Technology

Online Common Core Testing Lays Bare Tech Divide in Schools

Published

9 years ago

May 11, 2015

In this April 30, 2015 photo, students line up to take part in new Common Core-aligned standardized tests at the Cuyama Valley High School in New Cuyama, Calif. (AP Photo/Christine Armario)

Christine Armario and Sally Ho, ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW CUYAMA, Calif. (AP) — Nestled between mountains 60 miles from the nearest city, students at rural California’s Cuyama Valley High School use Internet connections about one-tenth the minimum speed recommended for the modern U.S. classroom.

So when it came time to administer the new Common Core-aligned tests online, the district of 240 students in a valley of oil fields and sugar beet farms faced a challenge.

New Cuyama has no access to fiber optic cables. Some residents live entirely off the grid, relying on solar power and generators. The local telephone company provided a few extra lines, but that only bumped speeds a few megabits.

“We tripled our capacity but it’s still woefully inadequate,” said Paul Chounet, superintendent of the Cuyama Joint Unified School District.

Across the country, school districts in rural areas like New Cuyama and other pockets with low bandwidth are confronting a difficult task: Administering the new standardized tests to students online, laying bare a tech divide in the nation’s classrooms.

Overall, 63 percent of public schools don’t have access to broadband speeds needed for digital learning. The problem is particularly acute in rural and low-income districts: Only 14 percent in those areas meet high-speed internet targets.

“It’s just very uneven all over the country,” Lan Neugent, executive director of the non-profit State Educational Technology Directors Association.

The Federal Communications Commission approved a $1.5 billion spending cap increase for school broadband and Wi-Fi last year that is expected to significantly boost connectivity. State grants linked to Common Core implementation and collaborations with tech and business leaders are also bridging the gap. But those initiatives could take a year or more to connect thousands of schools and testing started in 29 states and the District of Columbia for 12 million students this year.

In the meantime, they’re resorting to alternatives: Testing students in small groups, busing them to other schools and limiting all other internet access while exams are taken.

On a recent testing day in New Cuyama, 11 students filed into the high school’s small computer lab. Even with such a small number of test takers, students said they’d gotten kicked offline and had to log in again.

“It got me off track,” said Brian Olivas, 17.

The Common Core standards adopted in 43 states and the District of Columbia provide uniform benchmarks for what students should know in each grade in reading and math. To aid their adoption, two groups of states received grants from the U.S. Department of Education to develop new assessments required to be computer based.

By administering the tests online, educators can test more skills. Students can be asked, for example, to demonstrate how they would conduct a science experience or solve a math problem, rather than just bubble in an answer.

Some states were already administering their tests by computer. The vast majority, however, had to quickly bring their technology and infrastructure up to speed.

A survey by the Center for Education Policy found most districts had concerns about hardware and internet speeds and more than half said they didn’t expect to have the technology infrastructure in place to administer the test until this year or later.

The tech challenges come as the Common Core standards and testing face continued resistance. Thousands of parents in New York and a handful of other states chose to opt their children out of the new exams this year. And the standards have already become fodder for the 2016 presidential elections, with early Republican contenders like senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz dismissing them as a federal intrusion forced on students, even though they were adopted by states.

Ideally, technology can help eliminate achievement gaps between poor and rural students and their more affluent peers. The shift to online testing, however, reveals how wide the digital divide remains. Districts like Chicago Public Schools with large numbers of low-income students have raised questions about whether their students — who often don’t have access to a computer or the Internet at home — are at a disadvantage.

“The implementation of Common Core is bringing these issues more to the forefront,” said Brian Smith, executive director of the nonprofit Education Trust-West. “But this has been an issue that has plagued communities of color and low income communities for years.”

Nevada, Montana and North Dakota all dealt with crippling outages at the hands of their test maker, Measured Progress and Smarter Balanced consortium, believed to be linked to a server capacity issue traced down to initial coding problems. Florida, Colorado, New Jersey and other states also experienced glitches.

