Girls and STEM Education: Still Waiting For Liftoff

When Sally Ride was preparing to become America’s first female astronaut, she had to field some particularly tough questions: Would she be packing a bra or menstrual supplies? Did she worry her reproductive organs might be damaged by space flight?

Looking back at those interviews with Ride, who was 61 when she died July 23 after a battle with pancreatic cancer, the sexist tenor of the queries is almost comical. But as Ride was quoted as responding in 1983, “It’s too bad this is such a big deal. It’s too bad our society isn’t further along.”

But how far along are we really, nearly 30 years after Ride cracked NASA’s space ceiling?

Ride dedicated much of her post-NASA career to writing educational children’s books and supporting initiatives that encouraged students – particularly girls – to get involved in science. Unfortunately, there remains a significant gender gap both when it comes to females in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) careers, and student achievement on standardized tests in those subjects. On the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as “The Nation’s Report Card,” girls lagged a full five percentage points behind boys in eighth grade science. Overall, less than a third of American schoolchildren met the eighth grade standard for proficiency. (For more on STEM education, click here.)

Plenty of organizations are trying to boost student interest and achievement in STEM, and to address the underrepresentation of women in those fields. Interestingly, holding up role models like Sally Ride might not be the most effective approach.

The Institute of Education Sciences’ What Works Clearinghouse determined that when it comes to encouraging girls in math and science, there’s only “minimal” evidence that exposing students to role models in those fields has a measurable effect. Based on existing research, the clearinghouse rated several other approaches as having a “moderate” positive effect, including having teachers connect science and math to careers in ways that didn’t reinforce gender stereotypes. The only approach that was rated as having a “strong” effect by the clearinghouse was the following:

Explicitly teach students that academic abilities are expandable and improvable in order to enhance girls’ beliefs about their abilities. Students who view their cognitive abilities as fixed from birth or unchangeable are more likely to experience decreased confidence and performance when faced with difficulties or setbacks. Students who are more confident about their abilities in math and science are more likely to choose elective math and science courses in high school and more likely to select math and science-related college majors and careers.

Those findings are consistent with a 2008 University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee study, in which researchers explored the reasons why girls avoid science and math. The study found that parents and teachers encouraging self-confidence in girls was a bigger factor in their success in learning math and science than whether their interest was captured at the outset. In fact, when the self-confidence was there, the interest followed.

While the research might not be strong on the effect of role models on girls’ career choices, Erin Cadwalader, a public policy fellow for the Association for Women in Science,  said Sally Ride was most certainly an influence on her own life. Cadwalader, who was 2 years old when Ride blasted into space, said she wanted to be an astronaut until a growth spurt in her teens pushed her to 6'1". Wondering if she would exceed NASA's height limit -- 6' 3" for pilots and 6' 4" for mission specialists -- she decided to expand her career goals. She went on to earn her doctorate in neurobiology.

But Cadwalader said the biggest motivating factor in her career choice was probably her father, who was also a scientist. She trained as a developmental biologist, researching how certain proteins factor into heart defects in babies and children with a goal of improving early interventions.

“I always had parents who encouraged me,” Cadwalader said. “I never felt insecure about my abilities in science.”

(Indeed, a recent study found that parents might be an untapped resource for steering students into STEM classes.)

AWIS, a Washington, D.C.-based advoacy organization,  has been struggling to come with a catchy slogan to explain why the focus must expand to include addressing the significant problems women face when they actually enter STEM career fields. Those commonly include a lack of family-friendly policies and too few opportunities for advancement. The top contender for a slogan so far: Because Girls Grow Up.

 “You can get as many girls as you can into STEM classes, but if you don’t have a work environment that makes them want to stay in that industry, it doesn’t do much good in the long run,” Cadwalader said.

Psychologist and professor Nadya Fouad, one of the authors of the 2008 Wisconsin study, told me that Cadwalader’s points are spot-on. Fouad recently completed a study of retention of women engineers, and found that significant work remains to be done to improve both opportunities and the workplace.

 “We can do all the work we want to get women to consider these occupations,” Fouad said. “But the climate has to be supportive of them wanting to be in there.”

Have a question, comment or concern for the Educated Reporter? Email EWA public editor Emily Richmond at erichmond@ewa.org. She also tweets @EWAEmily.

