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Alabama Literacy Act Focuses on Reading by 3rd Grade

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Alabama Literacy Act Focuses on Reading by 3rd Grade

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In a special video message to Alabama educators, Ron Berger, Chief Academic Officer at EL Education, offers support for the challenging work of virtual teaching, including free EL Education resources. Ron was the keynote speaker at the ABPC's 20th Anniversary Celebration in 2019 at Camp McDowell. He's the author of Leaders of Their Own Learning, the guiding text in ABPC's Powerful Conversations Networks for two years.
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While ABPC Instructional Rounds are not exactly like medical rounds, writes Assistant Director Stoney Beavers, they are amazing learning and collaborative opportunities. Reflecting on several rounds he participated in just before social distancing began, Stoney expresses his hope that more schools "will plan on joining us in the future for a truly one-of-a-kind, wonderful learning experience."
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In a special video message to Alabama educators, Ron Berger, Chief Academic Officer at EL Education, offers support for the challenging work of virtual teaching, including free EL Education resources. Ron was the keynote speaker at the ABPC's 20th Anniversary Celebration in 2019 at Camp McDowell.

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A+ College Ready partnered with the Alabama Governor's office and the Governor's Computer Science Task Force to co-host the state's first-ever Computer Science Education (CSE) Summit in Montgomery. Hadi Partovi, founder and CEO of Code.org, opened the summit as its keynote speaker.
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A+ has joined with six peer organizations across the South to release an important report bringing new attention to improving education in our states. Accelerating the Pace: The Future of Education in the American South calls for us in Alabama and neighboring states to move faster to close achievement gaps between more affluent students and their historically disadvantaged classmates.
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In 2018, A+ will continue to set its sights on building a World Class Education System for Alabama. While 2017 was full of challenges, they have created new opportunities to improve and provide more support to students and their teachers across Alabama.
read more

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A+ College Ready partnered with the Alabama Governor's office and the Governor's Computer Science Task Force to co-host the state's first-ever Computer Science Education (CSE) Summit in Montgomery. Hadi Partovi, founder and CEO of Code.org, opened the summit as its keynote speaker.

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In a new report, seven nonpartisan organizations in the South-including the Public School Forum of North Carolina-urge their states to take swifter action to improve K-12 education for every child with an emphasis on support for disadvantaged students.

Accelerating the Pace: The Future of Education in the American South calls for states to move faster to raise the overall quality of education. The report shows that while the South has made major advances in education in recent decades, some "achievement gaps" between more affluent students and historically disadvantaged classmates widened between 2005 and 2015. The report and complete poll results are online at www.acceleratingthepace.org.

The report and the accompanying results of The Education Poll of the South are from the Columbia Group, an informal network of organizations that work to improve education in their respective states. The Columbia Group's members are:

A+ Education Partnership in Alabama

Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education

Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence in Kentucky

Education's Next Horizon in Louisiana

Mississippi First

Public School Forum of North Carolina

SCORE in Tennessee

Accelerating the Pace calls for state leaders and educators to focus on four main priority areas for improvement:

Make the South the best place to teach in the nation. Teachers and principals who have the talent, preparation and continued support they need to help students succeed.

Provide new types of academic-and nonacademic-support for today's students. Students need an array of support systems to help them deal with physical and emotional health issues that can impact their learning.

Clear all students' path from high school to their next steps in education and work. Build a much stronger bridge from high school into college, career training or a good job.

Ensure resources are adequate and targeted. Invest in education to meet the needs of every child, and consider additional support for students who need the most help to catch up.

"North Carolina has made significant improvements in education over the last few decades, but the pace of our progress isn't urgent enough to ensure every child has the educational opportunities they need," said Keith Poston, President & Executive Director, Public School Forum of North Carolina. "This report indicates how North Carolina can be a trendsetter in the South by continuing along the promising path we are already on when it comes to improving our public schools. This includes adopting a new school funding model that ensures access to high quality education for all of our children; improving how we prepare and retain our best and brightest educators in the classroom; and adopting a whole child approach to learning that promotes the overall well-being of a child and considers ways to improve his or her physical and emotional health."

