Council Of Chief State School Officers Research Articles

Assessment of Math Teachers’ Dispositions to Improve Urban Teacher-Leaders’ Growth and Effectiveness

This paper focuses on the dispositions of in-service math teacher-leaders, as defined in the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (InTASC) Standards by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) on 10 sets of critical dispositions. Teachers (N = 281) were assessed using versions of two instruments developed as part of the Disposition Assessment Aligned with Teacher Standards (DAATS) battery. One instrument is a self report questionnaire called Beliefs About Teaching 2 (BATS2), and the second is a guided reflection, the Experiential Teaching Questionnaire (ETQ2). Item analysis and scoring were done utilizing the Rasch model of item response theory and scaled on a modification of the original Krathwohl affective taxonomy. A discussion of the validity and reliability of these versions of the instrumentation is included, along with a qualitative review of sample responses illustrating the scoring. Finally, there is a discussion of the standards, indicating that the participating math teacher-leaders were consistent with the InTASC Standards. One conclusion is that math teacher-leaders have a lower than expected ability to value diverse learners in valuing diverse learners.

COMMON CORE STANDARDS IN U.S AND THE NEEDS OF PUBLIC EDUCATION IN MACEDONIA

This study identifies the challenges that the K-12 system of public education faces in Macedonia and explore several successful models that are active in US. These challenges are of different natures starting from the infrastructural issues, curriculum development and standards and unfortunately the strong political involvement of un-professional political elites in all stages of education. The study aims to focus on curriculum development by providing to Macedonia successful models that will create clear standards in teaching and assessment in the K-12 system in Macedonia. It is also expected that this set of criteria will indirectly minimize the political influence in the decision making since the standards are purely academic and performance-based. Common Core State Standards are a model that is considered successful in the US. It aims to unify the learning outcome in the whole country by setting clear educational objectives and mainly focuses in language arts and math. According to CCSS official website, this is a state-led effort launched in 2009 by state leaders, including governors and state commissioners of education from 48 states, two territories and the District of Columbia, through their membership in the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). On the other hand the K-12 curriculum in Macedonia is organized in yearly programs. Each of these programs seems quite impressive on paper since three levels of plans are included: the yearly/global plan, the thematic plan and thematic-procedural plan. For each academic year the program states the specific skills and vocabulary/mathematical element that should be conveyed in a particular year. However there are issues such: the Majority of the academic standards in Macedonia have not been revised nor updated in the last 12 years. Also, the content is often not relevant and it does not serve its educational purpose. Unfortunately the English language classes have no cohesion between the curriculum and the teaching materials. In regards to organization the curriculum/program does not have a consistent assessment plan and there is a lack of mentorship support. It is clear that Common Core State Standards are more complex to be fully replicated locally particularly when we consider the cultural context and the legal and infrastructural challenges but the aim for a progressive objectives. This paper aims to compare and contrast these US standards with the current K-12 educational system in Macedonia with the goal of recommending new norms and principles.

The Council of Chief State School Officers and National Governors Association: Whom Do They Serve?

The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the National Governors Association (NGA) are member associations headquartered in Washington, DC. They are also co-owners of the Common Core Standards — the controversial educational content standards that most US states have incorporated, in whole or in part, into their K–12 education programs. Yet, despite what their names might suggest, they are not government entities, even though most of their members are elected or appointed state government officials. The impact these organizations have on US schools via the Common Core Initiative deserves our attention and scrutiny. Also important to consider, however, is the impact their intimate association with the Common Core Initiative has had on them. Do these organizations any longer serve their members’ needs on education issues? Do governors and state superintendents receive unbiased information and a full range of evidence and policy options from the association staff they pay with their member dues?

Leadership for Effective Inclusive Schools: Considerations for Preparation and Reform

School leadership is critical to provide students with disabilities with opportunities to learn in inclusive schools. We summarise research about inclusive leadership, outlining factors that promoted and impeded inclusive schools in the United States. Next, we provide an example of a national collaboration between the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the Collaboration for Effective Educator Development, Accountability, and Reform (CEEDAR) Center that linked theProfessional Standards for Educational Leaders(PSEL; National Policy Board for Educational Administration, 2015) to a supplemental guidance document, titledPSEL 2015 and Promoting Principal Leadership for the Success of Students With Disabilities. The latter illustrates what effective inclusive school leadership means for each of the 10 PSEL standards, and provides recommendations for improving leadership preparation and policy, including licensure. We also consider possible implications of this work for those in other countries, emphasising the need for widely understood and shared leadership practices and the need to link such practices to initial and ongoing leadership development.

