Education Week - September 18, 2013 - 1

EDUCATIONWEEK
VOL. 33, NO. 4 • SEPTEMBER 18, 2013
AMERICAN EDUCATION’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD • © 2013 Editorial Projects in Education • $4
edweek.org: BREAKING NEWS DAILY
Calif. Testing Move
Hits Federal Nerve
Freeze on Exams Draws Rebuke
By Catherine Gewertz
California’s move to suspend most of its accountability
testing for one year—and the
sharp rebuke and threat it’s drawn from the
U.S. Department of Education—illustrate the
complications some states could face next
spring when they juggle their own assessments
with field tests of new common-core tests.
In an unusually stern statement Sept. 9, U.S.
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said that
California’s plan “is not something we could approve
in good conscience.” If the state proceeds
with the plan anyway, “the department will be
forced to take action, which could include withholding
funds from the state,” he said.
While he applauded the state’s commitment
to implement the Common Core State
Standards, Mr. Duncan said that “letting an
entire school year pass for millions of stuPAGE
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POETRY FOR THE EAR: Spoken-word poets Sarah Kay and Phil Kaye pose at the High Line, a park built on what was once an elevated
railroad in New York City. The pair travel to K-12 schools and universities across the country to promote their art form. PAGE 8
Teacher-Review Tool:
Classroom Portfolios
TFA Educators
Found to Boost
Math Learning
Secondary Level Affected
By Stephen Sawchuk
Even as evidence builds that
Teach For America produces capable
secondary math teachers,
the question about which parts of
the program are most effective in
preparing them for the classroom
continues to deepen. That’s the
implication of a rigorous federally
financed study released last week
that examines the impact of TFA
and a second popular program, both
of which quickly train and place top
college graduates and career-changers
in underresourced classrooms.
Secondary math teachers who
enter the profession through TFA
helped their students learn more
in mathematics than colleagues
who entered teaching through a
less-selective fast-track program
or a traditional, university-based
program. They also outperformed
experienced teachers in that subject—a
finding contradicting critics
who argue that TFA teachers’ relative
inexperience harms learning.
Teachers trained through another
selective alternative route, Teaching
Fellows, were indistinguishable
overall from teachers trained in
other ways.
Researchers found few relationPAGE
14 >
INDUSTRY & INNOVATION
Ed. Companies Nurturing Startups
By Sean Cavanagh
New York
This fourth-floor office space bears all the
signs of a startup company’s habitat—young
professionals clustered around tables or
sprawled out on the floor, typing on laptops,
sketching on whiteboards—except for the
name of the organization overseeing it all.
The activity underway here is being hosted
by Kaplan Inc., one of the most widely recognized
company names in education, as part of a
program designed by the test-preparation and
college-course provider to give fledging education
technology startups the tools to make it in
the complex K-12 market, one that for many
entrepreneurs often seems impenetrable.
Kaplan’s business “accelerator” effort,
launched this year, is one of a handful of ventures
created recently or being planned by
major education companies—including Pearson
and McGraw-Hill Education—that provide
direct financial or operational support or
guidance to school-focused startups. Backers
of the companies’ involvement in accelerator
programs say those efforts can take advantage
of the reach and influence of big companies to
bring new sources of innovation to schools.
For the startups, the opportunity to connect
with big players such as Kaplan offers many
advantages, from receiving informed advice
about an opaque market to securing access
to the larger company’s resources.
For companies like Kaplan, there are
also advantages, most notably exposure to
PAGE 18 >
By Erik W. Robelen
Video footage of students sight-reading a
musical score, or reciting a speech from Shakespeare’s
“Julius Caesar.” Digital photos of students’
self-portraits. Samples of student-penned
research papers and other assignments. Those
are the types of documentation hundreds of arts
educators in Tennessee recently assembled as
evidence of their impact on student learning.
The state this year is ramping up an alternative
component to its teacher-evaluation
system for the arts that tackles a thorny question
many states are grappling with: how to
evaluate teachers on student growth when
standardized-test scores are not available.
The answer in this Tennessee enterprise is
PAGE 20 >
Assessment Group Sets
Accommodations Policy
By Christina A. Samuels & Lesli A. Maxwell
PARENT
ENGAGEMENT:
Familyengagement
coach
Jeannette Diaz
hugs Jesus
Haghighi, 7, at
Public School 85
in New York City.
The school
partners with
Mercy College to
increase parent
involvement.
PAGE 8
Native-language translations of test directions
and math items, as well as a read-aloud
option for middle and high school students,
are among the accommodations that will be
allowed on a limited basis under a policy adopted
last week by a group crafting commoncore-aligned
tests in reading and math for
24 states.
The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consor-
tium’s governing board voted unanimously
on “usability, accessibility, and accommodations”
guidelines that outline the kinds of
testing supports and tools that will be made
available to all students, and particularly
those with disabilities and English-language
learners. The issue of reading text passages
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Melanie Burford/Prime for Education Week
Melanie Burford/Education Week

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Education Week - September 18, 2013

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