Have you thought about having your students create voice-over presentations to share with your class? Instead of (or in addition to) having your students give live class presentations, a voice-over PowerPoint can be easily recorded and shared through the LMS.
The 5 best things about using Jing, PowerPoint and the Discussion Board:
Even though the Supreme Court ordered a ban on the administration of corporal punishment to children almost a decade ago, it is shocking that schools across the country continue to adhere to the philosophy of ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’. The tragic case of Rouvanjit Rawla once again highlights this point. Rouvanjit, who was a student of Kolkata’s prestigious La Martiniere School for Boys, committed suicide after he was caned by his school principal and allegedly by four other teachers as well. What is truly despicable is that the school principal has no regrets about the incident and has admitted as much to the school’s board of governors and the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights investigating the case. This reflects a perverse streak among certain educators who have no qualms about using their position of authority to inflict physical torture on children. The problem is symptomatic of a virulent mindset within the education system that sees corporal punishment as a legitimate means to discipline students and build character. In reality all it does is promote a culture of violence.
The charter school’s popular director resigned abruptly at mid-year. One third of the faculty vowed not to return next year. E-mail allegations of poor management and failed communication clogged the in-boxes of parents, teachers and board members.
And that’s just in Excelsior Academy’s first year.
The K-8 charter school in Erda — Tooele County’s first charter — has had a rocky start.
So do many charter schools, which have to find or build a school house, navigate state laws and recruit a board and staff, typically with limited funds and expertise. The public schools receive money from the state for each pupil they enroll at the same rate as other public schools, but must raise funds for other expenses.
New schools often face opposition from parents and teachers when they don’t function as expected.
Recently I was invited to Paris to present at a prestigious international colloquium on autism and education, which was organized by the INS HEA, the French Ministry of Education’s training institute for special education teachers. Seventeen years earlier, I had left France because in those days, children with autism did not have the right to an education, and my son, Jeremy, was severely impacted by autism.
It was an emotional moment for me, standing there, addressing 500 attendees in a lecture hall of the Universite Paris Descatres in Bolulogne – Billancourt, explaining my son’s educational experience in the United States, where all children have the right to a free and appropriate education under IDEA.
In 1993, my family left France, where we had been living since 1981. Both Jeremy and his sister, Rebecca (who is neurotypical), were born in Paris at the time when children with autism were considered mentally ill, not developmentally disabled. They had no right to an education. Instead, they were enrolled in day programs on hospital sites, where they were treated with psychoanalysis. Parents had no right to visit the day program, nor did they receive any communication about what went on during the hours their child spent there.
Maggie Koerth-Baker, via a kind reader:
Earlier this week, the New York Times published the first part of a two-part series by John Tierney looking at the current state of women in the sciences–in particular, whether the playing field can ever really be level, or whether innate neural differences mean there will always be more men getting ahead in science and math careers than women.
When Dr. Larry Summers raised the issue to fellow economists and other researchers at a conference in 2005, his hypothesis was caricatured in the press as a revival of the old notion that “girls can’t do math.” But Dr. Summers said no such thing. He acknowledged that there were many talented female scientists and discussed ways to eliminate the social barriers they faced. Yet even if all these social factors were eliminated, he hypothesized, the science faculty composition at an elite school like Harvard might still be skewed by a biological factor: the greater variability observed among men in intelligence test scores and various traits.
Almost a decade ago, third graders at seven high-poverty schools in the Twin Cities got an offer: Stay in school, and we’ll give you $10,000 for college. All the students had to do was stay in the Minneapolis or St. Paul public schools, graduate, and go to college. Midday looks at how the experiment turned out.
In a class full of aspiring engineers, the big bad wolf had to do more than just huff and puff to blow down the three little pigs’ house.
To start, he needed to get past a voice-activated security gate, find a hidden door and negotiate a few other traps in a house that a pair of kindergartners here imagined for the pigs — and then pieced together from index cards, paper cups, wood sticks and pipe cleaners.
“Excellent engineering,” their teacher, Mary Morrow, told them one day early this month.
All 300 students at Clara E. Coleman Elementary School are learning the A B C’s of engineering this year, even those who cannot yet spell e-n-g-i-n-e-e-r-i-n-g. The high-performing Glen Rock school district, about 22 miles northwest of Manhattan, now teaches 10 to 15 hours of engineering each year to every student in kindergarten through fifth grade, as part of a $100,000 redesign of the science curriculum.
Ravitch was assistant secretary of education in the administration of George H.W. Bush and a board member of various right-wing think tanks, who has now become a leading critic of the market-based school “reform” that has been embraced by both Democrats and Republicans. Ravitch is “still looking” for an elected official to take a stand against these changes, but opposition is more likely to come from below. One encouraging piece of news is the landslide victory this week of the Caucus Of Rank-and-file Educators in the election for the leadership of the Chicago Teachers Union. –PG
As a part of the economic stimulus package of January 2009 — you may have heard of it — the federal government created a $100 billion education fund for states that were willing to take bold action to reform and improve their schools.
The fund, known as Race to the Top, is having the desired effect in many places. With state budgets in dire shape across the nation, it has provided a real incentive for states to look for ways to innovate in order to address real problems in the educational system — failing schools, bureaucratic deadlock, the achievement gap between rich and poor students.
In Wisconsin, though, what it has inspired is something more like a few pro-forma changes and half-hearted applications.
Wisconsin ranked in the bottom half of all the states that applied for Race to the Top funding in the first round in March. (The federal government placed our state’s application 26th out of 41 states and the District of Columbia that applied.)
Ten years after Wisconsin overhauled its licensure system for public school educators, the first big wave of teachers is set to advance under the rules – and reports are mixed on whether the change has made a difference.
Expectations for the new licensure regulations were high when they were first approved in 2000. In addition to requiring that teachers pass basic knowledge and skills tests and receive mentors for their first year in the profession, the rules also provided that teachers would have to demonstrate they had grown enough in their careers to attain a “professional” license.
For some beginning teachers, the new rules have been stressful additions to the start of an unfamiliar career with many bugs still left to be worked out. Others say they appreciate that they could set their own teaching goals and pursue related professional development activities while also reflecting on their experiences.
“I think teachers who really take the process seriously and do it with fidelity – they choose a goal that they really believe in and they want to achieve – that’s fine, that’s good, it serves its purpose,” said Judy Gundry, a citywide mentor for educators with initial teaching licenses in Milwaukee Public Schools.
Each year, Newsweek picks the best high schools in the country based on how hard school staffs work to challenge students with advanced placement college-level courses and tests. Just over 1600 schools–only six percent of all the public schools in the U.S.–made the list.
This year rankings have some fantastic new interactive features. We’ve teamed up with a data company called Factual to create individual profile pages for each school where students and faculty can comment and contribute. (For more information about how the rankings were calculated, see our FAQ.)
Mostly Milwaukee area high schools such as Rufus King (318) made the list. The only non-southeast Wisconsin high schools to make the list was Marshfield (370) and Eau Claire Memorial (1116). Marshfield High School offers 29 AP classes while Milwaukee Rufus King offers 0 and Eau Claire Memorial offers 14, via AP Course Ledger.
Related: Dane County High School AP course comparison.
Madison School District Administration 2.8MB PDF:
I. Introduction
A. Title or topic – District Evaluation Protocol – The presentation is in response to the need to provide timely and prioritized information to the Board of Education around programs and interventions used within the District. The report describes a recommended approach to formalizing the program evaluation process within the District.
B. Presenters
Kurt Kiefer – Chief Information Office/Director of Research and Evaluation
Lisa Wachtel– Executive Director of Teaching & Learning
Steve Hartley – Chief of Staff
C. Background information – As part of the strategic plan it was determined that priority must be given to systematically collect data around programs and services provided within the district. The purposes for such information vary from determining program and intervention effectiveness for specific student outcomes, to customer satisfaction, to cost effectiveness analyses. In addition, at the December 2009 Board meeting the issue of conducting program evaluation in specific curricular areas was discussed. This report provides specific recommendations on how to coordinate such investigations and studies.
D. Action requested – The administration is requesting that the Board approve this protocol such that it becomes the model by which priority is established for conducting curricular, program, and intervention evaluations into the future.
II. Summary of Current Information
A. Synthesis of the topic· School districts are expected to continuously improve student achievement and ensure the effective use of resources. Evaluation is the means by which school systems determine the degree to which schools, programs, departments, and staff meet their goals as defined by their roles and responsibilities. It involves the collection of data that is then transformed into useful results to inform decisions. In particular, program evaluation is commonly defined as the systematic assessment of the operation and/or outcomes of a program, compared to a set of explicit or implicit standards as a means of contributing to the improvement of the program.
Program evaluation is a process. The first step to evaluating a program is to have a clear understanding of why the evaluation is being conducted in the first place. Focusing the evaluation helps an evaluator identify the most crucial questions and how those questions can be realistically answered given the context of the program and resources available. With a firm understanding of programs and/or activities that might be evaluated, evaluators consider who is affected by the program (stakeholders) and who might receive and or use information resulting from the evaluation (audiences). It is critical that the administration work with the
Evaluating the effectiveness of Madison School District expenditures on curriculum (such as math and reading recovery) along with professional development (adult to adult programs) has long been discussed by some Board and community members.
Under enormous pressure to reform, the nation’s public schools are spending millions of dollars each year on gadgets from text-messaging devices to interactive whiteboards that technology companies promise can raise student performance.
Driving the boom is a surge in federal funding for such products, the industry’s aggressive marketing and an idea axiomatic in the world of education reform: that to prepare students kids for the 21st century, schools must embrace the technologies that are the media of modern life.
Increasingly, though, another view is emerging: that the money schools spend on instructional gizmos isn’t necessarily making things better, just different. Many academics question industry-backed studies linking improved test scores to their products. And some go further. They argue that the most ubiquitous device-of-the-future, the whiteboard — essentially a giant interactive computer screen that is usurping blackboards in classrooms across America — locks teachers into a 19th-century lecture style of instruction counter to the more collaborative small-group models that many reformers favor.
Excellent question.
Opportunity at the Top, a great report from Public Impact, points out that it’s great teachers that close achievement gaps but that all current efforts will fall well short of ensuring that all US students see the benefits.
The problem is that we’re trying to solve the wrong problem-there’s just no way to make the batch-print model work well for all kids. Batch processing age-cohorts in groups of 25 (or more) kids through print curriculum with one teacher has lots of limitations. The Public Agenda report shows it’s mathematically impossible to put a great teacher in every room and even if we did some kids would be behind while other kids were ahead.
Even the accompanying 3x For All report falls short of the answer because it is rooted in teacher-centric delivery. The solution is a blended learning environment with tiered staffing that leverages great teachers across hundreds of kids. If personalized digital learning made up 1/3 of the elementary day and 2/3 of the secondary day, school staffing patterns can be adjusted to include a variety of learning professionals-some on site and some remote.
After remaining incommunicado for nearly a month, La Martiniere for Boys issued a press release on Friday, denying responsibility for Rouvanjit Rawla’s death.
“As a school, we deeply regret the loss of young life. Attempts being made to hold the school entirely responsible are certainly misplaced. There are times when children need to be corrected and helped. The idea has always been to inculcate a sense of values amongst them. It is also important for the school to ensure that there is an environment conducive to learning and often corrective measures have to be taken to ensure this environment is not vitiated in the interest of the larger student community of the school,” read the statement, signed by governing board secretary Supriyo Dhar.
“The constant attack against the school has damaged the confidence of teachers and students who are totally innocent and are being unnecessarily drawn into unseemly public scrutiny.”
Five teachers of La Marts for Boys, including principal Sunirmal Chakravarthy, are facing charges of abetment to suicide after Rouvanjit’s father Ajay Rawla filed an FIR.
