Education Station NewsOK.com Blogging Community

-PERSONAL LOOK AT DISTRICT LAYOFFS: More than 60 central office employees in the Dallas school district were shown the door at the start of this week, and more cuts - including teachers - could be on the way later today as officials try to remedy an $84 million budget shortfall. Here’s a view on the situation from Donald Claxton, who briefly headed the communications department at Oklahoma City Public Schools under former Superintendent John Porter after working in the Dallas district.

-BOYCOTT MOVES TO THE BALL FIELD: An Illinois state senator from Chicago took his stab at school funding reform to last night’s playoff game between the Cubs and the Dodgers last night. Sen. James Meeks also led a student boycott of lower performing schools at the start of the year.

-CONFUSING STUDENT ASSESSMENTS: This Washington Post story talks about a literacy program’s assessments that start on a seemingly arbitrary scale of 2 to 16 and then switch to the letters J through P. I’m not questioning the scale or the program there, but the article did make me think about whether parents can always understand how their students are evaluated.

Wendy Kleinman
Education Reporter

I just wrapped up writing about the 2008 National Merit Scholarship winners in July.

But already, the list of nearly 200 Oklahoma students who are semifinalists in the 2009 National Merit Scholarship Program is out.

The 195 students are among 1,600 nationwide who will go on to compete for $35 million in college scholarships. About half will win, according to the National Merit Scholarship Corporation.

I did a few breakdowns of the list of Oklahoma semifinalists:
   143 attend public schools.
   42 attend private schools.
   9 are homeschooled.
   1 goes to a charter school.

Three schools yielded more than 10 semifinalists:
   The Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics, with 22.
   Jenks High School, with 14.
   Holland Hall School in Tulsa, with 13.

The students qualified by earning the highest scores among state test-takers on the 2007 Preliminary SAT exam.

The list of seniors will be narrowed down to a list of finalists before the scholarship winners are announced in the coming months.

Click here for a list of all the Sooner semifinalists.

Wendy Kleinman
Education Reporter

State test scores were released Thursday, for which student performance in part determined which schools landed on the NCLB-mandated 2008 Needs Improvement list.

Here’s a little more detail on how students fare on the different tests (click to enlarge):

Also Thursday, I ran across a story about how New York City officials want to give math assessments to kindergarteners. As you might imagine, there’s some debate over whether that’s too young an age for standardized testing. The full story is here.

Feel free to share your thoughts on these assessments or the Needs Improvement list below.

Wendy Kleinman
The Oklahoman

The nonprofit Center for Education Policy released a national report today studying the effect of NCLB: Has it really helped?

Researchers found that they couldn’t tell whether the No Child Left Behind Act has indeed left fewer children behind. But what the law did give the researchers was more data because of the required testing and reporting.

Here’s what that data showed about Oklahoma.

-The percent of all students proficient in reading and math saw a moderate-to-large gain all levels — except middle school reading — from 2002 to 2007. The percent of middle school students proficient in reading saw a slight gain.

-In reading, the achievement gap narrowed between blacks and whites, Hispanics and whites, and American Indians and whites on all grade levels except for high school Hispanics. There was no change in the gap between high school Hispanic and white students in reading.

-In math, the gap narrowed between whites and the other racial groups on elementary and middle school levels, but widened across all racial groups at the high school level.

Wendy K. Kleinman
Education Reporter

I wrote a story for Sunday’s Oklahoman about schools on “year-round” schedules, in which the school year is spread across a longer stretch of the calendar year by taking more frequent breaks.

Here’s a little more of the story - a breakdown of the scores of the traditional public schools on the year-round calendar and the years they started, plus a list of exactly which other places in the state follow the model.

SCHOOL                                                       2007 API SCORE            INITIAL YEAR
Oklahoma City Public Schools              1062 (average)
     Horace Mann Elementary                             1394                          2002-03
     Sequoyah Elementary                                   1430                          2001-02
     Westwood Elementary                                   *                               2002-03
Tulsa Public Schools                                1065 (average)
     Chouteau Elementary                                   1396                          2000-01
     Eugene Field Elementary                               869                          2004-05
     Kendall-Whittier Elementary                        1304                         1998-99
     Mark Twain Elementary                                1375                         2000-01
     Marshall Elementary                                      1195                         2000-01
Office of Juvenile Affairs centers
     Juvenile Center, Tecumseh
     Education Unit-Manitou, Tipton
     L.E. Rader Center, Sand Springs
Other state-accredited schools
     Lakeside School, Granite
     Tulsa Job Corp Center, Tulsa

*NOTES: Westwood did not meet the minimum number of test scores required for reporting. However, in 2006, the school’s API score was 1232, higher than the Oklahoma City average that year of 1006. Scores reported for 2007 were taken in the 2006-07 school year. The reporting samples were too small for juvenile affairs centers, and the final two are not required to report test scores to the state. (Sources: State Department of Education, Oklahoman research)

What do you think of this “continuous learning” model of school scheduling? Share your thoughts here on NewsOK’s Education Station.

