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>Low turnout expected for Tuesday’s NJ primary

>By GEOFF MULVIHILL

Associated Press Writer

June 1, 2008

MOORESTOWN, N.J.

By moving its presidential primary to February, New Jersey gained a bit of clout in picking candidates and drew a higher percentage of voters than any primary since 1940.

Now, for the downside: Because the presidential primary was moved up, voters don’t have as much incentive to turn out for Tuesday’s primary, which features a slate of candidates for U.S. Congress, county and local offices.

Political observers and campaign insiders expect a low voter turnout despite some intriguing intraparty races and an environment where politics is dominating the news.

They say many voters may be either worn out or confused by the higher-than-usual number of elections in New Jersey. In a handful of towns, it’s the fifth election since the beginning of the year.

Here’s one possible harbinger of turnout trouble: Some of the politically astute retirees who gathered for breakfast at the Heart to Heart Cafe in Moorestown on Friday were debating whether it would be worth voting in the primary.

They said they’re tired of voting and leery of politicians. Besides, some of the registered Republicans would like have a chance to cross party lines and support a Democrat _ something they can’t do under New Jersey’s primary rules.

And, a few admitted, they didn’t realize the primary was coming up until a few days earlier.

“The only reason you’d know there was a vote was that you got a sample ballot (in the mail),” said Rick Young, a retired heating oil distributor.

Some campaigns are preparing to spend more money than usual on election-day efforts to drum up votes. That means you should brace for a lot of last-minute phone calls reminding you that the vote is coming up.

Rutgers University political scientist Ingrid Reed says this year’s primary season reminds her of a primary eight years ago, when 17 percent of the electorate turned out.

“If we had that many this year, that would be good turnout,” she said.

Since 2000, about 1 in 10 of New Jersey’s registered voters have participated in June primaries.

This year’s presidential primary was different. New Jersey, like many states, moved up its voting to try to have more influence on the presidential nominations, and turnout was heavy at 35 percent _ the best turnout in New Jersey since 1940.

While the presidential primary brought out new voters, Reed said it’s largely the party loyalists who will show up Tuesday.

“This is more like an insider’s primary,” Reed said.

The Democratic State Committee is doing something it’s done before only for this year’s presidential primary: Mounting a campaign to remind its members when the election is.

The party, though, is not endorsing any of its candidates.

Democratic State Chairman Joe Cryan, who is also a state Assemblyman, said he expects the two big-spending U.S. Senate candidates, incumbent Frank Lautenberg and U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews, to give extra attention on get-out-the-vote efforts. Cryan didn’t expect the same kind of push for the third candidate, Morristown Mayor Donald Cresitello.

“There’s a lot more focus on election day as opposed to putting that extra TV ad up,” Cryan said.

He said those Election Day efforts will include paying people to direct voters to the polls.

Bill Caruso, a spokesman for Andrews, said the campaign will have workers on volunteers around the state on Tuesday.

Julie Roginsky, a spokeswoman for the Lautenberg campaign, said she wouldn’t divulge her candidate’s Election Day strategy. She predicted turnout might not be so bad _ thanks to the interest generated by the presidential primary between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. “We’ve got so many newly registered Democrats,” she said.

The Republican campaigns might not be able to do as much because the three candidates for U.S. Senate have raised far less than their Democratic counterparts. None of the three _ Joe Pennacchio, Murray Sabrin, or Dick Zimmer _ has been able to advertise heavily on television.

Republican State Committee Chairman Tom Wilson said that a big get-out-the-vote effort may not help lesser-known and lesser-funded candidates in his party.

“I don’t know whether Pennacchio or Sabrin would have the luxury of being able to say, ‘My message has been heard, now I’ve got to turn people out,”‘ he said.

Besides, he said, in primaries it can be tough to guess which partisans are on their side. “You can’t just turn people out randomly” and expect it to help, he said.

Wilson expects candidates in his party to focus on building name recognition until the end, and most campaigns are doing something to get voters to the polls. For instance, Pennacchio’s campaign has said it will have a phone bank set up to encourage supporters, while Sabrin has had a get-out-the-vote drive online.

With all the angst over primary turnout, there’s some renewed concern over whether the separate presidential election _ with a cost to the state of about $10.5 million this year _ is worth having again.

“I would say, keep it in June,” said U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., a Democrat from Paterson. “You’ve got too many elections.”

___

On the Net: www.njelections.org

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>School board elections may move to November

>Monday, May 12, 2008

THE RECORD

BY ELISE YOUNG

STAFF WRITER

New Jerseyans would elect school-board members in November rather than in the spring, under a bill approved by an Assembly committee Monday. But voters also would lose the power to decide multimillion-dollar district spending plans, which account for at least 50 percent of their property taxes.

The two-pronged bill drew a curious mix of testimony before the Assembly Education Committee. Representatives of the 200,000-member New Jersey Education Association and other lobbyists were displeased about the change in balloting date, but championed the decision to remove voters from the decision on spending.

Some committee remembers referred to a dismal voter participation rate, an average of less than 15 percent statewide.

“We need to have much more participation,” said Assemblywoman Joan Voss, D-Fort Lee. “This is disgraceful. We have to do something to get more public input into how money is spent.”

This year 14.3 percent of eligible voters voted in school elections, and they defeated 26 percent of the budgets, according to the state Department of Education. Last year 13.9 percent voted and rejected 22 percent of the budgets.

Critics acknowledged the low turnout, but argued that a move to November would politicize what is — officially, anyway — a nonpartisan event.

Ginger Gold, representing the teachers union, went so far as to suggest that the change in voting dates could be likened to a trap, forcing people to cast ballots when they rather would not.

“Just because people go into the booth doesn’t mean people will vote. You may not increase voter turnout as much as one might think,” Gold told the Assembly Education Committee. “We don’t force people to vote.”

Gregg M. Edwards, president the Center for Policy Research of New Jersey, a nonprofit public-issues group, testified that opponents to the November balloting feared a loss of power.

“It comes down to this: They don’t want more people voting,” Edwards said. He referred to his longer written testimony, which read: “The fewer the voters, the easier it is to affect election contests. The largely invisible and inaccessible April election magnifies the influence of certain special-interest groups.”

The bill was sponsored in part by Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts, D-Camden, an indication that it has significant support among the majority party.

Some committee members — including Assemblyman Scott T. Rumana, R-Wayne, who voted against the measure — said they were uneasy about excluding voters from the budget process.

“Taking the vote away from the public is a big concern for me,” he said. And as a practical issue, he said, a ballot with multiple contests may not be able to accommodate only so many names.

Some who testified pointed out that even if voters reject a local spending plan, state officials have the power to restore it. Even Edwards, so in favor of a November election, called the budget vote “a sham” and “largely symbolic.”

New Jersey’s Board of Education elections are a perennially odd rite of April: Historically low numbers of voters decide how the majority of property owners’ tax money is spent. Statewide, just 15 percent of eligible voters turn out for the contests, which take place apart from races for any other elective office. By comparison, 77 percent of eligible Bergen County voters cast ballots in the 2004 General Election.

Would-be trustees often are longtime Parent-Teacher Association activists or educators employed outside their hometowns. Their campaign budgets rarely reach four figures, a fund so limited that many candidates try to reach voters via a Web site or in interviews with weekly newspapers.

