Mark Miles of the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership blogged about reading reform in Hoosier schools and the importance of curbing social promotion in elementary schools:

Unfortunately, some defenders of the current system would rather pay lip service to reading reform than accept the core responsibility of teaching our kids.  For example, John Ellis, executive director of the Indiana Association of Public School Superintendents, recently penned an editorial in the Indianapolis Star that rejects the idea of retaining students who can’t read at the end of third grade.
 
The Indiana Department of Education and State Board of Education have made early reading education a top priority.  They’ve endorsed a policy framework that includes increased classroom time allocated to reading, intensive professional development for teachers on research-based reading instruction, and tools for assessing student reading proficiency on an ongoing basis in grades K-3, to catch problems early and devote more existing resources to struggling readers.
 
Under this model, retention is a last resort – a final opportunity to get students back on track with more intensive instruction on reading (not just holding back students in the same classroom with the same approach).
 
Mr. Ellis conveniently ignores this broader strategy and issues dire predictions of ‘mass retention.’  But if reading is the most important activity in our classrooms, and schools have 3,500+ hours of instruction from kindergarten to 3rd grade within which to teach kids to read, how little confidence must Ellis have in our public schools – his constituents – to fulfill their fundamental duties? 
 
He also attempts to undermine the progress made in Florida, which ended social promotion as part of an approach similar to what Indiana envisions.  Florida actually climbed from 31st to 21st in 4th grade public school reading scores from 2002-2007, cutting failure rates by a third.  (During the same time, Indiana slid from 15th to 27th in national reading scores.)  He implies that minority students were left behind by the Florida reforms – in fact, African-American, Latino, and low-income students all improved their reading performance in Florida from 2003-2007 while closing the ‘achievement gap’ with the general student population (Gauging the Gaps: A Deeper Look at Student Performance – The Education Sector).

Hat tip to Chamber VP of Education Derek Redelman for the info.

Not to pile onto the myriad reports of the decline of the American education system, but the New York Times relays one educational expert’s testimony that many nations, including our neighbor Canada, are surpassing America when it comes to educating youth: 

America’s education advantage, unrivaled in the years after World War II, is eroding quickly as a greater proportion of students in more and more countries graduate from high school and college and score higher on achievement tests than students in the United States, said Andreas Schleicher, a senior education official at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, which helps coordinate policies for 30 of the world’s richest countries.

“Among O.E.C.D. countries, only New Zealand, Spain, Turkey and Mexico now have lower high school completion rates than the U.S.,” Mr. Schleicher said. About 7 in 10 American students get a high school diploma.

Mr. Schleicher’s comments came in testimony before the Senate education committee and in a statement he delivered. The panel plans to rewrite the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the main law governing federal policy on public schools.

The committee also heard from Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, the largest teachers’ union; John Castellani, president of the Business Roundtable, a group that represents corporate executives; and Charles Butt, chief executive of a supermarket chain in Texas, who said employers there faced increasing difficulties in hiring qualified young workers.

The blame for America’s sagging academic achievement does not lie solely with public schools, Mr. Butt said, but also with dysfunctional families and a culture that undervalues education. “Schools are inheriting an overentertained, distracted student,” he said.

For more on the state of education in the Hoosier State, peruse some of the articles in the latest edition of BizVoice.

Hat tip to the Chamber’s Derek Redelman for bringing the NYT article to our attention.

Take a look at the Indiana Chamber’s BizVoice magazine covers (71 of them over the past 12 years) and you won’t see a lot of people. We don’t have anything against people, particularly Hoosier leaders in their field. We interview them, we gather their insights and we focus on telling good stories.

The lack of photographs is due more to the absence of a full-time staff photographer and the presence of a very talented creative director who has been involved in all but the first two issues of those 71. Tony Spataro won’t want me to mention his name (yeah, right), but I digress.

Our March-April issue does feature a photo of someone making a difference in higher education. His name is Nasser Paydar and he is chancellor of the Indiana University East campus in Richmond. His neighbor, literally across the parking lot, is Ivy Tech Community College.

Paydar eliminated associate degrees and remedial classes (why duplicate what Ivy Tech is doing, he says) and turned his focus to partnerships. He’s giving up potential students in the short run but gaining a strong pipeline for his campus’ bachelor and advanced degree programs. And, most important, he’s operating with the top priority on the students. Sounds like a simple concept, but it’s not one that is always followed.

The in-depth story on higher education efficiency and effectiveness is titled Breaking Down Walls: Columbus, Richmond Show the Way. Give it a read and let us know what you think.