Houston ISD Superintendent Terry Grier has eliminated the position of manager of magnet programs. That means Dottie Bonner, who held the job since March 2002, is out. She submitted her letter of resignation effective Aug. 31, according to the district.
Grier instead has created a higher-level position, an assistant superintendent over school choice. Lupita Hinojosa, the former executive principal over the Wheatley High School feeder pattern, has been named to the post.
We know that changing anything related to magnets puts parents on edge, especially after former HISD Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra’s failed attempt to reduce busing to the specialty schools. A quick Internet search shows that magnet transportation also was a hot topic in Grier’s former district, San Diego Unified. The school board there voted in spring 2009 to eliminate busing to magnets to save money but reversed the decision after parent outcry, according to Voice of San Diego.
I talked to Grier this morning about what happened in San Diego, and he said the decision to end busing to magnet schools was the school board’s, not his. “(Deputy Superintendent) Chuck Morris and I counseled and advised and recommended that they not do this — that it would destroy the magnet program — but they did anyway.”
How does a university rate the quality of a professor? In K-12 education, you have standardized tests, and those scores have never been more widely used in evaluating the value added by a teacher.
But there’s no equivalent at the college level. College administrators tend to rely on student evaluations. If students say a professor is doing a good job, perhaps that’s enough.
Or maybe not. A new study reaches the opposite conclusion: professors who rate highly among students tend to teach students less. Professors who teach students more tend to get bad ratings from their students — who, presumably, would just as soon get high grades for minimal effort.
The study finds that professor rank, experience and stature are far more predictive of how much their students will learn. But those professors generally get bad ratings from students, who are effectively punishing their professors for attempting to push them toward deeper learning.
The study is called “Does Professor Quality Matter? Evidence from Random Assignment of Students to Professors.” It was written by Scott E. Carrell of the University of California, Davis and National Bureau of Economic Research; and James E. West of the U.S. Air Force Academy
Technical Services has planned to replace our Eudora student email system since 2008 and identified this as Activity 50 in the June 2010 Technology Plan, approved by the Board of Education. Consideration has also been given to replacing our GroupWise staff email system since instability of the web version ofthis system became a problem beginning in October 2009. Demands on our staff email system have always been greater due to our need for highly secure, robust and reliable local and remote access, shared calendaring, and integration with an archival system allowing for a seven year retention. This has been a complicated system and is core to many critical business and legal functions ofthe District.
An request for proposals (RFP) for alternatives to replace our student email, with the caveat that our staff email might be considered as well, was released in fall 2009, generating responses from nine vendors, representing 11 products. Both Microsoft’s Live@edu and Google’s Gmail have been final contenders for student email and following product reviews in March by 13 teachers, six technical staffand four administrators, consensus built around migrating both student and staff email to Gmail. In addition to email, Google Apps for Education includes access to a wide variety ofGoogle tools including Docs (word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, fonus) and Google calendar.
Financial considerations:
- Moving to Gmail for both students and staff will enable free email account hosting and cost $67,320/yr for the use ofPostini for staff email archiving. We will continue to use Novell’s ZenWorks for desktop application maintenance, at a cost of $28,000/yr through the 2010-2011 fiscal year. This approach would cost $95,320/yr. Discussion around creating and maintaining Gmail accounts from Infinite Campus and Lawson, as well as migrating staff calendars and live email accounts has not concluded whether consulting help will be required, although discussions with other school districts suggest we may not need external assistance. Should technical assistance be required we would hire consulting support on a time and materials basis, for this help.
- If instead, the District stayed with GroupWise bundled with ZenWorks, Novell’s annual maintenance would be $54,378/yr. Continuing use our current staff email archive product would cost $29,300/yr. This approach would cost $83,678/yr, an annual savings ofless than $12,000. However, this approach will continue to require growth in data storage and requires an estimated 0.5 FTE allocation to maintain.
Related: Yale delays switch to Gmail and Oregon educational system offers Google Apps.
In response to the questions raised at the June 7 meeting of the Performance and Achievement Committee, the following information is shared in hopes ofclarifying proposed changes to the Student Code of Conduct:
Will there be a more specific definition ofbullying than the one that currently exists in the Explanation of Conduct Rules and Terms?
The following definition comes from the draft Anti-Bullying & Anti-Harassment Protocol and it, or a similar definition, will be brought forward with the version of the revised Code for which Board approval will be sought in July:
Bullying is the intentional action by an individual or group of individuals to infiict physical, emotional or mental suffering on another individual or group of individuals when there is an imbalance of real or perceived power. Harassing and bullying behavior includes any electronic, written, verbal or physical act or conduct toward an individual which creates an objectively hostile or offensive environment that meets one or more of the following conditions:
Places the individual in reasonable fear of harm to one self or one’s property
Has a detrimental effect on the individual’s personal, physical or mental health
Has a detrimental effect on the individual’s academic performance
Has the effect of interfering with the individual’s ability to participate in or benefit from any curricular, extracurricular, recreational, or any other activity provided by the school
Has the intent to intimidate, annoy or alarm another individual in a manner likely to cause annoyance or harm without legitimate purpose
Has personal contact with another individual with the intent to threaten, intimidate or alarm that individual without legitimate purpose
I started covering education reform in 1983, with the release of the “Nation at Risk” report. In those days everybody had some idea for how we should reorganize the schools or change the curriculum–cut school size, cut class size, create vouchers, create charters, get back to basics, do less basics, increase local control, increase the federal role.
Some of the reforms seemed promising, but the results were disappointing, and tangential to the core issue: the relationship between teacher and student. It is mushy to say so, but people learn from people they love.
Today, aided by the realization that teacher quality is what matters most, a new cadre of reformers have come on the scene, many of them bred within the ranks of Teach for America. These are stubborn, data-driven types with a low tolerance for bullshit. The reform environment they find themselves in is both softhearted and hardheaded. They put big emphasis on the teaching relationship, but are absolutely Patton-esque when it comes to dismantling anything that interferes with that relationship. This includes union rules that protect bad and mediocre teachers, teacher contracts that prevent us from determining which educators are good and which need help, and state and federal laws that either impede reform or dump money into the ancien régime.
I have long considered high school drop-outs not only the least soluble of our education problems but the least clear. School districts have traditionally fudged the numbers, reporting their drop-out rates as only 5 or 6 percent, a grossly deceptive one-year rate.
The National Governors Association and other policymakers, ashamed of this charade, have put an end to it. Everyone is switching to a four-year drop-out rate, the percentage of ninth-graders (about 31 percent nationally) who do not receive diplomas four years later. The improved data has not only raised the level of the debate but also made possible a new report with some unnerving revelations about graduation rates.
My wife made the mistake of letting me go with her to her office last Sunday to catch up on work. While there I read the new Education Week report, “Graduation by the Numbers: Putting Data to Work for Student Success,” and kept squealing at one statistical surprise after another. I insisted on reading each one to her, delaying her efforts to get back outside on a nice weekend day.
Graduation by the Numbers: Putting Data to Work for Student Success.
Related: “They’re all rich, white kids and they’ll do just fine” — NOT!.
via a Maurice Fisher email:
Dear Subscriber —
Could you share the following message with your STAFF, TEACHERS OR PARENTS? We are offering a complimentary copy of Gifted Education Press Quarterly. They would need to email me directly to receive our SUMMER 2010 issue. My email address is:
gifted@giftededpress.com
Please encourage your colleagues and friends to email me for a complimentary online subscription to GEPQ.
I need your help in locating new subscribers, and would greatly appreciate your asking colleagues and friends to contact me. We are now in a major political battle with federal and state governments to maintain gifted education programs in the public schools. I need your support in making Gifted Education Press Quarterly a resource available to all educators and parents who want to maintain and expand programs for gifted students! Your colleagues and friends should email me at: gifted@giftededpress.com. Thank you.
We’re all on a mission to advance the well-being of gifted education, and we all share a vision of excellence in this field. At this time in our nation’s history, it is important to maintain our leadership in education, science and the humanities. Therefore, I am asking the readers of Gifted Education Press Quarterly for your support to insure that we can continue publishing this Quarterly. Please consider sending a few dollars to help defray the costs of producing this important periodical in the gifted education field or ordering some of our books. We have been publishing GEPQ for 23 years with the goal of including all viewpoints on educating the gifted. Our address is: Gifted Education Press; 10201 Yuma Court; P.O. Box 1586; Manassas, VA 20109. Thank you.
I would also like to give you a special treat. Joan Smutny, the editor of the Illinois Association for Gifted Children Journal has given me permission to place the entire Spring 2010 Journal on the Gifted Education Press web site in PDF format. This is a very important journal issue in the gifted education field because it contains 27 excellent articles on Advocating for Gifted Education Programs. I invite you to read and/or print any or all of these articles from our web site. There is no charge for accessing this journal! Just go to my web site at www.GiftedEdPress.com and click the link for Gifted Advocacy – Illinois Association for Gifted Children Journal. Happy reading!
Members of the National Advisory Panel for Gifted Education Press Quarterly are:
Dr. Hanna David — Ben Gurion University at Eilat, Israel; Dr. James Delisle — Kent State University; Dr. Jerry Flack — University of Colorado; Dr. Howard Gardner — Harvard University; Ms. Margaret Gosfield – Editor, Gifted Education Communicator, Published by the California Association for the Gifted; Ms. Dorothy Knopper — Publisher, Open Space Communications; Mr. James LoGiudice — Bucks County, Pennsylvania IU No. 22; Dr. Bruce Shore — McGill University, Montreal, Quebec; Ms. Joan Smutny — National-Louis University, Illinois; Dr. Colleen Willard-Holt — Dean, Faculty of Education, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario; Ms. Susan Winebrenner — Consultant, San Marcos, California; Dr. Ellen Winner — Boston College.
Sincerely Yours in the Best Interests of the Gifted Children of America,
Maurice
Maurice Fisher, Ph.D.
Publisher
Gifted Education Press
Christian Oliver and Kang Buseong:
South Korea has some of the world’s most over-educated bakers. In one class in Seoul teaching muffin and scone-making, there are graduates in Russian, fine art and animation. For South Korean parents, the world’s highest spenders on their children’s education, something is going horribly wrong.
“I wanted to ease the burden on my parents by earning just a little something and finding a job that could give me something more dependable than temporary work,” said one 29-year-old trainee baker. Since graduating in art she could only find part-time work as a waitress. Like so many young people asked about finding work in a socially competitive society where unemployment is a stigma, she was too embarrassed to give her name.
South Koreans often attribute their economic success to a passion for education. But the country of 48m has overdone it, with 407 colleges and universities churning out an over-abundance of graduates.
B.C. Education Minister Margaret MacDiarmid is laying down the law to the Vancouver School Board — ordering trustees to send her a draft budget by June 18.
She also wants trustees to consider a number of cost-cutting options from last week’s comptroller-general’s report on the district’s finances.
The board currently faces a $17-million budget deficit, and has to submit a final and balanced budget to MacDiarmid by June 30.
Last week’s report recommended almost $12 million in other cost saving schemes.
They include closing schools, winning contract concessions from workers and charging higher rent to childcare centres.
I graduated from West Point in 1998, served several combat tours, then received a master’s degree from the Harvard Kennedy School so that I could instruct the cadets in politics, policy, and strategy. I have worked on the West Point faculty for two years, and this summer I’ll return to the operational Army in Afghanistan. From my own limited perspective, I can say that the Academy is falling heartbreakingly short of its potential to prepare young officers.
While West Point has recently made an effort to change with the times by adding a handful of elective courses in counterinsurgency, expanding its foreign immersion programs, and hosting several high level conferences on key Army issues, the founding principle of the cadet system remains the same: We lecture the cadets on professionalism but we practice bureaucracy. To summarize the difference, professional cultures debate, discuss, and continually innovate to stay effective in the changing world. Bureaucracies churn out ever-restrictive rules and seek to capture every eventuality in codified routines.
