April Update

maureen — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 11:35:49 -0500

Washington Math Standards Move Forward

It has already been a busy year for those involved with Washington’s new math standards. There have been multiple rounds of edits and revisions. The Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) has held numerous public hearings. And, at the end of the legislative session, oversight of the math standards process was transferred from OSPI to the State Board of Education.

Last Friday, however, the State Board moved the standards one step closer to the finish line. After receiving several rounds of public comment, the State Board approved state consultant Strategic Teaching’s “Edited Expectations” report on the new K-8 math standards with three final requests:

Add more examples to requirements
Provide more explicit language concerning calculator use, and
Give the document a good proofread.

Otherwise, they agreed, the new standards “provide greater clarity about what is expected of students in each grade, give more explicit guidance to educators about what to teach when, and increase the rigor of math to ensure more Washington students succeed.”

In accordance with SB 6534, the State Board now plans to ask OSPI to use Strategic Teaching’s suggestions to complete the revision of the K-8 math standards and begin work on professional development for teachers. This complex process looks to be completed on April 28, when the State Board will decide whether or not to adopt the new K-8 standards set to go into effect next year.

To learn more about Washington’s math standards, please visit the following resources.

The State Board of Education – For updates on the latest standards drafts and revisions from Strategic Teaching.
The Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction – For resources for educators, including podcasts by State Supt. Terry Bergeson on the standards revision process.
The College Work Ready Agenda’s Frequently Asked Questions about Math – For information about why a good foundation in math is so important.

Don't Miss Kati Haycock at the Seattle Public Library

Next week, Kati Haycock, executive director of The Education Trust, will be back in Seattle to present on the power of high standards for all students. Hosted by the League of Education Voters and sponsored by Partnership for Learning and others, Haycock will focus on what Washington can learn from other successful school systems and the policy we can implement to create more opportunities for all Washington students. The event is free, open to the public and one that you won't want to miss!

During her visit last December, Haycock spoke of the incredible turnaround potential of school systems that address achievement gaps, institute rigorous curriculum and ensure that quality teachers are in classrooms. She also firmly cut through age-old policy discussions with advice that, in education, "we need to focus on what we can do rather than what we can't."

A truly inspirational speaker and one of the nation's leading education reform advocates, Haycock will share her thoughts on what is really needed to give all students as many opportunities as possible to succeed in life.

Kati Haycock and Eric Liu
(view the invite)
Monday, April 28 from 7:00 - 8:30 pm
Seattle Public Library, Microsoft Auditorium
Please RSVP by Friday, April 25th

New College Bound Scholarship Breaks Down Barriers for Low-Income Students

Washington currently ranks 32nd nationally in the percentage of low-income students who participate in postsecondary education, at a time when the state's need for highly educated and highly skilled workers is growing rapidly.But a new scholarship sponsored by the Higher Education Coordinating Board (HECB) hopes to turn this trend around in Washington state with the College Bound Scholarship.

The scholarship will cover the cost of college tuition, fees and books for those who sign a pledge in 7th or 8th grade promising to graduate from high school with at least a 2.0 grade point average and demonstrate good citizenship. Their family income must also remain at 65 percent or less of the state's median income by the time of high school graduation to permit a scholarship award.

There are more than 56,000 Washington students potentially eligible for this scholarship. Are you one of them or do you know someone who is? The deadline for application is June 1, 2008 for 8th graders and June 1, 2009 for 7th graders. Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity! Visit the HECB website for more information.

Partnership for Learning Announces New Executive Director

We are pleased to announce that Larry Ehl has joined the Partnership for Learning team as executive director. Larry is a seasoned communicator with more than 24 years of experience in strategic advocacy and government relations and, as we're finding out, is pretty serious about his music collection.

Previously the director of government relations for the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT), Larry used to drive 3 ½ hours a day from Edmonds to Olympia and back.

"I have nearly 20,000 songs in my iTunes (including a lot of, um, Grateful Dead). So while the drive did give me time to listen to a lot of music, it's great to now be a part of efforts that will make a positive difference in children's lives and educators' work--and spend more time with my family," said Larry, who has three teenage daughters in Edmonds Public Schools.

As WSDOT's government relations director, Larry established effective relationships with legislators and the Governor's office, assisted in developing department advocacy and communication strategies and helped elected officials and the public better understand good transportation policy. He also represented Washington's transportation interests to Congress as a federal relations manager and secured funding for transportation projects that were important to communities.

Larry's also served six years on the Edmonds School Board, which was named under his tenure as the Washington State School Directors Association (WSSDA) School Board of the Year and given the WSSDA Diversity Award for outstanding efforts to promote diversity and multiculturalism. He also served as a past executive director of the University of Washington's Experimental College.

