Students who jokingly respond to surveys with wildly inaccurate answers can seriously skew results

Students who jokingly respond to surveys with wildly inaccurate answers can seriously skew results, with unfortunate public policy consequences, according to a study published today in “Educational Researcher,” the peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association.
Author Joseph P. Robinson-Cimpian found that “mischievous responders” can have a big effect. For instance, a recent survey on adolescent drug use found a huge disparity in cocaine usage between heterosexual students and those identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender — but Robinson-Cimpian found that the gulf was wildly inflate because some students made up phony answers on multiple questions.
Robinson-Cimpian writes that students inclined to joke around often give incorrect answers on multiple questions, picking responses that they perceive as far out of the mainstream. So, for instance, they might report that they are gay, blind, deaf, use cocaine weekly and have multiple children — all answers that should show up relatively rarely on the surveys and are unlikely to appear in combination all that often.
Such surveys must be weeded out, Robinson-Cimpian argues, or they can skew perceptions and push public policy in unwarranted directions. He warns that the issue of “jokester youths” can also perpetuate negative stereotypes by inflating the degree to which marginalized groups such as gay and lesbian students engage in risky behavior such as drug use. His article proposes a four-step analysis that researchers can apply to student surveys to identify responses that are most likely false.

“If we want sound research and policy, we need to have sound data,” he said.

Some Privacy Activists Not Pleased with Markey-Hatch Bill

Privacy activists are not pleased with the draft bill to tighten up student privacy protections being circulated on the Hill by Sens. Ed Markey and Orrin Hatch.

“This bill is entirely inadequate to address parent concerns about privacy,” said Leonie Haimson, an activist who has organized parents to press for greater safeguards.

Another parent activist, Barmak Nassirian, said he found elements of the bill useful, but overall he believed that “it falls short of what’s urgently needed.”

Nassirian pointed in particular to a provision barring schools from sharing student educational records with anyone who might use them “to advertise or market a product or service.” Such a crackdown is needed, he said — but it doesn’t go far enough. Nassirian argues for a broader restriction on nearly all commercial use of student data. For instance, he doesn’t want companies mining children’s files for insight into their needs and then developing new products based on that information.

And he called for a blanket statement that “data collected for one purpose should not be used for another purpose,” unless parents explicitly consent.

Haimson, meanwhile, said the proposed FERPA update did little to prevent highly sensitive information, including health, disability and discipline data, from being shared with private companies without parental consent. Parents, she said, need more control over their children’s data; they need to know exactly who is holding what and why.


“If legislators believe that parents should be included in the discussion over student privacy, they should actually try to listen to what we’re saying,” Haimson said.

Markey-Hatch Student Data Privacy

Sens. Ed Markey and Orrin Hatch plan to circulate a "discussion draft" of a long-awaited bill to strengthen student privacy protections this afternoon.
The bill would update the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 by imposing new restrictions on school districts and on the private companies that are routinely granted access to student records in order to create online grade books, manage cafeteria accounts and perform other functions for districts.
Among the new provisions, the bill would:
• Ban the mining of students’ records to target them with advertising,
• Give parents the right to see the records private companies hold on their children — and to correct errors,
• Require private companies to delete personally identifiable information on children as soon as they leave the school system,
• Mandate that districts keep a record of all outside companies that hold student data, and make that list available to parents and
• Require districts to minimize the distribution of student data and remove personal information from records when possible.
The bill addresses several weaknesses in the student privacy law, known as FERPA. But it does not address other concerns, including the vast amount of “metadata” that private companies hold on students. That metadata can include a student’s academic progress through an online curriculum; his learning style and his location, web browsing habits and other information gleaned from tracking his use of educational resources online. Much of that information is not considered an official educational record and is thus not protected by FERPA.

Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, has been one of the most outspoken members of Congress on privacy issues. He is also pushing an update to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.

