Education Week - March 12, 2014 - 1

EDUCATIONWEEK
VOL. 33, NO. 24 * MARCH 12, 2014
AMERICAN EDUCATION'S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD * © 2014 Editorial Projects in Education * $4
Plans Offer Strong Echoes of Common Core
By Caralee J. Adams
The plans unveiled last week by the College Board for a redesigned
College Board President David Coleman, in announcing planned changes to the SAT last week in Austin, Texas, said the
redesigned college-entrance exam "will be more focused and clear, useful and open than ever before."
SAT include substantive shifts aimed at making the exam more "focused"
and "useful," including an emphasis on having students justify their
answers with textual evidence, shunning "obscure" SAT words, making
the essay optional, and covering fewer math topics but in greater depth.
The redesign also offers strong echoes of the Common Core State
Standards, which board President David Coleman helped write.
In a March 5 announcement in Austin, Texas, Mr. Coleman said
the new exam, scheduled to debut in the spring of 2016, will better
reflect what students do in rigorous high school courses and what
they need to master in preparation for college and a career.
"Admissions officers and counselors find the data from admissions
exams useful, but are concerned that these exams have become disconnected
from the work of high school and surrounded by costly test
preparation," he said. "We've been listening to students and their
families for whom these tests are often mysterious and foster unproductive
anxiety."
The announcement by the College Board, which develops and administers
the SAT, comes two years after the college-entrance exam's reach
was first eclipsed by that of the rival ACT. For the class of 2013, 1.8 million
students took the ACT, compared with 1.7 million taking the SAT.
Reaction to the planned changes was mixed, but Christina L. Theokas,
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edweek.org: BREAKING NEWS DAILY
SAT Makeover Aims
To Reflect Classroom
THE INNOVATION GAMBLE
A city district rests its hopes on a tech-themed approach
Second of three parts
Making New Models Work
Is Instructional Challenge
By Benjamin Herold
Philadelphia
Another first-period engineering class has just been derailed by a series
of small frustrations: Students strolling in late. Questions met with blank
stares. Smartphones used for text messages instead of research.
Karthik Subburam, a five-year veteran in his first year teaching in the
"inquiry-driven, project-based, technology-infused" style of Philadelphia's
nationally acclaimed Science Leadership Academy, runs his fingers through
his hair. "Sometimes, it's like pulling teeth," he says.
Six months into the school year, a controversial gamble by Philadelphia
Superintendent William R. Hite to expand innovative school models has
yielded progress. Science Leadership Academy has established a second
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Testing Skeptics' Advice: Just Say 'No'
By Karla Scoon Reid
Riding what they see as a wave of
anti-testing sentiment among parents,
opponents of high-stakes assessments
believe a strategy known
as opt-out-having parents refuse
to let their children take state-mandated
tests-could force policymakers
to take note of their cause.
Once considered a rarity, the optout
push has prompted high-profile
boycott efforts and meetings in
large districts such as Chicago and
led more parents nationwide to join
forces with anti-testing advocates
in arguing that the assessments
are unnecessary, excessive, and, in
some cases, even harmful to students.

Such efforts come at a time when
states across the country are preparing
to field-test assessments
aligned with the Common Core
State Standards, and when controversy
over the common core in
many statehouses has reignited the
debate over testing overload.
In Chicago, where students
started taking the Illinois Stan-
dards Achievement Test last week,
teachers at two schools will likely
face disciplinary action for refusing
to administer the assessment. Parent
advocates last week were asserting
that up to 2,000 students in
grades 3-8 opted out, though a Chicago
school district official disputed
that tally, estimating the number to
be fewer than 1,000.
Rallies and meetings promoting
parents' rights to refuse student
testing are planned in a wide range
of communities, from Denver to
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Political, Policy Feuds Roil Indiana's K-12 Landscape
By Andrew Ujifusa
Indianapolis
For anyone seeking a mixture of
Students work on designing and building a model home during an engineering
class at Science Leadership Academy at Beeber in Philadelphia.
fierce education policy fights, governance
struggles under a spotlight,
and wrangling over the hottest K-12
topic in the nation-the common
core-Indiana is the perfect venue.
The key leaders are clear, and the
conflicts aren't drab affairs. State
Superintendent of Public Instruction
Glenda Ritz, a Democrat swept
into office in a 2012 upset, unsuccessfully
sued the appointed state board
of education in October when board
members sought help from the GOPcontrolled
legislature on A-F school
accountability.
A spat at a November state board
meeting about the powers of a new
agency created last year by Republican
Gov. Mike Pence became heated
enough that a mediator was assigned
to help. Ms. Ritz, a former school
media specialist, then cried foul over
a plan the agency discussed to remove
her as head of the state board.
And now Indiana is poised to re-
place the Common Core State Standards
with something different but
not entirely dissimilar, with uncertain
consequences for testing, accountability,
and instruction.
The environment became so tense
that U.S. Secretary of Education Arne
Duncan told a group of reporters in
January, "It's a level of dysfunction
that I have never seen before."
Relative calm has prevailed more
recently, and cooperation has emerged
in some areas. But the atmosphere is
a far cry from the dynamic that prevailed
from 2009 through 2012, when
then-Gov. Mitch Daniels and thenSuperintendent
Tony Bennett, both
Republicans, frequently collaborated.
"The different people in different
roles expose different weaknesses
in the system," said Gordon Hendry,
a Democratic member of the state
school board appointed last year by
Gov. Pence, who, like Ms. Ritz, took office
last year.
Although several states are having
vigorous debates about repealPAGE
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Jessica Kourkounis for Education Week
Erich Schlegel for Education Week

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Education Week - March 12, 2014

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