Education Week - November 5, 2014 - 5

REPORT ROUNDUP www.edweek.org/go/rr
n 2013-14 or before
n 2014-15
n 2015-16 or later
n Not sure/can't estimate
7
30%
30
34
MATH TEACHERS
7
24
36
8
23
PRINCIPALS
34
NOTE: Percentages do not always total 100% due to rounding.
SOURCE: The Center on Education Policy
READY TO TEACH STANDARDS?
Most leaders of districts in states where the
Common Core State Standards have been adopted
say all of their school principals and English/
language arts and mathematics teachers will be
trained and ready to implement the standards by
the end of the 2014-15 school year.
36%
33%
ENGLISH/LANGUAGE
ARTS TEACHERS
Study: Most Common-Core Materials
Developed by Teachers, Districts
"Common Core State Standards in 2014: District
Implementation of Consortia-Developed Assessments"
A report released last week by the Center on Education
Policy provides one of the first early glimpses of how districts
are solving one of the most difficult problems of putting the
Common Core State Standards into practice. Overwhelmingly,
they're creating their curricula locally.
More than two-thirds of districts reported that their teachers
are designing common-core curricula, and half said the
district is creating it.
Many districts are also turning to their states for curricular
help. Four in 10 district leaders reported using materials
developed by their states. Fewer than 15 percent said they
were drawing on curricular resources from other states. But
more than four in 10 district leaders said they were collaborating
with their state, or with other districts in their state,
to craft common-core instructional resources.
The Center on Education Policy survey echoes other research,
and widespread talk in the field, that finding or developing
curriculum materials for the common core is a challenge.
Nine in 10 district leaders said so in the new cep study.
But the new details on local curriculum design offer a notable
response to critics who feared the common core would
produce one national curriculum. The survey suggests that
big publishers aren't dominating districts' common-core curriculum
choices. Fewer than four in 10 reported using materials
from for-profit organizations. Fewer than 15 percent
said they are using materials from private, nonprofit groups.
"Teachers trust teachers," said Elena Balint, the manager
of the American Federation of Teachers' ShareMyLesson
project, an online storehouse of instructional resources
created and uploaded by teachers. "It's their area of expertise
to create materials and lesson plans that work for
their classrooms."
Many districts lag in providing professional development
for the common core. Only two-thirds of district leaders reported
that 90 percent or more of their teachers had participated
in some form of training for the common core by the
2013-14 school year.
-CATHERINE GEWERTZ
SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL LEARNING
"The Character Factor: Measures and Impact of Drive
and Prudence"
Character skills that improve performance can
mean more to success than academic skills, concludes
a new report from the Brookings Institution.
The study focuses on drive-defined as "the ability
to apply oneself to a task and stick with it"-and prudence-defined
as "the ability to defer gratification
and look to the future," as measured via a composite
score of behaviors on the National Longitudinal Survey
of Youth.
The researchers found children whose scores
showed greater character strengths were more likely
to graduate from high school with a gpa greater than
2.5, less likely to be arrested as an adolescent, less
likely to become pregnant as teenagers, and more
likely to graduate from college.
-EVIE BLAD
COLLEGE AND CAREER READINESS
"Investing in the Health and Well-Being of Young Adults"
The education field understands early childhood as
a time of critical brain and social development, but
educators and researchers should view the ages of
18 to 26-the transition to adulthood-as a critical
developmental window in its own right, according to
a new report from the National Institute of Medicine
and National Research Council.
The researchers found young people's cognition
and behavior continue to develop into their mid-20s,
and the same students most at risk of struggling in
school-those in poverty, new immigrants, and students
aging out of foster care-also have the toughest
time making the transition to college, careers, and
adult life after high school, yet few interventions center
on the transition age.
-SARAH D. SPARKS
ceive $200,000 in Sovereignty in
Indian Education enhancement
funds.
The awards are part of the administration's
push to improve
the quality of schooling provided
by the bie, which includes some
of the lowest-performing public
schools in the country. Tribes
receiving the funding are in Arizona,
North Dakota, and South
Dakota.