Rosemary Bernardi, a trustee in Evesham, Burlington County, told the committee that if school elections were in November — particularly in a presidential year — voters would be too preoccupied learning about candidates for more visible office.

“How much press time would you have for a school election candidate? None,” she said.

Richard Snyder, a Ramsey trustee, testified that a November election date would expose would-be candidates to machine politics, in which well-funded organizations could back a slate. Candidates who resist the machine’s overtures, he said, would be outspent and unseen.

Edwards, however, said a change to November — when voters are more aware about politics in general — could raise awareness about trustees’ role, possibly drawing more people to run.

“This could dramatically change the way school districts work,” Edwards said.

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>"Authentic Assessment" & Former Weatherman Bill Ayers

>BillAyersMugshot3




A quick internet search reveals that Ms. Botsford’s ASCD organization’s heavy buy-in with respect to “Authentic Assessment” may have its intellectual roots in work published in 1999 by the same American Educational Research Association (AERA) that recently hired Bill Ayers in concert with the American Psychological Association (APA) and the National Council for Measurement in Education (NCME).

Consider the following ASCD paper (copied verbatim from https://www.ascd.org/portal/site/ascd/menuitem.d6eaddbe742e2120db44aa33e3108a0c/template.ascdexpressjournal?articlemoid=7b7f89b094a75010VgnVCM1000003d01a8c0RCRD&journalmoid=f36f89b094a75010VgnVCM1000003d01a8c0RCRD):

(Begin quote)

A Policymaker’s Primer on Testing and Assessment

Dan Laitsch

Standardized testing plays an increasingly important role in the lives of today’s students and educators. The U.S. No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) requires assessment in math and literacy in grades 3–8 and 10 and, as of 2007–08, in science once in grades 3–5, 6–9, and 10–12. Based on National Center for Education Statistics enrollment projections, that will be roughly 68 million tests per year, simply to meet the requirements of NCLB. Such an intense focus on assessment, with real consequences attached for students and educators, makes it imperative that policymakers understand the complexities involved with assessment and in using assessments as part of high-stakes accountability policies.

As policymakers continue to establish and revise state and national assessment and accountability systems, two overarching questions must be addressed:

Do current tests supply valid and reliable information?
What happens to such assessments when high stakes are attached to the outcomes?

The American Educational Research Association (AERA), the American Psychological Association (APA), and the National Council for Measurement in Education (NCME) have jointly released The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (1999), a detailed set of guidelines on assessment use. Within these guidelines, the associations note that although tests, “when used appropriately, can be valid measures of student achievement,” decisions “about a student’s continued education, such as retention, tracking, or graduation, should not be based on the results of a single test but should include other relevant and valid information” (APA, 2001, paras. 9, 14). In a position supported by its Leadership Council, ASCD takes a similar stance (see box).

ASCD Adopted Position on High-Stakes Testing, 2004

Decision makers in education—students, parents, educators, community members, and policymakers—all need timely access to information from many sources. Judgments about student learning and education program success need to be informed by multiple measures. Using a single achievement test to sanction students, educators, schools, districts, states/provinces, or countries is an inappropriate use of assessment. ASCD supports the use of multiple measures in assessment systems that are

Fair, balanced, and grounded in the art and science of learning and teaching;

Reflective of curricular and developmental goals and representative of content that students have had an opportunity to learn;

Used to inform and improve instruction;

Designed to accommodate nonnative speakers and special-needs students; and

Valid, reliable, and supported by professional, scientific, and ethical standards designed to fairly assess the unique and diverse abilities and knowledge base of all students.

Complexities in Assessment
On both the individual and system levels, assessment poses issues worthy of consideration.

Individual Assessment. Multiple forms of assessment are important because of the potential effect of human error within even well-designed systems. Researchers at the National Board on Educational Testing and Public Policy found that human error in testing programs occurs during all phases of testing (from design and administration to scoring and reporting), and that such errors can have a significant negative effect on students when high-stakes decisions are made.

In 1999, researchers found that individuals involved in the assessment process made numerous errors across the different phases of the assessment process, resulting in significant negative consequences. For example, 50 students were wrongly denied graduation; 8,668 students were needlessly required to attend summer school; and 257,000 students were misclassified as limited-English-proficient (Rhodes & Madaus, 2003). In January of 2003, more than 4,000 teacher candidates were incorrectly failed on their certification tests due to an ETS scoring error (Clark, 2004).

Systemic Assessment. Using test results to evaluate educational systems is also problematic. As highlighted in a recent presentation at ETS (Raudenbush, 2004), the general concept of using tests for this purpose assumes there is a causal relationship between the system (treatment) and the test score (outcomes); however, assessment systems as currently designed are not structured to determine causation (there are no comparison or control groups). The assessment systems assume that school effects cause any differentiation in scores, but those differences could be the result of other, uncontrolled-for variables, such as the effect of previous schools or the effect of wealth or community characteristics (Popham, 2003; Turkheimer, Haley, Waldron, D’Onofrio, & Gottesman, 2003). According to Raudenbush, using school-mean proficiency results (NCLB’s basic accountability mechanisms) to evaluate schools is “scientifically indefensible,” and although value-added assessment (which measures year-to-year gain) addresses some issues, it, too, presents a flawed analysis of schoolwide performance, particularly when there are transitions between schools or significant differences in earlier educational experiences.

High-Stakes Accountability
The addition of high-stakes consequences to assessment systems in order to motivate change in educator behavior adds one more serious degree of complexity. High-stakes accountability mechanisms generally rely on operant theories of motivation that emphasize the use of external incentives (punishments or rewards) to force change (Ryan & Brown, in press). Other theories of motivation, however, suggest that such reliance on external incentives will result in negative and unintended consequences (Ryan & Brown, in press; Ryan & Deci, 2000). Operant approaches to motivation focus on behaviors (that is, the reward or punishment is designed to cause behavioral change), but the testing movement focuses on outcomes (the achievement of specific scores) regardless of behavior change. These conflicting goals result in a situation where the ends (higher test scores) become more important than the means (changes in educator behavior) used to achieve those ends. In other words, because the rewards and punishments stemming from the testing program are attached to conditions that educators may not have control over (including school and classroom resources, community poverty, social supports, and so on), educators are left to make changes in variables they do control (such as student enrollments, test administration, and classroom instruction).

As predicted by Ryan and Brown, the change in these variables is complex and includes consequences that policymakers could not have intended, such as narrowing the curriculum and associated training to tested subjects (Berry, Turchi, Johnson, Hare, Owens, & Clements, 2003; Moon, Callahan, & Tomlinson, 2003), increased push-out of underperforming students (Lewin & Medina, 2003), and increased manipulation of test administration (Rodriguez, 1999). A recent survey conducted by the National Board on Educational Testing and Public Policy found that 75 percent of teachers thought that state-mandated testing programs led teachers in their school to teach in ways that contradict their own ideas of good educational practice (Pedulla, 2003).

Assessment Types, Uses, and Scoring
Because much of the responsibility for the use of assessments resides with the users, it is important that policymakers understand in general what tests can and cannot do, as well as the appropriate ways in which tests might be used as part of an accountability system.