For Some Teachers, $4,000 Now Beats $8,000 Later

I have to admit I’m intrigued by a new approach to teacher merit pay, one that explores whether the fear of having to give back bonus money you already have in your pockets is a better motivator than the promise of good things to come.

There's been little evidence that teachers’ performance bonuses have any meaningful effect on student achievement. But a new study out of Chicago took a brand-new tack, dividing 150 teachers into two groups. The first group received a $4,000 advance, with the understanding that if students didn’t do better than average on standardized tests, they would have to pay it back. If achievement did go up, teachers stood to earn as much as another $4,000. The second group of teachers was told that they could earn up to $8,000 in merit bonuses at the end of the academic year with sliding scale payouts based on student test scores.

Interestingly, the teachers whose students showed the strongest performance gains were those who had the threat of repaying a $4,000 advance looming over them.

In writing about the study for The Atlantic’s online business section, associate editor Jordan Weissmann described this an unkind – but potentially genius – approach to the issue, and I’d call that an astute assessment.

I'll be interested to see whether the Chicago study gains traction. The odds of that happening are improved by the high-profile pedigree of the researchers who devised the study: Harvard professor and MacArthur Genius Grant recipient Roland Fryer,  University of Chicago professor and Freaknomics co-author Steven Levitt, economist John List (also of the University of Chicago), and University of California-San Diego management and strategy professor Sally Sadoff.

Not surprisingly, the premise of the study didn’t sit well with education historian Diane Ravitch, a vocal critic of such tactics. Teachers are not lab animals, and trying to motivate them by instilling fear is wrong by any measures, Ravitch argues. On her blog, she called the study’s premise “loathsome,” “inhumane,” and “unethical.” She also said it was “antithetical to the values of a democratic society” and “antithetical to decency.”

Over at the American Enterprise Institute, education research policy fellow Michael McShane responded to what he characterized as Ravitch’s “conniption fit,” noting that in the field of behavioral sciences “loss aversion” has been well documented. Rather than railing against it, “this is exactly the type of research that we should be conducting, taking widely understood phenomena from other disciplines and applying them to education to see how we can increase student achievement,” McShane wrote in a blog post. “They won’t all be winners, but should do more good than harm over time.”

There's something to be said for the psychological element at work here. I can envision that it might be harder to give up something you already have, compared with working toward the more ethereal possibility of a future reward. But the larger question might be whether merit pay is at best an indirect approach to improving student achievement. Many students come to class with significant socioeconomic challenges that factor into how they perform academically. And those probably can't be solved by dangling carrots -- or yanking them back.

Have a question, comment or concern for the Educated Reporter? Email EWA public editor Emily Richmond at erichmond@ewa.org. She also tweets @EWAEmily. 

Student Loan Crisis Needs Congressional Intervention: Consumer Protection Bureau

Not surprisingly, the repercussions of the nation's student loan debt crisis continue to grow. A new consumer protection agency, in a report to Congress and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, compared private loans to the subprime mortgages which contributed to the housing bubble and the disastrous fallout when it burst.

(For a first-rate overview of the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's report, read Libby Nelson piece on Inside Higher Ed.)

In a call with reporters late last week, the bureau's director Richard Cordray said that the findings revealed that "students were yet another group of consumers that were hurt by the boom and bust of the financial crisis ... Too many student loan borrowers were given loans they could not afford and sometimes for more money than they needed. They are now overwhelmed by debt and regret the decisions they made.”

As Nelson points out, there was some good news in that the report found the worst of the lending practices had apparently tapered off after 2008 when new regulations went into effect. However, individuals who took out loans prior to then are still suffering, Cordray said. One recommendation of the bureau is to allow individuals to discharge their student loans in bankruptcy court, something that's not currently allowed.

On a related front, to help students navigate the often complex process of obtaining federal financial aid for college, the Education Department is unveiling a new website: StudentAid.gov. One of the features is Student Loan Collection Assistant, a  digital tool to help answer questions from individuals who have fallen behind on their payments.

Have a question, comment or concern for the Educated Reporter? Email EWA public editor Emily Richmond at erichmond@ewa.org. She also tweets @EWAEmily.

A Simple Solution For Growing STEM

Earlier this week President Obama announced plans for a $1 billion “Master Teacher Corps,” that would reward superior K-12 educators in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) with up to $20,000 annually. This plan is just the latest endeavor in a nationwide push to focus on STEM learning, and to improve the United States’ global competitiveness.

