Monthly Archives: June 2017

Freshman Kylee Elderkin works on an assignment in English class at Nokomis High School in Newport on Friday, June 2, 2017. Elderkin says she used to routinely miss key skills and do poorly on tests. The switch to a proficiency-based education, which focuses on making sure students can demonstrate what they know, has helped students like Elderkin. Photo: Gregory Rec/Portland Press Herald

NEWPORT, Maine Algebra was not Kylee Elderkins favorite subject at the beginning of the school year.

I was a little behind, said Kylee, 14. I wouldnt understand.

The Nokomis Regional High School ninth grader said she used to routinely miss key skills and do poorly on tests. Struggling students like Kylee might not have made it through honors algebra in the past, said teacher Ellen Payne, who has taught high school math for 11 years. Payne said she used to lose four or five students a year from honors algebra; theyd have to drop down a level. In lower level classes, some would have to repeat the whole course.

This year Payne doesnt expect to lose Kylee or anyone else.

Thats due to a new teaching approach here called proficiency-based education, that was inspired by a 2012 state law.

The law requires that by 2021, students graduating from Maine high schools must show they have mastered specific skills to earn a high school diploma. Maine is the first state to pass such a law, though the idea of valuing skills over credits is increasingly popular around the country. Maine is the pioneer, said Chris Sturgis, co-founder of CompetencyWorks, a national organization that advocates for the approach in K-12 schools.

Kylee Elderkin, student, Nokomis Regional High School

This years nearly 13,500 eighth graders will be the first students required to meet the changed requirements, which are being phased in gradually. By 2021, schools must offer diplomas based students reaching proficiency in the four core academic subject areas: English, math, science and social studies. By 2025, four additional subject areas will be included: a second language, the arts, health and physical education.

When such a system works, its meant to offer students clarity about what they have to learn and how they are expected to demonstrate theyve learned it. Students have more flexibility to learn at their own pace and teachers get time to provide extra help for students who need it. Ideally, every diploma in Maine would signify that students had mastered the states learning standards.

But the law grants local districts lots of leeway in determining what students must do to prove their proficiency, which means the value of the new diplomas will still be largely determined by where students live. Logistical hurdles, resistance from teachers fed up with top-down reforms, confusion about exactly what the law requires, and missing information about how districts will be judged on their compliance are among the challenges that come with overhauling the states high schools.

Mary Nadeau, principal of Nokomis High School in Newport, poses for a photo in a hallway of the school on Friday, June 2, 2017. One of the reasons that Nokomis High School has sucessfully transitioned to a proficiency-based education model is the support that Nadeau has for the idea. Photo: Gregory Rec/Portland Press Herald

Five of the states 124 high schools are on target to hand out the new diplomas next spring, according to a spokesperson for the Maine Department of Education, while others have barely started to make the transition.

Erika Stump, a research associate at the Center for Education Policy, Applied Research and Evaluation at the University of Southern Maine, has written seven reports on proficiency-based education in the state. Asked how its going so far, Stump replied: It depends on how you define it and how you define going.

Since the mid-1990s several New England states have looked to proficiency-based education in an attempt to ensure a more equal education for all students. In fact, several Maine districts, including Gray-New Gloucester, were already working toward a proficiency-based model at the time the diploma law was passed.

Starting in 2011, several key groups and people in Maine worked to put the state ahead of the pack in terms of legal requirements for proficiency. Educate Maine, a local nonprofit with several business and technology leaders on its board of directors, spoke out early in favor of the diploma law. Former state education commissioner Stephen Bowen was a cheerleader for the idea during his tenure at the Maine Department of Education from 2011 to 2013.

Maine has really had a struggle making the transition from a natural resource-based economy to whatever this new economy is, said Bowen, who now directs innovation initiatives for the Council of Chief State School Officers, a national association for state superintendents. There was a sense that we needed to swing for the fences to make the economic transition the state needs to make.

Chris Sturgis, co-founder, CompetencyWorks

Bowen said that test scores had been flat and educators told him they felt they had squeezed all the success there was to squeeze out of the current system. It wasnt for lack of trying, Bowen said. It was a systems design problem.

