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Erica Frankenberg, Genevieve Siegel‐Hawley, and Jia Wang [1.4MB PDF] :
Seven years after the Civil Rights Project first documented extensive patterns of charter school segregation, the charter sector continues to stratify students by race, class and possibly language. This study is released at a time of mounting federal pressure to expand charter schools, despite on-going and accumulating evidence of charter school segregation.More here and here.Our analysis of the 40 states, the District of Columbia, and several dozen metropolitan areas with large enrollments of charter school students reveals that charter schools are more racially isolated than traditional public schools in virtually every state and large metropolitan area in the nation. While examples of truly diverse charter schools exist, our data show that these schools are not reflective of broader charter trends.
Four major themes emerge from this analysis of federal data. First, while charter schools are increasing in number and size, charter school enrollment presently accounts for only 2.5% of all public school students. Despite federal pressure to increase charter schools--based on the notion that charter schools are superior to traditional public schools, in spite of no conclusive evidence in support of that claim--charter school enrollment remains concentrated in just five states.
Second, we show that charter schools, in many ways, have more extensive segregation than other public schools. Charter schools attract a higher percentage of black students than traditional public schools, in part because they tend to be located in urban areas. As a result, charter school enrollment patterns display high levels of minority segregation, trends that are particularly severe for black students.
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A woman's chance of having a child with autism increase substantially as she ages, but the risk may be less for older dads than previously suggested, a new study analyzing more than 5 million births found."Although fathers' age can contribute risk, the risk is overwhelmed by maternal age," said University of California at Davis researcher Janie Shelton, the study's lead author.
Mothers older than 40 were about 50 percent more likely to have a child with autism than those in their 20s; the risk for fathers older than 40 was 36 percent higher than for men in their 20s.
Even at that, the study suggests the risk of a woman over 40 having an autistic child was still less than 4 in 1,000, one expert noted.
The new research suggests the father's age appears to make the most difference with young mothers. Among children whose mothers were younger than 25, autism was twice as common when fathers were older than 40 than when dads were in their 20s.
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Precious Holt, a 12th grader with dangly earrings and a SpongeBob pillow, climbs on the yellow school bus and promptly falls asleep for the hour-plus ride to Sandhills Community College.Once again, the MMSD and State of WI are going in the wrong direction regarding education. Much more on "Credit for non-MMSD courses.When the bus arrives, she checks in with a guidance counselor and heads off to a day of college classes, blending with older classmates until 4 p.m., when she and the other seniors from SandHoke Early College High School gather for the ride home.
There is a payoff for the long bus rides: The 48 SandHoke seniors are in a fast-track program that allows them to earn their high-school diploma and up to two years of college credit in five years -- completely free.
Until recently, most programs like this were aimed at affluent, overachieving students -- a way to keep them challenged and give them a head start on college work. But the goal is quite different at SandHoke, which enrolls only students whose parents do not have college degrees.
Here, and at North Carolina's other 70 early-college schools, the goal is to keep at-risk students in school by eliminating the divide between high school and college.
"We don't want the kids who will do well if you drop them in Timbuktu," said Lakisha Rice, the principal. "We want the ones who need our kind of small setting."
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Imagine that your stockbroker - or the friend who's always giving you stock tips - called and told you he had come up with a new investment strategy. Price-to-earnings ratios, debt levels, management, competition, what the company makes, and how well it makes it, all those considerations go out the window. The new strategy is this: Invest in companies with names that are very easy to pronounce.This would probably not strike you as a great idea. But, if recent research is to be believed, it might just be brilliant.
One of the hottest topics in psychology today is something called "cognitive fluency." Cognitive fluency is simply a measure of how easy it is to think about something, and it turns out that people prefer things that are easy to think about to those that are hard. On the face of it, it's a rather intuitive idea. But psychologists are only beginning to uncover the surprising extent to which fluency guides our thinking, and in situations where we have no idea it is at work.
Psychologists have determined, for example, that shares in companies with easy-to-pronounce names do indeed significantly outperform those with hard-to-pronounce names. Other studies have shown that when presenting people with a factual statement, manipulations that make the statement easier to mentally process - even totally nonsubstantive changes like writing it in a cleaner font or making it rhyme or simply repeating it - can alter people's judgment of the truth of the statement, along with their evaluation of the intelligence of the statement's author and their confidence in their own judgments and abilities. Similar manipulations can get subjects to be more forgiving, more adventurous, and more open about their personal shortcomings.
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Imagine that driving across town, you've fallen into a reverie, meditating on lost loves or calculating your next tax payments. You're so distracted that you rear-end the car in front of you at 10 miles an hour. You probably think: Damn. My fault. My mind just wasn't there.By contrast, imagine that you drive across town in a state of mild exhilaration, multitasking on your way to a sales meeting. You're drinking coffee and talking to your boss on a cellphone, practicing your pitch. You cause an identical accident. You've heard all the warnings about cellphones and driving--but on a gut level, this wreck might bewilder you in a way that the first scenario didn't. Wasn't I operating at peak alertness just then? Your brain had been aroused to perform several tasks, and you had an illusory sense that you must be performing them well.
That illusion of competence is one of the things that worry scholars who study attention, cognition, and the classroom. Students' minds have been wandering since the dawn of education. But until recently--so the worry goes--students at least knew when they had checked out. A student today who moves his attention rapid-fire from text-messaging to the lecture to Facebook to note-taking and back again may walk away from the class feeling buzzed and alert, with a sense that he has absorbed much more of the lesson than he actually has.
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OF all the supplies at Haven Academy, a charter school in the South Bronx, none matter as much as the squishy. Like any elementary school, Haven has pencils, books and desks. But it is the squishy -- a colorful rubber ball with dozens of tentacles that can withstand the strength of any young student -- that daily absorbs a fit of anger or a mess of tears.In the office of Jessica Nauiokas, the principal, a forlorn little boy yanks at a squishy and an angry little girl tosses one like a yo-yo. When Marquis, 6, was kicking and screaming one recent morning, a purple squishy was the only thing that could calm him.
Marquis, a kindergartner, had grown so frustrated with reading that he crawled under a table while other students wrote their alphabet letters; then he threw a chair across the room. Gabriella Cassandra, the school's social worker, literally carried him to the principal's office, where he again crawled under a chair.
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Decision favors plaintiffs in court challenge of Seattle math text adoptionStatement from Laurie Rogers:
Last year, Seattle Public Schools adopted the Discovering math series despite valiant opposition from parents and math professionals, despite poor assessments of the Discovering series' rigor and adherence to the new state math standards, and despite the fact that OSPI did NOT ultimately recommend the Discovering math series.
In response, three people filed a lawsuit, saying that Seattle didn't have sufficient supporting evidence for its adoption, and also that the Discovering series was associated with an INCREASE in achievement gaps.Recently, a judge agreed with the plaintiffs and - while stopping short of telling Seattle to cease and desist in their adoption - told Seattle to revisit its adoption. The district can continue to use the Discovering series, and Seattle administrators have stated their clear intention to do so.
Nevertheless, the court decision is momentous. It sets a precedent for districts across the country. When board members can't justify their adoption decisions, the people now have legal recourse.
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Our last article summarized the current state of research on teens and risk. That research demonstrates that teenagers do not suffer from some special inability to reason. Larry Steinberg and other researchers explain the steep rise in risk-taking behavior that comes with puberty by elaborating the interplay between two brain systems. The social-emotional system, which develops robustly in early adolescence, seeks out rewarding experiences, especially the sensation afforded by novel and risky behavior, and is also activated by the presence of peers. The cognitive-control system, which undergoes its great burst of development in later adolescence, evaluates and governs the impulses of the social-emotional system.During the years of greatest risk-taking, which peak somewhere around the age of 16 and during which the presence of peers greatly increases risk-taking, the adolescent brain is like a car with a powerful accelerator (the sensation- and peer-seeking social-emotional system) and weak brakes (the risk-containing cognitive-control system). That being the case, it's clear why some common approaches to reducing risk-taking by teenagers--explaining why drunk driving is dangerous, asking them to pledge to abstain from premarital sex--don't work very well.
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Admissions officers more than a year ago started noticing something odd about the Facebook groups built around their incoming classes: The creators weren't newly admitted students. Or current students. Or alums. Or anyone with any tie to the universities.Brad J. Ward, who then worked in the Butler University admissions office, began to compare the groups from colleges across the country -- including Georgetown, Virginia Tech and George Washington University -- and realized they were all created by the same handful of people. "There's something going down on Facebook. Pay attention," he wrote on his blog, Squared Peg, in December 2008
With help from admissions workers across the country, Ward traced these individuals to College Prowler, a Pittsburgh-based company that publishes campus guidebooks, and a not-yet-launched roommate-matching Web site called MatchU, started by a recent college graduate named Justin Gaither.
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This is going to be awkward, but someone has to tell you, so it may as well be me: you're kind of a loser. You know that feeling you sometimes have that your friends have more friends than you? You're right. They do. And you know how almost everyone at the gym seems in better shape than you, and how everyone at your book club seems better read? Well, they are. If you're single, it's probably a while since you dated - what with you being such a loser - but when you did, do you recall thinking the other person was more romantically experienced than you? I'm afraid it was probably true.The only consolation in all this is that it's nothing personal: it's a bizarre statistical fact that almost all of us have fewer friends than our friends, more flab than our fellow gym-goers, and so on. In other words, you're a loser, but it's not your fault: it's just maths. (I mean, it's probably just maths. You might be a catastrophic failure as a human being, for all I know. But let's focus on the maths.)
To anyone not steeped in statistics, this seems crazy. Friendship is a two-way street, so you'd assume things would average out: any given person would be as likely to be more popular than their friends as less. But as the sociologist Scott Feld showed, in a 1991 paper bluntly entitled Why Your Friends Have More Friends Than You Do, this isn't true. If you list all your friends, and then ask them all how many friends they have, their average is very likely to be higher than your friend count.
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Judge Julie Spector's decision [69K PDF], via Martha McLaren:
THIS MATTER having come on for hearing, and the Court having considered the pleadings, administrative record, and argument in this matter, the Court hereby enters the following Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law, and Order:Melissa Westbrook has more.FINDINGS OF FACT
1. On May 6, 2009, in a 4-3 vote, the Seattle School District Board of Directors chose the Discovering Series as the District's high school basic math materials.a. A recommendation from the District's Selection Committee;
b. A January, 2009 report from the Washington State Office of Public Instruction ranking High School math textbooks, listing a series by the Holt Company as number one, and the Discovering Series as number two;
c. A March 11, 2009, report from the Washington State Board of Education finding that the Discovering Series was "mathematically unsound";
d. An April 8, 2009 School Board Action Report authored by the Superintendent;
e. The May 6, 2009 recommendation of the OSPI recommending only the Holt Series, and not recommending the Discovering Series;
f. WASL scores showing an achievement gap between racial groups;
g. WASL scores from an experiment with a different inquiry-based math text at Cleveland and Garfield High Schools, showing that W ASL scores overall declined using the inquiry-based math texts, and dropped significantly for English Language Learners, including a 0% pass rate at one high school;
h. The National Math Achievement Panel (NMAP) Report;
1. Citizen comments and expert reports criticizing the effectiveness of inquiry-based math and the Discovering Series;
J. Parent reports of difficulty teaching their children using the Discovering Series and inquiry-based math;
k. Other evidence in the Administrative Record;
I. One Board member also considered the ability of her own child to learn math using the Discovering Series.
3. The court finds that the Discovering Series IS an inquiry-based math program.
4. The court finds, based upon a review of the entire administrative record, that there IS insufficient evidence for any reasonable Board member to approve the selection of the Discovering Series.CONCLUSIONS OF LAW
I. The court has jurisdiction under RCW 28A.645.010 to evaluate the Board's decision for whether it is arbitrary, capricious, or contrary to law;2. The Board's selection of the Discovering Series was arbitrary;
3. The Board's selection of the Discovering Series was capricious;
4. This court has the authority to remand the Board's decision for further review;
5. Any Conclusion of Law which is more appropriately characterized as a
Finding of Fact is adopted as such, and any Finding of Fact more appropriately
characterized as a Conclusion of Law is adopted as such.ORDER
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED:
The decision of the Board to adopt the Discovering Series is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.Dated this 4th day of February, 2010.
Seattle Math Group Press Release:
Judge Julie Spector today announced her finding of "arbitrary and capricious" in the Seattle School Board's May 6 vote to adopt the Discovering Math series of high school texts despite insufficient evidence of the series' effectiveness.Judge Spector's decision states, "The court finds, based upon a review of the entire administrative record, that there is insufficient evidence for any reasonable Board member to approve the selection of the Discovering series."
Plaintiffs DaZanne Porter, an African American and mother of a 9th-grade student in Seattle Public Schools, Martha McLaren, retired Seattle math teacher and grandparent of a Seattle Public Schools fifth grader, and Cliff Mass, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Washington, had filed their appeal of the Board's controversial decision on June 5th, 2009. The hearing was held on Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
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The number of students taking Advanced Placement tests hit a record high last year, but the portion who fail the exams -- particularly in the South -- is rising as well, a USA TODAY analysis finds.Jay Matthews has more.
Students last year took a record 2.9 million exams through the AP program, which challenges high school students with college-level courses. Passing the exams (a score of 3 or higher on the point scale of 1 to 5) may earn students early college credits, depending on a college's criteria.MARYLAND: A model in AP access, achievement.
The findings about the failure rates raise questions about whether schools are pushing millions of students into AP courses without adequate preparation -- and whether a race for higher standards means schools are not training enough teachers to deliver the high-level material.
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Skylar Shafran, a turquoise headband on her brunette head and a pink princess shirt on her string-bean frame, is standing on a chair in her living room, shifting from left foot to right. She has already gulped down a glass of orange juice and nibbled on some crackers; she has also demonstrated, with extemporaneous grace, the ability to pick up Hello Kitty markers with her toes. For more than an hour, she has been answering questions to a mock version of an intelligence test commonly known to New York parents as the ERB. Almost every prestigious private elementary school in the city requires that prospective kindergartners take it. Skylar's parents, Liz and Jay, are pretty sure they know where they're sending their daughter to school next year, but they figure it can't hurt to get a sense of where she sits in the long spectrum of precocious New York children. And so, although it wasn't cheap--$350--they've hired someone to find out. Skylar has thus far borne this process with cheerful patience and determination. But every 4-year-old has her limits.David Shenk has more."What is an umbrella?" asks the evaluator, a psychology graduate student in her mid-twenties.
"To keep me dry."
"And what is a book?"
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Twelve central Ohio schools are among the worst 5 percent statewide.Their academic struggles mean they are eligible to receive federal money to help them transform or start over. A list of these schools was released yesterday by the Ohio Department of Education.
Six Columbus City Schools buildings are on the list of the worst-off, as are four in Cleveland and 16 in Cincinnati. Several charter schools -- six of them in central Ohio -- also made the "top" rung on the list.
"No one is going to like the fact that they're on this list," said Mark Real, who heads the Columbus-based nonprofit KidsOhio, which studies education issues. He's been monitoring stimulus-related spending and improvement programs. "But this is not just a 'label and leave it' approach. These schools are in for some pretty intensive care."
These schools all have a large number of poor students and have been mired in academic difficulties for several years.
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Stanford's successful effort to exempt itself from Santa Clara County's new rules on underage drinking has put a focus on the university's growing effort to curb alcohol abuse on campus.The county's new ordinance, which took effect last year, makes it easier for police to cite anyone hosting a party where underage drinking occurs. It can mean a fine of up to $1,000 plus costs anytime the police are called in.
About 95 percent of Stanford's 6,600 undergraduates, many of them younger than 21, live on campus in university-owned housing. As the landlord, the school could have found itself facing plenty of potential liability under the new county rules.
But the financial question didn't play a role in the university's attempt to persuade county officials to free Stanford from the regulations, said Jean McCown, the school's director of community relations.
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So what should children be able to do by age 12, or the time they leave elementary school? They should be able to read a chapter book, write a story and a compelling essay; know how to add, subtract, divide and multiply numbers; detect patterns in complex phenomena; use evidence to support an opinion; be part of a group of people who are not their family; and engage in an exchange of ideas in conversation. If all elementary school students mastered these abilities, they would be prepared to learn almost anything in high school and college.Imagine, for instance, a third-grade classroom that was free of the laundry list of goals currently harnessing our teachers and students, and that was devoted instead to just a few narrowly defined and deeply focused goals.
In this classroom, children would spend two hours each day hearing stories read aloud, reading aloud themselves, telling stories to one another and reading on their own. After all, the first step to literacy is simply being immersed, through conversation and storytelling, in a reading environment; the second is to read a lot and often. A school day where every child is given ample opportunities to read and discuss books would give teachers more time to help those students who need more instruction in order to become good readers.
Children would also spend an hour a day writing things that have actual meaning to them -- stories, newspaper articles, captions for cartoons, letters to one another. People write best when they use writing to think and to communicate, rather than to get a good grade.
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I enjoyed meeting and talking with Ellie Schatz recently. Listen to the conversation via this 17MB mp3 audio file CTRL-Click to download or read the transcript. Parent and activist Schatz founded WCATY and is, most recently author of "Grandma Says it's Good to Be Smart".
I enjoyed visiting with Ellie and found the conversation quite illuminating. Here's a useful segment from the 37 minute interview:
Jim: What's the best, most effective education model these days? Obviously, there are traditional schools. There are virtual schools. There are chartered schools. There are magnets. And then there's the complete open-enrollment thing. Milwaukee has it, where the kids can go wherever they want, public or private, and the taxes follow.Thanks to Rick Kiley for arranging this conversation.Ellie: [32:52] I think there's no one best model from the standpoint of those models that you just named. [32:59] What is important within any one of those models is that a key player in making that education available to your child believes that no matter how good the curriculum, no matter how good the model, the children they are about to serve are different, that children are not alike.
[33:30] And that they will have to make differences in the curriculum and in the way the learning takes place for different children.
[33:45] And I have experienced that myself. I've served on the boards of several private schools here in the city, and I have given that message: "This may be an excellent curriculum, and I believe it's an excellent curriculum. But that's not enough."
[34:05] You cannot just sit this curriculum down in front of every child in the classroom and say, "We're going to turn the pages at the same time, and we're going to write the answers in the same way." It does not work that way. You must believe in individually paced education.
[34:24] And that's why I say the WCATY model cannot change. If it's going to accomplish what I set out for WCATY to do, it must be accelerated from the nature of most of the curriculum that exists out there for kids today.
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Jacques Steinberg, via a kind reader's email:
p>Lisa Foderaro writes in The Times’s Metropolitan section that efforts by Princeton University to curb grade inflation are “now running into fierce resistance from the school's Type-A-plus student body.”The university had hoped that other institutions would follow its lead in making it harder for students to earn an A. “But the idea never took hold beyond Princeton's walls,” Ms. Foderaro writes, adding: “with the job market not what it once was, even for Ivy Leaguers, Princetonians are complaining that the campaign against bulked-up G.P.A.'s may be coming at their expense.”
How much tougher is it to earn an A at Princeton? The percentage of grades in the A range fell below40 percent last year, compared to nearly 50 percent in 2004, when the policy was adopted.
In nearly 100 comments and counting, reader response on the issue of grade inflation has been fierce. For a sense of how one important arbiter -- Yale Law School -- interprets undergraduate grades, I draw your attention to this comment, from Asha Rangappa, the dean of Yale Law (and a Princeton graduate.) -- Jacques
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A number of years ago, curious about the ownership of student work produced in a class, I asked a lawyer friend who specializes in art and design copyright law if schools had the right to reproduce student work in their recruitment publicity without the students' permission. He informed me that the student, despite advice from faculty who may have shaped the work, owns the work and that written permission must be secured before it could be reproduced. He also said such works could be considered student records and recruitment results in some benefit to the institution that exceeds any reading of the "fair use" practices of educational institutions (i.e. those that might be applied to the use of lecture slides for a class).This reading of the law is at odds with the prevailing opinion of many schools that the student would not have produced work of a particular quality under his or her own resources, and therefore, that faculty have some "ownership rights" in the output of any class. Since that time I have been very careful to ask students first about any public use of their work, even in lectures I give at other schools, and I always credit the work with their names and give students the details on the presentation venues for their resumes. My lawyer friend told me that statements in college catalogs claiming that the institution retains ownership of work produced in a class wouldn't hold up in court; unless the maker is an employee of the institution/company or has signed away rights through some explicit agreement, ownership is retained by the maker. Other attorneys may have different interpretations, and I don't profess to be a legal expert, but the ownership of work produced by students is certainly something to think about.
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Abstinence-only education has been a frequent point of contention between conservatives and liberals.Conservatives, particularly religious ones, have argued that young people need to be taught the moral dimension of sexual activity as part of abstinence education and urged to avoid sex until marriage.
For those reasons, liberals and many health and education professionals have argued against abstinence-only education. Many of them have preferred comprehensive sex education.
Now a new study indicates that abstinence-only education works even when it doesn't have a moral component.
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Why is a child born in northwest Los Angeles four times as likely to be diagnosed with autism as a child born elsewhere in California?Medical experts have pondered for years why autism rates have soared nationwide, and why the disorder appears to be much more prevalent in certain communities than in others. Now, some recent studies that zero in on California may shed some light on these baffling questions.
A new autism study shows clusters of high autism rates in parts of California. WSJ's health columnist Melinda Beck joins Simon Constable on the News Hub with more.
Researchers from Columbia University, in a study published in the current Journal of Health & Place, identified an area including West Hollywood, Beverly Hills and some less posh neighborhoods that accounted for 3% of the state's new cases of autism every year from 1993 to 2001, even though it had only 1% of the population.
Another recent study, from the University of California, Davis, published in Autism Research, also found high rates of autism in children born around Los Angeles, as well as nine other California locations. Autism, usually diagnosed before a child is 3 years old, is a developmental disorder characterized by impaired social interaction and communication and repetitive behavior.
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via a kind reader. Math 627K PDF:
This document provides grade level standards for mathematics in grades K-8, and high school standards organized under the headings of the College and Career Readiness Standards in Mathematics. Students reaching the readiness level described in that document (adjusted in response to feedback) will be prepared for non-remedial college mathematics courses and for training programs for career-level jobs. Recognizing that most students and parents have higher aspirations, and that ready for college is not the same as ready for mathematics-intensive majors and careers, we have included in this document standards going beyond the readiness level. Most students will cover these additional standards. Students who want the option of entering STEM fields will reach the readiness level by grade 10 or 11 and take precalculus or calculus before graduating from high school. Other students will go beyond readiness through statistics to college. Other pathways can be designed and available as long as they include the readiness level. The final draft of the K-12 standards will indicate which concepts and skills are needed to reach the readiness level and which go beyond. We welcome feedback from states on where that line should be drawn.English Language Arts 3.6MB PDFEnglish Language Learners in Mathematics Classrooms
English language learners (ELLs) must be held to the same high standards expected of students who are already proficient in English. However, because these students are acquiring English language proficiency and content area knowledge concurrently, some students will require additional time and all will require appropriate instructional support and aligned assessments.ELLs are a heterogeneous group with differences in ethnic background, first language, socio-economic status, quality of prior schooling, and levels of English language proficiency. Effectively educating these students requires adjusting instruction and assessment in ways that consider these factors. For example ELLs who are literate in a first language that shares cognates with English can apply first-language vocabulary knowledge when reading in English; likewise ELLs with high levels of schooling can bring to bear conceptual knowledge developed in their first language when reading in a second language. On the other hand, ELLs with limited or interrupted schooling will need to acquire background knowledge prerequisite to educational tasks at hand. As they become acculturated to US schools, ELLs who are newcomers will need sufficiently scaffolded instruction and assessments to make sense of content delivered in a second language and display this content knowledge.
A draft of grade-by-grade common standards is undergoing significant revisions in response to feedback that the outline of what students should master is confusing and insufficiently user-friendly.Writing groups convened by the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association are at work on what they say will be a leaner, better-organized, and easier-to-understand version than the 200-plus-page set that has been circulating among governors, scholars, education groups, teams of state education officials, and others for review in recent weeks. The first public draft of the standards, which was originally intended for a December release but was postponed until January, is now expected by mid-February.
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After a day of knocking on doors chasing fleeting leads, Carlos Lopez and his partner finally heard welcome words: Yes, a resident confirmed, the man they were seeking lived in this house and would be home that evening.Mr. Lopez, a former police detective, now does gumshoe work for what he calls a more fulfilling cause: tracking down long-lost relatives of teenagers languishing in foster care, in desperate need of family ties and in danger of becoming rootless adults. That recent day, he was hoping to find the father of a boy who had lived in 16 different foster homes since 1995. The boy did not remember his mother, who had long since disappeared.
Finding an adoptive parent for older children with years in foster care is known in child welfare circles as the toughest challenge. Typically, their biological parents abused or neglected them and had parental rights terminated. Relatives may not know where the children are, or even that they exist. And the supply of saints in the general public, willing to adopt teenagers shaken by years of trauma and loss, is limited.
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Alliance for Excellent Education:
Few people realize the impact that high school dropouts have on a community's economic, social, and civic health.Business owners and residents--in particular, those without school-aged children--may not be aware that they have much at stake in the success of their local high schools.
Indeed, everyone--from car dealers and realtors to bank managers and local business owners--benefits when more students graduate from high school.
Nationally, more than seven thousand students become dropouts every school day. That adds up to almost 1.3 million students annually who will not graduate from high school with their peers as scheduled. In addition to the moral imperative to provide every student with an equal opportunity to pursue the American dream, there is also an economic argument for helping more students graduate from high school.
To better understand the various economic benefits that a particular community could expect if it were to reduce its number of high school dropouts, the Alliance for Excellent Education (the Alliance), with the generous support of State Farm®, analyzed the local economies of the nation's fifty largest cities and their surrounding areas. Using a
sophisticated economic model developed by Economic Modeling Specialists Inc., an Idaho-based economics firm specializing in socioeconomic impact tools, the Alliance calculated economic projections tailored to each of these metro regions.
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More than a third of sex crimes against juveniles are committed by juveniles, according to new research commissioned by the Justice Department.Juveniles are 36% of all sex offenders who victimize children. Seven out of eight are at least 12 years old, and 93% are boys, says the study by the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire.
The report comes as states toughen penalties for adult sex offenders and wrestle with how to handle juveniles.
"They are different from adult sex offenders," says study co-author David Finkelhor. They are more likely than adults to commit sex offenses in groups, and their victims are younger and more likely to be male.
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I was reading the comments in an earlier post about the new assignment plan and there were many comments about the rigor or lack there of at Rainier Beach High School. I would like to dispel the myth that Rainier Beach does not offer rigor to the high achieving student. If you have a high achieving 8th grader and are in the RBHS attendance area, here is just a sample of what you can expect:In math as a Freshman, you will start in at least Honors Geometry with Ms. Lessig who is our best math teacher. Once you get through that, you will take Honors Advanced Algebra with me, then Pre Calculus with Mr. Bird (a math major in college) and then as a Senior, you take AP Calculus with Ms. Day, a highly experienced and skilled teacher. As a bonus, in either your Junior or Senior year, you get to take AP Statistics with me. All of these classes are demanding and well taught by teachers who know what they are doing and are passionate about teaching math.