"Partnership for Learning has a great track record and reputation for working collaboratively in championing education reform efforts to better prepare our children for success and improve support for educators," said Larry. "I'm excited about the opportunity to devote my skills and energy to helping the business community, parents and educators improve our education system."

We're certainly happy to have a fellow music-lover and colleague devoted to Washington public education on board. So please join us in welcoming Larry to the Partnership and look forward to hearing from him soon!

Creating a College-Going Culture

maureen — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 13:12:00 -0600

The Mary Walker School District is located about an hour outside of Spokane, deep in the heart of rural and rugged Northeastern Washington. The majority of students are poor and many high school students possess more education than their parents.

While many urban schools struggle to help their poorest students with a network of community support, being isolated by geography and population presents an entirely new layer of challenges: Quality teachers are difficult to recruit. Districts often struggle to collaborate. Maintenance of aging facilities often takes precedence over necessary curriculum updates. And, until recently, getting students to think seriously about going to college was more a dream than a reality.

The Panorama Rural Education Partnership, however, has turned these challenges into opportunities by pooling their resources and holding students to higher standards.

In 2002, as a consortium of rural districts, they began to offer and encourage more students to take Advanced Placement (AP) coursework, provide increased access to college counseling and funding and spread the promise of college to earlier grades. And, in Mary Walker, where previously little college-going culture existed, now more than 70 percent of students attend postsecondary education and the number of students entering four-year colleges has increased more than three-fold.

“We’re really just a good story about the power of high standards for ‘average kids,’” says Jerry Dyar, Mary Walker’s college counselor and a strong advocate for the Panorama Partnership. “Teachers want to teach AP classes and students want to take them. They want to get ahead. So when we gave them the tools, we started seeing results.”

Dyar’s modesty hides the incredible amount of work he and others have done to unite the Panorama Partnership and bring together nine rural districts (Stevens County, Curlew, Cusick, Inchelium, Mary Walker, Northport, Republic, Selkirk and Wellpinit) under the mission that all students should be prepared for postsecondary success education.

“There has been some pushback from the community and some staff who think not all students are going to college,” said Mary Walker Superintendent Kevin Jacka. “But this is a place to start a discussion—the idea that college is limited to four-year programs is not the case. We stress that the skills and knowledge that make you successful in a university help you through technical programs, as well.”

Through the Panorama Partnership, Dyar and Jacka’s efforts to create a college-going culture in rural schools have included a scrappy, but highly effective, blend of the state’s college-readiness resources. Due to the high-poverty levels of their districts, the Panorama Partnership was able to qualify for a GEAR UP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs) grant that allows them to take middle and high schools students on college visits and put on an array of parent financial aid nights.

The highly successful Navigation 101 program—which challenges students to create, present and stick to a high school and beyond plan—has also become an essential part of the Panorama Partnership’s efforts to engage students and their families in academic, career, and college planning.

“We try to connect all existing resources to create this culture,” said Jacka. “We will be promoting the College Bound Scholarship Program (which promises full four-year tuition to low-income middle school students who pledge to graduate high school) to our 7th and 8th grade families during student conference week. The great majority of our students will qualify for the scholarship and will know before they even get to high school that college is affordable. We also give all of our 9th, 10th, and 11th grade students the PSAT at no charge.”

Though the addition and expansion of AP coursework in Panorama Partnership schools has been just one of the elements that has increased college-going rates, Dyar says that is an important one.

“AP classes aren’t the only answer, but they are an external validator—a tangible piece that tells students that they can go to college and succeed.”

Currently, almost 50 percent of Mary Walker students have enrolled in an AP class upon graduation—an amazing feat considering the districts only received AP materials through the Panorama Partnership in 2002. They have also begun to add pre-AP curriculum at the middle school level to improve AP readiness.

With the help of the GEAR UP grant, the Panorama Partnership recently dug deeper into its schools to mine the college aspirations of middle school students. In a Spring 2007 survey, they found that approximately 90 percent of 5th- through 8th-graders planned to go to college.

“The numbers are good, but the most encouraging thing is the variety and specificity of the career plans. Some examples: mechanic, architect, engineer, game designer, plumber, pharmacist, detective, linguist, orthopedic surgeon, x-ray technician. Very few of the obvious choices for this age group,” Dyar said.

For their efforts to improve college readiness, in 2007, Mary Walker High School was selected as one of the top 500 high schools in the nation (and awarded a silver medal) by U.S. News and World Report. Four other Panorama Partnership districts—Curlew, Northport, Republic and Selkirk—won bronze medals for being among the top 1,000 schools in the nation.

