Archive for the ‘
education reform ’ Category
This post originally appeared on Huff Post’s IMPACT blog and can be read in its entirety here.
The recent passing of Margaret Thatcher signals the true end of an era — Thatcher, Pope John Paul II and Ronald Reagan all were powerful leaders in the 1980s. While Reagan is now known largely for his international agenda, his domestic policies remain a part of our national fabric.
The end of April will mark the 30th anniversary of the groundbreaking “A Nation at Risk” education report issued during the Reagan Administration. No matter how one feels about Reagan’s viewpoints, there is no doubt the report’s stark introductory language is memorable:
“If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”
Thirty years on we are still struggling with those words and how we are failing students especially those who live in low-income neighborhoods.
The 1983 report kicked off a national education reform effort that picked up steam in many states. Massachusetts and Maryland in particular made great strides and now are considered to be the states with the highest education standards in the country.
Meanwhile, I must admit my state of Oregon has many great features but a strong K-12 reform agenda has not been one of them. On state report cards, we get an A for being bike friendly and an A+ for hazelnut production. But Education Week gives us a C on its report card and ranks us 43rd in the nation for education based on numerous factors including how we treat teachers. We received a D in the subcategories of accountability for quality and incentives and allocations.
Read more.
Category:
Chalkboard Project, education achievement gap, education reform |
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Tags: Chalkboard Project, education, education policy, education reform, Huffington Post IMPACT, Margaret Thatcher, Oregon Education, Ronald Reagan, Sue Hildick
Adam Davis is a Founder and Principal of DHM Research, an independent, non-partisan public opinion research and consultation firm in Portland, Oregon. With over 30 years of experience in all phases of public opinion research, Adam’s expertise ranges from survey research design to focus group moderating.
Twitter: @DHMresearch
Facebook: www.facebook.com/dhmresearch
Much is made in Oregon of the urban/rural divide—the supposed gulf that separates Oregonians living in urban and rural areas of the state based on differences in their values and beliefs. I started measuring these differences thirty-six years ago when I first began to research opinion in all corners of the state. While there are important differences, what I also learned then, and continue to see in our surveys today, is how similar we Oregonians are in much that we hold dear, regardless of where we live in the state. Too often only the differences are reported by the media and beaten like a drum in political speeches. (more…)
Category:
education reform, funding |
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Tags: Adam Davis, DHM Research, education policy, education reform, K-12 education, Oregon, Oregon Education, PERS, public education, urban/rural divide
Adam Davis is a Founder and Principal of DHM Research, an independent, non-partisan public opinion research and consultation firm in Portland, Oregon. With over 30 years of experience in all phases of public opinion research, Adam’s expertise ranges from survey research design to focus group moderating.
Twitter: @DHMresearch
Facebook: www.facebook.com/dhmresearch
My last two postings presented some issues education reform advocates in Oregon should consider as they work to improve public K-12 education in Oregon and do battle, often with teacher unions, in Salem and in their local districts. Another tool to have in your advocacy tool box are survey findings showing how teachers (as opposed to teacher union leadership) feel about the issues, including an understanding of the motivations that underlie those feelings, if attitudes cut across the full teacher population or if there are certain subgroups of teachers (e.g., newer teachers) that may feel differently than other subgroups, and how these feelings compare to voter attitudes. (more…)
Category:
education reform, Legislative |
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Tags: Adam Davis, advocacy, DHM Research, education reform, K-12 education, legislative session 2013, Oregon Education, public education, student success, teacher voice
Betsy Miller-Jones has served as the interim executive director of OSBA since January 2012. From 2004 through 2011 she provided training, facilitation and board development services to Oregon school district, ESD and community college boards. Betsy has six years experience as an elected school board member and prior experience with executive search services and board training with the New Hampshire School Boards Association. She is a nationally recognized board trainer, presenting at the National School Boards Association annual convention and at other state conferences. Betsy has a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Duke University and a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The new achievement compacts put in place by the Oregon Education Investment Board (OEIB) call for school boards to set annual targets of student achievement that will lead to 100% graduation from high school by the year 2025. The first achievement compacts were entered into between school boards and the OEIB last spring (2012). This spring (2013) will be the first complete cycle of reviewing data, incorporating public comment and building on the recommendations of the achievement compact advisory committees in each district. To help board members better understand both the how and the why behind achievement compacts, OSBA sat down with Chief Education Officer Dr. Rudy Crew and asked a series of questions about both the process and the philosophy behind this new way of doing business. (more…)
Category:
education reform |
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Tags: achievement compacts, advocacy, Betsy Miller-Jones, COSA, Crew's Corner, dr. rudy crew, Gateway to Student Achievement, graduation rates, leadership, lighthouse project, OEIB, OSBA, school districts, services
Dr. Andrew Dyke is a Senior Economist at ECONorthwest. He specializes in program evaluation and applied microeconomic analysis. He develops and applies sophisticated econometric models for many policy areas, including crime, education and labor economics. His recent project work includes student achievement growth modeling for Chalkboard Project’s federally funded Teacher Incentive Fund grant, an evaluation of Oregon’s Employer Workforce Training Fund, and regional economic modeling for TriMet and the Puget Sound Regional Council.