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This Dallas suburb, a wealthy enclave known for its top-notch schools, is struggling to integrate a flood of poor, minority students.In a battle mirrored in other districts across the U.S., parents here have been fighting for months over which public high school their kids will attend: one under construction in an affluent corner of the Plano Independent School District, or an older school several miles away in the city's more diverse downtown.
Last month, the district's school board angered many parents when it created a Pac-Man-shaped zone that placed their children in the downtown school for grades nine and 10 instead of in the newer, closer campus.
The downtown school has the highest proportion of poor students of all high schools in the district; many are Hispanic and African-American.
"We want to go to our neighborhood school," said Kelly McBrayer, a white, 48-year-old stay-at-home mother of three who lives near the site of the new high school.
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WHEN the Federal Government's My School website goes live this morning, I will give a little internal cheer.It will be a little victory for transparency, a little win for democracy and a little tick in the box that shows the Federal Government is deadly serious about improving education standards.
It will also be a little kick in the shins for those who would rather the mountain of compiled information the Government already has - and has had for some years - remains buried under layers of bureaucracy far from public view.
I will be happy because I want to know about the statistics around the performance of the schools in my area. I want to see the spots that need addressing and the areas where they are leading the way. Like most thinking parents out there, the information made available this morning will not be the sole premise on which I will judge those schools, those teachers or those students. Those who have been bleating about the way in which the students, teachers and schools will be judged must view parents as shallow and mushroom-like.
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Online college education is expanding--rapidly. More than 4.6 million college students were taking at least one online course at the start of the 2008-2009 school year. That's more than 1 in 4 college students, and it's a 17 percent increase from 2007.Turns out it's the economy, stupid.
Two major factors for the soaring numbers in the 2008-2009 school year are the sour economy and the possibility of an H1N1 flu virus outbreak, according to the seventh annual Sloan Survey of Online Learning report, titled "Learning on Demand: Online Education in the United States in 2009." But, the survey's authors say, there is a lot more work to be done, and there's huge potential for online education to expand, especially at larger schools.
"For the past several years, all of the growth--90-plus percent--is coming from existing traditional schools that are growing their current offerings," says Jeff Seaman, one of the study's authors and codirector of the Babson Survey Research Group at Babson College. Seaman's coauthor, Elaine Allen, who is also a codirector of the Babson Survey Research Group, added that community colleges, for-profit schools, and master's programs have seen significant growth in online offerings.
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G.P. "Bud" Peterson, president of Georgia Tech, sat down with writers at the AJC today and made clear that he did not support the pending legislation in the Georgia General Assembly to allow guns on college campuses. (We talked about other education issues that I will write about later.)Under a bill in the House, Georgia gun owners with conceal carry permits could bring their guns everywhere except the courthouse and the jailhouse. The restrictions on churches and campuses would be lifted.
Georgia Tech President Bud Peterson says "absolutely not" to guns on his campus in an interview Wednesday with the AJC
"Absolutely not," said Peterson, who was appointed as the 11th president of Georgia Tech in April after serving as chancellor at the University of Colorado at Boulder and provost at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. In addition, Peterson has held various positions at Texas A&M University and taught mathematics, physics and chemistry in Kansas.
In other words, this man has been around students and on campuses all his life and he doesn't believe that guns will better protect students.
But let him do the talking.
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The federal government's controversial website giving information on the performance of all schools will go live from this Thursday.www.myschool.edu.auThe site, called My School, will provide profiles for almost 10,000 schools and will allow parents to compare schools in their area as well as statistically-similar schools in other regions.
In navigating the web page, parents will be able to look at the profiles of their child's school which includes the numbers of students, teachers, attendance rates and the percentage of indigenous students.
Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard made no apology for the introduction of the website.
"I'm passionate about this and I believe this is the right direction for this country," she told Sky News on Monday.
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Independent policy think-tank the Grattan Institute has added to growing criticism of the Federal Government's My School website, saying it will not give an adequate assessment of a school's performance.My School, scheduled to be launched tomorrow, has already come under heavy criticism.
The Education Union says it will unfairly stigmatise disadvantaged schools, and the Secondary Principals Council says it fails to include crucial data about school funding.
However, several parent groups have supported the proposal to provide information on school performance.
Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard says it will provide parents and the community with accurate information, allowing them to be their own judge.
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A year ago, the life Demetria Overstreet and her family knew slowly began to fade.
Her husband, Lenzie, was diagnosed with kidney failure and had to leave his job to begin treatment.
With its main money-maker out of work, mounting medical bills and three children to care for, the family saw its financial problems beginning to build.
At one point, their home's gas and electricity were turned off. Car payments lagged. And at times, the family survived on eating hotdogs and chips.
"It was depressing, especially when my son would come home and said 'Momma, nothing comes on,' " Overstreet said, referring to the electricity.
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39MB mp3 audio. I recorded this from Monday evening's video stream. Unfortunately, the sound level was quite low. Notes and links on the 2010 State of the Madison School District here.
566K State of the District PDF.
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Here is an interesting op-ed piece by a tenured professor of biology at Piedmont College, Robert H. Wainberg. He is alarmed because he has been told by former students who are now teachers that some schools no longer hold Honors Day to recognize the accomplishments of above average and exemplary students so they don't hurt the feelings of kids who don't earn awards.Ah, yes. One size fits all education uber alles.This piece will appear in the paper on the education page Monday. Enjoy.
By Robert H.Wainberg:
I have been a professor of Biology and Biochemistry at a regional college for over two decades. Sadly, I have noticed a continual deterioration in the performance of my students during this time. In part I have attributed it to the poor study habits of the last few generations (X, XX and now XXX) who have relied too heavily on technology in lieu of thinking for themselves.In fact, the basics are no longer taught in our schools because they are considered to be "too hard," not because they are archaic or antiquated. For example, students are no longer required to learn the multiplication or division tables since they direct access to calculators in their phones.
Handwriting script and calligraphy are now in danger of extinction since computers use printed letters. A report I recently read disturbingly admitted that many of our standardized tests used for college admission or various professional schools (MCAT, LSAT and GRE) have to manipulate their normal bell-shaped curves to obtain the higher averages of decadtudenes ago.
What we fail to realize is that the concept of "survival of the fittest" still applies even within the realm of technology. There will always be those who are more "adapted" to the full potential of its use while others will be stalled at the level of downloading music or playing games.
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A gritty industrial patch of a blue-collar Chicago suburb seems an unlikely setting for the pioneering curriculum at Morton Alternative High School. The program, which combines intensive psychotherapy with conventional studies to help gang members and emotionally troubled teenagers finish school, has reported promising results and has attracted the notice of educators nationwide.Morton Alternative High School is the last chance for students who are expelled from Morton East High School and Morton West.
Dr. Mark Smaller, a Chicago psychoanalyst, started the program at Morton Alternative three-and-a-half years ago as a contrast to schools that take a strict disciplinary approach to youths with behavioral problems. Dr. Smaller and his team of social workers conduct weekly group and individual therapy sessions to help students deal with emotional problems and social pressures common to life in neighborhoods where families struggle with job losses, crime, violence and immigration issues.
Morton Alternative in Cicero is the last chance for students who are expelled from Morton East and Morton West High Schools. An average of about 100 students are at the school at any one time -- those judged to have some chance for improvement -- though they come and go throughout the academic year.
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High school seniors are applying to selective colleges around Washington in record numbers this year, particularly to schools with reputations for meeting the full financial needs of admitted freshmen. The trend suggests that the weak economy has driven applicants to schools that offer a bigger bang for the tuition buck.A surge in applications is not what admission deans expected this year, after a fiscal downturn and a flattening population of college-age students.
But applications to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore are up 13 percent over last year, with a projected pool of 18,150 students competing for 1,235 seats in the freshman class. The University of Richmond received 8,500 applications for 805 slots, a 9 percent increase. Applications are up 6 percent at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., and 3 percent at George Washington University in the District. The University of Virginia fielded 22,396 applications, an all-time high. The College of William and Mary, too, expects a record number of applicants.
"It shouldn't be happening, should it?" said Bill Hartog, dean of admissions at Washington and Lee. "My take on it is, financial aid, financial aid, financial aid."
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My family has much experience in higher education, not all of it happy. I spent six years as an often struggling undergraduate and grad student. My journalist wife did ten years in higher ed, including three of what she considered hard labor as a visiting professor. Our kids add another 11 years, with the youngest child about to sign up for three more. Please don't ask me what that will cost.American colleges and universities are the great strength of our education system. They are revered around the world. But those schools put heavy stress on our families, since getting into, paying for and graduating from the ones we most want often exceeds our capabilities. We need to know more about what they are doing to us, so I am happy to see washingtonpost.com launch two higher education blogs: College Inc. by Daniel de Vise and Campus Overload by Jenna Johnson. Let me celebrate that event by grumbling about what I consider higher education's five biggest blind spots:
1. College privacy rules are a mess. They are difficult to understand and infuriating when they exacerbate a family crisis. I have heard many stories about students getting into trouble, and their parents being among the last to know. University officials will sometimes take pity on a frantic dad and reveal important things in the kid's personal file. But why can't we have more reasonable procedures? Academics who fear intrusive helicopter parents should read the National Survey of Student Engagement report, which reveals that the children of such people do better in college than kids like mine, who didn't hear much from us.
2. Professors know too little about what high schools are doing to prepare students for their classes.
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Liz Heron, Elaine Yau and Fox Yi Hu:
More than 30 teachers and classroom assistants have been convicted of sex offences in the past 10 years - but the Education Bureau will not say if they are still working in the city's schools.Since January 1, 2000, at least 31 staff have been convicted of offences ranging from indecent assault of their pupils to secretly filming girls getting undressed for a dance class.
The catalogue of convictions and the names of the offenders was compiled by the Sunday Morning Post (SEHK: 0583, announcements, news) and presented to the Education Bureau, which was asked what action had been taken against the offenders.
But the bureau, responsible for registering teachers and advising schools on vetting prospective staff, refused to say how many of the 31 were still registered as teachers and how many were working in schools.
A spokeswoman also refused to explain why it would not release the information to the public. She did say 13 teachers were deregistered from 2006 to 2008 and seven of these had been convicted of sex offences.
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Picture a Milwaukee Public Schools high school that college-bound students are clamoring to attend. The school has grown from 100 to 1,000 in six years. Its program is rigorous, its test scores are strong. Hundreds are on a waiting list for admission for next year.
You might think MPS leaders would look at the meteoric rise of Ronald Wilson Reagan College Preparatory School on the far south side and say, "Terrific! This is an opportunity. What can we do to satisfy the obviously huge appetite for what this program has to offer?"
Or, if you were perhaps a bit more cynical, you might think MPS leaders would look at the Reagan situation and say: "OK, who screwed up? Who allowed this school to grow so fast? Can we get a lot of these parents to switch their kids to other high schools where - for some reason - there is no waiting list?"
Reagan arguably has provided the biggest shot in the arm that MPS has gotten in the last decade or so. It provides a rigorous International Baccalaureate program for all its students - "We have one vision, one mission, one focus - IB," says Julia D'Amato, the principal and chief driver behind Reagan's success. Reagan is working with other MPS schools to develop a kindergarten through high school IB continuum in MPS.
But in recent months, Reagan has had to fend off an attempt to cap its enrollment and it has been ordered to reduce sharply the number of students next fall who do not fall into the special education category. Reagan leaders clearly feel frustrated by how much work is going into protecting their success from MPS leaders.
"All the buzzwords that are supposed to make a successful school, that's what we have here," says Mary Ellen McCormick-Mervis, one of the school's administrators. "If we're doing everything right, why not help us?"
Parent meeting set
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The person who posted this video on YouTube said this fight happened 1/5/10... that's some way to say Happy New Year.I know some of you readers cannot stand when I post video of US acting the fool... well that's life. Here's some reality for US to look at for the next 30 seconds and do something about OUR kids.
It's one thing to see these young girls fighting so viciously. It's a damn shame to see ALL the other kids are cheering on this ish. Where's the teachers and what took the security so long? I know this isn't going on everyday, but this ish is getting tired.
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The quest to get a driver's license at 16 -- long an American rite of passage-- is on the wane among the digital generation, which no longer sees the family car as the end-all of social life.The holdouts include Kat Velkoff, who turned 17 in Chantilly without a license. Focused on tough classes, the debate team, dance and color guard, she turned 18 without taking the wheel. Then 19.
"It just wasn't a priority," said Velkoff, who got her license last fall at 20. "It was just never the next thing that needed to get done in my life."
Federal data released Friday underscore a striking national shift: 30.7 percent of 16-year-olds got their licenses in 2008, compared with 44.7 percent in 1988. The downtrend is even sharper in Virginia and Maryland, state figures show. Numbers from the District, which go back to 2003, show a decline in the past two years.
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Parents wishing to send their children to a different school district next year will be able to participate in the open enrollment program the first three weeks of February.Learn more about full and part time Wisconsin open enrollment here.From Feb. 1 through Feb. 19 parents can apply for their children to attend a public school other than the one in which they live. Last school year, more than 28,000 students participated.
Participation in the program has grown each year since it began in 1998 when just 2,500 were enrolled.
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The January/February 2010 issue of The Atlantic features a noteworthy article titled, What Makes a Great Teacher? Although the article does not focus on gifted education per se, it is still worth a close read. The article discusses specific attributes that excellent teachers with exceptional track records tend to display in the classroom. (It is important to note that these attributes are based on research that was conducted by the nonprofit organization, Teach for America, which advocates for teacher reform. It is also important to note that the group's research focuses solely on teachers who work in underperforming school districts where the primary goal in the general education classroom is to get students to perform at or above grade level.) The article outlines several specific recommendations that the organization makes for recruiting and hiring successful teachers, particularly in underserved communities.For those of us in the gifted education community, the traits identified in the article may be ones that we should perhaps consider first before we consider any additional teacher characteristics that might be specific to gifted education. (See my previous blog entry titled, Training and Competencies of Teachers of the Gifted.)
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Two weeks ago I explored the possibility that high schools could challenge all students, gifted or otherwise, without having gifted programs. Quaker Valley High School outside of Pittsburgh, for instance, seemed able to create new opportunities for a variety of kids by ignoring standard procedures that had outlived their usefulness, such as homework requirements or rules against taking more than one course in the same period.One wise reader said, in effect: Yeah, but that will never work in elementary schools.
As if by fate, I received an email shortly after from Susan Ohanian, a delightful teacher, speaker, author and blogger whose work I love, even when she is portraying me as a test-addled idiot. We may disagree on policy issues, but we have shared tastes about what good teaching looks and sounds like. In her email, she described how she brought a free-form gifted non-program to an elementary school in Troy, N.Y.
Here is what she said. Don't forget to take a look at her blog at susanohanian.org.
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One out of every five U.S. teenagers has a cholesterol level that increases the risk of heart disease, federal health officials reported Thursday, providing striking new evidence that obesity is making more children prone to illnesses once primarily limited to adults.A nationally representative survey of blood test results in American teenagers found that more than 20 percent of those ages 12 to 19 had at least one abnormal level of fat. The rate jumped to 43 percent among those adolescents who were obese.
Previous studies had indicated that unhealthy cholesterol levels, once a condition thought isolated to the middle-aged and elderly, were increasingly becoming a problem among the young, but the new data document the scope of the threat on a national level.
"This is the future of America," said Linda Van Horn, a professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University who heads the American Heart Association's Nutrition Committee. "These data really confirm the seriousness of our obesity epidemic. This really is an urgent call for health-care providers and families to take this issue seriously."
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Kristy (Christiane) Henrich, Marblehead High School Class of 2010
"Civil War Medicine" paper published in the Winter 2009 Issue of The Concord Review
Before crafting my research paper on U.S. Civil War Medicine, I had never composed a piece of non-fiction literature beyond six or seven pages. Twenty pages seemed to be an unconquerable length. I remember the dread that filled me as my A.P. United States History teacher, Mrs. Melissa Humphrey, handed out the assignment for the twenty-page research paper. She also passed around copies of The Concord Review as examples of research papers done well. For us, the first deadline was only a few weeks away. We had to have a thesis. It was then that I truly realized the depth of this academic adventure. My job was not to simply report on some topic in U.S. history; I had to prove something. I had to create an arguable thesis and defend it. I was overwhelmed.Evaluating the Legacy of Civil War Medicine; Amputations, Anesthesia, and AdministrationI put the assignment in the back of my mind for about a week. Then, I began to think seriously about what I could possibly want to write about. I brainstormed a list of all times in U.S. history that fascinate me, ranging from World War II to the Civil Rights Movement. Finally, I settled on Civil War medicine because of my plans to pursue a career in medicine. I figured this would be a great opportunity to gather more knowledge on my potential future profession.
Simply choosing a topic was not enough, though. I needed a thesis. So I began to search through books and online databases for any information about Civil War medicine. I gathered so much information that my head was spinning. I realized I had to narrow down my topic, and that this would be done by creating a specific, arguable thesis. Sifting through all the data and historical articles, I noticed that Civil War medicine was not as atrocious as I had always believed it to be. I had my thesis. I wanted to defend Civil War medicine by placing it in its own historical context, something many fail to do when evaluating it with a modern eye.
A few weeks later, approved thesis in hand, I stepped into the Tufts University library, the alma mater of my mother. The battle plan: gather enough materials, particularly primary sources, to prove my thesis. The enemy: the massive amounts of possibly valuable literature. I had never previously encountered the problem of finding books so specialized that they didn't end up being helpful for my thesis nor had I ever been presented with so many options that I had to narrow down from thirty to a mere fifteen books. Actually, I had never left a library before with so many books.
For the next few months, the books populated the floor of my room. Every weekend, I methodically tackled the volumes, plastering them with Post-it notes. The deadline for the detailed outline and annotated bibliography loomed. I continued reading and researching, fascinated by all I was learning. In fact, I was so fascinated that I felt justified using it as my excuse to delay synthesizing all of my information into an outline. With thousands of pages of reading under my belt, I finally tackled the seven-page map for my twenty-page journey. That was easily the hardest part of the entire process. Once the course was charted, all I had to do was follow it. Of course, it was under construction the entire way, and detours were taken, but the course of the trip turned out much like the map.
I thought printing out the twenty-page academic undertaking, binding it, and handing it in was the greatest feeling I had ever experienced from a scholastic endeavor. I remember being overjoyed that day. I remember sleeping so soundly. I remember the day as sunny. I'm not sure if it actually was...
Clearly, I was thinking small. I had no idea what my grade would be. At that point, I did not even care. I had finished the paper. I considered that a tremendous accomplishment. Eventually, the graded research papers were handed back. What had previously been my greatest academic feeling was surpassed. The grade on my paper was a 99%. I was overjoyed and thrilled that I had not only completed such a tremendous task but had completed it pretty darn well. I thought that was the greatest feeling.
I still needed to think bigger. I submitted my paper to The Concord Review on a whim this summer. I remember Mrs. Humphrey showing us the journals and praising their quality. She is a tough teacher, and I thought since she had liked my paper so much I should give The Concord Review a go. I was not counting on being published. I knew my chances were slim, and I knew I was competing with students from around the world.
This November, I received a letter in the mail from Will Fitzhugh, the founder of The Concord Review. My paper was selected to be published in the Winter 2009 issue. That was the greatest feeling. I am a seventeen-year-old public high school student. I am also a seventeen-year-old published author. People work their whole lives to make it to this point. I feel so honored to have this recognition at my age. My hard work paid off far beyond where I thought it would. Thank you, Mr. Fitzhugh, for recognizing the true value of academic achievement and for reminding me why I love to learn.
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Youth are spending more time with nearly every form of media than ever, according to a report released Wednesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation. They spend more hours on the computer, in front of television, playing video games, texting and listening to music than an adult spends full-time at work.The only media young people aren't soaking up, the study says, are newspapers, magazines and other print publications.
Youth spend more than 7 1/2 hours a day using electronic media, or more than 53 hours a week, the 10-year study says. "And because they spend so much of that time 'media multitasking' (using more than one medium at a time), they actually manage to pack a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes worth of media content into those 7½ hours."
Affirming parents' fears, the study showed those habits ripple throughout a youth's life. Those who were big media consumers were more likely than kids and teens who are only seldom in front of a screen to earn average or poor grades in school. Those who use more electronic media get in more trouble, and say they are often sad.
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A new Yale admissions video released Friday starts as most campus tours do: an uncomfortable question-and-answer session with an over-caffeinated admissions officer. Some kid asks what year the school was founded. A dowdy mom elbows a nerdy dad.And then a sultry young woman in a red sundress in the back row asks: "Why did you choose Yale?"
There's a reflective pause. A reflection piano overture. Reflective looks around the room. And then -- bam! -- the boring admissions video turns into a musical. The admissions officer serenades the no-longer-bored students: When I was a senior in high school, colleges called out my name. Every day I debate where to matriculate, but every place seemed the same. Yet after I went through the options, only one choice remained. I wanted to hail from a college called Yale . . . .
It feels like an episode of Glee, the popular TV show that overnight made it socially acceptable and even sexy to sing in the high school show chorus. Those involved admit they watched the movie "High School Musical" for inspiration. And since the video was posted on YouTube on Friday evening, it has been viewed nearly 50,000 times.
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WHY are the young so disappointing, when it comes to their manners, dress codes, or knowledge of the canon of Western civilisation? Ask a British or American conservative, and he will blame the left: the 1960s vintage teachers who disdain dead white guys like Shakespeare, the college campuses where Derrida and deconstruction have displaced reading actual literature or the egalitarian ethos of "all shall have prizes".Ask someone from the left, for example in Britain, and they will trace the rot back to Thatcherism: the hostility to pure research, the focus on commercially-driven vocational education (all those degree courses in golf course management or marketing, elbowing aside history or Ancient Greek), or the dumbing down of examinations by ministers who knew the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Luc Ferry, a prolific French philosopher and former education minister in the conservative government of Jean-Pierre Raffarin, has a new book out, "Face à la crise: Matériaux pour une politique de civilisation", offering a distinctly Gallic view of the problem: the fault lies with globalisation.
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"Good audience skills are imperative," Danielle Johnson reminds her restless 10th-graders as one, Raquel, nervously fiddles with her laptop before holding forth on her project portfolio at City Arts and Technology High School (known as CAT), a charter school of 365 students on a green knoll above the blue-collar southern reaches of Mission Street in San Francisco."I decided to use the story of my mom getting to this country as an immigrant," Raquel says, moving into her personal-memoir segment, sniffing back tears as a blurry photo of her mother at age 18 appears on the screen. "I had never asked my mother about how she got here."
CAT exemplifies President Obama's push to seed innovative schools that demand much from all students, echoed by Sacramento's $700 million reform plan that goes to Washington this week. How to bottle the magic of CAT teachers like Johnson - listening carefully to each teen, strengthening each voice with basic skills and motivating ideals - is the challenge facing would-be reformers.
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Perhaps with business organizations behind it, a significant increase in the state's investment in education from kindergarten through college could gain some traction in the Florida Legislature.Closing the Talent Gap: A Business Perspective (January 2010) 3MB PDF.Certainly without it, there is virtually no likelihood that lawmakers in an election year will find the courage to search for ways -- not all of them monetary -- to improve public education, and therefore our state's chances for the future.
An educated population and an accomplished work force are the underpinnings of a state where, as the Florida Council of 100 and Florida Chamber of Commerce expressed in a report last week, the American dream can be successfully carried out. Where better, asked Council of 100 Chair Susan Story "than in the state of Florida?"
Both Gov. Charlie Crist and former Gov. Jeb Bush put their stamp of approval on what was described at its unveiling Thursday as the "education wish list" of these two significant Florida business groups. Last year, the two joined with education leaders to get more money for higher education, even though the Legislature went in the opposite direction, cutting $150 million from our universities. Again this year budget committees are asking universities to be prepared for across-the-board cuts as high as 10 percent, in keeping with a budget shortfall of as much as $3 billion.
The recommendations from these groups, which are coincidentally against most tax or fee increases and lifting sales-tax exemptions, include tougher graduation standards at the pre-K-12 level, virtual elimination of teacher tenure and a constitutional amendment legalizing vouchers.
Updates, via a Steven M. Birnholz email:
"Political, Business Leaders: Overhaul Education in Fla." Lakeland Ledger
"Business groups propose major changes to education," Daytona Beach News Journal.
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Ronald Reagan must be grinning in his grave.Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger sends to the White House this week a colorful pastiche of education fixes, hoping to score $700 million in federal dollars. Sacramento's plan echoes Washington's own reform strategy - built on President Obama's surprising faith in market remedies for the ills facing schools.
Oddly mimicking Reagan's game plan of a generation ago, Sacramento's agenda relies on market competition by seeding more charter schools, allowing parents to shutter lousy schools and rewarding teachers who boost student performance.
"This is about parental choice in public education," said state Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, a chief architect of the bipartisan plan.
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Since it began in 2004, the Baltimore Talent Development High School has posted some impressive graduation rates and achievement scores, among other things.Even more notable, efforts by educators at nearby Johns Hopkins University to replicate the school's gains in dozens of other locations have also met with some success. Slowly, the network of Talent Development High Schools is helping student groups that often seem most at risk.
But good news at the high school level is unusual. Despite vigorous calls for change and a host of major reform efforts, encouraging results have been scarce. National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores - considered the "Nation's Report Card" - tend to be stagnant for high-schoolers, even when they rise for elementary school students.
Only about half of low-income and minority students in US high schools graduate, and many of those who do are unprepared for college. The isolated examples of success often fail when administrators or education reformers try to reproduce them on a large scale.
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For years, Kiplinger's has been advising parents that one way to keep higher-education costs under control is to have their kids attend community college for a year or two and then switch to a four-year school. This year, they finally listened to us -- with a vengeance.Community colleges are packed to the gills, and students are flocking to state institutions across the board. The average annual sticker price for a four-year public school remains a tad over $15,000 -- less than half the tab at a private institution. In our exclusive rankings of the 100 best values in public colleges, nearly 40 percent charge in-state students less than the average price, reports Senior Associate Editor Jane Bennett Clark.
There's nothing like a financial crisis to get families to focus on how much they're paying for big-ticket items such as college expenses. Surprisingly, they haven't always done that. In 2008, a survey of parents and students by Sallie Mae found that when deciding whether to borrow for college, a whopping 70 percent said a student's potential postgraduate income did not factor into the discussion.
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The Princeton Review's 100 "Best Value Colleges" list for 2010 is based on data compiled and analyzed by The Princeton Review, the education services and test-prep company known for its annual college listings.The analysis uses the most recently reported data from each institution for its 2009-10 academic year. The top 10 public and private "Best Values" are ranked; the rest are listed alphabetically.
FULL STORY: Can getting a degree be affordable?
The Princeton Review selected the schools based on surveys of administrators and students at more than 650 public and private college and university campuses.
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Education Secretary Arne Duncan entered some of the most contentious debates in college sports on Thursday when, in a speech at the N.C.A.A. convention, he called for stricter consequences for college teams that do not graduate their athletes and said the N.B.A.'s age-minimum policy sets up young athletes for failure."Why do we allow the N.C.A.A, why do we allow universities, why do we allow sports to be tainted when the vast majority of coaches and athletic directors are striving to instill the right values?" said Duncan, who was a co-captain of his Harvard basketball team and played in an Australian professional league from 1987 until 1991.