At best, tests are an incomplete measure of what a student knows and can do. A final score measures only the student’s performance relative to the sample of items included on that specific test. This is why educators argue for the use of multiple measures in evaluating students—so that a more complete picture of the student can be generated. Educators use assessments that cover a variety of purposes and measure differing levels of knowledge, skills, and abilities. For an assessment to work well, it must be consistent with the instructions of the test maker. Using a test for a purpose for which it was not intended can result in invalid or unreliable outcomes. The same is true regarding use of a test that has not been fully validated, or using tests where the scoring parameters have been set for political or public relations purposes rather than measurement purposes.

Thus, it is critical that the appropriate assessments and measures be used for the identified policy or educational goals. Three general areas to consider when examining assessments are test type (such as achievement tests or aptitude tests), test use (for diagnostics, placement, or formative or summative evaluation), and the scoring reference (raw scores, norm-referenced scores, or criterion-referenced scores).

Test Type. Achievement and aptitude tests, although similar, attempt to measure two different concepts. Achievement tests generally measure the specific content a student has (or has not) learned, whereas aptitude tests attempt to predict a student’s future behavior or achievement (Popham, 2003). Although student outcomes on these tests may be related, it would be inappropriate to use the tests interchangeably because they measure different constructs. The SAT is an example of an aptitude test that is frequently misused by policy activists to make content-focused judgments or comparisons of student achievement.

Test Use. Tests are used to help diagnose areas of student strength and weakness, as well as specific learning difficulties. Tests can also be used to guide school readiness and placement decisions, and to make formative or summative evaluations. Formative evaluations are structured assessments designed to gauge the progress of students as measured against specific learning objectives. Such assessments are used to help guide instruction so that teachers and students have a general idea of what learning outcomes have been achieved, and where further focus is needed. Summative assessments, on the other hand, are used to evaluate achievement at the end of specific educational programs (for example, mathematics achievement at the end of grade 10).

Scoring. The way in which tests are designed to have scores reported—as norm-referenced or criterion-referenced—also plays a key role in test usage. Norm-referenced tests are designed to result in a score spread, so that students can be compared to their peers and placed in a hierarchy by percentage. Scores reported from a norm-referenced test, therefore, are broken out in such a way as to ensure that half of the test takers score in the top 50 percent, and half score in the bottom 50 percent. Because the goal is to differentiate between test takers, when test items are created and validated, items that are too easy—or too hard—are discarded because they fail to differentiate between students. Even if a norm-referenced test is created from a set of state standards, it is exceptionally difficult to use such a test as a summative assessment because important content items may have been discarded in the test building process for being deemed too easy or too hard (Popham, 2003; Linn & Gronlund, 1995).

Criterion-referenced tests, however, do try to focus specifically on student outcomes relative to a fixed body of knowledge. Criterion-referenced tests can result in the majority of students scoring above, or below, a specified cut score. And, in fact, a criterion-referenced test should be positively (or negatively) skewed, depending on the success of the students and teachers in addressing the body of content from which the test has been constructed. State assessments designed to measure the achievement of students relative to the state’s content standards should be criterion-referenced.

Test scores are also occasionally reported in raw scores, which are simply the total of correct responses. Unfortunately, the raw score is frequently misinterpreted because it is reported without interpretation. A test that is particularly difficult (or easy) may have an unusually low (or high) average score. Without knowing the context of the test or the scoring, it is impossible to make a judgment as to what the raw scores say about the performance of test takers.

Interpreting Test Scores

Linn and Gronlund (1995) offer five cautions for interpreting test scores:

Scores should be interpreted in terms of the specific tests from which they were derived. In other words, student scores on a reading test should not be taken to represent students’ general ability to read; rather, the scores should be examined only in light of the skills the assessment was intended to measure. For instance, a reading test that measures a student’s ability to sound out words would not tell us how well a student comprehends the main idea in a paragraph of text.
Scores should be interpreted in light of all the student’s relevant characteristics. A student’s score on a specific test may be influenced by many variables, including language background, education, cultural background, and motivation. A low score does not necessarily indicate that the student does not know the material or that the system has failed to engage the student.

Scores should be interpreted according to the type of decisions to be made. Test scores should not be generalized to actions beyond the original purpose of the test.
Scores should be interpreted as a band of possible scores, rather than an absolute value. Because tests are only an approximate measure of what a student actually knows and can do, the student’s true abilities may differ from the measured score. Most tests include a measure of standard error, which can be used to help determine where a student’s true score may lie. For example, the true score for a student scoring a 68 on a test with a 4-point standard error is likely to fall within the range of 64 to 72.

Scores should be verified by supplementary evidence. This is perhaps the single most important admonition for test users. No test can ensure the accurate measure of a student’s true performance; other evidence should be examined. Allowing students to retake the same test does not provide supplementary evidence of performance. Instead, alternative measures, such as classroom performance, should be used to help make accurate determinations of student abilities.

Constructing Assessment Systems

In constructing assessment systems, test makers can draw from a variety of item types and formats, depending on the type of assessment being created and its purpose. For example, although selected-response tests (such as multiple-choice tests) are easy to score and offer a reasonable measure for vocabulary, facts, or general principles and methods, they are less useful for measuring complex achievement, such as the application of principles or the ability to generate hypotheses or conduct experiments. Such complex abilities require more complex item constructs, such as those found on constructed-response tests, which may include essay questions or actual performance assessments.

On the other hand, performance and portfolio assessments (authentic assessment assessments) allow students to more intentionally demonstrate their competence. Although such assessments may resemble traditional constructed-response tests, their goal is to mirror tasks that people might face in real life. For example, they might require students to demonstrate writing competence through a series of polished essays, papers, or poems (depending on the type of writing being assessed), or to design, set up, run, and evaluate a science experiment. Other types of performance assessment include speeches, formal presentations, or exhibits of student work.

Portfolio assessments, although similar to performance assessments, are designed to collect data over time and can also include measures from traditional assessments. The goal of portfolios is to allow teachers, students, and evaluators to gauge student growth by examining specific artifacts that students have created. Students in British Columbia, for example, are required to present a Graduation Portfolio Assessment, which accounts for 4 of the 80 course credits required to be awarded a diploma (BC Ministry of Education, 2004). The portfolio documents student work in grades 10–12 in six domains: Arts and Design, Community Involvement and Responsibility, Education and Career Planning, Employability Skills, Information Technology, and Personal Health. Although districts have approached the requirement in different ways, Surrey School District, which has the largest enrollment in British Columbia, is helping students create electronic portfolios that will provide Web-accessible evidence of their academic performance. In Providence, Rhode Island, the Met School has gone one step further and eliminated grades and traditional tests altogether, evaluating student work completely through publicly presented portfolios (Washor & Mojkowski, 2003).

Constructed-response tests—including performance and portfolio assessments—provide a richer evaluation of students, but they are much more time-consuming for teachers, students, and evaluators; they are also more expensive and difficult to administer and score in a large-scale standardized manner. Connecticut school officials are currently in a dispute with the U.S. Department of Education regarding assessment costs, because they don’t want to “dumb down” their constructed-response tests by dropping writing components that require hand scoring (Archer, 2005). Even so, the educational richness inherent in authentic assessments suggests that policymakers take seriously the possibility of incorporating a deep evidence base in assessment and accountability models.

