ALEC’s Report Card Receives Failing Marks

From Thursday’s inbox…

Contact: Christopher Lubienski, (217) 333-4382, club@illinois.edu Dan Quinn, (517) 203-2940, dquinn@greatlakescenter.org ALEC’s Report Card Receives Failing Marks Policymakers should insist on referencing evidence-based research EAST LANSING, Mich. (May 9, 2013) – Ranking states is a popular tool for education advocacy groups, with the goal of advancing a policy agenda based on ideologically driven pre-packaged reforms. These report cards receive considerable media attention, although few reflect research-based evidence on the efficacy of particular polices.  The 18th edition of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) Report Card on American Education: Ranking State K-12 Performance, Progress, and Reform is no different according to an academic review. Christopher Lubienski, associate professor of education policy and Director of the Forum on the Future of Public Education at the University of Illinois, and T. Jameson Brewer, a doctoral student at the University of Illinois, reviewed ALEC’s Report Card for the Think Twice think tank review project. The review was produced by the National Education Policy Center (NEPC), with funding from the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice. Lubienski and Brewer find that ALEC draws its grades exclusively not from research organizations, but from like-minded market-orientated advocacy organizations. “Furthermore, when studies are highlighted in this report, they do not represent the peer-reviewed research on a given issue, are often of extremely poor quality, and generally unsuited for supporting their claim.” In their review, Lubienski and Brewer provide two key areas – alternative teacher certification and school choice – to highlight gaps between ALEC’s agenda and empirical evidence. Despite multiple claims that a “growing body of research indicates…” – the report offers absolutely no supporting evidence. Math results, which have a lower pass rate, were used to compare traditionally-certified teachers to alternatively-certified teachers. Meanwhile alternatively-certified teachers were portrayed using their reading results. “Many of the grades given to states reflect the level to which pro-market policies have been implemented while the grades systematically ignore meaningful measurements of equality and outcomes” according to the review. Readers of ALEC’s Report Card should consider it a statement of policy preferences and not an overview of research on education reforms. The reviewers conclude, “At best, the report serves as an amalgamation of other like-minded think tanks’ assessments of states’ adoption of pro-market policies, and thus offers nothing new … it provides little or no usefulness to policymakers.” Find the report by Lubienski and Brewer on the Great Lakes Center website: http://www.greatlakescenter.org Find ALEC’s Report Card on American Education: Ranking State K-12 Performance, Progress, and Reform (18th edition) on the web: http://www.alec.org/publications/report-card-on-american-education/ Think Twice, a project of the National Education Policy Center (NEPC), provides the public, policymakers and the press timely, academically sound reviews of selected publications. The project is made possible by the support of the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice. This review is also available on the NEPC website: http://nepc.colorado.edu –###–

The mission of the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice is to support and disseminate high quality research and reviews of research for the purpose of informing education policy and to develop research-based resources for use by those who advocate for education reform.

Visit the Great Lakes Center Web Site at: http://www.greatlakescenter.org.

Follow us on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/greatlakescent.

Find us on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/GreatLakesCenter.

eSN White Paper Library: Read The Latest Whitepapers On Emerging Technologies And Critical Trends In Ed-Tech

While not the most reliable based on the available research (as most are produced by companies with a vested stake, some with little interest for empirical research), a couple related to K-12 online learning here…

