University students should pay higher interest rates on their government-backed support loans and expect higher tuition fees in future in order to plug a gap in higher education funding, employers said on Monday.
The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) said the government should save 1.4 billion pounds a year by removing its interest rate subsidy from student loans and reinvest the money in university teaching and research.
Maintenance grants should be restricted to the poorest students while a rise in the 3,200-pound-a-year cap on tuition fees looked “inevitable.”
It noted that universities believed an increase to 5,000 pounds a year would not lead to a decline in student demand while raising an extra 1.25 billion pounds in annual income.
Wauwatosa, WI trade school works on employability skills
Two by two, the students sit at tables in what once was a medical clinic. Next door to the single classroom is their break room. Down the hall, a conference room awaits more permanent furniture.
Much about the Tosa School of the Trades says “work” – not just the building, but the charter school’s curriculum as well.
“We want to be kind of almost like a job, because what we’re working on is employability skills as well as 21st century skills,” said Principal Jason Zurawik, who doubles as an associate principal at Wauwatosa East High School.
The Wauwatosa School District’s newest school, which opened this year to 14 students in the basement of a district building on W. North Ave., represents a resurgence of the idea of the vocational high school. Like those schools of old, its students learn trade skills alongside core subjects such as English, math, social studies and science.
But Zurawik also sees the school as training students in what educators refer to as 21st century skills – problem solving, critical thinking, teamwork, self-direction – that will allow them to adapt to different jobs later on.
And as a result, its teachers see the school as the way education should be heading.
Parents say Mass. puts low priority on education for gifted children
At age 3, Aurora Ghere began to read. Now 6, she delves into books that are usually fifth-grade fare, recently finishing “The Call of the Wild” and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”
She can also, her mother boasts, count to 1,000.
When the Gheres lived in Maryland, a screening in her school district identified Aurora as a gifted child.
But Green Meadow School in Maynard, where Aurora is in first grade, lacks programs geared toward gifted children. Though administrators have been supportive of Aurora’s needs, her mother thinks schools in her town and elsewhere should do more.
“We could care less if our children got into Harvard or MIT,” said Ghere. “We just want them to love school. School should be a joy.”
Elite Schools Don’t Make Elite People
I promised a high school counselor in California I would update a very old online column whose printout on her wall is too faded to read. It asked a question I think students immersed in college visiting and application writing should consider: Where did your heroes go to college?
Most of us want our lives to have meaning. We want to add value, at least in some small way. We want to be admired.
What college do you go to for that? Where did the people we look up to get their degrees? Often it’s not the best-known schools.
Let’s look at government and business leaders. (I know. They have their flaws. But we are just getting started.) The past four presidents graduated from Columbia, Yale, Georgetown and Yale. But the four before them attended somewhat more modest institutions: Eureka, the U.S. Naval Academy, Michigan and Whittier.
A difficult lesson in tough love
Do you keep phone numbers? I meticulously store contact details for everyone I meet, however random, and make notes of what they do and where I met them. My other modus operandi when meeting people is always to try to be as polite and helpful as possible (within reason).
Hence, I found myself giving up an hour or so earlier this year to cast an eye over the business strategy of a small enterprise. On meeting the people behind the business, I discovered that it was a rehabilitation clinic, and one of the people presenting to me was a very impressive addiction counsellor, and herself a recovering alcoholic.
And that is where I sat up and took notice, because I have a close relative who is alcohol-dependent. It is not Mr M or any of the cost centres, but it is someone very dear to me. Those of you who have someone in their family who is alcohol- or drug-dependent will know how emotionally scarring this is. You love them, you want to help, you try to help, but they are living in another world. In their world, they are not addicts; they believe that they could give up at any time. They always have an excuse. Something is always just around the corner that will fix their problems – if only they could meet the right person/get the right job/have the right amount of money, everything would be fine. Nothing and no one ever prepared me for the self-delusion of the alcoholic. Every time they say they are going to get help, your hopes rise; and invariably they end up being crushed again
A day at the museum – how much do children actually remember?
Museum corridors are often populated by clipboard-bearing school children enjoying a day away from the classroom. These museum trips seem like a good idea, but how much do children really learn from their day out? According to Julien Gross and colleagues, young children actually remember a great deal, especially if they are given the chance to draw as they recount their museum experience.