Consider this: From day one at the academy every possible situation that a cadet could conceivably encounter is accounted for by strict regulations. Not sure how many inches should be between your coat hangers, whether you can hold your girlfriend’s hand on campus, or how your socks should be marked? Consult the regulations. Moreover, all activity is subjected to the cadet performance system, which essentially assigns a grade to every measurable event in a cadet’s life (think shoe shines, pushups and pop quizzes) then ruthlessly ranks the entire class from first to last. Cadets at the top of the list get the jobs and postings they want after graduation. Those near the bottom end up driving trucks at Fort Polk, Louisiana.
Detroit Public Schools will be awarding $25,000 in Target gift cards to parents, incentives to get them to submit contact information to the district.
The contact information – which includes up-to-date phone numbers, e-mail addresses and home addresses – will be used as part of a strategy to retain students and to have ongoing communications with parents about district and school news, school closing information and emergencies.
The new national standards are too timid to recommend that high school students read complete history (or other nonfiction) books, or that high school students should write serious research papers, like the Extended Essays required for the International Baccalaureate Diploma.
Even the College Board, when it put together “101 books for the college-bound student” included only four or five nonfiction books, and none was a history book like Battle Cry of Freedom, or Washington’s Crossing.
For several reasons it has become taboo to discuss asking our students to read complete nonfiction books and write substantial term papers. Not sure why…
In fact, since the early days of Achieve’s efforts on standards, no one has taken a stand in recommending serious history research papers for high school students, and nonfiction books have never made the cut either.
Since 1987 or so it has seemed just sensible to me that, as long as colleges do assign history and other nonfiction books on their reading lists, and they also assign research papers, perhaps high school students should read a nonfiction book and write a term paper each year, to get in academic shape, as it were.
After all, in helping students prepare for college math, many high schools offer calculus. For college science, high school students can get ready with biology, chemistry and physics courses. To get ready for college literature courses, students read good novels and Shakespeare plays. Students can study languages and government and even engineering and statistics in their high schools, but they aren’t reading nonfiction books and they aren’t writing research papers.
The English departments, who are in charge of reading and writing in the high schools, tend to assign novels, poetry, and plays rather than nonfiction books, and they have little interest in asking for serious research papers either.
For 23 years, I have been publishing exemplary history research papers by high school students from near and far [39 countries so far], and it gradually became clearer to me that perhaps most high school students were not being asked to write them.
In 2002, with a grant from the Shanker Institute, I was able to commission (the only) study of the assignment of history term papers in U.S. public high schools, and we found that most students were not being asked to do them. This helped to explain why, even though The Concord Review is the only journal in the world to publish such academic papers, more than 19,000 of the 20,000 U.S. public high schools never submitted one.
The nonfiction readings suggested in the new national standards, such as The Declaration of Independence, Letter From Birmingham Jail, and one chapter from The Federalist Papers, would not tax high school students for more than an hour, much less time than they now spend on Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies, and the like. What would the equivalent be for college preparation in math: long division? decimals?
High school graduates who arrive at college without ever having read a complete nonfiction book or written a serious term paper, even if they are not in remedial courses (and more than one million are each year, according to the Diploma to Nowhere report), start way behind their IB and private school peers academically, when it comes to reading and writing at the college level.
Having national standards which would send our high school graduates off to higher education with no experience of real term papers and no complete nonfiction books doesn’t seem the right way to make it likely that they will ever get through to graduation.
“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
http://www.tcr.org; fitzhugh@tcr.org
Varsity Academics®
www.tcr.org/blog
The staff of Normandy Crossing Elementary School outside Houston eagerly awaited the results of state achievement tests this spring. For the principal and assistant principal, high scores could buoy their careers at a time when success is increasingly measured by such tests. For fifth-grade math and science teachers, the rewards were more tangible: a bonus of $2,850.
But when the results came back, some seemed too good to be true. Indeed, after an investigation by the Galena Park Independent School District, the principal, assistant principal and three teachers resigned May 24 in a scandal over test tampering.
The district said the educators had distributed a detailed study guide after stealing a look at the state science test by “tubing” it — squeezing a test booklet, without breaking its paper seal, to form an open tube so that questions inside could be seen and used in the guide. The district invalidated students’ scores.
Of all the forms of academic cheating, none may be as startling as educators tampering with children’s standardized tests. But investigations in Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts, Nevada, Virginia and elsewhere this year have pointed to cheating by educators. Experts say the phenomenon is increasing as the stakes over standardized testing ratchet higher — including, most recently, taking student progress on tests into consideration in teachers’ performance reviews.
Somewhat related: Wisconsin’s annual student test, the WKCE has often been criticized for its lack of rigor.
Verona school leaders are standing by their warning of potential retaliatory gang violence at the high school or Hometown Days this weekend.
The warning the Verona Area School District issued Wednesday night comes about six weeks after the fatal shooting of Antonio Perez on Madison’s East Side. Madison police have said they believe the slaying was gang-related.
Police in Madison, Middleton and Verona have been on alert for potential gang retaliation since Perez was killed in April 28. Authorities said the threat of violence between the Clanton 14 gang and the Carnales gang has been on their radar.
Verona Area School District Superintendent Dean Gorrell explained Thursday that it was his decision, and not by direction of law enforcement, that a warning on the threat of violence was announced Wednesday night.
In the center of Boston is the Boston Common, where there are several small statues of the ducklings made famous by the book “Make Way for Ducklings”. Long before I became a parent, I bought a painting from a local Boston artist that depicted the statues of the ducklings from that children’s book. In a decision of radical faith in the future, and one that involved finding a few extra dollars that I, as a graduate student, didn’t really have at the time, I bought it and decided that if I was ever to have a child, I would hang it in their room. I know that someday my daughter will outgrow it, but for now, it hangs above her desk in her room. I hope to visit the Boston Commons with her some day and show her the original statues that depict the characters from the book which she, of course, has a copy of. If such a visit takes place some year, it will be after my summer school class has ended for the summer.
I know of many people who claim that that just don’t teach summer school. The pay is often not great, and it takes away from time that might be spent on research and course development. However, someone must teach summer classes, which reminds me of the question of the “tragedy of the commons.” Like the farmers who all brought their cows to graze in the commons in the center of town, each individual professor is asking whether they, as individuals, wish to teach summer school. Something similar happens as is found when the common grazing land is depleted as too many cows are brought to the commons to graze. In both cases, since a “public good” is involved, the individual decisions may not lead to an optimum result. Too few professors may end up choosing to teach at that time.
The Board has two work sessions scheduled for this month.
The first, today, Thursday June 10 from 6:00pm to 8:00pm, will be on Math. No agenda details are available but there is sure to be a powerpoint and it is sure to appear on the District web site soon. I have to believe that the Board is looking for a report on the implementation of the curricular alignment, the implementation of the Theory of Action from the High School textbook adoption, and some update on student academic progress in math.
Next week, on Wednesday, June 16, from 4:00pm to 5:30pm, will be a Board Work Session on Advanced Learning. I honestly cannot imagine what the District staff will have to report
Do entrepreneurs need a college education? Flickr and Hunch co-founder Caterina Fake may have argued that the best way to become an entrepreneur is to drop out of college, but Read Write Web profiles one college entrepreneur who disagrees. Jay Rodrigues is a 21-year-old University of Pennsylvania junior who secured Series A funding for his college-calendaring system start-up, DormNoise. “Don’t drop out of school, because for every Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, there are hundreds of entrepreneurs who drop out and go nowhere,” he advises. “At least if you stay in school, you’ll have an education.” But it isn’t easy juggling his roles as CEO and college student–Rodrigues says he works about 16 hours a day. “Be 150 million percent sure this is what you want,” he says. For more on successful college entrepreneurs, check out our 2010 list of America’s Coolest College Start-ups.
With a little tweaking “The Lottery” would fit nicely into the marketing materials for the Harlem Success Academy, a public charter school founded by Eva Moskowitz, a former New York City councilwoman. On one level, this heart-tugging documentary recounts the experiences of four children competing in the academy’s annual intake lottery. On another, it’s a passionate positioning of charter schools as the saviors of public education.
Though infinitely classier — and easier on the eyes — than “Cartel,” the recent documentary exploring public education, this latest charter-school commercial is no less one-sided. Virtually relinquishing the floor to Ms. Moskowitz (who delights in vilifying the “thuggish” tactics of the United Federation of Teachers) and her supporters, the director, Madeleine Sackler, captures a smidgen of naysayers in mostly unflattering lights. Ignoring critical issues like financial transparency, Ms. Sackler sells her viewpoint with four admirable, striving families, each of whose tots could charm the fleas off a junkyard dog.
The Mayor’s office was kind enough to allow me to go to the media interviews with the 3 candidates for police chief.
First up was Interim Chief John Diaz. Low-key is definitely the by-word here (maybe even anemic). There is no doubting his sincerity and commitment to SPD. However, when I asked him about his thoughts on policing in the school district or programs to curb youth violence, I got a whole lotta nothing. I followed up, thinking maybe he didn’t understand me, but it was just a lot of blah, blah, blah about working with the district. For my narrow perspective, it was disappointing.
This fall, Jeanet Ugalde will attend UW-Madison on a full scholarship to study nursing. But first, she’ll be among the initial group of students receiving a diploma as part of a Madison School District program designed to give first-generation college-bound students the training to succeed in high school and post-secondary education.
“When I got the (UW acceptance) letter … I cried and I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t believe it. When I get the (tuition) bill around July and it says ‘zero,’ I will be so amazed,” Ugalde, the first person in her family to graduate from high school, said of being accepted to college.
Started three years ago at East High and now running in all four Madison high schools, AVID, which stands for Advancement Via Individual Determination, is designed to give “students in the middle” who may be the first in their families to graduate high school and attend college the training to succeed. The correlating TOPS — Teens of Promise — program is focused on extracurricular activities, including summer work internships.
NCES. Wisconsin spends an average of $10,791 per student. Madison spends $15,241.30 per student, according to the 2009-2010 citizen’s budget. More here.
Tuition has been increasing at such an alarming rate that some say we’re witnessing yet another bubble in America — this time not in the stock market or in housing, but in college tuition.
Stephen Burd, of the Education Policy Program at the New America Foundation, explains in this interview how federal student loans became non dischargeable in bankruptcy in 1998, and then private loans became non dischargeable as well in 2005. Taken together, these laws mean that students who are overpaying for degrees now with borrowed money will suffer the consequences for life.
Here are 8 reasons to believe we’re in the middle of a college tuition bubble (that’s about to burst).
1) Tuition is, and has been, increasing at double the rate of inflation
Following is a message from the Superintendent and VAHS Administration. Please address any inquiries to VAHS Administration or Dr. Gorrell.
Through our contacts with the Dane County Gang Task Force we have recieved information that indicates in the coming days the VAHS campus or Verona Hometown Days are possible locations for an altercation between two rival gangs. These gangs are the Clanton 14 gang and the Carnales gang. These are the two gangs alleged to have connections with the murder of Antonio Perez last month.
Given this information the following security measures will be put in place immediately:
Tomorrow and Friday we will have an additional VPD Officer stationed on campus working with Officer Truscott. Also, regular VPD patrol officers will be in the area patrolling both the VAHS campus and the neighboring residential area in their squad cars.
Members of the administrative team will also be out patrolling the interior and exterior of the buildings throughout the day. Special attention will be paid to monitoring the two designated K-Wing and two designated main building entrances. All other entrances are to be kept closed and locked. This too will be monitored by the VPD and HS administration.
