[English] American senior Maths and English results

[Mary Mason]

I'm in the states at the moment looking at Literacy. It is doing some
fantastic things at lower primary. The 'No child left behind' program
has put loads of money into lower primary. I am in Minnesota at the
moment and have seen the support they are giving to teachers to change
their practice and deliver a balanced curriculum model. The stress all
the time is on higher level thinking, reciprocal thinking - by that they
mean teaching students to question, clarify, summarise and predict. They
also teach them inferential thinking. The problem is that as for them so
for us. We do all this stuff about teaching students to read at lower
primary and then we assume they can read - particularly in secondary. We
do not give them the necessary scaffolding to read. We are not explicit.
There is also not enough deconstructing of texts at both upper primary
and lower secondary. Our teachers at these levels of the school need
much more explicit PD on how to deconstruct a text - how metaphor is
used - how gaps are used - why this sentence structure - why this
setting - how is setting used - how is character being built  - what
about point of view - what about the use of narrator for setting up
complexity. I am not saying teachers are not doing this in Australia but
it is not systemic.  I suspect - although I do not know - that this is
the same as the States. We could learn lots from lower primary. Here it
is data driven and they observe, they interview, and the teachers do
some work. They test twice a year and modify their program if they pick
up difficulties with students. Incidentally, I have been in schools
which have 90% subsidised lunches and I have seen real engagement at the
primary level. 

The focus in Minnesota is on the importance of teacher learning and of
study groups within the school.

Cheers

Mary

Mary Mason
Director of Teaching and Learning

ph: (03) 52263157
mob: 0402022012
>>> stephen at melbpc.org.au 02/25/07 5:40 AM >>>
Hi all,

Last Thursday the NAEP released the latest report on the academic
performance of American Year 11 and 12 (senior) students. 

"The (US) National Assessment of Educational Progress -- often called
the 
nation's report card -- is viewed as the best way to compare students 
across the country because it's the only uniform national yardstick for 
how well students are learning." (quote CNN)

<http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/>

According to results, almost 40 percent of high school seniors performed

below the *basic* level on the math test, and more than 25 percent of 
students failed to reach the *basic* level on the reading test. 

On the math test, about 60 percent of high school seniors performed at
or 
above the basic level. At that level, a student should be able to
convert 
a decimal to a fraction, for example.

Just one-fourth of 12th-graders were proficient or better in math. To 
qualify as "proficient," students might have to determine what type of 
graph should be used to display particular types of data.

On the reading test, about three-fourths of seniors performed at or
above 
the basic level, while 40 percent hit the proficient mark.

Seniors working at a basic reading level can identify elements of an 
author's style. At the proficient level, they can make inferences from 
reading material, draw conclusions from it and make connections to their

own experiences.
--

Cheers people
Stephen Loosley
Victoria, Australia
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