- eSchool News - https://www.eschoolnews.com -

5 ways the Common Core could be worthless

common-core-college

New brief urges higher education, states to better align Common Core with higher ed practices

Common Core State Standards, which have been adopted by 43 states and the District of Columbia, are supposed to be the ultimate indicator for a student’s college readiness. But according to a new policy brief, Common Core stops at higher education’s gate, offering little to no benefit for a student’s chances of entering college.

The brief, “Common Core Goes to College: Building better connections between high school and higher education [1],” by Lindsey Tepe, program associate on the New America Foundation [2]’s Education Policy Program, begins her brief with a powerful metaphor, linking the blunder of Chicago’s underground tunnel to what’s currently happening with the Common Core.

In 1989, after years of planning to connect two ends of one tunnel under Chicago, the two entities, which started building the tunnel at different points, realized that one side came in nine inches too low, and eight inches to the east of the other side’s connector point.

Like the Common Core, explains Tepe, if higher education’s policies don’t better align with K-12’s CCSS implementation, the nation-wide initiative will effectively become a road to nowhere.

“Careful analysis of state policies and practices reveals a higher education landscape riddled with complications and shortcomings for the successful alignment of higher education with the Common Core,” writes Tepe, “…including admissions, financial aid, retesting and course placement, and developmental education.

Also, little evidence suggests that colleges are meaningfully aligning college instruction with the standards, Tepe notes.

(Next page: 5 ways to better align higher education with Common Core)

1. Minimum standards for entrance.

According to Tepe, states that have implemented the CCSS will soon be determining what specific test score students will need to meet in order to demonstrate “college readiness.” However, most colleges and universities have not yet planned to include these scores as part of their minimum standards for student entrance.

Tepe explains that “less selective universities like Alabama State” use test scores primarily to establish minimum eligibility standards to avoid enrolling students likely to fail. Yet, many states are not considering integrating Common Core assessments with its admission criteria.

“For institutions that currently use ACT and SAT scores to establish minimum standards, expanding those standards to include Common Core assessment scores would provide an additional opportunity to demonstrate student readiness,” she writes. “A college-ready designation on the state-adopted, Common Core standards-aligned PARCC assessment should be sufficient to meet state minimum eligibility criteria for unconditional admission to the state’s public universities.”

Selective colleges like Harvard, who use test scores for sorting as a means to identify the best students among a much larger pool of students, should also use comparable scores on PARCC or Smarter Balanced as a sufficient substitute.

“If these assessments do not serve as a means for determining college readiness in minimum admissions policies, it will undermine the standards as a true proxy for college readiness,” she says.

2. Test scores for financial aid.

Some states’ postsecondary financial aid is need-based, but many states award aid based on academic merit, and many factors considered by colleges and universities in the admissions process are weighed for financial aid considerations, including high school, GPA, adherence to a “college preparatory” course load, and ACT and SAT scores, notes Tepe.

Therefore, where test scores are used as a proxy for college readiness to award financial aid, colleges and universities—as well as state governing boards—must allow students to demonstrate proficiency with the Common Core standards.

“However, as with admissions policies, few states have determined if, or how, they will integrate the new college-ready assessments into this critical area of higher education policy,” explains Tepe. “And for those states developing or using their own high school assessments, most remain separate and distinct from financial aid eligibility.”

3. Align college curriculum with Common Core.

According to Tepe, many of those within higher education were not involved in developing or endorsing the Common Core, and as a result, have not only not considered how they might change their own practices to better align, “many are not even aware of the Common Core.”

“While states have continued to take on increasingly greater roles in shaping K-12 education throughout the country, for a variety of reasons (including deep-seated principles of shared governance and academic freedom) public institutions of higher education have carried on, largely insulated from change,” says Tepe.

She notes that this is due in part to higher education not being based on scaffolded concepts of learning, like with K-12, and very often the content of college courses is developed with no awareness of K-12 expectations, or even those of other college-level courses.