But there could be a simpler way to achieve this goal: A new study published in the journal Psychological Science found that parents might be an “untapped resource” for steering students into higher-level STEM classes. (Thanks to Education Week’s Erik Robelen for showcasing the findings.)

According to researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and James Madison University, sending parents two glossy brochures and a link to a website that promoted STEM subjects was enough to boost student enrollment in those courses. As Robelen reported, students took on average nearly one additional semester of science and mathematics coursework in high school than their peers in the control group whose families did not receive the promotional materials.

“Our focus for this project was different from our previous work,” said lead author Judith Harackiewicz, of the University of Wisconsin, in a written statement for the journal. “In classes, we try to promote students’ motivation and performance in that class, but with families, our goal is to promote choices about which courses to take.”
There are massive campaigns underway to boost STEM learning in the United States, from the Carnegie Corporation of New York’s efforts to add 100,000 high-quality teachers in those subjects in the next 10 years, to efforts by CEOs of major corporations to improve the quality and quantity of instruction through the Change the Equation initiative. But could one solution actually be as straightforward as what the new study describes?

Certainly, the influence of families on a student’s educational path can’t be overstated. That’s one reason why schools are continually testing new methods of improving communication, from replacing the “backpack express” with emails to setting up online networks for parents to track their children’s attendance, homework and grades.

“Although some people question whether parents wield any influence, we think of parents as an untapped resource,” Harackiewicz said. “This study shows that it is possible to help parents help their teens make academic choices that will prepare them for the future.”

I’m curious to know more about why these particular brochures, delivered through good old-fashioned snail mail, were so effective. Was it just an example of savvy marketing? Or were parents primed to give the brochures more serious consideration as a result of STEM education moving closer to the front burner of public debate?

Have a question, comment or concern for the Educated Reporter? Email EWA public editor Emily Richmond at erichmond@ewa.org. She also tweets @EWAEmily.

Obama Proposes `Master Teacher Corps,' More NCLB Waivers Announced

It's a busy week for the U.S. Department of Education. On Wednesday, President Obama proposed spending $1 billion to fund a "Master Teacher Corps" initiative, which would reward top-performing educators with $20,000 annually. And today, it was announced six states and the District of Columbia will receive waivers from some of the toughest provisions of No Child Left Behind, bringing the total number of exemptions to 33.

Not everyone's on board with the proposed Master Teacher Corps, which is aimed at boosting student achievement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). As an aide to Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, told the Associated Press,  the federal government already has more than 80 teacher quality programs. Kline spokeswoman Alexandra Sollberger questioned the wisdom of pouring more money into another program that might not add anything new -- or effective -- to the existing options.

"Republicans share the president's goal of getting better teachers in the classroom," Sollberger told the Associated Press. "However, we also value transparency and efficient use of taxpayer resources."

But in a statement, Obama said the master-teacher program would shine a light on the best STEM educators, and allow them to “mentor and model” for their less-experienced colleagues. The program would start with 50 teachers and eventually expand to 10,000 teachers over four years. The funds to pay for it  – projected at $1 billion for the 2013 fiscal year – would require congressional approval.

“If America is going to compete for the jobs and industries of tomorrow, we need to make sure our children are getting the best education possible,” Obama said in the statement. “Teachers matter, and great teachers deserve our support.”

Obama's announcement of yet another new initiative comes on the heels of a House Appropriations sub-committee vote approving a bill that would dismantle three key elements of his education reform plan: Race To The Top, the School Improvement Grant program, and the Investing In Innovation (i3) grant program.

It's still too early to evaluate the effectiveness of RTTT, although states have certainly made major revisions to education policy and practice, and in enacting Education Department-approved reforms in order to qualify for a share of the more than $4 billion in federal funds. The i3 program, which requires communities to develop public-private partnerships to boost student achievement, is also in its early stages.

The SIG program, which at $4.6 billion is arguably the most costly federal education initiative on record, has shown promising indications of having helped some low-achieving schools boost performance -- a point U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan made in March. And University of Virginia researcher Thomas Dee found California’s SIG-funded schools did indeed improve test scores at a better rate than campuses with nearly identical demographics that did not receive the extra federal dollars. However, districts and states are also struggling to meet the SIG program’s mandated requirements for reform measures, particularly the provision requiring some schools to replace ineffective educators with more qualified staff. Researchers, including the Center on Education Policy, have also questioned whether those reforms will continue once the federal grant funds run out.

