The national education curriculum expert who helped design the country's premier standards and accountability system in Massachusetts will tell an Ohio Senate panel today that the 21st century skills-based program being proposed for Ohio will actually retard student learning.
The national education curriculum expert who helped design the country's premier standards and accountability system in Massachusetts will tell an Ohio Senate panel today that the 21st century skills-based program being proposed for Ohio will actually retard student learning.
In testimony prepared for the Ohio Senate Education Committee this afternoon, Sandra Stotsky, a professor of education reform at the University of Arkansas, will tell the lawmakers that, "Statements about skills, learning processes, or learning strategies are not standards, chiefly because they are generic in nature, content-free and not sufficiently content-specific" (see here).
The concept of 21st century skills is a major part of Strickland's sweeping education plan being considered by the General Assembly.
In her prepared testimony, Stotsky says the 21st century skills movement actually inhibits learning. "Attempts to emphasize skills, processes, or strategies, as in the 21st century skills movement, will point teachers in the wrong direction and retard student achievement," she says.
As senior associate commissioner at the Massachusetts Department of Education from 1999-2003, Stotsky had a key role in revising that state's education standards. Massachusetts' standards are generally regarded as the strongest in the United States and the state's education system is considered the nation's best.
"What did we do to ensure a set of strong and coherent academic standards in each subject? First, we eliminated all strands, substrands, or statements that were chiefly about skills and learning processes or strategies," she says.
Stotsky calls Ohio's current standards mediocre.
She believes it is imperative that Ohio have a strong school curriculum with solid intellectual content that starts before kindergarten and extends through high school.
Effective teachers, Stotsky says, should want their students to acquire knowledge and that should be reflected in state standards. The skills related to that knowledge will be developed naturally later as students "grapple with and grasp" the content of their lessons, she said.
Stotsky will tell the panel that successful education needs a strong curricular framework in English/reading, mathematics, science, history, geography, economics, civic education, foreign languages, and the arts.
"Why are curriculum frameworks with strong academic standards the beginning and the end? Because they heavily shape, or should, the academic components of all the other documents a state department of education develops for pre-K-to-12," she says.
In her prepared testimony, Stotsky describes a Massachusetts environment, when she arrived there, similar to Ohio's now. "Most of the educators on the original standards development committees had spent their time arguing about, and developing prescriptions for how teachers should teach or what strategies and skills student should learn, not the basic intellectual content to be taught from grade to grade," she says.
Tis the season for school reform and both President Obama and Gov. Strickland are pushing their school reform agendas hard. In comparing and contrasting the efforts of these two Democratic leaders some similarities emerge, but so do some interesting differences.
Where there is agreement: Both the governor and the president want to spend more money on public schools; both, also, want new investments in early education. These are long-standing Democratic positions so no surprises here. But, and this is new, each is seeking more seat time in schools for kids. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan could have been speaking for both Strickland and Obama when he said recently, "I fundamentally think our children are at a competitive disadvantage. The children in India and China who they are competing [with] for jobs are going to school 25, 30 percent more than we are." Gov. Strickland wants to add 20 days a year to Ohio's school calendar.
Where they disagree in kind: Both Strickland and Obama say they see quality teachers and better teaching as pivotal to improving student achievement. Here, Strickland's plan is less bold than Obama's, but controversial enough that it has garnered the ire of the Ohio Federation of Teachers. The governor's plan seeks to overhaul teacher tenure (making tenure decisions in nine years, up from the current three), and his plan would create new teacher licensure requirements and a teacher residency program.
President Obama goes further and challenges one of the central orthodoxies of teacher unionism when he proposes merit pay. The president has even hinted at the possibility that such pay should be connected to student test scores. Obama acknowledged that the teacher unions don't like his plan when he told Hispanic business leaders recently, "Too many supporters of my party have resisted the idea of rewarding excellence in teaching with extra pay, even though we know it can make a difference in the classroom."
The need for improved academic standards and testing are also common to the education plans of both the president and the governor. However, details are sketchier. Obama says the "solution to low test scores is not lower standards-it's tougher, clearer standards." The governor, meanwhile, seems captivated with adding new standards for hard to define, and harder yet to measure, 21st century skills.
It also appears that the governor and his team would abandon test-based accountability if they could. He told the Columbus Education Association recently, "Teachers must have the freedom to teach without the fear of standardized test results communicating that you're a bad teacher. Finally, testing and assessment ought to be diagnostic....This is not how it is in its current incarnation," Strickland said.
To their credit, the Obama administration has declared that it will not abandon the testing-based accountability provisions of No Child Left Behind. The Obama team has gone further and actually is also pushing for national, voluntary standards that states could opt into.
Where they disagree in full: In both his 2007 and his 2009 budget proposals Gov. Strickland sought to cut funding to charter schools while increasing their regulatory burdens. He has also sought to ban for-profit school-management companies from operating in the Buckeye State. President Obama, on the other hand, has been an advocate for more federal charter school spending and has spoken openly about his support for charters.
