP is gone. This will particularly be telling for the schools that had hit the tough part of the curve: going from 96% to something higher, for example. You won't see anything about this in Massachusetts reports anymore. It won't probably actually change anything in your school, other than a principal's report. What it SHOULD do is allow any school that doesn't have difficulty on the MCAS to pay attention to the rest of education. That's the theory.

Much of the rest of what I'll talk about below was going to happen, anyway, because Massachusetts has Race to the Top plans. To get a waiver, a state basically had to sign up to do the RTTT agreements. Massachusetts was already doing these (and so it's not a huge surprise that the waiver came through).

• Demonstrate adherence to college and career ready standards, which really meant adopting the Common Core standards. You've already heard about this going on, right? We're shifting away from the Massachusetts frameworks to the standards held in common with other states. That's going to change the curriculum.
• Levelling: each school is a Level 1-5. Again, this has already happened for two years running, per the Act Relative to the Achievement Gap. It's based on MCAS scores, still, 'though they're crunched in several different ways, including how subgroups are being served. In function, unless your school is Level 4, this is probably something that's only affecting real estate prices. This basically is your new "instead of AYP" label.
• Teacher evaluation: you had to tie them to student "performance" (which, yes, means test scores). Again, already in the new regulations via Race to the Top; already being implemented in Level 4 schools this year, in Race to the Top districts next year, in the rest of the state the year after that. No change.

The Fed was quite adament that they were offering "freedom" in return. Here's the one place I can see that:

• Funding: here's where you may see a difference in schools that have been getting supplemental funding due to low MCAS scores. The state is no longer going to mandate the transfer option (the right for a parent to send their kids to a higher-achieving school after so many years with poor scores). They are also no longer going to mandate supplemental services (that after-school MCAS prep that many schools in Worcester offer, for example). The idea is supposed to be to "free up districts" to make what decisions they like on how best to serve their kids with those funds; what that looks like on the ground is anyone's guess at this point. The state is specifically calling out the Eleven Essential Conditions that they've been requiring of the Level 4 schools, which include students’ social-emotional needs and family-school engagement, so we could see an emphasis on that.

More to come as I have it!
UPDATE: Or you could just read Diane Ravitch. 

Tony Wagner, Global Achievement Gap

Tony Wagner, Harvard Graduate School of Education, author of The Global Achievement Gap
 to help the public understand what it means to be an educated adult in the 21st century
there's some great stuff here! Worth it!

Questions on MCAS report

Mayor: "while the President is mentioning UPCS as one of the best schools in the country, it's a Level 2 school"
failure of this data
"doesn't tell the whole story"
Boone: "Much better way of recognizing the sound progress in our schools"
"overly cautious that we not use one measure but multiple measures" O'Brien

O'Connell: appears that we've had success with our tenth graders
"seeing some declines" in grades 5-8
notes different cohorts
Any plan to review curriculum in those grades? issues that need to be addressed?
Are we not preparing our students to excel the appropriate level?
Boone notes that science has not been taught
Mulqueen: "new literacy in each of the content areas"
to think like scientists, to think like mathematicians
curriculum review will do that

Monfredo:"in past years...emphasis on math and language arts"
letters to Level 1, to commendation schools
"lack of growth in math"
Boone: "more alignment with the standards of the expectations across the board"
"nationally mathematics continues to be a concern"
Monfredo asks about after school programs
Mulqueen cites innovation schools

Novick: sorry, I had quite a few...
whiplash to be spending all this time on this after all the criticism heaped on the MCAS at last night's forum
 there may well be new Level 4's; we don't know for sure, and we don't know when
Yes, there were schools that dropped from Level 2 to Level 3 (three, I think was said?)
Motion to bill the state for resending MCAS to 10th graders
Motion to for an update on common assessment and on NCLB waivers

Foley: comparison group would be other urban districts for CPI
question of whether we will have 72 schools statewide that are Level 4; so far we have 36

Mullaney: are you mailing to every tenth grader, or just the ones that had the change?
probably just the new ones, Perda
Boone points out that there is  parent information on the department website
"why does the state think that any parent really cares?" asks Mullaney

