Education Week - October 9, 2013 - 4

NEWS INBRIEF
Six States to Collaborate
On Standards Implementation
Several organizations that have
led the Common Core State Standards
Initiative announced that six
states have joined a “collaborative”
designed to help them implement
the standards.
Arizona, California, New Hamp-
shire, Washington state, West Virginia,
and Wyoming will join the
Improving Student Learning at
Scale Collaborative, according to an
announcement last week from the
National Governors Association and
the Council of Chief State School Officers,
the two groups that oversaw
development of the common core.
The National Conference of State
Legislatures and the State Higher
Education Executive Officers group
also joined in the announcement.
All four groups will provide a grant
to the states as part of the project,
and their staffs will provide technical
assistance.
The move is designed to help states
share information as they implement
the standards, and help align various
resources and policies within state
governments to make implementation
easier.
In addition, the grant and support
staff are supposed to help states
make better connections between
the common core in K-12 and higher
education.
The release says that many policy
decisions about how best to implement
the standards “have yet to be
made or are being put in place in an
uncoordinated way.” —ANDREW UJIFUSA
Truancy Costs Estimated
In the Millions in Calif.
California must act to reduce rampant
truancy that saw an estimated
1 million elementary students absent
in the last school year and may cost
the state billions of dollars through
increased crime and poverty, according
to a study released last week by
the state attorney general’s office.
“The empty desks in our public elementary
school classrooms come at
a great cost to California,” the report
says. It calls for a broad battle against
absenteeism that brings together
parents, educators, lawmakers, law
enforcement, and community groups.
The report was based on information
from about 550 elementary
A UNIVERSAL
LANGUAGE
Students from art and
Spanish classes work on a
mural this month at Danville
High School in Danville, Ky.
Teachers at the school who
were involved in an arts and
language program over the
summer started the mural
project, aimed at expressing
the colors and culture of
Latin America and Spain.
When the students returned
from summer break, they
began work to complete
the mural and are designing
and painting a second one.
schools, as well as surveys and interviews
with school district and county
education officials, district attorneys
involved with anti-truancy work,
nonprofit groups, parents, and state
prison inmates.
It cites California Department of
Education figures that found nearly
30 percent of all public school students
were truant during the 2011-12
school year, including about 1 in 5
elementary pupils.
—ASSOCIATED PRESS
Group Offers Blueprint
For Digital Tools in Schools
A professional association of district
technology leaders is offering advice
to school officials on how to transform
schools using digital tools—by sharpening
their focus on everything from
teachers’ professional development to
community engagement.
“Seven Keys to Unlocking School
Transformation With Digital Media,”
published by the Consortium for
School Networking, is meant to help
district officials avoid stumbles that
can prevent technology from being
used effectively. The consortium drew
ideas from a group of school district
leaders around the country, who are
contributing authors to the document.
The authors point to key steps for
State Chiefs Outline Standards for High-Quality Assessments
State schools superintendents have banded together
to demand that testmakers—and the two consortia
building tests for the common standards—adhere to
four principles to create “high-quality assessments.”
In a document issued last week, the Council of
Chief State School Officers laid out its vision of good
tests. It describes how assessment practice should
ensure test accessibility and security, and create
user-friendly reports that chart students’ progress
and provide data that can help guide instruction.
But the bulk of its paper details how tests should
reflect the Common Core State Standards in mathematics
and English/language arts. In math, for instance,
it says that good math tests must gauge a balance
of concepts, procedures, and applications, and
4 | EDUCATION WEEK | October 9, 2013 | www.edweek.org
must link math reasoning and practices to its content.
In English/language arts, it says that good tests
must assess both reading and writing and be based
on “a balance” of literature and informational text.
The paper lands as states worry that assessments
being designed by the Partnership for Assessment
of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, and
Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, two federally
funded state consortia, could cost too much
and use up too much instructional time. The CCSSO
paper is aimed at urging states to stick by their original
vision of good assessment when times get tough.
It’s also a lever to pressure test designers to design
assessments that truly reflect the common core.
–CATHERINE GEWERTZ
districts implementing digital media,
including involving all staff, parents,
and students; aligning policies to
support innovation; rethinking professional
development; and getting
school board support. —SEAN CAVANAGH
Montana Seeks Waiver
To Replace State Tests
Montana has submitted a letter
to the U.S. Department of Education
asking for approval of its plan to
drop its statewide math and English/
language arts testing in 2014 and instead
have its students take the field
tests being designed by the Smarter
Balanced Assessment Consortium.
The state’s decision to seek “doubletesting”
flexibility was announced
last week in a statement issued by
Montana’s superintendent of public
instruction, Denise Juneau.
Montana is asking the Education
Department to allow its students
in grades 3-8 and 11 to take the
Smarter Balanced field tests rather
than the state’s current tests in math
and English/language arts.
California Gov. Jerry Brown recently
signed legislation to set aside
most of its STAR testing system and
give the Smarter Balanced field
tests instead, despite disapproval expressed
by U.S. Secretary of Education
Arne Duncan.
In the guidance the federal de-
partment issued for states on the
double-test waivers, officials made it
clear that for a proposal to succeed,
it would have to include students
taking a full-length version of either
a consortium field test or the state’s
current test in both subjects.
—CATHERINE GEWERTZ
Indiana Will Not Change
Grades Given to Schools
Indiana’s board of education de-
clined last week to change the grades
for a handful of schools following a review
of changes former state schools
Superintendent Tony Bennett made
to the grading formula last year. The
controversial formula change raised
the grade of a political donor’s charter
school.
The board decided that three high
schools should keep the A’s they
received, while four other schools
should keep their F’s.
Three high schools saw their
grades lifted slightly, but four saw
their grades drop from D’s to F’s after
Mr. Bennett decided to drop high
school grades for certain “combined”
schools in Indiana’s scoring model.
Mr. Bennett resigned from his new
job as Florida’s schools chief in August,
a few days after the Associated
Press published emails uncovering
his changes to the formula. He has
maintained he did nothing wrong.
Indiana’s inspector general has confirmed
that Mr. Bennett is the subject
of an ongoing investigation, but has
declined to say specifically what is
being reviewed.
—AP
Football Season Canceled
After Player’s Death
A school district in upstate New
York has canceled the rest of its
football season because of the recent
death of a player.
Damon Janes, a running back for
the combined Brocton Central School/
Westfield Academy and Central
School football team, died last month
after losing consciousness from a helmet-to-helmet
hit that occurred in a
game the prior weekend.
As a result, the Westfield school
board unanimously approved a recommendation
to cancel the remainder
of the football season, according
to a statement on the district’s
website.
—BRYAN TOPOREK
Federal Shutdown Delays
NAEP-TIMSS Report
The government shutdown has
forced the postponement of a study
showing how U.S. states stack up to
nations around the world on math
Clay Jackson/The Advocate Messenger/AP
Education Week - October 9, 2013

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