He said his time as a college athlete was one of the most valuable periods of his life, but feared the N.B.A.'s age rule, which requires that a player be at least 19 years old and at least one year removed from high school before entering the league, does a disservice to athletes.
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Many of the nation's top public universities are giving millions of dollars in financial aid to students from relatively wealthy families instead of to those who urgently need it, resulting in campuses that are often less diverse than those at elite private schools, a new report says.From 2003 to 2007, public research universities increased the amount of aid to students whose parents make at least $115,000 a year by 28 percent, to $361.4 million, said the Education Trust, a nonprofit advocacy group.
Those schools routinely award as much in financial aid to students whose parents make more than $80,000 a year as to those whose parents make less than $54,000 a year, according to the report, "Opportunity Adrift."
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Over the past several weeks, I have discussed the impact of attending a traditionally female college in the early 1970s. I wasn't there that long -- like most students of the time, I got on the train at 18 and disembarked at 22 with a diploma. But those four years were formative, shaping the rest of my personal and professional life in some important ways:--Valuing female friendships: Most women I know value their friendships with other women, of course. But I was raised in a time and culture that put men first. We were encouraged to break a date with a girl friend, for example, if a boy asked us out. My exposure to the brilliance, fierce loyalty, seriousness and silliness of my classmates put an end to that nonsense. My best friend from college remains one of my two best friends today. She is the person I call when I need to talk through a problem, cry without explaining myself, or share good (or bad) news. There is nothing I wouldn't do for her.
--Valuing women in the workplace: I have friends, both male and female, who complain about "women bosses": that they are petty, self-contradictory micromanagers, mostly. For a while I thought I had just been extraordinarily lucky to have a string of extremely competent, visionary, and decisive (not to mention empathetic and fun) female employers. Then I realized that we were sometimes talking about the same people. Women of my generation were trained not to raise our voices; to deliver definite pronouncements as though they were tentative questions; and to mask and deny irritation until it builds up into an explosion. This behavior is so ingrained in many of us that we don't realize we're sending out seemingly mixed signals. Working on tech crews, student committees, etc., at college, I got used to decoding "Maybe we should go with the yellow scrim; what do you think?" as "Please get started on the yellow scrim now," and this assumption that my female bosses a) knew what they wanted and b) were communicating this, if I listened hard enough, saved me many misunderstandings as a young flunky. I also, unlike many of my peers, took women's competence as a given, and thus avoided the irritating questioning and second-guessing that tends to lead to the aforementioned explosions.
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In the course of their work my brilliant children - a human rights lawyer and a freelance journalist - travel to places such as Phnom Penh and Dubai. In the course of mine Macomb, Illinois, is a more typical destination, involving five hours of flying, including a layover in Detroit and then two hours of driving through snow-covered fields barely interrupted by a couple of semi-boarded-up "towns", including the intriguingly named Preemption (population 71).After all this industrial-agricultural wasteland, Macomb is a veritable hive of human, cultural and commercial activity. There is a branch of the state university system, where I have been invited to speak, and until a few months ago, my hosts inform me, there were a total of two Italian restaurants in town, one famed for its Spam-and-Doritos-topped pizza. I'm staying at the Hampton Inn, a minimalist motel chain located opposite a Farm King, an agricultural supply store. I can't help asking whether this is where the university puts up a genuine celebrity speaker, such as Bill Cosby. "Oh no," I am told, "he flew in in his private plane and out the same night."
Ann, a congenial administrator at Western Illinois University, fills me in on the student body. They are mostly white, first-generation college students and, while about a third of them are studying law enforcement with a view to a career in police work, this does not stop them from illegal under-age drinking or, for that matter, smoking pot. We muse on the problem of binge drinking, endemic to American campuses: why go straight from sobriety to vomiting? Haven't they ever sampled the pleasures of tipsiness? Then Ann tells me one of the saddest things I've heard on the perennial subject of Young People Today: they don't know how to be "silly", she says, in the sense of whimsy and absurdity. They are strait-laced and even a little timid, unless, of course, they are utterly wasted.
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Much has been written about how two education reform bills signed into law last week might affect California's chances of qualifying for federal Race to the Top funds.As important as that funding is, the new laws' significance goes much deeper. It signals that the balance of power in education is shifting away from teachers unions and toward parents, where it belongs.
The "parent trigger," a controversial element of the legislation, is the best evidence of this turning point.
The concept was developed by the grass-roots group Parent Revolution in the Los Angeles Unified School District. If a majority of parents in a failing school petitions for an overhaul, the district must do something -- replace administrators, convert to a charter school or make other major reforms.
By law, tenured California teachers can convert their school to a charter if a majority of them vote for it, and that has happened dozens of times. But teachers unions and other groups opposed giving parents the same right. One group called it the "lynch mob" provision -- an odd choice of words, given that it would empower parents primarily in minority communities where failing schools abound.
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The greatest revolution in education in the United States today is taking place in Los Angeles. It is the mandate of the Los Angeles Unified School District School Board to convert almost a third of its schools either to charter schools, the public schools of choice that are the one shining light in an otherwise dysfunctional system, or other alternatives such as magnet schools. The change is not only a mighty one for the state's largest school district, but in time it could double the number of public schools of choice in California.What is remarkable is not just the magnitude of this earth-shaking change, but the complete shift of the paradigm about how we think about public education. The driving force behind this revolution is Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who is not only a Democrat but also a former organizer for the United Teachers of Los Angeles, Los Angeles teachers' union. Villaraigosa took his nontraditional stand because, as he noted, LAUSD was racked with violence and plagued with a dropout rate of 50 percent, and showed no signs of improving.
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Howard Blume:
At Lakeview Charter Academy, inexperienced teachers have strong support and high expectations.Eleazar and Nora Gonzalez decided to send their son Daniel to Lakeview Charter Academy because, they said, large public middle schools have a reputation for gangs and drugs. They also worried about academics.
So they warmed to the no-nonsense welcomings issued at the first monthly parents night.
"It will be a miracle the day I don't give homework because home is to review," Alexandra Aceves, 25, announced, in English and Spanish, to the Gonzalez family and others crowded into a second-floor classroom.
The scene exemplified the characteristics of the 10 schools operated by Partnerships to Uplift Communities, a locally based charter management organization that, like others in Los Angeles, has focused on serving low-income minority communities. It has taken on, in particular, the thorny challenge of middle schools, especially in the Latino neighborhoods of the San Fernando Valley and downtown.
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Howard Blume Mitchell Landsberg and Sandra Poindexter:
Standardized tests show that the highest-performing charters push low-income black and Latino youth to higher levels of achievement.At their best, charter schools in Los Angeles shatter the conventional wisdom that skin color and family income are the greatest predictors of academic success.
Setting standards high and wringing long hours out of students and teachers, the highest-performing charters push low-income black and Latino youth to levels of achievement, as measured by standardized tests, more typical of affluent, suburban students.
If such schools were the norm, any debate over the value of charters would be moot. But there is no typical charter. They adhere to no single vision and vary widely in quality.
That said, a Times analysis showed that, overall, L.A. charter schools deliver higher test scores than traditional public schools. But charters lag well behind L.A. Unified's network of magnet schools.
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Catherine Candisky & Cindy Kranz:
Although charter schools come under withering criticism from some quarters, Ohio parents apparently aren't listening.A new state Department of Education report shows that charter-school enrollment is up 8 percent this year, while the number attending traditional Ohio schools has fallen.
Currently, 89,000 students attend 332 charter schools statewide. At the same time, enrollment in traditional public schools has dropped slightly to 1.75 million students.
In Greater Cincinnati, 32 charter schools enroll more than 9,000 students. Enrollment increases mirror the state trend.
T.C.P. World Academy's enrollment increased from 389 last year to 410 students this year.
"We always have a waiting list," said Superintendent/Principal Karen French, who attributed the enrollment increase to performance results and word of mouth.
The Cincinnati College Preparatory Academy enrollment numbers are at about 700 students now, compared with nearly 650 last year.
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Stephen Krieder Yoder, Isaac Yoder and Levi Yoder:
Isaac: My first semester at college was as fun and stimulating as I had hoped. Several classes already have changed my way of thinking, and I have a group of new friends.But not everything went according to plan: I went back on one decision I made before going into college -- the decision to not work a job during the college year.
Dad and I had agreed before college that if taking my studies seriously was my most important goal, spending time and energy working a job could detract from that goal. My part-time job at a tea shop in high school created many sleep-deprived days at school and made it more difficult to complete all my assignments well. Though I ended up succeeding despite the extra work, I thought that this added stress would be more problematic in college, when I would have more, and harder, schoolwork.
But after only my first semester, I've already begun to work a job in student government, in addition to my other extracurriculars.
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I recently saw the Great Depression film "The Grapes of Wrath," and while I had seen it before, this time I was reminded of what's going on in employment today. The movie starts off with Henry Fonda returning to his family farm after having been away for a few years, only to find his home abandoned. He soon learns that his family, as well as all of his Oklahoma neighbors, have been evicted and are leaving for the promise of jobs in California.We then learn that the families in Oklahoma have been hit with a perfect storm. Drought, low farm prices, and the displacement caused by farm automation had resulted in bankruptcy and foreclosure for millions of farmers. It was reported that one man with a tractor could replace 10-15 family farms, and over 100 farm workers.
Similarities to the Great Recession
Consider the tractor for a moment. The gasoline powered tractor first appeared way back in 1892. However, it didn't really catch on until the tractor was mass produced in the 1910's. Then, as tractor prices came down, its use on the farm started to take off. The result was an increase in farm productivity, falling prices for farm products, and a loss of jobs for millions of farmers. This displacement peaked 20 years later, during the Great Depression.
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he city's charter schools are providing a bigger boost to students' reading and math performance than are traditional public schools, according to a new study.The study -- by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University -- is the second in four months showing positive results for the city's charter schools. It comes as proponents of the publicly funded, privately run schools are urgently pushing officials to lift the state's charter school cap above 200.
New York's application for as much as $700 million in federal aid under a competition known as Race to the Top -- which looks favorably on states that support charter school growth -- is due by Jan. 19.
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IT WAS the kind of student conference I hate."I'll do better,'' my student told me, leaning forward in his chair. "I know I've gotten behind this semester, but I'm going to turn things around. Would it be OK if I finished all my uncompleted work by Monday?''
I sat silent for a moment. "Yes. But it's important that you catch up completely this weekend, so that you're not just perpetually behind.''
A few weeks later, I would conduct a nearly identical conversation with two other students. And, again, there would be no tangible result: No make-up papers. No change in effort. No improvement in time management.
By the time students are in college, habits can be tough to change. If you're used to playing video games like "Modern Warfare'' or "Halo'' all night, how do you fit in four hours of homework? Or rest up for class?
Teaching in college, especially one with a large international student population, has given me a stark - and unwelcome - illustration of how Americans' work ethic often pales in comparison with their peers from overseas.
My "C,'' "D,'' and "F'' students this semester are almost exclusively American, while my students from India, China, and Latin America have - despite language barriers - generally written solid papers, excelled on exams, and become valuable class participants.
Mixed reaction to 'My lazy American students' column
On Monday, The Boston Globe ran an opinion piece entitled "My Lazy American Students."In it, I wrote about how teaching in college has shown me that international students often work harder than their American counterparts. Though this is emphatically not true across the board, the work ethic and success of Asian, European, and South American students - who have to compete with a classroom of native English speakers - can be astounding.
I also noted in the column that there's too much texting in class, too much dozing off, too much e-mail-checking, too much flirting (I didn't mention flirting in the first piece, but I'll mention it here). Obviously, international students do all these things, but I have noticed them more amongst American students.
I worked hard on the column and lay in bed Sunday night hoping that - amidst the flurry of Christmas shopping - someone would read it.
And that's when the avalanche started.
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The question of what it means to be a parent has never been simple. But three recent cases highlight just how complicated things can get--and how inconsistent the courts have been in weighing genetic parenthood against the deals struck by would-be parents (gay and straight) with their partners.Case 1: Sean Hollingsworth and Donald Robinson Hollingsworth are legally married in California and are registered as civil union partners in New Jersey. The two husbands arranged for Donald's sister, Angelia Robinson, to serve as a gestational surrogate carrying embryos produced using sperm from Sean Hollingsworth and donor eggs. In October 2006, Ms. Robinson bore twin girls whom she turned over to their two fathers. In March 2007, Ms. Robinson sued for custody alleging that she had been coerced into being a surrogate. A New Jersey court ruled last week that Ms. Robinson, who has no genetic tie to the twins, is their legal mother and can sue for primary custody later this year.
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OU ARE A specialist in your field, you can see the opportunities before you, but there's little or nothing that you can do. If this place sounds vaguely familiar, it is where Dr Deirdre MacIntyre found herself almost a decade ago.She wasn't a solo traveller, either. A colleague and close friend, Dr Moya O'Brien, had also reached that bus stop. The trick was to recognise when it was time to jump off.
"We had trained in psychology together, she was my bridesmaid, I was her birth partner and we had worked together in what was the Eastern Health Board before it became the Eastern Regional Health Authority ," MacIntyre recalls. "We both had families with small kids, and very heavy clinical caseloads at work.
"I loved my career in child guidance, I loved my clinical work, but both of us felt that our impact was limited within the health board structure," MacIntyre recalls.
At this point, she had nearly 20 years' experience as a clinical psychologist and was principal in charge of the ERHA's child and adolescent psychology services. She had been involved in establishing community-based psychology services for children and their families.
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Read any newspaper or magazine and you will notice the many flavors of the one big question that everyone is asking today. Or you can just stay on the page and read recent editions of Edge ...Playwright Richard Foreman asks about the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self-evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the "instantly available". Is it a new self? Are we becoming Pancake People -- spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.
Technology analyst Nicholas Carr wrote the most notable of many magazine and newspaper pieces asking "Is Google Making Us Stupid". Has the use of the Web made it impossible for us to read long pieces of writing?
Social software guru Clay Shirky notes that people are reading more than ever but the return of reading has not brought about the return of the cultural icons we'd been emptily praising all these years. "What's so great about War and Peace?, he wonders. Having lost its actual centrality some time ago, the literary world is now losing its normative hold on culture as well. Is the enormity of the historical shift away from literary culture now finally becoming clear?
Science historian George Dyson asks "what if the cost of machines that think is people who don't?" He wonders "will books end up back where they started, locked away in monasteries and read by a select few?".
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A report out from the Southern Education Foundation out today says the South is the first part of the country where more than half the children in public schools are minorities. That is happening in part because more Latinos and their larger families are moving in. Latinos are the fastest-growing part of the U.S. population.And as the United States tries to keep up with other countries in getting students into, and graduated from college, Latinos are getting special attention. Because they're the least likely to get college degrees. From American RadioWorks, Emily Hanford reports.
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OK, I lied about no more wonky posts. Xeni's Facebook post reminded me of something. I want to float an idea about privacy as a commodity, vs. privacy as a right.Tiger Woods, described frequently as a "very private" person, was unable to keep his private life private. Why? Because he interacted with non-private people. The reason Kim Kardashian and the Jersey Shore denizens have risen to positions of prominence in popular culture is because they each epitomize the non-private person. They have nothing to hide, so nothing that becomes public knowledge can hurt them. Ms. Kardashian can be urinated on in a sex tape and actually be helped in terms of being a public figure. My own ability to be effective as a transgender rights activist is because there's nothing anyone could expose about me that would deter me from my activism. That gives me enormous power over anonymous haters who vent their impotent fury at me to no avail. Their own fear of exposure (loss of privacy) is their greatest weakness. What does this mean for you, dear reader? Read on.
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My Dec. 10 column about that troublesome Washington area gifted child, future billionaire Warren Buffett, said our schools are never going to help such kids much. I said the gifted designation was often arbitrary and should be disposed of. Instead, we ought to find ways to let all kids explore their talents.This produced a flood of comments on my blog. Many readers thought I was callous and daft. "Unfortunately, eliminating the label generally means that the schools give up doing anything for advanced learners," wrote a reader signing in as EduCrazy. Another commenter, CrimsonWife, said "if educators are fine with giving special attention and services to kids who are far out of the mainstream on the low end of the spectrum, why is it so controversial to provide specialized services to kids who are far out of the mainstream on the high end?"
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Young people who were serious about table tennis used to have to make the trip to Beijing, Stockholm or Moscow to train with world-class coaches. Now they go no farther than the Silicon Valley suburb of Milpitas.
"I'm trying to become one of the greatest players in the nation," Srivatsav Tangirala, 14, says matter-of-factly between drills at the huge new table tennis facility in the suburb. He and three dozen players, some as young as five, sprint sideways along the edge of the tables, 45 times in a row, perfecting their footwork."Lean forward, lean, lean, lean, lean," their coach implores.
This is the largest training programme for youths in the country, run by the India Community Centre in a region that is 60 per cent Asian. Here, ping-pong parents who grew up with the sport in Sichuan province or Hyderabad are the new soccer mums and Little League dads.
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Researchers have identified a cluster of autism cases in the South Bay -- but the elevated regional incidence seems linked to parents' ability to gain a diagnosis for their child, rather than any geographic risk.UC Davis MIND Institute press release.A rigorous study of all 2.5 million births in California between 1996 and 2000 revealed 10 places where the disability is more common than elsewhere in the state -- including the Sunnyvale-Santa Clara area, the San Carlos-Belmont area and several parts of southern California and Sacramento.
The scientists found a correlation, not cause, concluding that parents of autistic children in these clusters were more likely to be white, live near a major treatment center, be highly educated and
There was a lower incidence of the diagnosis where families were Latino and less educated.
A diagnosis of autism requires considerable advocacy by parents, who must navigate the complex world of pediatrics, psychiatry and autism experts. Once diagnosed, children gain access to all types of specialized services.
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Dana Hedgpeth & Jennifer Agiesta:
The decline of the auto industry and the nation's economic slide have left many residents here trapped, without work, in houses they can't sell, in neighborhoods where they fear for their safety, in schools that offer their children a hard road out.People across the metro area are feeling the stress of an uncertain financial landscape, with majorities worried about the economy, the cost of health care and having enough money to pay their bills. The region's bleak jobs situation is residents' No. 1 concern, by a big margin. That anxiety is compounded by a widely held feeling that the community is divided by race and income.
And yet they haven't given up.
In a new Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation-Harvard University poll about Detroit, almost all residents of the main three-county metropolitan area see their economy as in ruins. About half say this is a bad place to raise a family; as many describe a declining standard of living, swelling debt, deteriorating neighborhoods and a brutal job market.
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The economy may be recovering, but the effects of the recession continue to buffet the nation's public colleges and universities. State governments, coping with shrunken tax revenues and an overwhelming demand for services, have cut funding for higher education. Universities that once relied on the income from fat endowments have yet to recoup multimillion-dollar losses to their portfolios. Families continue to apply for financial aid in record numbers. Meanwhile, enrollment at state institutions has spiked as more students go public and more people overall seek college degrees.The schools in our top 100 best values in public colleges and universities -- led by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for overall value and by Binghamton University (SUNY) for out-of-state value -- continue to deliver strong academics at reasonable prices, in many cases by offering the same or more financial aid as in previous years. But no one can say that it has been easy.
To cope with less money and more students, public institutions, including many in our rankings, have slashed operating costs and raised tuition beyond the average increase of about five percentage points over inflation in recent years. The University of California system, caught in the downdraft of a state budget meltdown, imposed a midyear tuition hike of 15%, to be followed by another 15% increase in the summer, precipitating statewide protests. (Our rankings reflect tuition and fees, including midyear increases, as of December 1, 2009.)
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laiborne Pell died at age 90 on January 1, 2009. In the weeks that followed, the former Democratic senator from Rhode Island was lauded for his many achievements, but one stood out: The first sentence of Pell's obituary in The New York Times cited "the college grant program that bears his name." Pell Grants are the quintessential progressive policy, dedicated to helping low-income students cross into the promised land of opportunity and higher education. "That is a legacy," said Joe Biden, "that will live on for generations to come."What the encomiums to Pell failed to mention is that his grants have been, in all the ways that matter most, a failure. As any parent can tell you, colleges are increasingly unaffordable. Students are borrowing at record levels and loan default rates are rising. More and more low-income students are getting priced out of higher education altogether. The numbers are stark: When Pell grants were named for the senator in 1980, a typical public four-year university cost $2,551 annually. Pell Grants provided $1,750, almost 70 percent of the total. Even private colleges cost only about $5,600 back then. Low-income students could matriculate with little fear of financial hardship, as Pell intended. Over the next three decades, Congress poured vast sums into the program, increasing annual funding from $2 billion to nearly $20 billion. Yet today, Pell Grants cover only 33 percent of the cost of attending a public university. Why? Because prices have increased nearly 500 percent since 1980. Average private college costs, meanwhile, rose to over $34,000 per year.
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For much of his life, astrophysicist George Smoot III has been what he calls a "scientific outlaw."It was his passion for searching and investigating outside the mainstream that won the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientist the Nobel Prize for physics in 2006 for evidence supporting the Big Bang Theory. Even among his nerdy peers, the effusive Smoot was on the fringes, playing football in high school, trekking in Nepal, attending the Academy Awards, listening to music like Jay Z and Avril Lavigne on his iPod and volunteering as a sound tech for Jerry Garcia back in the day..
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Amy Hetzner, via a kind reader's email:
By the time the first bell rings at Brookfield Central High School, most of the students in Room 22 are immersed in college-level vector equations, reviewing for their final exam on the Friday before Christmas.Related: Janet Mertz's tireless crusade on credit for non-Madison School District classes.Senior Lea Gulotta, however, looks on the bright side of waking early every morning for the past semester so she can take a Calculus 3 class taught at the school by a college professor.
"We get to sleep in for a month," she said, noting that the regular high school semester won't end until mid-January.
There's another positive to Brookfield Central's agreement with the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha continuing education department, which brought the advanced mathematics class to the high school this year as part of the state's youth options program. Under youth options, school districts pick up the costs of courses at Wisconsin colleges if they don't have similar offerings available to students.
Instead of seeing students spend extra time commuting and attending class on a college campus, the arrangement placed the professor in the high school to teach 11 students who had completed advanced-placement calculus as juniors. Two of the students in the class come from the Elmbrook School District's other high school, Brookfield East.
Elmbrook pays UW-Waukesha the same tuition that it would pay if its students chose to attend the college campus on their own, she said.
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TWO years ago, during lunch with a second-grade teacher in the Chicago area, I mentioned that I was going to substitute teach. The teacher -- I'll call him Dan -- started into a story about his own experience with a substitute, which is easily summarized: Dan left a lesson plan; the sub didn't follow it. So, he ended by asking, how hard can substitute teaching be?I smiled, said nothing and bit into my Reuben.
Over the next two years, I would learn -- as I subbed once a week for a variety of classes, including kindergarten, sixth grade, middle-school social studies, high-school chemistry, phys ed, art, Spanish, and English as a second language -- that Dan's story is standard teacher fare. Last time I heard it, though, I didn't bite my sandwich or my tongue.
As much as I became frustrated by the lack of training and support, I was most angered by how many days teachers were out of their classrooms. Nationwide, 5.2 percent of teachers are absent on any given day, a rate three times as high as that of professionals outside teaching and more than one and a half times as high as that of teachers in Britain. Teachers in America are most likely to be absent on Fridays, followed by Mondays.
This means that children have substitute teachers for nearly a year of their kindergarten-through-12th-grade education. Taxpayers shell out $4 billion a year for subs.
I subbed for many legitimately ill teachers and for many attending educational conferences. But my first assignment was to fill in for a sixth-grade teacher who went to a home-and-garden show. My last was for a first-grade teacher who said she needed a mental health day because her class was so difficult.
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THOMAS COLLEGE, a liberal arts school in Maine, advertises itself as Home of the Guaranteed Job! Students who can't find work in their fields within six months of graduation can come back to take classes free, or have the college pay their student loans for a year.The University of Louisiana, Lafayette, is eliminating its philosophy major, while Michigan State University is doing away with American studies and classics, after years of declining enrollments in those majors.
And in a class called "The English Major in the Workplace," at the University of Texas, Austin, students read "Death of a Salesman" but also learn to network, write a résumé and come off well in an interview.
Even before they arrive on campus, students -- and their parents -- are increasingly focused on what comes after college. What's the return on investment, especially as the cost of that investment keeps rising? How will that major translate into a job?
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The Institute for Prospective Technological Studies: CACHIA Romina, FERRARI Anusca, KEARNEY Caroline, PUNIE Yves, VAN DEN BERGHE Wouter, WASTIAU Patricia - 1MB PDF:
An overwhelming majority of teachers are convinced that creativity can be applied to every domain of knowledge and that everyone can be creative. They also subscribe to the idea that creativity is a fundamental skill to be developed in schools, even if they are more ambiguous about how it can be taught, and less sure still about how it can be assessed.Survey respondents were asked to express their opinion about how they view creativity, as a general concept as well as in the school context, on a scale of 5 ranging from 'strongly agree' to 'strongly disagree'. The results are displayed in Figure 1.
Literature reports that very often people, including teachers, refer to creativity as being related exclusively to artistic or musical performances, as springing from natural talent, and as being the characteristic of a genius. These myths about creativity stifle the creative potential of students and create barriers to fostering creativity in schools.
To a large extent, the teachers that took part in our survey have an understanding of creativity which goes against such myths. Almost all teachers who took part in the survey are convinced that creativity can be applied to every domain of knowledge (95,5%) , and to every school subject. More than 60% are even strongly convinced of this. They confirm this view very clearly by disagreeing to a large extent with a statement restricting creativity to the realm of artistic and cultural expression (85%).
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Two elite English-medium schools offering the local curriculum have drawn up bold expansion plans that will enable them to admit children from non-Chinese-speaking families.St Paul's Co-educational College and Diocesan Boys School are setting up boarding houses and International Baccalaureate programmes and have devised adapted Chinese-language programmes for pupils who are not native speakers of Chinese.
The moves will permit the Direct Subsidy Scheme schools, which require all pupils to study Chinese language, to widen their nets to include children from English-speaking families, as well as foreign pupils and ethnic minority children.
Currently, almost all pupils at the schools, which are obliged to offer the local curriculum and will run the IB Diploma alongside it, have Chinese as their mother tongue and most are permanent residents.
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More minority students need to be lured into the sciences. One program has been a resounding success.At most universities, freshman chemistry, a class I've taught for nearly 40 years, is the first course students take on the road to a career in the health professions or the biological or physical sciences. It's a tough course, and for many students it's the obstacle that keeps them from majoring in science. This is particularly true for minority students.
In 2005, more than two-thirds of the American scientific workforce was composed of white males. But by 2050, white males will make up less than one-fourth of the population. If the pipeline fails to produce qualified nonwhite scientists, we will, in effect, be competing against the rest of the world with one hand tied behind our backs.
We've been able to survive for the last several decades in large measure because of the "brain drain" -- the fact that the most able students from other countries, particularly China and India, have come here to study science at our best universities and, in many cases, have stayed to become key players in our scientific endeavors.
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It was Deadline Day at YES Prep North Central, the day college applications were supposed to be finished, the day essays, personal statements and a seemingly endless series of forms needed to be slipped into white envelopes, ready for submission.The day the school's first graduating class would take one leap closer to college.
The seniors inside Room A121 were sprinting, scurrying and stumbling to the finish line. They hunched over plastic banquet tables, brows furrowed and eyed fixed on the screens of Dell laptop computers. Keyboards clattered, papers rustled and sighs swept across the room like waves of nervous energy.