Biancheria: what are we doing for middle schools that aren't innovation schools?
"alignment between the frameworks and the standards" says Boone
Biancheria questions what we are getting from Focus on Results for all the money we are paying
"we still have a tremendous amount of work to do"
science and social studies shouldn't be an afterthought; asks what we can do to bring science to the same level that math and English are
Boone: "we shouldn't have to have a test to teach social studies"
Mulqueen: essential lab components

MCAS 2010 report: report of the superintendent

You will find the report here. Being delivered by Superintendent Boone; prepared by David Perda (who uses the lamp of learning!)
"an uneven instructional time as it relates to science at all levels"
comparision with the state: for this year ELA all grades 87.2%; for us 76.1%
"pretty flat year" for both state and us
for math 79.9% for the state; 67.4% for WPS
Student Growth Percentiles "a year's worth of progress in a year's time"
about half of students show "expected" growth annual: state says that this is where they expect states to be (half the kids do a year or more; half do less)
range of 40-60% within what the state wants
"need to see all students regardless of language needs, disabilities...are making progress"
"by the end of third grade, students should be reading to learn"
"continue to refresh and enhance our technology opportunities"
mention here of the waiver being applied for by the state for NCLB
AYP made by Doherty, Tech, LakeView, West Tatnuck, Nelson Place,Worcester Arts
AYP made in math by Union Hill, Midland, Chandler El, Flagg
AYP in ELA: UPCS, Forest Grove, McGrath
"very strong performance, yet failed to meet" AYP...case made for waivers
special commendations from the state: Columbus Park 60% or higher for two years; Nelson Place and West Tatnuck, narrowing proficiency gaps over two years for high need students
Levels: majority of schools are Level 3 schools
Columbus Park, Forest Grove, LakeView, Wawecus Road, Worcester East Middle moved from Level 3 to Level 2 this year
Grade 10 mathematics needed to be corrected: a high school junior found the mistake
scores of 1049 changed; 68 students changed levels
slight increase overall in CPI for most schools

"Our kids were the ones whose education was stilted..."

Amazing piece on No Child Left Behind by Superintendent of the Pelham City Schools in Georgia, Jim Arnold:

Our kids were the ones whose education was stilted by our submission to the belief that one test could effectively distill and determine the depth and extent of an entire year of a child’s education. They are the ones whose time was wasted by “academic pep rallies” and “test prep” and by the subtle and insidious ways we told them the test was “important” and put pressure on them to “do their best because our school is counting on you.”
They were the ones that did without art and music and chorus and drama because we increased the amount of time they spent in ELA and Math. They were the ones that had time in their Social Studies and Science classes cut back more and more so schools could focus on the “really important areas” of ELA and Math. They were the ELL’s that couldn’t speak English but still had to take the test. Their teachers were the ones that were told “your grading of the children in your classes doesn’t count any more because standardization is more important to us that the individual grades you provide.” This told them in effect that their efforts at teaching were important but only if they taught using “this” methodology or “this” curriculum, then, when things started to go badly, they were the first to be blamed for the failure of public education. They were told to teach every child the same way with the same material but make sure to individualize while you’re at it. Hogwash.

No excerpt could do it justice. Read it all.
And boy, do we need more like him in administration.

The Last Best Place

Montana just faced down the federal Department of Ed...and won.

Note that it was somewhat on a technicality, as Montana hadn't reset their numbers in 2005, so the fed is letting them do that this year instead. Nonetheless, Montana's numbers are not going to what the fed said they should for 2011. An analogy one hopes Secretary Duncan can get from State Superintendent Juneau:

If the game of basketball operated like NCLB, every student, despite her or his athletic ability or interest, must make the team; and then, the only way a student can score points is by a slam dunk," she wrote. "Under NCLB rules, free throws don't matter, lay-ups don't matter, three-point shots don't matter, assists don't matter, and rebounds don't matter. Only the slam dunk matters. And, over time, the basket keeps rising in height.

Here it comes

Remember Secretary Duncan's 82% not meeting AYP?
In Vermont, 72 percent of their schools aren't making AYP this year.

AYP letters

AYP letters are going out this week. We're required to notify parents of students at schools that fail to make AYP for two years in a row.
Nine schools met AYP in both English and math
Twelve schools made it in English only
Six made it in math only

Many that failed to meet AYP were very very close. Superintendent Boone further notes that requirements for AYP are going up and up all the time (remember NCLB requires 100% by 2014).

