Franklin Schargel’s Blog

Until now, if you wanted to know how a school district’s high school graduation rate fared against other states or regions, you’d have to rely on state averages from the federal government. The Hechinger Report felt that was not good enough. (https://hechingerreport.org/the-gradation-rates-from-every-school-district-in-one-map/)

The government mandated a uniform way of calculating high school graduation rates beginning with the class of 2011. Since then, the national rate rose from 79 percent to 81 percent in 2013. It ranges from 69 percent in Oregon to nearly 90 percent in Iowa. But with only state-level figures published, that’s an incomplete picture, since low-performers are masked into averages. Hence this map. It comes with caveats, too. These rates are for all students from 2013, as a handful of states have yet to report their 2014 numbers. The state information wasn’t always completely in line with the district maps, and obviously missing some districts. The data don’t capture charter schools or private schools. Different states have different graduation requirements. And reported graduation rates can be questionable.

Nevertheless, the numbers tell fascinating stories. At first glance, you can see some regional patterns: Just look at how low graduation rates are in the South, and at the stark differences along some state borders, like Texas’s high graduation rates and New Mexico’s low ones. Some states are generally consistent in their achievement (Wisconsin) or lack thereof (Nevada), while others have notable variation among districts. In Colorado, for instance, poorer-performing districts surround pockets of high graduation rates.

 

The Akribos Group has just posted my 2nd article dealing with dropout Prevention.  You can visit their website, www.akribos.com or my website, www.schargel.com

The Grading of the Common Core Tests (from the NY Times)

The new academic standards known as the Common Core emphasize critical thinking, complex problem-solving and writing skills, and put less stock in rote learning and memorization. So the standardized tests given in most states this year required fewer multiple choice questions and far more writing on topics like this one posed to elementary school students: Read a passage from a novel written in the first person, and a poem written in the third person, and describe how the poem might change if it were written in the first person.

But educators do not necessarily judge the results.

About 100 temporary employees of the testing giant Pearson worked in diligent silence scoring thousands of short essays written by third- and fifth-grade students from across the country. There was a onetime wedding planner, a retired medical technologist and a former Pearson saleswoman with a master’s degree in marital counseling. To get the job, like other scorers nationwide, they needed a four-year college degree with relevant coursework, but no teaching experience. Pearson, which operates 21 scoring centers around the country, hired 14,500 temporary scorers throughout the scoring season, which began in April and will continue through July. About three-quarters of the scorers work from home. Pearson recruited them through its own website, personal referrals, job fairs, Internet job search engines, local newspaper classified ads and even Craigslist and Facebook. They earned $12 to $14 an hour, with the possibility of small bonuses if they hit daily quality and volume targets.

Officials from Pearson and Parcc, a nonprofit consortium that has coordinated development of new Common Core tests, say strict training and scoring protocols are intended to ensure consistency, no matter who is marking the tests. Still, educators, see a problem if the tests are not primarily scored by teachers. About 12 million students nationwide from third grade through high school took the new tests this year. Parcc, formally known as the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, another test development group, along with contractors like Pearson, worked with current classroom teachers and state education officials to develop the questions and set detailed criteria for grading student responses, including New York, separately developed Common Core tests without either consortium’s involvement.

Parcc said that more than three-quarters of the scorers have at least one year of teaching experience, but that it does not have data on how many are currently working as classroom teachers. Some are retired teachers with extensive classroom experience, but one scorer in San Antonio, for example, had one year of teaching experience, 45 years ago. For exams like the Advanced Placement tests given by the College Board, scorers must be current college professors or high school teachers who have at least three years of experience teaching the subject they are scoring.

“Having classroom teachers engaged in scoring is a tremendous opportunity,” said Tony Alpert, executive director of Smarter Balanced. “But we don’t want to do it at the expense of their real work, which is teaching kids.”

The most important factor in scoring, testing experts say, is to set guidelines that are clear enough so that two different scorers consistently arrive at the same score.

During training sessions of two to five days for the Parcc tests, prospective scorers study examples of student essays that have been graded by teachers and professors as well as the scoring criteria. To monitor workers as they score, Pearson regularly slips previously scored responses into the computer queues of scorers to see if their numbers match those already given by senior supervisors. Scorers who repeatedly fail to match these so-called validity papers are let go.

At the San Antonio center on Friday, the scorers worked on the Parcc test, which was given in 11 states and Washington.

Still, the new tests are much more complicated and nuanced than previous exams and require more from the scorers, said James W. Pellegrino, a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago who serves on advisory boards for Parcc and Smarter Balanced. “You’re asking people still, even with the best of rubrics and evidence and training, to make judgments about complex forms of cognition,” Mr. Pellegrino said. “The more we go towards the kinds of interesting thinking and problems and situations that tend to be more about open-ended answers, the harder it is to get objective agreement in scoring.”