Wendy K. Kleinman
Education Reporter

Report cards are out for schools and school districts across the state.

The Education Oversight Board in the state’s accountability office recently released data for the 2006-07 school year.

The report cards include statistics like regular and special education enrollment, average teacher salary, census data and of course test scores.

They are accessible online for free at www.SchoolReportCard.org/reports.htm.

Example of school-level report card
Example of district-level report card

Wendy K. Kleinman
Education Reporter

Mississippi legislators want to bring greater accountability to their superintendents, telling those in underperforming districts to bring them up to par or leave the course altogether.

The legislation — which must first garner federal approval because election rules are affected — would terminate superintendents whose districts fail to meet academic standards for two consecutive years.

The governor would removed elected superintendents and bar them from running for re-election, while appointed superintendents would be automatically fired.

The proposal has stirred up controversy in Mississippi. I’d like to know what you think.

Should students test scores be used to hold superintendents accountable? Is two years enough time to bring meaningful change? Is it right for a law to require a superintendent’s departure?

Share your thoughts here on NewsOK’s Education Station.

Wendy K. Kleinman
Education Reporter

A while back I came across a music video about education by Grammy Award-winning musician Tom Chapin.

The song is called “Not On The Test,” a topic I thought might be appropriate to address as Oklahoma students take state-mandated exams this month.

Here’s what the publicly schooled Chapin has to say in a statement about his song:

“Music, art, drama and sports — these are what kept me involved when I was in school. And these very things that make a teacher’s (and student’s) job easier and more rewarding are what’s been cut from curriculums across the country.

“Now we are teaching by rote again — where the test, and only the test, becomes the reason to teach and study.”

Do you agree? Take a listen to Chapin’s song at www.NotOnTheTest.com and share your feedback here on the Education Station blog at http://blog.newsok.com/educationstation.

Wendy K. Kleinman
Education Reporter

I never lived in on-campus housing. My community college didn’t have dorms at the time, and after I transferred I lived in rental houses off campus.

I think I missed out on an important college experience. Living with other students surely adds camaraderie to college life, and studies show it can also help keep students on track academically.

OU students have lots of options, both on and off campus, and at all price ranges. OU is hoping to lure more upper division students back to campus housing with a rebate program that gives back $100 to $400 a semester if the student maintains a high GPA.

Here’s the breakdown: GPAs of 3.25 to 3.49 would get $100 back; GPAs of 3.5 to 3.74 would get $200 rebated; GPAs of 3.75 to 3.99 would get $300, and 4.0 GPAs would get $400 back. 

OU’s Traditions Square apartments rent for $480 a month and include all bills paid. So students earning a perfect GPA would get most of one month’s rent back in reward for their academic success.

What do you think about the plan? Would it entice you to live on campus and make better grades?

E-mail me at ssimpson@oklahoman.com

Susan Simpson, Education Writer

The Oklahoma students who took the 2007 National Assessment of Education Progress exams are likely proud of the test results that were released Tuesday.

The scores show that Oklahoma was only one of 14 states whose students made gains in both grade 4 and grade 8 math since the 2005 assessment. Grade 4 reading scores also went up; grade 8 reading scores remained unchanged.

Nationwide, scores rose for both grades in both subjects. However, actual state scores are below the national averages.

About 2,800 Oklahomans took the four NAEP exams — about 40 percent were minority and more than 50 percent qualified for free or reduced lunch, a poverty indicator.

But scholars at Cato’s Center for Educational Freedom, a nonprofit policy research foundation in Washington, caution that the students’ gains may not be worth much celebration.

“While scores did generally improve, today’s NAEP results are nothing to write home about, nor are they any indicator that No Child Left Behind is doing any good,” said Cato policy analyst Neal McCluskey.

“Score improvements were small and either only continued increases taking place before NCLB, or actually slowed or stopped overall improvement rates,” he said.

Check out http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard for more details on the test results.

Wendy K. Kleinman
Education Writer