As for the NCLB waivers, the lucky winners in this round are Arizona, D.C., Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, Oregon, and South Carolina. It's important to remember states are not being given a pass on accountability. Student performance data must still be reported and achievement benchmarks must be met. Now that the newest waiver recipients have been announced, only a third of the states will still be playing by the old rules. So, at what point does the old rulebook become obsolete?

Have a question, comment or concern for the Educated Reporter? Email EWA public editor Emily Richmond at erichmond@ewa.org. She also tweets @EWAEmily. 

More Thoughts on NCLB, And Some Clarification

I wanted to take a moment and respond to some criticism I received on a prior post about No Child Left Behind, and my experiences as an education reporter in Nevada. Eduwonk blogger Andrew J. Rotherham took me to task for what he described as a misunderstanding of how the federal education law holds schools accountable.

Here’s what I wrote: “Under the original parameters of NCLB it doesn't take much for a school to fall short. Failing to have 95 percent of eligible students present for testing will do it. Low performance by just one or two students in a particular subgroup can also lead to a failing grade.”

I should have explained that I was referring specifically to Nevada’s formula for measuring Adequate Yearly Progress (every state had some leeway in developing its own matrix). NCLB requires schools to show achievement both overall and by various student subgroups, including ethnicity, special education status, and socioeconomic factors. When drafting its education law to comply with NCLB, the Silver State established its minimum subgroup size at 25, which turned out to be among the smallest in the country. That meant that just a few students absent on the day of the test, or scoring poorly on the actual assessment, could indeed mean failing to make AYP.

I also wrote that “it was literally a painful experience to have to write, year after year, about how many local schools would be labeled as ‘failing’ despite making every logical attempt at improvement."

What I meant was that schools were being perceived as failing if test scores missed the AYP benchmarks. The use of the word “labeled” implied I was unclear about the official federal designation, which is “in need of improvement.”

Rotherham suggested that by describing the experience as painful, I was somehow shifting the focus to myself, instead of where it rightly belonged – on the students. I couldn’t agree more that the students are the most important element in this complex equation. In fact, I expressed a similar sentiment a few paragraphs earlier in the blog, when I questioned whether the state waivers would really help students and schools.

There is nothing wrong with constructive criticism -- even if it comes gift-wrapped in a fair degree of snark. I am always willing to listen, and I always welcome comments and the opportunity to engage in dialogue about the issues related to education and journalism.

Have a question, comment or concern for the Educated Reporter? Email EWA public editor Emily Richmond at erichmond@ewa.org. She also tweets @EWAEmily.

The Future Of Penn State: Farewell To Football?

Just moments before last Friday's televised release of an independent report on the child sex abuse scandal that has shaken Penn State, the screens at the campus’s student center suddenly switched to a public access station.

Students and alumni had gathered for the broadcast of former FBI Director Louis Freeh's findings in his investigation into the Jerry Sandusky case. The damning details include significant lapses in legal and ethnical obligations by the university's president and legendary football coach Joe Paterno, among others.

While much of the country was learning about the Freeh Report, this State College audience instead watched an interview from Allentown about the state budget, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

It would be easy to cast the incident in the student center as a metaphor for a university refusing to deal with a crisis and hoping in vain that the bad news will simply go away. However, Penn State officials chose Freeh to lead the investigation in order to bolster confidence that no incriminating details would be suppressed. The report appears to have satisfied that burden. Now the university must decide what corrective action should be taken, and how to begin rebuilding confidence and trust.

Some sports journalists -- including USA Today's Christine Brennan and the Boston Globe's Dan Shaughnessy -- argue that Penn State football must be shut down if the university is going to recover. Others have countered that such extreme measures would only hurt the students who are currently involved in the program. (That's not to say it can't be done. Florida A&M University has pulled its celebrated marching band off the field indefinitely, following the hazing death of a drum major.)

Over the weekend, ESPN reported that Penn State's Board of Trustees had voted to leave Paterno's statue outside the stadium for now, motivated in part by a desire not to offend the alumni and students who are still standing by the late coach. And the university is certainly not lacking for support. Penn State is reporting its second-most successful fundraising year in its history, with donations topping $208 million.