“Thus, the Common Core standards appear at the moment to end at the college gate, representing the completion of an indistinct goal—‘college readiness’—rather than as another deliberate step on a student’s journey toward a college degree,” Tepe emphasizes.

(Next page: Ways 4-5)

4. Use as a measure for retesting and course placement.

In order to assess, sort and remediate under-prepared high school graduate students, anywhere from 28 to 40 percent of first-year undergraduates are enrolling in at least one developmental course; and at community colleges that percentage jumps to 50 percent.

“To have a substantive effect on course placement and to mitigate the need for retesting, the Common Core assessments need to contextualize their range of possible scores, both in terms of students’ mastery of specific content as well as their ability to succeed within the sequence of first-year coursework offered in colleges,” says Tepe.

To do this, states will need to decide upon more than a single cut-score for college readiness, and should also provide information on the types of first-year college-level coursework that students are prepared to take.

“For this information to be useful, public colleges and universities will need to adopt more consistent and reliable policies around placement decisions,” and “member states of the Common Core assessment consortia should work with test developers to provide additional information for college and university use in the course placement process.”

5. Align with teacher prep programs.

The final consideration for Common Core alignment is through teacher preparation programs, which as Tepe says, “With K-12 systems in 43 states and D.C. using these standards in their classrooms, the majority of teachers in this country will soon be required to teach based upon this framework.”

A recent Center on Education Policy [3] (CEP) report revealed that of the 40 responding Common Core states, 35 reported that their postsecondary institutions are involved in preparing students in teacher prep programs to teach the Common Core; only 24 are planning to revise teacher prep curriculum to reflect the new standards; 17 indicated that they are planning to make entry requirements for the teacher prep program more rigorous; and 12 percent reported they were revising course requirements for a teaching degree to require more courses in subject matter content.

Tepe’s recommendation is that colleges and universities with teacher prep programs require the incorporation of the state’s college- and career-ready standards required coursework.

“To prepare students to succeed in college and beyond, the spirit of these standards—alignment—needs to go to college as well,” states Tepe. “And each state needs to plan how to ‘do it all in one piece’ if it is going to be a success.”

For much more detailed information and recommendations, read the full report [1].

New eRate rules invite a new approach: Managed Wi-Fi

Posted By By Dennis Pierce, Special Projects Editor, eSchool News On In District Management,Featured on eSchool News,Innovation Insights,IT Management,News,Top News | No Comments
Wi-Fi

The FCC’s extensive eRate overhaul includes a new type of eligible service, managed Wi-Fi, which could lead to more outsourced networks in K-12 schools

Managed Wi-Fi will be eligible for eRate support as a Category 2 service.

[Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of articles examining the new eRate rules and how they will affect schools.]

On page 49 of its “Seventh Report and Order [4],” a 176-page document that rewrites the rules governing the $2.4 billion-a-year eRate, the Federal Communications Commission refers to a new category of service that is eligible for eRate support: managed Wi-Fi, or “managed internal broadband services” as the agency refers to it.

Before, schools could apply for eRate discounts only on the purchase of routers, switches, wireless access points, and other internal connections, or on the basic maintenance of this equipment. Now, the FCC’s new rules allow schools to enter into contracts that call for Wi-Fi providers to install and manage this equipment—and this full-service approach to wireless service would be eRate-eligible.

This change “will allow schools, for the first time, to leverage eRate discounts to outsource major aspects of delivering on-campus broadband connectivity,” said John Harrington, chief executive officer of the eRate consulting firm Funds For Learning [5]. “This is analogous to a school cafeteria considering bids to manage their kitchen and serve students meals.”

These types of agreements “could lead to improved network performance,” Harrington added.

(Next page: More details about managed Wi-Fi’s eligibility—and one state’s experience with the service)

In explaining its decision, the FCC said that managed Wi-Fi services “can provide substantial benefits and cost savings to many schools and libraries, particularly small districts … without a dedicated technology director available to deploy and manage advanced [networks] quickly and efficiently.”

