Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

How shifting to a UDL mindset enhances Common Core

When special and general ed teachers collaborate, everyone benefits

The implementation of the Common Core State Standards has been met with anxiety from administrators and educators at every level, because, like any major change, it can seem scary and overwhelming. General education teachers have had to learn and apply new instructional strategies to address the new standards and the vision that the standards embody, particularly universal design for learning. Special education teachers have been required for the first time to become pseudo subject-area experts to help struggling students and those with learning disabilities meet the standards.

This can be a stressful time for everyone. However, when educators are empowered to share their expertise with one another, and given the time and place they need to collaborate, they surpass expectations and their students soar.

At Sweetwater Union High School District, located near San Diego, we bring general and special education teachers together to meet the needs of students through a framework known as universal design for learning, which provides something of a blueprint for creating learning goals and materials that work for all learners. We accomplish this through carefully-designed cohorts, teacher-led “zones,” online resources support, and by fostering a collaborative culture.…Read More

Common Core is changing how schools teach ELA and math

New report finds Common Core is affecting reading and math — but not test scores

States considered strong adopters of Common Core are more likely to see a de-emphasis of fiction and a decline in advanced math enrollment among middle school students, according to a new report that also found a trivial difference in test scores between states that have and have not adopted the standards.

The report, from the Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings, pulls data from surveys conducted by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) to see how far Common Core recommendations have seeped into states’ instruction, comparing data from 2011 to 2015. The question of whether students should focus on analyzing fiction, which has been traditionally favored by schools, or nonfiction, which is favored by the CCSS, was considered a major implementation hurdle just a few years ago.

On that point, it appears Common Core’s suggestions are winning out over entrenched practice. In 2011, according to the data, 63 percent of students had teachers who said they emphasized fiction, compared with 38 percent of students with teachers who said they were emphasizing nonfiction — a 25 percent gap. By 2015, however, that gap had shrunk to just eight percent, with 45 percent of students who have teachers emphasizing nonfiction. The gap shrunk for eighth grade students from 34 percent in 2011 to 16 percent in 2015.…Read More

What happens when college and career readiness starts in kindergarten?

As one district proves, you don’t have to wait until high school to expose students to their futures

college-careerAsk a third grader what she wants to be when she grows up and she might say “a doctor.” Adults know that anyone with a doctorate is technically a doctor, but for a young mind their idea of what a doctor is or does is narrow. It is only through repeated exposure to careers that students begin to expand those definitions and begin to think about their futures. At the Kankakee School District in Illinois, where I graduated from and now serve as superintendent, it’s a process that begins as early as preschool.

Research shows that the earlier and more often you talk with young children about careers, the more students will envision themselves going to college and working in those fields. Without the consistent conversations, a student may never pursue secondary education or have a solid career at all.

From the time a student walks through the door of a school in Kankakee School District to the time they walk across stage to receive their high school diplomas, they are constantly transitioning to their next stage of life.…Read More

Study analyzes NAEP, Common Core math alignment

Panel urges addition of more math content to NAEP math framework upon next revision

naep-mathA new study of the math alignment between the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), adopted by most states, and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the longtime barometer of academic achievement among the nation’s students, found “reasonable agreement” overall but also some areas of 4th and 8th grade math where there was less of a match.

The study, the second in a series of three examining the relationship between NAEP and the Common Core State Standards in math, was conducted by 18 math educators, supervisors and mathematicians convened by the NAEP Validity Studies Panel (NVS), an independent panel charged with examining issues related to the validity of the NAEP assessments.

The panel found that 79 percent of NAEP items in 4th grade math assessed content included in the CCSS at grade 4 or below. However, the match rate was lower in some areas: 47 percent for data analysis, statistics, and probability, 62 percent for algebra and 68 percent for geometry.…Read More

Edulastic launches district tool for administrators

Resource offers district, school administrators insight into student progress on Common Core

school-administratorEdulastic, creator of formative assessment tools for teachers, has launched Edulastic District Enterprise, a premium version of the software platform designed specifically for district and school administrators.