“We’re very grateful—humbled really—to have this kind of response from Penn Staters, who I think have rallied to the cause … by the side of the institution through a very difficult time,” Rod Kirsch, the university’s senior vice president for development and alumni relations, told the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

What happened at Penn State involved a confluence of horrendous circumstances and poor decisions that are unlikely to be repeated. Still, the wider higher education community can learn from this ordeal. To be sure, those lessons will likely be hardest for those who were closest to the heart of the scandal. If Penn State is to move past this chapter, it's going to have to confront its new reality. And that reality can't be avoided by changing the channel.

Have a question, comment or concern for the Educated Reporter? Email EWA public editor Emily Richmond at erichmond@ewa.org. She also tweets @EWAEmily.

In Sea of Reform, A Rising Tide For Teachers' Union Support

In a new survey, teachers say they rely on their unions to protect them from school politics and abuses of administrative power, but they also want the labor groups to do more about ineffective educators, either by guiding them to improve – or guiding them out the door.

For “Trending Toward Reform,” the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Education Sector surveyed more than 1,100 K-12 public schoolteachers from across the country, and asked them about key issues including the state of their labor unions, and revisions to evaluation systems and tenure.

Just over 80 percent of the teachers said they believed their union protected them from campus politics, and abuses of power at the administrative level. And the percentage of teachers who said they were involved in local union activities jumped to 38 percent in 2011, from 24 percent in 2007.

(It’s worth noting here that the National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers’ union, has seen its membership drop by an unprecedented 16 percent since 2010.)

That teachers are looking for union protection isn’t surprising given how much is changing in the education landscape, and how quickly new accountability measures and expectations are taking effect. The Ed Sector results are also in line with findings in the latest Met Life Survey of the American Teacher. In 2006, just 8 percent of teachers said they didn’t feel their jobs were secure. On the 2011 Met Life survey, that percentage had more than quadrupled to 34 percent.

Teachers want their unions “at the table fighting for their interests, and making sure reforms are implemented in a way that’s fair to teachers and ensures teachers can do their best work,” said Sarah Rosenberg, a policy analyst at Ed Sector and the report's co-author.

Here’s just one indication of how fast the school reform train is moving: Two years ago, only 15 states and the District of Columbia required all teachers to take part in annual evaluations of any kind. As of this month, 28 states now require teacher evaluations to be tied in some way to student performance, according to the National Council on Teacher Quality.

The Ed Sector survey also seems to reinforce some conventional wisdom, specifically the notion that newer teachers might be more worried about their individual careers and less concerned about what happens to the larger employee pool in the long term. That’s probably understandable, given that about half of all new teachers are likely to quit the profession within their first five years.

On the issue of workforce recruiting, the percentage of veteran teachers (those with more than 20 years experience) who said they were likely to support easing state certification requirements dropped from 45 percent in 2007 to 34 percent in 2011. “It wouldn’t be a big leap to say that veterans are trying to save their jobs from new teachers who might be coming in,” Rosenberg said.

But perhaps even more important than the areas of dissent are where the two groups agree, Rosenberg noted. Both newcomers (teachers with less than five years experience) and veterans are resistant to using student test scores as a measure of teacher effectiveness. At the same time, the two groups showed similar support for initiatives aimed at attracting and retaining teachers, including providing more paid preparation time, and making it easier for people to leave and return to the profession without losing retirement benefits.

In keeping with the Met Life survey, Ed Sector’s analysts saw indications that “teachers are anxious about their jobs and want to secure them but they also want to ensure the best teachers are in the classrooms,” Rosenberg said. “Those are reasonable expectations to have at the same time.”

For Dan Goldhaber, director of the Center for Education Data & Research and a professor at the University of Washington, the teachers’ answers on questions related to their job evaluations provided some of the most compelling details of the Ed Sector survey. More than three-fourths of the teachers surveyed said their most recent performance evaluation had been taken seriously by their administrators, and had been fair and relevant. But a significantly lower percentage, just 38 percent of newcomers and 29 percent of veterans, said the evaluation had also been useful and effective at helping them improve their performance.

“We know from empirical evidence that teachers have very different impacts on students and we know those differences are not reflected in their evaluations,” said Goldhaber. “It will be interesting to look at how teachers feel about the rigor and usefulness of their evaluations when it actually reflects the differences we know exist among teachers.”