So much was riding on this.
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If you're gearing up for a job search now as an undergraduate or returning student, there are several bright spots where new jobs and promising career paths are expected to emerge in the next few years.Technology, health care and education will continue to be hot job sectors, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' outlook for job growth between 2008 and 2018. But those and other fields will yield new opportunities, and even some tried-and-true fields will bring some new jobs that will combine a variety of skill sets.
The degrees employers say they'll most look for include finance, engineering and computer science, says Andrea Koncz, employment-information manager at the National Association of Colleges and Employers. But to land the jobs that will see some of the most growth, job seekers will need to branch out and pick up secondary skills or combine hard science study with softer skills, career experts say, which many students already are doing. "Students are positioned well for future employment, particularly in specialized fields," Ms. Koncz says.
Career experts say the key to securing jobs in growing fields will be coupling an in-demand degree with expertise in emerging trends. For example, communications pros will have to master social media and the analytics that come with it; nursing students will have to learn about risk management and electronic records; and techies will need to keep up with the latest in Web marketing, user-experience design and other Web-related skills.
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This report summarizes data on the use of Infinite Campus teacher tools and the Parent and Student Portal. Data come from a survey conducted among all teachers responsible for students within the Infinite Campus system and an analysis of the Infinite Campus data base. Below are highlights from the report.About half of all middle and high school teachers responsible for providing grades to students are using the grade book tool.
Grade book use has declined over the past year at the middle school level due to the introduction of standards- based grading. In addition to the change in grading approach, the grade book tool in Infinite Campus does not handle standards-based grading as efficiently as traditional grading.
Lesson Planner and Grade book use is most common among World Languages, Physical Education, and Science teachers and less common among fine arts and language arts/reading teachers.
Grade book and other tool use is most common among teachers with less than three years of teaching experience. Seventy percent ofteachers responding to the survey within these years of experience category report using the tools compared with about half of all other experience categories.
Most of the other teacher tools within Infinite Campus, e.g., Messenger, Newsletters, reports, etc., are not being used due to a lack of familiarity with them.
Many teachers expressed interest in learning about how they can use other digital tools such as the Moodie learning management system, blogs, wikis, and Drupal web pages.
About one third of parents with high school students use the Infinite Campus Parent Portal. Slightly less than 30 percent of parents of middle school students use the Portal.
Having just been introduced to elementary schools this fall, slightly more that ten percent of parents of students at this level use the Portal.
Parents of white students are more likely to use the Portal than are parents of students within other racial/ethnic subgroups.
About half of all high school students have used the Portal at one time this school year.
About one in five middle school students have used the Portal this year.
Variation in student portal use is wide across the middle and high schools.
Follow up is planned during January 2010 with staff on how we can address some ofthe issues related to enhancing the use of these tools among staff, parents, and students.
This report is scheduled to be provided to the Board of Education in February 2010.
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Across the rich world more women are working than ever before. Coping with this change will be one of the great challenges of the coming decadesTHE economic empowerment of women across the rich world is one of the most remarkable revolutions of the past 50 years. It is remarkable because of the extent of the change: millions of people who were once dependent on men have taken control of their own economic fates. It is remarkable also because it has produced so little friction: a change that affects the most intimate aspects of people's identities has been widely welcomed by men as well as women. Dramatic social change seldom takes such a benign form.
Yet even benign change can come with a sting in its tail. Social arrangements have not caught up with economic changes. Many children have paid a price for the rise of the two-income household. Many women--and indeed many men--feel that they are caught in an ever-tightening tangle of commitments. If the empowerment of women was one of the great changes of the past 50 years, dealing with its social consequences will be one of the great challenges of the next 50.
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The end of the year is a time to count blessings. Let's start with the underappreciated fact that the Washington area is the best place in the country for children to both learn the mysteries of science, math, English and history, and to become comfortable with stark differences in race and culture.I've looked all over the country for schools--particularly high schools--that have a critical mass of committed parents and educators of various backgrounds who are determined to create a lively learning environment for every child. It was hard to find that when I lived in Pasadena, Calif., which was still reeling from massive white flight after a desegregation fight. It wasn't much better when we moved to Westchester County, N.Y., where schools were very short of minorities and low-income people.
Coming to Washington, it took time to see the difference. As usual, everyone complained about public education. That's an American pastime. But the more high schools I visited here, the more I realized this was---at least relatively speaking-- the Shangri-la of American education. There were more schools in one place than I had ever seen that fit my profile---well-mixed, well-run, with families committed to strong instruction. They shrugged off neighbors who, betraying unexamined biases, wondered how they could send their kids to THOSE schools.
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When Daniel Ottalini entered the University of Maryland in 2004, his family had an array of choices to cover the cost -- cheap student loans, a second mortgage at low rates, credit cards with high limits and their own soaring investments.By the time his younger brother, Russell, started at the University of Pittsburgh this fall, the financial crisis had left the family with fewer options. Russell has had to juggle several jobs in school, and the money he could borrow came with a much higher interest rate that could climb even further over time.
The upheaval in financial markets did not just eliminate generous lending for home buyers; it also ended an era of easy credit for students and their families facing the soaring cost of a college degree.
To pay for higher education, most Americans had come to rely on a range of financial products born of the Wall Street boom. Nearly all of these shrank or disappeared in the storm that engulfed the stock and debt markets.
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National Fatherhood Initiative:
On December 1, 2009, National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI) released Mama Says: A National Survey of Mothers' Attitudes on Fathering, the first-ever national survey taking an in-depth look at how today's mothers view fathers and fatherhood.
Conducted online by the University of Texas Office of Survey Research, Mama Says surveyed 1,533 mothers over the age of 18 with at least one child in the home under the age of 18. They were asked a series of over 80 questions dealing with a range of topics, such as their general opinions about fatherhood, views on work-family balance, and obstacles to good fathering.The study is a companion piece to NFI's 2006 study, Pop's Culture: A National Survey of Dads' Attitudes on Fathering. The report was co-authored by Dr. Norval Glenn, PhD. and Dr. Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, PhD.
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Although the practice is viewed as essential to keeping babies safe, nearly a third of all caregivers still don't regularly put infants on their backs to sleep, according to a new report published Monday.Despite guidelines from pediatricians and a national educational campaign in place since the mid-1990s, researchers found that while there was a dramatic increase in back-sleeping during the first years of the push, the percentage of parents following the recommendations has been virtually unchanged since 2001 - holding at just over 70 percent - although that's still a substantial improvement from the 25 percent rate in 1993.
Pediatricians and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development called for the change in sleeping practices in the face of a large body of evidence that placing infants on their backs reduced the risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, the leading cause of infant death in the first year of life in the United States.
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CAL has completed a comprehensive survey of K-12 foreign language programs nationwide, describing how our schools are meeting the need for language instruction to prepare global citizens. For comparative purposes, the survey has collected statistical data in 1987, 1997, and 2008. Elementary and secondary schools from a nationally representative sample of more the 5,000 public and private schools completed a questionnaire during the 2007-2008 school year. The 2008 survey results complement and enhance the field's existing knowledge base regarding foreign language instruction and enrollment in the United States.Jay Matthews comments.The report of the survey, Foreign Language Teaching in U.S. Schools: Results of a National Survey, provides detailed information on current patterns and shifts over the past 20 years in languages and programs offered, enrollment in language programs, curricula, assessment, and teaching materials, qualifications, and trainings, as well as reactions to national reform issues such as the national foreign language standards and the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation. The survey results revealed that foreign language instruction remained relatively stable at the high school level over the past decade but decreased substantially in elementary and middle schools. Moreover, only a small percentage of the elementary and middle schools not teaching languages planned to implement a language program within the next two years. The findings indicate a serious disconnect between the national call to educate world citizens with high-level language skills and the current state of foreign language instruction in schools across the country. This report contains complete survey results, along with recommendations on developing rigorous long sequence (K-12 programs whose goals are for students to achieve high levels of language proficiency, and are of interest to anyone interested in increasing language capacity in the United States. 2009.
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We all know that securing a good education for your children is strongly influenced by clout. Do we have it or not? The mayor's kid usually gets more attention than the grocery checker's kid. If you have taken the trouble to make friends with the principal, you are more likely to get your way than if you never appear in the building, or even PTA meetings.But rarely have I seen a better illustration of this than my colleague Emma Brown's terrific piece leading the Monday Metro section about how much Army and Marine Corps families are gaining from those services' decisions to back their members when they seek help for children with disabilities.
Among other examples, she tells how Karen Driscoll, wife of a Marine Corps officer, was told by officials of a northern San Diego County school district that they could only offer a classroom aide for her son ten hours a week. The child's previous school in Fairfax County had provided 21 hours and told her that was what she deserved under federal law.
Most parents seeking special education services know what that means. They are in for a long period of testy meetings, long emails, expensive private evaluations and maybe even legal action before they get what they need, if they ever do. But because of a new Marine Corps initiative, Driscoll had the services of a caseworker and a special education attorney in her meetings with school officials, and soon got what she was looking for.
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"All I remember was landing face first on the floor," said Tina, 18.Tina - disguised for her safety - says the violence spiraled out of control during her six-month relationship with her 17-year-old boyfriend.
"I remember he got on top of me and he was slapping me back and forth," Tina said. "And he said, 'next time you walk by me, acknowledge me. Say that you love me.'"
Raped, beaten and berated on a regular basis, she stayed with him, believing the abuse was part of a normal relationship.
"I knew my aunt went through it so I thought, you know, if she stuck it out with him, with her husband for years, that I should just do the same and keep my mouth shut," she added.
When another 15-year old - who did not want to be indentified - met a cute boy in one of her high school classes - she was smitten.
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Sandy Kleffman & Suzanne Bohan:
In some hardscrabble East Bay neighborhoods, people die of heart disease and cancer at three times the rates found just a few miles away in more well-to-do communities.Children living near busy freeways in Oakland are hospitalized for asthma at 12 times the rate of young people in Lafayette's wooded housing tracts.
The East Bay's striking health inequities extend far beyond life expectancy and involve more than differences between the rich and the poor. Disparities exist up and down the East Bay's socioeconomic ladder, according to data compiled by the Alameda County Public Health Department for Bay Area News Group.
Middle-class communities in Dublin, Castro Valley and Fremont have higher heart disease death rates than wealthier neighborhoods in Walnut Creek and Berkeley, but lower rates than struggling areas of East Oakland and North Richmond.
These facts have led public-health leaders to advocate to equalize opportunities for healthful living, instead of focusing only on a never-ending battle to treat disease.
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I spent most of today tracking down some information about the history of information overload, so I though I'd blog it in case someone else is looking into this. Also, I may well be getting it wrong, in which case please correct me. (The following is sketchy because it's just notes 'n' pointers.)I started with Alvin Toffler's explanation of info overload in the 1970 edition of Future Shock. He introduces the concept carefully, expressing it as the next syndrome up from sensory overload.
So, I tried to find the origins of the phrase "sensory overload." The earliest reference I could find (after getting some help from the Twitterverse, which pointed me to a citation in the OED) was in coverage of a June, 1958 talk at a conference held at Harvard Medical School. The article in Science (vol 129, p. 222) lists some of the papers, including:
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If you recently found a shiny gold dollar coin in downtown Bellevue, thank the kindness class. Ditto if you stumbled upon a piece of glass art in Pioneer Square, or a lottery ticket taped to a bus shelter with a note saying, "This may be your lucky day."Since mid-September, the 250 people in Puget Sound Community School's online course learned about kindness by practicing it.
Along the way, they took emotional risks, repaired relationships, improved their outlook on the world, and realized that kindness is contagious.
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Children's HealthWatch Boston:
A new report by Children's HealthWatch and the Medical-Legal Partnership | Boston finds that housing plays a significant role in protecting young children from food insecurity and the health risks of being seriously underweight. This new report confirms that increased support for subsidized housing must be part of the strategy for ending childhood hunger.
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National Center for Education Statistics:
A joint effort by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and National Center for Education Statistics, this annual report examines crime occurring in school as well as on the way to and from school. It provides the most current detailed statistical information to inform the Nation on the nature of crime in schools. This report presents data on crime at school from the perspectives of students, teachers, principals, and the general population from an array of sources--the National Crime Victimization Survey, the School Crime Supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey, the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, the School Survey on Crime and Safety and the School and Staffing Survey. Data on crime away from school are also presented to place school crime in the context of crime in the larger society.
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Recent discussions on this blog about gender balance in colleges and universities have sparked a number of memories of my own college experiences. I thought it would be interesting to share them here and to invite you to share yours, as well.As noted previously, in 1970 I entered a small college that had, until that year, been the "sister school" of a nearby men's university. There were only a handful of men in my class, and of course none in the more advanced classes.
I had applied to only three colleges in total, all chosen by my parents, and all in the South; two private women's schools and this, a well regarded branch of a state university system. I was accepted at all three, and my parents chose to send me to the cheapest school. I was in no position, or mood to argue; I had narrowly escaped secretarial school, at which I would have been a complete failure; I had no money, and because my parents did have money I was not eligible for the juiciest scholarships. I was grateful to be going anywhere.
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An earlier generation of college students took on the Vietnam War. Now a new generation is poised to take on the mess in Sacramento.This Christmas break, students from University of California and state and community college campuses will fan out across the state to collect signatures in support of an initiative that would free the Legislature from its two-thirds vote requirement on budget and revenue matters. Their goal is to collect enough signatures by April 15 to qualify for the November 2010 ballot.
Amid a welter of sit-ins, teach-ins and building takeovers, this is a bold effort to reach beyond the campuses and address the chronic problems of a dysfunctional Legislature and the state's fiscal crisis. If it passes, the California Democracy Act will allow a simple majority in the Legislature to pass a budget and balance it if necessary with new revenue sources.
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George White, 17, knows what happens to many California kids like him when they age out of the foster-care system. One of White's eight biological siblings recently turned 18. When the payments stopped, his foster parents packed his belongings into plastic trash bags, leaving the teenager homeless while juggling work and classes at an L.A. trade school.Of the roughly 4,500 18-year-olds who will "emancipate" from care in California every year, one quarter will experience homelessness like White's brother. To drive this statistic home, White has organized a 4K run through Compton and will ride his bike 1,149 miles: each mile representing one California foster youth who will spend time on the street, in a shelter, or couch surfing. "It's not enough having people on Capitol Hill saying they will or want to help you, you have to help yourself," he says in the Compton offices of Peace 4 Kids, an organization that works to provide opportunity for foster kids in a community where services are notoriously lacking.
Last year, Congress authorized giving states matching federal funds to extend foster care until age 21. But the way that law is interpreted could mean that in 27 states, including California and the District of Columbia, 18-year-olds would still be left out in the cold.
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With the radio playing softly in the background and munching on spoonfuls of noodles and cheese, Maria Vespa sat at her family's kitchen counter to take her geography mid-term on a recent afternoon.The 15-year-old stared intently at her computer screen as test questions popped up. She'd study each for a minute, take another bite of lunch and click on an answer. When she got stumped, she pulled out her notebook.
"That's one of the great things about online school," Maria said. "You get to use your notes when you're taking tests."
Another great thing about online school: instant grades. A few moments after Maria answered the last test question, her score popped up.
"I got a B," she said. "I would have loved an A, but a B is still pretty good."
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After a year of observing their parents pinch pennies and fret about the economy, the nation's teenagers may be coming to grips with reality.Sales are down sharply in recent months at nearly every major retail chain catering to teenagers, and interviews with teenagers suggest that the reasons go beyond their own difficulty finding part-time jobs.
"I think my sister and I, throughout this year we've kind of lost an interest in getting gifts and things like that," said Morgan Porpora, 16, who in the past had a list of things she wanted for Christmas. "I guess we've noticed the economy and we just kind of even feel bad I guess asking for a lot."
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Nearly 270 Kentucky children died of abuse or neglect during the past decade -- more than half of them in cases where state officials already knew of or suspected problems.During one recent 12-month period, 41 children died -- the highest rate of any state, according to a recent report by the Every Child Matters Education Fund, a Washington child-advocacy group.
In a six-month review of the problem, The Courier-Journal found that:
-- Child-protection officials, day-care workers, and parents, friends and relatives missed signs of abuse such as suspicious bruising and evidence of previous injury, or were hesitant to act.
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Facebook, the popular networking site, has 350 million members worldwide who, collectively, spend 10 billion minutes there every day, checking in with friends, writing on people's electronic walls, clicking through photos and generally keeping pace with the drift of their social world.Make that 9.9 billion and change. Recently, Halley Lamberson, 17, and Monica Reed, 16, juniors at San Francisco University High School, made a pact to help each other resist the lure of the login. Their status might as well now read, "I can't be bothered."
"We decided we spent way too much time obsessing over Facebook and it would be better if we took a break from it," Halley said.
By mutual agreement, the two friends now allow themselves to log on to Facebook on the first Saturday of every month -- and only on that day.
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When the Marquez sisters set out to get pregnant, Edelmira was 14 and Angela was 15.Related: Between Two Worlds: How Young Latinos Come of Age in America.Having babies, the girls thought, would force their Salvadoran-born parents to stop trying to keep them and their teenage boyfriends apart.
Edelmira was the first to succeed, giving birth to a baby girl in the eighth grade. She regretted it almost immediately, and warned her sister not to get pregnant.
Angela, whose round, brown eyes and shy smile are so similar to Edelmira's they could almost be twins, stayed quiet.
"I didn't want her to know I was still trying," Angela recalls, sheepishly. "When I used to see my sister play with her baby, I was like, 'She's so cute; I want my own.' "
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WITH the construction of the railways in the 19th century, a new sociological phenomenon was born: the travelling criminal. Until then, police had relied on local communities to recognise a bad apple in their midst, but now the felons were on the move, wreaking havoc in communities which had no knowledge of their past and hence no reason to be wary. For law enforcers trying to contain the problem by sharing descriptions of known recidivists, it became imperative to answer one question: what is it that identifies someone as a particular person?This question has long troubled humanity, of course, and it is explored in all its facets in a new exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London. One practical application lies in the forensic arena. The first solution offered, branding, was simple and effective. But even in a society that preferred to believe that criminals were born and not made, this was soon deemed unacceptable. So there was a need to find something innate to human beings that remains constant from the cradle to the grave, and that is sufficiently differentiated in the population to make it useful in identifying individuals.
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Daniel Kahn has never lived in this city, but he has attended its legendary public schools since the fourth grade. Now in eighth grade, he is vice president of the student council, plays in two school bands and is an A student who has been preparing to tread in his sister's footsteps at Beverly Hills High School.But Daniel will almost certainly be looking for a new place to hang his backpack next fall. The school board here intends to do away with hundreds of slots reserved for nonresident children, most of whom live in nearby neighborhoods of Los Angeles where the homes are nice but the city's public school system is deeply distressed.
The students used to be a financial boon for Beverly Hills, bringing millions of dollars in state aid with them. But California's budget crisis is changing the way schools are financed in many wealthy cities, suddenly turning the out-of-towners into money losers.
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It all started with the sound of static. In May 1964, two astronomers at Bell Labs, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, were using a radio telescope in suburban New Jersey to search the far reaches of space. Their aim was to make a detailed survey of radiation in the Milky Way, which would allow them to map those vast tracts of the universe devoid of bright stars. This meant that Penzias and Wilson needed a receiver that was exquisitely sensitive, able to eavesdrop on all the emptiness. And so they had retrofitted an old radio telescope, installing amplifiers and a calibration system to make the signals coming from space just a little bit louder.But they made the scope too sensitive. Whenever Penzias and Wilson aimed their dish at the sky, they picked up a persistent background noise, a static that interfered with all of their observations. It was an incredibly annoying technical problem, like listening to a radio station that keeps cutting out.
At first, they assumed the noise was man-made, an emanation from nearby New York City. But when they pointed their telescope straight at Manhattan, the static didn't increase. Another possibility was that the sound was due to fallout from recent nuclear bomb tests in the upper atmosphere. But that didn't make sense either, since the level of interference remained constant, even as the fallout dissipated. And then there were the pigeons: A pair of birds were roosting in the narrow part of the receiver, leaving a trail of what they later described as "white dielectric material." The scientists evicted the pigeons and scrubbed away their mess, but the static remained, as loud as ever.
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Andrew Levine knew he wouldn't find a job in investment banking when he graduated with an M.B.A. from the University of Miami in 2008. Wall Street was in the midst of a financial collapse. So instead the 24-year-old focused his efforts on launching a start-up. "I figured that starting my own company was the best use of my time while I waited for the market to thaw," says Mr. Levine.Faced with an unemployment rate of 16% for 20- to 24-year-olds, a growing number of recent college and grad-school graduates are launching their own companies, according to anecdotal evidence from colleges, universities and entrepreneurship programs around the U.S.
For his part, Mr. Levine built upon a business plan for a niche social-networking company he had created for an entrepreneurship class the prior year. He showed the plan to the father of a college friend who was an angel investor and got $40,000 in seed money in exchange for an equity stake in the business.
Armed with start-up cash, Mr. Levine created audimated.com, an online social-networking site for musicians and their followers. It serves as a forum for the independent music community--both fans and musicians--to discover and promote new music. The site is in beta testing now with a launch expected in January.
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Michelle Parks & Mary Carmichael:
How did you conceive the idea for the project?At first, my editors and I were interested in childhood bipolar disorder simply because it's a controversial topic -- there's a lot of debate about how the disorder should be diagnosed and whether it even exists in kids. But then I found that most of what had already been written was focused on either the academic side of the controversy -- [such as] what is the definition of pediatric bipolar disorder -- or the dangers of medicating kids. There weren't many vivid descriptions of the actual experience of being, or raising, a child with the diagnosis. So I decided I wanted to bridge that gap -- to show as well as tell, to force the reader to think through the difficult decisions that parents have to make instead of just saying "parents of these kids have to make tough decisions."
I thought the best way to do it would be to zoom in on one family, to give the reader someone with whom to identify. I knew the Blakes were the right family when Amy [Max's mother] said to me in our first interview that "no one understands how it feels" to raise a child like Max -- after all, the whole purpose of the project was to show people how that feels.
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Many 4-year-olds cannot count up to their own age when they arrive at preschool, and those at the Stanley M. Makowski Early Childhood Center are hardly prodigies. Most live in this city's poorer districts and begin their academic life well behind the curve.
But there they were on a recent Wednesday morning, three months into the school year, counting up to seven and higher, even doing some elementary addition and subtraction. At recess, one boy, Joshua, used a pointer to illustrate a math concept known as cardinality, by completing place settings on a whiteboard."You just put one plate there, and one there, and one here," he explained, stepping aside as two other students ambled by, one wearing a pair of clown pants as a headscarf. "That's it. See?"
For much of the last century, educators and many scientists believed that children could not learn math at all before the age of five, that their brains simply were not ready.
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Adam Sell:
The Concord Review is a one-man outfit run from a cluttered office on Route 20 in Sudbury.Back issues of the academic journal featuring research by high school history students sit in stacks, and editor Will Fitzhugh keeps his computer in the corner so he can leave even more room for books.
Fitzhugh, 73, has been running the quarterly publication for 22 years in an effort to keep old-fashioned term papers alive and well. He thinks scholarly research at the high school level has declined, and students are arriving at college unprepared.
"I think we're doing the majority of public high school students a disservice,'' said Fitzhugh. "They get to college and are assigned these nonfiction books and term papers, and they flame out. The equivalent is sending kids to college math classes with only fractions and decimals.''
Yet Fitzhugh, who started the journal while on sabbatical from his teaching job in Concord (hence the name), can't find anybody to take over when he retires. He took no salary from the journal for 14 years, and even now averages only $10,000 a year.
"It's going to be really hard, there's no job security. But most people don't want to work for nothing, and they don't want to leave the classroom,'' Fitzhugh said. "I don't know how long I can keep going.''
Despite a perpetual lack of funding for his project--Fitzhugh said he's been turned down by 154 foundations--The Concord Review has persevered.
The number of subscribers has grown to more than 1,400, and its printing runs every three months range from 2,500 to 4,000 copies. Filling each issue are 11 articles that Fitzhugh picks from more than 200 submissions.Papers come in from all over the world; the most recent issue features one from the American School of Antananarivo in Madagascar. Of the other 10 articles, seven were from students in private schools, which Fitzhugh said is roughly the average proportion.
And these are no simple book reports the students are writing. This issue includes papers titled "Rise and Fall of Cahokia,'' "Andersonville Prison,'' "Arquebus in Japan,'' and "Civil War Medicine.''
"Obviously it's been difficult in some ways, but I've been inspired by the work of the kids,'' Fitzhugh said.
One of those is Jonathan Weinstein. When he started writing a research paper for his Asian studies class at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School, Weinstein said, he expected it to come out around 10 pages, roughly the assigned length. But as he kept digging into information on HIV/AIDS in China, his paper grew.
"As I got into the topic, there wasn't any way to do a proper analysis without making it around 34 pages,'' Weinstein said. He started looking toward other avenues of publication, and settled on The Concord Review.
Sandra Crawford, Weinstein's teacher at Lincoln-Sudbury, hopes the recognition he got for his report might drive other students to attempt the same.
"I know it's made me think about when I have students do excellent papers, how can I bring those to a wider audience?'' Crawford said.
Though public schools contribute fewer of the papers Fitzhugh publishes, The Concord Review has a fan in Robert Furey, head of the history department at Concord-Carlisle Regional High School.
"It's an extraordinary opportunity for kids to have their work viewed by a wider audience,'' said Furey. "I think there needs to be a Concord Review to give the most serious history students the chance to have their work read.''
But not all teachers are sold. Todd Whitten, who teaches Advanced Placement courses at Burlington High School and was formerly a department head at Beaver Country Day School in Brookline, says the standards that The Concord Review sets are a throwback to a different era of teaching history.
"I think it's feeling more and more anachronistic,'' Whitten said. Term papers "are the way college works, it's a format that needs to be taught, but anecdotally, it's been taken over by English departments.''
Whitten said from his perspective, history and social studies departments aren't having students write Fitzhugh's style of paper anymore. "The focus is on being generalists, not specialists. You're trying to cover the surface of a lot of stuff,'' Whitten said.
For Fitzhugh, it boils down to showing that high school students are capable of outstanding academic work. The Concord Review is just one facet of his Varsity Academics initiative. If he can help inspire students to strive beyond their own expectations, even if The Concord Review folds, he will have done his job, Fitzhugh said.
"Athletics are performed publicly. Good academics are a secret.''
© Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
=================
"Teach by Example"
Will Fitzhugh [founder]
Consortium for Varsity Academics® [2007]
The Concord Review [1987]
Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes [1995]
National Writing Board [1998]
TCR Institute [2002]
730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24
Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776-3371 USA
978-443-0022; 800-331-5007
www.tcr.org; fitzhugh@tcr.org
Varsity Academics®
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Ten privacy groups have filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission over recent changes to Facebook's privacy policy.Led by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the groups criticize Facebook for changes that made previously private information public.
"More than 100 million people in the United States subscribe to the Facebook service," Marc Rotenberg, EPIC's executive director, said Thursday in a prepared statement. "The company should not be allowed to turn down the privacy dial on so many American consumers."
In response, Facebook said it was "disappointed" that EPIC took its complaints to the FTC instead of the company itself.