Assessment and Ethics
The ethical practices related to testing and assessment further complicate the picture. As highlighted by Megargee (2000), the ethical responsibilities for assessment are split between the test developer and the test user—the developer being responsible for ensuring the tests are scientifically reliable and valid measures, and the user for “the proper administration and scoring of the test, interpretation of the test scores, communication of the results, safeguarding the welfare of the test takers, and maintaining the confidentiality of their test records” (p. 52). This separation of ethical responsibility between test makers and consumers results in a loophole that allows commercial test makers to sell assessments to clients even when they know the tests will be misused. Additionally, although the education profession has taken responsibility for creating ethical standards, it currently has no mechanisms for enforcement.

Conclusions

Policymakers face a daunting challenge in designing school assessment and accountability systems; however, professionals in assessment have worked hard to provide the basic outline for policies that can support positive assessment systems. These systems cannot be implemented cheaply, and when cost-saving compromises are made, serious damage to both individuals and systems (school and assessment) can result. Therefore, policymakers should work to carefully understand (and adjust for) the trade-offs they make as they seek to create cost-effective accountability systems. It is not an understatement to say that the lives of individual students will be positively—or negatively—affected by the decisions they make.

In an effort to increase both the instructional use of assessments and public confidence in such systems, states should work to keep these systems transparent, allowing relevant stakeholders to review test content and student answer sheets. Teachers, parents, and students cannot use test data to improve instruction or focus learning if they are denied access to detailed score reports. In fact, states may be required to give such information to parents. Washington State officials recently decided to give parents access to student tests and booklets because they determined that under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), exams were defined as part of a student’s educational records and, therefore, must be made available to parents—and to students once they reach 18 years of age (Houtz, 2005).

Professional associations and psychometricians have focused on creating standards for test use (AERA, APA, & NCME, 1999), some of which have been delineated here. Due to the split between assessment creators and consumers regarding ethical responsibilities for test usage, as well as the lack of professional enforcement mechanisms, it is imperative that policymakers incorporate the recommendations of assessment professionals as they create systems that use evidence from standardized and large-scale assessment programs.

Recent Origins of Standardized Testing

Much of the theory and many constructs undergirding standardized assessments evolved from work done on standardized intelligence testing. British psychologist Sir Francis Galton, French psychologist Alfred Binet, and an American from Stanford University, Lewis Terman, are generally credited as the fathers of modern intelligence testing (Megargee, 2000). The work of Terman and Binet ultimately resulted in the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale, which is still in use today. The SAT—an aptitude test (a test that attempts to predict a student’s future achievement)—came into being in 1926 to help predict a student’s likely success in college, and the Graduate Records Examinations (GRE) were introduced a decade later. In 1939, David Wechsler introduced an intelligence scale that broke intelligence into discrete pieces, in this case verbal and nonverbal subtests. The first large-scale use of standardized intelligence testing occurred in the U.S. military during World War I, when more than 1,700,000 recruits were tested to determine their role (as officers or enlisted men) or denote them as unable to serve. Standardized achievement tests, which attempt to measure the specific knowledge and skills that a student currently possesses (and not general intellectual ability or potential for future achievement), came into widespread use in the 1970s through minimum competency testing (Popham, 2001).

The evolution of intelligence testing has been turbulent, with researchers still debating whether intelligence is a single construct referred to as “g” (Gottfredson, 1998) or consists of many different intelligences, such as Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences posits: linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist (Checkley, 1997). In addition to debates about how to define intelligence, scientists are trying to determine how much of it—if any—is hereditary and how much is learned—that is, influenced positively or negatively by the environment in which a person exists. One recent study, for example, found that the effects of poverty on intelligence could overwhelm any genetic differences, emphasizing the complex nature of intelligence (Turkheimer, Haley, Waldron, D’Onofrio, & Gottesman, 2003).

Historically, intelligence testing has also been used in ways that many people today find offensive. The eugenics movement of the early-mid-20th century used intelligence testing to identify individuals who were “feebleminded” (or had other deficiencies) so that they could be institutionalized or placed in basic-skills tracks (Stoskopf, 1999b). Eugenic policies were created to “strengthen” the genetic makeup of Americans, and scientists who supported these policies provided the impetus for U.S. immigration restrictions in the 1920s and sterilization laws that were in effect through the 1960s—resulting in the sterilization of, at a minimum, 60,000 individuals (Reilly, 1987). As recently as last year, a candidate for U.S. Congress from Tennessee, James Hart, garnered almost 60,000 votes running on a platform of eugenics (Associated Press, 2004; Hart, 2004; McDowell, 2004).

Early IQ testing, which was greatly affected by culturally biased items, also resulted in the tracking of African American children into low-level courses and vocational schools, on the basis of the assumption that they had generally low mental abilities (Stoskopf, 1999a). In 1923, Carl Brigham, who later helped create the SAT, published A Study of American Intelligence, which alleged on the basis of U.S. Army testing that intelligence was tied to race. Brigham recanted his findings in 1930; however, his work was used extensively to provide “scientific” evidence for racist policies in the 1920s (Stoskopf, 1999a).

[Extensive bibliography omitted]

Dan Laitsch is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada, and is coeditor of the International Journal for Education Policy and Leadership.

ASCD Infobrief
July 2005 Number 42
Assessment Policy

Copyright © 2005 by Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development

© 2008 Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development

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Kids being rushed past childhood.

>Ready, Set, Relax! is one town’s effort to stop hyper-parenting, in this exclusive excerpt.

Apr 05, 2008 04:30 AM
Carl Honoré

Ridgewood is the sort of place that comes to mind when people talk about the American dream. Nestled in the woodlands of northern New Jersey, this quiet, verdant town of 25,000 souls breathes affluence and well-being. The locals work hard at high-powered jobs in Manhattan, but they enjoy the fruits of their labour. Large, handsome houses sit on spacious lots dotted with swing sets and trampolines. Luxury sedans and shiny SUVs glide along wide streets lined with oak, dogwood and maple trees.

Move in a little closer, though, and this happy portrait starts to fray round the edges. At the school gates, around the tables in the local diner, and in the supermarket parking lot, you hear the people of Ridgewood voicing the same complaint: we may live inside a 21st-century Garden of Eden, but we are too damn busy to enjoy it.

Many families here are scheduled up to the eyeballs. Caught between work and home, parents struggle to find time for friends, romance, or even a decent night’s sleep. Their children are in the same boat, filling the hours not already occupied by school work with organized extracurricular activities. Some 10-year-olds in Ridgewood are so busy they carry Palm Pilots to keep track of their appointments. Eating dinner or doing homework in the car while travelling to swimming or the riding club is common here. One local mother emails an updated family schedule to her husband and two sons every evening. Another keeps her timetable pinned to the front door and the underside of the sun visor in her people carrier. With so many schedules to mesh, with so much going on, even getting toddlers together for a playdate can be a logistical nightmare. One of my favorite New Yorker cartoons was penned with places like Ridgewood in mind. It depicts two little girls waiting for the school bus, each holding a personal planner. One tells the other, “Okay, I’ll move ballet back an hour, reschedule gymnastics, and cancel piano. … You shift your violin lessons to Thursday and skip soccer practice. … That gives us from 3:15 p.m. to 3:45 p.m. on Wednesday the 16th to play.”

