Marie,

I wanted to let list members know about the latest issue of Education 
Week. As some of you who have contact with K-12 education may know, 
Education Week is a weekly newspaper  that reports federal and state 
news. This week the entire issue includes a review of the success of the 
standards-based education effort of the past decade. They call the 
results at once "heartening and sobering". They're heartening in that 
student achievement in some areas, particularly in math have improved. 
In addition,  there have been real gains for black, Hispanic and low 
income students, especially in math.  However, after all the "effort" 
that has been put into reading, overall reading scores have barely 
budged form 1992 to 2005 (although the scores of black, Hispanic and low 
income children increased at nearly triple the national average). There 
is also a discussion of high school drop out and graduation rates (still 
as low as ever for those same groups.) There are lots of reflective 
articles on the benefits, trade-offs and negative aspects of 
standards-based education that we, as adult educators, could learn from  
Several states are profiled in-depth including Delaware, New York, 
Texas, Massachusetts, Iowa and Nevada. The articles contain a lot of 
food for thought and would be a great resource for discussion groups or 
study circles.

Marilyn Gillespie
SRI International

Marie Cora wrote:


> Good morning, afternoon, and evening to you all. 

>

>  

>

> I'm pleased to welcome Peggy, Aaron, Regie, and EFF Center Staff to 

> our discussion.  I've been thinking about this over the weekend, and I 

> have a couple of questions to start us off:

>

>  

>

> For our guests: 

>

>  

>

> -The EFF Standards are complex in terms of what they try to capture in 

> a performance.  Is this was makes them different from competencies?  

> Or perhaps even different from other standards? 

>

>  

>

> For subscribers:  I found the "thought-provokers" really helped me to 

> focus on a piece of this big picture so I could get a handle on it.  

> Did anyone try #1 below?  Or perhaps if there are EFF users on the 

> List, you might comment on this activity.  As for #2 below - I found 

> this question helpful because it did make me consider how often and in 

> what ways I would look for achievement over time, and it also made me 

> think that I would necessarily look for such incremental gains via 

> classroom assessment rather than with a high stakes test.

>

>  

>

> 1.  Pick any EFF standard, read its definition, and imagine what it 

> would look like if you were actually assessing the application of the 

> integrated skill process described in the standard's definition.

>

>  

>

> 2.  How often do you feel a need to look for evidence that learning 

> has happened?  How does the nature of the evidence you are looking for 

> change as you look for learning within the space of one class session, 

> one week, one month, one course, one year, and so on.

>

>  

>

> Anyway, that's what I was thinking about.  How about you?  Please post 

> your questions and comments!

>

> Thanks,

>

> marie

>

> Assessment Discussion List Moderator

>

>  

>

>------------------------------------------------------------------------

>

>

>-------------------------------

>National Insitute for Literacy

>Assessment mailing list

>Assessment at nifl.gov

>To unsubscribe or change your subscription settings, please go to http://www.nifl.gov/mailman/listinfo/assessment

>  

>


-- 
Marilyn Gillespie, Ed.D.
Educational Researcher
SRI International
1100 Wilson Blvd., Suite 2800
Arlington, VA 22209-2268
Phone: (703) 247-8510
Fax: (703) 247-8493
marilyn.gillespie at sri.com

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.nifl.gov/pipermail/assessment/attachments/20060111/1ebbe4d4/attachment.html