“[The ranking and awards] are adjusted for poverty, which we have an abundance of—so what it says is that we are outperforming our demographics. It’s good thing, but it doesn't mean our kids are on a level playing field with kids from affluent districts. That's our goal: give students the same chance as students in Bellevue. The recognition is nice, but bittersweet,” said Dyar.

In the future, Jacka and Dyar want to continue to build the richness of the consortium’s AP and college-readiness curriculum and to be identified, not just as a group of rural schools, but as a place known for rigorously preparing students for college.

Math and Science Teachers Study Receives Funding

Last week, the Senate appropriated more than $140,000 to HB 2809 - a bill that seeks to quantify the number of math teachers we need, accelerate recruitment programs and introduce financial incentives to attract math and science teachers.

Nearly half of recent high school graduates attending community college in our state need remedial math before they can begin credit-bearing work. This is not only unfair to students, but wastes millions of dollars of taxpayer money every year. Improvement has been stymied due to a shortage of qualified teachers, which is projected to increase. Accurate data is the foundation needed to work toward solutions.

Teaching Science Teachers to be Leaders

allisonm — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 14:49:35 -0600

A big part of teaching is about knowing how to ask the right questions.

But what if the subject you’re teaching revolves around just that, the pursuit of more and more questions?

Welcome to science class, a period some of us may remember as an adventure into the innards of frogs, the Milky Way and everything in between. Science class today still requires students to know facts and formulas but they are also increasingly asked to seek their own answers to fundamental questions about how the world around them works.

“It is a much more active process of learning with teachers serving as highly skilled guides through a rigorous process of scientific inquiry. To do it well requires teachers that are passionate and incredibly knowledgeable and comfortable with the science content,” said Carolyn Landel, project director for the North Cascades and Olympic Science Partnership (NCOSP) at Western Washington University.

Nationally and locally, science education has long languished due to inadequate instructional materials, ineffective teaching strategies, and particularly at the elementary level, insufficient preparation in science to teach it well. Exacerbating these challenges, national and state standards include far more topics than students can learn over the course of their school experience, according to Landel (the State Board of Education and the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction are currently involved in revising Washington’s science standards and will complete their work in December of 2008).

So Landel and others brought together 28 school districts and five institutions of higher education in an innovative partnership to develop a network of “teacher leaders” with deep knowledge of science, how children learn, and how to plan effective instruction to support student learning. These teacher leaders are also coached on how to more effectively collaborate with their peers as well as serve as catalysts for change in science teaching throughout their school and district.

Thanks to Landel, NCOSP, and the hard work of the teacher leaders and their administrators, student learning in Northwestern Washington has increased dramatically.

According to Landel, the entire program is firmly grounded in the research surrounding “How People Learn: Bridging Research and Practice”—a scientific, research-based approach to teaching and learning. “What distinguishes the partnership is its relentless commitment to translating research findings into practical strategies and tools that teachers and administrators can use to support their daily work -- helping every child learn.”

Founded in 2002 by former NASA Astronaut and Western Washington University science professor Pinky Nelson, NCOSP was conceived as a partnership between higher education and school districts to simultaneously improve the preparation of future teachers and the quality of the science programs and science instruction in schools.

A grant from the National Science Foundation awarded in September 2003 provided external resources to help the partnership take form and to conduct careful studies to monitor its impact. Nelson and Landel assembled a staff and launched the first Summer Academy with 160 local science teachers in 2004.

The teachers were offered a variety of tailored incentives for their participation in the NCOSP program. All were awarded a stipend for taking the classes, and many elected to receive graduate credits that could be used to complete a master’s degree. Still others applied portions of their NCOSP experience to their pursuit of national board certification.

“Each partner district had to decide which of their teachers would participate,” said Landel. “They know their staff; they know the needs and concerns of their school. We relied on their expertise to select those that would become teacher leaders.” The result was a broad sampling of teachers with diverse backgrounds; a very representative slice of the state.

Using expertise from different groups is another hallmark of NCOSP. “The teachers bring a wealth of knowledge about teaching, schools, and children. The higher education faculty has expertise in science content and research. When these groups work together, everyone learns,” said Nelson.

The first 160 local teachers (90 from elementary, 40 from middle and 30 from high school), met for a two-week immersion during the summer and experienced a deep-dive into the current research on learning and effective science instruction. Through structured scientific investigations, teachers were confronted with many questions. The facilitators of those discussions provided few answers -- the teachers did the hard work of constructing the answers themselves.

“Across all grade levels we need teachers to recognize science as a dynamic body of knowledge that changes based on the best available evidence. There is no better way to understand that idea than to experience it first hand. Teachers quickly realize that it’s the evidence their students generate and the questions they explore that will help them learn science.”