Unlike other towns, though, Ridgewood has taken a stand against overstuffed schedules. What started with a few moms grumbling over coffee at the kitchen table has blossomed into a mini-movement. In 2002, Ridgewood pioneered an annual event called Ready, Set, Relax! The idea is that one day a year this alpha town takes a breather: teachers assign no homework, extracurricular activities are cancelled, and parents make a point of coming home early from the office. The aim is to cast off the tyranny of the timetable, to let children rest, play, or just daydream, and to give families time together that is not built around driving to the next volleyball practice or band rehearsal.

Hundreds of households put down their planners to take part in Ready, Set, Relax! and the event has inspired towns across North America, not all of them as well-heeled as Ridgewood, to follow suit. To help out frazzled families, the school board in Sidney, N.Y., a blue-collar hamlet 210 kilometres northwest of here, no longer schedules any extracurricular activities or meetings after 4:30 p.m. on Wednesdays. In 2007, Amos, a small forest and mining town in northwestern Quebec, held its first activity-free day based on the Ridgewood model. Marcia Marra, a mother of three who helped set up Ready, Set, Relax! in tandem with a local mental health agency, hopes the tide is turning. “People are starting to see that when their lives and their children’s lives are scheduled to the hilt, everyone suffers,” she says. “Structured activities can be great for kids, but things are just out of control now.”

This is not a new panic. Warnings about children being overscheduled, racing from one enriching activity to the next, first surfaced in the early 20th century. Dorothy Canfield Fisher, a popular novelist-cum-parenting guru, warned in 1914 that American parents were stripping childhood of its “blessed spontaneity” by placing “a constricting pressure upon the children to use even the chinks and fragments of their time to acquire accomplishments which seem to us profitable.” In 1931, Ruth Frankel, a pioneering cancer specialist in Canada, described how “the modern child, with his days set into a patterned program, goes docilely from one prescribed class to another, takes up art and music and French and dancing … until there is hardly a minute left.” Her fear was that overscheduled children would grow so jaded that they would turn “desperately to the corner movie in an effort to escape ennui.”

That same worry has reached fever pitch over the last generation. Books with titles like The Hurried Child and The Overscheduled Child have carved out shelf space in the library of modern parenting. Even the kids’ section has tackled the topic. In The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Pressure, the famous ursine family goes into stress meltdown because Sister and Brother Bear are enrolled in too many after-school activities.

Why are so many children so busy today? One reason is the rise of the working mother. When moms stayed home, it was easier just to let the kids play around the house. But as women entered the workplace and the extended family dissolved, someone else had to pick up the slack on the child-care front. Extracurricular activities fit the bill perfectly, promising not only supervision but also enrichment. Yet putting children on a tight schedule is not always a response to the child-care gap. Many stay-at-home moms also sign their children up for endless activities. Part of this is self-defence: when every other kid in the neighbourhood is booked solid, who is going to indulge in free play with your unscheduled child? In our atomized, bowling-alone society, organized activities are also a good way – sometimes the only way – to meet other parents. Nor does it help that many extracurricular activities are designed like a slippery slope: you sign up your 4-year-old daughter for a weekly dance lesson, and then, before you know it, she has a class every other night and is travelling across the country to compete. Rather than rock the boat, though, we persuade ourselves that lots of scheduled activities are just what children need and want, even when they tell us otherwise. The other day I watched a mother drag her 3-year-old daughter from a nursery school near our house. The child was weeping. “I don’t want to go to ballet,” she howled. “I want to go home and play.”

No one is saying that extracurricular activities are bad. On the contrary, they are an integral part of a rich and happy childhood. Many kids, particularly in lower-income families, would actually benefit from more structured activities. Plenty of children, especially teenagers, thrive on a busy schedule. But just as other trappings of modern childhood, from homework to technology, are subject to the law of diminishing returns, there is a danger of overscheduling the young. When it comes to extracurricular activities, many children are getting too much of a good thing.

Wayne Yankus, a pediatrician in Ridgewood since the early 1980s, reckons that 65 per cent of his patients are now victims of overscheduling. He says the symptoms include headaches, sleep disorders, gastric problems caused by stress or by eating too late at night, and fatigue. “Fifteen years ago it was unusual to see a tired 10-year-old,” says Yankus. “Now it’s common.” Recently he hired a therapist to spend one day a week in his office to talk to families about the need to prune their planners.

The extracurricular merry-go-round can also ensnare the family in a vicious cycle. Parents resent children for taking up so much time and costing so much money – Britons spend £12 billion a year on their children’s hobbies, half of which are abandoned within five weeks – while children resent their parents’ resentment. Activities overload also squeezes out time for the unscheduled, simple stuff that brings families together – relaxed conversation, cuddling, shared meals or just hanging out together in companionable silence. Yankus sees this disconnect in many Ridgewood households. “When the snow comes and the activities get cancelled, everyone is horrified because they’re suddenly stuck at home and have to deal with each other,” he says. “They don’t know how to get along without a schedule.”

Ridgewood does not shut down completely on Ready, Set, Relax! day. Some residents regard the event as silly or patronizing. Sporting matches arranged with neighbouring districts are not cancelled, and the homework ban is not always as strictly enforced as it could be, especially in high school. Yet the town does feel different on the big day. With fewer soccer moms running red lights, the traffic is less frantic. People are more likely to stop and chat than exchange a brief nod before pointing to their watch and rushing off to the next appointment. To many families, Ready, Set, Relax! has been an epiphany. More than a third of those who took part in 2006 trimmed their schedules afterward. Consider the Givens. The three children used to be enrolled in so many after-school activities that there was barely time to eat, sleep or talk. Even though she felt overwhelmed and often found herself jogging round the supermarket to save a few seconds, Jenny, the mother, somehow felt that it was her duty to keep the family maxed out on extracurricular pursuits. “Every activity that comes up you want your kids to try, and you fear that you are failing them if they are not busy every second,” she says. “You want the best for them, but always at the back of your mind, even if you don’t admit it, you have the fantasy that they might turn out to be brilliant at something, that by signing them up for an activity you might uncover some latent genius.”

In the Given household, that translated into an eye-watering barrage of art classes, Spanish lessons, soccer, lacrosse, softball, volleyball, basketball, baseball, tennis, scouts and book club. Every weekend, the parents would split up to ferry the children to their various activities. At home, time and tempers were short. Ready, Set, Relax! came as a wake-up call. On the first night, the Givens made Mexican food and chocolate chip cookies together. Then they got down Cadoo, a board game that had been sitting unopened on the shelf since Christmas. The evening rolled along in a riot of laughter and cuddles. “It was an amazing revelation for all of us,” says Jenny. “It was just such a relief not to be rushing off to the next thing on the to-do list.”

After the Ready, Set, Relax! night, the Givens cut back, keeping only activities the children are passionate about. Today Kathryn, 16, does an art class, Spanish lessons, and a book club. Chris, 14, plays on basketball and baseball teams while Rosie, 12, concentrates on soccer, tennis and lacrosse. The whole family is more relaxed, and the children are all doing better at school since the cutback. The spirit of Ready, Set, Relax! has rippled out into other initiatives in Ridgewood. Every Wednesday, weather permitting, about 80 children aged 4 to 7 are now let loose in the playground of the local primary school. This is Free Play Day and parents are confined to the sidelines. Left to their own devices, the children skip, play hide-and-seek and tag, make up stories, throw balls around, sing and wrestle. The noise is exhilarating, the child equivalent of a Wall of Sound. To many parents it is a revelation. “It never occurred to me to do this, to just let them play like this,” says one mother. “You always feel like you have to be organizing something for them, but actually you don’t.”

