Education Week - March 27, 2013 - 1

Education Week
VOL. 32, NO. 26 • MARCH 27, 2013

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edweek.org:

BREAKING NEWS DAILY

N.Y.C. System
School-Match
Gaps Tracked
Scholars Cite Pipeline Disparities

The first round of this year’s high-school-match
notifications in New York City’s massive, districtwide school choice process went out to students
this month, sparking celebration, consternation,
and a renewal of concerns about unequal access to
the city’s best schools.
A duo of soon-to-be-released studies previewed
March 15 at the annual Association of Education
Research and Policy meeting in New Orleans finds
that a majority of students—even low achievers—
get their first choice of high schools under the system. But students also tend to take very different
tracks through the system, depending on their
academic-proficiency levels, a fact that highlights
the complex roles that neighborhoods, schools, interests, and academic expectations can play in the
school-selection process.
The Big Apple’s school-matching system is certainly on a New York scale, with a formula so complex that its 2003 design helped earn its creator,
Alvin E. Roth, the 2012 Nobel Prize in economics. The city’s 8th graders and their families pore
through a 600-page directory of profiles of more
than 700 potential schools, of which they can rank
up to a dozen by preference.
Authors at the Research Alliance for New York
City Schools, at New York University, tracked the
process for 575,000 students matched in 8th grade
from 2005 through 2011. Specifically, they comPAGE 22 >

Charlie Mahoney/Prime for Education Week

By Sarah D. Sparks

Students at Match Community Day Charter Public School jump to attention at resident teacher Erica Vuolle’s command.

Resident Teachers Are Getting More ‘Practice’
By Stephen Sawchuk

TEACHING THE TEACHERS

Boston

One thing is immediately apparent
when Erica Vuolle teaches: Not a moment
of time is wasted.
When she speaks to her class here at
the Match Community Day Charter Public School, she expects all students’ eyes to
track hers. When she poses a question and
a student answers it correctly, she asks the

An occasional series
child to explain her reasoning. When a student gives an answer that’s only halfway
complete, she presses him to finish it. When
she gives directions, students repeat them
back in full, so that expectations are clear.
What’s not immediately apparent from
the ease with which Ms. Vuolle handles the

TWO FOR ONE: On a

FOCUS ON: ENGINEERING

Ramin Rahimian for Education Week

K-12 Bolsters Ties
To Engineering
By Erik W. Robelen
When stem education is discussed
in the K-12 sphere, it often seems
like shorthand for mathematics and
science, with perhaps a nod to technology and even less, if any, real attention to engineering. But recent
developments signal that the “e” in
stem may be gaining a firmer foothold at the precollegiate level.
For one, a new, national assessment
in technology and engineering literacy will be administered to 8th graders next year by the makers of “the
nation’s report card” on education.
Also, engineering design is threaded
through a set of “next generation” science standards nearing completion by
a coalition of experts and 26 states.
And the first-ever Advanced Placement program in engineering may
be on the horizon, as efforts to create
PAGE 18 >

worksheet in Jenny
Hinman’s class at
El Verano Elementary
School in Sonoma,
Calif., kindergartners
note what items sank
or floated in a container
of water as part of an
experiment. The district
blends science with
English-language
instruction. PAGE 10

INDUSTRY & INNOVATION

Educators Questioning
Timing of State Tests
Reflecting Standards
By Catherine Gewertz

of the winning applications shows those districts are tapping similar tactics: mobile devices and individualized learning plans for
students, personalized learning coaches for
teachers, and data dashboards that collect all
student learning information in one place.
What’s more, many of the districts are embracing the philosophy that learning isn’t defined by time spent in class, but by mastery of
PAGE 16 >

PAGE 14 >

Race to Top Districts ‘Personalize’ Plans
The 16 Race to the Top district winners,
pushed by $400 million in federal grants
that put a premium on personalized learning, are embarking on vastly different makeovers of the classroom experience—from
districtwide approaches to a narrower blueprint focused on middle school math.
Despite the divergent approaches, a review

PAGE 20 >

Not long after New York state raised eyebrows with a curriculum solicitation that was
anything but business-as-usual, it is triggering
uneasiness among teachers who feel that tests
are being given on the new standards too soon.
At issue is a new, voluntary curriculum in
mathematics and English/language arts that
New York purchased from private vendors
and is offering for free online as each piece is
completed. Also at issue are new tests that the
state had designed to reflect the Common Core
State Standards, and which are scheduled to be
given for the first time next month.
New York is ahead of most states in its work
to design detailed curricula and professional
development for the common core and to build
brand-new tests to reflect them. What’s unfolding in the Empire State as a result of that work
illustrates the way the common standards can

DIGITAL DIRECTIONS

By Michele McNeil

room is that this is only her second time
teaching a full class. She’s among the 40
teachers-in-training at the Match Teacher
Residency, a teacher education program
run by the Boston-based Match Education,
a nonprofit charter-management organization that requires candidates to practice
and master a repertoire of specific competencies before they lead a full classroom.
It is an approach to student-teaching

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Education Week - March 27, 2013

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