From the Headlines

As part of an initiative to increase college attendance, the Texas Legislature designated $7 million this year to pay for a free SAT or ACT exam this spring or summer for every high school junior in the state. Read the story here.

In a recent Washington Post editorial titled "Why Great Teachers Matter to Low-Income Students," Joel Klein, Michael Lomax, and Janet Murgua take issue with those who believe that "schools alone cannot overcome the impact that economic disadvantage has on a child, [and] that life outcomes are fixed by poverty and family circumstances."   Citing recent NAEP data showing very different achievement results for students in different urban districts, the authors assert the importance of looking closely "at those whom we attract and retain to teach, with regard to their quality and to ensuring that they are distributed equally across our school districts." Read the full article here.

Despite popular belief, a new study by Eric Hanushek and Steven Rivkin for the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests that the answer to this question is “no.”  When the researchers studied a large (anonymous) Texas district, they found that teachers who left their school tended to be significantly less effective than teachers who stayed.  Click here to read the study.

Check out Citizen Schools to see how after school is just as important as during school.  Reports on their effective student engagement can be found here.

In a recent survey, educators held that student engagement in the content was a better, more accurate measurement of teacher effectiveness than student performance on standardized tests.  This finding, along with other results from the survey, can found on Ed Week here.

Universities have long piloted Blackboard web technology to engage students outside the classroom.  Now, with advances in technology and much cooler, more robust tools, Blackboard needs a good look from the K-12 market.  Click here for more information

Jay Mathews, Washington Post, March 5, 2010

A new National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) study entitled “Who Benefits From KIPP?” is the first to use a randomized control group method to study the impact of KIPP's long school days, rigorous instruction, and school culture on fifth through eighth graders.
Critics of charter schools like KIPP often argue that they outperform local public schools either because they “cream” the best students or because their weakest students drop out (or both).  But a study of the KIPP Lynn charter school in Massachusetts finds no evidence of either.  Among the study’s key findings:

Evan Thomas and Pat Wingert, Newsweek, February 19, 2010

“For the first time in American history, there is the risk that the rising generation will be less well educated than the previous one... Studies show that more and more poor and nonwhite students aspire to graduate from college—but their graduation rates fall far short of their dreams. The graduation rates for blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans lag far behind the graduation rates for whites and Asians. As the minority population grows in the United States, low college graduation rates become a threat to national prosperity.”

To read the full article, click here.

Kate Alexander, Austin American-Statesman, March 19, 2010

Texas has earned widespread recognition for being the first state to adopt college readiness standards – but according to Leticia Van de Putte (D-San Antonio), a member of the Senate Education Committee, ideological battles have overshadowed college readiness in the recent debate over the state’s social studies standards.  An analysis conducted by the Austin American-Statesman indicates that while the existing standards for U.S. government, U.S. history and world history give insufficient emphasis to the higher-level thinking skills that students will need to succeed in college, fewer than 5 percent of the revisions proposed to these standards increase the emphasis on higher-order skills or address other concerns pertaining to college readiness.