There is, of course, something absurd – even a little tragic – about having to schedule unscheduled time, yet given the world we live in, that is probably the first step for many families. And clearly the Ready, Set, Relax! movement reflects a wider rethink.

Harvard urges incoming freshmen to check their overscheduling ways at the door. Posted on the university website, an open letter by Harry Lewis, a former dean of the undergraduate school, warns students that they will get more out of college, and indeed life, if they do less and concentrate on the things that really fire their passion. Lewis also takes aim at the notion that everything young people do must have a measurable payoff or contribute toward crafting the perfect resumé. “You may balance your life better if you participate in some activities purely for fun, rather than to achieve a leadership role that you hope might be a distinctive credential for postgraduate employment. The human relationships you form in unstructured time with your roommates and friends may have a stronger influence on your later life than the content of some of the courses you are taking.”

Most families that ease the load end up spending more time eating together. In a hurry-up, hyper-scheduled culture, where dining al desko, in front of the TV or computer, in the street or in the car is commonplace, the family meal often falls by the wayside. One study found that a fifth of British families never eat together. The irony is that many of the benefits extracurricular activities, including homework, purport to deliver may actually by achieved through the simple act of breaking bread en famille. Studies in many countries show that children who have regular family meals are more likely to do well at school, enjoy good mental health, and eat nutritious food; they are also less likely to engage in underage sex or use drugs and alcohol.

A Harvard study concluded that family meals promote language development even more than does family story reading. Another survey found that the only common denominator among National Merit Scholars in the United States, regardless of race or social class, was having a regular family dinner. Of course, we’re talking here about meals where both parents and children ask questions, discuss ideas at length and tell anecdotes rather than just watch TV and grunt “pass the salt.”

Why does a proper family meal pay such handsome dividends? When it comes to diet, the answer is obvious. A 9-year-old boy is more likely to finish his greens, or to eat any vegetables at all, in front of his mom and dad than when he is dining alone at the computer in his bedroom. Sitting around the dinner table, taking part in conversation, also teaches children that they are loved and cherished for who they are, rather than for what they do. They learn to talk, listen, reason, and compromise – all those essential ingredients of a high EQ. Of course, no one is saying that family meals are always a bed of roses. Sometimes they are sheer hell. Gathering tired toddlers, sullen teenagers and stressed parents around the table can be a recipe for open warfare. But then, dealing with conflict is part of life, too.

Excerpted from Under Pressure: Rescuing Childhood from the Culture of Hyper-Parenting. Copyright 2008 Carl Honoré. Published by Knopf Canada. Reproduced by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.

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>Panel Proposes Streamlining Math

>March 13, 2008
Panel Proposes Streamlining Math
By TAMAR LEWIN

American students’ math achievement is “at a mediocre level” compared with that of their peers worldwide, according to a new report by a federal panel. The panel said that math curriculums from preschool to eighth grade should be streamlined to focus on key skills — the handling of whole numbers and fractions, and certain aspects of geometry and measurement — to prepare students to learn algebra.

“The sharp falloff in mathematics achievement in the U.S. begins as students reach late middle school, where, for more and more students, algebra course work begins,” said the report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, appointed two years ago by President Bush. “Students who complete Algebra II are more than twice as likely to graduate from college, compared to students with less mathematical preparation.”

The report, to be released Thursday, spells out specific goals for students. For example, it says that by the end of the third grade, students should be proficient in adding and subtracting whole numbers; two years later, they should be proficient in multiplying and dividing them. By the end of sixth grade, it says, students should have mastered the multiplication and division of fractions and decimals.

The report tries to put to rest the long and heated debate over math teaching methods. Parents and teachers in school districts across the country have fought passionately over the relative merits of traditional, or teacher-directed, instruction, in which students are told how to solve problems and then are drilled on them, as opposed to reform or child-centered instruction, which emphasizes student exploration and conceptual understanding. The panel said both methods have a role.

“There is no basis in research for favoring teacher-based or student-centered instruction,” said Dr. Larry R. Faulkner, the chairman of the panel, at a briefing for reporters on Wednesday. “People may retain their strongly held philosophical inclinations, but the research does not show that either is better than the other.”

Districts that have made ‘’all-encompassing decisions to go one way or the other,” he said, should rethink those decisions, and intertwine different methods of instruction to help students develop a broad understanding of math.

“To prepare students for algebra, the curriculum must simultaneously develop conceptual understanding, computational fluency and problem-solving skills,” the report said. “Debates regarding the relative importance of these aspects of mathematical knowledge are misguided. These capabilities are mutually supportive, .”

The president convened the panel to advise on how to improve math education for the nation’s children. Its members include math and psychology professors from leading universities, a middle-school math teacher and the president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

Closely tracking an influential 2006 report by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the panel said that the math curriculum should include fewer topics, and then spend enough time on each of them to make it is learned in depth and need not be revisited in later grades. This is how top-performing nations approach the curriculum.

After a similar advisory panel on reading made its recommendations in 2000, the federal government used the report as a guide for awarding $5 billion in federal grants to promote reading proficiency.

The new report does not call for a national math curriculum, or for new federal investment in math instruction. It does call for more research on successful math teaching, and recommends that the Secretary of Education convene an annual forum of leaders of the national associations concerned with math to develop an agenda for improving math instruction.

The report cites a number of troubling international comparisons, including a 2007 assessment finding that 15-year-olds in the United States ranked 25th among their peers in 30 developed nations in math literacy and problem solving.

The report says that Americans fell short, especially, in handling fractions. It pointed to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, standardized-test results that are known as the nation’s report card, which found that almost half the eighth graders tested could not solve a word problem that required dividing fractions.

After hearing testimony and comments from hundreds of organizations and individuals, and sifting through 16,000 research publications, the panelists shaped their report around recent research on how children learn.

For example, the panel found that it is important for students to master their basic math facts by heart.

“For all content areas, practice allows students to achieve automaticity of basic skills — the fast, accurate, and effortless processing of content information — which frees up working memory for more complex aspects of problem solving,” the report said.

Dr. Faulkner, a former president of the University of Texas at Austin, said the panel “buys the notion from cognitive science that kids have to know the facts.”

“In the language of cognitive science, working memory needs to be predominately dedicated to new material in order to have a learning progression, and previously addressed material needs to be in long-term memory,” he said.

The report also cites recent findings that students who depend on their native intelligence learn less than those who believe that success depends on how hard they work. Dr. Faulkner said the current “talent-driven approach to math, that either you can do it or you can’t, like playing the violin” needed to be changed.

“Experimental studies have demonstrated that changing children’s beliefs from a focus on ability to a focus on effort increases their engagement in mathematics learning, which in turn improves mathematics outcomes,” the report says “When children believe that their efforts to learn make them ‘smarter,’ they show greater persistence in mathematics learning.”

The report makes a plea for shorter and more accurate math textbooks. Given the shortage of elementary teachers with a solid grounding in math, the report recommends further research on the use of math specialists to teach several different elementary grades, as is done in many top-performing nations.

The report also recommends a revamping of the math content on the national assessment test, to focus on the same skills that the report emphasizes.

