News from the NEPC: **Two Paths to 21st-Century Learning

From yesterday’s inbox…

Research and analysis to inform education policy and promote democratic deliberation

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Two Paths to 21st Century Learning New Brief Examines Debate over the Focus of Schooling  Contact: William J. Mathis, (802) 383-0058, wmathis@sover.net URL for this press release: http://tinyurl.com/ctzew3j BOULDER, CO (May 14, 2013) –The eighth in a series of short briefs summarizing current relevant findings in education policy research explores the idea of “21st Century skills.” The brief explains the sometimes-conflicting values and proposals for making schools relevant to meeting the needs of the 21st Century. The paper is written by Dr. William Mathis, managing director of the National Education Policy Center, housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education. Mathis points out that, depending upon who is speaking, the question of what 21st Century skills can or should entail fall into two very different categories. One perspective points to the increasing importance of so-called soft skills of teamwork, critical thinking, problem-solving, communication skills and diversity awareness – a focus that typically emphasizes constructivist learning. The other perspective focuses on cognitive skills in science, technology, math, and reading. It can be traced back at least as far as the Nation at Risk report 30 years ago and also encompasses No Child Left Behind as well as most policies arising out of the Obama administration. In truth, both types of skills are almost universally embraced as important, and there are ongoing efforts to advance both perspectives together. Mathis writes about approaches that combine “the three R’s” with “the four C’s (Critical thinking and problem solving, Communication, Collaboration, and Creativity and innovation).” But he cautions that, “given our history of testing as well as current obstacles, it seems likely that the four C’s will end up being treated merely as weak add-ons to the three R’s.” Mathis points in particular notable example of a fused effort in the work of Marisa Saunders, who describes a “multiple pathways” or “linked learning” approach that combines academic and technical learning. Linked learning is designed to make school relevant, collaborative, and creative, keeping a variety of options open to all students. “As contrasted with tracking, all students in a Linked-Learning school are provided with a high-quality education that maintains both college and workforce options,” Mathis writes. Additionally, a broad variety of methods are used to assess student achievement rather than simply relying on traditional standardized tests. Mathis concludes with a series of recommendations that focus on broadening accountability measures to ensure against the narrowing of curriculum and to promote the expansion of authentic learning opportunities. The recommendations also explain the importance of investing time, energy, and resources needed to expand the skills of teachers who would be teaching in a linked-learning setting. ‘Like’ on Facebook Follow on Twitter Forward to a Friend “Twenty-first Century Skills and Implications for Education” is part of Research-Based Options for Education Policymaking, a multipart brief that takes up a number of important policy issues and identifies policies supported by research. Each section focuses on a different issue, and its recommendations to policymakers are based on the latest scholarship. The brief is made possible in part by support provided by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice. Find William Mathis’s brief on the NEPC website at: http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/options The mission of the National Education Policy Center is to produce and disseminate high-quality, peer-reviewed research to inform education policy discussions. We are guided by the belief that the democratic governance of public education is strengthened when policies are based on sound evidence.  For more information on the NEPC, please visit http://nepc.colorado.edu/. This brief is also found on the GLC website at http://www.greatlakescenter.org/. If you are not already subscribed to this newsletter and would like to receive it regularly, click http://nepc.colorado.edu/ and then click the button in the upper right-hand corner that looks like this:

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News from the NEPC: ALEC Flunks Again