Indiana Chamber VP of Education & Workforce Development Derek Redelman discusses higher education developments in Richmond and Columbus. He explains that one key goal is to help students find an educational program that best suits them individually, and how new initiatives are impacting the state’s larger institutions. For a more detailed look at the issue, read the story in our latest edition of BizVoice magazine.

We’re No. 25 and No. 43. Those are the ratings for Indianapolis and Fort Wayne, respectively, in the annual America’s Most Literate Cities study published by Central Connecticut State University.

Libraries (branches, volume of materials, utilization and staff) are an apparent Hoosier strength with Fort Wayne seventh and Indy tied for 15th. Those were the best finishes for the Hoosier cities in any of the six categories: booksellers, education, Internet, newspapers and publications are the others.

Seattle topped the list followed by Washington, D.C.; Minneapolis; Pittsburgh; Atlanta; Portand, Oregon; St. Paul; Boston; Cincinnati; and Denver.

Check it out here.

For Tom Snyder’s Economic Club of Indiana speech Tuesday, it was largely a story of numbers (along with some video clips of Ivy Tech graduates telling their personal success stories).

Before going into the details of Ivy Tech’s growth, Snyder shared one statistic that affects all Indiana taxpayers – you are paying half of Ivy Tech students’ tuition. For that reason, Hoosiers need to know what’s happening with the community college, Snyder notes.

The school has seen an enrollment increase of more than 40,000 students since 2008. No longer can high school students decide between college and a high-paying factory job. Employers are calling for everyone to have some postsecondary education – whether it’s a four-year or two-year degree, Snyder states.

He offered this profile of the Ivy Tech student body:

• Average age is 27
• 25% are single mothers
• 60% receive financial aid
• 10,000 students are on food stamps
• 25% transfer to a four-year school
• 25,000 are enrolled at the Indianapolis campus (that’s more students than at Ball State University, Snyder asserts.)

Noting the high number of students who need remediation in math and English, Snyder turned to the audience to prove his point. Through an interactive demonstration, audience members took a five-question quiz based on math placement tests.

The audience used small remote control buzzers to answer questions such as: What is the smallest prime number? (Answer: 2) On most questions, about 60% or less answered correctly.

Snyder reminded the audience that while half of the tuition at Ivy Tech is covered by taxpayers, all of it is covered at the K-12 level. He shared his five steps to success in educating Indiana:

1. Children are prepared for kindergarten
2. Third grade students are reading at third grade level
3. Students decide to go to college while in the eighth grade
4. Students take math during their senior year of high school (helping prevent the need for remediation)
5. Graduates continue on to earn a post K-12 credentials

Snyder concludes education is a shared responsibility; everyone is an educator.

After all, you’re footing the bill.

In his recent Economic Club of Indiana speech, education reformer Kevin Chavous offered a pretty simple criteria he uses to determine if he will support a new education initiative. If it helps students learn, it’s got his support.

I have a feeling Chavous likes this one. Sure, the details are yet to be played out and a pilot program will debut in 2011in eight states, but letting qualified students leave high school early (after two years) to begin college seems to have strong possibilities. As some excerpts from news articles below explain, others may pass the required tests but opt to stay to engage in more college preparation. Something that offers options and opportunities has the makings of a winner.

Kentucky, Maine, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont will participate in the program, which will be operated through the National Center on Education and the Economy in Washington, D.C. A grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will pay for the pilot program.

It’s scheduled to begin in the 2011-2012 school year, with 10 to 20 high schools participating in each of the eight states. It’s not yet known which Kentucky schools might join the program, the state department of education said.

Marc Tucker, president of the National Center for Education and the Economy, said the effort ultimately would "prepare dramatically more students for college success, and greatly reduce the high number of students who now take remedial courses in college."

The program wouldn’t be for everybody, but could appeal to young, high-achieving students who are bored with high school and want to move on, said Cindy Heine, associate executive director of Kentucky’s Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence.

"We’ve been concerned for many years about students who find high school to be not challenging enough or irrelevant for their future plans," Heine said. "This could be a good option, because they could move right on into really relevant material for future jobs or other opportunities."

Each state participating in the initiative would approve as many as five "board examination" programs, such as the the College Board’s Advanced Placement program or the ACT’s QualityCore.

High school students in those states could then take one of the exams at the end of 10th grade. Those who passed would receive a high school diploma, and could choose to enroll as full-time students in any two- or four-year, open-enrollment college in their state without having to take remedial courses, officials said.

Sophomores who passed the exams also could elect to stay in high school and take classes designed to prepare them for selective college enrollment later on.