Change the Equation Blog

Common Science Standards Face Capacity Issues, Ed Week, May 15

The Next Gen Science Standards were released to much fanfare earlier this spring, but now the attention rightfully turns to how to make the standards work at the classroom level. Ed Week takes a look at some of the capacity issues facing the standards as they move forward, including teacher buy-in, professional development, and curriculum building. 

Children's Spatial Skills Seen As Key to Math Learning, Ed Week, May 15

Learning how to color inside the lines may actually have some benefits. A new study of what teachers typically term "executive function skills" -- think being able to draw straight lines, cut out shapes using scissors, and yes, coloring inside the lines -- found that strong motor skills in prekindergarten and kindergarten primed students for later success in subjects predicated on abstract reasoning, like geometry and algebra. 

What it takes to become an all project-based school, KQED, May 16

As schools strive to provide students with more experiential and in-depth learning opportunities, every school wants to be considered 'project-based.' KQED takes a look at what exactly it will take for schools to make that big jump. 

Adoption Of New Science Standards May Start With Rhode Island, Ed Week, May 16

Rhode Island became the first state to consider the Next Gen Science Standards -- the state board of education is expected to vote on adoption this week, on Thursday. Several other states that took part in the creation of the standards are also expected to consider adoption in the next several weeks. 

Gorgeous Black and White Photos of Vintage NASA Facilities Brain Pickings

BrainPickings found some wonderful early photos of NASA facilities. Retro but futuristic, they were taken from the 1920s to the 1950s, when space flight was still more sci-fi than reality.

Given the fact that even six-year-olds can have cell phones with Internet access, you've got to marvel  that today is only the 70th anniversary of the computer: Today in 1943, the U.S. Army contracted with the University of Pennsylvania to create ENIAC, the first electronic computer, known in its day as the "Giant Brain." 

ENIAC weighed more than 27 tons, and it covered more than 1800 square feet of floor space. It was composed of 17,468 vacuum tubes, 7,200 crystal diodes, and more than 5 million hand-soldered joints. Operating ENIAC took more than 150 kW of power, leading to a false rumor that turning the computer on caused lights across Philadelphia to dim. 

In one second, ENIAC could perform 5,000 additions, 457 multiplications, or 38 division calculations, much faster than any other earlier machine. It was used originally to crunch numbers for the design of the H-bomb. But reprogramming the machine could take weeks, as it couldn't store programs in its memory. It was quickly outpaced technologically even as it was being built, but still as an important technological milestone in the development of computer science. 

Indiana is likely to push the pause button on implementing Common Core State Standards. The reasons for the pause sound innocuous—legislators want to “study” them before they keep implementing them—but the danger to Common Core and Indiana’s students is very, very real. Common Core opponents see the pause as a chance to reject the standards outright, while teachers and schools would be left to sort out the resulting mess.

For at least some Common Core critics in Indiana, the pause buys time for a show trial. During the one-year interruption, the state would hold commissions, conduct studies and release reports on standards that were already adopted by the Indiana legislature more than two years ago. This would give the most virulent opponents of Common Core (including a handful of outright conspiracy theorists) an opportunity to spread the myths that Common Core is a takeover of the state’s schools by feds bent on a liberal agenda. (Never mind that Common Core was a state-led effort championed by Republicans like former Indiana state superintendent Tony Bennett and former Governor Mitch Daniels.) At the end of the review period, the Indiana State Board of Education would have to re-adopt the standards. So far, the State Board has been steadfast in its support of Common Core, but that could change after Indiana’s current governor, Mike Pence, appoints six new Board members this summer.

In the meantime, schools, teachers and students would be left in limbo. Implementation of Common Core began two years ago, so any pause would be very disruptive. Should educators simply stop all the work they’ve been doing to understand the new standards and upgrade their practices? Should they put the brakes on all that staff development? Veteran teachers have a right to feel jaded. It is precisely this kind of waffling that has doomed so many promising reforms in the past, and they have had to duck to avoid the fallout.

Democrats and Republicans alike have widely praised Common Core State Standards. The business community in Indiana has embraced them for their rigor and relevance to the demands of a global economy. Indiana citizens support them as well. Why stop a good thing in its tracks?

The following is an editorial from Change the Equation's Board Chair Craig R. Barrett on the Common Core State Standards.

Over the last five years most of the states in the U.S. have worked together to improve the expectations of students in our K-12 system.  This has been a state-driven process, and it is fully supported  by the business community. 

Today the quality of education in the U.S. ranks in the lower half of OECD countries, and we all know that we can do better.  The state-driven common core standards are designed to improve our educational performance, and are precisely what their name implies.  The standards are state-driven expectations of what children should learn.  The standards were created with input from around the U.S., from educators, from researchers, from local school districts, and from looking at the best education systems from around the world. 

These expectations have been ratified at the local level and replace disparate, existing state standards which everyone accepts are too low, and lead to a substandard educational system.  Forty-five states and the District of Columbia have ratified these standards and are in the process of implementation.  The standards are not driven by the U.S. Government, but are driven by the states, and leave local control of curriculum where it has always been―at the local school district level. 

Some people complain that the Common Core Standards constitute a national government takeover of K-12 education.  This could not be further from the truth.  From someone who has been involved with this effort (it started while George W. Bush was President), I can attest that this effort was supervised by Governors and Chief State School Officers, and not the Department of Education or the President.  Certainly some in Washington, D.C. have applauded this effort (what politicians don’t applaud something good happening in the education arena even if they are not involved?), but the common core standards are state driven and state adopted.  The states retain their ability to modify their standards in the future, and have realized that they need to improve their education programs, and that raising expectations is key to improving performance.  As noted above, the business community, the ultimate consumer of our K-12 graduates, is in full support of the common core. 

It is a shame that the RNC (Republican National Committee) has come out against common core with the false argument that it usurps local control.  The roughly 15,000 school districts in the U.S. will still maintain control of their local curriculum, and the 50 states will still control the standards within their education systems.  Defending the current low standards that have resulted in U.S. kids getting a substandard education hardly makes sense; it is one more misguided action by adults trying to dictate what our locally-controlled educational requirements should look like when they should be worried about the quality of education received by our children. 

Despite the fact that our kids perform poorly, we know that we do not have a kid problem in the U.S.; our kids are not inherently dumber than those in other countries.  We have an adult problem in the U.S., where some try to protect a system that has drifted from its charter of doing a good job for kids, to a system that services adults.  It is time we put the kids first and design a system that maximizes their future potential.  The state-driven common core standards do precisely that.