Fifty-eight lucky New Zealand school children, aged approximately six years, were taken for a day visit to the Royal Albatross Centre and Historic Fort in Dunedin. One to two days later, the amount of information recalled by the children depended to a large degree on how they were tested. Asked to freely recall the visit, the children remembered a significant amount of factual and trivial, “narrative” information, uttering an average of ten factual clauses. Crucially, this amount of factual recall doubled when they were allowed to draw at the same time as they recounted the day’s events. By contrast, the children performed relatively poorly when given a traditional comprehension test in the form of 12 questions.
A second study largely replicated these findings with a second group of children who were tested on their memory for the museum visit after seven months. The amount of information they recalled remained substantial but was reduced, as you’d expect after a longer delay. Also, the benefit of drawing now only affected recall of narrative information, not facts.
Remedial burden falls on community colleges
In Illinois’ community colleges, fewer students finish two-year programs in two years, while many flounder in remedial classes before dropping out.
Drawn by low tuition and open admissions, a growing number of students headed back to school at Chicago-area community colleges. For Kyle Perez and thousands of entering freshmen, it may be a little further back than planned.
Coming up short on a standardized math placement exam before beginning classes at Harper College in Palatine, the 18-year-old football player was disappointed to learn he would have to take a full year of remedial algebra and geometry.
“I’m going to be in a high school class, paying the same amount as I would for college,” said Perez, a 2009 Rolling Meadows High School graduate. “I’m not going to be getting any college credits for this. It’s going to slow me down a little.”
An estimated 20 percent of the record number of full-time students enrolled in the state’s 48 community colleges in the spring semester were forced to take remedial courses, officials said.
As a result, students are taking longer to earn two-year degrees and more are getting discouraged and dropping out, prompting efforts in Illinois and around the country to better align the curricula of high schools and community colleges.
Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction statewide value added project results (Including the Madison & Milwaukee Public Schools)
Kurt Kiefer, Madison School District Chief Information Officer [150K PDF]:
Attached is a summary of the results form a recently completed research project conducted by The Value Added Research center (VARC) within the UW-Madison Wisconsin Center for Educational Research (WCER). Dr. Rob Meyer and Dr. Mike Christian will be on hand at the September 14 Board of Education meeting to review these findings.
The study was commissioned by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI). Both the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) and Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) were district participants. The purpose of the study was to determine the feasibility of a statewide value added statistical model and the development of state reporting and analysis prototypes. We are pleased with the results in that this creates yet one more vehicle through which we may benchmark our district and school performance.
At the September 14, 2009 Board meeting we will also share plans for continued professional development with our principals and staff around value added during the upcoming school year.
In November we plan to return to the Board with another presentation on the 2008-09 results that are to include additional methods of reporting data developed by VARC in conjunction with MPS and the DPI. We will also share progress with the professional development efforts.
Related:
- Value Added Assessment.
- Wisconsin Knowledge & Concepts Exam (WKCE) – which has been criticized for its lack of rigor.
Fixing the Teacher Certification Mess
I have no doubt our system for certifying teachers is broken. On Aug. 24, I wrote||http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle/2009/08/_am_not_a_big.html about a first-rate Prince George’s County teacher who was nearly fired because of official confusion over his certification credits. These are courses he must take to keep his job, but the people in charge had given him conflicting information about how many, and which, courses he needed. Since then, scores of educators have sent me their own horror stories—some of which I collected in another column on Sept. 7.
What do we do about this? Many readers have sent their ideas. But it’s not going to be easy. Injecting common sense into the process threatens the way our education schools teach and the way our school districts hire. Those powerful interest groups show little willingness to change. But the acidic frustrations expressed by people who contacted me are, thankfully, corroding the resistance to innovation.
PARENTS’ NIGHT SPEECH
Don Regina, via hard copy (The text is “OCR‘d):
Good evening, everyone. I did not mean to burden you with more paper; after all, in life there is so much paperwork, but my administrators urged all teachers to present such a document to you. In my career I have observed that teachers feel somewhat anxious about tonight, but I don’t know why.
Tonight we are together for the first of three meetings, the other two being parent-teacher conferences. It seems we are here for different purposes. You care enough to hurry from work, forego a leisurely dinner, and spend a few hours here. Perhaps you are curious about what I look like, or how I dress (by the way, I am out of uniform-I rarely wear a coat and only don a tie once a week), the way I have decorated my room, what this course is about, and if I am knowledgeable, intelligent, and articulate enough to teach effectively. In other words, is it safe for you to turn your child over to me for forty-five minutes every day. But in Twenty-first Century America two lesser but very powerful gods, named “Things to Do” and “Hurry Up” harry us mercilessly, so you must base your first impressions on these brief encounters. Wouldn’t it be more relaxing if we could sit around a table over coffee and share ideas and concerns? I am here to tell you who I am and my teaching goals and philosophy. In short, I want not to make myself look good but to speak truly and simply, not to put my best foot forward but my real foot forward. Despite our seemingly different purposes, you and I are here for the same reason: we are involved in the education and development of your child and my student. Whether we agree or disagree and regardless of your reactions to what I do or don’t do, let us always remember we are the most influential allies in that essential and crucial process, and permit our alliance to set the tone for our relationship.
