Standards-based Education Reform Research Articles

Arabic Language Teachers’ Perceptions of a Standards-based Educational Reform in the UAE

Arabic language curriculum has been undergoing reforms across the Arab world to improve Arab students’ acquisition of their mother tongue. Reform initiatives including internationally funded projects have been aimed recently at reforming and modernizing the teaching and learning of the Arabic language. Many Arab countries have adopted a standards-based instruction model. However, there is a lack of vision regarding how this model can be successfully implemented at a national level. This article examines how standards-based curricular mandates have been translated into practice and how teachers perceive implementing the standards-based Arabic curriculum in public schools in Abu Dhabi. The study employs qualitative purposeful sampling and an exploratory methodology to collect experiences of Arabic teachers who implemented the curriculum from 2010 to 2017. The findings of the study uncover the main characteristics, successes, and challenges of the standards-based teaching model as perceived by teachers. The findings also display a consensus for implementing the standards-based Arabic curriculum among teachers. Additionally, the findings show that the educational model requires intense professional development that is rigorous, continuous and collaborative, mentorship and coaching in the classroom, integrated reformative efforts to change ineffective pedagogical practices and capacity building in the UAE.

Supporting Instructional Transformation Tied to Standards-Based Reforms: Examining a Learning-Focused Approach to Supporting School-Wide Implementation

ABSTRACT Across many international contexts, more recent standards-based and other educational reforms have largely intended to transform teaching. Given the importance of teacher learning to such transformations, we argue that a learning-focused support approach will be essential if such reforms are to be productively taken up by schools and teachers. We utilize existing literature on the implementation of Common Core State Standards in mathematics in the United States to extract findings of importance to a learning-focused approach for supporting school-wide implementation. Implications are generated for school leaders tasked with such work as well as for future research

The Culture and History of Standards-Based Educational Reform and Social Studies in America

There is no surprise that the culture of America’s public education system is continually changing. More than a decade ago the federal initiative No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was signed into law; a law that many consider the pinnacle of the standards-based educational reform (SBER). The purpose of this study was to define the nature, culture, and meaning of the contemporary standards-based educational reform movement, and to trace the historical roots of the SBER via federal and state educational policies, as well as the work of various professional organizations.

University–School Partnerships in English Pre-service Teacher Education: A Dialogic Inquiry into a Co-teaching Initiative

Evidence has been accumulating for some time about the impact of standards-based education reforms on schools and schooling, but there has been little research investigating the influence of these reforms on university-based initial teacher education (ITE). This article critically inquiries into the effects of these reforms on an ITE co-teaching project where a secondary English teacher in a school was seconded to work for a year as a teacher educator in an Australian university in a praxis-based partnership. Using Cavarero’s framing of ‘who’ and ‘what’ narratives, and Bakhtinian discourse theory, the authors present three autobiographical narratives exploring different perspectives on their experiences in the co-teaching partnership. The article affirms the value of school–university praxis partnerships for speaking back to standards-based reforms, but acknowledges that this speaking back involves complex relational and dialogic work in grappling with institutional and system-wide policies and practices.

From pre-service to early-career English teacher in the UK: negotiating powerful myths

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate contemporary pre-service English teacher education in the UK and the transition, for one individual, from pre-service into early-career English teacher. The investigation explores how standards-based education reforms are narrowing the scope of professional practice in UK schools, especially in regard to the creativity of teachers and students. Design/methodology/approach The authors use critical autobiography (Haug, 1992; Miller, 1995; Rosen, 1998) and dialogic storytelling strategies (Doecke and Parr, 2009; Parr et al., 2015), that are grounded in Bakhtinian (1981) theories of language, education and creativity. Findings The essay critically illustrates how standards-based reforms are narrowing the professional practice of English teachers in secondary classrooms in England and compares this with one account of pre-service teacher education in which prospective teachers are taught to appreciate the situated nature of teaching and learning and the power of creative practices to engage students in their learning and development. Originality/value The critical and creative use of dialogic storytelling strategies allows the authors to present rigorously contextualised accounts of English teacher education and English teaching in England. The reflexive accounts complement the increasing numbers of studies that are showing the injurious effects of standards-based education reforms on English teaching and learning in schools.

