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Meeting with several writing teams for social studies in all grade levels, the board asked for several revisions in the first drafts laying out the new standards for history, government and other social studies courses in Texas schools.

Meeting with several writing teams for social studies in all grade levels, the board asked for several revisions in the first drafts laying out the new standards for history, government and other social studies courses in Texas schools.

Meeting with several writing teams for social studies in all grade levels, the board asked for several revisions in the first drafts laying out the new standards for history, government and other social studies courses in Texas schools.

When some board members questioned why former Secretary of State and four-star Gen. Colin Powell was being dropped from the standards for elementary grades, they were told that former President Ronald Reagan was being substituted for Powell. That ended the questions.

When some board members questioned why former Secretary of State and four-star Gen. Colin Powell was being dropped from the standards for elementary grades, they were told that former President Ronald Reagan was being substituted for Powell. That ended the questions.

When some board members questioned why former Secretary of State and four-star Gen. Colin Powell was being dropped from the standards for elementary grades, they were told that former President Ronald Reagan was being substituted for Powell. That ended the questions.

When some board members questioned why former Secretary of State and four-star Gen. Colin Powell was being dropped from the standards for elementary grades, they were told that former President Ronald Reagan was being substituted for Powell. That ended the questions.

Another board member, citing her own experiences in elementary school, called on one writing team to include the Liberty Bell as a historical artifact that should be studied by students.

Two of those experts, evangelical minister Peter Marshall of Massachusetts and Wallbuilders president David Barton of Aledo, were asked about their earlier recommendations to drop labor leader César Chávez and former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first black member of the court, from the standards.

Marci Deal, social studies coordinator in the Hurst-Euless-Bedford school district, quickly cooled off one controversy that erupted when the writing team for sixth grade initially recommended that Christmas be dropped from a list of holidays of the major religions in a world cultures and geography course.

Many teachers complain bitterly about NCLB's emphasis on testing. Principals hate being labeled as failures. Superintendents say it wasn't adequately funded.

And many parents just view it as a toxic brand that isn't helping children learn.

Until states develop better assessments—which we will support and fund through Race to the Top—we must rely on standardized tests to monitor progress—but this is an important area for reform and an important conversation to have.

it places too much emphasis on absolute test scores rather than student growth—and it is overly prescriptive in some ways while it is too blunt an instrument of reform in others.

NCLB is that it doesn't encourage high learning standards. In fact, it inadvertently encourages states to lower them. The net effect is that we are lying to children and parents by telling kids they are succeeding when, in fact, they are not.

We don't believe that local educators need a prescription for success. But they do need a common definition of success—focused on student achievement, high school graduation and success and attainment in college.

In my view, we should be tight on the goals—with clear standards set by states that truly prepare young people for college and careers—but we should be loose on the means for meeting those goals.

They are simply not ready for college-level work when they leave high school.

Before we do, however, we want to hear from you. We want your input.

We don't need another study. We must stop simply admiring the problem. We need action.

And so the work of reauthorizing ESEA begins in states and districts across America—among educators and policy makers, parents and community leaders. This work is as urgent as it is important.

And yet we are still waiting for the day when every child in America has a high quality education that prepares him or her for the future.

Our shared goals are clear: higher quality schools; improved student achievement; more students going to college; closing the achievement gap; and more opportunities for children to learn and succeed.

Let's build a law that respects the honored, noble status of educators—who should be valued as skilled professionals rather than mere practitioners and compensated accordingly.

States must enact a laundry list of federally mandated "reforms" to qualify for the competition. Duncan and Obama call this initiative "Race to the Top."

funding mandates are controversial because they have never been shown to improve student learning.

No Child Left Behind, an education law that focused on one-size-fits-all standardized testing.

A portfolio that includes multiple-choice tests but also essays, research projects, homework and classroom presentations gives a much more complete picture of student achievement.

Likewise, to judge teacher effectiveness solely on student test scores ignores a range of factors outside a teacher's control, including support (or lack of it) in the home, changes in the student's situation from year to year, or even whether the student happened to be sick on the day of the test.

We are for reforms that work, which include standards-based and common curricula that have multiple source assessments; student data available for classroom teacher use based on a comprehensive approach; smaller class sizes; new teacher mentoring; and peer assistance and review. What we oppose are reforms based on the latest bright idea that has caught the eye of a politician or pundit with no experience teaching.

Only the prekindergarten and kindergarten classes at Harlem Success schools — about 450 students — attend the farm trips, though the state exams do not begin until third grade. Students in other grades go on nature-related field trips, like camping, that help acquaint them with unfamiliar settings, Ms. Moskowitz said.

