ISTE 2012: Educators seek the brass ring of student engagement

Robinson pushes for more personalized education.

“Redefining horizons: Encouraging students’ passion to achieve” is the theme for this year’s International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference—but in what looked like a scene that was more appropriate for a rock concert than an ed-tech show, it was educators’ passion that was evident in the overflowing crowd that appeared for the opening general session on June 24.

Though ISTE traditionally has been the largest educational technology conference in the U.S., with dwindling school budgets and the growth of online options, attendance has been down at national education trade shows in recent years.

But at ISTE’s 33rd annual conference, held in San Diego, the surging crowd and squished-in volunteers holding signs reading “Hey, it’s crowded” outside the opening general session suggested that educators are eager for new ideas in their classrooms.…Read More

8 states get waiver from No Child Left Behind

Another eight states are gaining flexibility from the Bush-era No Child Left Behind law, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Tuesday, the Associated Press reports. The Education Department has approved waivers for Connecticut, Delaware, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Rhode Island. Eighteen other states and Washington, D.C., also applied for a waiver and could receive approval in coming weeks. President Barack Obama’s administration is granting waivers in exchange for promises from states to improve how they prepare and evaluate students. In all, 19 states have been given waivers so far. “These states are getting more flexibility with federal funds and relief from NCLB’s one-size-fits-all mandate in order to develop and implement locally tailored solutions to meet their unique educational challenges,” Duncan said in a call with reporters…

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NCLB says top schools ‘in need of improvement’

Griffin Memorial School in Litchfield, N.H. had 91 percent of its elementary students score proficient or better on the state’s reading exam last fall, placing it among the top 10 schools in the state. But by state and federal standards, Griffin is considered “in need of improvement,” just like all 17 schools in neighboring Nashua, the Huffington Post reports.

“[It] just doesn’t make sense,” Litchfield Superintendent Elaine Cutler told the Nashua Telegraph. “It’s not a logical sequence of events. We all want to do better and continuously improve, but it is never enough.”

The “in need of improvement” label has also been attached to Nashua’s schools based on Adequate Yearly Progress reports by the state Department of Education. In compliance with the federal No Child Left Behind law, schools must meet annual benchmarks set for state-mandated standardized tests. Schools that don’t meet goals for two consecutive years are deemed “in need of improvement,” followed by a series of intervening initiatives like transferring students to a higher performing school, offering tutoring, replacing staff or even closing the school……Read More

House Republicans push plan to update NCLB

It's widely agreed that No Child Left Behind needs updating, but there are varying views on how much of a federal role there should be in education policy.

House Republicans on Feb. 16 pushed ahead with a plan to update the federal No Child Left Behind education law by shifting more control to states and school districts in determining whether children are learning.

A hearing on a pair of bills to have states develop their own systems to identify low-performing schools and turn them around came days after President Barack Obama freed 11 states from some of the George W. Bush-era law’s most stringent mandates. To get waivers, states had to submit plans and get the administration’s approval.

The administration says the waivers are a stopgap measure until Congress updates the law. Several other states are expected to apply for waivers by Feb. 21 during a second application round.…Read More

Florida offers look at problems with education law

While NCLB shined a light on the performance of all student subgroups, ultimately the law hasn't worked as intended.

By almost any measure, Norma Butler Bossard Elementary School is a top performing school in Miami: It has consistently been rated an “A” by the state, and students have achieved high scores on Florida’s standardized math and reading exams.

Yet when it comes to the federal No Child Left Behind law, the school hasn’t lived up to expectations. Last year, 79 percent of students had to be at grade level in reading and 80 percent in math. Overall, the students exceeded those goals. But two subgroups of students—English language learners and the economically disadvantaged—did not.

“This is a crystallization of the challenge,” said Miami-Dade Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho.…Read More

Official: 10 states get NCLB waivers

Some conservatives view Obama's plan not as giving more flexibility to states, but as imposing his vision on them.

President Barack Obama on Feb. 9 will free 10 states from the strict and sweeping requirements of the No Child Left Behind law, giving leeway to states that promise to improve how they prepare and evaluate students, The Associated Press has learned.