Initially, there was little pushback, said Lois Kilby-Chesley, president of the Maine Education Association, the states teachers union. The way it was presented was that it was going to meet the needs of every student, and that sounds like what all of us want, Kilby-Chesley said.

As the rollout of the new system has proved challenging and confusing for many school districts though, the unions position has grown more cautious. Kilby-Chesley now worries that low-performing and special education students could be hurt.

The proficiency-based idea has also created headaches at some schools for teachers trying to monitor students individual progress. Many teachers are skeptical of yet another in what seems like a series of endless reforms from the state government. Teachers report that some parents worry that switching to a new grading system with numbers instead of letters, which is an option for schools but not a requirement of the law, could affect college admissions. And the consequences for not meeting the terms of the law, including the way districts will be judged, have not yet been published by the Maine Department of Education.

At this point, Kilby-Chesley said that the union would support legislation to repeal the current proficiency-based diploma law.

We do want all kids to be proficient, obviously, she said. But when you say, Heres the bar, and youre never going to be able to jump over it. Why would [students] bother to keep trying?

But at schools that have embraced the new system, teachers say they are finding that struggling students are seeing the biggest gains because teachers are given more time to re-teach skills and students better understand the parameters for earning a diploma.

I think its going to raise our graduation rate, said Nokomis Principal Mary Nadeau. Its going to free us from backtracking. We can just cut to the chase and say, Can you do this?

If a student can write a great essay by the end of 10th grade, she pointed out, why should it matter that he or she struggled to write essays for most of freshman year? Once the student can show proficiency in essay writing, his or her grade on that skill in a previous course can cease to be a concern.

Part of this change has been about equity, Nadeau said. Deciding to believe that all students are capable of learning all of the standards, she said, was scary.

In the classrooms at Nokomis, tests are now broken down into specific sets of skills so teachers can identify how well students understand each task. When students get less than a proficient score, they must go back and study the skill they missed. They are then given a chance to retake the relevant portions of the test until they earn a satisfactory score.

Related: Despite its high tech profile, Summit charter network makes teachers, not computers, the heart of learning

Seniors John Hachey, Lauren Brewer and Emily Taylor, left to right, discuss the dessert they created for a health class to judges Ellen Payne, left and Debbie Richardson. Health teacher Donald Thorndike, standing at far left, says that having the students explain their decision-making process and the nutritional qualities of their desserts is part of having students demonstrate what they know, one of the tenets of proficiency-based education. Photo: Gregory Rec/Portland Press Herald

Kylee said that process is why she now loves algebra and is on track with the rest of her class. I definitely would have struggled if I didnt have to go through the process of retaking, Kylee said. It ties to what were doing now, so if I didnt know it, I wouldnt be getting the grades I get.

It has always been true that algebra students need to master variables in order to move on to factoring, for example, but ninth graders werent always so adept at understanding that, Kylees teachers said.

A similar realization has motivated students who dont master all the skills in a given course by the end of the school year, Payne said. In part, thats because they now get to keep the credit for the skills they have learned.

While we will still have students having to repeat Algebra Ior any other classthey will at least not have wasted their year, Payne said. They will have fewer [skills] that they have to meet the next year which takes a little pressure off them.

Erika Stump, researcher, University of Southern Maine

If one of Paynes algebra students gets through just half of the skills one year, he will be signed up for the course again the following year. The difference now is that he will be able to start where he left off. He might work independently from the rest of the class, with Payne providing guidance, until he masters all the necessary skills.

The shift in thinking about how students learn best has inspired other changes at Nokomis too. A new algebra class for students who struggle the most with that subject meets daily instead of every other day to provide the needed extra time. English students can prove their understanding of concepts in more than one way, such as illustrating a poem to demonstrate a grasp of figurative language. Multiple-choice questions have virtually disappeared. Homework is checked, but not graded.

We really thought if we didnt grade it, they wouldnt do it, Payne said of the homework she and her colleagues assign. She said that fear proved unfounded.