The accompanying results of The Education Poll of the South show that most Southern voters of all political views and backgrounds support better educational opportunities for every child, no matter students' background or where they live. The poll surveyed 2,200 registered voters in 12 states, from Virginia to Louisiana, and shows strong consensus for the need to improve education and on key issues that states need to address. Among the key findings:

74 percent of voters in the South see differences across their states in how well students are educated. Only 13 percent said all schools do an adequate job across their state. Another 13 percent didn't know.

85 percent of voters in the South support "improving public schools by addressing differences in the quality of educationacross all schools in the state." Only 6 percent-about one in 17 voters-opposed this idea, and 7 percent did not know.

84 percent support their "state improving public schools by addressing differences in funding across all public schools." Only 8 percent oppose the idea, and 7 percent did not know.

The poll findings are from among mainstream voters across the South that roughly match the political affiliation, gender, income levels, and racial/ethnic backgrounds of registered voters in each state. Nearly three out of four voters in the survey were parents, although 40 percent had children older than school age.

Many other partner nonprofit organizations provided data and expertise for the Accelerating the Pace report, spanning different political and ideological viewpoints. These include the Southern Regional Education Board, the PIE Network, and the Southern Education Foundation.

For more information, visit www.acceleratingthepace.org.

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Accelerating the Pace: The Future of Education in the American South

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In a new report, seven nonpartisan organizations in the South-including the Public School Forum of North Carolina-urge their states to take swifter action to improve K-12 education for every child with an emphasis on support for disadvantaged students. Accelerating the Pace: The Future of Education in the American South calls for states to move faster to raise the overall quality of education.

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February 2018 | Volume 75 | Number 5
Measuring What Matters Pages 88-89

H. Richard Milner IV

Assessment should help us learn about students-not sort them.

When I was in high school, I had a teacher who prided herself on being a tough grader-very few students passed her classes. She talked extensively to her classes at the beginning of the year and throughout the term about how challenging her tests were and even bragged about the meager percentages of students who typically passed them.

While most teachers today don't explicitly follow these types of practices, I've found they still hold enormous power in our schools. So it's important to reflect on the real purposes of assessments and measurement in our work.

As educators, we need appropriate assessment tools to determine what students know and what they have learned in order to revise and refine our (educators') practices. Assessments and measurement tools provide important evidence of what we have actually taught-and how well we have taught it. Assessments should be seen as opportunities for educators to adjust their practices and respond to students, not as opportunities to punitively grade or sort students through explicit or implicit tracking systems.

In this sense, assessment and evaluative tools should be expansive and should be used to chart and promote student learning and development over time. This is especially true with respect to students who are often placed at the margin of learning-black and brown students, students whose first language is not English, students who have learning differences, and students who live below the poverty line. Measurement has often been used as means to compare these students to more advantaged students and thus push them even further to the margins, when it should be employed to support their development as diverse human beings. As Linda Darling-Hammond wrote a few years ago:

The Reagan era introduced a new theory of reform focused on outcomes rather than inputs-that is, high-stakes testing without investing-that drove most policy initiatives. The situation in many urban (and rural) schools deteriorated over the decades.

While measurement allows us to understand dimensions of student outcomes, our focus must be on the inputs-that is, the learning and development opportunities of students in their individual context. When used to gauge or address inputs, assessments have the potential to be much more constructive in our schools and society, to be more equitable and responsive to student diversity.

Supporting Growth and Diversity

In an educational context, equity means developing environments and systems in ways that provide students with what they need based on careful and systematic attention to the particulars of their situation. Equality, by contrast, en-tails providing them with the same, standardized set of conditions and resources regardless of circumstances.

At this point in our psychometric history, we need to do a better job of using our assessments to support equity, as opposed to equality or standardization. We should be working toward assessments-and assessment systems-that help us improve our practices to support student growth and student diversity. These assessments may be written, oral, performative, arts-centered, or technologically enhanced. In all cases, the important thing is for educators to learn what students are learning (or not learning) as we challenge them to build knowledge, attitudes, dispositions, skills, and practices.

