IAP NEWS UPDATE July 14th – 27th 2012
Publication: Education Week Title: Seizing the Moment for Mathematics Author: William Schmidt Website: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/07/18/36schmidt.h31.html
For years now it has been clear that the U.S. mathematics curriculum is a mile wide and an inch deep, and that the fragmented quality of mathematics instruction is related to our low ranking on international assessments. Nearly a generation after the first Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, the nation's governors and chief state school officers, in concert with other stakeholders, have fashioned the Common Core State Standards for mathematics that may finally give American students the high-quality standards they deserve.
These new math standards have attracted some criticism, however. Aside from more abstract arguments, a number of specific claims have been leveled against them, including that they are untested; that they are not world-class; and that some existing state standards are superior.
As part of our ongoing research, Richard Houang and I recently concluded a study of the math standards and their relation to existing state standards and the standards of other nations. Drawing from our work on the 1995 TIMSS, we developed a measure of the congruence of the common core to all 50 state standards in effect in 2008-09, as well as to an international benchmark. We also examined the relationship of each state's math standards to the common standards and how each state performed on the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress. Although, we can't project the success of the common math standards with certainty, it would give us reason for optimism if states whose standards more closely resembled those of the common core performed better on NAEP.
What did our research uncover?
The common-core math standards closely mirror those of the world's highest-achieving nations. Based on the 1995 TIMSS, we identified common standards from the best-performing countries, which we call "A+ standards." We found an overlap of roughly 90 percent between the common math standards and the A+ standards. If the standards of the world's top achievers in 8th grade mathematics are any guide, then the common standards represent high-quality standards. Of course, as a nation, we shouldn't just slavishly replicate whatever we find other countries doing. But when we look across a number of very different countries—all of whose students do better than ours—we find the same curricular characteristics over and over again. The only sensible course of action is to take a close look and see if important lessons can be learned.
In doing this, we find three key characteristics in the curricula of the highest-performing countries: coherence (the logical structure that guides students from basic to more advanced material in a systematic way); focus (the push for mastery of a few key concepts at each grade rather than shallow repetition of the same material); and rigor (the level of difficulty at each grade level). The common core adheres to each of these three principles.
Unfortunately, when one hears that a state's existing standards are better than the common core, it usually means that those standards include more—and more advanced—topics at earlier grades. But this is exactly the problem the common math standards are designed to correct. It is a waste of time to expose children to content they are not prepared for, and it is counterproductive to skim over dozens of disconnected topics every year with no regard for student mastery. As it stands today, we simply hope that students will somehow "get it" at a later grade, and yet we know that far too many students never do. The disappointing reality is that, while improved from a decade ago, most state math standards fall below the common standards in both coherence and focus.
In debating the utility of the common core, it is very important to recognize that standards are not self-executing. For example, states with very strong standards but very low thresholds for "proficiency" on the state assessments are, in effect, sending a message to teachers and districts that their standards aren't to be taken that seriously. In that way, proficiency cut points can serve as a rough measure of implementation. After including both cut points and how far away a state's standards are from the common core (controlling for poverty and socioeconomic status), we found that the two in combination are related to higher mathematics achievement—an even stronger
relationship than was the case when only the measure of similarity was included. In the final analysis, however, the key ingredient in the implementation of standards is whether districts, schools, and, most importantly, teachers, deliver the content to students in a way that is consistent with those standards.
As it stands in many classrooms, teachers are forced to pick and choose among the topics as laid out in the textbook, items on state assessments, and the content articulated in state and district standards—expressions of the curriculum that frequently clash with one another. In our recently completed Promoting Rigorous Outcomes in Mathematics and Science Education, or PROM/SE project—a research and development initiative to improve math and science teaching and learning at Michigan State University—we found tremendous variation in the topics covered in mathematics classes within states, within districts, and even within schools. In fact, the content coverage in lowincome districts had more in common with the content delivered in low-income districts in other states than with that of the more affluent districts in their own states. Given how haphazardly standards are implemented, it shouldn't be much of a surprise if the relationship between state standards and student achievement is modest. What's remarkable is that the relationship is as strong as it is.
The essential question is not whether the common core can improve mathematics learning in the United States, but whether we, as a nation, have the commitment to ensure that it does. The adoption of the common core doesn't represent a success, but an opportunity. It remains to be seen whether the right kind of common assessments and supporting instructional materials will be developed. It is very much an open question whether states will devote the energy and planning required, especially in a time of fiscal constraint. And, most urgently, we don't yet know if teachers will receive the preparation and support they need to teach mathematics in a fundamentally new way.
The common core offers the opportunity to revolutionize math instruction in this country, to improve student performance, to close the gap between the United States and its competitors, and to ensure that every American student has an equal opportunity to learn important mathematics content. But it is only a chance, and it is imperative that we seize it.
Publication: Education Week
Title: Doublethink: The Creativity-Testing Conflict Author: Yong Zhao Website: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/07/18/36zhao_ep.h31.html
Doublethink is "to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them," according to George Orwell, who coined the phrase in his novel 1984.