I understand the difficulties and complexities of marking examinations. I did it for all of my professional life. But the testing companies which are making large sums of money not use trained educators and to pay them (according to the article) “$12 to $14 an hour, with the possibility of small bonuses if they hit daily quality and volume targets” and to allow them to work at home where no body validates their involvement or the time it takes to grade and to give them bonuses based on “volume targets” an examination seems criminal when so much depends on the grading of the papers. Why aren’t Pearson and PARCC using professionals as the College Board does with the grading of Advanced Placement tests?

 

Compare this to the grading of tests for doctors or accountants. Would we allow these important tests to be graded by non-professionals who have had limited experience in the field and worked at home and were paid $12 to $14 an hour and were given incentive bonuses for meeting volume targets? Just asking!

 

 

The New Mexico Supreme Court has ruled that students called to the principal’s or dean’s office with the possibility of  arrest must be given his/her Miranda rights. The court also said that the mere presence of a uniformed deputy or School Resource Officer (SRO) does not preclude the student’s rights. The court distinguished between questioning by a school official for discipline and questioning by a law enforcement official empowered to bring criminal charges.

The court’s ruling said that a child’s statement cannot be used “if the confession was elicited in the presence of a law enforcement officer or a school official  acting as an agent of law enforcement’ without advising the youth of his or her rights and there is a “knowing, intelligent and voluntary waiver.”

This ruling, if affirmed and used, in other states has a wide impact on school policy.

Should schools be punished when students and parents opt out of high stakes testing? Large numbers of students have refused to sit for standardized tests this year. The antitesting movement has been growing in a number of states. For months, state and federal officials warned that districts that fell below a 95 percent participation rate might lose federal funds,

 

In New York State, school districts will not be penalized for having large numbers of students refusing to sit for the New York State standardized tests this year, education officials stated. The number of students who opted out of the tests this year was quadruple the number from the year before and constituted some 20 percent of potential test takers, hampering the state’s ability to analyze the test results. More than 200,000 third through eighth graders declined to take the exams this year. In a number of districts, students who refused to take the tests outnumbered those who did. In the Chateaugay Central School District had an 89 percent opt-out rate.

But New York State is not alone. In New Jersey, tens of thousands also opted-out. Many Colorado districts saw less than 80 percent participation. Pennsylvania’s opt-out rate tripled from last year. More than 3,000 boycotted examinations in Albuquerque.

I am not opposed to testing. For better or worse, being good at taking tests has helped me at every point of my educational careers. I am opposed to how the test results are inappropriately being used. Linking test results and high stakes tests to rank schools, how to fund them and being used to evaluate teachers inevitably leads teachers and schools to teach to the test, spend large amounts of time and money and results in less teaching. This has caused teachers to be driven out of a profession that they love and is corroding the true purposes of education.

PBS NewsHour’s Rethinking College series:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/topic/education/
All this week, PBS will be exploring one of the biggest problems facing higher education in the United States. The shows can be viewed later.
More students are enrolling in college, but the percent of students who actually earn a college credential by the age of 24 has only increased significantly for families with the highest household incomes. Between 1970 and 2013, the percent of students earning college credentials from families with incomes in the top quarter of all household rose from 40 to 77 percent.

For students from families in the lowest quarter of all households, attainment of a college credential rose from 6 to just 9 percent.
Every night, this week, the PBS NewsHour will take a look at efforts on campuses across the country “” from the University of Texas at Austin to Valencia College in Orlando, Florida “” focused not just getting more low-income, first-generation students into college, but through college to a useful credential.
Online, the NewsHour and its partners at the Hechinger Report and Inside Higher Ed, will examine places where efforts like these are paying off and where states and others are falling short.
By some projections, within the next five years about 65 percent of jobs in the United States will require some form of certification beyond a high school diploma.
But despite a focus from the Obama administration and countless nonprofits, degree attainment in the U.S. is not rising fast. In 2013, 40 percent of those between 25 and 65 had a postsecondary credential, just 2.1 percentage points than the 37.9 percent that did in 2008.
That stall has more leaders and educators asking what it will take to close the country’s graduation gap.

Is college worth the cost? Sure, it is!  However, in the past a college education virtually insured the individual with a degree a better paying job.  To a large degree that is still true.  But today, it is connected to a large student debt. A college degree is simply a way station to better employment so that students need to consider what they are they being trained for, what are the employment prospects in that field, and will the education they are being trained for pay them enough to pay off their student loans. 