MTA elects anti-Common Core leader

Barbara Madeloni, an outspoken opponent of the Common Core and high-stakes testing, won election this weekend as president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association. Madeloni’s victory is the latest signal that local and state affiliates are growing restive with the national unions’ efforts to find common ground with education reformers — and want a more militant tack. Last month, an insurgent ticket won control of the 600,000-member New York State United Teachers, after painting the incumbent union leaders as too accommodating of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s education reform platform. Last week, the Chicago Teachers Union passed a resolution slamming the Common Core. Over the weekend, the Seattle Education Association’s incumbent president narrowly beat back an unexpectedly strong challenge from a teacher who had led a much-publicized boycott of the standardized MAP tests last year.

— As she takes the helm of the 110,000-member MTA, Madeloni vows to call for a three-year moratorium on high-stakes testing, including a ban on using test results to evaluate schools and teachers. She promises a vigorous campaign to expose “corporate forces” behind the education reform movement and to seek ties with other unions “to develop a national strategy to resist the undoing of public education.”

— Madeloni’s position statement on Common Core calls it a “money grab for testing and curriculum development companies” that will narrow the curriculum and limit teachers’ academic freedom. She also opposes the concept of common national standards, writing that “our democracy must be about diversity and not standardization.”

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Gregory G. Nadeau

Public Consulting Group

781-370-1017

gnadeau@pcgus.com

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NH Flips to Competency-Based Education

Letting go of time-based practices: A closer look at what’s happening in New Hampshire

by Julia Freeland

“From policy to practice: How competency-based education is evolving in New Hampshire.”

New Hampshire was the first state to abolish the Carnegie Unit, which made way for the first statewide experiment in competency-based education at the high school level. Under a set of 2005 regulatory changes, New Hampshire districts were required to create competencies and begin measuring high school credit in these terms by the start of the 2008–09 school year.

With a number of years of this bold policy now under its belt, we wanted to understand what this means in practice across the state.

This paper profiles 13 public schools in New Hampshire, each of which demonstrates a distinct approach to competency-based education. We found that since the mandate was handed down, some schools have invested deeply in building competency-based models by creating opportunities for students to move at a flexible, personalized pace; providing supplemental content for students who have fallen behind or want to move ahead; and making assessment more frequent and formative, with a focus on demonstrating mastery in real-world examples and settings. Other schools, however, have remained tethered to time-based practices, such as bell-schedules, end-of-unit assessments, and fixed whole-class pacing. Although teachers and administrators at these schools have articulated school-wide competencies, these competencies may not guide curriculum and instruction across all subjects.

The variation across this small sample sheds light on what New Hampshire’s competency policy actually means in practice. A few particular themes emerged in our interviews across these school systems:

Local control rules the day. New Hampshire’s famous moniker as the “live free or die” state resonated with administrators’ and teachers’ varying impressions of competency-based education throughout the state. In fact, because of the strong tradition of local control, New Hampshire’s districts and charter schools were free to interpret and implement the state’s competency mandate as they saw fit. Therefore, although the state put forth a new vision in its regulations, the 2005 policy and its subsequent revisions leave significant space for district and charter schools to define what competency-based education means for their students. This in turn means that no two systems are implementing competency-based education alike.

Common definitions are hard to come by. In the paper, we compare these 13 schools against CompetencyWorks’ five-part definition of competency-based education. CompetencyWorks has done important work level-setting the field on a common definition, and we wanted to reinforce that by framing where schools appear in their evolution toward fully competency-based models. It is worth noting, however, that New Hampshire’s trailblazing reforms of 2005 pre-dated the CompetencyWorks 2011 definition—in other words, before the national education community even grasped the terms of competency-based education. Therefore, combined with an emphasis on local control, it’s unsurprising that few teachers and leaders agree on a singular definition of competency-based education in New Hampshire. Still, it’s helpful to measure schools’ progress against a common metric and terms to allow people to understand the similarities and differences between what different schools are doing.

