An Annual Meeting With a View

The view forward is clouded by calls for changes in NCLB from a bevy of groups both inside and outside of the field.

And it all plays against a backdrop of a sluggish economy, tight budgets for public schools, an unprecedented demand for college admission, record increases in the cost of postsecondary programs, and calls for more highly skilled employees at every level.

As keynote speaker Deborah Wadsworth put it, “The stakes for American education couldn’t be higher.”

Few would know as well as Wadsworth. She is a board member, senior advisor, and past president of Public Agenda, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization that works to educate Americans on policy issues and policymakers on Americans’ opinions.

“The public believes progress has begun to be made. There is a deep well of good will toward this effort,” Wadsworth said. But the well roils with strong opinions about the details of NCLB, especially among the nation’s teachers, school leaders, and many interest groups.

“It would be criminal not to build on these powerful intentions, criminal to let the sound and fury over details, or specific solutions rejected by this group or that, undermine the resounding consensus that exists over the need to raise standards,” Wadsworth said. “This is a work in progress, an evolving story, and I think that we must guarantee that the momentum is sustained.”

The focus of the next chapter in the story is a rising call for schools to prepare all students to a college-ready standard. Then the questions become: Can educators meet such a goal? Can they prepare all students to a college-readiness standard?

They must, according to speaker Janis I. Somerville, who directs the joint K-16 initiative sponsored by the National Association of System Heads and the Education Trust.

“This is a moment when we could seize a lot of good,” Somerville said. “It is increasingly clear that student success—in college, on assessments, and in gaining access to decent jobs—depends on completing a rigorous, college-prep level curriculum.”

Parents and students “get it,” Somerville said; 75 percent of new high school graduates enroll in postsecondary programs.

Unfortunately, many of them aren’t ready to perform at that level. Those students—28 percent of all freshmen in 2000, according to a recent study by the National Center for Education Statistics—end up in remedial classes. Many of them do not successfully complete a postsecondary program.

“Remediation is like the canary in the mine shaft—it tells us big, bad things are happening,” Somerville said.

The trend in who succeeds—and who does not—adds to educators’ concerns.

Somerville cited statistics that show 60 percent of students from high-income families attain college degrees by age 26. Only 7 percent of 26-year-olds from low-income families do the same.

“It almost feels as if the price of access is to get very, very little success,” Somerville said.

Newly minted high school graduates won’t find any more success in the workforce.

Business leaders say new graduates just don’t have the skills they need for today’s jobs. Interviews with employers reveal that they want the same skills in new employees as institutions of higher education want in freshman students, Somerville said. So the old mindset of preparing high schoolers for either college or work must change. High school must be thought of as the place that prepares students for either option.

To prepare all students to the college-ready level, educators need to agree on a clear goal, and support the secondary schools and teachers in reaching it. Postsecondary education’s first role is improving communication. “K-12 can’t get there if higher education isn’t clearer about what we want,” Somerville said. The incentives for higher education to work with K-12 are not good, she added.

High schools, meanwhile, need to support teachers with the right materials and effective diagnostic tools.“Most schools and districts don’t have the capacity to do these things alone,” she said, which is why many are turning to ACT’s programs. She pointed to ACT’s EPAS/Educational Planning and Assessment Program^®, the Standards for Transition^®, and statewide implementations of the ACT Assessment^® as tools helping schools move in the right direction.

“ACT has become the resource for some states,” Somerville said, noting that statewide ACT Assessment programs in Illinois and Colorado are especially encouraging. “ACT for all—this just knocks my socks off,” she said.

The success in those states, as well as in other schools and districts that are realizing gains in achievement, is encouraging. Representatives of several successful programs—in education and in workforce development—shared their experiences.

Laura F. Murray, superintendent of Homewood-Flosmoor High School District, a single-school district serving 2,300 students in south suburban Chicago, described several disturbing trends identified at her school in the late 1990s: the school’s ACT Composite score had dropped half a point, electives drove the curriculum, students took easy classes to keep high grade-point averages, parents’ perceptions and expectations often were inaccurate, the school’s rising minority population was not reflected in the makeup of honors classes, and the school did not systematically assess student progress from ninth grade through twelfth.

In studying students’ transcripts, Murray noticed a striking trend, “To get above-average ACT scores, the student had to have algebra I, algebra II, geometry, and trigonometry. It did not matter in my high school whether they received an A, B, C, or D in the course—it was the fact that they were in the course.”