The first 10 states to receive the waivers are Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Tennessee. The only state that applied for the flexibility and did not get it, New Mexico, is working with the administration to get approval, a White House official told the AP.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the states had not yet been announced. A total of 28 other states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have signaled that they, too, plan to seek waivers — a sign of just how vast the law’s burdens have become as a big deadline nears.…Read More

John Kline’s No Child Left Behind bills strike at values of Brown v. Board, coalition writes

A broad coalition of 38 civil rights, education reform and business groups sent House education chairman John Kline a scathing letter Wednesday, describing his No Child Left Behind legislation as potentially racist, the Huffington Post reports.

“It undermines the core American value of equal opportunity in education embodied in Brown v. Board of Education,” the groups wrote.

Their letter calls Rep. Kline’s bills a rollback of federal accountability, a return to an era that ignored achievement gaps. The bills would “thrust us back to an earlier time when states could choose to ignore disparities for children of color, low-income students, ELLs [English language learners], and students with disabilities. The results, for these groups of students and for our nation as a whole, were devastating.”…Read More

Opinion: Why Is Congress redlining our schools?

Today a new form of redlining is emerging, says Stanford University Education Profession Linda Darling-Hammond, who directs the Stanford University Center for Opportunity Policy in Education and was founding director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (NCTAF). If passed, the long-awaited Senate bill to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA, better known in its current form as No Child Left Behind) would build a bigger highway between low-performing schools serving high-need students—the so-called “bottom 5 percent”—and all other schools. Tragically, the proposed plan would weaken schools in the most vulnerable communities and further entrench the problems—concentrated poverty, segregation and lack of human and fiscal resources—that underlie their failure…

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Education law’s promise falls short after 10 years

In Washington, much of the political debate over the law centers on how much federal control the government should have.

The No Child Left Behind education law was cast as a symbol of possibility, offering the promise of improved schools for the nation’s poor and minority children and better prepared students in a competitive world.

Yet after a decade on the books, President George W. Bush’s most hyped domestic accomplishment has become a symbol to many of federal overreach and Congress’ inability to fix something that’s clearly flawed.

The law forced schools to confront the uncomfortable reality that many kids simply weren’t learning, but it’s primarily known for its emphasis on standardized tests and the labeling of thousands of schools as “failures.”…Read More

On 10th anniversary, a look back at ‘No Child’ legacy

George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation, which requires students at all U.S. public schools to meet certain math and reading benchmarks, went into effect nearly 10 years ago, on Jan. 8, 2002. Since then, NCLB has been a popular target for politicians, educators, and policy experts as it has become outdated, U.S. News reports. The legislation was supposed to be rewritten in 2007, but has merely been renewed by Congress for the past several years. President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have repeatedly attacked the law, going so far as to grant waivers from the law to states who submit alternative accountability plans. Congress took its first real stab at reforming the law in October 2011 as Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin, of Iowa, and Republican Sen. Mike Enzi, of Wyoming, presented a comprehensive revision to No Child Behind. The Harkin-Enzi legislation looks to be one of Congress’s main focuses when it goes back into session later this month…

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Ohio schools fail to meet No Child Left Behind standards

Ohio plans to ask for a federal waiver to circumvent academic failure in 40 percent of the state’s public schools this year, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. All of the nation’s public schools are mandated to be proficient in math and reading by 2014, under the guidelines of the No Child Left Behind Act. Last year 50 percent of Ohio’s school districts failed to meet the minimum educational goals, according to the Enquirer. The 2011 national failure rate was the highest since the legislation took effect 10 years ago. Here are some facts about Ohio’s academic results and the No Child Left Behind Act…

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Report: Half of schools fail to meet federal standards

At least 39 states, plus Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico, have said they will file waivers.

Nearly half of America’s public schools didn’t meet federal achievement standards this year, marking the largest failure rate since the much-criticized No Child Left Behind law took effect a decade ago, according to a national report released Dec. 15.

The Center on Education Policy report shows more than 43,000 schools—or 48 percent—did not make “adequate yearly progress” this year. The failure rates range from a low of 11 percent in Wisconsin to a high of 89 percent in Florida.

The findings are far below the 82 percent failure rate that Education Secretary Arne Duncan predicted earlier this year but still indicate an alarming trend that Duncan hopes to address by granting states relief from the federal law. The law requires states to have every student performing at grade level in math and reading by 2014, which most educators agree is an impossible goal.…Read More