In light of those issues, some districts have resorted to the paper test.

In New Cuyama, Chounet expects to get internet speeds up to the recommended 100 megabits per second by next year with the help of a state grant that will connect schools to higher bandwidth.

Chounet said those updates can’t come quick enough.

“Even though we’re isolated we have to provide students the technology skills,” he said. “When they leave here, that’s going to be the expectation.”

Associated Press writer Sally Ho reported from Las Vegas.

Follow Christine Armario on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/cearmario.

Follow Sally Ho on Twitter: http://twitter.com/1sallyho.

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Advanced Conductors Provide Path for Grid Expansion

Utility companies in the United States could double electric transmission capacity by 2035 by replacing existing transmission lines with those made from advanced materials, according to a new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Published

7 days ago

October 29, 2024

Oakland Post

Photo courtesy UC Berkeley News.

By Matthew Burciaga

UC Berkeley News

Led by Duncan Callaway, professor and chair of the Energy and Resources Group (ERG), and Amol Phadke, an affiliate and senior scientist at the Goldman School of Public Policy, the first-of-its-kind study details a faster and more cost-effective way to expand the grid and connect the more than 1,200 gigawatts of renewable energy projects awaiting approval. The analysis was first published last December as a working paper by the Energy Institute at Haas and has been covered by the New York Times, the Washington Post, Heatmap News, and other news outlets.

“Expanding transmission capacity is critical to decarbonization, and we sought to study ways to build it faster and cheaper,” said Callaway.

It currently takes 10 to 15 years to build a new power line and the U.S. is building transmission lines at a lower rate than it was in the past decade. Without sufficient capacity, renewable energy projects often sit in limbo for years as transmission operators study what upgrades—if any—are needed to accommodate the increased loads.

The authors modeled various scenarios to determine if replacing existing transmission conductors with those made with advanced composite-core materials—a process known as reconductoring—could provide a pathway to faster grid expansion.

Several reconductoring projects have been initiated in Belgium and the Netherlands, and utility companies in the U.S. have used the material to string transmission lines across wide spans like river crossings. That technology, however, has not made its way to the majority of overhead power lines that feed residential and commercial customers.

“As we learned more about the technology, we realized that no one had done the detailed modeling needed to understand the technology’s potential for large-scale transmission capacity increases,” said Phadke.

Based on the authors’ projections, it is cheaper—and quicker—for utility companies to replace the 53,000 existing transmission lines with advanced composite-core materials than it is to build entirely new transmission lines.

They assert that doing so would reduce wholesale electricity costs by 3% to 4% on average—translating to $85 billion in system cost savings by 2035 and $180 billion by 2050.

“The level of interest we’ve received from federal and state agencies, transmission companies and utilities is extremely encouraging, and since our initial report, the Department of Energy has committed hundreds of millions of dollars to reconductoring projects,” said co-author Emilia Chojkiewicz, a PhD student in ERG and an affiliate of the Goldman School of Public Policy. “We are looking forward to learning about these projects as they unfold.”

Additional co-authors include Nikit Abhyankar and Umed Paliwal, affiliates at the Goldman School of Public Policy; and Casey Baker and Ric O’Connell of GridLab, a nonprofit that provides comprehensive technical grid expertise to policy makers and advocates.

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Black History

A Life of Inventions: Engineer and Physicist George Alcorn

George Edward Alcorn Jr. was born on March 22, 1940, in Indianapolis. Growing up in a family that valued education, Alcorn developed an early love for science and mathematics. He excelled in school, and attended Occidental College in California, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in physics in 1962. He received a master’s degree in nuclear physics in 1963 and a Ph.D. in atomic and molecular physics in 1967 at Howard University.

Published

1 week ago

October 28, 2024

Oakland Post

Portrait of George Edward Alcorn Jr. Debbie McCallum, Public domain.

By Tamara Shiloh

George Edward Alcorn Jr. was born on March 22, 1940, in Indianapolis.