“My students have had to get comfortable with seeking answers to questions they generate,” said Roger Hasper, an NCOSP teacher leader at North Bellingham Elementary. “As I increased my use of questioning strategies and inquiry students started to take more responsibility for their thinking across all areas of the curriculum.”

After participating in the Summer Academy, the teacher leaders received continued support through regional Learning Community Forums, which met monthly for the first three years of the program. NCOSP’s teacher leaders also receive additional support from Teachers on Special Assignment (or TOSAs; teacher leaders who take a one-year sabbatical to support partnership activities across all districts). TOSAs help observe and facilitate ongoing meetings between teacher leaders, their teaching colleagues, and their school principal.

Squalicum High School Principal David Engle in the Bellingham School District has developed a deeper respect for the challenge of good science teaching and has seen significant improvement in his school’s science instruction since one of his staff became a teacher leader. This teacher leader has worked with other teachers in her building to share what she’s learning, increasing the impact on instruction across multiple classrooms.

“Students are more highly engaged in our science curriculum because of these instructional changes,” said Engle. “I've seen my teachers really address the misconceptions that students bring to class with them about basic science ideas and I've seen a much more reflective approach to science instruction from the teachers most involved in the NCOSP work.”

Engle’s school isn’t the only one that has benefited. Two years ago, only 36 percent of eighth-grade students at Nooksack Valley Middle School in Everson were proficient on the science WASL. In 2007, that number rose to 73 percent in classrooms taught by NCOSP teachers. The results at Nooksack Valley Elementary School were equally striking. The scores for fifth graders in NCOSP classrooms jumped from near the state average of 36 percent two years ago to almost 90 percent this year.

“All of our schools’ test results are now significantly higher than state averages – despite demographics that would predict otherwise. We are confident that we will continue to improve,” said Mark Johnson, Nooksack Valley Superintendent.

With the success of the first 160 teachers in 2007, NCOSP added an additional 250 teachers. This time, however, the new teachers were provided professional development guidance by the teacher leaders (all past NCOSP participants) at their school. This sort of collaborative model that uses the expertise of teacher leaders is exactly what Landel hopes will catch on in each of the participating districts and perhaps beyond.

“There are many more teachers across the state that could benefit from this type of program,” said Landel. “The next question we need to sit down, study, and ask ourselves is, ‘What does it take to build other partnerships like this that benefit teachers and students and how do we implement them to support broader statewide changes?’”

In the science of teaching science, the questions never really end.

To learn more about the North Cascades and Olympic Science Partnership, visit www.ncosp.wwu.edu or email Carolyn Landel at Carolyn.Landel@wwu.edu.

For updates on Washington’s revision of state science standards visit the State Board of Education’s website.

To learn more about a complimentary statewide effort to improve science education in Washington State visit LASER’s website.

Holding Back Vital Change

House Bill would deny students the math necessary to be college ready

Representative Dave Quall has introduced and will hold a hearing Monday, Feb. 4 on HB 3299, a bill to reverse the state's requirement for a third year of high school math. This would be a major step backward. The requirement is already not likely to be implemented until 2013. Reversing the requirement would diminish important momentum and extend the pattern of awarding diplomas to students who are not prepared for a two-year community or technical college or other higher education.

Two Legislators Focus on Ending Washington's Math Teacher Shortage

Why can’t we offer more math to high school students? What’s holding us back from doing away with remediation—those costly pre-college classes half of community college students need even though they’ve just received a high school diploma? The answer, more often than not, is that we simply don’t have enough qualified math teachers.

Two legislators are stepping up this session to squarely address the challenge. Rep. Pat Sullivan and Sen. Rodney Tom have both introduced bills that would set in motion a process to quantify the shortage of math and science teachers; unify, strengthen and accelerate recruitment efforts; and introduce financial incentives to attract new math and science teachers into the profession. The House bill (HB 2809) was broadly supported in last week’s public hearing. The Senate bill (SB 6781) is slated to be heard February 6.

The Professional Educators Standards Board (PESB) has shown a strong commitment to work on this issue, as well. PESB recently released the preliminary results of a statewide survey of school districts that reported impending teacher shortages in meeting the new third year of math requirement. This was an encouraging step forward but gathering accurate data on this topic remains challenging. And when it comes to things such as pay incentives—only the legislature can pave the way. Recent public opinion research has shown strong support for using pay incentives as a way to attract qualified math and science teachers, even if it means they will be paid more than teachers of other important subjects.

We applaud these two legislators for stepping up and offering proactive solutions to the statewide shortage of math teachers.

For other updates on important education-related legislation please visit our blog, The Hall Monitor.