After Arthurdale: Place-based education and early childhood in West Virginia

ABSTRACTThis case study explores how opportunities for critical, place-based education can be eclipsed by the decontextualized curricula and pedagogies inherent in neoliberal, standards-based early education reforms such as universal pre-kindergarten that contain some progressive elements. Following Schwab (1973), we explore the roles of teachers and place in crafting curriculum and pedagogy. Specifically, we present both contemporary data and historical facts in order to document and analyze how educators in the Arthurdale, WV, area have used teacher lore (Schubert & Ayers, 1992) to “lighten” curriculum and pedagogy away from the dark funds of knowledge of local children and families. Dark funds are the knowledge and epistemologies that do not match with middle-class curriculum standards for success in schooling, but that reflect the realities of local children, families, and communities (Zipin, 2009). By tracing the racialized development of teacher lore in the past and present, it becomes clear that critical place-based educational activities such as natural and social histories and action research cannot be sustaining without an interrogation of how White identities have been constructed and perpetuated through teacher lore and other means over time. We use these findings to make several suggestions for reconceptualizing the roles of teacher lore in place-based education while creating curricula and pedagogies responsive to the local early education context.

Research Commentary: Analysis of Curriculum Standards: An Important Research Area

This commentary highlights the contribution that careful and systematic analyses of curriculum or content standards can make to questions and issues important in the mathematics education field. We note the increased role that curriculum standards have played as part of a standards-based education reform strategy. We also review different methods used by researchers to compare and analyze the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics, each method designed for a particular purpose. Finally, we call upon mathematics education researchers to engage in careful analysis of curriculum standards and to share their findings in ways that can inform public debate as well as support education professionals in improving student learning opportunities.

Professional Learning and the Unfinalizable: English Educators Writing and Telling Stories Together

Standards-based education reforms and intensified accountability regimes are now a feature of most countries’ agendas to improve the quality of their teaching workforces. One of the direct consequences of these reforms is a requirement that teachers demonstrate their ongoing participation in forms of professional development or professional learning throughout their careers. Along with this, there has been a narrowing of what is acknowledged by standards-based accountability regimes as discipline-based professional knowledge and ‘valuable’ professional development. This essay is a dialogic, reflexive account of a professional learning and writing project for English teachers and teacher educators in Australia, begun in 2013, called the stella2.0 project. The project builds on the groundbreaking work of the STELLA project in Australia from the turn of the century, and some other models of teacher writing projects across the world. Drawing on Cavarero, we critically scrutinize writing and storytelling in the dialogic professional community of the stella2.0 project, and in the process ‘speak back’ to standards-based reform policies that undermine English educators’ agency and professionalism.