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Before Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941, the out-of-wedlock birthrate for African-Americans was nineteen percent. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, in 2004 the illegitimate black birthrate was 69.4 percent. In contrast, the out-of-wedlock rates that year for Caucasians and Hispanics were 25 and 45 percent respectively. Consequently, in America well over half of our minority population enters the education sweepstakes with one parent tied behind their back. Our largest minorities groups have a parent gap that not only precedes the performance differential in math in reading, it guarantees it.We are living in a moment in time where otherwise reasonable people debate the merits of raising a child in a same-sex-marriage home. Consequently, it is culturally reasonable to argue whether wealthy Americans can raise children in single-parent homes without handicapping their education. That said, it is criminally insane to suggest that a single parent of limited means is doing anything other than providing a rough life for both child and mother. Frankly, I have had it with televised images of sobbing single parent mothers lamenting the demise of their fatherless children because of the misdeeds of someone else's single-parent child.
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Arriving in Christmas mail, the heaviest letter of them all: next term's school fees. A century ago, the cost of a private education at a secondary British school was about seven guineas, roughly £7.35 or one and half ounces of gold. Today, the average bill is £4,000 a term, or six ounces of gold. At the most prestigious boarding schools, such as Eton, a term's fees can reach £9,000 (before extras). That takes the total cost of a private secondary education to as much as £135,000 - about half a gold ingot.Talk about a heavy load. During the past decade, school fees have risen by three-quarters. Broader UK inflation, meanwhile, has been about 20 per cent. Everything is relative, however, and by some measures school fees have actually fallen. Take what is typically the largest asset owned by a private educating family, their home. Now match it against their largest cost. In 1999, the value of an average UK house was equivalent to five years of Eton fees. Today it would buy almost 6 years.
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Like a Lincoln Center hopeful, Aislee Nieves spends most afternoons in her cramped living room, the couch pulled aside so she can perfect her pointed toes and pirouettes. A spreadsheet tells her the tryouts she has attended, where and when the next one is and the one after that.On a recent Sunday she flitted about her apartment in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, collecting what she needed that day: ballet slippers, leotard, footless tights, all slipped into her bright green knapsack.
"Mommy, you have the admission ticket? And my transcript?" she asked, her 13-year-old voice betraying a slight edginess.
Yes, yes, her mother, Blanca Vasquez, answered. After all, they had been auditioning for high school nearly every weekend for the last month.
The high school admission process in New York City is notoriously dizzying, with each eighth grader asked to rank up to a dozen choices, and the most competitive schools requiring tests, essays or interviews. But for hundreds of students who sing, dance, act or play an instrument, trying out for the ninth grade is now an all-consuming routine.
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Without discussion, the Milwaukee School Board voted 7-0 Thursday night to make condoms available at many of the city's high schools, paving the way to make Milwaukee Public Schools one of the relatively few districts in the nation to provide contraception to students.Somewhat related: biggovernment.com and mediamatters.org have been going back and forth on Obama Administration "safe school czar" Kevin Jenning's K-12 sex education activities.The communicable disease prevention program, as the district calls it, could be in place as soon as the 2010-'11 school year.
The proposal sparked some opposition after being made public Dec. 2, but the board approved the condom distribution without much dissent. Comments from the public are not allowed at board meetings and a board committee had voted 5-0 on Dec. 9 to recommend adopting the program.
The condoms will be available free of charge, but only to students in high schools that have school nurses and only after students request them at the nurse's office, according to a fact sheet circulated by the school district. Up to two condoms will be distributed at a time.
Thursday's vote does not authorize funding for the program, but the district has said it will not use taxpayer money to buy condoms and instead will seek other sources of funding.
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I share this secret only with recluses like myself who lack the imagination to conceive of any gift better than a book. If you are buying for a child -- particularly if you are in a last-minute Christmas shopping panic -- scan this list compiled by a company called Renaissance Learning.It is an amazing document. Parents who keep track of what their children are doing in school, particularly in this area, might be vaguely aware of Renaissance Learning and its famous product, Accelerated Reader, the most influential reading program in the country. It was started 23 years ago by Judi Paul and her husband, Terry, after she invented on her kitchen table a quizzing system to motivate their children to read.
Students read books, some assigned but many chosen on their own, and then take computer quizzes, either online or with Accelerated Reader software, to see whether they understood what they read. Students compile points based in part on the difficulty and length of each book and sometimes earn prizes from their schools.
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A Taunton, Massachusetts father is furious that his 8-year-old son was sent home from school and required to undergo a psychological evaluation.All this comes the boy drawing a picture of Jesus on the cross. It was part of a second grade Christmas assignment.
The student was ordered into counseling by his principal. After the little boy did go into counseling, and the doctor said he was fine, but his father says his son is now uncomfortable in school.
Chester Johnson, father: "I want to transfer him to another school and I want something done about this. They owe my family an apology and they owe me an apology."
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Betsey Stevenson [317K PDF]:
Previous research has found that male high school athletes experience better outcomes than non-athletes, including higher educational attainment, employment rates, and wages. However, students self-select into athletics so these may be selection effects rather than causal effects. To address this issue, I examine Title IX which provides a unique quasi- experiment in female athletic participation. Between 1972 and 1978 U.S. high schools rapidly increased their female athletic participation rates--to approximately the same level as their male athletic participation rates--in order to comply with Title IX. This paper uses variation in the level of boys' athletic participation across states before Title IX as an instrument for the change in girls' athletic participation over the 1970s. Analyzing differences in outcomes for both the pre- and post-Title IX cohorts across states, I find that a 10-percentage point rise in state-level female sports participation generates a 1 percentage point increase in female college attendance and a 1 to 2 percentage point rise in female labor force participation. Furthermore, greater opportunities to play sports leads to greater female participation in previously male-dominated occupations, particularly for high-skill occupations.
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A decade of pesky germs, from SARS to avian flu to H1N1, has given rise to dozens of products bragging about their microbe-killing properties. Everything from hand-sanitizing liquids to products like computer keyboards, shopping carts and tissues tout that they kill 99.9%, or 99.99%, of common bacteria and fungi.But some of these numbers look like the test scores in a class with a very generous grading curve. They often don't include all pesky germs, and are based on laboratory tests that don't represent the imperfections of real-world use. Human subjects, or countertops, in labs are cleaned first, then covered on the surface with a target bug. That is a far cry from a typical kitchen or a pair of grimy hands.
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About 1 in 7 American teens with cellphones say they have received nude or nearly nude photos by text message, according to a new survey on the phenomenon known as "sexting."Helping to define the little-understood trend in teen life, the poll found that 15 percent of adolescents ages 12 to 17 have received sexually suggestive photos or videos on their personal cellphones. Just 4 percent acknowledged sending out a naked image.
Older teens were more likely to report sexting, with 30 percent of 17-year-olds saying they had received such photos, compared with 4 percent of 12-year-olds, according to the report by Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project.
The provocative photos are usually sent as part of a romantic relationship -- or one that is wished-for, the study found.
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As Seattle Public Schools released new details about its latest transformation plan for perpetually-troubled Cleveland High School over the past week, there's been a collective eye roll among some teachers there.Melissa Westbrook has more.
"I've been here for 15 years and every other year we do this," says math teacher David Fisher, referring to a long string of ballyhooed overhauls that the Beacon Hill school has embarked on at the behest of the district.One thing is different: The district is promising to pour money into this reinvention of Cleveland as the School of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). It proposes to spend more than $4 million over the first three years, according to a report at last Wednesday's school board meeting by Superintendent Goodloe-Johnson. That's a lot of money for a school that is already up and running. (See the breakdown of spending on page 8 of this pdf.)
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My wife was enjoying a quiet flight back to Washington after a week off in California when I, sitting next to her, started thrashing around. I was reading a book, but in a way that any person would find disturbing. I was marking and remarking pages. I was filling margins with unreadable scrawls. I was flipping back and forth. I was talking to myself: "Whoa! No! Yes!""What is that?" she asked.
It's a good question. The simple answer is: the latest book by school improvement activist Tony Wagner: "The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don't Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need." Wagner is co-director of the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is also a great writer and speaker. I consider this book more of an experience than a read.
My habit is to write on the last page, next to the inside of the back cover, any column ideas that come to me from a book. The last page of my copy of Wagner's book is a maze of my jottings. I have been making fun of the 21st century skills movement as a high-cost, high-level, often incomprehensible conversation among people who have forgotten to explain what it means to teachers.
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ON THE surface, Framingham, Massachusetts looks like any other American town. Unbeknown to most who pass through this serene place, however, it is a gold mine for medical research. Since 1948 three generations of residents in Framingham have participated in regular medical examinations originally intended to study the spread of heart disease. In the years since, researchers have also used Framingham to track obesity, smoking and even happiness over long periods of time. Now a new study that uses Framingham to analyse loneliness has found that it spreads very much like a communicable disease.Feeling lonely is more than just unpleasant for those who yearn to be surrounded by warm relationships--it is a health hazard. Numerous studies show that loneliness reduces fruit-fly lifespans, increases the chances of mice developing diabetes, and causes a host of adverse effects in people, including cardiovascular disease, obesity and weakening of the immune system. Simply being surrounded by others is no cure. In people, the mere perception of being isolated is more than enough to create the bad health effects. However, in spite of its significant impact, precious little is known about how loneliness moves through communities.
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During the years Salman Khan spent scrutinizing financials for hedge funds, he rationalized the profit-obsessed work by telling himself he would one day quit and use his market winnings to open a free school.www.khanacademy.org/.It began with long-distance tutoring in late 2004. He agreed to help his niece Nadia, then a seventh-grader struggling with unit conversion, by providing math lessons over Yahoo's interactive notepad, Doodle, and the phone.
Nephews and family friends soon followed. But scheduling conflicts and repeated lectures prompted him to post instructional videos on YouTube that his proliferating pupils could watch when they had the time.
They did - and before long, so did thousands of others. Today, the Mountain View resident's 800-plus videos are viewed about 35,000 times a day, forming a virtual classroom that dwarfs any brick and mortar school he might have imagined. By using the reach of the Internet, he's helped bring education to the information-hungry around the world who can't afford private tutors or Kaplan prep courses.
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Steve Rankin - via a kind reader's email:
Dear Editor: In the article "Racial Divide," you quote the Madison School District's Kurt Kiefer as saying "We celebrate the high fliers" and state that Madison has 57 National Merit semifinalists this year.But did we "celebrate" them? Two were named last week in the Wisconsin State Journal, and they were named because of their disabilities. I could not find reference to the other 55 on the school district's website. (By searching madison.com archives, I did find a list of 62 from September, including private school students.) How many high school athletes did we celebrate this week, by posting their names, their accomplishments, and their pictures in the paper?
The State Journal names a male and female athlete of the week, and runs a feature story. When did we name a scholar of the week? A thespian? A musician? Do we cover the State Solo and Ensemble Competition as though it were newsworthy? How about math meets? Debate and forensics? Do we review high school plays with the same attention as weekly football games?
When academic and artistic pursuits are covered with even a quarter of the vigor with which we cover sports, when students of color are served by the district as gifted in fields other than athletics, when we let students know in a public way that we value them for those gifts and that hard work, then we can begin to talk about celebrating the high fliers, and then we can begin to scratch our heads about an achievement gap.
When we send the clear message to students, especially students of color, that they are of value to society for their entertainment value on an athletic field, we do not serve them or us.
Steve Rankin
Madison
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Author Beth Fertig says that as many as 20 percent of American adults may be functionally illiterate. They may recognize letters and words, but can't read directions on a bus sign or a medicine bottle, read or write a letter, or hold most any job. Her new book, Why cant U teach me 2 read, follows three young New Yorkers who legally challenged the New York City public schools for failing to teach them how to read -- and won. Host Scott Simon talks to Fertig about her book.Related: Madison School District Reading Recovery Review & Discussion.....
SIMON: The No Child Left Behind Act is often criticized. But you suggest in this book that it perhaps did force teachers to not just let a certain percentage of students slip through the cracks.
Ms. FERTIG: That is the one thing that I do hear from a lot of different people is, by not just looking at how a whole school did and saying, you know, 60 or 70 percent of our kids passed the test, they now have to look at how did our Hispanic kids do, how did our black students do, how did our special ed students do, how did English language learners do - students who aren't born to parent who speak English.
And this way, by just aggregating the data, they're able to see which kids are falling behind and hopefully target them and give them more interventions, more help with their reading. And the ideal is that a child like Umilka isn't going to be caught, you know, in high school and they're going to figure out then that they weren't reading.
SIMON: You make a point in the book you can't get a job cracking rocks these days without having to probably fill out a computer form as to how many rocks you cracked.
Ms. FERTIG: Exactly. Antonio is now working at UPS as a loader. He had to take a basic orientation test. And because he had improved his reading skills to a fourth or fifth grade level, he was able to pass that. But he feels stuck now.
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A handful of states have moved to restrict or regulate school staff members who restrain or seclude hard-to-handle children against their will in the wake of abuses exposed by congressional investigators seven months ago. But many more states have done little or nothing, advocates say.
"There has been a lot of attention, a lot of advocacy, a lot of family members involved, but it's slow going," says Jane Hudson, an attorney for the National Disability Rights Network, based in Washington, D.C.Many states still have no rules in place to address how and when school staff can restrain and seclude children, says Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee. So he and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., also on the committee, are pushing legislation to set federal rules.
"Without a federal standard to set the bar, it's the Wild West," Miller says. "We believe the right approach is a balanced one that provides federal guidance to states but still allows states the flexibility to tailor their regulations to their specific needs."
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Click for a Reading Recovery Data Summary from Madison's Elementary Schools. December 2009
Madison School Board 24MB mp3 audio file. Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad's December 10, 2009 memorandum [311K PDF] to the board in response to the 12/7/2009 meeting:
Attached to this memo are several items related to further explanation of the reason why full implementation is more effective for Reading Recovery and what will happen to the schools who would no longer receive Reading Recovery as part of the administrative recommendation. There are three options for your review:Related: 60% to 42%: Madison School District's Reading Recovery Effectiveness Lags "National Average": Administration seeks to continue its use.The first attachment is a one-page overview summary ofthe MMSD Comprehensive Literacy Model. It explains the Balanced Literacy Model used in all MMSD elementary schools. It also provides an explanation of the wrap around services to support each school through the use of an Instructional Resource Teacher as well as Tier II and Tier III interventions common in all schools.
- Option I: Continue serving the 23 schools with modifications.
- Option II: Reading Recovery Full Implementation at Title I schools and Non-Title I Schools.
- Option III: Serving some students in all or a majority of schools, not just the 23 schools who are currently served.
The second attachment shows the detailed K-5 Title I Reading Curriculum Description in which MMSD uses four programs in Title I schools: Rock and Read, Reading Recovery, Apprenticeship, and Soar to Success. As part of our recommendation, professional development will be provided in all elementary schools to enable all teachers to use these programs. Beginning in Kindergarten, the four instructional interventions support and develop students' reading and writing skills in order to meet grade level proficiency with a focus on the most intensive and individualized wrap around support in Kindergarten and I" Grade with follow up support through fifth grade.
Currently these interventions are almost solely used in Title I schools.
The third attachment contains three sheets - the frrst for Reading Recovery Full Implementation at Title I schools, the second for No Reading Recovery - at Title I Schools, and the third for No Reading Recovery and No Title I eligibility. In this model we would intensify Reading Recovery in a limited number of schools (14 schools) and provide professional development to support teachers in providing small group interventions to struggling students.The fourth attachment is a chart of all schools, students at risk and students with the highest probability of success in Reading Recovery for the 2009-10 school year. This chart may be used if Reading Recovery would be distributed based on student eligibility (districtwide lowest 20% of students in f rst grade) and school eligibility (based on the highest number of students in need per school).
Option I: Leave Reading Recovery as it currently is, in the 23 schools, but target students more strategically and make sure readiness is in place before the Reading Recovery intervention.
Props to the Madison School Board for asking excellent, pointed questions on the most important matter: making sure students can read.
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via a kind reader's email, who notes that Verona's video archives include very helpful topic based navigation!
At the most recent meeting on Dec. 7, the school board heard a final presentation from New Century School's site council. Developments with New Century's charter renewal are reaching a critical point, since we need approval from the school board by early January to participate in kindergarten recruitment. New Century is one of Wisconsin's oldest charter schools (established in May 1995), and our school community is fighting for the charter's continued existence. It's been a challenging journey.Click "video" for the December 7, 2009 meeting and look for "D", the New Century Presentation. Interestingly, "E" is a presentation on a proposed Chinese immersion charter school.
Unfortunately, Madison lacks significant charter activity, something which, in my view, would be very beneficial to the community, students and parents.
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New federally financed drug research reveals a stark disparity: children covered by Medicaid are given powerful antipsychotic medicines at a rate four times higher than children whose parents have private insurance. And the Medicaid children are more likely to receive the drugs for less severe conditions than their middle-class counterparts, the data shows.Those findings, by a team from Rutgers and Columbia, are almost certain to add fuel to a long-running debate. Do too many children from poor families receive powerful psychiatric drugs not because they actually need them -- but because it is deemed the most efficient and cost-effective way to control problems that may be handled much differently for middle-class children?
The questions go beyond the psychological impact on Medicaid children, serious as that may be. Antipsychotic drugs can also have severe physical side effects, causing drastic weight gain and metabolic changes resulting in lifelong physical problems.
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Pew Research Center. The results - at the end - are rather shocking.... or not.
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lexandria School Superintendent Mort Sherman has discovered that the city's gifted education program needs revision. Sherman likes to poke at beehives. Few issues inspire as much angry mail as changing gifted programs. He wants to find ways to get more black and Hispanic kids into the program, but if I were he, I would go much further than that.Start with the story of one particularly troublesome Washington area gifted child, Warren Buffett, as described in the biography "The Snowball," by Alice Schroeder. By age 13, Buffett, later to be the richest man in the world and a Washington Post Co. board member, had had it with school. I wonder whether it might have been better if his parents had let him quit right then.
At newspaper gatherings, Buffett sometimes mentions the Washington Post paper route he had as a boy. It sounds quaint and charming, until you read the book and discover that the kid had so many routes that his annual income (including proceeds from his tenant farm and other investments) was greater than that of his teachers at Deal Junior High and Wilson High in the District. His father was a congressman. His family was comfortable. But he had made all that money himself as a boy genius entrepreneur. By age 14, he had filed his first tax return.
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Americans serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are amazed at how poor these places are, and how difficult it is to make a living. On top of that, there are lots of children, who are destined to be even less well off than their parents. This is one reason for Islamic terrorism. There are too many Moslems. At least in the sense that the economies of Islamic countries cannot create enough jobs for all the young people coming of age. Consider that for the last fifty years, the population of all Moslem countries has tripled. That's population growth that is more than double the rate of the world as a whole, and about ten times the rate of Europe. It's about five times the rate in the United States.Many of those unemployed young men are angry, and making war is a typical activity of angry young men. But the women are not too happy either, and this is becoming a major threat to Islamic terrorists. In Islamic societies, women's activities are greatly restricted. One thing they are encouraged to do is have lots of children. Many women in Islamic countries are rebelling against this. You don't hear much about this, because women don't rebel in the same loud, headline grabbing way that men do. What unhappy women often do is stop having children. Not so easy to do, you think? Well, think again.
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Wisconsin DPI, via a kind reader's email:
Eighty percent of Wisconsin school districts offer 4-year-old kindergarten (4K), educational programming that has been growing throughout the state.
Sixteen school districts opened 4K programs this year. The 333 districts that provide 4K programs are serving 38,075 children, an enrollment increase of more than 4,000 from last year. Of the districts providing 4K, 101 do so through the community approach, which blends public and private resources to allow more options for the care and education of all 4-year-olds.Licensed teachers provide instruction for all public school district 4K programs. In the community approach, some districts provide a licensed 4K teacher in a private child care setting, some contract with Head Start or the child care setting for the licensed teachers, and others bring child care into the licensed 4K public school program or mesh licensed 4K services with a Head Start program. Wisconsin is one of the nation's leading models for combining educational and community care services for 4-year-olds.
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What are the implications of "tracking," or grouping students into separate classes based on their achievement? Many schools have moved away from this practice and reduced the number of subject-area courses offered in a given grade. In this new Thomas B. Fordham Institute report, Brookings scholar Tom Loveless examines tracking and detracking in Massachusetts middle schools, with particular focus on changes that have occurred over time and their implications for high-achieving students. Among the report's key findings: detracked schools have fewer advanced students in mathematics than tracked schools. The report also finds that detracking is more popular in schools serving disadvantaged populations.Valerie Strauss:
A new report out today makes the case that students do better in school when they are separated into groups based on their achievement.Chester Finn, Jr. and Amber Winkler [1.3MB complete report pdf]:Loveless found that de-tracked schools have fewer advanced students in math than do tracked schools--and that de-tracking is more popular in schools that serve disadvantaged students.
By 2011, if the states stick to their policy guns, all eighth graders in California and Minnesota will be required to take algebra. Other states are all but certain to follow. Assuming these courses hold water, some youngsters will dive in majestically and then ascend gracefully to the surface, breathing easily. Others, however, will smack their bellies, sink to the bottom and/or come up gasping. Clearly, the architects of this policy have the best of intentions. In recent years, the conventional wisdom of American K-12 education has declared algebra to be a "gatekeeper" to future educational and career success. One can scarcely fault policy makers for insisting that every youngster pass through that gate, lest too many find their futures constrained. It's also well known that placing students in remedial classes rarely ends up doing them a favor, especially in light of evi- dence that low-performing students may learn more in heterogeneous classrooms.Related: English 10.Yet common sense must ask whether all eighth graders are truly prepared to succeed in algebra class. That precise question was posed in a recent study by Brookings scholar Tom Loveless (The 2008 Brown Center Report on American Education), who is also the author of the present study. He found that over a quarter of low-performing math students--those scoring in the bottom 10 percent on NAEP--were enrolled in advanced math courses in 2005. Since these "misplaced" students are ill-pre- pared for the curricular challenges that lie ahead, Loveless warned, pushing an "algebra for all" policy on them could further endanger their already-precarious chances of success.
When American education produced this situation by abolishing low-level tracks and courses, did people really believe that such seemingly simple--and well-meanin --changes in policy and school organization would magically transform struggling learners into middling or high-achieving ones? And were they oblivious to the effects that such alterations might have on youngsters who were al- ready high-performing?
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Five months after it first announced coming privacy changes this past summer, Facebook is finally rolling out a new set of revamped privacy settings for its 350 million users. The social networking site has rightly been criticized for its confusing privacy settings, most notably in a must-read report by the Canadian Privacy Commissioner issued in July and most recently by a Norwegian consumer protection agency. We're glad to see Facebook is attempting to respond to those privacy criticisms with these changes, which are going live this evening. Unfortunately, several of the claimed privacy "improvements" have created new and serious privacy problems for users of the popular social network service.
The new changes are intended to simplify Facebook's notoriously complex privacy settings and, in the words of today's privacy announcement to all Facebook users, "give you more control of your information." But do all of the changes really give Facebook users more control over their information? EFF took a close look at the changes to figure out which ones are for the better — and which ones are for the worse.
Our conclusion? These new "privacy" changes are clearly intended to push Facebook users to publicly share even more information than before. Even worse, the changes will actually reduce the amount of control that users have over some of their personal data.
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I have argued that universities will move to a superstar market for teachers in which the very best teachers use on-line instruction and TAs to teach thousands of students at many different universities. The full online model is not here yet but I see an increasing amount of evidence for the superstar model of teaching. At GMU some of our best teachers are being recruited by other universities with very attractive offers and some of our most highly placed students have earned their positions through excellence in teaching rather than through the more traditional route of research.I do not think GMU is unique in this regard--my anecdotal evidence is that the market for professors is rewarding great teachers with higher wages and higher placements than in earlier years.
The online aspect, which enhances the market for superstars, is also growing. Here from a piece on online education in Fast Company are a few nuggets on for-profit colleges which have moved online more quickly than the non-profits.
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Eight-year-old Alex picked up a 75-cent can of fruit punch from one of the grocery store's shelves and called excitedly to his mother in Spanish.Maria, 38, gave her stocky third-grader a sympathetic smile. She'd already made Alex and his 3-year-old sister, Emelyn, walk 30 minutes under a broiling sun from their house in suburban Maryland to the Safeway, the closest place that accepts Emelyn's federal milk and cereal vouchers. Then they'd trekked 20 minutes more to this cheaper Latino grocery so Maria, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who can't afford a car and wouldn't be eligible for a driver's license anyway, could save $3.40 on chicken.
"At home, my son," Maria said soothingly. "When we get home, you can drink some water."
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Cavities have made a dismaying comeback in children in recent years, and the search is on among scientists to find new ways to fight tooth decay.The prevalence of cavities in children aged 2 to 5 decreased steadily through the 1970s and 1980s, thanks largely to the expansion of water fluoridation and to advances in treatment and prevention, dental experts say. The trend appeared to hit a low around the mid-1990s, when about 24% of young children had cavities, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But tooth decay then began heading higher. A CDC survey found that 28% of small children--a significant increase, according to the agency--had cavities in the five years ended 2004, the latest data available. The reasons for the increase aren't entirely clear. But dental experts suggest it may be due to children drinking more bottled water that doesn't contain fluoride, and to changes in dietary habits.
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Childs Walker's article "Poor, minority students lose ground in college, study says" (Dec. 4) was quite chilling for anyone who has watched the demise of our public school system. The thinking seems to be that if minorities can't pass tests than the tests must be too difficult and should be made easier. That has become American education's mindset and has produced high school graduates who can't read, write, do basic math or think for themselves. It is much easier to dumb down education than to address the real problems of lack of parenting skills and inadequate teaching methods.Of course America will be at a competitive disadvantage; while the rest of the world is raising educational standards, we are focused on making sure minority testing and graduate percentage rates are as high as non-minorities no matter how closing the gap is achieved.
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Parents at two largely Latino, bilingual schools - one on Milwaukee's south side and one in Waukesha - are waging battles to save their schools.Although Kagel and White Rock elementary schools stand 18 miles apart in separate counties, the debates at both fit into the larger, national philosophical issues about bilingualism, small schools vs. large schools, economic pressures on school districts and changing demographics.
At Kagel, a neighborhood school in the heart of Milwaukee's Latino community, more than 200 parents filled the school's small gymnasium last month when word leaked out that Kagel was on the list of schools that Superintendent William Andrekopoulos identified for possible closure because of dropping enrollment or performance issues.
Parents reacted with signs that read: "Small school - Ideal scenario" and "Our children's education is important to us."
At the meeting, Andrekopoulos assured parents that Kagel, which is 76% Latino, won't be shut down. But because of low enrollment - 334 students - and increasing district costs, some changes might be in store, such as converting it into an early child education center, he said.
Zuleika Reza, a parent and member of the school's governance council, said parents don't want that.
"We want to make it clear that we want to keep it as a small school that's within walking distance for many families," she said.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-deanza6-2009dec06,0,3692913.story?track=rss:
After-school programs at De Anza Elementary in Baldwin Park keep students, faculty and even families focused on education.The bell signaling the end of the school day at De Anza Elementary in Baldwin Park rang more than an hour ago. But hundreds of students are still at school, studying vocabulary, practicing math and completing homework under the supervision of teachers.