On remembering what the numbers mean

At last night's State of the Schools address, the exchange I found most interesting was one only partly covered in today's paper. A gentleman asked, in effect, are we going to make it? No Child Left Behind requires that all children be performing at or above proficient on their state tests by 2014; is Worcester going to be there?
Now the reporter didn't entirely miss it--Superintendent Boone was undeniably positive in her answer, reviewing increasing test scores, the work done at various schools, and so on. But the most telling part, I thought, was this, which didn't make the paper.

No one thought we were going to be there.

Now, she's absolutely right*, that anyone who has any real familiarity with the enormous assortment of kids served in our schools (locally or nationally) did not think that every single one of them--and I'm thinking here of some of the severely disabled, or kids who are just not up to grade level, or just got here from somewhere else--were going to be taking and achieving proficiently on state tests in 2014. But back in 2001, 2014 felt really far away, and leaving "no child" behind lent itself nicely to 100%.
The states dealt with this different ways. The first, for the states that didn't already have statewide testing, was to create an easy test. You get your numbers up nice and high to start with, you can easily keep them there, and maybe this will all go away by the time you start to get close to 2014 and somehow have to make this 100%.**
The requirement, however, was that states, districts, schools, show "adequate yearly progress" towards that 100%. So if you started out with 80% of kids making the mark, you had to show the feds that you were getting that higher: to 81, 85, and so forth.
The states were allowed to set their year-by-year goals, however, which led to another way that states dealt with this: they made different curves. Assuming, again, that this would all go away as we started to get to 2014 and people started to notice that the numbers weren't near 100, many states set low, achievable goals for the first few years, and showed a graph with amazing gains in the years closer to 2014.
You may have noticed that 2014 is fast approaching.
If you don't hit your goals for a certain number of years, you've got an "underperforming" school. Plenty of states have had relatively few underperforming schools for a number of years. If you've got an easier test and a nice low curve, you can hit AYP for plenty of years.
We're starting to hit a steeper part of the curve, now, though, and nationwide, the numbers are going up.

Now, Massachusetts was an exception on both counts. We already had the MCAS, which, whatever its faults, isn't an easy test, and our state education officials opted for a steady increase on the AYP chart. We've had larger numbers of underperforming schools for longer because of the way the state has chosen to implement NCLB. What was considered "adequate" in Massachusetts isn't what was "adequate" elsewhere. Our numbers are continuing to go up, too--I heard a DESE official estimate that we could be as high as 70% underperforming statewide possibly next year. When we talk about "underperforming" or "level 4" or whatever the latest term is, it helps to remember that this all has to do with how you've stacked the deck on NCLB...which had a goal that no one thought we were going to reach, anyway.

*and, in fairness to Superintendent Boone, I should note that she added, "but it made it possible for us to aim for 80%" per the Worcester Compact
**and ESEA comes up for renewal every few years, anyway, so there's a good chance the rules will change. They usually do.

Superintendent on district MCAS

There will be more on this at our next meeting...

recognizes the success and the elignment
all schools throughout the state identified by level

we got MCAS scores, growth data, school levels

10 of our schools have been designated as Level 1
4 as Level 2
27 as Level 3
(this is the level of intervention and support by the state)
We will continue as a Commisssioner's district (having any Level 4 would do that automatically)

Grade 3 literacy has been a focus and concern, as we had flatlined
9% gain in grade 3 proficient or above on ELA: "that's real growth and that's substantive growth"
"still have some work to do in that area..saw some significant growth in that area"
"all of our grade levels showed improvement, which the exception of 10th grade"

nine of our schools made AYP in both ELA and math
12 made it in ELA alone
6 in math alone
an additional 20 schools were within 5 composite points of where they needed to be for meeting AYP

"our student growth performance continues to be pretty much were we were before"...about half and half

"outpaced expected achievement rate in ELA and math" Burncoat High
Nelson Place and Heard Street have moved off of the list of concerns
"Commended schools"--a first this year--that have shown a great deal of progress
Clark Street, Elm Park, Heard Street, Jacob Hiatt, Nelson Place, Roosevelt, Tatnuck Magnet, Burncoat Middle

