By measuring the percentage of students who scored highly on the fourth and eight grade reading and math sections of the NAEP and also taking into account the average number of states that performed better in relation to how that state performed, they were come to some conclusions about which states are producing the top students. Here is the sample comparison that the Daily Beast provided between Massachusetts (which performed best out of all 50 states) and Mississippi (which performed poorly).

“Massachusetts
4th grade students at or above the advanced level, Math: 12 percent
Number of states that performed better, at a statistically significant level: 0
8th grade students at or above the advanced level, Math: 17 percent
Number of states that performed better, at a statistically significant level: 0
4th grade students at or above the advanced level, Reading: 13 percent
Number of states that performed better, at a statistically significant level: 0
8th grade students at or above the advanced level, Reading: 5 percent
Number of states that performed better, at a statistically significant level: 0
Average number of states that performed better than Massachusetts, per test: 0

Mississippi
4th grade students at or above the advanced level, Math: 2 percent
Number of states that performed better, at a statistically significant level: 47
8th grade students at or above the advanced level, Math: 2 percent
Number of states that performed better, at a statistically significant level: 48
4th grade students at or above the advanced level, Reading: 4 percent
Number of states that performed better, at a statistically significant level: 35
8th grade students at or above the advanced level, Reading: 1 percent
Number of states that performed better, at a statistically significant level: 46
Average number of states that performed better than Mississippi, per test: 44”

According to the Daily Beast, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Minnesota were among the top performers while Oklahoma, Louisiana, New Mexico, West Virginia, and Mississippi feature poorer NAEP test scores. While I’m sure that many of the residents of the “winning states’ might want to do a little fist pump for all the little Good Will Huntings that made the results possible, it’s hard to do so when considering the part poverty had to play in the creation of the test scores.

The Daily Beast is quick to point out that the definition of “smart” is a inexact term and that states with lower levels of child poverty generally performed better on the NAEP, which should sound familiar to some of the research we discussed in “Education Heartbreaker: It’s Not You, It’s Poverty”. According to data put together by George Bracey which measured how students performed on the international PIRLS test taken by 10-year-olds in 35 countries against how many students in a school were on a free or reduced lunch program, students with lower levels of poverty performed better than impoverished schools on the same test.

Economy and it’s effect on education appears to be a timely topic, what with President Obama’s 2011 State of the Union address set to go live to the nation tonight 9pm EST. Many analysts suspect that jobs, innovation and education will be a hot topic during the hour-long speech. Obama has in the past spoken about America’s need to remain competitive internationally and we’ve discussed why the new space race has already begun in the classroom.

However, there are other interesting perspectives about what these test scores mean and why this nation can’t address the educational crisis without first addressing the nation’s impoverished. William J. Mathis is the managing director of the National Education Policy Center and a former Vermont superintendent who believes that the United States will remain low scorers when compared internationally if we don’t make changes to the economic system which causes various students from all over the country to have highly different educational experiences based on income. He says in the Washington Post’s Answer Sheet blog, Test Scores and the Economy:

Unfortunately, the United States has become the most inequitable of the developed nations — a very dubious number one ranking. The simple arithmetic shows that we will remain low-scorers as long as we perpetuate huge economic disparities and inequalities in the quality of schooling we provide. Number one ranked Finland has 3% poverty while the United States has over 25% poverty.

It is the scores of our most needy children that pull our national average down. One of the reasons that other nations are catching up and surpassing us is because they are building their middle class while the United States is pursuing policies that destroy theirs.

It’s certainly food for thought. Should we read these results a Massachusetts kids “smarter” or just located in an area of the country that is, by many standards, more privileged?

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This week we take a look at the current state of affairs and consider what steps should be taken by education officials in the upcoming decade.

More children tutored to get into grammar schools

by Graeme Paton, Telegraph UK

An interesting story coming out of the UK begs the question, “How young is too young to start test preparation?”

In the UK children as young as 4 years old are being tutored in an effort to help them pass highly-competitive grammar school tests.

In tough times, schools try to keep homeless student’s education on track

by Rick Rojas, Los Angeles Times

When thousands of California residents lost their homes and faced eviction during the 2008-2010 housing crisis, many young students found themselves way behind in coursework. In recent months, tutoring centers in the area also saw an uptick in students attending their after-school programs. These children are homeless and living in shelters which often don’t open up until evening. This provides a safe environment for at-risk youth to stay and learn and keep them off the streets.