Erratum

TESOL QuarterlyVolume 48, Issue 4 p. 873-874 ErratumFree Access Erratum This article corrects the following: What Does Standards-based Educational Reform Mean for English Language Learner Populations in Primary and Secondary Schools? Amanda Kibler, Guadalupe Valdés, Aída Walqui, Volume 48Issue 3TESOL Quarterly pages: 433-453 First Published online: August 22, 2014 First published: 28 October 2014 https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.207AboutSectionsPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat In Kibler, Valdés, and Walqui (2014), new references have been included and certain citations were corrected in the online version after initial publication. The online version is available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/tesq.2014.48.issue-3/issuetoc Specific updates were made as follows: On page 434, “Snodden and Taylor's 2013” has been changed to “Taylor and Snodden's 2013”. On page 444, “(Hakuta et al., 2012)” has been deleted. On page 445, “Leung (1992)” has been changed to “Leung (1993)”. On page 446, “(Peercy & Martin-Beltrán, 2012; Pawan & Ortloff, 2011)” has been changed to “(Pawan & Ortloff, 2011; Peercy & Martin-Beltrán, 2012)” On page 448, this new reference was included: Bunch, G. C. (2013). Pedagogical language knowledge: Preparing mainstream teachers for English learners in the new standards era. Review of Research in Education, 37, 298–341. doi:10.3102/0091732X12461772 On page 449, this new reference was included: Cook, V. J. (Ed.) (2002). Portraits of the L2 user. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. On page 451, these new references were included: McDonnell, L. M., & Weatherford, M. S. (2013). Evidence use and the Common Core State Standards movement: from problem definition to policy adoption. American Journal of Education, 120(1), pp. 1–25. doi:10.1086/673163 McKay, P. (2000). On ESL standards for school-age learners. Language Testing, 17(2), 185–214. doi:10.1177/026553220001700205 On page 452, these new references were included: McNamara, T., & Roever, C. (2006). Language testing: The social dimension. Oxford: Blackwell. Ortega, L. (2014). Ways forward for a bi/multilingual turn in SLA. In S. May (Ed.), The multilingual turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL and Bilingual Education (pp.32–53). New York, NY: Routledge. The following reference was moved from page 451 to 452. Peercy, M. M., & Martin-Beltrán, M. (2012). Envisioning collaboration: Including ESOL students and teachers in the mainstream classroom. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 16(7), 657–673. Reference Kibler, A., Valdés, G., & Walqui, A. (2014). What does standards-based educational reform mean for English language learner populations in primary and secondary schools? TESOL Quarterly, 48(3), 433– 453. doi:10.1002/tesq.183 Wiley Online LibraryWeb of Science®Google Scholar Volume48, Issue4December 2014Pages 873-874 ReferencesRelatedInformation

Symposium: Language Assessment in Standards‐Based Education Reform

This symposium article, to which three authors contribute distinct parts, presents the rationale for standards‐based language assessment and examines both the uses and misuses of language assessments in English‐speaking countries that are engaged in standards‐based education reform. Specifically, they focus on the assessment of emergent bilinguals (also referred to as English language learners or English as an additional language students). The first part lays out the intentions and challenges of standards‐based language assessment for emergent bilinguals, focusing on validity concerns. The second part describes classroom‐based teacher‐led assessments of emergent bilinguals in England, which carry high stakes along with the national standardized tests. This contrasts with what is happening in the United States where, as the third part describes, the main focus is on high‐stakes standardized testing for purposes of accountability. In addition to the challenges inherent in attempts to measure language in meaningful ways, a thread cutting across the authors' accounts is the widespread practice of high‐stakes standardized testing. The U.S. and English cases show how issues of validity arise when emergent bilinguals are simply included into assessments intended for English monolinguals without appropriate differentiation, and when an assessment is used for purposes beyond what it was designed to do. As all of the authors of this symposium article contend, assessments—particularly when standardized—hold the potential to dominate standards‐based education reform efforts when they are ultimately summative and attached to severe consequences.

Implications of Common Core State Standards on the Social Studies

Social studies teachers have often been on the outside looking in during much of the era billed as the standards-based educational reform (SBER), but with the adoption and implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), social studies teachers seem to have been invited back inside. Yet, how will the standards impact social studies teachers' instructional practices? The article attempts to address those issues, while also briefly describing the history of the SBER, and the state of social studies education.