With the help of state grants, federal funds and teacher volunteers, nearly half of De Anza's students spend extra hours every week learning at school -- hours well beyond the traditional school day.
"Until six o'clock at night, you would think we're still in session," said Principal Christine Simmons. "Seeing the campus so alive like that, and seeing the parents and students so excited, just makes me and all the teachers want to work harder."
The result, according to the state Department of Education, is a dramatic improvement in student achievement.
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I attended the Cleveland STEM Community Meeting on December 4 with my wife and 8th grade daughter.First, the important parts.
My daughter is excited about the program. To her it looks like a good mix of the academic challenge of Garfield with the more personalized instruction (and project-based learning) of NOVA. She got most excited when she saw a list of the possible classes in the Global Health Academy.
My wife and I are much more confident about the probability that the program will actually be there and that it will be something like what has been advertised.
There was a pretty good crowd of people there - I'd say about forty to fifty (not counting staff).
The folks from Cleveland who were there are excited about the program and have a very clear picture of the idea - the project-based learning, the integration of technology, the alignment between classes, the extended school day and accelerated schedule, etc.
The STEM program looks real and, to us, it looks good. They still have some things to work out. The schedule is inspired, but needs some tinkering. They haven't figured out how to get the student:computer ratio to the promised 1:1. They are still missing a lot of the curricular elements - they haven't found the puzzle pieces but they know what they have to look like.
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The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights recently announced that it would investigate whether some colleges are discriminating against women in an effort to generate a more gender-diverse student population. Reaction was mixed, with some saying it's about time that the "crisis with boys" in higher education is acknowledged and addressed, and others expressing some disbelief and ridicule that the gender wars have come to this.
But part of the overall response really stuck in my craw--the oft-repeated claim that we "just don't know" what's going on with boys. According to many, sources for the gender differential in higher education are a complete "mystery," a puzzle, a whodunit that we may be intentionally ignoring.
Yes, there are numerous potential explanations for the under-representation of men in higher education--and in particular the growing female advantage in terms of bachelor's degree completion. For example, it could be that boys and girls have differing amounts of the resources important for college success (e.g. levels of financial resources or parental education) or that the usual incentives for college-going (e.g. labor market returns) have differential effects by gender (why, laments the Wall Street Journal, don't boys "get" the importance of attending college?). It's also possible that changes in the labor force or marriage markets, gender discrimination, or societal expectations play a role--or that the reasons have to do with the growth of community colleges, changes in college affordability, or shifts in the available alternatives to college (e.g. the military).
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Michelle Lukacs grew up in Mequon and worked as a teacher in Milwaukee. Then she was a teacher and guidance counselor in Jefferson. She got a school principal's license through a program at Edgewood College in Madison.She moved back to Milwaukee and decided to open a school as part of the publicly funded private school voucher program. She called it Atlas Preparatory Academy because she liked the image of Atlas holding the whole world up and because it was the name of a refrigeration company her husband owns.
On the first day of classes in September 2001, Atlas had 23 students in leased space in an old school building at 2911 S. 32nd St.
This September, Atlas had 814 students, a growth of 3,439% over eight years. It now uses three buildings on the south side and has grown, grade by grade, to be a full kindergarten through 12th-grade program.
Atlas' growth is explosive, even within the continually growing, nationally significant voucher program. Voucher enrollment over the same period has roughly doubled from 10,882 in September 2001 to 21,062 this fall.
The Atlas story underscores an interesting trend: The number of voucher schools in recent years has leveled off, and this year, fell significantly. But the total number of students using vouchers to attend private schools in the city has gone up, and a few schools have become particular powerhouses, at least when it comes to enrollment.
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via a kind reader's email: Sue Abplanalp, Assistant Superintendent for Elementary Education, Lisa Wachtel, Executive Director, Teaching & Learning, Mary Jo Ziegler, Language Arts/Reading Coordinator, Teaching & Learning, Jennie Allen, Title I, Ellie Schneider, Reading Recovery Teacher Leader [2.6MB PDF]:
Background The Board of Education requested a thorough and neutral review of the Madison Metropolitan School District's (MMSD) Reading Recovery program, In response to the Board request, this packet contains a review of Reading Recovery and related research, Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) Reading Recovery student data analysis, and a matrix summarizing three options for improving early literacy intervention. Below please find a summary of the comprehensive research contained in the Board of Education packet. It is our intent to provide the Board of Education with the research and data analysis in order to facilitate discussion and action toward improved effectiveness of early literacy instruction in MMSD.Reading recovery will be discussed at Monday evening's Madison School Board meeting.Reading Recovery Program Description The Reading Recovery Program is an intensive literacy intervention program based on the work of Dr. Marie Clay in New Zealand in the 1970's, Reading Recovery is a short-term, intensive literacy intervention for the lowest performing first grade students. Reading Recovery serves two purposes, First, it accelerates the literacy learning of our most at-risk first graders, thus narrowing the achievement gap. Second, it identifies children who may need a long-term intervention, offering systematic observation and analysis to support recommendations for further action.
The Reading Recovery program consists of an approximately 20-week intervention period of one-to-one support from a highly trained Reading Recovery teacher. This Reading Recovery instruction is in addition to classroom literacy instruction delivered by the classroom teacher during the 90-minute literacy block. The program goal is to provide the lowest performing first grade students with effective reading and writing strategies allowing the child to perform within the average range of a typical first grade classroom after a successful intervention period. A successful intervention period allows the child to be "discontinued" from the Reading Recovery program and to function proficiently in regular classroom literacy instruction.
Reading Recovery Program Improvement Efforts The national Reading Recovery data reports the discontinued rate for first grade students at 60%. In 2008-09, the discontinued rate for MMSD students was 42% of the students who received Reading Recovery. The Madison Metropolitan School District has conducted extensive reviews of Reading Recovery every three to four years. In an effort to increase the discontinued rate of Reading Recovery students, MMSD worked to improve the program's success through three phases.
Related:
In her column, Belmore also emphasized the 80 percent of the children who are doing well, but she provided additional statistics indicating that test scores are improving at the five target schools. Thus she argued that the best thing is to stick with the current program rather than use the Reading First money.also, Seidenberg on the Reading First controversy.Belmore has provided a lesson in the selective use of statistics. It's true that third grade reading scores improved at the schools between 1998 and 2004. However, at Hawthorne, scores have been flat (not improving) since 2000; at Glendale, flat since 2001; at Midvale/ Lincoln, flat since 2002; and at Orchard Ridge they have improved since 2002 - bringing them back to slightly higher than where they were in 2001.
In short, these schools are not making steady upward progress, at least as measured by this test.
Belmore's attitude is that the current program is working at these schools and that the percentage of advanced/proficient readers will eventually reach the districtwide success level. But what happens to the children who have reading problems now? The school district seems to be writing them off.
So why did the school district give the money back? Belmore provided a clue when she said that continuing to take part in the program would mean incrementally ceding control over how reading is taught in Madison's schools (Capital Times, Oct 16). In other words, Reading First is a push down the slippery slope toward federal control over public education.
Thanks to Jason Shepard for highlighting comments of UW Psychology Professor Mark Seidenberg at the Dec. 13 Madison School Board meeting in his article, Not all good news on reading. Dr. Seidenberg asked important questions following the administrations presentation on the reading program. One question was whether the district should measure the effectiveness of its reading program by the percentages of third-graders scoring at proficient or advanced on the Wisconsin Reading Comprehension Test (WRCT). He suggested that the scores may be improving because the tests arent that rigorous.I have reflected on his comment and decided that he is correct.
Using success on the WRCT as our measurement of student achievement likely overstates the reading skills of our students. The WRCT---like the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination (WKCE) given in major subject areas in fourth, eighth and tenth grades--- measures student performance against standards developed in Wisconsin. The more teaching in Wisconsin schools aims at success on the WRCT or WKCE, the more likely it is that student scores will improve. If the tests provide an accurate, objective assessment of reading skills, then rising percentages of students who score at the proficient and advanced levels would mean that more children are reaching desirable reading competence.
I'm glad Jason Shepard questions MMSD's public display of self-congratulation over third grade reading test scores. It isn't that MMSD ought not be proud of progress made as measured by fewer African American students testing at the basic and minimal levels. But there is still a sigificant gap between white students and students of color--a fact easily lost in the headlines. Balanced Literacy, the district's preferred approach to reading instruction, works well for most kids. Yet there are kids who would do a lot better in a program that emphasizes explicit phonics instruction, like the one offered at Lapham and in some special education classrooms. Kids (arguably too many) are referred to special education because they have not learned to read with balanced literacy and are not lucky enough to land in the extraordinarily expensive Reading Recovery program that serves a very small number of students in one-on-on instruction. (I have witnessed Reading Recovery teachers reject children from their program because they would not receive the necessary support from home.)Though the scripted lessons typical of most direct instruction programs are offensive to many teachers (and is one reason given that the district rejected the Reading First grant) the irony is that an elementary science program (Foss) that the district is now pushing is also scripted as is Reading Recovery and Everyday Math, all elementary curricula blessed by the district.
I wonder if we might close the achievement gap further if teachers in the district were encouraged to use an approach to reading that emphasizes explicit and systematic phonics instruction for those kids who need it. Maybe we'd have fewer kids in special education and more children of color scoring in the proficient and advanced levels of the third grade reading test.
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Standards and common assessments were introduced 15 years ago. KIPP took the expectations expressed by state tests seriously and made numerous process improvements to the old model of school. At the middle school I visited Monday, 100% of the Kipsters had passed the state math test.This KIPP school gives uniform weekly quizzes in every state tested subject and relentlessly evaluates the data from every classroom and student. The school only hires new teachers, trains them on data-driven instruction, and expects hard work (e.g., to go along with their bonus plan, a sign in the principal's office read, "New Incentive Plan: Work or Get Fired")
This is the best of the batch-print model. Kids sit obediently in rows in classrooms of 25 students. One teacher per subject per grade yields direct accountability for results. Their homegrown curriculum is mostly worksheets. Quizzes are paper based. Scores are tabulated on a spreadsheet. No fancy learning management system at work here--they just figure out what the state wants, teach it and test it. They are fantastic executors--a critical innovation in a sector that is commonly sloppy and uneven in delivery.
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CEREMONIES in the Great Hall of Parliament House in Canberra are typically attended by visiting royals, heads of state and other dignitaries. On November 16th several hundred ordinary, middle-aged Australians, with pain in their faces and tears in their eyes, packed the hall to witness a ceremony devoted to them. It seemed a miracle that many were there at all. Shipped from Britain as youngsters, or plucked from broken homes and single mothers in Australia, some suffered childhoods spent in orphanages where violence, sexual abuse and humiliation were rife. Some of their peers killed themselves.After years of campaigning, survivors gathered to hear Kevin Rudd, the prime minister, offer a formal apology for this "great evil". It was the second such apology Mr Rudd has offered in under two years. Early last year, he began his government's first term by apologising to the "stolen generations": children, many of mixed race, taken by the authorities from aboriginal families. In all, by 1970 over 500,000 "stolen", migrant and non-indigenous children had been placed in church, charity and government institutions.
Mr Rudd's latest apology has focused attention on Britain's grim "child migration" scheme, under which children as young as three were sent to the former colonies of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, often without their parents' knowledge or consent. One motive was racial: the young countries wanted "British stock". Australia took about 10,000 children, most of them after Canada reduced its intake in the 1940s.
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South China Morning Post Editorial:
The voucher subsidy scheme for non-profit kindergartens triggered an uproar when it was announced three years ago, amid fears that an exodus of students would force profit-making schools to close and claims of discrimination against middle-class families. But critics failed to reckon with parents who believe it is never too soon to imbue the work ethic. As we reported yesterday, the voucher scheme is subsidising a new class of preschoolers, aged from three to six, who spend the entire day in two separate kindergartens - one for profit and one not.Their parents claim the vouchers for half the cost of a half day at a local non-profit kindergarten, and can also afford to enrol them in international classes at profit-making private kindergartens for the other half day. One father concerned argues that twice the time spent interacting with other children and teachers is better than half a day watching television. Moreover, these children are exposed at an early age to two languages - English and either Cantonese or Putonghua - in a school environment. Thus the obsession with grades now extends almost from the nursery door to young adulthood.
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It costs $12,000 to $20,000 to send one child to a preschool in San Francisco, a little less if you join a co-op. That's insane.I'm sure it's not the schools' fault. Schools have to pay San Francisco prices, rent San Francisco space and follow San Francisco regulations. And why shouldn't they reap the benefits of the intense competition that keeps prices high?
I'm sure it's not the regulators' fault. They need to set and enforce the rules that keep our kids safe.
I'm sure it's not the parents' fault. They - we - just want the best for our kids, and we're willing to pay for it if possible.
It's nobody's fault. Which makes it everybody's fault.
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In the category of "it makes you wonder," the student newspaper at Montgomery Blair High School reports that bathrooms on the second and third floors are now being locked during lunch.Why? The school has a security shortage and couldn't figure out a better way to deal with it.
The story, in silverchips.online says that the Alex Bae, president of the Student Government Association met with Principal Darryl Williams on Monday, and that the principal said he hopes the situation can be fixed soon.
Apparently, the story says, the bathrooms were closed during lunch because students abuse their bathroom privileges. Acts of vandalism occur during lunch and kids hide out in the bathroom to avoid going to class.
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Here's one survey colleges in California should feel proud to rank consistently low on: the average debt of their graduates.In 2008, an estimated 48 percent of students graduating from four-year public and private schools in California had debt, and their loans averaged $17,795 per person. Only six states had lower average debt.
Nationwide, about two-thirds of students graduating in 2008 came out with debt, averaging $23,200, up from $18,650 four years ago, according to a study released Tuesday by Berkeley-based Project on Student Debt.
The national numbers came from a survey of students conducted every four years by the federal government. The government does not break out debt for all states or individual schools. To get those numbers, the Project on Student Debt used unaudited data filed voluntarily by 922 public and private nonprofit schools, about half of all such schools.
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The middle school years, when nothing seems more important or more impossible than fitting in, are rough for nearly everyone. But they are particularly brutal for preteens such as Will Gilbertsen, whose mild autism makes him stand out.Less than two months into sixth grade at Arlington County's Kenmore Middle School this fall, the freckle-faced 11-year-old with a passion for skateboarding had gained a reputation for racewalking through the halls between classes. "That's so I can't hear the teasing," he told his mother.
As the number of children with autism has ballooned nationwide, so has the population of children who, like Will, are capable of grade-level academics but bewildered by the social code that governs every interaction from the classroom to the cafeteria. Not so profoundly disabled that they belong in a self-contained classroom but lacking the social and emotional skills they need to negotiate school on their own, they often spend the bulk of their day in mainstream classes supported with a suite of special education services including life-skills groups and one-on-one aides.
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My son just turned 3. He loves trains, fire trucks, tools of all kinds, throwing balls, catching balls, spinning until he falls down, chasing cats, tackling dogs, emptying the kitchen drawers of their contents, riding a tricycle, riding a carousel, pretending to be a farmer, pretending to be a cow, dancing, drumming, digging, hiding, seeking, jumping, shouting, and collapsing exhausted into a Thomas the Tank Engine bed wearing Thomas the Tank Engine pajamas after reading a Thomas the Tank Engine book.That doesn't make him unusual; in fact, in many ways, he couldn't be more typical. Which may be why a relative recently said, "Well, he's definitely all boy." It's a statement that sounds reasonable enough until you think about it. What does "all boy" mean? Masculine? Straight? Something else? Are there partial boys? And is this relative aware of my son's fondness for Hello Kitty and tea sets?
These are the kinds of questions asked by anxious parents and, increasingly, academic researchers. Boyhood studies--virtually unheard of a few years ago--has taken off, with a shelf full of books already published, more on the way, and a new journal devoted to the subject. Much of the focus so far has been on boys falling behind academically, paired with the notion that school is not conducive to the way boys learn. What motivates boys, the argument goes, is different from what motivates girls, and society should adjust accordingly.
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Anyone who has ever had to go to Saturday School knows the grind: Arrive at 9 in the morning, spend three hours sitting at a table looking as if you're doing something productive, take the usual 15-minute break and, of course, scoff at the random troublemaker who tries to set the clock ahead an hour so everyone can leave early.I'm all too familiar with this routine. During my 17th hour of my sixth session in Room 201 at Las Lomas High School on a Saturday morning, a thought struck me: How is this type of punishment possibly going to help me not disrupt class and not get more tardies in the future? Obviously, this method is not completely working for me because I've had a total of six Saturday Schools in my two years at Las Lomas.
Maybe Saturday School is a wake-up call to some impolite students, but it's not enough. Fear doesn't seem to solve the problem. Acknowledges Associate Principal Mark Uhrenholt, "As the year goes on, there will be more repeat offenders."
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Susan Troller, via a kind reader's email:
Madison's achievement gap -- driven in large part by how well white students perform on the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Exam -- is significant compared to other urban districts in the state with high minority populations. White students here perform significantly better on the annual tests than students in Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha and Beloit and scores for Madison's black students are somewhat better than in Milwaukee or Racine. But black students' scores in Madison are lower than Kenosha's and, among younger students, lower than Beloit's, too.Related: "They're all rich, white kids and they'll do just fine" -- NOT!.The point spread between the scores of Madison's white and black sophomore students on the WKCE's 2008 math test was a whopping 50 points: 80 percent of the white students taking the test scored in the advanced and proficient categories while just 30 percent of the black students scored in those categories. It's a better performance than in Milwaukee, where just 19 percent of black students scored in the advanced and proficient categories, or Racine, where 23 percent did, but it lags behind Kenosha's 38 percent. None of the scores are worth celebrating.
Adam Gamoran, director of the Wisconsin Education Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is a nationally known expert whose work has often explored issues related to the achievement gap. He says racism, overt or inadvertent, may make school feel like a hostile environment for black students, and that it needs to be recognized as a potential factor in the achievement gap.
"It would be naive to say it doesn't exist, and that it's not a problem for a certain number of students," Gamoran says. He cites disproportionate disciplinary actions and high numbers of black students referred to special education, as indicators of potential unequal treatment by race.
Green, who attended Madison's public schools, says when black students are treated unfairly it's a powerful disincentive to become engaged, and that contributes to the achievement gap.
"There's plenty of unequal treatment that happens at school," says Green who, while in high school at La Follette, wrote a weekly, award-winning column about the achievement gap for the Simpson Street Free Press that helped her land a trip to the White House and a meeting with Laura Bush.
"From the earliest grades, I saw African-American males especially get sent out of the classroom for the very same thing that gets a white student a little slap on the wrist from some teachers," she says. "It's definitely a problem."
It manifests itself in students who check out, she says. "It's easy to live only in the present, think that you've got better things to do than worry about school. I mean, it's awfully easy to decide there's nothing more important than hanging out with your friends."
But Green advocates a doctrine of personal responsibility. She encourages fellow minority students to focus on academic ambitions, starting with good attendance in class and following through with homework. She also counsels students to take challenging courses and find a strong peer group."The bottom line, though, is that no one's going to get you where you're going except you," she says
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"Is this level of recklessness something a citizen should even have to contemplate?" asked Lubar, the founder and chairman of Milwaukee investment firm Lubar & Co. In an April 2008 speech, Lubar said Milwaukee County government was such a mess it wouldn't work even "if Jesus was the county executive and Moses chaired the board of supervisors."Leah Bishop:The current system favors elected officials, public employees and unions, he said Tuesday.
"There are a lot of reasons why the unions and others who want power and want control are going to fight this," Lubar said. He said change would be difficult, but insisted that a radical overhaul of county government was possible. He called for the election of a governor and legislators who support the overhaul as the best way to bring about the change.
Lubar also endorsed mayoral control of Milwaukee Public Schools, saying he supported the plan advocated by Barrett and Gov. Jim Doyle to give the Milwaukee mayor the power to appoint the MPS superintendent.
Marshall is among a team of educators, scholars and school administrators collaborating to develop a national K-12 standard for English-language arts and mathematics.Anthony Jackson:"The reason for the initiative is that we have 50 states and 50 sets of standards, which means that a student in Mississippi isn't necessarily learning the same kind of things as students in Georgia," Marshall said.
Marshall said students in each state are learning on different levels largely because of notions of equality, access and mobility.
The set of standards provides a better understanding of what is expected of both teachers and students. Though curriculums will not be regulated, there will be a criteria for what needs to be taught.
"The standards are more statements of what students should know and be able to do, not how they are going to learn," Marshall said.
To succeed in this new global age, our students need a high level of proficiency in the English Language Arts. The ability of schools to develop such proficiency in students requires the kind of fewer, clearer and higher common core ELA standards that the Common Core State Standards Initiative is constructing. Moreover, benchmarking these standards to exemplary ELA standards from other countries appropriately sets expectations for student performance at a world-class level.My sense is, at the end of the day, these initiatives will simply increase power at the school administrative level while substantially reducing local school board governance. I understand why these things are happening, but have great doubts that our exploding federalism will address curricular issues in a substantive manner. I continue to believe that local, diffused governance via charters and other models presents a far better model than a monolith.As the comment period ends, we would like to urge that the final common core ELA standards ensure that our students learn not just from the world but about the world. Internationally benchmarked standards will ensure that U.S. students are globally comparable, but not globally competent or globally competitive. For the latter, common core ELA standards must explicitly call out the knowledge and skills that enable students to effectively read, write, listen and speak within the global context for which they will be prepared, or be passed by, in the 21st century. English language arts offers students the chance to deepen their insight into other cultures, effectively gather and weigh information from across the world, and learn how to create and communicate knowledge for multiple purposes and audiences. To support students' development of the English language skills required in a global economic and civic environment, we urge the English Language Arts Work Group to consider integrating within the common core ELA standards the following essential skills.
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He set his sights on Harvard University while in middle school, after stumbling across it in the encyclopedia. Though he lived in a nearby town, the son of a gas station owner had never visited the campus. The nuns at his Catholic high school refused to write him recommendations, proclaiming the college full of atheists, communists, and rich snobs.Not only did William Fitzsimmons get in, one of just a handful of students on a nearly full scholarship the 1960s, he has spent his nearly four-decade career in Harvard admissions helping transform a bastion of privilege into one more accessible to students from backgrounds like his.
Now, as the admissions season kicks into high gear, the 65-year-old dean traverses the country on recruiting trips, sharing his tale of how a working-class youth managed to make the trip from the modest streets of Weymouth to Harvard Yard, just 15 miles away but seemingly a world apart. It's a story line he imparts frequently to put Harvard on the radar of students who might have dismissed an Ivy League education as a pipe dream.
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All over the world, in poor and rich countries alike, families take their children out of school in order to contribute to the livelihood of the family. They're not opposed to education, but the family needs the extra hands that the child can provide in order to make ends meet. There are many educational innovations that are aimed at improving the ability of the child, once educated, to earn a decent income. But nobody has focused on the issue of replacing or improving the family's income while they send their kids to school.By contrast, the innovations that have been developed by the Uganda Rural Development and Training program and employed at the URDT Girls' School are special in that they increase the family income, not years later, but while the child is still in school. On average, the incomes of families whose children are enrolled at the URDT Girls School increase by 20% while their daughters are still in school.
Think about that for a minute. What that does is eliminate the need to have the girls drop out of school in order to contribute to the family's income. Imagine the implications for the rest of the world if all families benefited by keeping their children in school rather than by having them drop out to go to work.
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Few girls who play sports in suburban Philadelphia would recognize Robert H. Landau, but many coaches and athletic directors know that spotting him in the bleachers could spell trouble.With a sharp tongue, a refusal to compromise and a well-honed sense of injustice, Landau is that familiar breed of community activist with a knack for pushing public officials over the edge. His specialty is girls' sports, and his targets are usually wealthy public schools from the Main Line suburbs that pride themselves on being progressive and fair in offering a rich array of opportunities.
No slight to girls is too small for Landau to take on. His victories range from the momentous to the less obvious, like forcing his daughters' school district to provide more athletic choices, pressuring leagues to showcase their title games and getting a school mascot to perform at their games.
Landau's complaint against Haverford High School -- over issues like publicity for and scheduling of boys' and girls' basketball games -- has upset even those who would otherwise support him.
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Minnesota's charter school movement, which sparked a national rethinking of public schooling nearly two decades ago, has been infected by an out-of-control financing system fueled by junk bonds, insider fees and lax oversight.State law prohibits charter schools from owning property, but consultants have found a legal loophole, allowing proponents to use millions of dollars in public money to build schools even though the properties remain in the hands of private nonprofit corporations.
The key to making it all work is the state's lease aid program, which was created 11 years ago to help spur competition in public education by offering rental assistance to groups promoting alternatives to district schools. In the beginning, many charters were located in dumpy strip malls and received no real-estate grants.
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Parents for Public Schools is recruiting Pine Belt parents to attend a free, two-day leadership institute this spring designed to help parents better understand public education.Amazing...."Most of the time, they do not understand the language or acronyms used in education," said Victoria Peters, a parent coach with the organization who works in the Pine Belt.
"We know parents have something to say, but the reason we don't hear them is because they don't know what to say to give feedback."
The institute is sponsored by Parents for Public Schools, a national organization based in Jackson that promotes parent involvement and leadership in schools. It will be held Feb. 26-27, March 26-27 and April 16-17 at the Hilton in Jackson. The deadline to apply is Dec. 14.
Peters said 30 parents will be selected to attend a variety of interactive workshops and breakout sessions.
"We want a diverse group of parents," she said.
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The redrawing of school attendance zones usually upsets some parents, but a set of proposed changes in the Plano school district triggered a war of words the likes of which the district hadn't seen in years.Presentations on the proposed boundary changes: School Board 2.8MB PDF / Staff 1.7MB PDF.Parents not only lambasted the proposed changes, but they also turned on one another, accusing opponents of selfishly thinking only about their own children.
"This school-vs.-school and neighborhood-vs.-neighborhood thing saddened me," trustee Brad Shanklin said at a board meeting this month.
District officials recently put forth a new set of changes partly designed to quell the anger. And they will find out Tuesday whether they have succeeded.
That's when residents will have a chance to speak publicly about the latest proposal. The district will host a similar meeting the next night in Spanish. School board members are expected to vote on the boundary changes Dec. 15.
New boundaries are needed to balance student enrollment across Plano ISD after more families moved into the district's eastern side.
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Kimberly Hamilton arrives and leaves work in the dark so often, custodians at Winchester Elementary School are on alert not to lock her in or out."If I leave at 5 o'clock, someone's putting a hand to my forehead to see if I have a fever," she says, laughing at the absurdity, but serious about the hours it takes to move children from barely proficient to mastery.
She teaches her third-graders to get along with others, be good citizens, live in a violent society and dream for the future.
The $90 million grant the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awarded this month to Memphis City Schools to improve the effectiveness of its teachers offers Hamilton the biggest one-time raise she could ever hope for in public education, going from the $49,000 she earned last year to the $75,000 base pay proposed for the district's most talented teachers.
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Milwaukee Public Schools will spend some $4 million in federal stimulus money over two years to support a major parental involvement program in 35 schoolsFirst of four parts
Lennise Crampton, a 40-year-old Milwaukee mother of eight, sometimes wonders how her children would have performed in school if she'd known how to be a better parent from the start.
A single mother until she married this year, Crampton usually managed decent meals and clothing and getting her kids to class. It was up to the school, she thought, to handle the education part.