Teachers and administrators here said they prioritized their students and families over fitting any preconceived idea of what proficiency-based education should look like. For example, they use the 1-to-4 grading scale in class to help students better understand how close they are to hitting their proficiency targets. For report cards, they convert those scores into letter grades to make it simple for parents, colleges and other post-secondary institutions to understand.

English teacher Elizabeth Vigue talks with senior Dylan Bickford as he works on an assignment in class at Nokomis High School in Newport on Friday, June 2, 2017. Vigue says that it was scary to give up teaching most of the novels on her syllabus but she says that it was worth it to watch her students grasp concepts that she knows will help them read any novel they want in the future. I think this takes courage, Vigue says of the transition to proficiency-based education. One thing you need to believe to work here is that every child can learn. Photo: Gregory Rec/Portland Press Herald

But despite its popularity with both teachers and students at Nokomis, this potential revolution in Maines high school experience is far from a successful finish.

On the plus side, even critics have been mostly unconcerned about costs beyond what it will take to pay educators for their extra training and planning time during the transition. To cover those costs, districts are receiving 1/9 of 1 percent of their annual state education allocation on top of their regular amount during the years of the phase-in. That could range from a few thousand dollars for smaller districts to more than $10,000 for larger districts, Stump said.

Private funding causes some to worry about outside influence. In New England, the primary private funder has been the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, which has donated to multiple projects, including Educate Maine and Great Schools Partnership, seeking to evaluate proficiency-based education and make it a reality in schools. (Nellie Mae is also one of the many funders of The Hechinger Report, the nonprofit education news publication that produced this report.)

And the practical questions for schools can seem endless: How do coaches determine athletic eligibility if every student learns different things at different times? When are teachers supposed to find time to let students re-take tests? And what about students who, due to their special education status, will never reach a universal standard for proficient?

With districts across Maine answering those questions in different ways, the new law might not result in academic improvement across the board, Stump said. If your intent is to raise student achievement, a large-scale, vaguely defined proficiency-based diploma law is not going to do that, she said.

Some schools are making unpopular changes that arent required by the law, she said. Other schools are changing the language they use to describe what they are doing without changing their practice. And still other schools have made changes only to have them reversed when leadership or other circumstances change. None of these processes have endeared teachers or students to the new rules.

Moreover, in Maine, its up to each district to decide what proficient means. So while everyone agrees that high school graduates should be able to read, Stump said, thats not a sufficient answer to what constitutes proficient reading.

Mary Nadeau, principal, Nokomis Regional High School

How much should you be able to read? Stump asked. Should you be able to read Shakespeare or should you be literate?

Some teachers worry that requiring all students to be proficient at everything is both unrealistic and unfair. Not every academic skill is essential to every person, argued Linda Morehouse, a longtime English teacher at Gray-New Gloucester High School. They can still be contributing members of society even if theyre not that great at grammar, Morehouse said. That shouldnt hold them back from a ticket to a successful career, which is our diploma.

Ideally, the additional time and support students are supposed to receive would address concerns like Morehouses, said Diana Doiron of the Maine Department of Education, who visits schools across the state to help put the new system in place.

We inherited a structure for schooling that was based on time and on philosophical beliefs that learning would be distributed across a bell curve, Doiron said. To dispense with that structure and allow all students the time they need to complete their work, she said, is really getting at the heart of what education is supposed to be.

Related: Has New Hampshire found the secret to online education that works?

Such a shift would move schools away from what educators sometimes refer to as the industrial model of education that held sway in the 19th and 20th centuries to a model geared towards the more flexible work environments of the 21st century, proponents argue.

Freshmen Sophie Platt, right, and Hayley Ogden watch as math teacher Ellen Payne works an algebra equation in class at Nokomis High School in Newport on Friday, June 2, 2017. Payne said that she used to lose four to five students from honors algebra classes every year; they would either drop down a level or re-take the course the following year. Under the proficiency-based education model this year, Payne says she doesnt expect to lose any students out of the class. Photo: Gregory Rec/Portland Press Herald

Its also potentially more motivating to students, said David Ruff, a former Maine teacher and the executive director of Great Schools Partnership, a nonprofit advocacy group focused on bringing proficiency-based learning strategies into New England schools. Its the difference, he said, between telling a kid, Youve got to spend the morning with me raking leaves, or Youve got to rake the backyard and when its done you can run, he said. In the second case, the backyard gets done pretty quick.