Accommodation for Challenge, Diversity and Variance in Human Characteristics

Assessment accommodations emerged during the 1990s as the avenue to access for students with disabilities. Defined at that time as changes in materials or procedures that provided access to largescale assessments, accommodations became both the hope of students, parents, and educators of students with disabilities, and the bane of test developers and psychometricians.Accommodations were seen as the way to ensure that students with disabilities could participate in national, state, and district assessments at a time when lack of participation was the norm rather than the exception (Kantrowitz & Springen, 1997; Shriner, Spande, & Thurlow, 1994; Ysseldyke, Algozzine, & Thurlow, 1992; Ysseldyke, Thurlow, & Linn, 1999; Zlatos, 1994). Today, accommodations are viewed as a way to ensure that assessments really avoid measuring construct irrelevant variance and instead measure what students with disabilities know and are able to do. Accommodations are defined in a variety of ways that conform to this critical element-the validity of results when accommodations are used (Bolt & Roach, 2009; Laitusis & Cook, 2007).Much has changed since the early 1990s, with nearly 99% of students with disabilities now participating in state assessments (Thurlow & Vang, 2014). Just as participation rates and perceptions of accommodations have changed, so too has the context of instructional and assessment systems. These changes are part of an evolution that leads to continued questions about the extent to which accommodations are needed, and who needs them.The purpose of this article is to explore some of the continuing evolution in instructional and assessment accommodations. This will be done by providing background on the theoretical perspectives underlying assessment accommodations, including the history of accommodations, accommodation policies, and validity considerations. The author will address changing perspectives on accessible assessments and the implications of these changes for instructional and assessment accommodations. Also, the author will explore ways in which educational needs, not due to disability or limited English proficiency, are being addressed through greater accessibility in assessments and through the provision of accommodations. This topic is particularly relevant to students from diverse backgrounds. Many of these students are identified as struggling learners, and are frequently among those identified as having a disability or limited English proficiency. Finally, lessons learned from disability research and practice will be summarized that have application to students other than those with identified disabilities or limited English proficiency while not attempting to address accommodations in the array of alternate assessments that federal policy has allowed for students with disabilities.A landmark study by the National Research Council (McDonnell, McLaughlin, & Morison, 1997) explored the apparent exclusion of students with disabilities from many of the benefits of educational reform. It confirmed the importance of the participation of students with disabilities in large-scale assessments, particularly statewide assessments, if students with disabilities were to benefit from standards-based educational reforms. This study also pointed to the importance of accommodations for students in order for them to have access to the general curriculum, and to be able to show their knowledge and skills on assessments.Perspectives on assessment accommodations have changed quite dramatically over time. Initially, accommodations were viewed as a way to level the playing field as well as to improve the validity of assessment results (Bums, 1998; McDonnell, McLaughlin, & Morison, 1997; Thurlow, Elliott, & Ysseldyke, 1998) and to provide a way for students to take assessments when they otherwise would not be able to take them. These goals do not necessarily mean that student performance will improve (Thurlow, Elliott, & Ysseldyke, 2003). …

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.

Refining Methods for Estimating Critical Values for an Alignment Index

The alignment among standards, assessments, and teachers’ instruction is an essential element of standards-based educational reforms. The Surveys of Enacted Curriculum (SEC) is the only common tool that can be used to measure the alignment among all three of these sources (Martone & Sireci, 2009). Prior SEC alignment work has been limited by not allowing for significance tests. A recent article (Fulmer, 2011) provided a first attempt to address this shortcoming of the SEC, but that work was limited in several ways. We extend Fulmer's simulation approach by accounting for important elements of the SEC procedures, including the proper framework size, number of standards and assessment points, number of raters, rater cell-splitting rates, and rater agreement results. The results indicate that inferences about relative alignment may be heavily influenced by features of the alignment procedures. Thus, our method should be broadly applied to future SEC alignment investigations.

Catch-22 and the Paradox of Teaching in the Age of Accountability

Drawing upon Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 , this paper explores the logic of standards-based education reform and the myriad ways in which accountability systems, performance standards, and market-based reform initiatives have degraded teaching and learning in public schools. In this critical analysis of essential elements of the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind Act and the Obama administration’s Race to the Top fund, the author explores three dominant themes woven throughout Heller’s work: (1) the reliance on symbolic indicators of progress, (2) the irrational nature and deadening effect of bureaucratic rules and procedures, and (3) the dangers of unchecked capitalism. The author suggests that these reform efforts are not only counterproductive, but eroding the democratic foundations of our public school systems. The author concludes that to maintain their autonomy and professionalism, teachers will have to find alternative ways of organizing and produce a counter narrative that not only exposes the failings of standards-based reform but also offers meaningful alternatives.