The Common Core State Standards and Intellectual Freedom: Implications for Libraries

The Common Core State Standards are a single set of codified, grade-by-grade K-12 educational standards in both English/language arts (ELA) and math that were intended to replace previous state K-12 standards and align them with one another. The National Governors’ Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) developed Common Core in consultation with educational testing companies and with funding from the Bill Gates Foundation. While Common Core has enjoyed bipartisan support from Democrats and Republicans, opposition to Common Core has also generated strange bedfellows, mingling groups that would ordinarily clash, such as the Tea Party and teachers’ union locals. Disparate challenges to Common Core are best understood not as individual curricular challenges, but as moving pieces in a larger social movement context.

Teacher Preparation and the Tenants of Accountability

There is an obvious interrelationship between K-12 student performances and the preparation of teachers in Teacher Education Programs in Higher Education. As accountability increases in K-12 educational systems for students and teachers, accountability increases in Teacher Preparation Programs. There are different methods for evaluating the effectiveness of Teacher Preparation Programs; and recent evaluation methods have focused on the performances of the K-12 students through value-added models. There are proponent and opponents of using value-added models. However, there is much agreement on the need to make improvements to Teacher Preparation Programs. A Task Force was formed in 2012 called the Network for Transforming Educator Preparation (NTEP). The Task Force was formed by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). Licensure, Program Approval, and Data Collection, Analysis and Reporting are among the key areas addressed by the Tasks Force: http://www.ccsso.org/Resources/Programs/Network_for_Transforming_Educator_Preparation_(NTEP).html. These are the similar areas addressed through accreditation processes for Teacher Preparation Programs. In this article, the challenges of accountability with a focus on accreditation are addressed. A review of teacher accreditation and six elements for improving teacher preparation are also discussed.

What Does Standards‐based Educational Reform Mean for English Language Learner Populations in Primary and Secondary Schools?

he standards movement has become omnipresent in contemporaryeducation, impacting English teaching and learning in second andforeign language contexts around the world. A particular set of issues,however, is relevant to primary and secondary school settings for learn-ers of English in which English is used as the predominant means ofeducating the student population across the curriculum. In these con-texts, students are not just learning English as a subject matter but arelearning (and being assessed upon) standards-based academic contentin English as well. In these settings, standards, curricula, and assess-ments are designed with varying understandings and incorporation ofissues related to the linguistic and academic development of Englishlanguage learners (ELLs). A focus on standards-based reform in suchEnglish-medium contexts is a particularly relevant and timely focus fora TESOL Quarterly special issue because many countries with English-medium education have growing numbers of school-aged immigrantand indigenous ELL students and ongoing, contested debates abouthow best to educate them. New national standards have recently beenreleased in the US (Common Core State Standards: National Gover-nors Association Center for Best Practices, Council of Chief StateSchool Officers, 2010a, 2010b; Next Generation Science Standards:NGSS Lead States, 2013) and Australia (The Australian Curriculum:ACARA, 2012), while ongoing reforms continue both in other tradi-tionally English-dominant societies, such as England and Canada, andworldwide. Issues of standards-based reform presented in this specialissue are also relevant more generally to the many other countries inwhich the official language of schooling is not that of the larger com-munity or population, and while this special issue is dedicated to Eng-