From yesterday’s inbox…

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Flunking Again ALEC ‘Report Card’ Gets ‘A’ for Ideological Fealty, Fails on Research Quality Contact:  William J. Mathis, (802) 383-0058, wmathis@sover.net Christopher Lubienski,  217-333-4382, club@illinois.edu URL for this press release: http://tinyurl.com/bnptwat BOULDER, CO (May 9, 2013) – The recent education “report card” on the states put out by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) claims to rely on “high quality research” but gets a failing grade in a new review. Professor Christopher Lubienski and doctoral candidate T. Jameson Brewer, both of the University of Illinois, reviewed ALEC’s 18th Report Card on American Education: Ranking State K-12 Performance, Progress, and Reform for the Think Twice think tank review project. The review is published today by the National Education Policy Center, housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education. The ALEC “report card” assigns its grades based on states’ policies regarding their support for charter schools, their implementation of school voucher plans, and the permissiveness they display toward homeschooling. “The authors contend that these grades are based on ‘high quality’ research demonstrating that the policies for which they award high grades will improve education for all students,” Lubienski and Jameson write. Instead, the “report card” draws on the work of advocacy groups and is grounded in ideological tenets, leading the authors to assign high grades to states “with unproven and even disproven market-based policies,” the reviewers add. They point out that the authors’ claims of “a growing body of research” lacks citations; their grading system contradicts  testing data that they report; and their data on alternative teacher research is “simply wrong.” “In fact, the research ALEC highlights is quite shoddy and is unsuitable for supporting its recommendations,” Lubienski and Jameson conclude. “The report’s purpose appears to be more about shifting control of education to private interests than in improving education.” ‘Like’ on Facebook Follow on Twitter Forward to a Friend Find the review by Christopher Lubienski and T. Jameson Brewer on the NEPC website at: http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-report-card-ALEC-2013 Find Report Card on American Education: Ranking State K-12 Performance, Progress, and Reform by Matthew Ladner and Dave Myslinski on the web at: http://www.alec.org/publications/report-card-on-american-education/. The Think Twice think tank review project (http://thinktankreview.org) of the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) provides the public, policy makers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected publications. NEPC is housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education. The Think Twice think tank review project is made possible in part by support provided by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice. The mission of the National Education Policy Center is to produce and disseminate high-quality, peer-reviewed research to inform education policy discussions. We are guided by the belief that the democratic governance of public education is strengthened when policies are based on sound evidence.  For more information on the NEPC, please visit http://nepc.colorado.edu/. This review is also found on the GLC website at http://www.greatlakescenter.org/.

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News from the NEPC: “Dirty Dozen” Ways Charter Schools Influence Student Enrollment

From yesterday’s inbox…

Research and analysis to inform education policy and promote democratic deliberation

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The “Dirty Dozen” Ways Charter Schools Influence Student Enrollment New Article Describes Them for Teachers College Record Contact:  William J. Mathis, (802) 383-0058, wmathis@sover.net Kevin G. Welner, (303) 492-8370, welner@colorado.edu URL for this announcement: http://tinyurl.com/c8kp7f8 BOULDER, CO (May 6, 2013) – Charter schools may be public, but they can shape their student enrollment in surprising ways. This is done though a dozen different practices that often decrease the likelihood of students enrolling with a disfavored set of characteristics, such as students with special needs, those with low test scores, English learners, or students in poverty. “The Dirty Dozen: How Charter Schools Influence Student Enrollment,” by Kevin Welner, Professor of education policy at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education and director of the National Education Policy Center, is now available here: http://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentID=17104. To describe the strategies, Welner’s Teachers College Record article identifies 12 different approaches, using lighthearted category names such as “The Bum Steer,” “Location, Location, Location,” and “Mad Men.” But the subject itself is of crucial importance, since it raises vital issues concerning equity as well as the reporting of research outcomes. Researchers and governmental authorities have long known that charter schools generally under-serve a community’s at-risk students. Welner’s article builds on this research to explore the charter school practices that result in those enrollment outcomes. When charter schools fail to serve a cross-section of their community, they undermine their own potential and they distort the larger system of public education. “It doesn’t have to be this way,” says Welner. “The task for policymakers is to redesign charter school policies in ways that provide choice without undermining other important policy goals. For instance, being innovative doesn’t require being selective or restrictive in enrollments.” “These practices,” Welner explains, “also make it difficult for researchers to accurately compare the effectiveness of charter and non-charter schools.” High-quality research studies make great efforts to include a comparison group of non-charter school students that matches charter school students in key ways such as race, free and reduced lunch status, and gender. Yet the many ways charters influence enrollment create daunting obstacles for researchers. Welner cautions researchers and policy makers: “These studies cannot account for all these practices merely by research design or statistical adjustments. Studies of charter school performance are almost surely attributing results to charter school instructional programs that are caused in part by charter school enrollment practices.” Welner says that he started to write this analysis after reading a February 2013 article written by Reuters reporter Stephanie Simon. Her article described a variety of ways that charter schools “get the students they want.” “I sought to build on Simon’s excellent work,” Welner said. “After reading the Reuters article, I started noticing a variety of other ways in which charter schools influence the makeup of their enrollment.” He added, “I’m not sure if my ‘Dirty Dozen’ list of practices is complete. There may be others. And readers should keep in mind that some of these tactics have also been used by non-charter public schools.” After decades of market-based and accountability reforms, all public schools now face the same incentives around cost and test-scores. “The difference, of course, is that many of the tactics described in this article are simply not available to non-charter public schools.” The new article is not an indictment of all charter schools. “There are plenty of charter schools that try to enroll a diverse and representative group of students,” concludes Welner. “But there are plenty of others that use a potent combination of the ‘Dirty Dozen’ practices to shape their enrollments in ways that flout our societal understandings of public schooling.” ‘Like’ on Facebook Follow on Twitter Forward to a Friend Find Kevin Welner’s article on the Teachers College Record website. The article is freely available until May 10th at: http://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentID=17104. After that, it will be available on the NEPC website at: http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/TCR-Dirty-Dozen. The National Education Policy Center (NEPC) is housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education. Its mission is to produce and disseminate high-quality, peer-reviewed research to inform education policy discussions. We are guided by the belief that the democratic governance of public education is strengthened when policies are based on sound evidence.  For more information about the NEPC, please visit http://nepc.colorado.edu/.