Another striking set of statistics: The teachers interviewed for the survey were also in strong support of unions getting more involved in identifying weak teachers and either helping them to improve or guiding them out of the profession. Only about 10 percent of teachers said their unions are already doing it. Of the teachers whose unions aren’t involved in such efforts, nearly 70 percent said they would favor it.

In a written statement, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said that Ed Sector’s findings echo the voices of union members who have long said that “what teachers want most and get least are the tools, time and trust to be better teachers and help their students learn and grow. Teachers also believe in accountability as long as the measures are fair, they have a voice in the process, and they receive the support they need to succeed.”

The report “also makes clear that both new and veteran teachers believe unions can play a key role in education reform and ensuring teacher quality – a responsibility that AFT takes seriously,” Weingarten said.

Both sides – the teachers and the district administration – share the same goal of wanting to help students learn better. But it’s still a tricky hill for a teachers’ union to climb.

“Are there times when what is best for the union membership is not best for student achievement?” Goldhaber asked. “And if so, what does the union do in those cases?”

Have a question, comment or concern for the Educated Reporter? Email EWA public editor Emily Richmond at erichmond@ewa.org. She also tweets @EWAEmily.

Reporters And Social Media: Do Newsrooms Need Rules?

I was somewhat surprised to learn that the New York Times doesn't have a written policy to guide its reporters through the sometimes murky waters of social media.

In an interview with the Poynter Institute's Jeff Sonderman, Times' associate managing editor for standards Phil Corbett explains that the overarching goal was not to discourage or hamper reporters from embracing social media as a tool. Too many rules might stifle innovation, Corbett said.

At the same time, Corbett said, reporters "need to realize that social media is basically a public activity, it’s not a private activity, and that people will know that they work for the Times, that they are Times journalists, and will identify them with the Times. And so they should just keep that in mind and be careful not to do anything on social media that would undercut their credibility."

Corbett adds that so far, "this approach seems to be working for us. People have been smart about it, and thoughtful."

There's no shortage of examples of reporters who haven't been "smart" about using social media, often to the detriment of their own careers. At the same time, there are plenty of journalists -- particularly those on the education beat -- that have effectively incorporated Twitter and Facebook into their repertoire.

For the education reporters reading this: How big a part does social media play in your beat coverage? Does the superintendent of the local district follow your tweets? Have you found any downside to the immediacy of live blogging? How often have you used Facebook or other social media sites to track down students or teachers?

Have a question, comment or concern for the Educated Reporter? Email EWA public editor Emily Richmond at erichmond@ewa.org. She also tweets @EWAEmily. 

NCLB: A Glass Now More Than Half Empty?

The number of states granted waivers from the most onerous provisions of No Child Left Behind crossed the halfway mark when Washington and Wisconsin joined the 24 others that have obtained waivers from the U.S. Department of Education.

"It is a remarkable milestone that in only five months, more than half of the states in the country have adopted state-developed, next-generation education reforms to improve student learning and classroom instruction, while ensuring that resources are targeted to the students that need them most," said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in a statement late last week announcing the new waivers. "A strong, bipartisan reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act remains the best path forward in education reform, but as 26 states have now demonstrated, our kids can't wait any longer for Congress to act."

Indeed, it has been quite a wait for students, educators, parents, schools, and states. The reauthorization of ESEA is more than four years overdue. Given the fiercely partisan mood on the Hill and the looming election cycle, there is little optimism for a speedy resolution. In the meantime, what does it mean to have more than 50 percent of the nation's states exempt from NCLB's accountability standards? And just how much are the waivers really helping students and schools?

The New York Times' Motoko Rich explored whether the milestone essentially means NCLB has been nullified. Joshua Starr, superintendent of the Montgomery County schools in Maryland, told the Times that his state's waiver won't have much impact. “It is another example to me of how we’re not focused on the right things in the American education conversation today,” Starr said in the Times story. “I have a lot of respect for Arne Duncan but it’s just sort of moving around the chairs on the Titanic.”

I have mixed feelings about this. As an education beat reporter in Nevada, I spent a great deal of time  (probably too much time) explaining NCLB to readers, covering policy forums and town hall meetings and symposiums about implementation, and reporting on efforts by schools, districts and states to meet the enormously complex, and often wholly unrealistic, expectations of the federal law.

