The SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) announced they have awarded a contract to Pearson to develop a new Technology Readiness Tool to support states as they transition to next-generation assessments. This new open source tool, with the assistance of the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA), will support state education agencies as they work with local education agencies to evaluate and determine needed technology and infrastructure upgrades for the new online assessments to be launched by the two consortia in the 2014-15 school year. 

"Online assessments offer states and school districts clear advantages, including expanded item types, timely feedback to inform instruction, and improved accommodations for students with special needs," said Joe Willhoft, Executive Director of SMARTER Balanced. "To be successful, however, careful planning and management of the transition process is a must. That’s why both consortia are working with state and local education leaders from around the country to develop this new, free tool to help states facilitate the evaluation of current technology and infrastructure for online testing."

SMARTER Balanced and PARCC both received grants from the federal Race to the Top Assessment Program to work with states to create next-generation, comprehensive assessment systems. The development of the Technology Readiness Tool is one component of their initiatives to establish infrastructure and content for common online assessments. Intended to launch in spring 2012, the tool will be developed using open source technology, allowing the consortia free access to the source code. Data will be collected twice annually through 2014 to provide updated information on technology and infrastructure readiness.

"Navigating any type of educational change is a complicated process and the move to online assessments brings with it great opportunities and unique challenges," said Laura Slover, Senior Vice President at Achieve, which is the project management partner for the PARCC consortium. "Both test consortia are focused on providing the tools and resources to remove any potential roadblocks for states as they move through the transition process."

Both consortia are working with their member states to develop next-generation assessments that align to the new Common Core State Standards and accurately measure student progress toward college and career readiness. Use of the tool will allow local schools to capture and report key readiness indicators, including: number and type of computers; local network and bandwidth infrastructure; and local staff resources and other information needed to evaluate overall technology readiness for the coming transition to digital delivery of assessments. The consortia are collaborating with SETDA to work with Pearson to support its deployment by providing states and school districts with multiple training resources and a communications campaign.

“With their investment in the development of this Technology Readiness Tool, the leaders of SMARTER Balanced and PARCC will put states and school districts on a path toward successfully implementing next-generation assessments," said Douglas Kubach, President and CEO, the Assessment and Information group of Pearson. "At Pearson we are deeply committed to contributing our vision and expertise to support the transition to online assessments.”

The SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium brings together states to create a common, innovative assessment system for mathematics and English language arts/literacy that is aligned with the Common Core State Standards and helps prepare students for college and careers. The Consortium involves educators, researchers, policymakers, and community groups in a transparent and consensus-driven process to help all students thrive in a knowledge-driven global economy. The Consortium’s projects are funded through a four-year, $175 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education, comprising 99 percent of activity resources, with the remaining support provided through generous contributions of charitable foundations. Membership is open to any interested U.S. state. For more information, please visit www.smarterbalanced.org.

PARCC is an alliance of states working together to develop common assessments serving nearly 25 million students. PARCC’s work is funded through a four-year, $185 million dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Education. Partners include about 200 higher education institutions and systems representing hundreds of campuses across the country that will help develop the high school component of the new assessment and then put it to good use as an indicator of student readiness. PARCC is led by its member states and managed by Achieve, a nonprofit group with a 15-year track record of working with states to improve student achievement by aligning K-12 education policies with the expectations of employers and the postsecondary community. PARCC’s ultimate goal is to make sure all students graduate from high school college- and career-ready. For more information, visit www.parcconline.org. 

Pearson, the world’s leading learning company, has global reach and market-leading businesses in education, business information and consumer publishing (NYSE: PSO). For more information about the Assessment & Information group of Pearson, visit http://www.pearsonassessments.com.

by Jen Donovan 

The RESPECT Project, part of the Obama Administration’s 2013 proposed budget, is part of a $5 billion program devoted to working with educators to reform and elevate the field of teaching. In his State of the Union address President Obama voices his reasons for reform: “No other profession carries a greater burden for securing our economic future. No other profession holds out more promise of opportunity to children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. And no other profession deserves more respect." Project RESPECT, headed by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, aims to provide teachers with appropriate resources, recognition, and compensation.

The proposal will affect all facets of the teaching profession from training to tenure. The goal can be found in the acronym, RESPECT: Recognizing Educational Success, Professional Excellence, and Collaborative Teaching. Consistent with Obama’s plan, Project RESPECT will focus on making schools of education more selective and rewarding good teachers with salaries that are competitive with other professions. Obama makes the promise to “Give [schools] the resources to keep good teachers on the job, and reward the best ones. In return, grant schools flexibility to teach with creativity and passion, to stop teaching to the test, and to replace teachers who just aren't helping kids learn. That's a bargain worth making." 

Duncan hopes that the RESPECT proposal will introduce and inform the administration about the deeper flaws within the education profession. “Our larger goal is to make teaching not only America's most important profession, but also America's most respected profession,” he says.