At Homewood-Flosmoor, Murray used her data to educate students, parents, and teachers—successfully changing the focus from GPA to challenging courses. She also instituted teacher training and support systems, outreach programs to feeder schools, and a schoolwide data collection and dissemination system that made it easy for teachers to track progress for a classroom or an individual student. With time, the school raised its ACT scores again. In 2001-02 the U.S. Department of Education awarded Homewood-Flosmoor a Blue Ribbon Award for Academic Excellence. In 2002, it was the only public high school to receive the National 2002 Technology Award. In 2003, the school was one of eight in the country to earn the National Education Association/Saturn United Auto Workers Partnership Award for Teacher Mentoring Programs.

Colorado also has focused on changing perceptions. The state’s education reform is moving from theory into practice, according to Elizabeth Celva, the Colorado Department of Education’s director of student assessment.

In the spring of 2001, the idea of high expectations for all seemed revolutionary to Coloradans, Celva said. By the following spring, skepticism had become awareness and excitement. And by the spring of 2003, the premise had evolved into accepted practice.

Part of Colorado’s reform has been to administer the ACT Assessment to all public high school juniors; the results opened many students’ eyes to opportunities they didn’t realize they had. The state’s college-going rate jumped up for the first class in which all students were tested. Many of the students who said they had not planned to go to college earned ACT scores that showed them they could.

“I’m excited about the opportunity that participating in ACT as a state has offered to our students,” Celva said.

In nearby Oklahoma, educators took a different approach to statewide assessment.

In the early 1990s, when many Oklahoma high schoolers were graduating without the skills needed to succeed in college, the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education implemented ACT’s EPAS program to help all students in Oklahoma reach higher levels of achievement. The diagnostic series of three assessments—EXPLORE^® in eighth grade, PLAN^® in tenth, and the ACT Assessment in eleventh or twelfth—were offered to schools as a voluntary program, completely outside of the state’s accountability program.

“That’s the secret to EPAS’ success in Oklahoma,” said Dr. Dolores A. Mize, associate vice chancellor and special assistant to the chancellor of the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education. “EPAS has not been threatening.”

In 1993, EPAS was implemented in four pilot schools. Today, 98 percent of the state’s public schools participate. Oklahoma officials estimate the economic impact of EPAS on the state to be $190 million. As the program matured, the data generated for the state became invaluable.

“One year of not having EPAS means we lose a longitudinal data set that is vital to our state’s progress. It is not worth letting go,”said Mize.

Workforce development programs also value a data-driven approach to improving skills. Two states making great strides in workforce development—Louisiana and Kentucky—sent representatives to relate their experiences.

In Louisiana, policymakers face low literacy rates, low high school graduation rates, and a rapidly increasing need for highly skilled workers. “Louisiana’s demographics suggested that an aggressive strategy to develop its workforce was not only important, but critical to its economic viability,” said Lisa S. Vosper, the assistant commissioner for accountability and workforce initiatives for the Louisiana Board of Regents.

The state launched a collaborative response, bringing together the Board of Regents; Departments of Correction, Education, Social Services, and State Civil Service; the state’s Community and Technical College System; Department of Labor; and the Governor’s Workforce Commission to study the situation and develop a plan to improve it.

“We linked education with economic and workforce development to move Louisiana forward,” Vosper said.

The result was the Louisiana Work Ready certificate program, which uses ACT’s WorkKeys^® assessments to evaluate and document skills.

Kentucky also uses WorkKeys in another collaborative effort that includes an employability certificate. Kentucky’s program aims to increase workers’ standard of living, quality of life, and skills.

“The shift was from improving institutions to improving lives,” said Keith W. Bird, chancellor of the Kentucky Community and Technical College System. To that end, Bird oversaw the controversial merger of the state’s community colleges and technical training programs. The new Kentucky Community and Technical College System uses the WorkKeys system as a common language between education and business, a unified approach to “leave no worker behind,” as Bird put it.

“WorkKeys is not just a tool for workforce development, it’s also a tool for curricular development,” said Bird. “We’re taking WorkKeys and integrating it with our academic mission.”

The integration comes from WorkKeys job profiles. Trained job profilers evaluate positions to determine the skill levels needed. The information gathered in job profiles is provided to curriculum specialists and drives the educational programs.

“We’re all about education and training for economic development,” Bird said.

Improving lives through education and training—Kentucky’s focus was shared by all the presenters at the ACT annual meeting, whether they hailed from academia or business.

As the meeting wrapped up, the educators seemed energized by the discussions. Progress has been made, and although much work remains to be done, the view to the future is hopeful.

“The idea of having a high school curriculum, a core curriculum, that is rigorous and that meets the standard for college admission as well as the standard for the workplace, I think is a wonderful, wonderful goal,” said Richard W. Riley, a former U.S. secretary of education and current ACT board member.

“I think it is a goal we can reach, and I am very pleased that ACT is involved.”