However, some children are harder to reach. They need a non profit which will come directly to them.

Enter School on Wheels, a non profit which is responsible for training hundreds of tutors in the Los Angeles area. These tutors go on location to parks, libraries and other public places in order to educate the many children left homeless this year.

Why Low Performing Schools Need Digital Media

by Craig Watkins, Huffington Post

What would happen if communities with a high concentration of latino and African American teens inspired them to use their mobile phones not only to game and listen to music, but as learning devices.

In this fascinating article, Craig Watkins explains how some community leaders are using mobil to help drive engagement within low income, low performing schools with a high concentration of latino and black youth.

Education Cares About Technology, But Do Technologists Care About Education?

by Merdith Ely, Guestblogger for Huffington Post

In this interesting article, Meredith Ely, marketing manager for LearnBoost discusses how difficult is may be for technologists to truly understand the needs of educators. Though many technologists support education, very few actually have experience working in technology and education.

However, she argues that technology companies are in a unique and possibly lucrative position should they decide to innovate in education rather than in some other field.

100+ Online Resources that are Transforming Education

by Yury Lifshits, Mashable

Mashable, the premire social media blog, has always been a fantastic resource on tech, social and internet trends. However, as education technology opportunities expand, so do their helpful posts on the topic. This week, we take a look at the 100+ Online Resources that are currently transforming education as we know it.

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featured photo by Kodak Agfa

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Though last week was a notoriously slow news week, I was able to find a few interesting blogs and articles on a variety of education topics. There’s a lot of chatter around a new study by Education Trust which determined that nearly 1/4 of the individuals who take the Army Entrance exam lack the remedial math and science skills to past the exam.

How do teacher absences affect students?

by Jim Stergious, Boston.com

Though Educational pundits often speak about reforming the number of hours children spending in the classroom learning, but are teachers also guilty of playing hooky too often to effectively teach our children?

In reaction to a recent story in the Providence Journal about how at Central Falls High School there hasn’t been a single day that all 88 teachers have shown up to work, Jim Stergeious sends a call out for data on how teacher absences affect student performance.

Study: Nearly a Quarter of Takers Fails Army Entrance Exam

By Ed Payne, CNN

It’s a horrifying prospect. Are Americans too dumb for the Army?

Though America is fighting two overseas wars, teachers are also on the frontlines here at home trying to produce quality United States students. However, though they may be producing students who pass their classes, they’re not producing students who could potentially serve our country.

A quarter of all individuals who take the army entrance fail to meet even the most basic eligibility requirements. Every year the military turns away a large number of students because they lack the problem solving, math, and science skills to serve.

Deloitte CEO: Better Career Preparation Starts in High School

by Barry Salzberge, Guest Post on WSJ Blog

Though we may have tons of data (test scores, grades) on how much our students perform in high school, we have very little data on how they perform once they leave school for college and are out there working in the world.

Barry Salzberge believes that to truly prepare future generations there needs to be some way that colleges can share how students performed with educators from the student’s high school.

Are Your Students Moving?

by Kimberly Warner, I Love Ed Tech Blog

Using Ed Tech in the classroom doesn’t have to be a stationary activity. You can also use technology to get your students physically moving in the classroom and get them geared up partipate in class discussions.

Kimberly Warner from Simple K-12 speaks with Dave Dodgeson about how he uses cell phones in the classroom to motivate his students daily.

Holiday Party Chatter: Tracking and Testing

by Maureen Downey, Get Schooled Blog

With an education blogger in the room, there’s no doubt that the usual holiday chatter will take a turn toward education and technology at some point.

According to Maureen Downey, this holiday she received some interesting insights into how parents with school-aged children feel about the quality of the education that their children are receiving. One neighbor in particular felt that public schools focus on test score and test preparation was preventing their children from getting a full, balanced education.

featured photo by CS Muncy

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Or, at least, that’s what some education reform advocates, including Stephen Krashen, are saying about student performance. A contributor for the Schools Matter blog, Krashen believes that our country performs poorly on international test results such as the PIRLS because, compared with 35 other countries we were tested against, the US has a higher percentage of children in poverty

It’s true that our students are being out-performed and out-shined internationally in math, science and literacy, as we discussed in a recent blog post. However what might be hard for most Americans to swallow about Stephen Krashen’s claim is that our children are impoverished at all. Afterall, CBS recently reported that on average the U.S. leads the way with spending per student. While other countries spend only $95,000 on students K-12, the US spends $129,000. Are we to believe that we’re spending so much …and yet, it’s just going toward meeting our own children’s most basic needs?