Most years, Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) has more schools in the top 100 of both lists than any other school system in the country

rankings validate that the school system is “seeing the benefits of providing the academic support that allows our students to aim high and achieve at the highest levels.

But do the rankings really mean much?

I feel obliged to question the validity of the methods used to rank high schools.

for ignoring graduation rates and achievement gaps among socioeconomic and ethnic segments.

Mathews’ goal is to improve students’ academic preparation, especially in lower-and middle-income neighborhood schools. His solution is to expose more students to challenging course work, and he unapologetically describes his purpose as “advocacy as well as evaluation.

He says the Challenge Index’s key attributes make it the singular best measure of a school’s quality: It can be easily understood; it points directly to implementing positive change through rigorous course offerings; and it can be applied meaningfully to all schools—unlike quality evaluations based on traditional measures such as test scores, which, he says, are inherently biased toward schools in wealthier, upper-middle-class neighborhoods.

Walter Johnson Principal Christopher Garran

Critics

have attacked the Challenge Index for not effectively capturing what it purports to measure (school quality), in part because it doesn’t gauge student achievement, only the number of rigorous course exams taken.

Newsweek ranks schools based on the Challenge Index, which was developed by Washington Post education reporter (and Bethesda resident) Jay Mathews. A school’s Challenge Index score is the number of Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB) and Cambridge tests taken by all students in a school year divided by the number of graduating seniors. (AP courses are well-known; IB and Cambridge also consist of rigorous courses for which students can receive college credit. Like AP, their standardized exams are graded by outside examiners.)

U.S. News’ approach

far more computationally complex

a school must do significantly better on standardized state English and math tests than statistically expected given its economic makeup; be in the top half of its state (approximately) in the performance of its minority students

“College Readiness” formula combines two components: the percentage of 12th-graders who had taken an AP or IB exam during or before their senior year; and the percentage who passed at least one exam—equivalent to an AP test score of 3 and an IB score of 4.

U.S. News project, cites three ways its methodology is superior: “We measure success [tests passed]—not just quantity of tests taken. We factor in how well schools do in serving economically disadvantaged students and minorities. And we recognize schools within their respective state.”

The U.S. News rankings have been attacked by education experts for intermixing highly selective “elite” schools, such as Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va.—currently their top-ranked school in the U.S.—with schools having open admissions

Unlike U.S. News, Mathews eliminates some academically elite schools, setting the cutoff at the level of the highest average SAT/ACT scores of any “normal enrollment” school in the country.

“It would be deceptive for us to put them [schools above this threshold] on this list [because] the Challenge Index has been designed to honor schools that have done the best job in persuading average students to take college-level courses and tests. It does not work for schools that have no, or almost no, average students.”

As of 2009, schools with AP exam pass rates lower than 10 percent (schools that would have made the list in previous years) have also been eliminated from the main Newsweek ranking. Most of these schools, which are typically located in low-income neighborhoods, have recently introduced their students to academically challenging courses as a form of “shock therapy.”

Just as the Challenge Index is too limited in its concept of best schools, the U.S. News procedures try to cover too much. The crux of the problem is combining three essentially different criteria (college readiness, overcoming economic disadvantage and minimizing ethnic group disparities) into one ranking. Schools that excel in one aren’t necessarily those that excel in the other(s). Some schools that do the greatest job of preparing their minority students might not have total-school achievement scores that are among the best. Other schools characterized by superlative overall college readiness might score only slightly above average relative to their economic profile. In trying to incorporate “economic disadvantage” and the reduction of ethnic group (minority) achievement gaps together with schoolwide high achievement, the U.S. News ranking risks confounding different educational objectives. Depth and breadth of performance, and exceeding expectations, should be reported separately, rather than conjoined. Separate rankings would be easier to understand, more informative and less disputable—although perhaps less likely to help sell magazines.

Several principals, including Whitman’s Goodwin, noted how nonacademic programs that help students succeed and are a huge part of some students’ lives (arts, music, sports, civic activities, etc.) are not examined.

comparing large and small schools can be misleading

eferring to the many qualitative features that go into making a great school, Doran says, “The rankings are measuring the brain of the school—not the heart of the school.”

This restriction seems to apply only if she pursues the IB diploma; there might be no such constraints for IB certificate candidates. If this is the case, perhaps she could continue an accelerated math curriculum, maybe taking a class such as multivariate calculus before starting college, by leaving the IB diploma path.

we can't help thinking that she's being held back. Although the IB Programme might need to establish rules and guidelines for consistent implementation, there's always a chance that they don't always provide for our kids' best educational opportunities.