Intelligent Accountability: Re-Thinking the Concept of “Accountability” in the Popular Discourse of Education Policy

I believe that the quality of our education system says as much about the long-term health of our economy as the stock market, the unemployment rate and the size of the gross domestic product. That's because the quality of our work force and the intellectual breadth and depth of future leaders is directly related to the quality of education we provide today. So I begin ... by recognizing America's common agenda to promote economic security through education. (U.S. Secretary of Arne Duncan) In prepared remarks before the United States Chamber of Commerce's Education and Workforce Summit in November of 2009, U.S. Secretary Arne Duncan expressed a sentiment now dominant in the popular discourse of education reform in the United States linking the economic fortunes of the U.S.A. in the global economy to the human capital produced by its education sector. (1) This perspective envisions economic success as emerging from an educational system that produces new generations of technological and scientific innovators and high-skill workers to drive an economic sector geared toward providing high value-added goods and services on a global marketplace. (2) For K-12 schooling, the challenge would appear to be to produce students possessing the foundational knowledge and skills of literacy, mathematics, and critical thinking required for university and technical training. To that end, Duncan offers straightforward proposals for educational reform that require states to set rigorous, easily-measured academic standards, create assessments linked to those standards, use data generated by those assessments to raise academic achievement, and, finally, to hold educational stakeholders [administrators, teachers, and students] accountable for failure. Most commonly subsumed under the conceptual rubric of 'accountability,' this model of education reform has become the default policy position of both political parties in the U.S. and has become the commonsensical position in popular debates over education reform. It is a policy position built on the assumption that it is possible to dramatically raise academic achievement in public education by re-organizing its incentive structures. However, critics of these reform policies charge that placing an undue emphasis on easily defined academic standards tied to standardized assessments and accountability regimes will lead to a narrowing of school curriculum to the easily assessed, the regimentation of schooling, the re-enforcement of teacher-centric pedagogies that provide little opportunity for student discovery and critical thinking, and an over-reliance on rote learning. It is from this indeterminate situation in debates over education policy that this inquiry finds its impetus. The task of this article is to unpack the concept of accountability in order to clarify and critique the logic of this educational and political concept. To accomplish this task, I will employ a synthetic method of analysis that will, first, situate accountability within the larger framework of standards-based education reforms of which it is an integral element. From there, the second step is to examine the research literature in order to interrogate standards-based policy reforms at each point in its logical chain so as to unpack the unquestioned assumptions and problematics inherent to the concept of accountability that are often obscured by contemporary educational discourse. The results of this study suggest that critics of accountability policies are well justified in their concerns. A Synthetic Method of Inquiry The methodology for this inquiry is grounded in an ontological observation into the internal contradictions between the conceptual norms with which modern societies take their general orientations and the concrete realities generated by those conceptual understandings. This methodology is itself rooted in a long tradition of praxis philosophy tracing its lineage to the works of Hegel. …

How Well Aligned Are State Assessments of Student Achievement With State Content Standards?

Coherence is the core principle underlying standards-based educational reforms. Assessments aligned with content standards are designed to guide instruction and raise achievement. The authors investigate the coherence of standards-based reform’s key instruments using the Surveys of Enacted Curriculum. Analyzing 138 standards-assessment pairs spread across grades and the three No Child Left Behind tested subjects, the authors find that roughly half of standards content is tested on the corresponding test and roughly half of test content corresponds to the standards. A moderate proportion of test content is at the wrong level of cognitive demand as compared to the corresponding standards, and vice versa. Between 17% and 27% of content on a typical test covers topics not mentioned in the corresponding standards. Policy and research implications are discussed.