As part of a special launch program, districts and schools that sign up to pilot Edulastic District Enterprise during this school year will receive free access for teachers and administrators for the remainder of the school year.

Edulastic is a next-generation online assessment platform that allows K-12 teachers to track students’ progress toward Common Core State Standards. By providing a free tool that allows teachers to create and share fully customized assignments, Edulastic helps guide instruction by allowing teachers to quickly discover what students have learned and identify areas of struggle to course correct their teaching in real time.…Read More

Oregon adopts K-8 Common Core math programs

Common Core programs use research-based approach to help students learn reasoning, critical thinking

common-coreThe Oregon State Board of Education has adopted Curriculum Associates’ i-Ready and Ready Common Core math programs for use in all K–8 classrooms across the state.

Built for the CCSS, the programs were built from scratch by strictly following the Publishers’ Criteria for the Common Core State Standards.

Ready Common Core Mathematics emphasizes conceptual understanding through reasoning, modeling, and discussion that explores the structure of mathematics while also developing students’ procedural fluency.…Read More

5 steps to universally-designed instruction

White paper addresses instructional design process to make learning rigorous, accessible for all learners

learning-instructionGoalbook has published a white paper, Different Paths Up the Same Mountain, which outlines a 5-step instructional design process for educators to apply in the classroom.

The new state and Common Core standards were intended to prepare all students to be college and career ready in the 21st century. This transition has occurred as general education classrooms have increased in diversity, including students with special needs and English Language Learners.

Diversity and variability is the norm–not the exception–in the U.S. K-12 classroom. School and district leaders across the country are adapting their instructional approach to address the diversity of learners present in classrooms.…Read More

Debunking the myth that good teachers shouldn’t use curriculum aids

Expecting teachers to go it alone hurts school improvement. It’s time to reframe the debate

curriculum-teachersThe myth that good teachers have the Midas touch and therefore don’t need curriculum programs has been around for decades. This myth paints teachers as curricular experts who are best positioned to create instructional plans tailored to particular students. It also reflects the prevalence of low-quality and uninspired textbook series that have dominated the market throughout the latter half of the 20th century. Some packages simply did not have much to offer, while others talked down to teachers, as the oft-used phrase “teacher-proof curriculum” suggests.

The perception that good teachers reject textbooks and design their own curriculum has been a persistent belief of educators over the years. Researchers have long noted unease about using teacher’s guides among many teachers, regardless of whether the curriculum in question was a traditional textbook from the 1980s1, 2 or a more innovative program reflecting the vision outlined in the widely adopted National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Standards of the 1990s.3, 4

Under the current era of the Common Core State Standards, this myth is playing out in some districts and schools in a different way. Teachers are encouraged to use the new standards as their guide for what to teach and are expected to gather and develop instructional resources to determine how. Curriculum resources of any kind are viewed as unnecessary, redundant to what teachers already do or should be doing.…Read More

13 Common Core facts for parents

As Common Core implementation continues in adopting states, parents say they often feel uninformed

common-coreBy now, many parents have heard of the Common Core State Standards. But that doesn’t mean they understand why states are adopting the Common Core, what the Common Core will do for students, and how the standards are different from previous state standards.

During an edWeb webinar on how parents can learn about the Common Core, Anne O’Brien, deputy director of the Learning First Alliance (LFA), a partnership of education organizations that focuses on improving student learning, offered a look at Common Core background and dispelled a number of myths surrounding the standards.

One of LFA’s current priorities is communication around the Common Core, O’Brien said, due to a lot of misinformation and myths.…Read More

Districts report ‘major problems’ finding Common Core resources

Years into Common Core, teachers lament lack of materials

common-coreThe learning standards were new. The textbooks were not.

So curriculum director Tammy Baumann and her team took the books apart, literally. Then they rearranged lessons, filled in holes with outside material and put it all together in what will be the K-2 math curriculum in the fall at her district in East Lansing, Michigan.

It was a time-consuming but necessary response, Baumann said, to what appears to be a near-universal lament of teachers as they page through textbooks and websites: a lack of high-quality teaching materials aligned to the Common Core Learning Standards that have been adopted by most states.…Read More