Scaffolding the Development of Self-Regulated Learning in Mathematics Classrooms

Results from an action research study examine the development of self-regulated learning behaviors in a seventh grade mathematics class.Educators today are being challenged to think beyond simple, skills-based conceptions of teaching and learning and to support young learners' thinking and reasoning. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), the National Research Council (NRC), and the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGAC) and Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) have called for approaches to teaching and learning mathematics that deeply engage students in mathematical processes to develop mathematical proficiency (NCTM, 2000; Kilpatrick, Swafford, & Findell, 2001; NGAC-CCSSO, 2010). These calls to action highlight the need to develop classroom environments and specific instructional strategies that support learning content while also developing strategic learning behaviors. Typically, early mathematics instruction has consisted of helping students learn basic mathematical facts, carry out the steps of an algorithm, or understand mathematical concepts. This article provides another perspective on instruction based on broadening definitions of mathematics and mathematical competence, theories of self-regulated learning (SRL), and theories of social interaction within classrooms that support students' development of regulatory skills and strategies.In every classroom there are learners who are more independent than their classmates. These students are eager to begin working and often plan how to accomplish assigned tasks. Researchers have coined the term self-regulated learner to depict the proactive nature of such students' approaches to learning (Zimmerman, 1990). Too often, however, we fail to cultivate these competencies in each and every student. Emphasizing short-term mastery goals without attending to students' development of strategic learning skills can adversely affect what students think about their own ability to develop understanding and what it means to learn, ultimately limiting their competence as problem solvers and self-regulated learners.As students enter the middle grades, more is expected of them in terms of taking responsibility for academic growth. This increased expectation may be particularly evident as students are asked to complete homework assignments in several distinct subject areas and study independently for tests. Some students have difficulty moving from the comprehensive social support that was provided in elementary school environments, where most classes are self-contained, to the environment of middle school, where students move between rooms to separate subject area classes taught in pre-determined time segments by different teachers. To be successful in the middle grades and beyond, students must learn to navigate these new demands. Teachers play an important role in developmentally responsive instruction to help students acquire the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary for success.As middle school educators strive to provide developmentally responsive instruction for young adolescents, they must be providing all students with the knowledge and skills needed to take control of their lives (NMSA, 2010, p. 14). Although our work took place in a mathematics classroom, scaffolding the development of regulatory strategies and skills is necessary in all content areas. Young adolescents want to feel competent and responsible for themselves. However, they may not be aware of ways to evaluate their own learning behaviors, to make plans for modifying those behaviors, and then to act on plans to improve learning, thus increasing feelings of competence and responsibility. Teachers must help students become more aware of these cyclical processes-forethought, performance, and reflectionso that they will be able to attribute their successes, and possibly failures, to their own decisions and actions.In this article, we provide a theoretical framework for SRL and mathematics education that has potential for impacting the ways students learn. …

The Common Core “State” Standards: The Arts and Education Reform

As the Common Core Standards (CCSS)1 become reality, teachers have reason for concern. Their autonomy and intellectual freedom to craft curriculum, tests, and assessments are relinquished and put in the hands of experts and testing companies such as Pearson. This reform to public education has consequently marginalized the arts and exacerbated the inequities of people in poverty and with disabilities.These populations flourish when engaged in autonomous acts of discovery, experimentation, and hypothetical thinking, all antithetical to the new reform.Published in 2010, the Common Core State Standards initiative for school reform has been intended to replace the current state standards. The initiative has been funded by the richest private foundations-primarily the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Broad Foundation-wielding their influence on Obama's and Arne Duncan's polices. It has been backed by the most powerful federal agencies in education: the National Governors Association (NGA) Center for Best Practices, Achieve Inc., the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), and the United States Department of Education (Chapman, 2011).As of January 27,2013,45 states, four territories, and the District of Columbia2 have adopted the CCSS in English Language Arts (ELA) and mathematics, which will replace current state standards. States that accepted federal money have committed their schools to the most prescriptive and formalized curriculum we have seen in this country. The Common Core Standards have aligned national curriculum and standardized testing to the effect that testing inexorably drives curriculum.Teachers, principals and, ultimately, schools are accountable for student test scores. Consistently low performing schools face corrective action, restructuring, or closure. Most at stake are the arts, faced with elimination if test scores are not raised in ELA and mathematics (Kohn, 2013). The curriculum materials of CCSS will be fully implemented by most states in 2013-2014.3National Core Arts StandardsIn January 2013, the National Coalition for Core Arts Standards (NCCAS) released National Core Arts Standards: A Conceptual Framework for the Arts, the revision of the National Arts Standards. Its purpose is to place the arts in the curriculum beyond their integration into ELA and mathematics.4 Members of the coalition intend to dispel any doubt that the arts have a meritorious place within the curriculum. Inspiration for the arts framework came from McTighe and Wiggins (2005), authors of Understanding by Design. Among their foci are essential questions that promote engaged and provocative dialogue.The arts framework invites rhizomatic and hypertexual learning in contrast to the CCSS's linear processes of transmitting knowledge, although the authors must make clear that NCCAS standards conform in direct and meaningful ways to the CCSS. The arts framework is about to undergo a second review at the College Board5 to align the goals of NCCAS with CCSS and to determine whether the standards will or will not be framed to coordinate with CCSS.The Arts According to David ColemanDavid Coleman, a prominent architect of CCSS and the recently appointed president of the College Board, has taken the podium at several satellite organizations of CCSS to clarify his philosophy, often to soothe the nerves of educators and administrators who have taken offense at a clumsy comment. Coleman's presence at a panel given at the Common Core headquarters in Washington, DC, is an example of a strategic event. The Common Core is a non-profit organization based in Washington, DC, and founded in 2007 to conduct research and advocacy in K-12 education. The Common Core is unrelated to CCSS but has since become its partner, providing CCSS with tools such as curriculum maps. Common Core has co-opted CCSS's language of content-rich reform, and the knowledge that students need to learn. Lynne Munson, president and executive director of the Common Core, led a symposium in Washington, DC, on March 15, 2012, provocatively called Truant from School: History, Science and the Arts. …