Change, Sputnik, and Fast Food

I love change. I really do. I get bored when things become routine. I'm always first in line to think about how we could tweak this or that or restructure, refine, and redefine. I love making up new systems, new courses, and new answers to old questions. But sometimes enough is enough. And change based on whim, sound bite, or political expediency always makes me feel ... well, little twitchy. Saying I'm twitchy these days is lot like saying the Grand Canyon is mud puddle. Do you remember gold-standard research? A few years back, the research division of the U.S. Department of Education, the Institute of Education Sciences (the name alone makes me twitch), announced that gold-standard research required randomized control experiments, and only such research counted for selection of No Child Left Behind-acceptable teaching programs. While the decision created financial boon for such programs as Success for All and Direct Instruction, this unilateral decision caused many progressive approaches and programs to wither away. I was teaching on an Indian reservation at the time this announcement was made. Over the next few years, I witnessed--as direct result of this pronouncement--the elimination of culture-based programs designed to teach native children in ways that responded to and respected their histories and cultures. A lot was lost, that's for sure. But I was told this is how it has to be. Sure some people will suffer, but we have to focus on the greater good. No longer will programs be implemented in schools that are not gold-standard research based. That is, until the government wants to. Think Race to the Top. In 2009, President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced an exciting new reform initiative, Race to the Top. A very catchy name, I think. Perhaps not as uplifting as No Child Left Behind, but much better than the last Democratic education reform--Comprehensive School Reform. So, while we haven't learned much about how to support real change, we've learned that we need catchy names to sell it. This $4.35-billion U.S. Department of Education program was designed to bring to local schools, but Race to the Top is awarded to states, not local districts. And the application process is no less controlling than any NCLB funding process--there are strings. Race to the Top outlines key education reforms states must demonstrate commitment to advancing to be eligible for funding, such reforms include adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace. It seems here we should say allegedly or theoretically or hypothetically or some sort of qualifier. After all, there is no evidence, let alone gold-standard evidence, that such statement is true. Incentives for Standards The biggest string--about the size of an anchor rope--is an incentive enticing states to adopt the Common Core State Standards. Touting the principles of standards-based education reform, the Core Content web site (www.corestandards.org) claims these standards will provide a consistent, clear understanding of students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know they need to do to help them. Such fundamental misconceptions always worry me. I'd only been teaching few days when I realized that understanding children need to learn doesn't ensure that we know how to help them learn it. Knowing is really quite different from knowing how. For example, I know children need to learn algebra but have almost no understanding of how I might effectively teach it. At the same time, I know all children need to learn to read, and I know the skills they'll need to become good readers. I've even taught many children to read. And in that process, understanding what wasn't nearly as important as matching my ways of teaching to each individual child's way of learning. …

EXZELLENZ UND EQUITY: NEUE BILDUNGSTHEORETISCHE PERSPEKTIVEN FÜR EIN ALTES SPANNUNGSVERHÄLTNIS

EXCELLENCE AND EQUITY: APPLYING NEW PERSPECTIVES IN THE THEORY OF EDUCATION TO A TRADITIONALLY TENSE RELATIONSHIP – The majority of international assessments of school performance, as well as the international standards-based education reform focus on optimising the skills of children who perform poorly in school. This article, however, places the focus on the top␣performers (“excellence”) and links this with the theory of equal opportunities (“equity”). The article follows two main lines of argument. The argument relating to the theory of education deems the achievement of equal opportunities and equity likely only if and when all children start from an equal position and are then allowed to develop unequally and appropriately, according to their individual talents. The second argument highlights the tense relationship between excellence and equity with regard to school children’s varying home backgrounds, and asks how intellectual potential can best be discovered and encouraged. At the same time, the article demonstrates that the concept of accelerated learning, in differentiating between individuals within homogenous groups of learners, opens up a number of interesting perspectives and can ultimately redress the tense relationship between excellence and equity.

The courts and standards-based education reform

The courts and standards-based education reform