This exclusive White Paper Library brings you the latest white papers in education technology, covering topics like Student Performance, Classroom strategies, NCLB scores, Data Analytics for decision making, and so much more. New white papers are added to the library often so check back for the most recent white papers available. How a Centralized Monitoring, Alerting, and Reporting System Can Save School Property—and Lives Provided by Status Solutions While many schools have adopted some combination of incident detection systems, these often operate in silos, independent of one another. An appropriate response therefore might be delayed, because alerts don’t reach responders in time or details about an incident are lacking. Learn how a centralized alarm management system can help. How to Integrate Macs into a Windows-Centric Environment-Efficiently and Cost-Effectively Provided by Parallels With the growing popularity of Mac devices in schools, IT managers face challenges in delivering the services that students and staff need on the computers they want to use. Read how Parallels Desktop for Mac Enterprise Edition can help you meet this challenge in an efficient, cost-effective way—with an almost instant ROI The Top 8 Mistakes in Implementing Online Credit Recovery Provided by K12 Whether you are in the initial phases of thinking about online credit recovery, or if you are looking for improved results from your current program, this white paper contains information designed to guide you on the path to success How an online collaboration tool has saved schools time and money while improving achievement Provided by Blackboard This whitepaper quantifies the success that K-12 schools have had when it comes to improving student outcomes while also saving time, travel, and money for professional development and meetings. Several districts share their implementation stories of synchronous education technology solutions How user feedback led Brown University to switch LMS providers Provided by Instructure In 2010, Brown University decided to re-evaluate its LMS strategy based on recent innovations in the marketplace and a growing concern that its current LMS technologies were not keeping pace. Why a Scalable BYOD Access Strategy is Critical for K-12 Districts Provided by ADTRAN School districts that adopt Bring Your Own Device programs can lower their overall cost of running IT, enable new ways of educating, and improve the technology experience for students, faculty, and staff. Download this ZK Research whitepaper that outlines the key elements of a successful BYOD strategy…. One-to-One Solutions: Where Are We Today? Provided by AT&T School leaders are faced with deciding how best to make the transition to a digital learning environment. Will they provide devices to students to initiate a one-to-one environment, allow students to bring their own device (BYOD), or enact some blended approach? Rowan-Salisbury School System uses WLAN to Expand Learning Opportunities Beyond the Classroom Provided by Aerohive Networks The Rowan-Salisbury School System faced the growing pains that come for school districts that embrace high-tech trends. Officials needed to accommodate an influx of Apple iPads, iPod Touches, laptops, and other popular Wi-Fi-enabled mobile devices on their network. Learn how the Rowan-Salisbury School System deployed a Wireless LAN that allowed students to use the same device in the classroom as they use at home—providing an enriched learning experience for students. BYOD and Beyond: How to Turn BYOD into Productivity Provided by Aerohive Networks One of the most overlooked aspects of the BYOD phenomenon isn’t just connecting the users to the network, but how to manage them once they’re there. This white paper will take you through the necessary connectivity and productivity requirements to ensure your network is truly ready for the mobility explosion. Blending the Best of Online and Face-to-Face Learning to Improve Student Outcomes Provided by Schoolwires It’s a fact that student engagement leads to better learning outcomes. But how can teachers extend student interaction beyond class time? And engage the students who are reluctant to raise their hands in the classroom? Best Practices in Data Management, Reporting, and Analytics for Education Provided by SAS This whitepaper describes 10 best practices for making the most of SAS software — from the perspective of SAS education customers themselves. Learn how analytics is empowering teachers and administrators to drive improvement.… How to Boost Achievement with Continuous Assessment and Instruction Provided by eInstruction eInstruction’s Insight 360 combines the capabilities of a student response system with a projector, mobile interactive whiteboard technology, instructional content, and assessment software to create a complete “mobile formative instruction” system. In this free whitepaper, you’ll learn how research supports the use of such a system to improve teaching and learning. … Nine steps to transforming education with a holistic view of data Provided by Its SAS This white paper explains how Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools, which had information from 80 schools spread across 22 databases, integrated its data resources to provide faster, more meaningful data that make a difference in student performance

Would you like your white paper to be included? Request information. eSchool News, 7920 Norfolk Ave Suite 900. Bethesda, MD 20814 | Phone: 301-913-0115 . Fax: 301-913-0119 www.eSchoolNews.com | custserv@eSchoolNews.com  Contents Copyright 2012 eCampus News. All rights reserved. You are receiving this eMail newsletter at mkbarbour@gmail.com as part of a free information service from eSchool News.

Online Learning, Aligning Curriculum and Technology, and More Free Spotlights From Education Week

From Monday’s inbox…

Download FREE Spotlights on Online Learning, Aligning Curriculum and Technology, and more. For mobile version click here.

New Spotlights from Education Week Education Week Spotlights contain essential news and commentary on the big issues. These Spotlights provide the information you need to understand the most talked-about topics. For a limited time, download these Spotlights FREE: Implementing Online Learning: Learn about both the challenges and advantages to remote and blended learning models. Aligning Curriculum and Technology: Explore how districts are integrating digital tools into curriculum and instruction to improve student learning. Special Education: Examine major trends in special education, including response-to-intervention, research-based teaching techniques, and professional development. STEM: Ensure that your students are prepared for 21st century challenges and opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and math. Professional Development: Gain insights on integrating online and face-to-face professional development, applying co-teaching strategies in the classroom, and more. Looking for other topics? Check out Education Week‘s full series of more than 50 Spotlights. Each Spotlight is delivered in an easy-to-read, easy-to-use digital format, with numerous in-depth articles in one convenient PDF file. This message was intended for mkbarbour@gmail.com. You are receiving this e-mail because you are currently registered on edweek.org or teachermagazine.org. Editorial Projects in Education, Inc., 6935 Arlington Road, Suite 100, Bethesda, MD 20814. EPE is the publisher of Education Week, Digital Directions, Teacher Professional Development Sourcebook, edweek.org, teachermagazine.org, DigitalDirections.org and TopSchoolJobs.org. Copyright © 2012 Editorial Projects in Education.

