News and Notes

• Middle and high school students who read fluently in English class and on the Web may find that they cannot understand their science texts. And their science teachers may be ill prepared to guide them in reading the academic language in which science information is presented. In “Academic Language and the Challenge of Reading for Learning About Science,” an article published in Science, Catherine E. Snow, SERP's Boston Research Director, makes the case that students need to be taught academic language in order to learn science and other subjects. read article
• Kenji Hakuta, part of the SERP leadership team, is a co-convener of the Working Group on ELL Policy. This Working Group brings a research perspective to developing recommendations, sharing information, and fostering dialogue among educators, policymakers, and other stakeholders about current policy issues affecting English Language Learners. This group recently launched a website that describes its current work across the nation.
• "The development of reading skills in language minority learners, particularly during the middle school years, remains unclear despite the increasing need for educators to serve this rapidly growing population." SERP's Boston Research Director Catherine E. Snow worked with colleagues Jeannette Mancilla-Martinez, Michael J. Kieffer, Gina Biancarosa, and Joanna A. Christodoulou to prepare an article for the journal Reading and Writing investigating English reading comprehension growth in adolescent language minority learners. Click here to read the abstract and to preview the article.
• SERP’s San Francisco Field Site Director, Phil Daro, the mathematics chair of Standards Development Group in the Common Core State Standards Initiative, was part of a team who developed and wrote the first official public draft of the college- and career-readiness standards in mathematics. This initiative is supported by The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center). For a copy of the mathematics standards, the draft standards for English Language Arts, and a press release of their work, they are available on www.corestandards.org
• Mathematics for Whom? The Top of High School Meets the Bottom of College
  by Phil Daro, SERP-San Francisco Field Site Director
  "All students deserve the chance to prepare for college. Furthermore, as children they deserve more than the chance; they deserve our determination to overcome any damage done to what they expect for themselves. They deserve pathways to college designed as preparation, not as obstacle courses more appropriate for selection than preparation." Read this paper commissioned by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Institute for Advanced Study.
• White Paper
  Aligning Science Standards with Classroom Practice
  by Suzanne Donovan, SERP Executive Director
  "K-12 science education in the United States varies enormously not only from state to state and school district to school district, but also from school to school and often from classroom to classroom within a school. State Standards and accountability assessments have become the primary mechanism for ensuring that, amidst the wide variation in practice, core content is being taught. The purpose of standards in a highly decentralized system is to create a baseline of shared expectations that can shape textbook content, focus teachers’ instructional plans on important ideas, and galvanize those who provide professional development and teaching tools to focus their efforts on critical content. The assessments aligned to the standards provide a common metric that is critical to introducing accountability into a decentralized system."
  Download paper
• Report on SERP's Word Generation in Education Week
  Research Partnership Launches First Product
  By Debra Viadero
  "When researchers from the Strategic Education Research Partnership met with Boston secondary school teachers three years ago, the teachers told them they had a problem. Students struggled to understand their textbook lessons because they continually tripped up on—or glossed over—the academic words they came across."
  Read entire article at EdWeek.org
• SERP's Word Generation Director Claire E. White and Harvard Assistant Professor of Education James S. Kim teamed up to prepare a new report on how systematic vocabulary instruction and expanded learning time can address the literacy gap. Read their report presented recently at the Center for American Progress.
• Recommended Reading
  Constructive Controversy: The Educative Power of Intellectual Conflict
  By David W. Johnson, Roger T. Johnson, & Karl A. Smith
  "By passing up conflict, instructors miss out on valuable opportunities to involve students and enhance their learning."
  Download entire article
  Reprinted with permission from the authors and Change Magazine
  Originally published: January, 2000