Growing up in a family that valued education, Alcorn developed an early love for science and mathematics. He excelled in school, and attended Occidental College in California, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in physics in 1962. He received a master’s degree in nuclear physics in 1963 and a Ph.D. in atomic and molecular physics in 1967 at Howard University.

Alcorn began his career in developing scientific technology in private industries, starting a career as a physicist for IBM. His career took off when he joined several prestigious companies and research institutions, such as the Aerospace Corporation, where he developed important technologies for spacecraft. In 1978, he accepted a position at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, where he worked for the remainder of his career. There, he developed technologies for space stations and private institutions across the nation, becoming a key figure in the field of physics and space exploration.

Alcorn is well known for his groundbreaking work on X-ray spectrometers. An X-ray spectrometer is a device used to identify different elements in materials by analyzing the X-ray wavelengths they emit. His improvements allowed the instrument to detect X-rays with greater accuracy and efficiency. This invention has been critical for NASA’s space missions, aiding in the analysis of planetary atmospheres and surfaces, including Mars and other planets in our solar system.

He also contributed to the development of plasma etching, a process used in manufacturing microchips for computers and electronics. His work in this area advanced semiconductor technology, which powers everything from smartphones to satellites.

Another accomplishment was the development of new technologies used in the Freedom space station in partnership with space agencies in Japan, Canada and Europe, though their projects never made it to space.

Throughout his career, Alcorn received several awards and honors, including NASA’s Inventor of the Year Award in 1984. In 2010, he received the highest honor from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. In 2015, Alcorn was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for his invention of the imaging X-ray spectrometer.

In addition to his work in the lab, Alcorn dedicated much of his time to teaching and mentoring young scientists. As one of the few African American scientists working in advanced fields like physics and space exploration, he has been an inspiration to young people, especially those from underrepresented groups in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). He taught at Howard University and worked to encourage more African Americans to pursue careers in science and engineering.

George is quoted as stating, “The big thing about being in science and engineering is that if you have a good, interesting project going, work is not coming to work, it’s coming to an adventure.”

George Edward Alcorn passed away June 19, 2024.

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Antonio‌ ‌Ray‌ ‌Harvey‌

Gov. Newsom Touts California Economic Success

In a 20-minute interview on Oct. 10, Gov. Gavin Newsom said California’s economy is in great shape due to achievements in certain areas. The Governor was speaking at the 2024 California Economic Summit event hosted by California Forward in Sacramento. It was attended by more than 100 leaders from industry, community, and the private, public, and nonprofit sectors.

Published

2 weeks ago

October 21, 2024

Oakland Post

Gov. Gavin Newsom. File photo.

By Antonio Ray Harvey

In a 20-minute interview on Oct. 10, Gov. Gavin Newsom said California’s economy is in great shape due to achievements in certain areas.

The Governor was speaking at the 2024 California Economic Summit event hosted by California Forward in Sacramento. It was attended by more than 100 leaders from industry, community, and the private, public, and nonprofit sectors.

“It is an exciting and dynamic time,” said Newsom. “Thirty-two of the top 50 AI companies are all here in California. We dominate in tourism – record breaking tourism last year.”

“It isn’t by accident that California is an economic powerhouse,” Newsom continued. “Whether it be around education, infrastructure, or immigration, we’re following a formula for success.”

In Newsom’s overview of the state’s economy, he didn’t include why two companies decided to leave for the state of Texas. SpaceX and Chevron announced their departures over the summer.

Billionaire Elon Musk is moving the headquarters of his companies X and SpaceX from San Francisco to Texas. After 140 years of doing business in California, Chevron is heading to the southwestern state as well.

Chevron employs 2,000 workers in San Ramon. It operates crude oil fields, technical facilities, two refineries, and services more than 1,800 retail stations in California.

“There will be minimal immediate relocation impacts to other employees currently based in San Ramon. The company expects all corporate functions to migrate to Houston over the next five years. Positions in support of the company’s California operations will remain in San Ramon,” Chevron shared in an Aug. 2 press release.