American education policymakers have apparently entered the zone of doublethink.
They want future Americans to be globally competitive, to out-innovate others, and to become jobcreating entrepreneurs. Last year, the Obama administration announced a $1 billion-plus publicprivate initiative to support entrepreneurial activities, which included support and rhetoric surrounding youth-entrepreneurship education. And the U.S. Department of Education says that "entrepreneurship education as a building block for a well-rounded education not only promises to make school rigorous, relevant, and engaging, but it creates the possibility for unleashing and cultivating creative energies and talents among students."
State leaders have taken similar actions. California, Massachusetts, and Oklahoma have begun exploring the development of measures to gauge the extent to which schools foster creative and entrepreneurial qualities in their students, according to a Feb. 1, 2012, article in Education Week.
In the meantime, the policymakers want students to be excellent test-takers. The federal government is racing to the top of standardization and standardized testing; states are working hard to make two subjects common and core for all students; an increasing number of teachers are being paid based on their students' test scores; and students are fed with an increasingly narrow, standardized, uniform, and imagination-depleted education diet. All these measures are intended to improve students' academic achievement, or, in plain English, test scores.
But test scores are not measures of entrepreneurship or creativity. Not even scores on the intensely watched and universally worshiped Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, are good indicators of a nation's capacity for entrepreneurship and creativity.
In doing research for my book World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students, I found a significant negative relationship between PISA performance and indicators of entrepreneurship. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, or GEM, is an annual assessment of entrepreneurial activities, aspirations, and attitudes of individuals in more than 50 countries. Initiated in 1999, about the same time that PISA began, GEM has become the world's largest entrepreneurship study. Thirty-nine countries that participated in the 2011 GEM also participated in the 2009 PISA, and 23 out of the 54 countries in GEM are considered "innovation-driven" economies, which means developed countries.
Comparing the two sets of data shows clearly countries that score high on PISA do not have levels of entrepreneurship that match their stellar scores. More importantly, it seems that countries with higher PISA scores have fewer people confident in their entrepreneurial capabilities. Out of the innovation-driven economies, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan are among the best PISA performers, but their scores on the measure of perceived capabilities or confidence in one's ability to start a new business are the lowest. The correlation coefficients between scores on the 2009 PISA in math, reading, and science and 2011 GEM in "perceived entrepreneurial capability" in the 23 developed countries are all statistically significant. (By the way, these countries have also traditionally dominated the top spots on the other influential international test, the Trends in International Math and Science Study, or TIMSS.)
China's Shanghai took the No. 1 rank in all three areas of the 2009 PISA, but the scores do not have any bearing on China's creativity capacity. In 2008, China had only 473 patent filings with or granted by leading patent offices outside China. The United States had 14,399 patent filings in the same year. Anil K. Gupta and Haiyan Wang put those figures in a broader context, writing in The Wall Street Journal last year: "Starkly put, in 2010 China accounted for 20 percent of the world's population and 9 percent of the world's GDP, 12 percent of the world's [research and development] expenditure, but only 1 percent of the patent filings with or patents granted by any of the leading patent offices outside China." And 50 percent of the China-origin patents, the writers added, were granted to subsidiaries of foreign multinationals.
Moreover, what brings great test scores may hamper entrepreneurial qualities. Standardized testing and a focus on rote memorization, for example, are perhaps the biggest enemies of entrepreneurial capability. A contrast between Finland and the East Asian countries illustrates this point. Although Finland's entrepreneurship activities do not rank as high as its PISA performance, the Finns possess a much higher level of perceived entrepreneurial capabilities than the East Asian countries. In the 2011 GEM survey, 37 percent of Finns reported having the capability for entrepreneurship, more than 20 percentage points higher than the Japanese (14 percent), at least 10 percentage points higher than the South Koreans (27 percent) and Singaporeans (24 percent), and nearly 10 points higher than the Taiwanese (29 percent). This difference may come from the different style of education in Finland and the East Asian countries.
Unlike their peers in high-performing East Asian nations with well-established reputations for authoritarian and standardized-testing-driven education that emphasizes rote memorization, Finnish students do not take standardized tests until the end of high school. In fact, Finnish schools are a standardized-testing-free zone, according to Pasi Sahlberg in his book Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn From Educational Change in Finland? As a result, students in Finland are not pushed toward rote memorization. Finnish education is certainly not nearly as authoritarian as its Asian counterparts.
Most important, as the education historian Diane Ravitch observed in The New York Review of Books earlier this year: "The central aim of Finnish education is the development of each child as a thinking, active, creative person, not the attainment of higher test scores, and the primary strategy of Finnish education is cooperation, not competition."