If approved by congress, Project RESPECT will challenge states and districts and will require the cooperation of district principals and administration, schools of education, and teachers’ unions. 

For more information on Project RESPECT, visit the U. S. Department of Education website.

The Obama Administration released its 2013 budget today. The U.S. Department of Education is requesting $69.8 billion in discretionary funding for 2013, an increase of $1.7 billion or 2.5 percent from 2012. The President is proposing a $14 billion one-time strategic investment in key reform areas, including aligning education programs with workforce demands, raising the teaching profession, and increasing college affordability and quality. 

“In these tough budget times, the Obama Administration is making a clear statement that high-quality education is absolutely critical to rebuilding our economy,” U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said. “If we want to strengthen the American workforce, we must continue to invest in education.”

The Department of Education has proposed investing $850 million for the 2013 Race to the Top competition to support comprehensive state and local reforms and innovations designed to close achievement gaps and increase student achievement. A significant portion of the funds would be dedicated for early learning. 

To further support innovation at the local level, the Department is proposing $150 million for the Investing in Innovation fund to develop, evaluate, and scale-up evidence-based approaches to improve student achievement, raise graduation rates, and increase teacher and school leader effectiveness. A portion of these funds will be used to support the development of breakthrough learning technologies through the Advanced Research Projects Agency - Education (ARPA-ED). In addition, the Department would boost funding for Promise Neighborhoods – up to $100 million in total – to support the development and implementation of comprehensive community projects designed to combat the effects of poverty and improve education and life outcomes for disadvantaged students.

Also, the Department is proposing $5 billion in competitive funding to provide support to states and districts as they pursue bold reforms that can help better prepare, support and compensate teachers. 

This budget also establishes a new 25 percent set aside in Title II funds, about $620 million, within Effective Teachers and Leaders state grants that would go toward creating and expanding high-performing pathways into teaching and school leadership, reducing shortages of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) teachers, and investing in efforts to enhance the profession. In addition, the Department would invest $400 million for the Teacher and Leader Innovation Fund – an increase of $100 million over the current level – to support states and districts that want to implement bold approaches to improve the effectiveness of the education workforce in high-need schools.

The Department would also invest $190 million in mandatory funding for Presidential Teaching Fellows to provide scholarships to talented students who attend top-tier teacher preparation programs and commit to working in high-need schools.

The Administration is proposing $8 billion in mandatory funding for a Community College to Career Fund. Jointly administered with the U.S. Department of Labor, this competitive program would provide funding to develop new partnerships between community colleges and businesses in order to train and place two million workers in high-growth industries. 

These funds would give more community colleges the resources they need to become community career centers where people learn skills that local businesses are looking for right now. In addition, employers would offer paid internships for low-income students so they could simultaneously earn credit for work-based learning and gain relevant employment experience. The fund will also support new pay-for-performance strategies to provide incentives to ensure trainees find permanent jobs and encourage companies to locate in the U.S.

In addition, the Department is proposing to invest $1.1 billion to support the reauthorization and reform of the Career and Technical Education program so what students learn is more closely aligned with the demands of the workforce, and partnerships with postsecondary education are strengthened.

The Department would invest $1 billion for the first year of a Race to the Top: College Affordability and Completion to drive reform on the state level and help students finish faster, and it would expand and reform campus-based aid programs to provide more than $10 billion in student financial aid for colleges that restrain cost increases and provide a good value, especially to disadvantaged students. As part of that package, the Department would invest $735 million in Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants, and increase aid to $1.1 billion in federal work study and $8.5 billion in Perkins loans – up from about $1 billion currently available in Perkins loans.

The Department is also proposing $55 million for a First in the World competition to drive innovation among postsecondary institutions, including minority-serving institutions, and help them scale up practices that work to increase college completion.

In addition, the Administration is continuing key investments in Pell grants by increasing the maximum award amount to $5,635 to support nearly 10 million students as they pursue higher education. Following up on the President's State of the Union address, the Department is proposing to freeze the interest rate on subsidized student loans at 3.4 percent – instead of allowing it to double to 6.8 percent this summer – and make the American Opportunity Tax Credit permanent. The AOTC provides taxpayers up to $10,000 over four years to cover expenses like tuition, fees and textbook costs.

These proposals come on top of other continued investments, including $14.5 billion for Title I College and Career Ready Students, $534 million for School Improvement Grants and $11.6 billion for IDEA Part B Grants to states. 

Read the President's speech on the White House website, and read more information about the budget on U.S. Department of Education website. 

President Barack Obama announced on Thursday, February 9, that ten states that have agreed to implement bold reforms around standards and accountability will receive flexibility from the burdensome mandates of the federal education law known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB). In exchange for this flexibility, these states have agreed to raise standards, improve accountability, and undertake essential reforms to improve teacher effectiveness. The ten states approved for flexibility are Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oklahoma, and Tennessee.