Back at Nokomis, where roughly half of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a few students dressed in colonial garb hurried back to class for a presentation on the Revolutionary War. Camouflage flannel shirts and hoodies were the fashion statement of choice for most of the rest of the 613 students in this rural high school.

Spurred both by the new law and by concerns that academics at Nokomis lacked cohesion, Principal Nadeau tapped her subject-area department heads to get crystal clear about what we want students to know and be able to do and then how to measure it.

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Some teachers were initially resistant, Nadeau said, but all of the academic departments met both on their own and with administrators to develop their lists of what students in their subject area needed to know. Teachers also received additional transition help from Ruffs Great Schools Partnership thanks to a federal grant Nadeau won for the school. Now, most say they approve of the changes.

Nokomis High Schools graduation rate is on par with the state average, but its located in an economically depressed, rural area of the state with lower teacher salaries, so proponents see their success as a particularly encouraging sign.

If Nokomis can do it, anybody can do it, said Ruff, of the Great Schools Partnership.

Nokomis does boast the advantage of having a strong and trusted leader in Nadeau, a factor Stump called critical to successfully encouraging teachers to question their current practice and embrace massive changes.

English department head Elizabeth Vigue was quick to point to the biggest change her team had to make: giving up nearly every novel on their syllabus.

Having to acknowledge you didnt know what skills that novel was good for was painful, Vigue said. But shes decided that giving up classics like Charles Dickens Great Expectations has been worth it to watch her students better grasp concepts she knows will allow them to tackle any novel they want in the future.

I think this takes courage, Vigue said of making such big changes. One thing you need to believe to work here is that every child can learn.

The next story in this short series exploring Maines new graduation requirements will look at a school that has struggled to comply with the new law. The final story will examine a school thats found a different proficiency solution, one that may offer a clue to the systems future.

This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Read more about high school reform.

Read more from the original source:

How diplomas based on skill acquisition, not credits earned, could ... - The Hechinger Report

A looming decision about whether to abolish or shrink the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah should provide an early signal of how the Trump administration will deal with a long list of public lands issues.

For roughly a month and a half, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has had 27 national monuments under a microscope, reviewing the protected status of these vast expanses of land (and, in some cases, water) at the prompting of an April executive order by President Trump.

The idea, according to the order, is to assure that each of these areas is appropriately designated under the 1906 Antiquities Act, a law that gives the president the authority to establish national monuments with a few caveats. Namely, they must include historic landmarks or other objects of historic or scientific interest, and they must not exceed the smallest area necessary for their upkeep.

At issue is whether the presidents who created the monuments overstepped their authority. But just as important to those who live around the sites is whether they restrict the economy and ignore local interests.

Bears Ears, established last year by President Barack Obama, is the first on Zinkes list. But a second Utah site, the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, offers a more comprehensive glimpse into the controversy that eddies around many of the monuments and a revealing peek into what Zinke may ultimately recommend to the president.

So, here it is: a tour of Grand Staircase-Escalante. That is, a tour of the national monuments economic impact, the political cloud surrounding it and what we can expect once Zinkes decision comes down.

The Grand Staircase-Escalante, with its famous hoodoos, or columns, has long been at the center of a local fight over whether its federal designation hurts or helps the surrounding area. (Photo by Bob Wick/BLM)/Flickr

So, what is the benefit or harm of having a national monument in your neighborhood?

According to Headwaters Economics, a Montana-based think tank that crunched the data on jobs and the economy around 17 of the national monuments under review, the effect is anywhere from nothing to a modest net positive.

Chris Mehl, the groups policy director, says that from 2001 to 2015, overall jobs in the communities around Grand Staircase, in particular, increased by 24 percent and personal income overall grew by 32 percent.

