DC State Board of Education Discusses ELP, Science Standards

By AMY DOGGETT

The DC State Board of Education held its monthly meeting last night in Judiciary Square, voting on the English Language Proficiency Standards and discussing the revised science standards.


The board started off discussing the benefits of the ELP standards which encourage those students struggling with English to learn the language through social and instructional purposes, as well as through subjects such as language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies.


“We have an enormous amount of students who are still trying to master English and we are expecting them to meet mastery in English and Language Arts and in Reading and Math and that sort of imposes a higher standard on all of us to make sure that those students have the tools that they need,” said Elected Board Member Mary Lord.


According to the resolution document, the new ELP standards aim to “improve the English language proficiency standards in the District of Columbia.” They plan to do this by using a program called World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment (WIDA), which is a program that uses a series of assessments to help students become English proficient.


“I was very moved by the ability of teachers to make progress with each individual student regardless of where they were starting from. They saw the end point and, to me, the biggest proof of success of the program was the fact that students scored so much higher than the typical student,” said Lord.


The board has been planning the revision of these standards for three months now, according to Vice President Laura Slover, and they are confident in the outcome.


The process of implementing this program “has really given us time and the public time to really think about the benefit of these standards and to really hear from the users of the standards,” said Slover.


The board unanimously voted to pass the ELP standards at the end of their discussion, bringing the attention to the new proposed science standards for grades five through eight and for high school Biology classes.


Two members of The Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE), Whitney Allgood and Tamara Reavis, gave a presentation to the board, detailing what the new proposed science standards aimed to accomplish.


According to Allgood, students are strong in areas such as Categorical Concurrence, Depth of Knowledge and Balance of Representation. However, the new science standards aim to strengthen the range of knowledge of these students by having teachers focus on the concepts that students can actually be tested on, while still incorporating “hands on” lab activities.


The board expressed some concern about the lack of input from teachers in the science field used to construct these proposed standards, feeling as if OSSE needs more participation from science teachers in order to make the standards effective.


“When the rubber hits the road, even if we have great ideas, it would be important to get feedback as the process is happening, not after the process has gone through. Your experiences are not around science. Your backgrounds are not around science,” said Elected Board Member William Lockridge, addressing Allgood and Reavis.


Other board members gave praise to the presentation and its presenters, noting the thoroughness of the power point presentation.


“I think they did a nice job presenting the changes that they need to make and really down to the standard level showing what the impact of the changes will be,” said Slover.


According to Allgood, the new standards will attempt to rearticulate an aligned curriculum so the teachers know what material to focus on, especially when it comes time for students to take assessments.


A hearing for the proposed science standards is scheduled for March 3. A voting session will follow two weeks later, allotting little time for the rest of the planning of this proposal. Some board members expressed concern about the lack of time for the development of the proposal.


“Go slow, don’t rush ideas,” said Elected Board Member Dorothy Douglas. “We do this the right way so our kids won’t be confused. There’s enough confusion in their lives.”


Other board members felt confident that OSSE had enough time to develop its standards in time to implement them by the fall 2010 deadline.


“I think there are some changes that need to be made; not in a rush, but in the time it takes to pass these standards. I think there is some clean up to be done, but I think, generally speaking, the standards are in pretty good shape,” said Slover.