The central tenet of the law, that 100 percent of students be proficient in reading and math by the 2013-14 academic year, never seemed like much more than a one-way ticket to Fantasyland when NCLB debuted. It is, however, a noble goal, and one that educators and schools should surely strive to meet.

Last year I spoke with Eugene Hickok, deputy secretary of education under President George W. Bush and a key architect of No Child Left Behind and its subsequent implementation. I asked him whether setting the bar at a more realistic level had ever been discussed.

"The analogy we used at the time was why we don’t try to get a man to the moon by 70 percent, or let’s send him to the moon, but let’s not worry about getting him back," said Hickok, who is now a senior policy director for Dutko Worldwide, a public affairs and lobbying organization. "Politically, there’s just no alternative. You can’t say let’s get 90 percent of our kids to be successful and write off 10 percent."

Here's what I can tell you: It was literally a painful experience to have to write, year after year, about how many local schools would be labeled as "failing" despite making every logical attempt at improvement. Under the original parameters of NCLB it doesn't take much for a school to fall short. Failing to have 95 percent of eligible students present for testing will do it. Low performance by just one or two students in a particular subgroup can also lead to a failing grade.

On the upside, thanks to NCLB, there is a wealth of data on student achievement that simply never existed prior to the law's passage and that can only help schools improve in the long run. People often don't believe me when I tell them that until it was federally mandated, most states couldn't tell you how many black or Hispanic students had graduated in a given year.

Where is the happy medium between demanding 100 percent of students demonstrate proficiency on standardized tests and giving schools a free pass from accountability? The optimist in me hopes the new incarnation of ESEA will find it.

Have a question, comment or concern for the Educated Reporter? Email EWA public editor Emily Richmond at erichmond@ewa.org. She also tweets @EWAEmily.

Building Brains (And Bridges)

After months of congressional wrangling, President Obama will sign HR 4348 -- also known as the Transportation and Student Loan Rate Bill -- today at the White House.

Not only will the bill prevent interest rates from doubling for about seven million students, it will also continue funding jobs for the critically needed work of fixing the nation's deteriorating bridges and roads.

I think it's interesting that these two issues -- transportation and higher education -- are linked together in a single piece of legislation. These topics might not seem to have much in common but I'd argue the connective tissue is stronger than it first appears.

As the country continues rebounding from the effects of the recession, younger workers are still finding a shortage of opportunities. Earlier this year, the Pew Research Center reported the employment rate for individuals ages 18-24 was 54 percent, the lowest point since the statistic was first tracked in 1948. College students are a key underpinning of the future strength of the nation's infrastructure. Helping to shore them up, rather than saddling them with crippling debt that they might struggle to repay, probably makes a lot of sense.

At the same time, it's important that students have some degree of confidence in the rate of return on their investment in a post-secondary degree. The Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University has done extensive research in this area, and determined that an individual with a four-year college degree will earn an average of $1.4 million more over a lifetime than someone whose education stopped after finishing high school.

The Project on Student Debt is an excellent resource if you're looking an explanation behind the numbers. I've also written about new efforts toward greater accountability in higher education here and here.

Have a question, comment or concern for the Educated Reporter? Email EWA public editor Emily Richmond at erichmond@ewa.org. She also tweets @EWAEmily.

From Schools to the Olympics, Women and Title IX Score New Victories

Four school districts have agreed to ensure thousands of girls are given equal athletic opportunities after gender discrimination complaints were filed with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

Title IX, the 1972 federal law banning gender discrimination in schools, applies to all campuses that receive public funding. In 2010, the National Women’s Law Center filed complaints against a dozen districts nationwide alleging that girls were not being given equal opportunities to play sports.

Back in May, I asked Neena Chaudhry, the NWLC’s senior counsel for education and employment, how the organization selected the 12 school districts. Chaudhry told me they were chosen not because their Title IX violations were necessarily the most egregious but rather because they were a representative sampling of urban, suburban and rural campuses. By picking a cross-section of districts, the scope of the problem could be better illustrated, Chaudhry said.

The agreements announced Monday by the Education Department were reached with Deer Valley Unified in Phoenix, Ariz., Wake County Public School System in Raleigh, N.C., the Houston Independent School District and Ohio’s Columbus City Schools. Eight of the original 12 complaints filed by the NWLC are still pending.