These jobs are believed to be mostly service based, in fields that include everything from health care to hospitality, outdoor recreation and tourism.

The monument lies within two rural counties in southern Utah, home to about 12,000 residents and about a half-dozen towns across an area thats nearly 10,000 square miles in size.

Mehl says the economies of rural Western communities like the one around Grand Staircase have changed dramatically, with huge social impacts were just coming to grips with. So other, larger economic factors may be involved.

But theres no sign of an economic apocalypse here, he says.

Commissioners in rural Garfield County, Utah, have long seen it differently.

In 2015, they passed a resolution declaring a state of emergency, saying the monument had all but wiped out the natural resource-based economy in the area. They cited a remarkable 67 percent drop in enrollment at Escalante High School since the monument was designated, while other schools have suffered similar drops.

We see markers that dont indicate a healthy economy, says Matthew Anderson of the Sutherland Institute, a Utah-based free market think tank. He argues that Headwaters study doesnt tell the whole story.

President Bill Clinton, with Vice President Al Gore, signs his 1996 order designating the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah. Opponents continue to note that Clinton made this move while sitting at the Grand Canyon in Arizona. Doug Mills/AP

Local anger still runs deep over President Bill Clintons 1996 designation because it also effectively nixed a proposed coal mining operation. A Dutch mining firms proposal could have brought in $100 million in new tax revenue and created about 600 jobs, according to state estimates at the time.

Anderson argues the types of jobs created by a national monument designation namely in recreation and tourism tend to be low-paying and seasonal, and he says these jobs dont always sustain families the way livestock grazing does. A national monument grandfathers existing activities like grazing leases but bars new ones.

Some residents throw cold water on the idea of shaky employment.

We are awash in jobs, Blake Spalding, co-owner of a local grill, tells The Salt Lake Tribune. What we need is people to fill them.

The debate around Grand Staircase by no means ends with the balance sheet.

Ninety-three percent of Garfield County is owned and controlled by the federal government. And for some detractors, like former Escalante Mayor Jerry Taylor, the federal presence feels akin to that of an unwelcome relative.

We love our mother-in-law, he once said, according to E&E News. But sometimes we dont want her to tell us how to run our house.

Those detractors have not forgotten how the monument was established in the first place: planned largely without input from state leaders and designated by Clinton at a signing ceremony that wasnt even in Utah.

Remember, Zinke said during a visit to the state, according to The Tribune, when this monument was formed, the governor of Utah read it in the paper.

As recently as February, Utah lawmakers called on Washington to reduce the size of the monument, citing a negative impact on the prosperity, development, economy, custom, culture, heritage, educational opportunities, health, and well-being of local communities among other grievances.

Nevertheless, when Zinke visited Grand Staircase last month, he was greeted by chants of demonstrators calling for him to save our monument, the St. George Spectrum & Daily News notes.

The site flush with ancient artifacts and fossils that date back tens of millions of years has been lauded as the Shangri-La for dinosaurs. And proponents defend its value not only for recreational visitors, but also for scientists.

What we learn here matters to the entire West, Nicole Croft, executive director of Grand Staircase-Escalante Partners, tells E&E News.

The ultimate fate of the monuments is murky partly because a presidents authority under the law that established them, the 1906 Antiquities Act, may be open to dispute.

Whats unclear right now is whether the president has the authority to undo what one of his predecessors has done, says Mark Squillace, a professor at the University of Colorado Law School. The act essentially authorizes the president to proclaim, but not to modify or revoke, national monuments.

Squillace says only Congress has the clear authority to revoke a designation because Congress has authority over public property.

While some small monuments have been turned over to states, no precedent exists for the abolition of a national monument the size of Grand Staircase.

Because of that lack of clarity, one thing is fairly clear: Any order by Trump to shrink or nullify any monument will almost certainly end up in court. It is widely expected that environmentalists would immediately sue.

Squillace says the dispute could go all the way to the Supreme Court.