Managed Wi-Fi will be eligible for eRate support as a Category 2 service, and although schools can enter into multiyear contracts for this type of service, they would have to apply for eRate funding separately each year. “We will not make multiyear commitments,” the FCC said.

Using the agency’s newly created funding cap of $150 per student on the pre-discount cost of Category 2 services over a five-year period, schools would be eligible to apply for eRate discounts on managed Wi-Fi services costing up to $30 per student, per year. “This is consistent with the price of managed Wi-Fi services in the market today,” the FCC said.

C-Spire Fiber [6] has piloted managed Wi-Fi service in several Mississippi school districts at an average cost of $19 to $29 per student. And the state of Idaho pays about $21 per student, per year, for a managed Wi-Fi contract with Education Networks of America [7] (ENA).

ENA supplies Wi-Fi services to all public high schools in Idaho that have opted into the contract, which was more than 80 percent of schools as of press time. This includes network engineering, installation, management, maintenance, and content filtering—although the filtering portion of the contract would not be eligible for eRate support under the new program rules.

“Essentially, we’re responsible for wireless network management from the initial site survey to the end of the contract,” said Michael McCurley, chief technology officer for ENA. If there is a problem with a school’s wireless network, ENA troubleshoots and fixes the problem—and the company also takes care of network optimization.

State officials wanted all students to have equal access to technology, regardless of where they lived, said Joyce Popp, chief information officer for the Idaho Department of Education.

“We also understood that many of our districts have extremely limited resources,” Popp added—and contracting with ENA ensures that each high school has the same quality of service for its local network.

“Our experience with ENA has been excellent,” Popp said of the managed Wi-Fi contract. “They have been extremely responsive to problems and concerns … and continually strive to resolve all issues quickly and professionally.”

While managed Wi-Fi offers many potential benefits, it might not be the best option for all schools.

“The biggest problem with outsourcing [IT functions] … is an inexplicable faith in service providers,” said Geoff Tritsch of Vantage Technology Consulting Group, during a recent ed-tech conference [8]. “Too many [schools] give critical functions over to outsourcers without doing their due process.”

Tritsch noted that outsourcing your IT functions doesn’t “absolve you from managing.” If you’re going to pass on responsibility for managing your Wi-Fi network to a third-party service provider, make sure you have a clear agreement that defines what the company will do and how—as well as acceptable response times and your recourse if these aren’t met.

Only time will tell if managed Wi-Fi will have mass appeal among K-12 schools, Harrington said. But the fact that it’s eRate-eligible could give rise to a new market segment.

“At a minimum, school technology leaders have been given the freedom to consider these arrangements without sacrificing eRate funding,” he noted.

See also:

A $5 billion bounty: How to use eRate support for Wi-Fi [9]

Part three of this series will examine the impact that ending eRate support for voice services will have on schools. Part four will look at how schools are coping with the end of support for email and web hosting services. Watch www.eschoolnews.com [10] every Tuesday this month for more information.

6 reasons mobile learning is booming

Posted By By Laura Devaney, Managing Editor On In Digital Issue Article,Featured on eSchool News,Teaching Trends,Top News | No Comments
mobile-learning

Top ed-tech stories to watch: Schools grapple with data privacy

Posted By From staff and wire reports On In District Management,Featured on eSchool News,IT Management,News,Top News | No Comments
data-privacy

No. 4 on our list of key ed-tech trends for the new school year is the need for K-12 leaders to navigate a data privacy minefield

School leaders must talk openly about privacy and address parents’ concerns proactively, before it’s too late.

[Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of stories examining five key ed-tech developments to watch for the 2014-15 school year. Our countdown continues tomorrow with No. 3.]

After the high-profile demise this past spring of inBloom, a controversial nonprofit organization that aimed to build a national, cloud-based student data system to improve education, school leaders face a puzzle: How can they balance the privacy concerns of stakeholders with the need to collect and analyze information about their students?