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Major Virtual Schools Report Released

From Thursday’s inbox…

 

Contact:  Jamie Horwitz, (202) 549-4921, jhdcpr@starpower.net Dan Quinn, (517) 203-2940, dquinn@greatlakescenter.org Major Virtual Schools Report Released Analysis uncovers underperforming schools EAST LANSING, Mich. (May 2, 2013) – In the last decade, although virtual schools have expanded rapidly there is little data to justify their growth. The National Education Policy Center (NEPC), with funding from the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice, released the first of a planned series of annual reports on the performance of virtual schools, the policy issues that virtual schools raise, and the available research evidence on virtual education. Virtual Schools in the U.S. 2013: Politics, Performance, Policy, and Research Evidence, is edited by Alex Molnar, a research professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. Contributing authors to the research brief include Gary Miron of Western Michigan University, Luis Huerta of Teachers College, Columbia University, Jennifer King Rice of the University of Maryland, and Larry Cuban of Stanford University. Contributors to this study also included professors Sheryl Shafer of Teachers College, Columbia University, Brian Horvitz of Western Michigan University, and Charisse Gulosino at the University of Memphis According to Cuban, “Policymakers know that business, civic and community leaders expect them to work tirelessly to improve student academic performance through every available means, including better school organization, governance, curriculum, instruction – and especially better technology. Unfortunately, good politics does not automatically result in good policy.” The report offers a number of troubling statistics: In the 2010-11 school year, only 23.6 percent of virtual schools made Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) compared to 52 percent for traditional and charter schools. Three-quarters of the students in virtual schools are white, compared to the national mean of 54 percent. Black students account for only 10.3 percent of the virtual school enrollment, compared to 16.5 percent for all public schools. The gap is even wider for Hispanic students, which is surprising given the large presence of virtual schools in states with large Hispanic populations like Arizona, Florida and California. The number of students qualifying for free or reduced lunch in virtual schools is 10-percentage points lower than all public schools – 35.1 percent compared to 45.4 percent. The proportion of students with disabilities being served by virtual schools is half the national average – 7.2 percent compared to 13.1 percent. Profits, rather than student outcomes, is clearly the main driver behind the rapid growth of virtual schools. Because virtual schools have lower costs associated with teacher salaries and benefits, facilities and maintenance, transportation, food service and other in-person services – compared to their brick-and-mortar counterparts – Huerta and King Rice recommend developing a new funding formula based on the actual costs of operating virtual schools. It’s imperative for policymakers to slow or stop the growth of these schools until more research is done and accountability measures can be put into place, the report’s authors concluded. “Even a cursory review of media reports and a passing acquaintance with the research on virtual education reveals that policy is being made in an environment much like the legendary ‘wild west’,” according to the report editor Molnar. “These reports will analyze the performance of full-time, publicly funded K-12 virtual schools; describe key policy issues raised by virtual education; assess the research evidence that bears on K-12 virtual teaching and learning; and provide research-based recommendations to help guide policymaking.” Find the report on the Great Lakes Center website: http://www.greatlakescenter.org This report is also found on the NEPC website: http://nepc.colorado.edu/ - ### -

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News from the NEPC: Online Schools Expand, but Performance Lags

This showed up in the inbox this morning.  Haven’t had a chance to more than skim it, but some real trues in here.  I particularly like the line from the press release: “Publicly-funded virtual school expansion appears to be driven by lobbying and advertising dollars.  It is not justified by the research evidence, nor is it governed by thoughtful policy.”  – as it sums up what I have been saying for years about the neo-liberal agenda to privatize public education, its all about the money!!!