Even Zinke himself hinted at the uncertainty during his confirmation hearings earlier this year.

The law is untested, he said.

See more here:

What Utah's Canyon Country Can Tell Us About Trump's Monuments Review - KTOO

In the two previous articles on the UNCTAD report on Irans standing in science, technology and innovation we summarized the main findings of the report regarding Irans human resource base and infrastructure. Both of which have developed rapidly and have played and will continue to play a significant role in the transition towards a knowledge-based economy. In the final article we will present a general image of Irans STI landscape and discuss actions which Iran can take to further accelerate the transition.

Read the previous articles: Part 1 Part 2

Irans STI policy since 1990 has gone through three stages of change. The first wave of STI policy in Iran was aimed at developing higher education and scientific publications, the implication of which was the development of the significant human resource base discussed in the first part of our report. From the year 2000 came the second wave of STI policy, which intended to develop research and emerging technologies, resulting in increased number of scientific publications and endeavors in nano- and bio-technologies. From 2010, transition towards innovation and a knowledge-based economy has gained pace. The outcome of the third wave today has been the increase in KBFs, S&T parks, VCs and other sources of funding, and the development of laws to support the transition.

The UNCTAD report in 2005 indicated that, at the time, the mostly state-owned economy created very low competitive pressure and very few incentives for technological upgrading and innovation. Before 2005 the private sector accounted for an only 15% share of the value added in GDP and policies were mainly focused on production, rather than innovation.

In an effort to devise policies that intend to support KBFs, Irans government established the Vice Presidency for S&T in 2007. The establishment of this institution along with its 16 technology councils, and the Innovation and Prosperity Fund in 2011, were among the major institutional and structural changes made to assist the growth of KBFs. Other strategies were also used to achieve S&T goals; creating a system to monitor and evaluate institutions of higher education and S&T, increasing the ratio of gross expenditure on R&D by 0.5% every year and including the indicators of S&T, such as the revenue generated from exporting, in government planning.

While government and companies have increased R&D investments, the importance of the structure and type of R&D investments should also be taken into account. The UNCTAD report found that 64% of the R&D investments is associated with buying new equipment and machinery, whereas, collaborative R&D remains largely overlooked. Other forms of R&D investments such as collaboration with foreign companies and acquisition of external knowledge should have a larger share of R&D investments, especially at a time when political tensions have decreased and sanctions have, at least partly, been lifted. The ratio of R&D investment to sales is highest among ICT firms and remains under 0.5% in the food industry and agriculture.

To stimulate knowledge-based economic growth Iran should focus on attracting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). For many years FDI in Iran remained below 0.5% of the GDP and is still estimated at below 1% of the GDP, compared to the average 2.6% for all developing economies. Most of the FDI is focused on the oil and gas sector and a large proportion is focused on maintaining existing businesses but not developing new leading businesses, export-oriented products or collaborating with existing firms in R&D and innovation. FDI is of great importance in economic growth, however, the government should develop incentives and policies to direct a significant share of FDI to innovation and R&D in high-tech industries. FDI should become means to accessing not only capital, but new technology and know-how.

Analyzing the input and output of STI indicators reveals a significant gap between the level of human resource and infrastructure development, and their contribution to an innovation and knowledge-based economy (high-tech exports account for less than 1% of Irans exports). To achieve this goal, policy making in Iran should be aimed at strengthening the private sector, creating a dynamic ecosystem for innovation in the business sector, creating stronger demand for innovative skills and knowledge-intensive activities in mature industries that are currently using mainly mid-level technologies, and increasing private sector investment in design, engineering, R&D and innovation.

Iranian businesses, startups and entrepreneurs are now extremely hopeful about their future. The macroeconomic context has stabilized significantly. Compared to before 2012, the entrepreneurial culture is spreading and the government has realized the importance of KBFs and has started to take action to enhance the business environment. All that s points to a brighter future for KBFs and a diversified economy less dependent on oil for Iran.

See the article here:

Iran Swiftly Moving Towards a Knowledge-Based Economy Part 3 - TechRasa (press release) (blog)