In his post, “The Problem with Poverty: Evidence from Gerald Bracey,” Stephen Krashen shares some interesting data that may prove that the reason U.S. children perform poorly isn’t just bad teachers or problems with unions (as postulated by the hit public school documentary Waiting for Superman). It may just be that our children can’t learn because their basic needs are not being met.

By cross-checking student’s scores on the PIRLS, an international test given to 10-year-olds in 35 countries, with how many students in a school were on a free or reduced lunch program, researchers were able to determine performance based on poverty level. According to this data put together by Gerald Bracey, schools with lower levels of poverty performed better than impoverished schools.

Indeed, when you separate and analyze the schools with a low level of poverty you discover that the US (who was previously behind with impoverished schools were included) outscores Sweden, one of the top-scoring schools.

For many this is troubling data, not simply because it exists, but because there is no easy solution for it. Nor is there any easy way to say to an struggling child, “It’s not you, its poverty.”  Indeed, a post earlier this year by The Answer Sheet shares some dismal and heartbreaking numbers. According to the post, 1 in 6 US students attends a high-poverty school, a number which has significantly increased in the past decade alone.

One commenter on a teaching message board called “Tuff-Teach,” humanizes this data. The commenter says:

“In my experience, no amount of expectation or accommodation helps children who simply don’t care. While working at one of the highest poverty schools in our district I had a class where over 75% of the students had no food at home. Those kids qualified for free lunch and breakfast – only all but 1 of the parents couldn’t get their kids to school in time for the free breakfast. That was almost 2/3 of my class that ate 1 meal a day. Sure, there were times when Doritos and a can of soda were affordable. Out of all of those kids, only 1 cared anything about what I was doing. The rest threw chairs, randomly punched each other in the face, etc. They were angry (and rightfully so). BTW – this was 6 year olds. Poverty does matter. No child can learn (well) if her basic needs aren’t being met. Sleep, food, attention and love ALL come FIRST before learning can happen.”

What do you think of Gerald Bracey’s data? Have you had first hand experiences dealing with poverty you’d like to share? What do you make of the disconnect between the amount we’re spending on our school children vs. the levels of poverty Bracey reports? Tell us in the comments!

featured photo by Hayley_Bouchard

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In short, the Project RED team, whose mission is to “define technology models that can be replicated by schools across the nation,” has determined 9 factors which they believe improve test scores, lower drop out rates, and increase the chances of students graduating and moving on to college.

According to the study, only 1% of schools actually have employed all 9 factors identified in the study at this time.  However, Project RED believes that (when used in combination) these factors are the key we need to unlock the doors to a new generation of performance within our schools.  To us, these “implementation factors” as Project RED calls them, seem more like a call to action to save our schools.

We encourage you to read the study and ask yourself, “Are these the steps we need to take to improve student performance across the board?”

1. Place more technology into intervention classes

In the Project RED world, one of the key factors in improving drop out-rates is providing technology to intervention classes (ELL, Title I, special ed and reading intervention, specifically) .

The results of this implementation are especially potent when technology is available for every student. When a lower student/computer ratio (1:1) is present, the technology serves to improve test scores, reduce drop-out rates and provide displine and focus to even the most attention-challenged student. It’s especially effective when students are permitted to set their own pace, as that teachers benefit from being able to focus on the students who need the most direction and assistance.

2. Change management leadership by principal

In Why the New Space Race Begins in the Classroom, we talked about the impact that transitioning the top performing graduates into teaching positions can have on student performance. However, we haven’t really touched on the impact principals can have on their schools.

According to Project RED, a good principal can have a huge impact on how well a school performs, overall. Also, when a principal with proper training is introduced into a school system that has correctly implemented technologies, the benefits of a having the principal as a strong leader increases.

3. Increase online collaboration

Twenty years ago, students had a much smaller pool of learning from which to drink.