Research and analysis to inform education policy and promote democratic deliberation

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As Online Elementary and Secondary Schools Expand, Academic Performance Lags New NEPC Study Finds Limited Oversight, Excessive Costs of Virtual Schools Drain Millions in Public Funds Contact:  Jamie Horwitz, 202/549-4921; jhdcpr@starpower.net Alex Molnar, 480/797-7261; nepc.molnar@gmail.com URL for this announcement: http://tinyurl.com/bpoxwmd BOULDER, CO (May 2, 2013) –A national study, released today by the National Education Policy Center (NEPC), offers a comprehensive review of 311 full-time virtual schools operating in the United States and finds serious and systemic problems with them. University of Colorado Boulder Professor Alex Molnar, who edited Virtual Schools in the U.S. 2013: Politics, Performance, Policy, and Research Evidence, summed it up this way: “Even a cursory review of virtual schooling in the U.S. reveals an environment much like the legendary wild west. There are outsized claims, lagging performance, intense conflicts, lots of taxpayer money at stake, and very little solid evidence to justify the rapid expansion of virtual schools.” Lagging Performance – Soaring Enrollment On the publicly-available metrics of Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), virtual schools lag significantly behind traditional brick-and-mortar schools In the 2010-2011 school year, 52 percent of brick-and-mortar district and charter schools met AYP, contrasted with 23.6 percent of virtual schools – a 28 percentage-point gap.  Virtual schools also enroll a far smaller percentage of low-income students, special education students, and English language learners than brick-and-mortar public schools. “It now appears that early adopters of the virtual school model were largely home-schoolers who were used to studying alone and who generally had lots of parental guidance,” said Western Michigan University Professor Gary Miron. “As virtual schools have expanded, it appears that their performance has slipped dramatically.” Currently virtual schools enroll more than 200,000 elementary and secondary students in 39 states and the District of Columbia.  McLean, Virginia- based K12 Inc. is by far the largest private operator in this sector. Expansion Driven by Lobbying and Advertising Rather than Student Success Despite virtual schools’ track record of students falling behind their peers academically or dropping-out at higher rates, states and districts continue to expand virtual schools and online offerings to students. Publicly-funded virtual school expansion appears to be driven by lobbying and advertising dollars.  It is not justified by the research evidence, nor is it governed by thoughtful policy. Columbia University Professor Luis Huerta, another of the report’s authors, noted that,  “In the past two years a number of states, including Wisconsin, Oregon, Louisiana, and Michigan, either raised or eliminated enrollment caps for full-time virtual schools.”   Co-author Jennifer King Rice, a University of Maryland professor, points out that at the same time,  ”None of those states passed legislation strengthening accountability and oversight.” High Cost to Taxpayers The overall cost to taxpayers for lackluster virtual schools has been significant.  Despite incurring much lower costs than brick-and-mortar schools, virtual school operators receive the same allocation as charter schools that pay for buildings, desks, textbooks, and other costs associated with more traditional school settings. The consistently poor performance of full-time virtual schools makes it imperative to know more about these schools. Stanford University Professor Emeritus Larry Cuban, who contributed a review of current research knowledge on virtual education to the NEPC report and has long followed education technology issues, explained: “The current climate of elementary and secondary school reform that promotes uncritical acceptance of any and all virtual education innovations is not supported by educational research. A model that is built around churn is not sustainable; the unchecked growth of virtual school is essentially an education tech bubble.” Recommendations The authors of the NEPC report conclude that continued rapid expansion of full-time cyber schools is unwise. More research is needed, and to enable such research, state oversight agencies need to require more, and better refined, data. Financial controls and funding unique to cyber schools need to be established. ‘Like’ on Facebook Follow on Twitter Forward to a Friend The NEPC report Virtual Schools in the U.S. 2013: Politics, Performance, Policy, and Research can be found on the web at http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/virtual-schools-annual-2013. Along with Professors Molnar, Miron, Huerta, King Rice, and Cuban, contributors to this study included professors Sheryl Shafer of Teachers College – Columbia University, Brian Horvitz of Western Michigan University, and Charisse Gulosino at the University of Memphis. The mission of the National Education Policy Center is to produce and disseminate high-quality, peer-reviewed research to inform education policy discussions. We are guided by the belief that the democratic governance of public education is strengthened when policies are based on sound evidence.  For more information on NEPC, please visit http://nepc.colorado.edu/. This Research Brief is made possible in part by the support of the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice (GLC).  For more information about GLC, visit http://www.greatlakescenter.org/.

Copyright © 2013 National Education Policy Center, All rights reserved. You’re receiving this email because you have opted in at our website or sent a personal request to be included. Thank you. Our mailing address is: National Education Policy Center School of Education, 249 UCB University of Colorado Boulder, CO 80309-0249 Add us to your address book