Given current information the Administrative team, in consultation with our partners in law enforcement, believes that these are prudent preventative steps. If additional information becomes available we will alter this plan accordingly. We ask all staff members to do their usual stellar job of remaining vigilant and reporting anything of concern to the Administrative Team at once.
Keeping staff informed is a priority and more information will be provided if and when it becomes available.
Thank You,
Dr. Gorrell
Ms. Hammen
Ms. Williams
Mr. Murphy
Mr. Boehm
It’s a well-known fact that there’s a severe gender imbalance in undergraduate college populations: about 57 percent of undergrads these days are female and only 43 percent male, the culmination of a trend over the past few decades in which significantly fewer young men than young women either graduate from high school or enroll in college. It’s also a well-known fact—at least among college admissions officers—that many private institutions have tried to close the gender gap by quietly relaxing admissions standards for male applicants, essentially practicing affirmative action for young men. What they’re doing is perfectly legal, even under Title IX, the 1972 federal law that bans sex discrimination by institutions of higher learning receiving federal funds. Title IX contains an exemption that specifically allows private colleges that aren’t professional or technical institutions to prefer one sex over the other in undergraduate admissions. Militant feminists and principled opponents of affirmative action might complain about the discrimination against women that Title IX permits, but for many second- and third-tier liberal arts colleges lacking male educational magnets such as engineering and business programs, the exemption may be a lifesaver, preventing those smaller and less prestigious schools from turning into de facto women’s colleges that few young people of either sex might want to attend.
Now, however, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has decided to turn over this rock carefully set in place by admissions committees. The commission launched an investigation last fall into the extent of male preferences in admissions decisions at 19 various institutions of higher learning. These include public universities (where such preferences are illegal under Title IX); elite private institutions such as Georgetown and Johns Hopkins; smaller liberal arts schools (Gettysburg College, with 2,600 undergraduates, is on the list); religious schools (the Jesuit-run University of Richmond and Messiah College in Grantham, Pa.); and historically black Virginia Union University, also in Richmond. On May 14 the commission’s general counsel, David P. Blackwood, announced that four of the 19 schools–Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, Gettysburg, and Messiah—had raised legal issues concerning compliance with the commission’s subpoenas, and that Virginia Union, while responding politely, had not complied in any way. Blackwood said that the commission might have to ask the Justice Department for help in obtaining admissions data from Virginia Union.
This is the second in a series of interviews with thought leaders in education reform. Today we interview former West Virginia Governor Bob Wise about personalized learning, equity and policy changes that will enable a better system for our students.
What is the vision for personalized learning?
For personalized learning, it’s delivering high-quality content to children and students wherever they live. I mean, whatever their conditions, their life situations, their educaiton surroundings. It’s being able to customize education so that we engage each student where they want to be, and make it as relevant as possible to them.
Personalization to me is the sense of making sure there is a personal graduation plan for every student, making sure a direct relationship bteween at least one adult in the building and one student.
Even if you are using data…there is data that immediately is picking up whether they are increasing absences, etc…and someone is charged with intervening. How do we take what is a largely impersonal experience, to using technology that is actually helping education become a more personal experience.
Can a $50 stack of paperbacks do as much for a child’s academic fortunes as a $3,000 stint in summer school?
Researchers think so. Now, an experimental program in seven states — including the Chicago Public Schools — will give thousands of low-income students an armful of free books this summer.
Research has shown that giving books to kids might be as effective at keeping them learning over the summer as summer school — and a lot cheaper. The big questions are whether the effect can be replicated on a large scale — and whether it can help reduce the achievement gap between low-income and middle-class students.
Schools have always tried to get students to read over the summer. For middle-class students, that’s not as big a deal. They usually have access to books, says Richard Allington, a reading researcher at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville.
The 14-hour study sessions were over but the nerves remained for Tong Dan as she squeezed in some last-minute cramming during a lunch break Monday from the most important test she and millions of other Chinese teens will ever take.
Each year, about 10 million high school seniors across China take the “gaokao” — the exam that is the sole determinant for whether they get into a university. About 68 percent of test takers this year are expected to pass — but for the vast majority who don’t it means they head straight into the search for a low-paying, blue-collar job.
But even a college degree no longer guarantees graduates a good job in China’s increasingly competitive workplace. With about 700,000 of last year’s university graduates still unemployed, there is added pressure on students like 17-year-old Tong to do well on the two-day college entrance exam and gain one of the few coveted slots at the country’s elite schools.
China has poured billions of dollars into a massive university expansion plan over the past few decades, meaning the number of graduates will skyrocket to a record 6.3 million this year, compared to 1 million in 1998. The expansion has also led to a widening gap between the quality of education found in many universities, especially those in poorer provinces, and the top schools.
As the number of black children in Dallas ISD declined over the last decade, the number of black activists closely observing school board meetings has dwindled to a few in the audience.
And some leaders of a civil rights group that once battled for equal education in Dallas schools are now urging black parents to send their kids elsewhere. Some say the rising attention to the needs of children learning English is overshadowing the needs of black students.
As their focus wanes from Dallas ISD, some fear a powerful lobby for the interests of the district’s minority students could be lost.
“It’s not a surprise to anybody that blacks are leaving DISD,” said Juanita Wallace, president of the Dallas NAACP. “We know that Hispanics are really taking over the school district. The whites are completely gone, and now blacks are going.”
If you run up big credit card bills buying a new home theater system and can’t pay it off after a few years, bankruptcy judges can get rid of the debt. They may even erase loans from a casino.
But if you borrow money to get an education and can’t afford the loan payments after a few years of underemployment, that’s another matter entirely. It’s nearly impossible to get rid of the debt in bankruptcy court, even if it’s a private loan from for-profit lenders like Citibank or the student loan specialist Sallie Mae.
This part of the bankruptcy law is little known outside education circles, but ever since it went into effect in 2005, it’s inspired shock and often rage among young adults who got in over their heads. Today, they find themselves in the same category as people who can’t discharge child support payments or criminal fines.
I wore my high school ring for more than 40 years. It became black and misshapen and I finally took it off. But now I have a new one, courtesy of the organizing committee of my 55th high school reunion, which I attended over the Memorial Day weekend.
I wore the ring (and will wear it again) because although I have degrees from two Ivy league schools and have taught at U.C. Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, Columbia and Duke, Classical High School (in Providence, RI) is the best and most demanding educational institution I have ever been associated with. The name tells the story. When I attended, offerings and requirements included four years of Latin, three years of French, two years of German, physics, chemistry, biology, algebra, geometry, calculus, trigonometry, English, history, civics, in addition to extra-curricular activities, and clubs — French Club, Latin Club, German Club, Science Club, among many others. A student body made up of the children of immigrants or first generation Americans; many, like me, the first in their families to finish high school. Nearly a 100 percent college attendance rate. A yearbook that featured student translations from Virgil and original poems in Latin.
Packed neatly on the bookshelves in Mark Changizi’s Carnegie Building office sit stacks of notebooks containing hundreds of questions. Why do we have fingernails? Why are organs packaged in such a specific way inside our bodies? Why does skin wrinkle when it gets wet? Why are our hands shaped the way they are?
These are among the questions in the notebooks–26 and counting–that Changizi fills with potential research ideas he poses as queries about the design and behavior of biological systems.
So far questions in the notebook have yielded highly acclaimed research findings, including why primates see in color and have forward-facing eyes, why optical illusions succeed at tricking our eyes, and why written characters across languages share common shapes.
Changizi’s groundbreaking explanations have landed on the pages of The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, and New Scientist. In May 2009, his findings will appear in Changizi’s first-ever trade book The Vision Revolution, published by Benbella Books.
Boston school officials this week will unveil a more stringent residency policy for students applying to the city’s three exam schools, responding to growing concerns that out-of-towners are improperly gaining admission.
The proposed policy, which officials will present to the School Committee on Wednesday, would allow only city residents to apply to Boston Latin School, Boston Latin Academy, and the John D. O’Bryant School of Math and Science.
Currently, nonresidents can take the entrance exam for those schools; they must establish residency shortly before admission decisions are made.
“It’s a fairly significant change,” said Rachel Skerritt, chief of staff for Superintendent Carol R. Johnson. “We want to make sure students who have access to the stellar education at the exam schools live in the city.”
Ann Larson’s recent IHE column, in which she dissects the popular idea that that a college education is the key to upward mobility for lower-income Americans, resonated for me in a personal way, because I have two nephews who joined the military after they ran out of money for college tuition. One, in the National Guard, spent a year in Iraq and could be called up again. The other will have shipped out to Afghanistan when this column is posted.
Both are highly intelligent young men who made what seem to a fond and panicked aunt to be foolish decisions based on false assumptions, though they would tell you otherwise. Our politics are very different, but neither joined up out of a fervent desire to further a political cause. It was a trade-off, in both cases: service in return for educational support. And because they are honorable people, they are prepared to give their lives to fulfill their end of the agreement.
Larson discusses the case of “Valerie,” who immigrated from Haiti with the dream of attending college, and is now saddled with student-loan debts she is unlikely to ever be able to pay off given the jobs available to her. A recent NYT article describes a middle-class family in a similar economic situation. My nephews, like many other young people, saw the military as an alternative to a life that is crippled by either crushing debt or limited vocational opportunities. But, Larson argues,
Total enrollment in North Texas public schools increased for every major ethnic group from 2000 to 2010 – but the gains are anything but uniform across the region. This interactive map shows enrollment gains and losses, by ethnic group, at local public schools with more than 100 students over the past decade.
Use the box below to select a school district and a racial category. Click the Submit button to see the results.
The Perry Preschool was the idea of a man named David Weikart. He was a school system administrator in the small city of Ypsilanti, Michigan back in the late 1950s. When he took the job, he was shocked to discover how many poor African-American children were doing badly in school. A lot of them were being assigned to special education classes, getting held back, and failing to graduate from high school.
Weikart wanted to do something about it, but school officials did not share his enthusiasm. They didn’t want him changing things, messing around in their schools.
So rather than change the schools, Weikart decided to invent a new kind of school – a pre-school for 3- and 4-year-olds. His hope was that preschool could boost children’s IQs.
This was a radical notion. Most people believed everyone was born with a certain amount of intelligence, a quotient, and it never changed. They had faith in IQ tests to measure intelligence. And they thought intelligence mattered a lot, that it was the key to success in school, and life.
Jennifer Guerra & Sarah Hulett:
It’s 7:15 on a chilly spring morning kids from all over New Orleans are coming in by the bus load to KIPP Central City Academy and Primary. A group of sixth graders is hanging outside, waiting for the bell to ring. So I ask them what they think about their school. Three of the boys say they like it just fine. The fourth one, Troy Picard, is not a fan.
“No, their rules are just too strict for me,” says Picard, prompting a quick rebuttal from his friend Carl Lacoste.
“Troy, I disagree what you said about strict rules,” Lacoste says. “The only rules we have are work hard and be nice.”
“But a lot of other rules fall under that category,” Picard says.
Students aren’t the only ones with rules. Jonathan Bertch, who runs the business side of things at KIPP Central City, says adults at the school have rules, too. The main one is “no excuses.” As in: All those excuses you hear about why inner city kids can’t succeed? Out the window.
Spurred by state budget crunches and an angry public mood, Republican and some Democratic leaders are focusing with increasing intensity on public workers and the unions that represent them, casting them as overpaid obstacles to good government and demanding cuts in their often-generous benefits.
Unlike past battles over the high cost of labor, this time pitched battles over wages and pensions are being waged from Sacramento to Springfield to New York City and the conflict is marked by its bipartisan tone, with public employee unions emerging as an intransigent public enemy number one in cities and state capitals across the country.