10 Math Applications from Voniz.com

Mathematics provides a challenge to many students. It has even created a new work, mathphobic. Solving problems, algorithms, algebra, trigonometry, linear equations, calculus etc. are not everyone’s cup of tea. With the increased emphasis of jobs requiring math skills, educators need to find way of making more interesting and less fearful. There are a number of math websites and courses online that can easily help in problem solving with step by step tutorials, math games and guide articles. Look below for top 10 websites for learning mathematics online.

1. Mathway

Mathway is a mathematics website that can solve almost all kinds of math problems. It offers different mathematics tools and helpful tutorials that can guide to learn all concepts of mathematics easily. With hundreds of millions of problems already solved, Mathway is one of the top problem solving resource available for students, parents, and teachers. Mathway solves problems in Basic Math, Pre-Algebra, Algebra, Trigonometry, Precalculus, Calculus, Statistics, Finite Math, Linear Algebra, and Chemistry. Available easily on Android and I tunes, receiving answers on Mathway is completely free, but step-by-step solutions require payment.

2. Math

Math.com provides a unique experience that quickly guides the user to the solutions they need and the products they want. The solutions include on demand modular courses targeting key math concepts, 24/7 online tutoring, assessments, and expert answers to math problems and questions. It also offers recreational and exploratory introduction to the world of math that can be easily understood and used for deeper understanding of the subject.

3. Mathsisfun

Mathsisfun is a platforms for learning mathematics in a fun way. It provides numerous mathematic tools, puzzles, games, worksheets and activities that can make learning mathematics interesting for children, teachers and parents. It covers topics such as data, geometry, numbers, money, algebra, measurement.

4. Coolmath4kids

Coolmath4kids is one of the learning websites providing  some useful Mathematics learning tools, puzzles and games which are very useful to teach kids Mathematics. It boasts to be an amusement park of learning games, activities, puzzles and many more things for students under 12 years.

5. Mathforum

Mathforum is  one of the oldest forums on mathematics where students and teachers can engage and problem solve. It is made for educators, teachers, students and researchers who love math or want to love math.  It is regarded as one of the best virtual learning platforms for learning mathematics and online teaching, offering study materials, articles, guides and software, on math for all levels (Elementary, Middle, High and College+).

6. PurpleMath

PurpleMath is another popular site for students and teachers to gain a deeper understanding of algebra. It provides for innovative ways to learn algebra and emphasizes on practicalities rather than technicalities making math useful in real life. It contains tutoring forums, worksheets, lessons and articles to make learning algebra easy and fun.

7. Coolmath

Coolmath is a popular mathematics learning website making the learning experience easier to understand. It provides math for 13 years to 100 years of age covering topics such as algebra, pre-calculus and more. CoolMath offers free math lessons, games and applications which can help students learning math quickly.

8. Mathplayground

Mathplayground offers math-based kids learning games. It is an educational site for elementary and middle school students where you can practice your math skills, play a logic game, and have some fun!

9. Mathcats

Mathcats provides funny puzzle and games to learn math easily. This website promotes open-ended and playful explorations of important math concepts in the context of online learning games, interactive applets, and activity suggestions. Math Cats is filled with activities covering a variety of math concepts. In this engaging site, you will find math games, math trivia, math investigations, math crafts, an art gallery loaded with student submitted “cat artwork,” and more. Students will enjoy this colorful site that is sure to provide hours of fun while learning.

10. 10. Onlinemathlearning

Onlinemathlearning offers basic to high level math teaching materials to students. You can find here hundreds of useful resources on Mathematics . It offers mathematics solutions from Pre-KG to 12th Grade, along with Maths for Tests such as GRE, GMAT, SAT, GCSE, Regents, ACT, California, A-level . It also includes interactive learning through games and worksheets.

 

The PARCC Examination

According to the Denver Post, (8/3/2015) and Education Week (July 23, 2015) the PARCC (Partnership of Readiness for College and Careers) faces “an “uncertain future”. The “once strong” examination is bleeding members.” Some of the original 24 states (in 2010) that gave the tests this past spring are either backing out of giving them this coming school year or are on the bench because of either budgetary or political reasons.

Last spring ten states and Washington DC gave the tests but at least 3 states have declined to give the test next school year. Arkansas, Mississippi and Ohio won’t be giving the test next year due to educational budget cuts or votes by their school boards. Louisiana is barred from using PARCC test items for a majority of its exam next school year. In addition there is a serious push in Massachusetts for not to give the PARCC in the 2015-2016 school year. The number of states giving the PARCC examination in 2015-2016 school year will total six (Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico and Rhode Island). If Massachusetts ultimately chooses PARCC, that number rises to seven and D.C.

Tom Loveless, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, a Washington, DC based think tank said, “PARCC’s future is cloudy.”