Here are the panel’s recommended benchmarks for elementary school math education:

Benchmarks in Math Education Fluency With Whole Numbers

1 By the end of Grade 3, students should be proficient with the addition and subtraction of whole numbers.

2 By the end of Grade 5, students should be proficient with multiplication and division of whole numbers.

Fluency With Fractions

1 By the end of Grade 4, students should be able to identify and represent fractions anddecimals, and compare them on a number line or with other common representations offractions and decimals.

2 By the end of Grade 5, students should be proficient with comparing fractions and decimalsand common percents, and with the addition and subtraction of fractions and decimals.

3 By the end of Grade 6, students should be proficient with multiplication and division offractions and decimals.

4 By the end of Grade 6, students should be proficient with all operations involving positiveand negative integers.

5 By the end of Grade 7, students should be proficient with all operations involving positiveand negative fractions.

6 By the end of Grade 7, students should be able to solve problems involving percent, ratio,and rate and extend this work to proportionality.

Geometry and Measurement

1 By the end of Grade 5, students should be able to solve problems involving perimeter andarea of triangles and all quadrilaterals having at least one pair of parallel sides (i.e.,trapezoids).

2 By the end of Grade 6, students should be able to analyze the properties of two-dimensional shapes and solve problems involving perimeter and area, and analyze the properties of three dimensional shapes and solve problems involving surface area and volume.

3 By the end of Grade 7, students should be familiar with the relationship between similar triangles and the concept of the slope of a line.

Source: National Mathematics Advisory Panel, 2008.

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>A solution to how to teach math: Subtract

>A solution to how to teach math: Subtract

By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Wondering why your child isn’t learning enough math in school? Her textbook may be too thick.

In an unprecedented effort, a blue-ribbon panel commissioned by President Bush has been working since 2006 to find out why the math skills of U.S. students pale next to those in so many other industrialized nations. The 20 respected scholars scoured more than 16,000 research studies, heard testimony in eight cities and argued among themselves — sometimes heatedly — for nearly two years.

CHART: What kids need to know — and when
In the end, they found a math instruction system that’s “broken and must be fixed” if the USA is to compete with established economic powers or emerging ones such as China.

In its long-awaited report, out today, the National Math Panel zeroes in on several factors:

•Children badly need both automatic recall of math facts and understanding of big concepts, in effect declawing both sides in the decades-long “math wars.”

•Based on brain research, Americans should look at prowess in math less as a talent than as the result of sheer hard work.

•Schools must streamline their math courses, focusing on “a well-defined set of the most critical topics” from early elementary school through middle school. “Any approach that continually revisits topics year after year without closure is to be avoided,” the report says.

If widely adopted by states, the new approach could force U.S. textbook publishers to slim down their wares, forcing massive textbooks — some run 700 or even 1,000 pages — into extinction.

In their place would be books as slim as 150 pages to help children solidly learn just a few key skills each year.

“There is a problem of kids not feeling like they’re getting anywhere, that third-grade math is the same as fourth-grade math,” says panel chairman Larry Faulkner, president emeritus of the University of Texas at Austin.

Math books are much smaller in many countries with higher mathematics achievement, the panel says.

“In the U.S., we’re trying to teach first-graders 20-some topics,” says Michigan State University professor William Schmidt.

Schmidt, who is not a member of the panel, agrees with the finding that math curriculums often lacks coherence. “You’re trying to do everything everywhere,” he says.

The panel lays out a plan for a “focused, coherent progression” of skills. The progression includes fluency in adding and subtracting whole numbers by the end of third grade, and multiplying and dividing whole numbers by the end of fifth grade. Students should be able to solve problems involving percent, ratio and rate by the end of seventh grade.

The panel issues a call for an “authentic algebra course” for many students by eighth grade and a greater emphasis on fractions for young students.

Teachers told the panel students’ biggest deficiency was a poor command of fractions, Faulkner says.

The panel suggests updating the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federally administered test, to emphasize mastery of fractions and other pre-algebra skills.

The report, to be delivered today to Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, could spark an effort to create a federally funded math program, much as the 2000 National Reading Panel led to the $1-billion-a-year Reading First program for early elementary grades.

“There was a recognition that we had to do for math what had been done for reading, which is to settle some of these long-standing skirmishes and get a better understanding about the core things that we know,” Spellings says. “Educators are hungry for it, looking for it. This will be well-received.”

On the “talent” question, Faulkner says the research is clear: “Effort counts. Students who believe that working hard will make them smarter in math actually do achieve better.”

The belief that people who are good in math are simply born good at it is “not a cultural belief that’s shared in China,” he says.

What kids need to know — and when

After two years of work, the National Math Panel issues its recommendations today. They include calls for greater emphasis on fractions, algebra and key “benchmark” skills in early grades. Here’s a sample:

Fluency with whole numbers Fluency with fractions Geometry and measurement

Grade 3 •Add and subtract

Grade 4 •Identify and use fractions and decimals, and compare them on a number line

Grade 5 •Multiply and divide •Compare fractions and decimals and common percents; add and subtract them •Solve problems involving perimeter and area of triangles and all quadrilaterals having at least one pair of parallel sides (i.e. trapezoids)

Grade 6 •Multiply, divide fractions and decimals •Add, subtract, multiply, divide positive and negative integers •Analyze the properties of two- and three-dimensional shapes and solve problems involving perimeter and area, surface area and volume

Grade 7 •Add, subtract, multiply, divide positive, negative fractions •Solve problems involving percent, ratio, and rate and extend this work to proportionality •Be familiar with the relationship between similar triangles and the concept of the slope of a line

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>Lays Out Truce In Math Wars

>Education Panel
Lays Out Truce
In Math Wars
Effort to Fix ‘Broken’ System
Sets Targets for Each Grade,
Avoids Taking Sides on Method

By JOHN HECHINGER
March 5, 2008; Page D1

A presidential panel, warning that a “broken” system of mathematics education threatens U.S. pre-eminence, says it has found the fix: A laserlike focus on the essentials.

The National Mathematics Advisory Panel, appointed by President Bush in 2006, is expected to urge the nation’s teachers to promote “quick and effortless” recall of arithmetic facts in early grades, mastery of fractions in middle school, and rigorous algebra courses in high school or even earlier. Targeting such key elements of math would mark a sharp departure from the diverse priorities that now govern teaching of the subject in U.S. public schools.

FORUM

1

How does the quality of math education in schools today compare to when you were in school? Discuss2

The panel took up its work amid widespread alarm at the sorry state of math achievement in America. In the most recent testing by the Program for International Student Assessment, released late last year, U.S. 15-year-olds achieved sub-par results among developed nations in math literacy and problem-solving, behind such countries as Finland, South Korea and the Netherlands.

“Without substantial and sustained changes to the educational system, the United States will relinquish its leadership in the twenty-first century,” reads a draft of the final report, due to be released next week by the Department of Education.

MATH ESSENTIALS

The National Mathematics Advisory Panel is expected to call for the following “critical foundations” or benchmarks for U.S. school children.

Fluency with whole numbers:

1. By the end of grade three, students should be proficient with the addition and subtraction of whole numbers.

2. By the end of grade five, students should be proficient with multiplication and division of whole numbers.

Fluency with fractions:

1. By the end of grade four, students should be able to identify and represent fractions and decimals, and compare them on a number line or with other common representations of fractions and decimals.