Moving Forward with Common Core State Standards Implementation: Possibilities and Potential Problems

The standards-based education reform has reshaped curriculum in the United States. This reform came about in large part as a result of the 1983 report A Nation at Risk (U.S. Department of Education, 1983), which urgently warned that something needed to be done to fix failing schools across the nation. This report undoubtedly transformed teaching and learning in schools, despite the fact that almost three decades later our nation still faces the problem of poor student achievement (Dee & Jacob, 2010; Toch, 2012). The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 was an attempt to use recommendations from the earlier report to reform education practices, but it had questionable success. The current attempt to address student achievement concerns written by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA) is the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) initiative (NGA & CCSSO, 2010). Although not fully implemented yet, there are already foreseeable advantages and disadvantages to the new standards. This perspective piece examines the possibilities and potential problems of this newest reform effort as it relates to social justice and the skills required for current and future educators to implement it.

New Assessments for New Standards: The Potential Transformation of Mathematics Education and Its Research Implications

During the past 2 decades, significant changes in mathematics curriculum standards and policies have brought greater attention to assessment instruments, practices, purposes, and results. In moving toward stronger accountability, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 (NCLB, 2002) mandates that school districts receiving funding under NCLB formulate and disseminate annual local report cards that include information on how students and each school in the district performed on state assessments. This mandate has not only facilitated a growth in state testing (Wilson, 2007) but also influenced the teaching of mathematics (Seeley, 2006). More recently, the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) crafted and launched the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (NGA Center & CCSSO, 2010), which have been formally adopted by the vast majority of U.S. states and territories. The Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) specifies standards for mathematical content by grade in K–8 and by conceptual categories at the secondary level and identifies key Standards for Mathematical Practice that should be present in K–12 instruction. The CCSSM represents an unprecedented initiative to raise academic standards in school mathematics that will inevitably influence the development of curriculum materials, teaching, and assessment practices.

Celebrate Great Teachers

TWO GREAT chemistry teachers were in the news recently, both honored for their success in the classroom. On May 2, Michelle Shearer, a high school chemistry teacher in Maryland’s Frederick County Public Schools system, was named the 61st National Teacher of the Year by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). The next day, National Teacher Appreciation Day, President Barack Obama hosted Shearer and the other State Teachers of the Year at a reception in the White House Rose Garden. “Michelle’s specialty,” President Obama said during the reception, “is taking students who are normally underrepresented in science—minorities, women, students with disabilities, even students who say equations and formulas are just not their thing—and helping them discover the scientist within.” In April, Brian Coppola, a University of Michigan chemistry professor, was named one of the three finalists for the 2012 Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching. Conferred biennially by Baylor University, the award is ...

Using Standards for Internal Quality Assurance for Management and Program Administration

Using Standards for Internal Quality Assurance for Management and Program Administration

