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--- Wednesday --- March 3, 1999 --- Vol. 2 --- No. 8 ---
NATIONAL EDUCATION GOALS PANEL
NEGP Weekly
THE UPDATE ON AMERICA'S NATIONAL EDUCATION GOALS
in cooperation with the DAILY REPORT CARD
CONGRATULATIONS
Hats off to Naomi Geradine
House, the newly named National
Superintendent of the Year.
House hails from Memphis City
Schools in Memphis, Tennessee.
She was honored at the American
Association of School
Administrators National
Conference on Education.
Selection criteria for the
award include: leadership for
learning, communications
skills, professional
development, and community
involvement. Among other
awards, House will receive a
$10,000 scholarship presented
in her name to a student in the
high school from which she
graduated.
WHO ARE THE WORKING POOR?
A new publication issued by
Child Trends is the first
statistical portrait of working
poor families with children at
the start of welfare reform
(1996). "Working Poor Families
With Children" is written by
Richard Wertheimer, senior
research associate at Child
Trends. For more info:
www.childtrends.org, or
202/362-5580.
__________ __________
| SPOTLIGHT |
| |
| SANDSTORM |
| |
| The winds of social |
| promotion are picking up |
| again, and this time they |
| are pummeling liberal |
| social promotion policies. |
| |
| Not so long ago, |
| conventional wisdom held |
| that retaining students in |
| the same grade severely |
| damages a child's self- |
| esteem. Soon after, |
| however, educators |
| complained that loose |
| social promotion policies |
| were to blame for low |
| student achievement. |
| Research then emerged that |
| challenged holding children |
| in the same grade as at |
| best neutral, and at worst |
| harmful to the child. |
| |
| This time, many of those |
| railing against social pro- |
| motions also are calling |
| for remedial and summer |
| school programs to assist |
| students who are struggling |
| to make the grade. (#1) |
|_____________________________|
============== QUOTE OF THE DAY ==============
"Simply pounding kids on the head is not going to get the results
we need."
Kati Haycock, president of the Education Trust, on social
promotion. (#1)
_______________________________________________________________
| (c) by the Education Policy Network, Inc. |
| 1255 22nd Street NW; Washington, D.C. 20010; 202/724-0124 |
| EPN, Inc. hereby authorizes further reproduction and |
| distribution with proper acknowledgment. |
| Publisher: Barbara A. Pape |
|_______________________________________________________________|
============== TABLE OF CONTENTS ==============
GOAL THREE: STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT AND CITIZENSHIP
HERE WE GO AGAIN: The push to end social promotion. (#1)
SCHOOL-TO-CAREER PARTNERSHIPS: An emphasis on technology. (#2)
GOAL FOUR: TEACHER ED/PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
PUTTING QUALITY FIRST: Maryland raises teacher standards. (#3)
NATIONAL EDUCATION GOALS PANEL UPDATE
GOAL RUSH: No stopping now. (#4)
CHANGING HANDS: Goals Panel has new leader. (#5)
===== GOAL THREE: STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT AND CITIZENSHIP =====
*1 HERE WE GO AGAIN: THE PUSH TO END SOCIAL PROMOTION
"The winds have shifted again," writes the WASH POST, of the
new call to end social promotion (Benning and Argetsinger, 2/26).
President Bill Clinton, in his 1999 State of the Union address,
declared: "All schools must end social promotion."
Texas Gov. George Bush's plan to end social promotion
recently passed the state legislature. In an editorial for the
POST, columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. reports that Hartford,
Connecticut's, new school superintendent, Anthony Amato, also has
declared war on social promotion. And, California's new
governor, Gray Davis, has "made a statewide campaign against --
you guessed it -- social promotion, a key part of his education
reform package," pens Dionne.
According to the POST, the debate over social promotion
emerged in the 1970s, when school officials promoted struggling
students with the goal of keeping children's self-esteem in tact.
The pendulum swung back during the 1980s, when educators blamed
liberal social promotion policies for low student achievement.
In the early 1990s, sentiment on social promotion shifted
again, as some researchers claimed the policy did little to help
low-achieving students, and in some cases harmed them, writes the
paper. Once again, however, change is afoot, as key policymakers
challenge loose social promotion policies, in some cases to
achieve school accountability. Clinton: "We do our children no
favors when we allow them to pass from grade to grade without
mastering the material."