In this spirit, here are five interrelated reminders educators need as we work toward assessment for equity:

1. Assessments and "measurement" should be used to gauge student learning, development, and improvement over time.

2. Assessments should be used by teachers to adjust their practices (how they teach, what they teach, when they teach, and so forth) to respond to and meet the needs of students.

3. Students should not feel intimated by assessments, but see them as opportunities to get a snapshot-a picture of where they are and what they need to do to improve.

4. Punitive assessments send the wrong message and can raise anxiety among learners, especially the ones who most need our support.

5. Perhaps most important, assessment tools should be just as diverse as the students who take them.

Re-centering and refocusing measurement systems and assessments on inputs will allow us to develop practices that more closely align with student needs. Equitable assessments are what we need in schools today instead of more standardization.

Endnote

Darling Hammond, L. (2014). Foreword. In H. R. Milner & K. Lomotey (Eds.), Handbook of urban education. New York: Routledge Press.

H. Richard Milner IV is Helen Faison Professor of Urban Education and Director of the Center for Urban Education at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of the award-winning Start Where You Are But Don't Stay There: Understanding Diversity, Opportunity Gaps, and Teaching in To-day's Classrooms (2010) and Rac(e)ing to class: Confronting poverty and race in schools and classrooms (2015), both from Harvard Education Press.

KEYWORDS

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Assessment for Equity - Educational Leadership

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February 2018 | Volume 75 | Number 5 Measuring What Matters Pages 88-89 H. Richard Milner IV Assessment should help us learn about students-not sort them. When I was in high school, I had a teacher who prided herself on being a tough grader-very few students passed her classes.

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A+ College Ready partnered with the Alabama Governor's office and the Governor's Computer Science Task Force to co-host the state's first-ever Computer Science Education (CSE) Summit in Montgomery. Hadi Partovi, founder and CEO of Code.org, opened the summit as its keynote speaker.
read more

A+ has joined with six peer organizations across the South to release an important report bringing new attention to improving education in our states. Accelerating the Pace: The Future of Education in the American South calls for us in Alabama and neighboring states to move faster to close achievement gaps between more affluent students and their historically disadvantaged classmates.
read more

In 2018, A+ will continue to set its sights on building a World Class Education System for Alabama. While 2017 was full of challenges, they have created new opportunities to improve and provide more support to students and their teachers across Alabama.
read more

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A+ College Ready partnered with the Alabama Governor's office and the Governor's Computer Science Task Force to co-host the state's first-ever Computer Science Education (CSE) Summit in Montgomery. Hadi Partovi, founder and CEO of Code.org, opened the summit as its keynote speaker.

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POLL: Should education be the top priority for Tennessee's future governor?

Despite making significant strides in the past several decades, Southerners remain concerned about the quality of education in their states, according to a recent report by a network of Southern state-based organizations called the Columbia Group.

The report, " Accelerating the Pace: The Future of Education in the American South," found that student achievement has improved significantly, but overall achievement gaps have widened in some states, especially between affluent and white students and their low-income or minority peers.

"If schools do not help more students catch up more quickly - even as they raise expectations for all children - the region's economic prospects will worsen," the report states. "In some areas, they already have."

Commissioned by groups including the Tennessee State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE) and the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education, the report includes the first Education Poll of the South. Conducted last fall in 11 states across the Southeast, it surveyed more than 2,000 voters on their thoughts and priorities regarding education.

Respondents rated "improving K-12 public education" and "improving the economy and creating jobs" as the top two priorities they want state and local elected officials to address.

Changes in achievement gaps from 2005 To 2015
ALABAMA

Gaps widened for black fourth-graders in math and for Hispanic students in fourth-grade reading and math and eighth-grade reading.

Gaps also widened for students from low-income families in fourth grade reading and math and eighth-grade math.

GEORGIA

Gaps narrowed substantially for fourth- and eighth-grade students from low-income families in both reading and math.

Gaps narrowed for black and Hispanic students in fourth-grade math.

In fourth-grade reading, gaps widened for black students and stayed the same for Hispanic students. Gaps widened for black and Hispanic students in eighth-grade reading.

In eighth-grade math, gaps stayed the same for Hispanic students and widened for black students.

TENNESSEE

Gaps widened for students from low-income families in fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math.