Then in December of 2005, a representative from Lloyd Street School marched up to Crampton's door and asked her to participate in a program that improves relationships between teachers, schools and families.
Crampton started coming to weekly meetings at Lloyd, where her two youngest attended. She learned about training she could get as a low-income parent. She learned how to engage in her children's academics at home and how to advocate for their needs at school.
"These little ones get the best of the best now," she said. "If it applies to my children's academics, I'm on it."
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With New Jersey high schools already facing a new mandate to teach students financial literacy, at least six school districts will be able to participate in a pilot program that establishes a class on the topic for seniors.I would hope that essential financial calculations would be covered in Math class.
The state Department of Education in June added economics and financial literacy instruction to the state's high school graduation requirements.At the same time, a bill working its way through the Legislature aimed to create a financial literacy pilot program, establishing a course on the subject in six districts. Those schools would receive advice and support from the state in establishing those classes.
Gov. Corzine signed the pilot-program bill on Nov. 20. The program, which will set up courses for high school seniors, will cover topics such as budgeting, savings and investment, and credit-card debt.
"So many young New Jerseyans find out all too late that living in a credit-card culture carries a price," said Senate Majority Leader Stephen Sweeney (D., Gloucester), one of the law's sponsors.
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Trine Tsouderos & Patricia Callahan:
James Coman's son has an unusual skill. The 7-year-old, his father says, can swallow six pills at once.Diagnosed with autism as a toddler, the Chicago boy had been placed on an intense regimen of supplements and medications aimed at treating the disorder.
Besides taking many pills, the boy was injected with vitamin B12 and received intravenous infusions of a drug used to leach mercury and other metals from the body. He took megadoses of vitamin C, a hormone and a drug that suppresses testosterone.
This complex treatment regimen -- documented in court records as part of a bitter custody battle between Coman, who opposes the therapies, and his wife -- may sound unusual, but it isn't.
Thousands of U.S. children undergo these therapies and many more at the urging of physicians who say they can successfully treat, or "recover," children with autism, a disorder most physicians and scientists say they cannot yet explain or cure.
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Time for a status report on all the different ways Milwaukee children can use public money to pay for their kindergarten through 12th grade education:With all the controversy in recent months around whether to overhaul the way MPS is run, the half dozen other routes that Milwaukee children have for getting publicly funded education have been almost entirely out of the spotlight. But Milwaukee remains a place where the term "school choice" shapes the educational landscape in hugely important ways.
- Private school voucher program enrollment: Up almost 5% from a year ago, just as it has been up every year for more than a decade.
- City kids going to suburban public schools using the state's "open enrollment" law: Up almost 11%, just as it has been up every year for about a decade.
- Enrollment in charter schools given permission to operate by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee or Milwaukee's City Hall: Up more than 19% and up substantially from a few years ago.
- Enrollment of minority students from the city into suburban schools using the state's voluntary racial desegregation law, known as Chapter 220: Up almost 5%, although the long-term trend has been downward.
- Enrollment in what you can think of as the conventional Milwaukee Public Schools system: Down, but by less than 1%, which is better than other recent years. Mainstream MPS enrollment has been slipping every year and went under 80,000 a year ago for the first time in many years.
How important?
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It was during the 1999 Maghi festival, whose revelries grip western Nepal in mid-January each year, that Asha Tharu's parents sold her. Asha, who was then five years old, fetched $40. In return for the money, Asha was sent to work for a year as a bonded labourer at the house of her new owner in Gularia, a town near her village of Khairapur."I had to get up very early and I had to clean the pots, clean the rooms and wash the clothes," recalls Asha, now a bright 15-year-old. "I worked all day and I didn't get enough sleep."
I have come along jolting, unmade roads from Nepalgunj in western Nepal to meet Asha at her sister-in-law's hut, a rather beautiful dwelling of unbaked mustard-yellow bricks, more African in appearance than Asian. In the main living area are two large, exquisitely fashioned mud urns built into the walls for storing rice. In the unfurnished room where the family sleeps, Asha sits on the dirt floor and tells me about her new life. She says she is happy in school and that, on the weekends, she works in a brick factory, earning $1.30 for an eight-hour shift. That is enough to buy rice and to help her elder sister pay for school.
More than anything, Asha remembers the petty slights she endured during her eight years of servitude, which ended last year when her "master" agreed to release her. "They would give me scraps. I used to feel very hurt by that, receiving the left-overs of guests or the elder family," she says, glancing occasionally at the dusty ground outside the mud hut where she now lives. "Sometimes I'd get rotten food, or half-stomach food, not enough to stop my hunger," she says. "They would hit me or shout at me if I dared complain."
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Educating children with disabilities is expensive.This year, the Keene School District will spend about $13.7 million for services ranging from special education teachers to speech and physical therapists.
That figure also includes funds for programs that serve children with severe disabilities, programs that are so specialized the district can't run them in Keene.
As expensive as those programs can be -- hundreds of thousands of dollars for one year, in some cases -- the cost is more easily absorbed in a city the size of Keene than in some of the neighboring towns.
Sometimes, the annual school district meeting in a small town can sound like a game of "what if":
What if a child with a severe disability moves into our town?
Paying for one student to attend a specialized program, like the school at Crotched Mountain Rehabilitation Center in Greenfield, could double the special education budget of some districts.
Out-of-district placements this year range from $30,000 to $375,000 in the Chesterfield, Harrisville, Marlow, Marlborough, Nelson and Westmoreland school districts, according to Timothy L. Ruehr, the districts' business manager.
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A reporter's seven-year correspondence with his 93-year-old cousin, illustrator Sam Fink, reveals a family's past and the beauty in old-fashioned letter writingShortly before Christmas 2002, I received my first letter from Sam Fink. On the envelope, he had drawn an elephant and colored it with orange, yellow, brown and blue crayons. "Good to remember. Happy New Year," he wrote above the address.
The letter was equally charming. He wrote about his son, David, who lived in Israel with a brood of grandchildren and great grandchildren. "When I visit my family in Jerusalem twice a year for a two-week stay, instead of asking about their lives, I share mine," Sam wrote. "In most instances, young people do not know how to share with old people." He signed it, "Your cousin, somehow, once removed, second, or whatever the term...Sam Fink."
That letter marked the start of a seven-year correspondence I have had with Sam, who is a family success story -- a noted illustrator who has drawn popular books about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. He was my father's first cousin, and though I hadn't seen him more than a dozen times in my life, a family photo my wife had mailed as a holiday card caught his interest and prompted him to write me.
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Pamela Krys, who moved to Woodland Hills a year ago, made a confession during a school fair this month at Sutter Middle School in Canoga Park."I don't understand the points," she said, referring to one aspect of the application process for magnet programs. "They don't do points in Florida."
Understanding the points system is just one of the complications surrounding school choice in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Although its "choices" website is improving, the school system provides no central location -- online or off -- to help parents manage all their options if they don't want their children to attend their neighborhood school.
Separate programs have different application forms, processes and deadlines. Nor does the district supply some key information, such as student test scores for most magnets. Budget cuts led to the cancellation of districtwide magnet fairs, although some regional administrators have staged smaller events.
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The Rochester, N.Y., public schools do a fine job. Their leaders often have great ideas. But according to Rochester school board member Mike Reno, they are talking about doing something to their Advanced Placement courses that could be troublesome, even though I once thought it was a good idea. (Some people who know me say that is the very definition of a bad idea.)Here is what Reno revealed in an email to me:
"Our district, in an effort to increase AP participation, is proposing to lower the grading scale for AP classes. The idea is based on the notion that kids in Rochester don't want to take AP classes because they are afraid that the tougher work will lead to a lower grade, and they don't want to damage their GPA for fear it will harm their college entrance chances. The district's logic suggests by that lowering the grading scale, students will have a better chance of getting a better grade, and therefore be more willing to take the class.
"This is not their brainchild. They claim other districts are doing it. They are calling it internal weighting. They believe this is a better approach than grade weighting, where an A in an AP class would be worth, say, 5.0 instead of 4.0. The district argues that colleges strip off weighted grades, whereas an internal weight benefits the student during college entrance. (I believe grade weighting has value when calculating class ranking, vals, sals, top scholars, etc, but think colleges are free to recalculate anything they'd like). Am a crazy to think this is a bunch of nonsense?"
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If you went to my high school and weren't in attendance on the first day back from summer break -- say, you had been on vacation with your parents an extra day, or you had come down with the flu -- a rumor that you were pregnant and out getting an abortion went hastily through the locker-lined halls. In 10th grade, it happened to me (I had been sick), and, from then on, I wanted to write about a popular girl who is mistaken for pregnant by her schoolmates. The girl must hand in her homecoming crown, withdraw from student government, where she is president, and give up her football-captain/quarterback boyfriend.Years went by, and I did become a writer -- a screenwriter, not a novelist. I wrote this story to mixed reviews. "Interesting premise," said one agent. "But not much story there." I chalked it up to the particular necessities of those who buy and produce screenplays: They need shocking, cinematic events. They need things to blow up.
I decided to write the story as a young adult novel. I have always loved and admired YA novels, as much for their alternate themes of devastation and lightheartedness as for how influential they can be in their readers' lives. I sat down to write the story and finished it in a couple of months. But before I sent it to an agent who was interested, I did something I never thought I could do: I deleted it.
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When Alexandria Superintendent Morton Sherman walks the halls of the city's schools and peers into classrooms, he can often guess whether the class he's watching is gifted."Standing at the door, looking through the glass, you can tell what kind of class it is" by looking at the colors of the students, he said. "It shouldn't be that way."
Alexandria is a majority-minority school system, except in its gifted program. White students, 25 percent of the total enrollment, are 58 percent of those labeled "gifted." Hispanics and African Americans, 25 and 40 percent of enrollment, respectively, account for about 10 and 20 percent of those in gifted classes.
Sherman, at the helm for a little more than a year, is bringing fresh attention to equity issues that have long confounded the small urban school system, where half of the 11,000 students live in poverty.
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Near the end of her struggle to find the right high school for a son who did not always share her tastes, Tracey Henley was overjoyed to discover that some of her son's best friends had endorsed her choice, and his resistance had vanished. "So now we don't have to forge his signature on the form, always a plus," she said.Where had this painful sifting of options occurred? Was it some struggling urban district? No, Henley lives in Montgomery County, like much of suburban Washington a mecca for those seeking the best in public education. Her story illustrates that in even the best possible circumstances, parents often have to work very hard to find the place that fits their child. I, like Henley, wonder if there is a better way to do this.
Henley's son is an eighth grader at Sligo Middle School in Silver Spring. He has attention deficit disorder, but the meds have been effective and through elementary school he performed well above grade level in all subjects. Then he entered middle school and "we were really unprepared for just how much his already-poor executive management functions would collapse in the face of increased expectations," Henley said.
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London's 2012 Olympics logo is in trouble again. The head of the company chosen to market the games struggled last week to find anything nice to say about the logo, which has been compared to crazy paving, graffiti or a broken swastika."For us, it is irrelevant whether we like it or not," Brett Gosper, chief executive of McCann Worldgroup in Europe, told the Financial Times. Pressed on whether he would have designed a logo like that, he said: "Probably not."
When the logo, dreamt up by brand company Wolff Olins, was unveiled in 2007, its defenders said it did not matter what the older generation thought. It was aimed at the irreverent, technology-loving young.
"Move over oldies. Who is doing the running anyway?" one defender of the logo wrote to the FT. "What has been delivered is a tag, to use the language of the street...If the logo appears sprayed on walls up and down the land, so be it."
As someone who occasionally talks about journalism in schools, I find the logo useful. I show it to classes of teenagers, we discuss it and I then get them to write a column about it. They all recognise the logo - and they almost all loathe it.
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More than two million children are being taught in schools that are mediocre or failing, inspectors said yesterday.
- Half of academies are substandard
- Countless school graduates start work without 3Rs
- £5billion wasted on adult literacy classes
A 'stubborn core' of incompetent teachers is holding pupils back and fuelling indiscipline and truancy, Ofsted warned.
Despite a raft of national initiatives, a third of schools still fail to offer a good education.
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Faced with a federal lawsuit alleging gender discrimination, the Elmbrook School District has reversed an earlier decision and will allow students from both its high schools to join a girls ice hockey cooperative.Brookfield Central High School freshman Morgan Hollowell and her father, James, sued the School District last month after it refused to join a cooperative with other school districts to offer girls ice hockey, even though the district participates in a similar cooperative for boys ice hockey.
At the time, Elmbrook Superintendent Matt Gibson said the district chose not to join the girls cooperative because too few students were interested in playing the sport and it would be difficult for the district to supervise.
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nctepa2009actual From the presentation
Preparation: John Robert Wooden, revered and very successful basketball coach at UCLA, used to tell his players: "If you fail to prepare, you are preparing to fail."Download the 200K presentation PDF here.and,
Premise: The majority of U.S. public high school students now graduate without ever having read a single (1) complete nonfiction book, or written one (1) serious (e.g. 4,000+ words, with endnotes and bibliography) research paper.
and,
Elitism" is making the best form of education available to only a few. The democratic ideal of education is to make the best form of education available to all. The democratic ideal is not achieved, and elitism is not defeated, by making the best form of education available to almost nobody.
Kieran Egan, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia
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Jay Matthews:
Doris Burton taught U.S. history in Prince George's County for 27 years. She had her students write 3,000-word term papers. She guided them step by step: first an outline, then note cards, a bibliography, a draft and then the final paper. They were graded at each stage.A typical paper was often little more than what Burton describes as "a regurgitated version of the encyclopedia." She stopped requiring them for her regular history students and assigned them just to seniors heading for college. The social studies and English departments tried to organize coordinated term paper assignments for all, but state and district course requirements left no room. "As time went by," Burton said, "even the better seniors' writing skills deteriorated, and the assignment was frustrating for them to write and torture for me to read." Before her retirement in 1998, she said, "I dropped the long-paper assignment and went to shorter and shorter and, eventually, no paper at all."
Rigorous research and writing instruction have never reached most high-schoolers. I thought I had terrific English and history teachers in the 1960s, but I just realized, counting up their writing assignments, that they, too, avoided anything very challenging. Only a few students, in public and private schools, ever get a chance to go deep and write long on a subject that intrigues them.
We are beginning to see, in the howls of exasperation from college introductory course professors and their students, how high a price we are paying for this. It isn't just college students who are hurt. Studies show research skills are vital for high school graduates looking for good jobs or trade school slots.
Students who have been forced to do well-researched essays tell me those were the most satisfying academic experiences of their high school years. Christin Roach, a 2001 graduate of Mount Vernon High School in Fairfax County, glowed when she described the work she put into her 4,000-word report, "The Unconstitutional Presidential Impeachments of Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton." It taught her the skills that led to her earning a joint degree in journalism and political science at Boston University.Her project was part of the International Baccalaureate program at Mount Vernon. More than 20 Washington area public high schools, and a few private ones, have IB programs. But only a few dozen students at most at each school write the 4,000-word papers to get the full IB diploma. Take away IB and a few selective private schools, and well-organized research projects largely disappear from the high school landscape.
The leading U.S. proponent of more research work for the nation's teens is Will Fitzhugh, who has been publishing high school student papers in his Concord Review journal since 1987. In 2002, he persuaded the Albert Shanker Institute to fund a study of research paper writing by the Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut. The results were as bleak as he expected. Sixty-two percent of the 400 high school history teachers surveyed never assigned a paper as long as 3,000 words, and 27.percent never assigned anything as long as 2,000 words.
They had no time to assign, monitor, correct and grade such papers, they said. If they assigned long projects, they could not insist on the many revisions needed to teach students the meaning of college-level work. So most new undergraduates check into their freshman courses unclear on the form and language required for academic research.
The colleges aren't great at filling the gap. A new book by Seton Hall University scholar Rebecca D. Cox, "The College Fear Factor," painfully exposes students wallowing in ignorance, and professors not understanding why. Only about half survive this torture and graduate.Why not junk some of the high school history requirements in favor of one solid month devoted to one long paper, with students bringing in their work, step by step, every day? Doris Burton and her colleagues couldn't get their students to focus, but they had little support above. If we want our students to be proud of what they did in high school, we have to insist that they do it, and no longer assume they will somehow learn it in college.
By Jay Mathews | November 18, 2009; 10:00 PM ET
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This year marks the 10th anniversary of California's Public Schools Accountability Act, an early legislative triumph of then-Gov. Gray Davis. While some good things have come out of the law, the act has failed in its two key missions: to inform parents and the public about the true performance of schools and students, and to impose widespread tough consequences on failing or underperforming schools.In contrast to funding-focused measures, such as Proposition 98, the act commendably sought to spotlight school and student outcomes, especially results on the state's standardized tests. While many educators complain about this emphasis on student testing, the real problem turned out to be how the act uses test scores to measure school performance.
The act uses the Academic Performance Index, or API, to measure the performance of schools. Based on student results on the state's California Standards Tests, the API calculates a score on a scale of 200 to 1,000 for every school, with the state designating 800 as the target to which all schools should strive to achieve.
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A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed a class-action lawsuit against the Madison School District over a student transfer policy the district has since re-written.U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb wrote in a 36-page decision that the district was following state law - a law that was later determined to be unconstitutional - when it implemented its policy for assuring that open enrollment transfers did not create racial imbalances at schools.
Crabb wrote that a municipality like the school district cannot be held liable under federal law for trying to implement a state mandate when it has no other policy choices. State or federal law is responsible for any wrongdoing, she wrote.
Madison attorney Michael Fox, who is representing the class, which he estimated to be 200 to 300 people, said the decision will be appealed to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The law in this area is unsettled, he said, and federal judicial circuits around the U.S. disagree on it.
In this case, a white East High School student, identified in court documents as "N.N.," applied for transfer to either Waunakee or Monona Grove in 2007. The district denied her application because it said her departure from East would have caused the school's minority student percentage to increase.
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The loser now will be later to win, the noted social commentator Bob Dylan predicted in 1964 in his generation-defining "The Times They Are A-changin."
In Wisconsin, both Republicans and gay rights activists can take encouragement from those words.And both can be encouraged by the results of a statewide public opinion poll conducted in September for the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute by the UW-Madison Political Science Department.
Less than a year after Barack Obama won Wisconsin in the 2008 presidential race by 17 points and Democrats captured the state Assembly after 14 years of Republican control, favorable opinions on Obama have softened, and the political affiliation of the poll respondents suggests a modest swing to the Republicans.
Furthermore, while younger voters voted heavily for Obama and Democrats in 2008, the WPRI poll shows little substantial difference among younger, middle-aged and older voters on party affiliation. Democrats continued to draw more favorable responses than Republicans, but the results suggest Republicans are gaining ground.
For example, in the November 2008 exit polls, Wisconsin voters age 18 to 29 preferred Obama over Republican John McCain by 29 points, a 64%-35% margin. But in the WPRI poll, less than a year later, sentiment on Obama was remarkably similar across age groups.
Among the 700 randomly selected Wisconsin adults for the telephone survey, 57% said they strongly approved or somewhat approved of the presidents performance. And the comparable figures by age group were 59% for the younger group, 58% for those 36 to 64, and 54% for those 65 and over.
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Keith Ripp and other Madison-area parents have spent thousands of dollars to test and tutor their children for dyslexia. They think this is something Wisconsin school districts should more aggressively pursue.But Ripp has a better-than-average ability to do something about it. A Republican state assemblyman from Lodi, he has authored a bill to require that schools perform dyslexia screening on pupils in kindergarten through second grade, as well as those from grades three to five who score low on reading tests.
Another Ripp bill would require the Department of Public Instruction to ensure that reading specialists, special education teachers and elementary school reading instructors are trained and tested in dyslexic instruction techniques.
"My youngest son, who is 13, has severe dyslexia," says Ripp. "My wife and I knew something was going on before second grade. We hired tutors. We tried to work with the school system to come up with something. We had his hearing and eyesight checked. He was very intelligent but was struggling a lot with reading."
The couple paid for the testing on their own, as well as some tutoring, at an estimated cost of about $8,000.
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A new study has found that young people feel differently about two types of parental control, generally viewing a type of control that's thought to be better for their development more positively. However, when parents are very controlling, young people no longer make this distinction and view both types of parental control negatively.The study, conducted in the United States by researchers at Örebro University in Sweden, appears in the November/December 2009 issue of the journal Child Development. Unlike a lot of prior research on parenting that's focused on control, this study looked at how adolescents view and react to parental control.
Scholars tell us that parental control falls into two categories: behavioral control (when parents help their children regulate themselves and feel competent by providing supervision, setting limits, and establishing rules) and psychological control (when parents are manipulative in their behavior, often resulting in feelings of guilt, rejection, or not being loved). It's thought that behavioral control is better for youngsters' development.
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Kayla Rosenblum sat upright and poised as she breezed through the shapes and numbers, a leopard-patterned finger puppet resting next to her for moral support.But then came something she had never seen before: a visual analogy showing a picture of a whole cake next to a slice of cake. What picture went with a loaf of bread in the same way?
Kayla, who will be 4 in December, held her tiny pointer finger still as she inspected the four choices. "Too hard," she peeped.
Test preparation has long been a big business catering to students taking SATs and admissions exams for law, medical and other graduate schools. But the new clientele is quite a bit younger: 3- and 4-year-olds whose parents hope that a little assistance -- costing upward of $1,000 for several sessions -- will help them win coveted spots in the city's gifted and talented public kindergarten classes.
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Creating a course to teach corporate social responsibility isn't as easy to do as, say, honing a curriculum for Finance 101.After all, integrating public and societal interests into corporate decision-making strategies is tricky. Teaching students to become socially responsible managers first requires dispelling previous notions about where personal values fit in the workplace, says Daylian Cain, assistant professor of organizational behavior at the Yale School of Management. Acting on your values is more complex than it might seem.
In an interview, Mr. Cain, who specializes in conflict of interest issues, spoke about imparting these ideals.
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Tonight, 32 young Americans will win Rhodes Scholarships. Their tenures at Oxford are funded by the legacy of the British imperialist Cecil Rhodes, a man whose life would not be honored today were it not for his vision that young people of outstanding intellect, leadership and ambition could make the world a better place.For more than a century Rhodes scholars have left Oxford with virtually any job available to them. For much of this time, they have overwhelmingly chosen paths in scholarship, teaching, writing, medicine, scientific research, law, the military and public service. They have reached the highest levels in virtually all fields.
In the 1980s, however, the pattern of career choices began to change. Until then, even though business ambitions and management degrees have not been disfavored in our competition, business careers attracted relatively few Rhodes scholars. No one suggested this was an unfit domain; it was simply the rare scholar who went to Wall Street, finance and general business management. Only three American Rhodes scholars in the 1970s (out of 320) went directly into business from Oxford; by the late 1980s the number grew to that many in a year. Recently, more than twice as many went into business in just one year than did in the entire 1970s.
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The insanity crept up on us slowly; we just wanted what was best for our kids. We bought macrobiotic cupcakes and hypoallergenic socks, hired tutors to correct a 5-year-old's "pencil-holding deficiency," hooked up broadband connections in the treehouse but took down the swing set after the second skinned knee. We hovered over every school, playground and practice field -- "helicopter parents," teachers christened us, a phenomenon that spread to parents of all ages, races and regions. Stores began marketing stove-knob covers and "Kinderkords" (also known as leashes; they allow "three full feet of freedom for both you and your child") and Baby Kneepads (as if babies don't come prepadded). The mayor of a Connecticut town agreed to chop down three hickory trees on one block after a woman worried that a stray nut might drop into her new swimming pool, where her nut-allergic grandson occasionally swam. A Texas school required parents wanting to help with the second-grade holiday party to have a background check first. Schools auctioned off the right to cut the carpool line and drop a child directly in front of the building -- a spot that in other settings is known as handicapped parking.We were so obsessed with our kids' success that parenting turned into a form of product development. Parents demanded that nursery schools offer Mandarin, since it's never too soon to prepare for the competition of a global economy. High school teachers received irate text messages from parents protesting an exam grade before class was even over; college deans described freshmen as "crispies," who arrived at college already burned out, and "teacups," who seemed ready to break at the tiniest stress.
This is what parenting had come to look like at the dawn of the 21st century -- just one more extravagance, the Bubble Wrap waiting to burst.
All great rebellions are born of private acts of civil disobedience that inspire rebel bands to plot together. And so there is now a new revolution under way, one aimed at rolling back the almost comical overprotectiveness and overinvestment of moms and dads. The insurgency goes by many names -- slow parenting, simplicity parenting, free-range parenting -- but the message is the same: Less is more; hovering is dangerous; failure is fruitful. You really want your children to succeed? Learn when to leave them alone. When you lighten up, they'll fly higher. We're often the ones who hold them down.
Read more about "The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting."
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Andrea Ballarin, 23, is a self-confident student hoping to graduate soon from Humboldt University in Berlin. But when she starts talking about getting a job once she graduates, her mood changes. The prospects, she said, are slim.It is not because of the economic crisis facing Germany. Ms. Ballarin, who will graduate in Slavic studies, said the reason for such poor job prospects had more to do with the new higher-education policies the government recently introduced.
"It is not that I think the reforms are bad," Ms. Ballarin said. "They are needed, but they are so ill-thought out in the way they are being introduced."
In the past week, those changes have led to student demonstrations and sit-ins in many universities in Germany, which last year turned out over 309,000 graduates. Adding to the students' anger, several universities have introduced tuition fees, €200 to €500 a semester, or about $300 to $750, to a previously free system.
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China's Ministry of Education voiced on Monday its support for the formation of C9, an academic conference comprising nine domestic prestigious universities and referred to as China's Ivy League by some experts.Xu Mei, the ministry's spokeswoman, said the establishment of the conference is a "helpful attempt that is conducive to the country's construction of high-quality colleges, cultivation of top-notch innovative talents and enhanced cooperation and exchanges between Chinese universities and their foreign counterparts."
On October 12, nine institutions of higher learning including the elite Peking University and Tsinghua Univerisity signed cooperative agreements that featured flexible student exchange programs, deepened cooperation on the training of postgraduates, and establishment of a credit system that allows students to win credits through attending classes in member universities of C9.
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Gov. Timothy M. Kaine announced Tuesday that the Virginia Education Department has launched a study of minority students' low participation in gifted education programs statewide.Related: ""They're all rich, white kids and they'll do just fine" -- NOT!"African Americans represent 26 percent of the state's 1.2 million students but 12 percent of those in gifted education programs. Hispanics are 9 percent of the state's schoolchildren, but 5 percent of gifted students.
"Virginia is proud of both the high standards of our educational system and the wealth of diversity in our communities. . . . It's critical we assess any disproportionate barriers . . . so we can ensure students of all backgrounds have the opportunity to participate," Kaine said in a release.
NAACP officials have urged Kaine in recent months to address racial and ethnic disparities in new regulations for gifted education that he is expected to sign in the next few weeks. Some said a study does not go far enough to address their concerns.
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Education should be the top national priority ahead of health care, the economy and climate change, according to Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) Chief Executive John Chambers.Education should be an issue that brings together Democrats and Republicans at a time when they can agree on little else, Chambers said. He helped present the findings of an education-focused task force at the WSJ CEO Council conference Tuesday.
The task force determined that the government should form a national council for an educated work force, linking together the secretaries of education, labor and commerce, said Accenture Ltd. (ACN) Chief Executive William Green.