They’re the whipping boys for a new generation of governors who, thanks to a tanking economy and an assist from editorial boards, feel freer than ever to make political targets out of what was once a protected liberal class of teachers, cops, and other public servants.
Attention, children in Milwaukee Public Schools: Your Reading Adventure Awaits!
It has lots of stories! It wants you to write out answers to lots of questions about what goes on in the stories!
It has lists of spelling words! It will teach you the difference between common nouns and proper nouns! How to use proofreading marks! What to learn from the sequence of vowels and consonants in words!
It has a fair amount of phonics-related skill building, but it’s not as strong on that as some phonics-oriented people would like!
It will require you to do a lot of work, if you’re going to succeed! It’s not easy! I stumbled during an exercise in a fifth-grade reading book on matching English words to their foreign language roots, and I thought I was smarter than a fifth-grader!
In Harlem–as elsewhere in this city, state, and nation–there is a sharply rising struggle between teachers’ unions and black parents.
That dispute is over parental choice of schools, especially in regards to publicly financed charter schools which can, and usually do, refuse to recognize teachers’ unions. Geoffrey Canada, whose Harlem Children’s Zone is nationally known for making charter schools a working part of the community, recently sent out a rallying cry to black parents everywhere when he said, “Nobody’s coming. Nobody is going to save our children. You have to save your own children.”
In Harlem, where thousands of parents apply for charter schools on civil rights grounds, State Senator Bill Perkins–whose civil liberties record I’ve previously praised in this column–is in danger of losing his seat because of his fierce opposition to charter schools. The UFT contributes to his campaigns. His opponent, Basil Smikle–who has worked for Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Bill Clinton Foundation, and, unfortunately, Michael Bloomberg–says: “Education has galvanized the community.”
1833: Founding of Kalamazoo College, Michigan’s oldest college campus.
1874: Kalamazoo paves the way for tax-funded education in Michigan when the state Supreme Court affirms Kalamazoo’s right to levy taxes to operate a public high school.
1896: Kalamazoo Public Library is among the first 10 in the country, and the second in Michigan after Detroit, to create a children’s section with its own librarian.
1903: Founding of Western Michigan University, now one of the 50 largest universities in the country.
1906: Kalamazoo Central High School creates state’s first high school marching band.
1920: Kalamazoo Central becomes the country’s second high school with a drama class and opens Chenery Auditorium, one of the largest high school auditoriums of that era.
1958: Kalamazoo College creates its study-abroad program, one of the first in the country.
A good friend of mine, James, has an interview this morning. It is quite important. If he is successful, it will mean quite a lot in the future. If he fails, he will certainly be at a disadvantage.
Given the importance of doing well, he has spent some time preparing and rehearsing answers to practice questions. What he wears to the interview has been carefully thought out as first impressions are very important. There is a lot riding on the 15 minutes he will spend being questioned.
James, however, is not taking this very seriously. I am confident that he does not have the faintest idea how important this is. In fact, it is fairly likely that he will not even realise that he has to do an interview at all until he is right there in the room.
James is two years old. His interview is for the purpose of whether he will get into primary school, in a couple of years. There is nothing particularly special about the school he is applying to; its admission policies are the same as a lot of schools in Hong Kong.
I have been known to produce pieces of pure fiction in this column from time to time, but I am not making this up. This actually happens. Schools really employ people to interview two-year-olds and make a decision about each toddler’s academic future.
It’s a story of an industry that may sound familiar.
The buyers think what they’re buying will appreciate in value, making them rich in the future. The product grows more and more elaborate, and more and more expensive, but the expense is offset by cheap credit provided by sellers eager to encourage buyers to buy.
Buyers see that everyone else is taking on mounds of debt, and so are more comfortable when they do so themselves; besides, for a generation, the value of what they’re buying has gone up steadily. What could go wrong? Everything continues smoothly until, at some point, it doesn’t.
Yes, this sounds like the housing bubble, but I’m afraid it’s also sounding a lot like a still-inflating higher education bubble. And despite (or because of) the fact that my day job involves higher education, I think it’s better for us to face up to what’s going on before the bubble bursts messily.
College has gotten a lot more expensive. A recent Money magazine report notes: “After adjusting for financial aid, the amount families pay for college has skyrocketed 439 percent since 1982. … Normal supply and demand can’t begin to explain cost increases of this magnitude.”
Consumers would balk, except for two things.
First — as with the housing bubble — cheap and readily available credit has let people borrow to finance education. They’re willing to do so because of (1) consumer ignorance, as students (and, often, their parents) don’t fully grasp just how harsh the impact of student loan payments will be after graduation; and (2) a belief that, whatever the cost, a college education is a necessary ticket to future prosperity.
Related: Wal-Mart partners with online school to offer college credit to workers.
Mr Green, speaking at the Hay Festival on the Welsh borders on Saturday, said it would be of particular relevance to those who would grow up to become part of the sub-prime market.
“Part of the answer lies in financial literacy education in schools,” said Mr Green, promoting his 2009 book Good Value: Reflections on Money, Morality and an Uncertain World.
“I really don’t think it’s wise in the circumstances of modern life to have people come out of the school system into working life or, sadly, often not working life, without the very basics of financial literacy.”
Mr Green, who has been chairman of HSBC since 2005, and is also an ordained priest, was keen to stress that there was a social imperative for banking services to be open to those on lower incomes.
However, he said some forms of lending were unacceptable, citing 110pc mortgages, and said those at the bottom end of the market may not have had proper understanding or access to information when taking out such loans.
If one knew nothing about the backgrounds of the young men and women gathered in the student union at City College, the end-of-semester scene could be mistaken as being merely poignant instead of extraordinary. More than 60 students filled their paper plates with food as they awaited the announcement of scholarship winners. They beamed when their names were called for having earned a scholarship or admission to a four-year university. They applauded each other’s successes. They posed for photographs. Young mothers clutched their children’s hands.
What was remarkable was how the master of ceremonies, Michael McPartlin, did not need to look at his notes to talk about the students’ accomplishments – or even the final exam, child-care or work obligations that prevented some from attending. He knew all the little details and cared about getting them right. What was even more remarkable were the odds that each of the students had to overcome to be celebrating the successful conclusion of an academic year.
In a nod to the rising cost of college tuition and the burden of massive student loan debt on graduates, a growing number of universities are stepping up with “no-loan” aid pledges.
More than 50 colleges — including elite private schools and flagship state universities in Virginia and Maryland — have eliminated or capped loans in their financial aid portfolios for some or all students, promising enough aid in grants and work-study to cover most of the gap between what they charge and what each student can afford to pay.
At a handful of private universities with sizable endowments, including Princeton, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, the goal is quite literally to eliminate loan debt for most graduating seniors.
“It’s going down, and it’s going down dramatically,” said Amy Gutmann, president of Penn. “A typical family earning $90,000 a year attends Penn tuition-free. A typical family earning $40,000 a year attends Penn with tuition, room and board covered.”
Wander Ursinus College and you’d think you had stepped into an Ivy League idyll. Stone-clad buildings overlook a sweeping lawn, which slopes to a picture-perfect, small-town Main Street. Winding paths skirt carefully tended gardens. Outdoor statues gaze raptly at midair as students stroll by, chattering on cellphones.
But Ursinus College, in Collegeville, Pa., lacks the wealth and status that allow the real Ivies to choose from among the best students in the country and to cover their full financial need with no-loan aid packages. Like the vast majority of colleges, Ursinus must not only troll for top students but also calibrate exactly how much money it will take to bring them to campus and keep them there.
In college-speak, it’s called enrollment management — a way of slicing and dicing admissions policies and financial aid to attract a strong and diverse student body while bringing in enough revenue to keep the doors open. Whereas elite colleges take merit as a given and extend financial aid only to those who need it, Ursinus offers sizable scholarships to outstanding applicants from every economic strata, including the wealthiest.
Surprised? Consider your own college search. As a parent, you look for the best academic program for your student at an affordable price — the same basic process that colleges use to attract the best students, but in reverse. The better you understand how colleges conduct their deliberations, the better you can go about yours.
Overly protective parents might be leaving a lasting impact on their child’s personality, and not in a good way, a new study finds.
The results show having so-called “helicopter parents” was associated with being dependent, neurotic and less open, a slew of personality traits that are generally thought of as undesirable.
The study, which surveyed college freshman, is one of the first to try to define exactly what helicopter parenting is, and measure it. The term was originally coined by college admissions personnel when they started to notice a change in parents of prospective students — parents would call the admissions office and try to intervene in a process that had previously just been between the student and the college, said study researcher Neil Montgomery, a psychologist at Keene State College in N.H.
Soon the sounds of “Pomp and Circumstance” will fade and thousands of college graduates will have to really start facing the music — their education loans.
For them, I have a new tune: Know what you owe.
That should be the mantra for every student borrower because an unsettling number of graduates — and their parents — only have a vague idea of how much has been borrowed. It’s only after the degree has been obtained that they add up the costs. Many don’t know who they borrowed from or how many different loans they have.
In 2008, about two-thirds of students graduating from four-year colleges and universities had student loan debt averaging $23,200, according to data analyzed by the Project on Student Debt, an initiative of the nonprofit Institute for College Access & Success.
Okay, graduates, so now that you have your degree, what do you know about your loans, and how will you manage them?
‘What’s funny,” says Madeleine Sackler, “is that I’m not really a political person.” Yet the petite 27-year-old is the force behind “The Lottery“–an explosive new documentary about the battle over the future of public education opening nationwide this Tuesday.
In the spring of 2008, Ms. Sackler, then a freelance film editor, caught a segment on the local news about New York’s biggest lottery. It wasn’t the Powerball. It was a chance for 475 lucky kids to get into one of the city’s best charter schools (publicly funded schools that aren’t subject to union rules).
“I was blown away by the number of parents that were there,” Ms. Sackler tells me over coffee on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, recalling the thousands of people packed into the Harlem Armory that day for the drawing. “I wanted to know why so many parents were entering their kids into the lottery and what it would mean for them.” And so Ms. Sackler did what any aspiring filmmaker would do: She grabbed her camera.
Her initial aim was simple. “Going into the film I was excited just to tell a story,” she says. “A vérité film, a really beautiful, independent story about four families that you wouldn’t know otherwise” in the months leading up to the lottery for the Harlem Success Academy.
Diagnosis of autism has always been difficult and often the condition remains unrecognised until too late for treatment to have a maximum effect.
But now researchers at Imperial College London have discovered a potential way of spotting the disorder in children as young as six months old.
They have found that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) also suffer from disorders in their gut and that this can be detected with a simple urine test.
That would mean that intensive behavioural and social treatment could begin before the disease has caused any permanent psychological damage.
Professor Jeremy Nicholson, the author of the study, said: “Children with autism have very unusual gut microbes which we can test for before the full blown symptoms of the disease come through.
“If that is the case then it might become a preventable disease.”
Ambitious journalists don’t have to worry about affording extra education when free open courses are available for anyone to take online. Spend some time studying and exploring the various aspects of journalism with these classes before forging your own future as a journalist. These courses will help you learn about writing, reporting, photojournalism, multimedia, and more.
Writing, Reporting, and Communication From improving your grammar to learning to connect with other cultures to strengthening communication skills, these classes will improve your ability to connect with others.
- Cleaning Your Copy. Learn to correct your grammar, spelling, and stylistic mistakes with the information in this class specifically for aspiring journalists. [News University]
- BBC News Style Guide. This class covers the style guide used at BBC News to help writers become more effective writers. [BBC Training & Development]
- Writing and Experience: Culture Shock! Writing, Editing, and Publishing in Cyberspace. Explore American pop culture while learning to write for an online audience in this course. [MIT]
- Beat Basics and Beyond. Find out the basics about working a beat and get tips from veteran reporters in this course. [News University]
- Technology for Professional Writers. This course teaches important technology skills for writers who may not have a background in technology. [Utah State University]
For years, Pat Bearce had a message for his daughter Andrea: After her college graduation, she would be on her own financially.