"beginning to pay huge dividends"
"sobering data on the science and technology data"
narrowing of focus on math and ELA, now "science is becoming an indicator"
"to be commended for fine work in 2009"

Ed Reform at 17: Questions

(note that the intial round of questions came from WEC Director Jennifer Davis Carey)

Questions (note that these are coming from the Collaborative, not the audience):
a credible way of evaluating teachers that will improve teacher performance: to Reville
"total inadequate support on the front lines of urban education"
"we gotta do better at that...no young teacher should come into this and not get regular support and evaluation"
"try to strike a balance...look at a number of factors"
"developing a much more vigorous classroom evaluation process"

to O'Sullivan: students make more choices..has ed reform advanced that aim
"I think so. As I look around at what I'm doing now...explosion of people who want to be here and their children are being educated here"
"a lot of indications that we are changing the status quo"
supportive of people who want to be here and want to contribute
Reville points out that we lead (or close to it) the world in science and technology, but points to gap among groups, and that we have lower than the national average interest among students heading to college in wanting to go into science

to DelPrete: what one or two areas do we need to focus on for improvement?
teachers and teaching have been a pretty marginalized subject in ed reform
"refocus the subject on teaching and learning"
"working on the whole continuum of teacher development...how teachers get socialized into the profession...depends on a capacity for teamwork"
"inspiration gap, collaboration gap"
"kids' social capital...kids don't have access to social capital or wider opportunities for learning..we are their social capital..even if we build their education, if we don't build their capacity...they instinctively follow other paths"
"what concretely...how do we get kids to understand the opportunities" out there, where their education might lead?

to Baehr: AYP not a great measure: is this accurate? Is there more that we ought to be using as a measure?
Yes.
"we've seen the limitations of" AYP
"doesn't take into account mobility"
state has "deemphasized" AYP: at Level 3 and 4, we're not limited to AYP
Level 3, built on MCAS and on high school graduation and dropout
20% of lowest achieving will be Level 3 (once 2010 MCAS comes out); priority for assistance
"abandoning AYP for that purpose"
and it wasn't a factor in identifying Level 4 or 5 schools

to Boone: how can the reams of data be used to improve education
"not use data as a negative"
"I think we have to go back to what I refer to as data mining: what can we learn from the data?"
"when we frame and look at data around a set of key questions, we can grow from it"
"more extensive cultures in our schools..in discussing data...through a sense that it is not a negative"
"use data as a tool to drive decisions...that's the premise behind an accountability system in Worcester"
"align resources based on data"
"we have to own the way we've taken data down a negative pathway"
"at the end of the day, do we continue to drive a car...we keep bringing it back with the same malfunction...somebody has to figure out what's going on" (that was an analogy with teacher evaluation being measured by student test scores)
Baehr jumps in: MCAS "equate year to year score"
"a smart, reliable, accurate, valid way to relate MCAS scores year to year"
one kid, year to year, how he did against his peers
between 40 and 60% is typical growth; growth of over 60% is a "school that's really adding value"
"use of potent data can help change practice"
"many have describe MCAS as an autospy...need something more like temperature taking"
quarterly assessment using real MCAS test questions from previous years (yes, folks, that would be four times a year...)

Notes going up: Ed Reform at 17

I took notes at yesterday's "Education Reform at Seventeen" panel put on by the Worcester Education Collaborative. (There's links up there now...telling.) They are notes (so, not complete sentences), and I'll be posting them in chronological order.

A few thoughts: it was a very controlled presentation (the panelists apparently were each given an assignment; questions were largely asked by WEC, rather than the audience). There was also a single version of the history of the creation of the original ed reform bill in 1993, which largely left out--'though to Secretary Reville's credit, he did mention--that the state was being sued by districts, including Worcester, for underfunding education, and fixing that was a major motivation in getting the bill passed. That the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education (among others) pushed to be certain that something they regarded as "accountability for increased spending" got into the bill was not the first motivation for getting it done.
Also, the state continues its slow-but-sure de-emphasis of adequate yearly progress (despite this being a tenet of NCLB, which remains in force until ESEA is re-authorized). AYP is not how schools in Massachusetts are being catagorized, as of the new ed reform act in January.