We all know this: Improving education to promote student outcomes—academic, social, and otherwise—is hard work, and it requires risk-taking and experimentation to succeed. Unfortunately, it’s also all too easy for individuals—educators and researchers, alike—to assume that they have found the magic bullet, if only everyone would sit up and listen… As a result, the “next big thing” often gets oversold as proven technology, implemented too quickly, and frequently discarded before the final results are in. Good ideas as well as bad can suffer the same fate. (more…)
Category:
education reform |
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Tags: Andrew Dyke, Chalkboard Project, ECONorthwest, EcoNW, oregon public education, public education, stakeholders, Teacher Incentive Fund, TIF, training, value-added models, VAM
Adam Davis is a Founder and Principal of DHM Research, an independent, non-partisan public opinion research and consultation firm in Portland, Oregon. With over 30 years of experience in all phases of public opinion research, Adam’s expertise ranges from survey research design to focus group moderating.
Twitter: @DHMresearch
Facebook: www.facebook.com/dhmresearch
Last time we looked at six issues for K-12 advocates to consider in preparing to do battle in Salem during the 2013 legislative session. This time let’s consider six sneaker issues related to public education. Like sneaker waves that are large and unexpected, these issues might rise up without warning and swamp discussions between educators and Oregonians. They are important to know about, because how advocates address them may impact their credibility with people whose support is important in other areas, like improving educator quality and securing more funding.
Too much homework. Many parents feel their children—especially K-8—are being given too much homework, to the point of negatively impacting family dynamics and jeopardizing their children’s health. Parents also get inconsistent messages about the quality and quantity of homework from administrators and teachers. Some believe there is no empirical evidence showing that homework plays an important role in a child’s academic success, and they feel it is a poor substitute for more time in the classroom with teachers and fellow students. (more…)
Category:
education reform |
3 Comments »
Tags: Adam Davis, art education, curriculum, DHM Research, discipline, education in Oregon, homework, Oregonians, STEM, too much homework
Ford Morishita is a member of the Chalkboard Project Advisory Council. After teaching science, and coaching for 33 years at the middle and high school levels, he retired in 2011. His interests include STEM literacy across all subjects, early childhood science, bringing bioscience/bioengineering education into the classroom, and NGSS (Next Generation Science Standards) implementation. Ford’s professional service includes work at the local, state and national levels. He served as a founding member of the Teachers Advisory Council for the National Research Council, past president for the Oregon Science Teachers Association, and was designated a national associate of the National Academies. He has a B.S. in Biology and an M.A.T. from Lewis and Clark College.
I was recently contacted by a specialist with Defined STEM, and listened intently as they gave a short presentation of their web-based education program. I was extremely impressed, and immediately began to think about the potential utility of this application for any school district developing a STEM curriculum framework. The skinny here is: “Defined STEM is a web-based application designed to promote effective and relevant connections between 21st century learning skills and how those skills are used across all subjects and curriculum.” (more…)
Category:
education reform |
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Tags: Defined STEM, Ford Morishita, STEM
Dr. Rudy Crew, Oregon’s new Chief Education Officer, spoke at the Grantmakers Conference in Eugene on October 17th. About sixty representatives of Oregon foundations heard him suggest where Oregon should focus its energies and resources to help students grow and achieve—making sure all students can read by third grade, promoting STEAM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics), better training and supporting teachers, and supporting stronger parent and community connections with schools.
As I listened it occurred to me that education officials and advocates know how to advance in all four of these areas. There are proven programs for teaching reading and raising literacy. There are effective models for engaging students in meaningful STEAM instruction and activities. There are traditional and non-traditional programs that are better equipping teachers to be successful in the short and long-term. There are exemplars in building relationships between parents and schools. We have a pretty good idea how to do all this; perhaps not with unquestionable certainty, but with enough confidence to move forward. We lack just one resource. (more…)
Category:
Chalkboard Project, education reform |
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Tags: Chalkboard Project, Distinguished Educators Council, ed reform, education policy, Oregon Education, professional development, time for educators, todd jones
When the annual school report cards are issued, many parents eagerly scan for their student’s school to see where it stands, and if it has improved. Yet when they look at the scores, they are often left feeling confused—no more informed about what kind of education their child is receiving than before. As a busy parent, it is convenient to have a simple document that gives a quick snapshot of how your child’s school is faring. But the current report card, which depends exclusively on high-stakes, standardized testing, leaves that picture black and white at best. For the report card to be truly useful as a measure of educational quality offered by a particular school to parents, it needs to give color to the culture of the school. It needs to reflect what the school is like on the inside, not just whether all students have met a predetermined cut score. I am more concerned with the growth of each student from year to year, including both students who have not yet ‘met’ grade level standards and those who have scored high enough to exceed the needed score. A school that is making strides to help students improve year to year seems like a more personalized and relevant marker of whether individual students are learning. (more…)
Category:
education reform, innovation, student achievement |
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Tags: equity, family engagement, Harvard Family Research Project, Oregon report card, parent involvement, school climate, school report card
The Distinguished Educators Council (DEC), made up of 13 Oregon teachers recognized for their knowledge and accomplishments, has released its recommendations to ensure Oregon is a great place to teach. “As we work to create a seamless, high-quality system from birth through post-secondary education we know that teachers at all levels will be the real drivers of change in schools across the state. We should all be doing what we can to ensure that teachers’ voices are helping to drive these policy conversations,” reflected Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber. “I am glad to see this group of distinguished teachers offering their best thinking and using their expertise to benefit students inside and outside their own classrooms.”
The report outlines five top-line recommendations, each with specific actions policymakers and school leaders should take to improve teaching and learning.
Read the full report, “Making Oregon a Great Place to Teach: Recommendations from the Distinguished Educators Council.”
Read the news release.
Category:
Chalkboard Project, education reform, equity |
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Tags: Chalkboard Project, DEC recommendations, DEC report, Distinguished Educators Council, diversity in education, education policy, equity, leadership opportunities, teacher evaluations, teacher preparation
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