The United States saw a decline of creativity over the past two decades, as a 2010 Newsweek article reported. Titled "The Creativity Crisis," the article cites research by Kyung Hee Kim, an educational psychology professor at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va. Kim analyzed performance of adults and children on a commonly used creativity measure known as the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. The results indicate a creativity decrease in the last 20 years in all categories. This decline coincided with the movement toward more curriculum standardization and standardized testing in American schools exemplified by the No Child Left Behind Act. "NCLB has stifled any interest in developing individual differences, creative and innovative thinking, or individual potential," Kim said in an interview on the Encyclopaedia Britannica blog.
Standardized testing rewards the ability to find the "correct answer" and thus discourages creativity, which is about asking questions and challenging the status quo. A narrow and uniform curriculum deprives children of opportunities to explore and experiment with their interest and passion, which is the foundation of entrepreneurship. Constantly testing children and telling them they are not good enough depletes their confidence, which is the fuel of innovation. So, by any account, what policymakers have put in place in American schools is precisely what is needed to cancel out their desire for creative and entrepreneurial talents.
I don't know how policymakers can hold, simultaneously, these two ideas, creative entrepreneurship and test-driven curriculum standardization, that both research and common sense recognize as contradictory unless they change the slogans of 1984's Oceania, "War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength" into "Standardization is Innovation, Uniformity is Creativity, and Testing is Enterprising" for education today.
Country-Specific Education Articles Publication: Macau Daily Times Title: Macau tested by PISA’s good and bad Author: Sum Choi Website: http://www.macaudailytimes.com.mo/macau/37221-macau-tested-by-pisa%E2%80%99s-
good-and-bad.html
Nine years after Macau joined the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) arranged by the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), the local education sector is on its way to receive the best of the global examination (or “evaluation”, to be more precise), while trying to avoid some of the side-effects.
Over four thousand 15-year old Macau students (age requirement for sitting PISA) have just finished the trial held across the world once every three years, and the scoring is still being calculated. All schools (around 40 - 50) in the territory sent their 15-year-olds to the assessment, and some of them expressed high hopes for the results this year.
Keang Peng School’s Vice Principal Mr. Kotold Macau Daily Times that they sent all their 15-yearolds (totaling 226) to the evaluation session, and initial feedback from the students is “positive.” “Macau has quite good results in Mathematics - just like other East Asian neighbors…our school even scored better Math result than Shanghai, which achieved the best overall result in the world (in 2009).” According to the school’s online information, last time their students scored 548.7 in reading and comprehension, 601.3 in Math, and 575.2 in science; which make up the three components of the assessment. Shanghai’s result was 555.8, 600.1 574.6 in the three components; while Macau’s overall result was 486.6, 525.3, and 511.1 respectively.
Ko said students did some preparations for the evaluation: “Basically every school does some mobilization in preparation for the assessment, such as mock exercises, and teachers also show them the pass papers and teach them how to answer similar questions.”
Asked if the assessment is contributing to Macau’s education, the educator’s response was positive: “Macau has no united exam for students across the territory, so PISA can let us know the accomplishments of our students in comparison to other places, and seek improvement in areas of weakness.”
Ko’s view is shared by Mr. Chan King Lim, director of academic affairs at PuiChing Middle School, who said the scores serve as a kind of benchmark and reference for improvement. The educator said they integrated some elements of the assessment into their daily teaching materials and classes to help students understand the objectives and ideas of PISA. PuiChing sent all their 15-year-olds to the assessment. Another middle school, the Escola Estrela Do Mar, told MDT they sent over 200 students to PISA, all of their 15-year-olds.
Speaking to the MDT, the Education and Youth Affairs Bureau (DSEJ) said because Macau has a comparatively small population, PISA required all its 15-year-old students to participate in the evaluation in order to make the result statistically reliable.
“Unlike Shanghai which as over 23 million people and huge number of students at that age, Macau has only four to five thousand 15-year-old students, so all of them have to sit PISA, even if you happen to have sickness or other emergencies on the assessment day, you have to sit it a week later, without exception; that’s PISA’s prerequisite for Macau.” The DSEJ official said for Shanghai or other populous areas, a random selection is conducted to include a portion of the age-group into the assessment.
In the previous assessment in 2009, Macau’s overall scoring and global ranking was not that impressive. And DSEJ official said it showed Macau’s teachers have to reinforce their professional skills. This time the DSEJ official stressed that teachers and students should not, as some news reports said, feel under pressure about any low scoring or ranking.
“This (to feel nervous about assessment results) is a distortion of PISA’s objective, which is to give a country or city some form of reference in their students’ weakness and areas of strength, and then take appropriate measures to deal with the weakness. It’s a distortion of PISA’s aspiration for individual teachers or students to feel bad about low marks.”
Ms. Yang, a Chinese teacher in PuiChing, also said the score could be a trap for some educators mistaking PISA as a competition, while it is not. Professor KC Cheung, of the University of Macau’s Faculty of Education, which is responsible for coordinating and implementing PISA in Macau, said the assessment could serve as a reference for educational development but it’s impractical to think any intensive drilling can make the city’s students top scorers in PISA.