It has been three years, and she isn’t quite there yet.
After studying broadcast journalism at Texas Christian University, Andrea decided to pursue a career as a chef, choosing a pricey culinary school in New York City. The restaurant jobs she landed didn’t come with health coverage, so, in addition to guaranteeing her apartment lease in Manhattan, her parents covered her health-care costs for a couple of years. They paid her monthly cellphone bill, too. And she still has a jointly held credit card with her mother, Catherine.
“It’s pretty hard to get them launched,” says Mr. Bearce, a pilot at Boeing Co. in Seattle, who now says he never actually intended to enforce the deadline. “The real bottom line is that when they’re done with school, they’re not really done.”
In a nod to the rising cost of college tuition and the burden of massive student loan debt on graduates, a growing number of universities are stepping up with “no-loan” aid pledges.
More than 50 colleges — including elite private schools and flagship state universities in Virginia and Maryland — have eliminated or capped loans in their financial aid portfolios for some or all students, promising enough aid in grants and work-study to cover most of the gap between what they charge and what each student can afford to pay.
At a handful of private universities with sizable endowments, including Princeton, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, the goal is quite literally to eliminate loan debt for most graduating seniors.
“It’s going down, and it’s going down dramatically,” said Amy Gutmann, president of Penn. “A typical family earning $90,000 a year attends Penn tuition-free. A typical family earning $40,000 a year attends Penn with tuition, room and board covered.”
Like so many parents at this time of year, we stood watching and cheering as our daughter walked across the stage at graduation.
For Julia, it was graduation from college in mid-May. For others, it will be graduation from high school. But whatever the setting, Julia and her fellow graduates take an awful lot of people across the stage with them — many of them teachers.
Not that we have any particular bias as her parents, you understand. We think Julia is incredibly smart, poised, inquisitive, a leader in her group. But we also know that step by step through her days in school, it was teachers who helped shape her into the graduate we applauded on that Saturday in May.
As a society we say we value education. We are sure a whole lot more ambivalent about teachers as a group. You heard that ambivalence in the Madison area as the School Board wrestled with a very tough budget for the coming year. You hear that at the national level as President Obama’s education policies are demanding more accountability from teachers.
My point is not that teachers ought not be asked to share in the financial burden of tough times nor that there ought not be ways to hold them accountable. My point is that in looking at ways to strengthen our education system, we ought to remember that the teachers are the ones giving of themselves day after day to prepare our sons and daughters for the future. It does no one any good to be bashing them.
Is every teacher terrific? Of course not. But at least in the Madison schools, with four kids who have been educated by something like 150 teachers over the years (to say nothing of another vast array of teachers at the college level), I have developed a deep admiration for the work they do.
It’s “payday” in Jill Strand’s classroom at Glacier Edge Elementary School in Verona.
Strand’s third-graders rush toward plastic bins crammed with parent-donated school supplies and trinkets, eager to cash the weekly mock paychecks issued by Strand for classroom jobs like collecting library books and checking desks for tidiness.
“They don’t understand how much they’re really learning,” says Strand. “They see it as fun, free-choice time.”
But in a sign that a deeper financial message is resonating, not all students are quick to part with the hard-earned classroom currency the paychecks are exchanged for. Kate Veak tucks her “Strand Bucks” away, saying she is saving for something bigger, like a hardcover book.
Strand recently chronicled her lessons in savings and investing in “Financial Literacy: TEACH IT!,” a series of online teacher vignettes compiled by the Wisconsin Educational Communications Board, which won a 2010 award from the Governor’s Council on Financial Literacy for the project. Strand says she may soon introduce her third-graders to the concept of sales tax and is considering letting them borrow from their classroom bank, potentially leading to discussions about credit card interest and maybe even payday loans.
A consortium of school districts including: Belleville, Middelton Cross Plains, Mt. Horeb, Oregon, McFarland, Verona Area, Madison and Wisconsin Heights are actively and energetically seeking partnerships with business, academic and manufacturing sectors in the Dane County region in an effort to create and staff what is referred to as The Global Academy. The Global Academy will be a hybrid secondary / post-secondary learning environment designed primarily for high school juniors and seniors from the consortium districts. The Global Academy will provide specialized and advanced training in the following areas that culminate in two year or four year degrees: Architecture and Construction, HealthScience, InformationTechnology, Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
Rationale:
Regional, national and global need for specialized and advanced skills, along with growing competition for jobs that require those skills from advanced and developing countries is changing the curriculum landscape for high schools in the United States. In Wisconsin, public high schools are making valiant efforts to respond to this need, but struggle to do so given revenue caps and shrinking budgets. Neighboring school districts produce similar programs that are barely sustainable and represent an inefficient duplication of programs and services. A consortium of school districts providing specialized and advanced programs, pooling resources, talent and students is a much more viable and sustainable method ofproviding educational programs that prepare students for 21st Century career opportunities. Additionally, partnering with business, manufacturing and academic sectors will add expertise, latest trend information and greatly increased opportunities for obtaining certifications, advanced standing and credits in institutions of higher learning.
The district has developed over time a very detailed Student Code of Conduct that clearly outlines student misbehavior and prescribes suspension and expulsion as the specific responses for some misbehavior. While the current code is clear regarding which misbehaviors require suspension and a recommendation for expulsion, it does not offer administrators a sufficient array of options that can be used to intervene in order to support behavior change in students when suspension and expulsion are not an appropriate consequence.
Current research shows that a reactive model in the absence of positive, proactive strategies is ineffective. As an evidence-based national model that has recently been adopted at the state level in Wisconsin, Positive Behavior Supports (PBS) provides the mechanism for schools to shift to data driven decision making and practices grounded in a tiered approach that emphasizes teaching, modeling and reinforcing pro-social skills and behavior. Many districts across the country are developing Codes of Conduct that align with the PBS Model.
As all elementary, middle and high schools move toward full implementation of Positive Behavior Supports (PBS), it is important that the Code of Conduct is aligned with the PBS model which is grounded in teaching appropriate behaviors to students and acknowledging students for learning and exhibiting positive behavior. PBS provides a framework for defining and teaching in positive terms what is expected from students as behavior expectations that are defined only by
Appendix LLL-12-11 June 14,2010
III.
rules and “what not to do” provide an inadequate understanding for students and families.
The proposed Code o f Conduct represents a step toward improved alignment with the PBS model and reflects a shift in thinking from an approach that relies heavily on rules, consequences and reactive practices to an approach that provides a multi-tiered, progressive continuum of interventions to address a wide range of student behavior. While the current code is used primarily by administrators to determine which misbehaviors are appropriate for suspension and expulsion, the proposed code would also be used by teachers and other staff to determine which behaviors they are expected to handle in the classroom and which behaviors should be referred to the administrator or designee. It will provide all staff with multiple options in three (3) categories of intervention: Education, Restoration and Restriction (see details in attached chart). In addition, the proposed code presented in ‘chart form’ would be used as a teaching tool to give students a visual picture o f the increasing severity o f behaviors and the increasing intensity of interventions and consequences that result from engaging in inappropriate behaviors.
Related: Disciplinary Alternatives: Abeyance Option Phoenix Program:
The District has developed overtime, an extensive and very clear expulsion process, that is compliant with state and federal law, that focuses on procedure and is based on zero tolerance for some behaviors, In the 2007/08 school year, 198 students were recommended for expulsion with 64 actually being expelled. In the 2008/09, 182 students were recommended for expulsion with 44 actually being expelled.
Students are expelled from two to three semesters depending on the violation with an option to apply for early readmission after one semester if conditions are met. Approximately 72% of the students meet early readmission conditions and retum after one semester. Currently, no services are provided to regular education students who are expelled, Expelled special education students are entitled to receive Disciplinary Free Appropriate Public Education services.
Concems have been raised by members of the Board of Education, MMSD staff and community about the zero tolerance model, lack of services to expelled students and the significant disruption caused in the lives of these students, families and neighborhoods when students are expelled.
Approval is being sought for the implementation of an abeyance option, the Phoenix Program, including the budget, to be implemented at the beginning of the 2010/11 school year,
Madison School District [4.6MB PDF]:
District administration, along with school leadership and school staff; have examined the research that shows thatfundamental change in education can only be accomplished by creating the opportunity for teachers to talk with one another regarding their instructional practice. The central theme and approach for REaL has heen to improve and enhance instructional practice through collaboration in order to increase student achievement. Special attention has been paid to ensure the work is done in a cross – district, interdepartmental and collaborative manner. Central to the work, are district and school based discussions focused on what skills and knowledge students need to know and be able to do, in order to be prepared for post-secondary education and work. Systemized discussions regarding curriculum aligmnent, course offerings, assessment systems, behavioral expectations and 21 st century skills are occurring across all four high schools and at the district level.
Collaborative professional development has been established to ensure that the work capitalizes on the expertise of current staff, furthers best practices that are already occurring within the MMSD high school classrooms, and enhances the skills of individuals at all levels from administration to classroom teachers needed. Our work to date has laid the foundation for further and more in-depth work to occur.
Since March of 2010, MMSD district and school staff has completed the following work to move the goals of the REaL Grant forward. Specific accomplishments aligning to REaL grant goals are listed below.
REaL Grant Goal 1: Improve Student Achievement for all students
- Accomplishment I: Completed year 2 of professional development for Department Chairpersons to become instructional leaders. The work will continue this summer with the first ever Department Chairperson and Assistant Principal Summer Institute to focus on leading and fostering teacher collaboration in order to improve student achievement.
- Accomplishment 2: Continued with planning for implementing the ACT Career and College Readiness Standards and the EP AS system. Visited with area districts to see the
impact of effective implementation the EP AS system in order to ensure successful implementation within MMSD.- Accomplishment 3: Piloted the implementation of the EXPLORE test at Memorial, Sherman and with 9th grade AVID students at all four comprehensive high schools.
- Accomplishment 4: This summer, in partnership with Monona Grove High School and Association of Wisconsin School Administrators (AWSA), MMSD will host the Aligned by Design: Aligning High School and Middle School English, Science, Math and Social Studies Courses to College/Career Readiness Skills. To be attended by teams of MMSD high school and middle school staff in July of 2010.
- Accomplishment 5: Continued focused planning and development of a master communication system for the possible implementation of early release Professional Collaboration Time at MMSD High Schools. Schools have developed plans for effective teaming structures and accountability measures.
- Accomplishment 6: District English leadership team developed recommendations for essential understandings in the areas of reading, writing, speaking and listening for 9th and 10th grades. Following this successful model, similar work will occur in Math, Science and Social studies.
Related: Small Learning Community and English 10.
Bruce King, who evaluated the West High’s English 9 (one English class for all students) approach offers observations on the REal program beginning on page 20 of the PDF file.
Digital media have made creating and disseminating text, sound, and images cheap, easy and global. The bulk of publicly available media is now created by people who understand little of the professional standards and practices for media.
Instead, these amateurs produce endless streams of mediocrity, eroding cultural norms about quality and acceptability, and leading to increasingly alarmed predictions of incipient chaos and intellectual collapse.
But of course, that’s what always happens. Every increase in freedom to create or consume media, from paperback books to YouTube, alarms people accustomed to the restrictions of the old system, convincing them that the new media will make young people stupid. This fear dates back to at least the invention of movable type.
As Gutenberg’s press spread through Europe, the Bible was translated into local languages, enabling direct encounters with the text; this was accompanied by a flood of contemporary literature, most of it mediocre. Vulgar versions of the Bible and distracting secular writings fueled religious unrest and civic confusion, leading to claims that the printing press, if not controlled, would lead to chaos and the dismemberment of European intellectual life.