News from the NEPC: Report on Teachers in Digital Age Lacks Rigor of Evidence

This showed up in my inbox on Tuesday.

Is this email not displaying correctly?  View it in your browser.

Report on Teachers in Digital Age Lacks Rigor of Evidence Contact: William J. Mathis, (802) 282-0058, wmathis@sover.net Luis A. Huerta,  (212)-531-1638, huerta@tc.columbia.edu URL for this press release: http://tinyurl.com/bslolbm Boulder, CO (April 3) — The Fordham Institute’s Teachers in the Age of Digital Instruction, an advocacy document outlining a vision for how technology might transform the teaching profession, provides little or no empirical research evidence to support its central claim that digital age technologies will improve the education system, according to a new review. The report was reviewed for the Think Twice think tank review project by Luis Huerta of Teachers College at Columbia University. The review is published by the National Education Policy Center, housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education. Huerta writes in his review that the report’s rationale is based on claims that the current education system lacks the capacity to support revolutionary changes needed to unleash the technological innovations of online learning that will yield increased effectiveness and efficiency. The report explains that effective teachers are central to the demands of online instruction and will be even more necessary in the digital age than in the current system. It asserts that the elements that constitute effective teaching can be broken down into discrete skills and then packaged and distributed to a wider group of learners via digital media. Harnessing the talents of effective teachers will be critical in both meeting the needs of students and in making teaching a “true profession” (p. 2) through increased specialization and tiered salary structures, the report asserts. Huerta notes that while the report addresses an important topic, the empirical research evidence to support its fundamental premise is insufficient and inadequate. Consequently, he concludes,  the report amounts to only a vision of what changes might be necessary as the digital revolution comes of age in public education. Find Luis Huerta’s review on the NEPC website at: http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-teachers-digital-age Find Teachers in the Age of Digital Instruction, by Brian and Emily Hassel on the web at: http://www.edexcellence.net/publications/teachers-in-the-age-of-digital-instruction.html 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/

follow on Twitter |   friend on Facebook

National Education Policy Center · School of Education, 249 UCB · University of Colorado · Boulder, CO 80309-0249

A few hours later, I received this notice:

NEPC Again Directs Criticism at Fordham Institute Series
Education Week News
… combative tone than Wayne State University professor Michael Barbour’s criticism of a paper by former Edison Learning founding partner John E. Chubb.

Check out both items….

Creating Sound Policy For Digital Learning: A Working Paper Series From The Thomas B. Fordham Institute

My colleague Cathy posted this to her Google+ account some time ago.

Click on the image or visit http://www.edexcellence.net/publications-issues/publications/creating-sound-policy-for-digital-learning.html

The comment about citing research – and I would add making any mention of the process or methodology that they used – is a common complaint about this neo-liberal series on how policy needs to be changed in order to allow K-12 online learning as a tool to privatize public education.  Interestingly, the National Education Policy Center has commissioned reviews from more progressive scholars on the last two reports in this series – both of which underscore the lack of methodology or process, the failure to cite methodologically reliable and valid research (or really peer reviewed research of any kind) or the misuse or misunderstanding of that research.

Unfortunately, the only reviews of the first three that I can find come from other neo-liberal think tank personnel or the conservative media.  Anyway, I have linked in all five reports and the reviews of the two final reports below (full disclosure: I am the author of the final NEPC review).

• Quality Control in K-12 Digital Learning: Three (Imperfect) Approaches
• School Finance in the Digital-Learning Era
• Teachers in the Age of Digital Instruction
• The Costs of Online Learning / NEPC review
• Overcoming the Governance Challenge in K-12 Online Learning / NEPC review

So, where do you fall?  A neo-liberal who is trying to privatize public education or in the progressive camp who is trying to ensure a broad, quality education for all students?