"We don't have a national agenda to be tops in the world in education," Green said. "On every measure, we're slipping."
Indeed, countries are doing a better job of preparing their children for the global work force, Chambers said.
AT&T Inc. (T) Chief Executive Randall Stephenson said that the talent pool coming out high schools is getting diluted.
"Parents need to recognize that their children are falling behind," he said.
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The first thing that jumped out at me about today's Washington Post story about kids in D.C. schools eating federally funded breakfasts was "sugar."How much sugar was in the breakfast given to fourth-grader Alex Brown?
He had a bowl of Lucky Charms cereal, amount not mentioned; but a single serving, 1 cup, has 14 grams of sugar. That's not especially high in the sweetened cereal world,
but it's not great.The breakfast also included graham crackers, amount not mentioned. But the amount of sugar per serving, which is one little square, in Nabisco graham crackers is 2.2 grams.
Then there was the juice. The article said the boy had milk and juice, amount and kind not mentioned. But one serving, which is 1 cup, of Minute Maid orange juice has 22 grams of sugar.If the child had a cup of Lucky Charms, two graham cracker squares and an 8-ounce glass of Minute Maid orange juice, he would have consumed 40.4 grams of sugar for breakfast.
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There were a lot of things I was anxious about when I came out of the School of Ed. One was the switch from being the graded to the being the grader. It was really an odd sensation to grade someone else's work in black and white. All that time spent at a liberal undergraduate school attending vegan potluck dinners, talking about how terrible judging people can be, and now I was being paid to judge people every day.It gets easier with time. At first you might pour over your grades for a very long time, thinking about how many points a student really deserves based on their effort and the demonstration of their comprehension of an idea. You might come up with rubrics for the littlest assignments to ensure fairness and award points to papers only after covering up their authors. A lot of that will disappear under the shear workload that is grading. Really, looking at students' work takes forever! A very good friend of mine back in Kansas has over 150 students on her rosters. Think about it: you assign a two page paper in all of your classes and all of a sudden you have a 300 page novel to tear apart, comment on, revise and turn back to its many authors. Who has time for that?
In addition to time, it's really difficult to do any kind of grading if things are going poorly in the first year of teaching. It's unfair to fail all of the students for not learning if you've not grabbed hold of the reigns and taken control of the class. While the vast majority of the students who failed my class last year were making very poor decisions that led to that failure, fewer would have done so poorly if I'd been able to give them the structure and support they needed. How many? Who knows.
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In a grimy shack near the entrance to an orphanage in the far north of Vietnam, Hoang's mother watches anxiously - seemingly torn between instinct and obedience - as her first-born child is taken from her and given to a woman offering to sell him for US$10,000.
"Look at him - he's such a handsome little boy," baby broker Tang Thi Cai says as the two-month-old kicks his legs and blinks. "If you want him, though, you've got to be quick. We've already started the paperwork to sign him over to the orphanage, so there's no time to lose."Sensing my hesitation as she fusses around the fly-blown room, Cai adjusts her sales pitch. "If you'd prefer a girl, let me know," she says. "We have some pregnant women here about to give birth - and as soon as a girl is available, we can phone you."
When Hollywood superstars Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt adopted three-year-old Pax Thien from an orphanage in Ho Chi Minh City two years ago, it confirmed Vietnam's status as one of the world's most popular destinations for overseas adoptions. But a year later, adoptions from Vietnam to the United States were halted amid allegations of corruption, baby selling and irregularities in the way the infants were sourced. Today, the system is mired in even deeper suspicions.
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The parents of exceptionally bright students in Madison schools waited 18 years for a plan to raise the academic bar for their children. But now, they're really getting impatient.Approved by the Madison school board in August, the district's new three-year plan for talented and gifted ("TAG") students already is raising questions from parents about focus and speed. The district's TAG staff, they note, consists of only 8.5 positions in a district of 24,622 students - and three of those positions are vacant.
"Change of a large system takes time," said Chris Gomez Schmidt, the mother of three young children who serves on the district's advisory committee for talented and gifted students. "But I think there's a lot of families within the system who are frustrated when they see that their students' needs are not being met. I think that families don't feel like they have a lot of time to wait."
The district's talented and gifted plan, which replaces a 1991 document, will be spelled out for the public Tuesday night in a community forum from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at Hamilton Middle School, 4801 Waukesha St. The forum is meant to make the reforms understandable and "transparent" to the public, said Lisa Wachtel, executive director for teaching and learning for the district.
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A federal judge says Chicago Public Schools must arrange for the immediate transfer of students who want to leave a South Side high school after an honor student's brutal beating death.U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman's ruling Monday came in a lawsuit filed last week against the district by 11 students who say they don't feel safe at Christian Fenger Academy High School. Along with the transfers, the students want a judge to order the district to make Fenger safer.
Derrion Albert, a 16-year-old Fenger honor student, was beaten to death in September during a sprawling fight that was caught by a cell phone video camera.
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BBC:
Cyberbullying is a growing problem in primary schools, according to the Anti-Bullying Alliance.In a small study carried out by the group in south east England, one in five children questioned said they had been bullied online or by phone.
And many of the 227 10 and 11-year olds questioned said they used social networking sites, even though users are meant to be over 13.
Campaigners say parents must learn how to help children protect themselves.
The Anti-Bullying Alliance (ABA), which is a charity bringing together 60 organisations, also released the findings of a survey of parents on cyberbullying at the start of 'Anti-bullying week'.
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Open enrollment has become part of the educational path that many families in the Boulder Valley School District follow, and this year officials have made some changes to the application process to make it both easier and greener.Related: Wisconsin part-time and full-time open enrollment.For the first time, parents can file a request for their child to attend a Boulder Valley school outside their neighborhood on the district's Web site, eliminating the need for applicants to pick up a paper form and drive it to the Boulder Valley Education Center. The online application will mirror the hard-copy version, allowing parents to choose their top choices and explain their reasoning.
"It will be more convenient, faster and it will mean that a person will not need to drop it by the education center," said district assessment director Jonathan Dings. "We think this will save paper and gas, in an effort to be as green as we can in this process."
Parents still will have the option of filling out a paper application and dropping it off, if that works best for them, Dings said. But, he said, the district is "hopeful that we will have a great deal of participation" in the inaugural online program.
"We know that if the product works well, a whole lot more people will try it," he said.
Open enrollment is a statewide option that allows families to send their kids to schools outside their neighborhoods. The option plays a substantial role in how Boulder Valley students are placed, Dings said.
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How many concussions would you allow your child to suffer before you decided that perhaps he or she should retire from the travel soccer team?In the past month alone, I have heard about several dozen injuries to young athletes, both on school and club teams, and I'm starting to wonder how so many families can be obsessed with sports to the point that a child's health suffers.
I've actually heard parents talk about their children's soccer concussions as if they were simple headaches: "He had another concussion last week but should be good to go soon." I know one child who has suffered at least three breaks in his hands from high school football and baseball. His parents know there could be long-term health consequences, but that is less important, somehow, than the glory of youth sports.
There was a story in The Washington Post this month about companies that have redesigned football helmets to cut down on concussions.
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via a kind reader's email:
The case was brought by Seattle parents who challenged the use of race in assigning students to schools, arguing it violated the Constitution's right of equal protection. The ruling was celebrated by those who favor color-blind policies, but criticized by civil rights groups as a further erosion of Brown vs. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 case that outlawed school segregation."The results of this lawsuit in the Seattle Public School district are very discouraging, especially the disparity in income, race and available resources between "south end" and "north end" schools. A new school assignment plan currently being implemented for 2010-2011 will only relegate neighborhoods of color to the poorest schools in the district. The blog http://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/, while mostly dealing with "north end" problems like APP programs and such, the fact that children will be forced into neighborhood schools is dividing an already divided district. Rainier Beach High School, for instance, demographic data indicates Caucasians at less than 7% and an African American at more than 65%, a graduation rate of 37% and test scores at the bottom of the barrel.
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I got to the last page of the last icon-shattering piece Gerald W. Bracey will ever write, and felt sad and empty. As usual, he had skewered--with great erudition and insight--some of my fondest beliefs about how to improve schools. As a consequence, my thinking and writing about these issues will (I hope) be better next time. But who is going to do that for me in the future?Jerry Bracey, the nation's leading critic of unexamined assumptions in education, died Oct. 20 at age 69, apparently in his sleep, in his new home in beautiful Port Townsend, Wash. This was a shock to everyone who knew him because, although he had prostate cancer, it did not seem to have slowed him down.
The last person to receive one of his infamous emails questioning the ancestry and sanity of the recipient should frame the thing and put it on a wall. I don't know anyone else in our community of education wonks who matched him in passion, honesty and wit. The 2009 edition of the Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education proves it.
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Parents: How extensively do your children do research for school papers? Does anyone still own encyclopedias?
Teachers: What sources and how many of them do you require when you assign a research paper? Is Wikipedia acceptable as a source?Posted by: jane100000
Adam, some would say (and I would agree) that neither conducting an on-line search nor consulting an encyclopedia counts as doing a research paper. Google and wikipedia can give a student a great start in gaining some grasp of the issues s/he is planning to address in a paper, but only reading entire chapters (or entire books) and being able to consult journal articles can get you even close to confidence that you're not missing the boat.
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Its parent-teacher conferences made the evening news. So did cases of swine flu. And Sidwell Friends School has recently been the target of a few small protests that seem aimed at prominent parents, not students.The school, long a favorite of Washington's leading families, is no stranger to presidential children. But in the months since Barack and Michelle Obama decided to send their daughters there, Sidwell has been pulled into the spotlight of a distinctly 21st-century culture -- one that is increasingly celebrity-obsessed and often shockingly unmannered.
Educators and others at Sidwell have portrayed this as what their most famous parent might call a "teachable moment."
When five anti-Obama, anti-gay protesters appeared in front of the school's Wisconsin Avenue NW entrance Monday morning, they were met by 150 Sidwell students waving signs ranging from "There is that of God in Everyone" to "I Kissed a Girl and I Liked It."
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Adrienne Lu & Jonathan Tamari:
Gov.-elect Christopher J. Christie reiterated many of the themes of his campaign in an appearance at a suburban New Jersey high school yesterday, and offered glimpses of his personal life at the end of the campaign trail.Christie told a crowd of hundreds of students at Steinert High School in Hamilton, Mercer County, that his priorities were cutting taxes and government spending.
Asked by a student how he defeated Gov. Corzine - who had the advantages of wealth and the support of national Democrats, including President Obama - Christie said, "I have absolutely no idea."
Christie, who was joined by Lt. Gov.-elect Kim Guadagno and a handful of state lawmakers from the region, told students he wanted them to be able to afford to build lives in New Jersey as they grow older. Christie has four children, the eldest a teenager who now asks to be dropped off behind school so the new security detail following the family does not draw too much attention.
In a meeting with reporters after the event, Christie promised tough negotiations with labor unions representing teachers and state workers. He said the New Jersey Education Association, which represents teachers and opposes many of the urban education ideas he has backed, "has been a strong advocate for the status quo."
"They need to get realistic about the fact that change is coming," Christie said.
In dealing with state workers, Christie said he would be fair, but added, pointedly, "I'm not going to be a pushover, and that's going to be a change."
When negotiating with state workers' unions, Christie said, he and Guadagno "are there to represent the taxpayers."
Corzine was often criticized as being too close to unions.
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A longer school day can help improve student test scores, closing the achievement gap. But critics question the cost of those additional hours.Going to school from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. may sound like a student's nightmare, but Sydney Shaw, a seventh-grader at the Alain Locke Charter Academy on Chicago's West Side, has come to like it - as well as the extra 20 or so days that she's in class a year.
"I'm sure every kid at this school says bad things about the schedule sometimes," says Sydney, who was at school on Columbus Day, when most Chicago schools had a holiday. "But deep down, we all know it's for our benefit."
Finding ways to give kids more classroom time, through longer hours, a longer school year, or both, is getting more attention. President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan support a lengthier timetable. Many education reformers agree that more time at school is a key step.
Charter schools like Alain Locke and KIPP schools (a network of some 80 schools that are often lauded for their success with at-risk students) have made big gains in closing gaps in student achievement, partly through expanded schedules. Other schools have been making strides, too - notably in Massachusetts and in the New Orleans system.
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Peter Mandelson wants more contact hours in higher education, but this would reduce students' ability to think for themselvesBoth the National Union of Students and Lord Mandelson, whose ministerial brief includes higher education, are making an issue of the number of "contact hours" between faculty and students, especially in the arts and humanities. It appears that Lord Mandelson wishes universities to market themselves along the lines of commercial organisations, now that students have to pay more out of their own pockets for their education. Accordingly, he wishes universities to compete with each other, among other things, over the amount of time they offer students.
The assumption that lies behind the contact hours issue is a deeply mistaken one. It is that universities are a simple extension of school, and that as at school, students should be given as much attention as possible. This misunderstanding is astonishing coming from Peter Mandelson, who read PPE at Oxford, though comprehensible enough among students first encountering a much more independent working style than they had while being prepared for the endless hoop-jumping at school. But before the unthinking campaign over contact hours gets out of hand, both the nature of a university education in the arts and humanities, and the role of faculty at universities, should be re-clarified.
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Judge Chris Freese sided with the family of Kaleb Drew, who argued that the boy's yellow Labrador retriever is a service animal allowed in schools under Illinois law. They say the dog is similar to a seeing-eye dog for the blind and is trained to help Kaleb deal with his disabilities, keeping him safe and calm in class.
The Villa Grove school district had opposed the dog's presence and argued that it isn't a true service animal.
The case and a separate lawsuit involving an autistic boy in southwestern Illinois are the first challenges to an Illinois law allowing service animals in schools.
Authorities in both school districts have said that the needs of the autistic boys must be balanced against other children who have allergies or fear the animals.
Kaleb Drew's dog, Chewey, has accompanied him to school since August under court order, pending the judge's final ruling Tuesday on the family's lawsuit against the school district.
Similar lawsuits have been filed on behalf of autistic children in other states, including California and Pennsylvania.
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[and the wordless picture books have been a big hit, too!!...Will Fitzhugh]
"The staff cobbled together an approach that incorporates methods and materials used with younger children, such as art projects and wordless picture books, into high-school-level instruction. The idea is to use engaging activities and easy-to-access materials as door-openers to more complex subject matter.
The result is a high school that 'looks more like an elementary school,' Mr. Ledbetter said, because teachers find that letting students sketch, cut out, or fold their ideas seems to work well."
Catherine Gewertz:
The sheep's-brain dissections are going rather well. Scalpels in hand, high school students are slicing away at the preserved organs and buzzing about what they find. It's obvious that this lesson has riveted their interest. What's not so obvious is that it has been as much about literacy as about science.In preparing for her class in human anatomy and physiology to perform the dissections, Karen Stewart had the students read articles on the brain's structure and use computer-presentation software to share what they learned. She used "guided notetaking" strategies, explicitly teaching the teenagers how to read the materials and take notes on key scientific concepts. She reinforced those ideas with more articles chosen to grab their interest, such as one on how chocolate affects the brain.
The class also watched and discussed a recent episode of the hit television show "Grey's Anatomy," about a patient with an injury to one side of the brain. The students' work is graded not just on their grasp of the science, but also on the quality of their research and writing about it.
Ms. Stewart isn't the only teacher who weaves literacy instruction into classes here at Buckhorn High School. It pops up on every corridor. A teacher of Spanish shows his students a self-portrait of the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo and asks what cues it conveys about her culture. A physical education teacher brings his class to the school library to study body mass. And a mathematics teacher burrows into the Latin roots of that discipline's vocabulary to help students see their related meanings, and uses "concept maps"--visual depictions of ideas--to help them grasp an idea's steps or parts.
Literacy is shot through everything at this 1,350-student Alabama school in a former cotton field 10 miles south of the Tennessee state line. It's been an obsession for a decade, ever since school leaders tested their students and found that one-third of the entering freshmen were reading at or below the 7th grade level, many at the 4th or 5th grade level.
"Those numbers completely changed my professional life," said Sarah Fanning, who oversees curriculum and instruction at Buckhorn High. "I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. Each of those numbers had a face, and that face went to bed with me at night."
'Relentless From the Beginning'
The Buckhorn staff immersed itself in figuring out how to improve student learning by boosting literacy skills in all subjects, something few high schools do now, and even fewer were doing then. That work has made the school a national model. Hosting visitors and making presentations--including at a White House conference in 2006--have become routine parts of its staff members' schedules.
Adolescent-literacy work such as that at Buckhorn High is taking on a rising profile nationally, as educators search for ways to improve student achievement. Increasingly, scholars urge teachers to abandon the "inoculation" model of literacy, which holds that K-3 students "learn to read," and older students "read to learn." Older students are in dire need of sophisticated reading and writing instruction tailored to each discipline, those scholars say, and without it, they risk being unable to access more-complex material. The Carnegie Corporation of New York recently released a report urging that adolescent literacy become a national priority. ("Literacy Woes Put in Focus," Sept. 23, 2009.)
Selected literacy resources at Buckhorn High School:
Professional Reading
Reading Reminders, Jim Burke
Deeper Reading, Kelly Gallagher
Content Area Reading, Richard R. Vacca and Jo Anne L. Vacca
I Read It, But I Don't Get It, Cris Tovani
Do I Really Have to Teach Reading? Cris TovaniWordless Picture Books
Anno's Journey, Mitsumasa Anno
Free Fall, David Wiesner
Tuesday, David Wiesner
Freight Train, Donald Crews
Zoom, Istvan BanyaiContent-Area Picture Books and Graphic Novels
Chester Comix series, Bentley Boyd
Just Plain Fancy, Patricia Polacco
Harlem, Walter Dean Myers
The Greedy Triangle, Marilyn BurnsHigh-Interest, Easy-to-Understand Books for Adolescents
A Child Called "It," Dave Pelzer
Hole in My Life, Jack Gantos
Crank, Ellen Hopkins
Burned, Ellen Hopkins
The "Twilight Saga" collection, Stephenie Meyer
The "Soundings" and "Currents" series, Orca Publishing
The Bluford High series, Townsend PressSource: Buckhorn High School
"We've seen a lot of focus on early literacy, but more recently people are saying, 'Wait a minute, what about kids in the upper grades?'" said Karen Wood, who focuses on adolescent literacy as a professor of literacy education at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte."The days are passing by rather rapidly of middle and high school teachers' being able to say, 'Either you get the content or you don't.' I think we are starting to see a greater acceptance of the need for this," Ms. Wood said. "And it has to be a whole-school responsibility, not just something that's put off on teachers."
Sherrill W. Parris is the assistant state superintendent of education who oversees the 11-year-old Alabama Reading Initiative. Buckhorn High, she says, was on the leading edge of the state's adolescent-literacy work by enlisting in the project in its second year, 1999. It was one of the few high schools to do so.
"They have been relentless from the beginning," she said.
In Search of Expertise
When Buckhorn joined the reading initiative, its teachers and top administrators attended the state's two-week summer workshop, and were inspired by its vision of literacy instruction across the content areas. But they quickly saw they would have little guidance in putting the vision into action.
"We called the state department of education and said, 'Can you recommend some good books or programs?' and they said, 'No, but if you find some, call us,'" recalled Tommy Ledbetter, who has been Buckhorn's principal for 28 years.
Ms. Fanning said the state paid for a reading coach that first year, but Buckhorn "didn't know enough then to know how to use her."
The state program's fluctuating funding and focus, and a shortage of expertise in guiding middle and high schools, have meant that adolescent literacy has not received the consistent support in Alabama that originators of the initiative would have liked, Ms. Parris said.
On its own, Buckhorn's staff scoured the field for expertise. Gradually, they assembled a list of authors such as Kelly Gallagher and Cris Tovani, whose theories and strategies seemed to click, and who became their shining stars. ("Kelly Gallagher is our Brad Pitt," quipped Buckhorn English teacher Tracy Wilson.)
Higher Scores
Buckhorn High School has exceeded county and state averages on Alabama's 10th grade writing test. SOURCE: Alabama Department of Education
The staff cobbled together an approach that incorporates methods and materials used with younger children, such as art projects and wordless picture books, into high-school-level instruction. The idea is to use engaging activities and easy-to-access materials as door-openers to more complex subject matter.
The result is a high school that "looks more like an elementary school," Mr. Ledbetter said, because teachers find that letting students sketch, cut out, or fold their ideas seems to work well.
Colorful student work lines the school's walls and dangles from its ceilings. In one poster, a math student drew a picture of himself next to a streetlamp, and described his reasoning in deciding how to calculate its height. He included the calculation and the answer.
On a "word wall" in an English classroom, a student didn't simply write the definition of the word "ostracize." To show its meaning, he insisted that his teacher hang it several inches away from the wall, as if it had been rejected by the other words.
That teacher, Donna Taylor, said she was a skeptic when school leaders began emphasizing visual and artistic depictions of ideas a decade ago.
"It seemed kind of elementary," said Ms. Taylor, who's been teaching for 17 years. "I thought, hey, I'm a high school teacher--we need to be preparing [students] for college, doing serious, deep work, one step away from a bachelor's degree. But once I saw how this visual stuff helps the kids learn, I was on board."
Avoiding 'Assumicide'
Will Culpepper is just such a student. "It's hard for me to understand something when I write it down or read it, but if I do a picture or hands-on stuff with it, I can get it better," said the 16-year-old junior.
Teachers use a variety of strategies to build comprehension. Recognizing that many students are intimidated by vast gray stretches on textbook pages, English teacher Tracy Wilson uses shorter articles or excerpts to teach the same content. That builds students' knowledge and confidence to tackle the full versions, she says.
Taking a cue from math teachers, she uses "talk-alouds," stopping frequently as the class reads a fiction passage to discuss what is happening. Instead of only writing definitions of vocabulary words, her students often make "foldables," colorful projects with sections that open to show a word's meaning, context, origin, and use.
Math teacher Carrie Bates asks students to explain their problem-solving reasoning, in class and in homework. When a student struggles, she finds that simple picture books, like The Greedy Triangle by Marilyn Burns, can work wonders to get a concept across. Then she can build more-complex understanding onto that.
Buckhorn teachers try to avoid committing what Kelly Gallagher calls "assumicide": assuming students have the skills to access the content. They explicitly teach those skills.
Ms. Wilson walks her students through ways to get clues about meaning from context, helping them deduce from the sentence "the phlox is blooming in the garden," for instance, that phlox is a flower.
Career and technical education teacher Connie Mask helps her students get the most from their textbooks, acquainting them with the table of contents and the index, and explaining the significance of photographs and captions. "This was stuff I just thought students knew how to do," she said.
Each week, the teachers work on specific literacy strategies. One week, it's using graphic organizers or Venn diagrams to help students understand content. Another week, it's building students' retelling and summarizing skills or practicing guided-reading techniques.
A good chunk of teachers' weekly professional development focuses on such strategies as well. And in an ongoing "book group," they tackle tomes by literacy experts. Teachers also spend a lot of time scrutinizing data from state and school tests to see how their instruction needs adjusting.
Social studies teacher Jenny Barrett says she didn't used to think her job description included teaching literacy skills. But now she sees that she has to help her students learn how to spot places in the textbook to mark with Post-its, understand the common roots of words like "oligarchy" and "monarchy," and draw pictures of ideas when that helps them understand. She also has learned strategies like breaking text into "chunks" to help students parse the meanings.
Librarian's Key Role
School librarian Wendy Stephens has played a key role in Buckhorn's literacy work, revamping the library's holdings in support of both students and teachers. She helped Ms. Barrett expand the list of materials she uses, such as picture books and comic books, for instance, and works closely with her on a project in which students research aspects of Thomas L. Friedman's The World Is Flat, such as globalization or outsourcing, and make videos about them.
Ms. Stephens has built up collections that typically are popular with boys, such as manga, or Japanese cartoon, magazines, books by Edgar Allan Poe, and a series of books by Dave Pelzer recounting his abuse as a child. For girls, she makes sure to stock the "Twilight Saga" by Stephenie Meyer, and works by Maya Angelou and Ellen Hopkins.
She added wordless picture books, which many teachers use to help students construct storylines in various subjects, and content-area comic books.
Expanding the library's pop fiction collection required a shift in attitude, Ms. Stephens said.
"I had to put aside my own bias," she said recently in the school's large, airy library. "Sure, I thought everyone should be reading Hemingway. But I just want to increase their fluency."
It seems to be working. The number of books checked out of the library has soared from fewer than 200 a month when Ms. Stephens took over in 2003 to more than 1,600. About a dozen students come in early for a book group, and she has set up computer-based videoconferences for students with favorite authors.
Measuring the impact of the literacy work at Buckhorn High isn't easy, since the school no longer uses the standardized test it used in 1998. It does outpace the 19,000-student Madison County district and the state in the proportion of students who score proficient on the reading portion of the state graduation exam, but only by a small margin. (Ninety-eight to 100 percent of Buckhorn's students have been passing in recent years; statewide, the percentage is in the mid- to high 90s.)
The school's proficiency scores on the state's 10th grade writing test are significantly better than district or state averages.
Ms. Fanning points in particular to the fact that one-quarter or more of Buckhorn's freshmen enter as "struggling readers"--two or more grade levels behind--but nearly every student passes the graduation exam by 12th grade.
"We think we are really making a difference here," she said.
Coverage of pathways to college and careers is underwritten in part by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Vol. 29, Issue 10, Pages 20-23
"Teach by Example"
Will Fitzhugh [founder]
Consortium for Varsity Academics® [2007]
The Concord Review [1987]
Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes [1995]
National Writing Board [1998]
TCR Institute [2002]
730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24
Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776-3371 USA
978-443-0022; 800-331-5007
www.tcr.org; fitzhugh@tcr.org
Varsity Academics®
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It is well known that many preschool parents have become super-anxious trying to give their kids a leg up on kindergarten, but I didn't realize just how nutty things had become until I talked to several dozen preschool program directors.What child development experts know is that youngsters best learn the fundamentals of literacy through well-designed play. But lots of parents don't understand that. Here is what's going on in the preschool world of the greater Washington region and, I have no doubt, in other places across the country as well.
Parents are:
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I must have landed on an Internet marketing list, because I receive so many e-mails pitching my chances to win a scholarship to an online college. Like: "Hey, mom, apply for a full-tuition scholarship, earn your degree and have a career!" Are these scholarships for real? -- B.R.A few people will win these scholarships, but the advertised financial-aid awards are really hooks cast by companies in the lead-aggregation industry. They're marketing ploys.
Notice that virtually all the schools offering these scholarships are for-profit colleges. Higher-education experts tell me that on average, online for-profit colleges cost three times more than online nonprofit colleges.
Here' the inside story. Lead-generating marketers require scholarship seekers to provide their personal information on a scholarship application -- in reality, a "lead form." The marketers aggregate the forms and sell them to participating schools at a price of up to $100 per qualified lead. It's little wonder that you're receiving so many scholarship pitches.
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This is in response to a "Teen Rant" of Oct. 18 by Lizzie Logan, who complained about SAT tests. Lizzie believes that the tests are unfair because they give an advantage to students from rich families. Here is what I'd like to tell Lizzie:Yes, Virginia, the colleges do prefer knowledgeable students who are already fluent in trigonometry and calculus, who have a reasonably rich lexicon and who can convey their thoughts in the form of an essay. Otherwise, the students will have to spend two out of four college years taking remed