In a White House announcement attended by state education officials, teachers, civil rights, and business leaders, the President said that NCLB, which is five years overdue for a rewrite, is driving the wrong behaviors, from teaching to the test to federally determined, one-size-fits-all interventions. The President called on Congress to work across the aisle to fix the law even as his administration offers solutions for states to help prepare all students for college and career readiness.

"After waiting far too long for Congress to reform No Child Left Behind, my Administration is giving states the opportunity to set higher, more honest standards in exchange for more flexibility," said President Obama. "Today, we're giving 10 states the green light to continue making reforms that are best for them. Because if we're serious about helping our children reach their potential, the best ideas aren't going to come from Washington alone. Our job is to harness those ideas, and to hold states and schools accountable for making them work."

The administration is continuing to work closely with New Mexico, the eleventh state that requested flexibility in the first round. Twenty-eight other states along with D.C. and Puerto Rico have indicated their intent to seek waivers.

The administration's decision to provide waivers followed extensive efforts to work with Congress to rewrite NCLB. In March 2010, the administration submitted a "blueprint for reform" to Congress and has met extensively with Republican and Democratic legislators.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan said that current law drives down standards, weakens accountability, causes narrowing of the curriculum and labels too many schools as failing. Moreover, the law mandates unworkable remedies at the federal level instead of allowing local educators to make spending decisions.

"Rather than dictating educational decisions from Washington, we want state and local educators to decide how to best meet the individual needs of students," said Duncan.

To get flexibility from NCLB, states must adopt and have a plan to implement college and career-ready standards. They must also create comprehensive systems of teacher and principal development, evaluation and support that include factors beyond test scores, such as principal observation, peer review, student work, or parent and student feedback.

States receiving waivers no longer have to meet 2014 targets set by NCLB but they must set new performance targets for improving student achievement and closing achievement gaps. They also must have accountability systems that recognize and reward high-performing schools and those that are making significant gains, while targeting rigorous and comprehensive interventions for the lowest-performing schools. Under the state-developed plans, all schools will develop and implement plans for improving educational outcomes for underperforming subgroups of students. State plans will require continued transparency around achievement gaps, but will provide schools and districts greater flexibility in how they spend Title I federal dollars.

Visit the Department of Education website for more information. 

The GE Foundation, the philanthropic arm of GE, announces an $18 million grant to Student Achievement Partners, a nonprofit organization to provide critical implementation support for Common Core State Standards across the U.S. The four-year grant is the largest corporate commitment to date for the Common Core State Standards and reflects GE’s longstanding dedication to preparing American students for an increasingly competitive workforce. 

“Our economy is facing an undeniable challenge—good paying jobs are going unfilled because U.S. workers don’t have the skills to fill the positions. We must cultivate a highly educated workforce and we see the Standards as a key component to answering this challenge,” says Robert Corcoran, Vice President, GE Corporate Citizenship, and President and Chair, GE Foundation.

The grant will allow Student Achievement Partners to offer national support to teachers. Student Achievement Partners helped in the development of the Core Standards, a process that drew on the input of teachers, business leaders, researchers, and policymakers. As contributing authors of the Core Standards, Student Achievement Partners integrated 10,000 public comments from teachers and other stakeholders as the Standards were being developed. Student Achievement Partners also helped ensure that the Standards were based on the best available evidence of what students need to master in order to be ready for the demands of college and career. 

“This is a great day for the education reform movement and specifically for the momentum behind the Common Core State Standards. The GE Foundation is going deep in this work and its commitment to improving public education for all students is exactly what it is going to take to seed real and lasting change, especially during these tough economic times,” says David Coleman, Founding Partner, Student Achievement Partners.

The grant from GE Foundation will support several related efforts to help educators achieve the Core Standards:

• Direct collaboration with teachers to produce and share examples and best practices of excellent instruction aligned with the Standards; 
• A website, www.achievethecore.org, to distribute free resources designed to support teacher understanding and implementation; 
• Standards Immersion Institutes designed to cultivate teacher experts who can build knowledge in their districts and states; 
• The development of tools to track implementation and evaluate the quality of student work; and
• Partnerships with a network of non-profits to provide ongoing technical support to district and state leaders guiding implementation.

“This is a win for the youth of America and the companies that hope to employ them in the future,” says former Governor John Engler, President, the Business Roundtable, an organization comprised of the chief executive officers from leading U.S. companies. “The Core Standards movement can help our nation prepare a highly trained, internationally competitive workforce so we can continue to lead the world. The GE Foundation has demonstrated real leadership by stepping up and supporting this work.”

“Our members came together from states across the country to develop the Common Core and are now focused on implementing these new standards,” says Gene Wilhoit, Executive Director, Council of Chief State School Officers. “Teachers are on the frontlines of this work and supporting them as they bring the standards to life for their students is our top priority. We are thrilled that Student Achievement Partners in partnership with the GE Foundation will be providing such a strong resource for teachers.”

For more information, visit the GE website’s newsroom.