“Even as we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the passage of Title IX, we must still remain vigilant in our efforts to ensure equal opportunity for girls in education,” said Russlynn Ali, assistant secretary for the Office for Civil Rights, in a statement. “The agreements reached in these four cases are representative of the important Title IX work that OCR continues to do, and should provide assurance to the thousands of girls in these school districts and across the nation that fundamental fairness on the playing field and in all areas of education is within their reach. OCR will continue to vigorously work to ensure equal opportunity.”

The NWLC, using data submitted by the four school districts to the Education Department, determined there was an 11 to 14 percentage point gap between how many girls were enrolled and the share of athletic opportunities available to them. As part of the agreements, the four districts will conduct assessments to determine how to correct the inequities, including surveying students to identify areas of athletic interest that are not being met, and adding opportunities accordingly.

The announcement of the agreements comes at an interesting time. The London Olympics start later this month, and for the first time the United States’ delegation will likely have more females than males. In an interesting twist, the June 23 anniversary date of Title IX is also known as “Olympic Day,” marking the start of the modern Olympic Games.

As of Monday, it was expected there would be 10 more women than men among the athletes, although the qualifying events are not yet complete, said Patrick Sandusky, chief communications officer for the U.S. Olympic Committee. Also for the first time, the United States will have women competing in every sport at the Summer Games.

The increase in female athletes is the result of a combination of factors, including new sports for women being added, such as boxing, as well as more events being added to existing competitions including cycling, Sandusky said. Additionally, some women's teams, such as field hockey, qualified for the London Games. At the same time, some of the men's teams that had qualified in the past, such as soccer, fell short this time around.

Adding more spots on the teams is only part of the equation. Girls and women also have to be encouraged and supported in their efforts to reach for those athletic goals. While the playing field isn't yet level, the increase in participation and interest in girls' and women's sports nationally is a direct result of the impact of Title IX.

Regardless of their gender, the overwhelming majority of students will obviously never reach elite athlete status. But that doesn’t negate the benefits – academic, social and societal – of playing sports. And it also doesn’t undercut the reality that for millions of children, public school athletics programs are often their only opportunity to participate in organized sports of any kind.

“The many benefits of girls’ participation in sports go beyond even the playing field and lead to higher academic achievement and graduation rates, lower teenage pregnancy rates, and overall better health,” said Marcia D. Greenberger, the NWLC’s co-president said in a statement Monday. “Our findings and OCR’s investigation underscore the urgency to treating girls fairly and putting these schools on the path toward compliance with Title IX.”

Have a question, comment or concern for the Educated Reporter? Email EWA public editor Emily Richmond at erichmond@ewa.org. She also tweets @EWAEmily. 

The Reading List: Fixing College, Attracting Students to STEM

Jeff Selingo,  editorial director for the Chronicle of Higher Education, recently wrote a provocative piece for the New York Times entitled "Fixing College." Selingo makes the case that 1999-2009 is the "lost decade" for the nation's colleges and universities, representing squandered resources and misdirected ambitions.

To reverse those trends, higher education needs to reduce costs, take advantage of classroom technology, and refocus priorities on high-quality academic program, Selingo says.

What do you think about Selingo's argument that higher education has lost sight of its primary purpose? Would you support a hybrid model that combines online instruction with the traditional bricks-and-mortar classroom experiences? (The letters to the editor generated by Selingo's perspective are also worth a read.)

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I've been thinking (and writing) quite a bit lately about STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education. Over at Slate, readers submitted their top ideas for making the programs more appealing and useful to students, and there are certainly some smart perspectives worth consideration.

One reader wrote that the problem isn't a shortage of interested students, it's a shortage of science jobs. Another made the case for public science projects -- similar to the public art installations -- in order to build support and understanding among the wider population that might not otherwise understand the importance of the work. 

I had to laugh when I read one suggestion that creating "cool engineer" characters for television programs would attract younger students to the field. It reminded me of how some of my classmates would grill our science teacher the morning after a particularly unbelievable episode of "McGyver." It turned out (at least according to our beloved Mr. McCarthy) that a chocolate bar could stop a radioactive leak. 

Have a question, comment or concern for the Educated Reporter? Email EWA public editor Emily Richmond at erichmond@ewa.org. She also tweets @EWAEmily.