First, Obama and the education secretary, Arne Duncan, set up a contest. They put down $4.5 billion in Race to the Top money. They issued some general guidelines about what kind of reforms states would have to adopt to get the money. And then they fired the starting gun.
Reformers in at least 23 states have passed reform laws in hopes of getting some of the dough. Some of the state laws represent incremental progress and some represent substantial change. The administration has hung tough, demanding real reform in exchange for dollars. Over all, there’s been a tremendous amount of movement in a brief time.
This is not heavy-handed Washington command-and-control. This is Washington energizing diverse communities of reformers, locality by locality, and giving them more leverage in their struggles against the defenders of the status quo.
Second, the Obama administration used the power of the presidency to break through partisan gridlock. Over the past decade, teacher unions and their allies have become proficient in beating back Republican demands for more charters, accountability and choice. But Obama has swung behind a series of bipartisan reformers who are also confronting union rigidity.
In Rhode Island, the Central Falls superintendent, Frances Gallo, fired all the teachers at one failing school. The unions fought back. Obama sided with Gallo, sending shock waves nationwide. If the president had the guts to confront a sacred Democratic interest group in order to jolt a failing school, then change was truly in the air. Gallo got the concessions she needed to try to improve that school.
In this era of rising college expectations — more applications, more students and more university places than ever — we Americans remain very insular. We think nothing can be better than Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford or some other moldy brick institution high on the U.S. News list. A few adventurous U.S. students are enrolling in Canadian and British schools, but nobody talks about that in the high school cafeteria or the PTA.
Our self-regard is, in some ways, justified. On most international ratings, one of the topics of Ben Wildavsky’s intriguing new book “The Great Brain Race: How Global Universities Are Reshaping the World,” U.S. colleges still dominate the top 10. But Wildavsky reveals that that will probably change. Students in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America are beginning to speak as knowledgeably about France’s Ecole Polytechnique, the Indian Institutes of Technology and Britain’s University of Leicester as they do about Columbia and Caltech. Many foreign universities are catching up with ours.
In our comfortable spot at the top of the world’s higher ed pyramid, we are ignoring one of the most powerful trends of the 21st century — a growing free trade in great minds. Wildavsky, a senior fellow in research and policy at the Kauffman Foundation, argues that this will make this era more innovative, and more prosperous, than any that human civilization has seen.
The number of colleges that offer bachelor’s degrees in three years can be counted on two (or three) hands. They include Lake Forest College in Illinois, Southern New Hampshire University, Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y., and, in a recent conversion, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
The three-year degree has spawned a round of news coverage and, last month, an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times by the former president of George Washington University.
“The college experience may be idyllic,” Stephen Joel Trachtenberg wrote, “but it’s also wasteful and expensive, both for students and institutions.”
Trachtenberg, who co-wrote the piece with GWU professor Gerald Kauvar, floated the idea of a three-year degree during his tenure at the Foggy Bottom university.
That piece drew enough notice to prompt a rebuttal, released today by the president of the Association of American College and Universities, a D.C. nonprofit advocating for the cause of liberal education.
Terence Chea & Christine Armario:
Students graduating from high school this spring may be collecting their diplomas just in time, leaving institutions that are being badly weakened by the nation’s economic downturn.
Across the country, mass layoffs of teachers, counselors and other staff members — caused in part by the drying up of federal stimulus dollars — are leading to larger classes and reductions in everything that is not a core subject, including music, art, clubs, sports and other after-school activities.
Educators and others worry the cuts could lead to higher dropout rates and lower college attendance as students receive less guidance and become less engaged in school. They fear a generation of young people could be left behind.
“It’s going to be harder for everybody to get an opportunity to get into college,” said Chelsea Braza, a 16-year-old sophomore at Silver Creek High School in San Jose. “People wouldn’t be as motivated to do anything in school because there’s no activities and there’s no involvement.”
A U.S. appeals court heard arguments Thursday over whether school officials can discipline students for making lewd, harassing or juvenile Internet postings from off-campus computers.
Two students from two different Pennsylvania school districts are fighting suspensions they received for posting derisive profiles of their principals on MySpace from home computers. The American Civil Liberties Union argued that school officials infringe on student’s free speech rights when they reach beyond school grounds in such cases to impose discipline.
“While children are in school, they are under the custody and tutelage of the school,” ACLU lawyer Witold Walczak argued Thursday in the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. “Once they leave the schoolhouse gate, you’ve got parents that come into play.”
It’s a moment many education reformers have dreamed of for decades and many thought they’d never see: a set of high-quality national education standards designed to set a higher bar for American schools that states seem eager to adopt. The goal, much discussed since George H. W. Bush was president, was finally accomplished because the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers (rather than the federal government) took the lead, and states were invited to join the process voluntarily. In a country where local control of schools often outranks other educational considerations, the key to success was finding a way to create national but not federal standards.
The lack of nation-wide education standards has long been a key difference between US schools and those of most other developed countries, many of which score higher on international comparisons.
To help make sure schoolchildren around the country are learning the same grade-by-grade information necessary for success in college and life after high school, Wisconsin’s schools chief Wednesday formally committed the state to adopting a set of national education standards.
The long-awaited Common Core State Standards for English and math, released Wednesday, define the knowledge and skills children should be learning from kindergarten through graduation, a move intended to put the United States on par with other developed countries and to make it easier to compare test scores from state to state.
“These standards are aligned with college and career expectations, will ensure academic consistency throughout the state and across other states that adopt them, and have been benchmarked against international standards for high-performing countries,” state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers said in a news release Wednesday.
Wisconsin already had pledged to support the common standards. A draft report released in March solicited public comment on the standards, which were subsequently tweaked before the final document was released Wednesday.
OBJECTIVE By using a large, multicenter database, we investigated the characteristics and morbidities of 1591 children returning from 218 global destinations and presenting for care in 19 countries.
METHODS Data reported to the GeoSentinel Surveillance Network between January 1997 and November 2007 were analyzed, to assess demographic features, travel characteristics, and clinical diagnoses of ill pediatric travelers. Data were compared between children and adults and among 3 pediatric age groups (0-5 years, 6-11 years, and 12-17 years).
RESULTS Children were predominantly tourist travelers returning from Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, or Latin America. Compared with adults, children disproportionately presented within 7 days after return, required hospitalization, lacked pretravel health advice, and had traveled for the purpose of visiting friends and relatives. Diarrhea (28%), dermatologic conditions (25%), systemic febrile illnesses (23%), and respiratory disorders (11%) accounted for the majority of diagnoses reported for children. No fatalities were reported. Diarrhea occurred disproportionately among children after exposure to the Middle East/North Africa, dermatologic conditions after exposure to Latin America, systemic febrile illnesses after exposure to sub-Saharan Africa or Asia, and respiratory disorders after exposure to Europe or North America. The proportionate morbidity rates of travel-associated diseases differed among the pediatric age groups and between children and adults.
Here’s a new way to look at Wal-Mart: institution of higher learning.
Under a program announced Thursday, employees will be able to receive college credit for performing their jobs, including such tasks as loading trucks and ringing up purchases. Workers could earn as much as 45 percent of the credits needed for an associate or bachelor’s degree while on the job.
The credits are earned through the Internet-based American Public University, with headquarters in Charles Town, W.Va., and administrative offices in Manassas.
“We want to provide you with more ways and faster ways to succeed with us,” Eduardo Castro-Wright, head of Wal-Mart’s U.S. division, told 4,000 employees during the company’s annual meeting. The program is designed to encourage more workers to climb the corporate ladder. Though Wal-Mart says about 70 percent of its managers begin as hourly employees, it estimates that about half of its staff do not hold college degrees.
Jaymes Murphy, 24, a salesman from Victoria, Tex., who was at the annual meeting, said he tried for several years to juggle work and school with little success. He would attend class from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. and then sprint to his job as a cashier at Wal-Mart from 3 p.m. to midnight. He eventually quit school but he dreams of getting a bachelor’s degree in political science or communications.
“It gets stressful,” he said. The program would allow him to “not have to worry about sacrificing one or the other.”
Smart. A great example of thinking different in an effort to address costs and benefits.
David Figlio and Cassandra Hart [340K PDF]:
School choice option including both voucher and neo-voucher options like tuition tax credit funded scholarship programs have become increasingly prevalent in recent years (Howell, Peterson, Wolf and Campbell, 2006). One popular argument for school choice policies is that public schools will improve the education they offer when faced with competition for students. Because state funds are tied to student enrollment, losing students to private schools
constitutes a financial loss to public schools. If schools face the threat of losing students and the state funds attached to those students–to private schools, they should be incentivized to cultivate customer (i.e., parental) satisfaction by operating more efficiently and improving on the outcomes valued by students and parents (Friedman, 1962).
Alternatively, vouchers may have unintended negative effects on public schools if they draw away the most involved families from public schools and the monitoring of those schools diminishes, allowing schools to reduce effort put into educating students (McMillan, 2004).1
It is notoriously difficult to gauge the competitive effects of private schools on public
school performance because private school supply and public school performance affect each other dynamically (Dee, 1998; McEwan, 2000). In cross-section, the relationship between private school supply and public school performance could plausibly be either upward-biased or downward-biased. On the one hand, private schools may disproportionately locate in communities with low-quality public schools. In such a case, the estimated relationship between private school penetration and public school performance would be downward-biased. On the other hand, if private schools locate in areas with high valuation of educational quality, then the
Pressure for quick fixes can outweigh research evidence when ministers set schools policy, according to a study of three decades of education initiatives.
Media pressure and political expediency are more likely to influence decision making, says a report from the CfBT education charity.
The report draws upon interviews with former ministers and civil servants.
It calls for the setting up of an independent chief education officer to give objective advice.
The report, Instinct or Reason, due to be published next week, examines the pressures that have shaped education policy since the late-1970s, across Conservative and Labour administrations.
Yes ter day, I wrote about just a few of the rea sons I am opposed to summer home work. Of course that doesn’t mean I am opposed to read ing for plea sure, learn ing for plea sure, or pur su ing one’s pas sions. I’m just opposed to the school send ing home the same kind of work it sends home dur ing the school year - work that is mostly an after thought, is busywork, and doesn’t engage a student.
Before you resign your self to sum mer home work, though, make sure that your school is com ply ing with all poli cies and guidelines.
Take a few min utes and check your school’s pol icy. You might be surprised to find that it for bids sum mer home work. If it does, just give your school prin ci pal a friendly call and remind her/him of the pol icy. But if your school pol icy doesn’t pro hibit sum mer home work, don’t stop there. Be sure to check the dis trict and state guide lines as well.
This is how you check the state guidelines:
A group representing governors and state school chiefs laid out a detailed blueprint Wednesday of the skills students should learn at each grade level, reinvigorating the battle over what some see as an attempt to usurp local control of schools.
Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia have signed on to the concept of common standards but haven’t promised to adopt them. If they do, it could trigger wide-scale changes to state tests, textbooks and teacher-education programs nationwide.
The Common Core State Standards detail the math and language-arts knowledge children should master to prepare them for college and the work force.
The blueprint doesn’t tell teachers exactly what to teach or how to teach but lays out broad goals for student achievement. Kindergartners, for example, should know how to count to 100 by tens, and eighth-graders should be able to determine an author’s point of view. Currently, each state sets its own academic benchmarks, and the rigor varies widely.
Sam Dillon has more.
Teenage smoking is often thought of as kind of innocent experiment, but a drag on a friend’s cigarette may be the beginning of something that will be hard to shake.