Gaps widened for black students in fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math.

Gaps narrowed for Hispanic students in fourth-grade reading, but widened in fourth-grade math.

Data was not available for Hispanic eighth-graders.

Source: Accelerating the Pace: The Future of Education in the American South report, The Education Poll of the South, The Columbia Group
This comes as no surprise in Tennessee. Last month, SCORE released results from a statewide survey of more than 1,000 Tennessee voters that identified education as their top issue when voting for the next governor.

"SCORE regularly conducts surveys about voter views on education issues, and it is clear from the latest results that Tennessee voters understand the importance of public education, especially as providing a foundation for success after high school," SCORE President David Mansouri said in a statement. "Voters also are eager to hear candidates for governor talk about the policies they favor for improving education in Tennessee."

As far as education across the South, the Columbia Group's report highlighted some significant improvements in Tennessee, including Gov. Bill Haslam's 2017 bill that provides free community college and technical school tuition for all through the Tennessee Promise program and a new rating system of teacher-preparation programs, first released in 2017.

However, not all changes have been positive. Achievement gaps have widened in many states in the region, according to data from 2005 and 2015.

Though Tennessee students are performing better on fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math assessments according to National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data, white students still outperform their black and Hispanic peers.

The number of students testing at or above proficient levels in fourth-grade math increased by 18 percentage points for non-low-income students in the past decade, five points higher than the 13 percentage point increase in low-income students.

In Georgia, gaps in math proficiency narrowed in the past decade, but in 2015, 47 percent of white fourth-graders tested at or above grade level, whereas only 19 percent of black students and 28 percent of Hispanic students did.

Alabama saw similar trends, with gaps widening for minority and low-income students in both fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math assessments.

"Our state has made significant improvements in education over the last few decades, but the pace of our progress isn't enough to provide every child with an excellent education," Georgia Partnership President Steve Dolinger said in a statement. "I encourage all thought leaders and policymakers to use this report and accompanying poll results to make needed changes so all students in Georgia are receiving the education they deserve, and the education they need to ensure a future workforce that keeps our state the best in which to do business."

Southern voters are aware of these achievement differences and believe they should be addressed, according to poll results.

The majority - 85 percent - of those polled support addressing differences in the quality of education across their states, and 64 percent recognize these differences stem from the disparities in school funding.

School finance systems in many states have not changed since the 1990s, according to the report. In recent years, some states, including Alabama and Georgia, have considered weighted funding systems that would allocate or add funds based on a school district's needs.

"We're now so starved," Carolina Novajk of the A+ education partnership in Alabama said in the report. "Money isn't everything, but it certainly is necessary."

Last month, in his final State of the State address, Haslam unveiled his budget proposal for fiscal year 2018-2019, calling for more than $200 million in funds for K-12 education.

The need for better career and technical education to prepare a better workforce was also a highlight of the report - something that Tennesseans, including Haslam, across the state and region have made a major focus. According to the report, "the South still suffers from a major shortage of adults with two- and four-year degrees and with career certifications."

Only 1 in 3 adults in Alabama, for instance, had an associate degree or above as of 2014. According to SCORE, only 39 percent of Tennesseans have any type of post-secondary credential.

One of the new accountability measures under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the 2015 federal law that replaced No Child Left Behind, is whether school districts are producing "ready graduates." This aligns with Haslam's goal of having 55 percent of adults completing postsecondary training by 2025.

Locally, Hamilton County Schools' new superintendent, Bryan Johnson, has made career readiness a priority. In partnership with Chattanooga 2.0 and area business leaders, the district plans to unveil the Future Ready Institutes - industry-themed smaller learning academies housed within the district's high schools - later this month.

Overall, Southerners are seemingly conscious of the inequities that exist across education, and that concern is likely to remain a priority in this election year.
Contact staff writer Meghan Mangrum at mmangrum@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6592. Follow her on Twitter @memangrum.

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Education report: Southern states need to get faster at closing achievement gaps

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Despite making significant strides in the past several decades, Southerners remain concerned about the quality of education in their states, according to a recent report by a network of Southern state-based organizations called the Columbia Group.