Education Week - August 21, 2013 - 1

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EDUCATIONWEEK
VOL. 33, NO. 1 • AUGUST 21, 2013
AMERICAN EDUCATION’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD • © 2013 Editorial Projects in Education • $4
Concerns Arise
About Competition
By Catherine Gewertz
The College Board is redesigning
four of its testing programs
so they reflect the Common Core
State Standards and can be used
for accountability, a project that
adds yet another player to the
list of companies seeking to take
on new roles in a shifting nationwide
assessment landscape.
The New York City-based
nonprofit announced last year
that it would align its college-
edweek.org: BREAKING NEWS DAILY
College Board Enters
Common-Test Market
entrance exam, the SAT, to the
common standards. But its plans
have expanded to include three
other products: ReadiStep, aimed
at 8th and 9th graders; the PSAT,
typically taken by 10th and
11th graders; and Accuplacer,
used by colleges to determine
course placement for incoming
students.
Test redesigns are still largely
in the discussion stage, according
to David Coleman, who took
over as the College Board’s president
last October after serving
as a chief writer of the common
standards in English/language
PAGE 16>
Dawn Hawkins and her son, Khyrie Brown, 13, return to Leslie Pinckney Hill Public School in Philadelphia,
closed in the spring to save costs. Khyrie will be going to a new school this year.
Fiscal Clouds Swirl Around Philadelphia Schools
By Jaclyn Zubrzycki
Philadelphia’s scramble last week
to find the $50 million in emergency
aid Superintendent William R. Hite
Jr. says is needed to open schools as
scheduled exposed deep rifts about
how to fix the district’s chronic fiscal
problems.
On the hot seat, both short and
long term: a district that’s laid off
thousands of teachers and support
staff; a city that’s weighing how to
meet its pension obligations amid
the school funding crisis; teachers
and principals whose contracts expire
at the end of this month; and a state
that’s been criticized over an aid formula
that experts say is among the
most inequitable in the country.
“This has been an historic pat-
tern in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia,”
said Michael D. Casserly, the
executive director of the Council
of the Great City Schools, a Washington
group that represents large
urban districts. “Philadelphia is not
unique in facing substantial budget
issues, but it is unique in the fact
that the state, for decades, has not
adequately supported Philadelphia
or its schoolchildren.
DIGITAL DIRECTIONS
“The crisis is not related just to
an economy that’s gone sour in the
last few years,” he said. “It’s related
to a longer historical lack of support
from the state.”
But Timothy Eller, a spokesman
for the state department of education,
asserted there has been strong
state financial support for public
schools under Gov. Tom Corbett, a
Republican who took office in 2011,
and said the Philadelphia district will
get more than $1.33 billion in state
funding this school year.
“State taxpayers cannot be exPAGE
17>
Districts’ Leeway Shatters Mold
INDUSTRY & INNOVATION
Federal Role in Accountability Redefined; Many Wary
By Michele McNeil
& Lesli A. Maxwell
By awarding a No Child Left Be-
hind Act waiver to eight California
districts, U.S. Secretary of Education
Arne Duncan has embarked on
an experiment that redefines the
federal role in school accountability.
That move is sparking criticism
from across the political spectrum
and raising questions about whether
the new flexibility goes too far.
The first-of-its-kind waiver, good
for one year, essentially allows
the eight districts to set up their
own accountability system outside
of the state of California’s—and
largely police themselves through
their own board of directors.
The districts, known as CORE, for
California Office to Reform Education,
will operate under a new school rating
system that will eventually count
nonacademic factors, such as absentee
rates and parent surveys, as 40 percent
of a school’s grade. In the short
term, those districts are frantically
preparing for the start of the 2013-14
school year, which means making key
decisions about NCLB-era practices,
such as whether to keep providing tutoring
and school choice to students in
persistently low-performing schools.
Until now, Mr. Duncan has granted
PAGE 14>
IN JEOPARDY: Three states are at risk
of losing their No Child Left Behind Act
waivers. PAGE 18
Use of Calculators to Shift
With Core-Aligned Exams
By Erik W. Robelen
Although calculators have not
figured prominently in discussions
of the common-core math
standards, it’s likely the complementary
tests will result in far
greater uniformity in their use on
state exams across the nation.
Policies emerging from the
two state consortia developing
common-core assessments would
prohibit most students from
using calculators on the grades
3-5 tests, for example. At grades
6 and above, they call for calculator
“on” and “off” sections and set
restrictions on what functionality
is allowed. (Both consortia will
provide online calculators for the
computer-based tests.)
Those rules, especially in to-
day’s high-stakes-testing environment,
are sure to influence regular
classroom use of calculators,
from the elementary ban to the
ways increasingly sophisticated
PAGE 12>
Tutoring Firms
Hit Hard Times
In Waiver Era
By Michele Molnar
The private tutoring industry,
which has flourished under the No
Child Left Behind Act, has been hit
hard by federal waivers that have
eased key provisions of the law.
Those waivers, granted by the U.S.
Department of Education to most
states and a group of California districts,
allow school systems to avoid
the NCLB mandate that they use 20
percent of Title I funds for afterschool
tutoring and transportation
for school choice to eligible students.
Many for-profit providers of the
tutoring, known in the NCLB law as
supplemental education services,
have had to pursue new K-12 rev-
enue streams, or even close their
doors, as federal funding funneled
through affected school districts is
being reallocated for other purposes.
At its peak several years ago, tutoring
services were provided by
about 2,500 companies and other organizations
that had received state
approval to work with students,
PAGE 14>
Yamil Marcos
Catalan, 11, plays
a reading game
at a camp run
by University
Instructors, a
former
supplemental
education services
provider.
▲
Jessica Kourkounis for Education Week
John W. Adkisson for Education Week

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Education Week - August 21, 2013

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