The president told a reporter from the Cleveland Plain Dealer recently, "the number of children going to the Cleveland Public Schools who are actually prepared to go to college [is] probably one out of seven or eight or ten. And that's just not acceptable. It's not acceptable for them. It's not acceptable in terms of America's future. And so we've got to experiment with ways to provide a better education experience for our kids, and some charters are doing outstanding jobs." Further, Education Secretary Duncan, when CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, built one of the country's premier portfolios of charter schools-which now serves about 23,000 students. This included a 1,450-student school operated by the for-profit charter operator Edison Learning. It also included holding schools to account for results.
The tension around education (reformers vs. teacher unions) within the Democratic Party has been much discussed since the August Democratic National Convention in Denver (for a recent example see here). President Obama and Governor Strickland seem to be in different factions when it comes to school reform and their party. We wish the president well in this struggle.
The board of the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio told members last month that it could not rely on a nine percent return on investment to fund future retirement benefits. The implication is that the board will continue to rely on a long-term return of eight percent.
While that eight percent might seem ridiculous given the vast losses in the stock market, it turns out that just about all public pension funds depend on that rate. It also turns out that public pensions need a rate of return that is much higher-by about one-third-than the comparable figure for private pension funds, which generally calculate growth at a long-term average rate of about six percent.
Why the difference? According to a pension-fund analyst at the Center for Retirement Growth at Boston College, public pension funds generally expect wage growth to be higher for their members than the managers of private pension funds. "The private sector has a little more expectation of trying to keep on top of costs," Jean-Pierre Aubry told The Gadfly.
Getting that higher rate of return means gambling, according to Jay Greene, the chairman of the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas. But, in a Gadfly interview, Greene pointed out that, because public pension funds such as the STRS are guaranteed by the government they are essentially gambling with taxpayers' dollars.
An eight percent return may sound perfectly reasonable to some, he said. "The trouble is we don't know the future will resemble the past. Will the next century look like the last century? We can look over the world and see markets that vary widely. There's no way to know looking at the average return in the recent past."
"We're investing with considerable risk as current events show," he said. "Japan has had 30 years of no returns. It's not inconceivable."
Not making that eight percent is huge, especially in a down market. Boston College's Aubrey was co-author of a report in March that calculated the aggregate assets for state and local pensions have dropped $1.3 trillion since the peak of the market in October 2007. The current level is $1.6 trillion below the expected level based on an assumption of an eight-percent return. Further, the center estimates that, nationally, pension funds need $270 billion in extra contributions over the next four years, and then more than $100 billion extra annually for the following 20 years.
Greene said the market, however, does tell us what the risk-free return should be and that is the rate on U.S. Treasury bonds. They are now at about four percent and, long-term, are much closer to the six-percent general rate on which private pension funds are based.
Assuming a four-percent return, a teacher pension fund that would have been 70-percent funded at eight percent would drop to 44-percent funded. Teachers, school districts, and/or taxpayers would either have to make up the difference or have a very serious discussion about how much less than 100 percent of salary a realistic pension should provide.
Some critics might argue that the Treasury rate is too conservative but Greene argues that the only way to get a higher return is by increasing taxpayers' risk. Of course, over the last year or so, pensions have lost big. During all of 2008, the STRS, for example, lost 29 percent of its value.
The creaky nature of the pension funds (see here) isn't new. Public pension funds are generally considered in OK shape when their assets are roughly 80 percent of liabilities. But generous pension outlays have been so steep (average public pensions far exceed private pensions) that in 2007, well before the financial meltdown, roughly 40 percent of the major teacher pension plans, nationally, were short of future cash needs, according to Greene.
The STRS board warned bluntly at its March meeting that the fund might not be able to meet future obligations without substantial changes such as teachers working longer, an increase in contributions, and alterations to how benefits are calculated (see here).
Lawmakers in more than half the states are considering changes to their pension funds (see here). New Mexico recently hiked employee contributions and required new workers to work longer before retiring. And, in New Jersey, the governor said that he has to balance the state's obligations to its faltering public pension funds against state services such as education and health care, according the Philadelphia Inquirer (see here). The teachers' fund alone was short $14 billion last June.
Perhaps echoing Ohio's future, a New Jersey official told the newspaper, "I just don't see how the state can raise the revenues to make those kinds of payments. It's depressing."
Tis the season for school reform and both President Obama and Gov. Strickland are pushing their school reform agendas hard. In comparing and contrasting the efforts of these two Democratic leaders some similarities emerge, but so do some interesting differences.
Where there is agreement: Both the governor and the president want to spend more money on public schools; both, also, want new investments in early education. These are long-standing Democratic positions so no surprises here. But, and this is new, each is seeking more seat time in schools for kids. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan could have been speaking for both Strickland and Obama when he said recently, "I fundamentally think our children are at a competitive disadvantage. The children in India and China who they are competing [with] for jobs are going to school 25, 30 percent more than we are." Gov. Strickland wants to add 20 days a year to Ohio's school calendar.