A study of adolescent smokers in the journal Pediatrics tracks the course of addiction to nicotine among a group of sixth-graders. After following 1,246 middle-school children for four years, researchers say a pattern emerged of occasional smoking that led to an addiction to tobacco: A cigarette a month will do it.
“When people are just wanting a cigarette, every now and then, they think they just enjoy smoking,” says study coauthor Dr. Joseph DiFranza of the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. “As time passes, then they start to notice they will crave a cigarette. So even when they are with someone who is not smoking, something will pop into their mind that will tell them it is time for a cigarette.”
A new report published today shows that school absenteeism in Ireland remains high.
The report show that over 57,000 students miss school each day. Approximately 31,500 of truants are primary students and 26,000, post-primary students. This equates to a loss of 12 school days per student per year in primary school and 13 days in post-primary school.
The new data, is contained in a National Educational Welfare Board’s report which calculates attendance from the academic years 2006/07 to 2007/08.
NEWB’s study reveals that about 58,000 or 12 per cent of all primary school students and 57,000 or 17 per cent of post-primary students are absent for 20 days or more per year.
Close to 17,000 pupils are suspended from school every year with another 150 students expelled.
One of the favorites to win this year’s National Spelling Bee lay face down on his living room floor wearing a black shirt, blue jeans and white socks, his torso supported by a couple of big pillows. His hands seemed to be on nonstop autopilot as they folded colorful paper into origami shapes.
Across the room in a big chair sat his younger brother. Between them were stacks and stacks of oversized, homemade note cards, bound by rubber bands and arranged like a city skyline on a large footstool. They are only a fraction of some 20,000 cards in the house, each printed with a word, its origin, pronunciation and definition.
These particular stacks contained the really hard words, the ones 13-year-old Tim Ruiter hadn’t mastered yet.
A member of the Class of 2010–who this season dons synthetic cap and gown, listens to the inspirational words of David Souter (Harvard), Anderson Cooper (Tulane), or Lisa Kudrow (Vassar), and collects a diploma–need not be a statistics major to know that the odds of stepping into a satisfying job, or, indeed, any job, are lower now than might have been imagined four long years ago, when the first posters were hung on a dorm-room wall, and having a .edu e-mail address was still a novelty. Statistically speaking, however, having an expertise in statistics may help in getting a job: according to a survey conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, graduates with math skills are more likely than their peers in other majors to find themselves promptly and gainfully employed.
The safest of all degrees to be acquiring this year is in accounting: forty-six per cent of graduates in that discipline have already been offered jobs. Business majors are similarly placed: forty-four per cent will have barely a moment to breathe before undergoing the transformation from student to suit. Engineers of all stripes–chemical, computer, electrical, mechanical, industrial, environmental–have also fared relatively well since the onset of the recession: they dominate a ranking, issued by Payscale.com, of the disciplines that produce the best-earning graduates. Particular congratulations are due to aerospace engineers, who top the list, with a starting salary of just under sixty thousand dollars–a figure that, if it is not exactly stratospheric, is twenty-five thousand dollars higher than the average starting salary of a graduate in that other science of the heavens, theology.
How does Google’s unchallenged domination of Search shape the way we retrieve information? Does Google flatten global knowledge?
I look around, I see my kids relying on Wikipedia, I watch my journalist students work. I can’t help but wonder: Does Google impose a framework on our cognitive processes, on the way we search for and use information?
Two weeks ago, at an INMA conference in Oxford, I met Monica Bulger, an Education PhD, she was giving a speech covering the notion of cognitive containers associated with devices such as the iPad (see her blog). Then, at a dinner at Exeter College, in a room right out of a Harry Potter movie set, she discussed her work at the University of California Santa Barbara where she investigated her students’ use of Web searches.
Dr. Bulger took 150 graduate and undergraduate students and asked them to write a 1 to 2 pages recommendation for the use of computers in the classroom (she verified that the question was not already treated in Wikipedia). They had 50 minutes to complete the assignment.
The goal of the experiment was ‘to disprove the fact that information is simply a matter of access, and after that, everything else is easy. I wanted to show the highly sophisticated cognitive process taking place. No matter how sophisticated machines are, research still requires a bit of work’.
Among her findings (details here):
During the winter of 2007, a UCLA professor of psychiatry named Gary Small recruited six volunteers–three experienced Web surfers and three novices–for a study on brain activity. He gave each a pair of goggles onto which Web pages could be projected. Then he slid his subjects, one by one, into the cylinder of a whole-brain magnetic resonance imager and told them to start searching the Internet. As they used a handheld keypad to Google various preselected topics–the nutritional benefits of chocolate, vacationing in the Galapagos Islands, buying a new car–the MRI scanned their brains for areas of high activation, indicated by increases in blood flow.
The two groups showed marked differences. Brain activity of the experienced surfers was far more extensive than that of the newbies, particularly in areas of the prefrontal cortex associated with problem-solving and decisionmaking. Small then had his subjects read normal blocks of text projected onto their goggles; in this case, scans revealed no significant difference in areas of brain activation between the two groups. The evidence suggested, then, that the distinctive neural pathways of experienced Web users had developed because of their Internet use.
The most remarkable result of the experiment emerged when Small repeated the tests six days later. In the interim, the novices had agreed to spend an hour a day online, searching the Internet. The new scans revealed that their brain activity had changed dramatically; it now resembled that of the veteran surfers. “Five hours on the Internet and the naive subjects had already rewired their brains,” Small wrote. He later repeated all the tests with 18 more volunteers and got the same results.
The crisis in U.S. public education is beginning to read like something out of the theater of the absurd.
Now they are getting rid of summer school.
The Associated Press reported Sunday: “Across the country, districts are cutting summer school because it’s just too expensive to keep. The cuts started when the recession began and have worsened, affecting more children and more essential programs that help struggling students.” A survey found that over one third of the school districts in the country are looking at cutting out summer school starting this fall. And who are the students who will be hit hardest by this move? “Experts say studies show summer break tends to widen the achievement gap between poor students and their more affluent peers whose parents can more easily afford things like educational vacations, camps and sports teams,” said AP.
“Most people generally think summer is a great time for kids to be kids, a time for something different, a time for all kinds of exploration and enrichment,” Ron Fairchild, chief executive officer of the National Summer Learning Association, told the news agency. “Our mythology about summer learning really runs counter to the reality of what this really is like for kids in low-income communities and for their families when this faucet of public support shuts off.”
The New York Times reports:
“[…]The unemployment rate for the 16-to-24 age group reached a record 19.6 percent in April, double the national average…”
A documentary from a pair of Dutch filmmakers about urban farming at a Detroit school for pregnant teens and young mothers is getting wider recognition as the school’s program faces the prospect of being uprooted.
Mascha and Manfred Poppenk made “Grown in Detroit” first for Dutch public television and began screening it last year. It focuses on the Catherine Ferguson Academy for Young Women, which has its own working farm.
“This is really a film Americans should see,” Mascha Poppenk said. “They need to see there are good things going on in Detroit.”
The building that houses Catherine Ferguson could be closed in June and its program moved to another one about a mile away. It’s part of a plan announced in March by district emergency financial manager Robert Bobb to close 44 schools.
Detroit Public Schools, which is fighting years of declining enrolment and a $219 million budget deficit, closed 29 schools before the start of classes last fall and shuttered 35 buildings about three years ago.
A few weeks ago my friend’s 8-year-old came home all excited, waving a letter from school about a test called the Scholastic Reading Inventory.
Not only did the little boy have test results showing he’d scored well above the third-grade level (no surprise to anyone who knows this avid reader), he also had a list of recommended books. Number one on the list: Arctic Dreams. Number two: A Clockwork Orange.
A Clockwork Orange?
His mom gently took the list away and scanned the titles before explaining that she would not be getting a dystopian novel about ultraviolence for her third-grader (or, for that matter, most of the other recommended books, including Guns of August, Left for Dead, and Kafka’s Metamorphosis). Then she called her son’s school, Shorewood Elementary, to ask what was going on.
The “unschooling” movement of the 1970s featured open classrooms, in which children studied what they were most interested in, when they felt ready. That was followed by today’s back-to-basics, early-start model, in which students complete math worksheets in kindergarten and are supposed to take algebra by eighth grade at the latest. Under the “whole language” philosophy of the 1980s, children were expected to learn to read by having books read to them. By the late 1990s, reading lessons were dominated by phonics, with little time spent on the joys of what reading is all about — unlocking the world of stories and information.
A little more than a decade ago, educators bore no responsibility for their students’ failure; it was considered the fault of the students, their parents and unequal social circumstances. Now schools are held liable for whether students learn, regardless of the students’ lack of effort or previous preparation, and are held solely accountable for reaching unrealistic goals of achievement.
No wonder schools have a chronic case of educational whiplash. If there’s a single aspect of schooling that ought to end, it’s the decades of abrupt and destructive swings from one extreme to another. There is no magic in the magic-bullet approach to learning. Charters are neither evil nor saviors; they can be a useful complement to public schools, but they have not blazed a sure-fire path to student achievement. Decreeing that all students will be proficient in math and reading by 2014 hasn’t moved us dramatically closer to the mark.
Diffused governance, is, in my view, the best way forward. This means that communities should offer a combination of public, private, virtual, charter and voucher options. A diversity of K-12 approaches insures that a one size fits all race to the bottom does not prevail. I was very disappointed to recently learn that Wisconsin’s Democrat Senator Russ Feingold voted to kill the Washington, DC voucher program. No K-12 approach is perfect, but eliminating that option for the poorest members of our society is simply unpalatable.
Somewhat related Lee Bergquist and Erin Richards: Wisconsin Governor Candidate Mark Neumann taps public funds for private schools
Republican businessman Mark Neumann started his first taxpayer-funded school with 49 students, and in eight years enrollment has mushroomed to nearly 1,000 students in four schools.
Neumann, a candidate for governor who preaches smaller government and fiscal conservatism, has used his entrepreneurial skills to tap private and public funds – including federal stimulus dollars – to start schools in poor neighborhoods.
The former member of the U.S. House operates three religious-based schools in Milwaukee, a fourth nonreligious school in Phoenix and has plans to build clusters of schools across the country.
The Nashotah businessman is part of a growing national movement from the private sector that is providing poor neighborhoods an alternative to traditional public schools.
There are signs the schools are achieving one of their primary goals of getting students into post-secondary schools.
When the kindergartners at the Brooklyn School of Inquiry, one of New York City’s schools for gifted students, form neat boy-girl rows for the start of recess, the lines of girls reach well beyond the lines of boys.
A similar imbalance exists at gifted schools in East Harlem, where almost three-fifths of the students at TAG Young Scholars are girls, and the Lower East Side, where Alec Kulakowski, a seventh grader at New Explorations in Science and Technology and Math, considered his status as part of the school’s second sex and remarked, “It’s kind of weird and stuff.”
Weird or not, the disparity at the three schools is not all that different from the gender makeup at similar programs across the city: though the school system over all is 51 percent male, its gifted classrooms generally have more girls.
Traumatised by the destruction of their homes and lives, Haiti’s children are finding some refuge in schools resurrected from the rubble
If there is a drier, dustier, more desolate place in the Caribbean I’d be amazed to see it. A few weeks ago, this vast space in Haiti now know as Corail Cesselesse was a vast scraggly grassland about 20km outside the capital, Port-au-Prince.
Now, after the 7.3-magnitude earthquake struck Haiti on 12 January, it is home to several thousand of the 1.5 million who have been displaced. Many are children – in a country where half the population is under 18 – and for those who have moved to giant camps, they have also been uprooted from their homes, their families and their schools.
Corail is an official camp – the product of inter-agency co-operation and government consent – and there is plenty of evidence of the foreign money pouring into the country in the aftermath of the earthquake. It is guarded by armed UN guards, and there are well-organised latrines and water tanks.