Dionne points out that both Clinton and Bush include in
their put-a-stop-to-social-promotion policies provisions for
remedial and summer school programs, and improved teacher
professional development and pre-service training. Yet, Dionne
also notes that the new ban on social promotion "has a certain
advantage for those who run schools: It moves the burden of
failing systems from the adults who run them to the children who
aren't making it."
"Simply pounding the kids on the head is not going to get
the result we need," said Kati Haycock, president of the
Education Trust, in Dionne's editorial. Linda Darling-Hammond,
professor at Columbia University and executive director of the
National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, argues
against sending struggling students back to the same class where
they achieved little if any success.
The POST reports that many Washington, D.C., area teachers
complain that principals often pressures them to promote students
because holding too many students back would reflect poorly on
the school. "Teachers have told me that they've stopped
bothering recommending retention or summer school because
principals are not going to back them up," said Rick Nelson,
president of the Fairfax County Federation of Teachers. "You
don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that if in a
county as diverse as Fairfax you've got 199 out of 200 students
being promoted, the bar is set too low," he added.
Nelson recommends more remedial and intervention programs
during the school year, rather than holding students back.
"Ending social promotion is as extreme a position as the 10-
year fad of not retaining children," said Jim Grant, executive
director of the Society for Developmental Education, a New
Hampshire-based group that studies how to prevent academic
failure. "The time has come to stop the fads and pushing schools
into extreme positions."
*2 SCHOOL-TO-CAREER PARTNERSHIPS: AN EMPHASIS ON TECHNOLOGY
Based on a forum held in 1997 and sponsored by IBM and the
DeWitt Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, IBM released a new
publication that highlights school-to-career efforts that
emphasize technology. "School-to-Career Programs and Technology:
Partnerships for Student Success" is intended to "provide
educators and business leaders with examples of school-to-career
activities that use computer-based and other technologies to
enrich and enhance learning about the world of work."
At the forum, educators and policymakers from around the
country examined how technology is being used in school-to-career
programs. They also discussed how technology could be better
integrated into the curriculum to improve student achievement.
The publication is divided into five sections:
School-to-Career Partnerships
Bringing the World of Work to the Classroom
Technology and Active Learning Experiences
Professional Development for Teachers
Systemic School-to-Career Initiatives
Model programs from northern California, Boston, southwest
Tennessee, and Los Angeles are featured in the publication. A
resource list is included in the appendix.
"Our hope is that this publication will assist schools,
businesses, and community-based organizations in their efforts to
develop, enrich or expand their school-to-career partnerships --
and ultimately strengthen the web of school-to-career programs
for all students," writes Stanley Litow, vice president, IBM
corporate community relations.
A copy of the report will be available in the near future
at: www.ibm.com/ibm/ibmgives.
===== GOAL FOUR: TEACHER ED/PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT =====
*3 PUTTING QUALITY FIRST: MARYLAND RAISES TEACHER STANDARDS
In a unanimous vote, the Maryland Board of Education
established new minimum passing scores for its teacher exam that
places the state second only to Virginia as the toughest in the
nation (Argetsinger, WASH POST, 2/24). "We're sending a clear
message that we're setting a rigorous standard," said Lawrence E.
Leak, assistant state superintendent of schools.
Earlier, state education officials switched from
administering the multiple-choice National Teacher Exam to the
new three-part Praxis test, which relies on essay questions.
State board members decided to take the opportunity to raise the
stakes by mandating a higher minimum score necessary to pass the
test. Two years ago, Virginia also switched to the Praxis and
set the highest pass rate in the country. However, Virginia
education officials did not anticipate the high number of teacher
candidates who did not pass the exam -- 35% of the 5,000
education students who took the exam failed writing, 35% failed
math, and 20% failed the reading section, writes the paper.
The POST reports that Maryland's call for a higher pass rate
"put[s] a squeeze on" school districts already experiencing a
dearth of teachers and teacher colleges that now face "federal
mandates to prove that they are preparing their students to pass
state licensing exams and get hired into classroom jobs," notes
the paper. Maryland state board members promised support to
colleges of education, as the schools try to prepare their
students to meet the higher standard. Virginia colleges are in
the process of realigning their curriculum to meet the higher
Praxis standards.
According to the paper, most Maryland education leaders
support raising the bar for prospective teachers. "We would
certainly support Maryland having the highest scores," said Bob
Moore, policy analyst for the Maryland State Teachers
Association. "We think the test itself is good -- it's more
performance-oriented."
