Education Week - May 21, 2014 - 1

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VOL. 33, NO. 32 * MAY 21, 2014
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State Plans
For Testing
Fragmented
'Common' Exams Lose Sway
By Catherine Gewertz
& Andrew Ujifusa
Only a few years ago, the ambitious
initiative to use shared assessments
to gauge learning based on the new
common-core standards had enlisted
45 states and the District of Columbia.
Today, the testing landscape looks much
more fragmented, with only 27 of them
still planning to use those tests in 201415,
and the rest opting for other assessments
or undecided, an Education Week
analysis shows.
For a variety of reasons, including the
Special education teacher Elizabeth Rosenberry, right, uses singing in a lesson to encourage Jesus Torres-Tiamani, left, to make eye contact as
classmate Ian Tokay looks on. The strategy comes from a federally backed arts initiative for students with severe cognitive and behavioral needs.
Arts Program Shows Promise in Special Ed. Classes
Liana Heitin
New York
Each of the visual arts, music, and dance activities
Elizabeth Rosenberry engages in daily
with her 2nd graders has a critical underlying
goal: eye contact.
The veteran teacher opens class by crouching
in front of a student and gently clutching his
arms. "Zachary, look at me," she sings, matching
his wide-open eyes with her own. The two paraprofessionals
assisting in the classroom at the
public school, P4Q @ Skillman, encourage the
EVALUATING THE EVALUATIONS
Bias Detected in Classroom Observations
By Stephen Sawchuk
As the rubber hits the road in the implementation
of states' revamped teacher-evaluation
systems, new research illuminates a troubling
source of bias. School principals-when conducting
classroom observations-appear to give some
teachers an unfair boost based on the students
they're assigned to teach, rather than judging
them solely on their instructional savvy.
Observers tended to give the best marks to
teachers whose students already were highperforming,
while those teachers working with
academically struggling students were penalized,
according to an analysis of thousands of
observation scores.
The report, released last week by the Brown
Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Inother
five students, also seated in the semicircle,
to watch the interaction and sing along.
Ms. Rosenberry is one of 240 teachers in New
York City's District 75-a geographically dispersed
collection of schools and programs serving
students with the most severe cognitive and
behavioral needs-to have received training in
an initiative called Everyday Arts for Special
Education, or ease.
In 2010, the district received a $4.6 million
federal Investing in Innovation, or i3, grant-
an impressive amount by arts education standards-to
offer professional development in
ease at 10 schools and to study the program's
effects along the way. The project was ranked
fourth-highest among the 49 winners of i3
grants, and was chosen from 1,700 applicants.
With just a year left of that five-year funding
from the U.S. Department of Education, a
researcher who has been following the program
says there's convincing evidence ease has succeeded
in improving elementary students' academic,
socialization, and communication skills.
Even pending the final research results, the
program is spreading: Teachers, psychologists,
PAGE 12>
length and cost of the tests and political
heat over the federal money supplied for
their development, many states changed
their minds about using the end-of-year
accountability tests in English/language
arts and math from the two state consortia
that are leading the drive.
As of mid-May, 17 states planned to
use the tests produced by the Smarter
Balanced Assessment Consortium; just
nine states plus the District of Columbia
planned to use tests made by the Partnership
for Assessment of Readiness for
College and Careers, or parcc.
Adding a level of complexity, six
states decided to split their assessment
PAGE 16>
'Parent Trigger'
Hits Slow Lane
In Legislatures
Principal Evaluation
Presents Difficulties
stitution, a Washington think tank, raises a host
of new concerns about the nation's evolving systems
for grading teachers. And it suggests that,
in trying to manage the technical and political
challenges posed by test-score-based approaches
to evaluation, such as "value added" methods,
policymakers may be missing problems in other
features of the systems.
"It's very worrisome. It's a huge bias," said
Grover J. "Russ" Whitehurst, the director of the
Brown Center. "The criticism about value-added
is certainly something we need to attend to, but
a lot of work has helped reduce or eliminate that
bias. None of that's being done for observation
scores."
The report recommends that districts try to
level the playing field by adjusting teachers'
PAGE 10>
'VALUE ADDED' SCRUTINY: New studies raise questions on value-added models in teacher evaluation. PAGE 10
By Denisa R. Superville
The number of states that mandate
principal evaluations has jumped in recent
years, driven by rules tying federal education
aid to such policies. But many are still
grappling with the best ways to measure
principal effectiveness and the extent to
which student performance should be included
in evaluating principals.
Since 2010, at least 36 states have
adopted laws requiring principals to
undergo regular assessments and increasing
the rigor of those reviews, according
to the National Conference of
State Legislatures.
The changes reflect a shift from largely
pro forma evaluations to complicated maPAGE
20>
By Andrew Ujifusa
Interest in the controversial school
choice option known as the parent trigger
has declined sharply among state
lawmakers this year, even as legislators
in a number of states forge ahead on
tax-credit scholarships and other school
choice alternatives.
In 2010, California became the first
state to pass a law allowing parents to
spark a transformation of a low-performing
school. In addition, Connecticut,
Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio,
and Texas have passed some version of
that option, according to the National
Conference of State Legislatures. But no
state has enacted a new parent-trigger
law since 2012, the same year that a
Hollywood film based on the policy,
"Won't Back Down," was released.
Although 20 states considered trigger
bills in 2013, according to the ncsl, the
number dropped to 13 this year; seven
of those proposals were holdovers that
PAGE 20>
Emile Wamsteker for Education Week

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Education Week - May 21, 2014

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