Where they disagree in kind: Both Strickland and Obama say they see quality teachers and better teaching as pivotal to improving student achievement. Here, Strickland's plan is less bold than Obama's, but controversial enough that it has garnered the ire of the Ohio Federation of Teachers. The governor's plan seeks to overhaul teacher tenure (making tenure decisions in nine years, up from the current three), and his plan would create new teacher licensure requirements and a teacher residency program.
President Obama goes further and challenges one of the central orthodoxies of teacher unionism when he proposes merit pay. The president has even hinted at the possibility that such pay should be connected to student test scores. Obama acknowledged that the teacher unions don't like his plan when he told Hispanic business leaders recently, "Too many supporters of my party have resisted the idea of rewarding excellence in teaching with extra pay, even though we know it can make a difference in the classroom."
The need for improved academic standards and testing are also common to the education plans of both the president and the governor. However, details are sketchier. Obama says the "solution to low test scores is not lower standards-it's tougher, clearer standards." The governor, meanwhile, seems captivated with adding new standards for hard to define, and harder yet to measure, 21st century skills.
It also appears that the governor and his team would abandon test-based accountability if they could. He told the Columbus Education Association recently, "Teachers must have the freedom to teach without the fear of standardized test results communicating that you're a bad teacher. Finally, testing and assessment ought to be diagnostic....This is not how it is in its current incarnation," Strickland said.
To their credit, the Obama administration has declared that it will not abandon the testing-based accountability provisions of No Child Left Behind. The Obama team has gone further and actually is also pushing for national, voluntary standards that states could opt into.
Where they disagree in full: In both his 2007 and his 2009 budget proposals Gov. Strickland sought to cut funding to charter schools while increasing their regulatory burdens. He has also sought to ban for-profit school-management companies from operating in the Buckeye State. President Obama, on the other hand, has been an advocate for more federal charter school spending and has spoken openly about his support for charters.
The president told a reporter from the Cleveland Plain Dealer recently, "the number of children going to the Cleveland Public Schools who are actually prepared to go to college [is] probably one out of seven or eight or ten. And that's just not acceptable. It's not acceptable for them. It's not acceptable in terms of America's future. And so we've got to experiment with ways to provide a better education experience for our kids, and some charters are doing outstanding jobs." Further, Education Secretary Duncan, when CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, built one of the country's premier portfolios of charter schools-which now serves about 23,000 students. This included a 1,450-student school operated by the for-profit charter operator Edison Learning. It also included holding schools to account for results.
The tension around education (reformers vs. teacher unions) within the Democratic Party has been much discussed since the August Democratic National Convention in Denver (for a recent example see here). President Obama and Governor Strickland seem to be in different factions when it comes to school reform and their party. We wish the president well in this struggle.
The national education curriculum expert who helped design the country's premier standards and accountability system in Massachusetts will tell an Ohio Senate panel today that the 21st century skills-based program being proposed for Ohio will actually retard student learning.
In testimony prepared for the Ohio Senate Education Committee this afternoon, Sandra Stotsky, a professor of education reform at the University of Arkansas, will tell the lawmakers that, "Statements about skills, learning processes, or learning strategies are not standards, chiefly because they are generic in nature, content-free and not sufficiently content-specific" (see here).
The concept of 21st century skills is a major part of Strickland's sweeping education plan being considered by the General Assembly.
In her prepared testimony, Stotsky says the 21st century skills movement actually inhibits learning. "Attempts to emphasize skills, processes, or strategies, as in the 21st century skills movement, will point teachers in the wrong direction and retard student achievement," she says.
As senior associate commissioner at the Massachusetts Department of Education from 1999-2003, Stotsky had a key role in revising that state's education standards. Massachusetts' standards are generally regarded as the strongest in the United States and the state's education system is considered the nation's best.
"What did we do to ensure a set of strong and coherent academic standards in each subject? First, we eliminated all strands, substrands, or statements that were chiefly about skills and learning processes or strategies," she says.
Stotsky calls Ohio's current standards mediocre.
She believes it is imperative that Ohio have a strong school curriculum with solid intellectual content that starts before kindergarten and extends through high school.
Effective teachers, Stotsky says, should want their students to acquire knowledge and that should be reflected in state standards. The skills related to that knowledge will be developed naturally later as students "grapple with and grasp" the content of their lessons, she said.
Stotsky will tell the panel that successful education needs a strong curricular framework in English/reading, mathematics, science, history, geography, economics, civic education, foreign languages, and the arts.
"Why are curriculum frameworks with strong academic standards the beginning and the end? Because they heavily shape, or should, the academic components of all the other documents a state department of education develops for pre-K-to-12," she says.
In her prepared testimony, Stotsky describes a Massachusetts environment, when she arrived there, similar to Ohio's now. "Most of the educators on the original standards development committees had spent their time arguing about, and developing prescriptions for how teachers should teach or what strategies and skills student should learn, not the basic intellectual content to be taught from grade to grade," she says.