==== NATIONAL EDUCATION GOALS PANEL UPDATE ====
*4 GOAL RUSH: NO STOPPING NOW
Members of the National Education Goals Panel last month
unanimously voted to rename the National Education Goals as
"America's Education Goals," and to continue efforts to meet them
beyond the year 2000. Initially conceived at the 1989 education
summit convened by President George Bush and all the nation's
governors, the National Education Goals were designed as targets
for the nation and the states to achieve by the year 2000.
While "notable" progress has been made by the nation and the
states to reach the Goals, they have not been met (National
Education Goals Panel press release, 2.23).
"The decision about where we go from here depends a lot on
how far we've come," said North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt, a
past Goals Panel chairman. "Have these Goals given us worthwhile
targets to aspire to? Do they set out clear objectives that
parents, educators, and everyone else who cares about children
agree are important? Finally, can we achieve them? The answer
to all of these questions is yes. They really are America's
Goals in every sense of the word."
The bi-partisan group of National Education Goals Panel
members also agreed to rename the Goals Panel as "America's
Education Goals Panel." The resolution, which also calls for
maintaining the current membership configuration and mission,
will be submitted to Congress. Goals Panel members include eight
governors, four members of Congress, four state legislators, the
U.S. Secretary of Education, and a representative of The White
House.
The resolution cites the role of the Goals in advancing
standards-based education reform and providing a forum for bi-
partisan consensus in key educational areas, including early
childhood readiness-to-learn, student achievement, teacher
preparation and others, writes the release.
Input on the usefulness of the Goals and the Goals Panel was
sought from a variety of groups during 1998, including state
Business-Education Coalitions, commissioners of the Education
Commission of the States, education and child-advocacy
organizations and the general public. A group of national
education experts praised the Goals Panel for making significant
contributions in the following areas:
launching and supporting the academic standards movement;
legitimizing benchmarking, and state and international
comparisons;
increasing attention to early childhood in the education
reform agenda;
focusing and sustaining education reform;
making additional contributions in goal-specific areas.
For more information, visit the National Education Goals
Panel's Web site: www.negp.gov.
*5 CHANGING HANDS: GOALS PANEL HAS NEW LEADER
Kentucky Governor Paul Patton last month became the new
chairman of the National Education Goals Panel, replacing West
Virginia Governor Cecil H. Underwood. Patton: "As governor of a
state where we're doing everything to make quality education
available, affordable and accessible at every level, it's
important to us to have an accurate view of how our students are
doing. I want to continue and strengthen our role as a resource
on what's really working to help students and schools improve.
It's not just about how we're doing. It's also about the
practices and initiatives that can help states and local
communities all across the nation do better."
Under current legislation, the Goals Panel is charged with a
variety of responsibilities to support system-wide reform,
including:
reporting on national and state progress toward the Goals
over a 10-year period;
working to establish a system of academic standards and
assessments;
identifying promising and effective reform strategies;
recommending actions for federal, state, and local
governments to take; and
building a nationwide, bipartisan consensus to achieve the
Goals.
Following are the National Education Goals:
THE NATIONAL EDUCATION GOALS
GOAL 1: READY TO LEARN
All children in America will start school ready to learn.
GOAL 2: SCHOOL COMPLETION
The high school graduation rate will increase to at least 90
percent.
GOAL 3: STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT AND CITIZENSHIP
All students will leave grades 4, 8, and 12 having
demonstrated competency over challenging subject matter
including English, mathematics, science, foreign languages,
civics and government, economics, arts, history, and
geography, and every school in America will ensure that all
students earn to use their minds well, so they may be
prepared for responsible citizenship, further learning, and
productive employment in our Nation' modern economy.
GOAL 4: TEACHER EDUCATION AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
The Nation's teaching force will have access to programs for
the continued improvement of their professional skills and
the opportunity to acquire the knowledge and skills needed
to instruct and prepare all American students for the next
century.
GOAL 5: MATHEMATICS AND SCIENCE
United States students will be first in the world in
mathematics and science achievement.
GOAL 6: ADULT LITERACY AND LIFELONG LEARNING
Every adult American will be literate and will possess the
knowledge and skills necessary to compete in a global
economy and exercise the rights and responsibilities of
citizenship.
GOAL 7: SAFE, DISCIPLINED, & ALCOHOL- AND DRUG-FREE SCHOOLS
Every school in the United States will be free of drugs,
violence, and the unauthorized presence of firearms and
alcohol and will offer a disciplined environment conducive
to learning.
GOAL 8: PARENTAL PARTICIPATION
Every school will promote partnerships that will increase
parental involvement and participation in promoting the
social, emotional, and academic growth of children.
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