Creating new resources, processes, and values is hard and gradual work – The temptation of any reform agenda—especially one as rational and intuitive as competency-based education—is to imagine that vis-a-vis policy change or of their own will, schools can simply flip a switch and suddenly exist in this new, mastery-based paradigm. Many systems, however, still appear to be grappling with the deep cultural shifts—both in their schools and communities—required to let go of time-based practices that have dominated education for over a century. On the other hand, those systems that have successfully moved toward more competency-based approaches are putting in a concerted effort to manage cultural change, or were already grounded in a competency-based, personalized culture even before the mandate was handed down.
For schools, districts, and states nationwide, New Hampshire provides a case study on the variety of new solutions that emerge when regulatory barriers disappear and schools are free to embrace competency-based approaches. The lessons from 13 schools across the state suggest that adopting competency-based approaches is not a quick or easy process, and that it requires new infrastructure, new approaches to teaching and learning, and new tools to deliver content and assess work to allow each student to progress upon mastery.

This paper is the first in a series of papers investigating the evolution of competency-based systems across New Hampshire. The next paper will analyze the role of blended learning in a subset of these schools to better understand which blended learning models appear best suited to supporting competency-based education. Stay tuned.

- See more at: http://www.christenseninstitute.org/letting-go-of-time-based-practices-a-closer-look-at-whats-happening-in-new-hampshire/#sthash.YfpNveOv.dpuf

School and location Students

served

Description

Milan Village

Elementary School*

Milan, N.H.

Grades K–6,

130 students

Milan Village Elementary School began transitioning to a competency-based

(also called “skills-based”) approach in 2006, after being categorized as a

school in need of improvement. In addition to constructing courses around

the skills and competencies that students must master, the school allows

students to move through online course material at a flexible pace, based on

performance. Starting in 2nd grade, the school provides each student with a

laptop and uses academic software and playlists to support student learning

and make individual learning pathways available to each student.

Making Community

Connections Charter

School (MC2)

Manchester, N.H.

Grades 6–12,

43 students

MC2 is a small charter school that focuses on providing a highly-personalized

education to each student. The school has defined academic competencies

as well as “habits of mind” that students must demonstrate in order to

graduate. Each student moves through the schools’ competencies according

to an individual learning plan. Students move through these competencies in

4 phases, which are similar to but distinct from traditional grade levels. Many

students move faster through some phases than others: some students

have completed the 4 Phases in less than four years, while other students

take longer. The curriculum is heavily project-based, and students create

projects to meet particular competencies in consultation with their teachers.

Students also spend a portion of their week in internships in the community,

for which they also receive academic credit toward competencies.

North Country

Charter Academy

Littleton & Lancaster, N.H

Grades 9–12,

49 students

North Country Charter Academy is an alternative high school that serves

students who are at risk of or have already dropped out of high school. The

majority of the school’s curriculum is delivered online through Edmentum,

an online course provider. Students engage with this online curriculum at

one of North Country Charter Academy’s two sites. Students move through

Edmentum at a flexible pace with additional face-to-face support from

teachers who track each student’s progress along the way.

Sanborn Regional

High School

Kingston & Newton, N.H.

Grades 9–12,

728 students

Sanborn Regional High School was one of the earliest district high

schools to shift toward competency-based education, with significant

support from competency expert Rose Colby. It uses a competency-based

transcript, in which students receive feedback based on their mastery

of each competency. The school has also created professional learning

communities—groups of teachers across departments that meet regularly,

shares expertise, and work collaboratively—to align teachers around a

common goal of getting each student to mastery. Students who score below

a certain level of mastery have the option to “reassess,” or retake an exam,

without penalty to get to mastery. The school offers students differentiated

supports on an ongoing basis with time set aside each day for catch up or

acceleration based on the students’ progress.

Manchester School of

Technology (MST )

Manchester, N.H.