National Standards Closer to Reality

Twenty years after President George H.W. Bush and the nation's governors ventured a cautious challenge to the long tradition of local control in public education--establishing a national goal that students demonstrate competency in core subjects--we're headed toward voluntary national standards and testing in public education. There's been so much momentum in that direction in Washington recently that what would amount to a sweeping shift in policy has hardly rated a headline. The President and Secretary of Education Duncan have publicly praised the idea. Having 50 different goalposts is absolutely ridiculous, Duncan said of the state standards required by the No Child Left Behind Act in an address to the American Council on Education. And he has signaled that there's hundreds of millions of dollars in federal stimulus money waiting for state leaders who step forward to craft common tests built on higher standards. Duncan is working closely with two organizations representing key stakeholders--the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the education policy arm of the National Governors Association (NGA). They've called on states to demand more from their schools in the name of a stronger workforce and greater economic competitiveness by voluntarily adopting a common core of internationally benchmarked standards in math and language arts for grades K-12. An astonishing 49 states and territories already have signed onto the initiative. Leaders in the philanthropic community, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, also have joined the common standards campaign, as have influential civil rights groups like the Education Trust and education policy voices on both the left (the Center for American Progress) and the right (the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation). And a key congressional player, George Miller, the California Democrat who chairs the House Committee on Education and Labor, signaled his support earlier this year when he held a hearing titled Strengthening America's Competitiveness Through Common Academic Standards, where witnesses called for fewer, tougher standards over the vast and vague expectation of many states today. Logic of National Standards The logic of national public school standards and tests is compelling. The reading, writing, and math skills students need don't vary a whole lot from California to Kansas, particularly when many of today's increasingly global employers are able to tap digitally into talent wherever they find it. Even with the inevitable fights over evolution and creationism and over some parts of the cultural canon, the same is mostly true for some subjects, such as science and history. And how schools teach would be left to them. On the testing side of the equation, the inefficiency of 51 redundant state testing systems is obvious. The nation's testing infrastructure suffers from a severe lack of funding and expertise, and moving to common standards and assessments would permit the creation of a smaller number of higher-quality tests. Traditionally, politics have trumped these arguments. President Bush proposed the creation of voluntary national standards in elementary and secondary education in the early 1990s, and the Clinton Administration sought voluntary national tests in the mid-1990s. But partisan politics and strong philosophical opposition from both the Left and the Right combined to sink the proposals on Capitol Hill. Liberals argued that the tests would be unfair to students in impoverished communities, while conservatives argued that national standards and testing would amount to a federalization of public schooling. But No Child Left Behind transformed the policy landscape. It established standards, tests, and the holding of local educators accountable for results as a cornerstone of school reform. And its federal mandate for standards and testing nationwide dealt a strong psychological blow to the tradition of local educational control, particularly since the law was proposed by a conservative Republican president and approved by a Republican-controlled Congress--traditional opponents of centripetal forces in policy making. …

Chief State School Officers Rank Barriers to Implementing Comprehensive School Health Education

Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) members were surveyed to determine their perception of barriers to implementing comprehensive school health education. CCSSO members were asked to prioritize the barriers and offer recommendations to overcome the barriers. A structured response, paired-comparison survey instrument was developed and mailed to 56 of 57 CCSSO members. Eighty-two percent of the members responded. CCSSO members perceived lack of administrative commitment as the number one barrier. Lack of adequately prepared teachers and insufficient time in the school day ranked second and third, respectively. While CCSSO members offered no recommendations for overcoming the number one barrier, recommendations to overcome other barriers included high-quality and more available preservice and inservice programs for teachers.

Educational Indicator Systems: Observations on Their Structure, Interpretation, and Use

Recent years have witnessed an explosion of interest in educational indicators. This topic has been the focus of an ever-increasing number of reports, articles, study commissions, and national and state panels. Organizations such as the U.S. Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, and the RAND Corporation, and nearly all state governments, are currently involved in developing and improving educational indicators.' Hardly an educational group or agency at the national or state level has not become involved in the business of educational indicators during the 1980's (Smith, 1988, p. 487). Burstein, Oakes, and Guiton (1992) document that this surge of interest in the United States can be traced at least as far back as a 1983 report, A Nation at Risk, which triggered broad public concern about education and initiated a strong push for closer monitoring of the system, its schools, and its personnel. In 1984, the secretary of education's compared states' educational performance. The Wall Chart prompted the CCSSO to create the State Educational Assessment Center and begin work on a fairer and more comparable set of indicators. In the following year, the National Research Council recommended that data collection and reporting be reorganized under a stronger federal agency. International indicator efforts received a boost in 1987 with U.S. government support for a cross-national indicator project within the Office for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris. Running in parallel, national indicator work was also strengthened by the Hawkins-Stafford Act of 1988, which expanded the National Assessment for Education Progress to include state-by-state data, facilitated national and state cooperation in data collection, and established the Special Study Panel on Education Indicators to advise the National Center for Education Statis-