President Barack Obama unveiled
his vision last summer for
an improved bie, a long-troubled
agency that directly operates 57
schools for Native American students
and oversees 126 others run
under contract by tribes.
-LESLI A. MAXWELL
SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT
"Are Low-Performing Schools Adopting Practices
Promoted by School Improvement Grants?"
| OBITUARY |
Thomas M. Menino, the popular mayor of Boston
who had authority over the city's schools
throughout his 20-year tenure, died Oct. 30 of
cancer. He was 71.
Mr. Menino took office in 1993, two years
after the 57,000-student district came under
mayoral control. He announced last year that
he would not seek a sixth term.
A commemorative page on the district's website credits the
mayor with leading the transformation of the school system "from
a failing school district to one of the most renowned urban public
school systems in the country." It lists the district's achievements
during his tenure, including the Broad Prize for Urban Education
in 2006, as well as gains in graduation rates and national assessment
results.
Mr. Menino was diagnosed with advanced cancer in February,
shortly after leaving office, and announced Oct. 23 he was suspending
treatment and a book tour so he could spend more time with family
and friends, according to the Associated Press. -KATHLEEN KENNEDY MANZO
Not really, according to a research brief on the
$3 billion School Improvement Grants program just
released by the Institute of Education Sciences, the
U.S. Department of Education's statistical arm.
None of the schools participating in the survey that
used the most common turnaround models available
under the Obama administration's sig program-
"turnaround," which calls for getting rid of the principal
and half the staff; and "transformation," which
calls for a broad range of strategies, including extended
learning time and performance pay for educators-did
absolutely everything they were encouraged
to do. The report relies on a survey of administrators
at low-performing schools, including some that were
implementing sig and some that were not.
However, more than 96 percent of schools in the
survey have tried the most popular turnaround practices,
which include using data to inform instruction,
using technology to bolster teaching and learning,
and giving educators time to collaborate. -ALYSON KLEIN
COMMON STANDARDS
"U.S. Teachers Offer Split Decision on Common Core"
Public school teachers are divided on the merits of
the Common Core State Standards, with 44 percent
having a negative opinion of the shared academic
goals and another 40 percent of teachers favoring it,
according to a new Gallup poll.
The more implementation experience teachers
had with the standards, the better they appeared to
AUTISM
"The Contribution of De Novo Coding Mutations to
Autism Spectrum Disorder"
Two different groups of genetic mutations may
contribute to autism spectrum disorders for high-IQ
boys and low-IQ boys and all girls with autism, finds
a new study in the journal Nature.
Researchers analyzed the genes of 2,500 families
in which one child has an autism spectrum disorder.
At least 30 percent of autism disorders are caused by
so-called "de novo" mutations, which occur spontaneously
rather than being passed down from a parent.
Within the children with the most severe cases,
including boys with low IQs and girls, the researchers
found those sorts of spontaneous mutations in 27
new genes, making it likely that problems in these
genes contribute to severe autism.
-S.D.S.
EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY
"Horizon Report Europe: 2014 Schools Edition"
The New Media Consortium finds similar and
evolving European and American views about how
teachers should be presenting and delivering content
in the digital age, across the 28 member nations of
the European Commission, the executive body of the
European Union.
Open educational resources are gaining traction,
as is the use of data to drive instructional policy.
An increasingly accessible and omnipresent Internet
also means teachers "are no longer the primary
sources of information and knowledge for students,"
the report finds.
-SEAN CAVANAGH
EDUCATION WEEK | November 5, 2014 | www.edweek.org | 5
like them. Fully 61 percent of teachers who reported
working in schools where the standards were fully
implemented have a positive opinion of them, compared
with just 26 percent of teachers in states without
the common core.
The survey is based on a random sample of 854 public
school teachers, with the data weighted to match
national workforce demographics. The margin of error
is plus or minus 5 percentage points.
-STEPHEN SAWCHUK
Elise Amendola/AP-File
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Education Week - November 5, 2014

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