Grades 9–12,

85 students

MST began as a two-year career and technical education (CTE) program

before converting to a four-year high school for the 2012–13 school year. As

a two-year high school, MST subscribed to competency-based practices

prior to the state’s required shift in 2008–09. Teachers work together to

create school-wide competencies and then design a heavily project-based

curriculum to fulfill those competencies. Classes offer multiple learning

pathways so that students who move ahead can explore material more

deeply. The school also operates a learning lab where students who need

additional support or time can receive extra help either online or face-toface.

Next Charter School

Derry, N.H.

9–12,

33 students

Next Charter School opened in the 2013–14 school year with a strong

emphasis on personalization and project-based learning. Next adopted the

ELA and math competencies created by the NHDOE and then underlaid

those competencies with performance indicators—or smaller units of

learning within each competency—that students would need to master.

Students work on projects aligned to these competencies and performance

indicators in groups or individually. Teachers grade students based on which

competencies they are able to demonstrate through a given project. Students

have the option of revising projects that do not demonstrate mastery or

moving on to new projects that address those competencies later on.

Virtual Learning

Academy Charter School

(VLACS )

Exeter, N.H.

Grades 6–12,

serving 9,170

individual

students

with 17,626

course

enrollments

Founded in 2007, VLACS was New Hampshire’s first statewide, online

school. All of VLACS’ courses are aligned to the New Hampshire’s state

competencies and the Common Core State Standards. Students can

move through VLACS courses at a flexible pace. To pass a VLACS course,

students must demonstrate at least 85 percent proficiency against each

course competency. VLACS also provides smaller online modules used for

“competency recovery,” which consists of targeted lessons to help students

master particular competencies with which they are struggling.

Bedford High School

Bedford, N.H.

Grades

9–12, 1,328

students

Bedford High School’s teaching staff created competencies and has aligned

the school’s curriculum to those competencies. Students are graded on the

basis of course-level competencies; in other words, a given test score will

include discrete grades for a student’s performance on each competency

being assessed. Instruction at Bedford High School is not yet offered at a

flexible pace, as students move through courses on a set schedule as a class

Common Core from Left to Right

- Common Core news -- the Chicago Teachers Union on Wednesday passed a resolution opposing the standards on the grounds that they "better reflect the interests and priorities of corporate education reformers than the best interests and priorities of teachers and students." The resolution also asserts that the new exams disrupt learning and take up too much time. The CTU, which is bucking the national unions on this issue, is vowing to lobby the Illinois Board of Education to overturn the Common Core - and plans to try to rally other union affiliates to its cause. Their resolution: http://bit.ly/1hyy1h7.

- And on the pro-standards side, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is touting a recent Fox News appearance by former D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee, who didn't hesitate to take on comedian Louis C.K. and his flurry of tweets mocking Common Core math. Some kids might complain that their new homework is too tough, Rhee said, but "we have to, as the adults, know what our kids need" - and be willing to tell them they've got to buckle down and get it done. That clip: http://uscham.com/1orUpNL.

Google Classroom

http://www.google.com/edu/classroom/

The Classroom stream.  Classroom will let teachers create assignments, make announcements, and administer Q&A with their students.  With Classroom, teachers will be able to:

• Create and collect assignments: Classroom weaves together Google Docs, Drive and Gmail to help teachers create and collect assignments paperlessly. They can quickly see who has or hasn’t completed the work, and provide direct, real-time feedback to individual students.
• Improve class communications: Teachers can make announcements, ask questions and comment with students in real time—improving communication inside and outside of class.
•  Stay organized: Classroom automatically creates Drive folders for each assignment and for each student. Students can easily see what’s due on their Assignments page.

Simplified assignment process.  With Classroom, creating assignments in Google Apps for Education will be much easier. You’ll be able to attach a document from Google Drive, share YouTube videos and Google Play for Education content, or send website links. Set a due date for each individual assignment. After you press “Assign,” in the background Classroom automatically files all assignments and class materials into folders organized in Google Drive.

Class announcements and Q&A.  Communicate directly with your students in the real-time activity stream.  Teachers can pose a question at the beginning of class, post videos for the students to watch, set reminders about upcoming events or share anything else important to the class.