Now, with birth of Web 2.0 technologies, the factors that used to limit student student learning are no longer present. Online learning allows students who are struggling to reach beyond their network and access specialized assistance from a wide variety of tutors and teachers. Project RED found that when students are able to use technology to collaborate more actively with other individuals, they are more significantly engaged (thus reducing the need for disciplinary action from teachers).

Teachers also have a more comfortable way to extend the school day beyond 3pm. Twenty years ago, it was impossible for a teacher to speak to their students without picking up the phone. Now, students have access to more technology at home and more channels of communication. Email, message boards and video tutoring can connect teachers with their students without the student or teacher having to leave his or her front door.

4. Technology integrated in core curriculum

Though overall the study found that very few schools integrate technology properly, the schools which did implement it into their core curriculum correctly out performed all other schools. Though schools with a lower student/computer ratio performed better, those schools who had a 1:1 ratio AND also made it a point to increase the interactions of students with technology in their core competencies has better performing students with higher test scores and lower drop-out rates.

5. Offer online formative assessments

Online formative assessments not only decrease the cost per student (average of $44 per student), it also was one of the top 5 factors in improving test scores for students.

6. Lower the student/computer ratio to 1:1

Though the Project Red study determined that all students benefit from technology,  the schools that showed the best performance were those which provided a computer for every child. Unlike schools with a higher ratio of students to computers, 1:1 schools were able to engage their students more frequently (leading to fewer disciplinary incidents).

The study also found that 1:1 schools with properly implemented technology were able to save money by reducing paperwork (40% reduction) and copy machine expense (24% reduction).

7. Offer virtual field trips

Schools which engaged in virtual field trips monthly showed improvement in one area that is a particular challenge to troubleshoot: improving dropout rates. According to the study, schools which encourage frequent virtual field trips had some impact on keeping students in school.

Since 25% (about 1 million) US students drop out of school a year, Project Red has a keen interest in keeping at-risk youth engaged in the classroom; they believe fun technologically-engaging activities are key to keeping a student on the right track.

Interestingly, Project RED found when a school employs all 9 of the key technological factors listed here, the reduction in dropouts jumps to 89%.

8. Encourage daily Internet use

Despite the fact that daily use of technology is one of the top five factors in improving discipline within schools and increasing attendance, Project Red found that many of our nation’s students only have access to technology weekly or worse, monthly.

However, schools which implemented a strong technological program (which encouraged daily use) were found to have to improved discipline and higher graduation rates

9. Provide better principal training

If you’re going to implement a huge technological program in schools, you need principals who have received the proper training. A good principal is key in motivating teachers and making the process of measuring the success of these programs run more smoothly. The principal is also the key figurehead who will work for change on all levels of authority, from classrooms up through their superintendents and even the school board.

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So what do you think? Are these steps realistic to you? What steps are you or your school taking to increase student engagement with these tools? Do you find it easy or difficult to inspire your students with technology?

6 Digital Trends to Watch In Education
A detailed review of the latest internet trends such as social media, video, game based-learning impacting education and how educators, teachers and tutors can embrace those changes with the rise of the digital- native.

Download the eGuide >>

We received many requests for a feature that makes it easy for tutors to enter student session data in Socrato where the incorrect responses are not marked on the bubble sheet. Tutors want to avoid populating an excel file for all questions manually when they don’t have scanners – 171 question for SAT and 216 question for ACT.

Based on this feedback we created a new student session data entry mode.  The “Take Test for Student” mode works well if when a tutor does not want to manually review and mark the incorrect questions before hand. Tutors and teachers can also use this feature to “tee up” a test for a specific student without having an actual student account.  This feature is now available on “Groups => Sessions => Enter or Import Scores” page. To use this mode please follow these steps:

• Add student
  • Make sure the student already exists in your member list. If not, go to “Groups => Members => Add/Invite member” and add the student
• Prepare Session
  • Go to the “Groups => Sessions => Enter or Import Scores” page
  • Select Test
  • Enter session date, comment, and tag
  • Under “Enter Results Manually” click on “Take Test for Member”
  • Find student (if not found, go to step “Add Student”)
  • For selected student click on “Take test for member”
• Enter Student Session Data
  • On Take Test page – Select “Bubble sheet mode”, select “Questions by section”
  • Optionally enter “pre-test score survey”
  • Enter all response in bubble sheet
  • Complete test
  • Optionally enter “post-test score survey”
• Enter Essay Score
  • On the Results page click on the “Review” button
  • Go the essay question and enter the score by clicking on “Assign Points”
  • Click Quit
• Generate SAT or ACT Diagnostic Analysis Report
  • Go in you “Groups => Reports => Diagnostic Reports”
  • Select the student and generate report

We have been using this for a while with a few customers with positive feedback.
If you have any feedback or suggestions please let us know.

