FOR RELEASE: Thursday, February 19, 2009
Former U.S. Education Official Visits NORMES
Doug Mesecar, from left, works with the NORMES team of Sean Mulvenon, Charles Stegman and Denise Airola.
Doug Mesecar learned about the National Office for Research on Measurement and Evaluation Systems from its director, Sean Mulvenon, when both men were working at the U.S. Department of Education.
Mesecar was the assistant deputy secretary for innovation and improvement under Secretary Margaret Spellings; Mulvenon, a University of Arkansas professor of educational statistics and research methods, was in D.C. on assignment as senior adviser to Deputy Secretary Ray Simon. With the change in presidential administration, Mulvenon returned to his full-time appointment at the university and Mesecar took a new position as vice president of math strategy and publishing for Scholastic Inc., the world's largest publisher and distributor of children's books.
Mulvenon started NORMES in the College of Education and Health Professions at the University of Arkansas with a $500 grant in 1996 and has guided its development into an organization with funding in excess of $1 million annually. The nationally award-winning NORMES Web site provides educational statistics data for Arkansas public schools at http://normes.uark.edu/.
"Sean frequently referred to his work here and he brought some of it to bear on our work at the Department of Education," Mesecar said in an interview during his visit to Fayetteville on Jan. 20 and 21. "I had never heard anyone talk quite that way about how to collect data, how to analyze and manipulate it and about the possible implications of data.
"We had talked about ways to work together in the future, and I wanted a better sense of what he's doing here."
Scholastic has been at the forefront of literacy education with its Read 180 program, an intensive reading intervention program that includes software that uses individual student performance data to differentiate reading instruction.
"We want to do the same thing with math that we achieved in literacy," he said.
Research does show that, without mastering algebra, most students are not able to do more advanced math, which correlates with getting into college and thus future job success and earnings, Mesecar said.
"I wanted to bounce ideas off people who are really smart and know math really well," he said. "NORMES also can help Scholastic get a sense of where education policy is heading and the role data will play. It's exciting to hear about the work NORMES is doing with several state education systems that want to make the best use of data."
NORMES works with the Arkansas Department of Education collecting and analyzing millions of pieces of student data, including grades, standardized test scores and attendance, to produce the department's annual "report cards," which give detailed demographic and achievement information for every school in the state's 245 school districts.
In addition, NORMES calculates annual accountability indicators for all schools and districts in Arkansas. NORMES reaches out to educators and administrators through professional development that focuses on helping schools get the most from NORMES' school performance reports and analysis.
NORMES has worked with other states, including Michigan and Oregan, to design data collection and analysis systems, professional development and reporting systems.
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Contact:
Heidi Stambuck, director of communications
College of Education and Health Professions
479-575-3138, stambuck@uark.edu