Amid an onslaught of criticism from parents and data privacy advocates, states that had signed agreements with inBloom began to pull out of the initiative last year, and the group shut its doors in April. Now, ed-tech observers are wondering what inBloom’s collapse will mean for other efforts to personalize instruction using cloud-based data systems.

As school leaders turn to software companies for help in collecting and storing student data in the cloud, privacy advocates worry about what will happen to the information—and whether it might be used for marketing purposes.

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act governs the use and disclosure of students’ personal information, but it can only penalize schools for non-compliance. The law doesn’t include any direct authority over software providers—which is one reason many policy makers think it’s time to update FERPA for the digital age.

(Next page: How new legislation intends to modernize FERPA—and the biggest lesson that school leaders can learn from the inBloom fiasco)

On July 30, Republican Sen. Orin Hatch of Utah and Democratic Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts introduced the “Protecting Student Privacy Act,” which intends to bring FERPA into the era of Big Data.

“Students may well have more of their personal data stored by third parties than anyone, and the widespread storage of this information puts students at risk that this data could fall into the wrong hands,” Hatch said in a press release.

“This legislation establishes security safeguards to ensure greater transparency and access to stored information for students and parents. Further, it includes a provision banning data mining for marketing or advertising purposes and other common-sense protections.”

The act requires transparency about outside parities who have access to student data; minimizes the amount of information schools can share that is personally identifiable; gives parents access to personal information about their children that is held by private companies, and provides for corrections if in error; and calls for private companies to delete personally identifiable information when it’s no longer needed for a specific purpose.

Zach Williams, director of communications for the Ogden School District in Utah, said his understanding of the new act is that it enhances FERPA, taking it from the age of paper documents to modern technology.

“Technology advances so quickly that it’s hard to write legislation that keeps up with advances,” he said. “I think this act appears to be reiterating that even if it’s a third party that has information, they still need to follow FERPA guidelines, which is something that we take very seriously already.”

Williams added: “The part I really like, as a parent, are the restrictions on advertising or marketing using student data. That’s something that really is important.”

The family advocacy group Common Sense Media [11] supports the legislation, calling it “a step forward for fostering student privacy while permitting ed-tech innovation.”

Schools are “collecting massive amounts of sensitive student data, from test scores and assignments to disciplinary and demographic records,” said the group’s CEO, Jim Steyer, in a statement. “We share the bill’s goal of strengthening [FERPA] to help ensure that schools and the private ed-tech companies they work with protect students’ personal information and have appropriate practices for data security, use, destruction, and parental access.”

Common Sense Media’s “School Privacy Zone” campaign recommends three ideals for safeguarding student privacy: (1) students’ personal information should be used only for educational purposes; (2) students’ personal information and online activity should not be used to target advertising to students or families; (3) ed-tech providers should have appropriate data security policies in place.

Before checking a box agreeing to the terms of a software license, school leaders should carefully read the fine print to understand what they’re agreeing to—and they should make sure the agreement prohibits the company from using any data for non-educational purposes.

inBloom officials claimed to have followed these guidelines, but it didn’t matter in the end—which suggests the need for school leaders to talk openly about privacy and address parents’ concerns proactively, before it’s too late.

The need for better communication with parents is underscored by a recent study from Fordham University’s Center on Law and Information Policy, which found that 95 percent of schools use cloud services for data hosting and/or mining—but only a quarter of schools have notified parents that they use these services.

If there is a positive lesson to come out of the inBloom situation, “it’s yes, you have to have best practices in place,” said Keith Krueger, chief executive officer or the Consortium for School Networking. “But if you can’t communicate that to your community, it all falls apart.”

Material from the Standard-Examiner [12] (Ogden, Utah) and the Virginian-Pilot [13] (Norfolk, Va.) was used in this report. (c) 2014; distributed by MCT Information Services.

See also:

Top ed-tech stories to watch, No. 5: Maker movement makes waves [14]