User Interface

• More content  – In addition to grade 3 – 5 MCAS material, more content was added for grades 6 and 7.
• Easier access to content – Question search by grade level.
• Improved reporting - The Question distribution report now shows students’ points-data for open response questions.
• More stable upload of students’ assessment data.
• Fixed a number of issues for students TIA and roster data upload process. (e.g., information for one question was captured incorrectly and the session ID was getting lost).
• Fixed a number of other bugs.

Under the Hood

• Faster performance for take test area – With a number of schools now using Scorato in their school computer labs, we needed to make improvements so the system does not slow down. We made a good number of changes to how the take test is managed in the system. This will allow our servers to support a larger number of concurrent users.
• More stable and faster reports generation – We have completely revamped how the PDF files are generated for SAT diagnostic reports. With this change, the time required for report generation has dropped significantly. The current load calculation shows that the first report is available in about 10 -15 seconds, and subsequent reports are created in less than 5 seconds. These are complex reports, so this improvement constitutes a significant improvement compared the previous time lapse required to generate the reports. Pretty cool!

If you encounter any issues with these changes and improvements, please let us know.

Looking Forward

New and improved key features which are currently works in progress include:

• Additional reports which will allow teachers and principals to slice and dice their school’s and students’ data. They will be able to leverage these reports for instruction planning. This will allow them to automatically create custom and personalized assignments from Scorato. We are very excited about this.
• Making the delivery (printing and emailing) of all reports easier.

A big thank you goes out to all who have sent suggestions, requests and issues to us. We welcome your feedback and try to act on it in a timely fashion.

-Raju

With this release Socrato also welcomes all new teachers supporting summer MCAS tutoring.

It’s inspiring to see how much effort, energy, and dedication goes in to help at-risk kids. We feel proud to be part of program, and we hope our efforts are making a difference for the teachers and students.

The focus of this release was to start supporting tutoring centers, schools, and classroom instructors by providing real time analysis and recommendations about student learning to teachers and students. In addition, we added about 1,100 more questions to the “question bank” to support MCAS test preparation. Key highlights are as follows.

• Search our large question bank by curriculum strands and standards, and create your own custom tests to print for students or assign to them online 
  • Share your test with other teachers.
  • Have your students take the tests on-line on Socrato, or off-line with printed quizzes.
  • The questions are mapped to the state curriculum, so you can quickly report on student and class performance according to the DOE standards.
• Vastly enhanced Group area
  • In addition to creating a simple group to collaborate, large or complex organizations like tutoring center, schools, districts or training organizations are supported. Groups are built to support easy sharing of test materials, and also provide reporting and detailed analysis at different levels of the group structure.
    
• Timesheet and attendance for group members
  • This feature was added based on the request from our key users. It allows full tracking of timesheet for instructor and electronic attendance submission for students. The time and attendance sheets are supported via user-configurable workflow for approval and processing.
• Assignments and sharable content libraries
  • Any content can be associated with groups along with comment for assignment and communication. Content can also be shared across multiple groups by putting leveraging the hierarchical group structure.
• Ability to load past MCAS TIA’s (Test Item Analysis Report) & Assignment Results
  • Teachers can upload data and run analysis for a group of students
• Exhaustive analysis and reporting
  • Students and Teachers can get real time analysis of their students and class. Example report are question response analysis, trends by students, trends by subject areas over time, and more.
• Sizable question bank
  • In addition a significant amount of content has been added into the question bank to support the full usage of all features.

Thank you for all of your feedback. It has been instrumental in shaping the new functionality and changes in this release.   We also have long list of enhancement requests. We are working on those.  Keep letting us know how we’re doing and what we can do to improve things.

 To all our users, thank you for your feedback and bug submissions. If you have any comments or questions please feel free to reach out to us.

 Best,

-Team Socrato