2. By the end of grade five, students should be proficient with comparing fractions and decimals and common percents, and with the addition and subtraction of fractions and decimals.

3. By the end of grade six, students should be proficient with multiplication and division of fractions and decimals.

4. By the end of grade six, students should be proficient with all operations involving positive and negative integers.

5. By the end of grade seven, students should be proficient with all operations involving positive and negative fractions.

6. By the end of grade seven, students should be able to solve problems involving percent, ratio and rate and extend this work to proportionality.

Geometry and measurement:

1. By the end of grade five, students should be able to solve problems involving perimeter and area of triangles and all quadrilaterals having at least one pair of parallel sides (i.e. trapezoids).

2. By the end of grade six, students should be able to analyze the properties of two dimensional shapes and solve problems involving perimeter and area, and analyze the properties of three-dimensional shapes and solve problems involving surface area and volume.

3. By the end of grade seven, students should be familiar with the relationship between similar triangles and the concept of the slope of a line.

Source: Draft of National Mathematics Advisory Panel final report

Unlike most countries that outperform the U.S., America leaves education decisions largely to state and local governments and has no national curriculum. School boards and state education departments across the country are likely to pore over the math panel’s findings and adjust their teaching to make sure it aligns with the nation’s best thinking on math instruction. The federal government could also use the report to launch a national program in math instruction, as the government did for literacy after findings from a similar advisory panel on reading in 2000.

The math panel’s draft report comes amid the so-called math wars raging in the nation’s public classrooms. For two decades, advocates of what has come to be known as “reform math” have promoted conceptual understanding over drilling in, say, multiplication and division. For example, to solve a basic division problem, 150 divided by 50, students might cross off groups of circles to “discover” that the answer was three. Some parents and mathematicians have complained about “fuzzy math,” and public school systems have encountered a growing backlash.

The advisory panel’s 19 members include eminent mathematicians and educators representing both sides of the math wars. The draft of the final report declines to take sides, saying the group agreed only on the content that students must master, not the best way to teach it.

The group said it could find no “high-quality” research backing either traditional or reform math instruction. The draft report calls a rigid adherence to either method “misguided” and says understanding, which is the priority of reform teachers, and computation skills, emphasized by traditionalists, are “mutually supported.”

Larry Faulkner, the panel’s chairman and president of the Houston Endowment, a philanthropic foundation, said in an interview that the group had “internal battles” but decided “it’s time to cool the passions along that divide.” The panel held 12 meetings around the country, reviewed 16,000 research publications and public-policy reports and heard testimony from 110 individuals.

The advisory group also doesn’t take a position on calculator use in early grades, a contentious issue among educators and parents. The draft says the panel reviewed 11 studies that found “limited to no impact of calculators on calculation skills, problem-solving or conceptual development.” But the panel, noting that almost all the studies were more than 20 years old and otherwise limited, recommended more research on whether calculators undermine “fluency in computation.”

Still, the draft report says calculators shouldn’t be used on tests used to assess computation skills. Some states allow disabled children to use calculators on tests of arithmetic.

The draft report urges educators to focus on “critical” topics, as is common in higher-performing countries. The panel’s draft report says students should be proficient with the addition and subtraction of whole numbers by the end of third grade and with multiplication and division by the end of fifth. In terms of geometry, children by the end of sixth grade should be able to solve problems involving perimeter, area and volume.

Students should begin working with fractions in fourth grade and, by the end of seventh, be able to solve problems involving percent, ratio and rate. “Difficulty with fractions [including decimals and percents] is pervasive and is a major obstacle to further progress in mathematics, including algebra,” the draft report says.

These benchmarks mirror closely a September 2006 report by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, which many viewed as a turning point in the math wars because it recognized the importance of teaching the basics after the group for years had placed more emphasis on conceptual understanding.

Francis Fennell, president of the math teachers group and a panel member, said the group’s specific recommendations could help parents determine whether their kids are on the right track.

The draft report recommends a revamp of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a widely followed test administered by the Education Department, to emphasize material needed for the mastery of algebra, especially fractions. The draft calls for similar changes to the state tests children must take under the federal No Child Left Behind Law.

The document urges publishers to shorten elementary and middle-school math textbooks that currently can run on for 700 to 1,000 pages and cover a dizzying array of topics. Publishers say textbooks often must cover a patchwork of state standards.

Write to John Hechinger at [email protected]

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>Bad news for Ridgewood in DOE’s Just Released School Violence Report

>Picture 0028
Today (8/30), the Ledger reported on the Department of Education’s latest report on school violence, vandalism, weapons and substance abuse. The report contains some very troubling news for Ridgewood. This is regardless of the fact that the reporting across districts and counties may be flawed, though not flawed enough to render the report irresponsible. It would be wise for administrators to pay close heed to these findings and consider what they have done in the past that either has not worked, or may have inadvertently exacerbated the problem. Here’s a comparative look of four districts in the report: Glen Rock, Hackensack, Ridgewood and Newark.

Glen Rock, with an enrollment of 2,471 students, reported a total number of 8 incidences of the above
Hackensack City, with an enrollment of 5,059, students reported a total number of 24 incidences
Ridgewood, with an enrollment of 5,553 students, reported a total of 95 incidences.
Newark City, with an enrollment of 41,855 students, reported a total of 414 incidences (unless you’re terc impaired, you know that that would extrapolate to more incidences by percentage in Ridgewood).

Could it be that Glen Rock, Hackensack and Newark are drastically underreporting or does Ridgewood have more than a Starbucks’s problem? Regardless, our administrators owe Ridgewood parents and taxpayers a revealing discussion of this issue rather than the usual explaining away of what the numbers mean. The full report is available at:

https://www.state.nj.us/education/schools/vandv/0506/appende1.pdf

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>Monday, July 17th – 8:00pm ,former VP Al Gore will be at Bookends

>gore1Al GoreMonday, July 17th – 8:00pm
Former Vice President Al Gore will make a special visit to sign his NY Times Best Seller; An Inconvenient Truth. Don’t miss this great opportunity to meet the former VP to Bill Clinton and expert on Global Warming!

Readers Speakout :

Professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, in Australia gives what, for many Canadians, is a surprising assessment: “Gore’s circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention.”

Appearing before the Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development last year, Carleton University paleoclimatologist Professor Tim Patterson testified, “There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth’s temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years.” Patterson asked the committee, “On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century’s modest warming?”

“During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country’s economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system. ” al gore

The earth is actually COOLER now than it was in the 13th century. Greenland was named ‘Greenland’ by the Vikings because it actually WAS green at that time, at least along the shores. There were vinyards in England during the same period. The melting of free floating ice, such as the ice shelf along the coast of Antarctica, would not raise the sea level. In fact it could even lead to a lower sea level. This seems to defy common sense but is none the less true. Water has its greatest density at 39 deg F. Even the melting of glacial ice on land does not have the dramatic effect that is predicted. As the weight of ice is decreased the land mass actually rises. The increased water mass in the ocean also deforms the crust, pushing the seabed lower. The earth’s crust is plastic, changes in one area effect every other area. It is not the simple zero sum game assumed by global warming alarmists. Global warming is a mixture of fuzzy math, irrespronsible extrapolation of short term data, and politicly motivated antigrowth green party bullshit.

We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.from the Petition Project at https://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p37.htm.