My name is Don Regina, and I am ( ) years old. I, and my son . . attended this school, so like you I believe in a private, values oriented education. I hold a Bachelor of Arts degree from St. Michael’s College in Vermont, a Masters Degree in British and American literature from the UW-Madison, and a Lifetime License from the Department of Public Instruction. Yes, I am a lifer. I have taught English here at Edgewood High School for ( ) years-this is my only post-and advise the school newspaper and coach the boys cross country team.
My profession has changed somewhat in the last thirty years. When you and I were in high school, we read and wrote about the classics-A Tale of Two Cities, Crime and Punishment, and Silas Marner. During the Seventies in college I argued with my fellow student teachers about the relative or apparent merits of something called independent study. And now my subject is called Language Arts. Despite all the superficial changes and glitsy gimmicks, and the history of education is loaded with gimmicks, we are and always will be studying the two Rs-reading and writing. So, unlike math or foreign language teachers, we English teachers must fight on two fronts.
It is not surprising, then, that I have two major goals. First, I must teach students to read carefully and perceptively. They must know what happened and what the author said in the text, and use that knowledge to understand characters such as Macbeth, John Proctor from The Crucible, or Elizabeth Bennett from Pride and Prejudice. They should interpret symbols such as Robinson Crusoe’s island, James Joyce’s Dublin, or Mark Twain’s river town, Dawson’s Landing, in Puddn Head Wilson. And, most importantly, they should understand the theme or message the author is conveying. What is Jonathan Swift saying about humanity in Gulliver’s Travels? How is F. Scott Fitzgerald portraying his generation in The Great Gatsby? What is Alice Walker expressing about the plight of women in The Color Purple?
My second goal is multi-faceted: to teach students to write competently. They should organize and clearly express their ideas in fully developed paragraphs and complete sentences using appropriate words. And they should 3 master writing’s nuts and bolts: correct spelling, grammar, usage, and punctuation. As you can see, this is a daunting task.
Literacy in Schools: Writing in Trouble
Surely if we can raise our academic standards for math and science, then, with a little attention and effort, we can restore the importance of literacy in our public high schools. Reading is the path to knowledge and writing is the way to make knowledge one’s own.
Education.com
17 September 2009
by Will Fitzhugh
Source: Education.com Member Contribution
Topics: Writing Conventions
[originally published in the New Mexico Journal of Reading, Spring 2009]
For many years, Lucy Calkins, described once in Education Week as “the Moses of reading and writing in American education” has made her major contributions to the dumbing down of writing in our schools. She once wrote to me that: “I teach writing, I don’t get into content that much.” This dedication to contentless writing has spread, in part through her influence, into thousands and thousands of classrooms, where “personal” writing has been blended with images, photos, and emails to become one of the very most anti-academic and anti-intellectual elements of the education we now offer our children, K-12.
In 2004, the College Board’s National Commission on Writing in the Schools issued a call for more attention to writing in the schools, and it offered an example of the sort of high school writing “that shows how powerfully our students can express their emotions”:
“The time has come to fight back and we are. By supporting our leaders and each other, we are stronger than ever. We will never forget those who died, nor will we forgive those who took them from us.”
Or look at the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the supposed gold standard for evaluating academic achievement in U.S. schools, as measured and reported by the National Center for Education Statistics. In its 2002 writing assessment, in which 77 percent of 12th graders scored “Basic” or “Below Basic,” NAEP scored the following student response “Excellent.” The prompt called for a brief review of a book worth preserving. In a discussion of Herman Hesse’s Demian, in which the main character grows up, the student wrote,
“High school is a wonderful time of self-discovery, where teens bond with several groups of friends, try different foods, fashions, classes and experiences, both good and bad. The end result in May of senior year is a mature and confident adult, ready to enter the next stage of life.”
It is obvious that this “Excellent” high school writer is expressing more of his views on his own high school experience than on anything Herman Hesse might have had in mind, but that still allows this American student writer to score very high on the NAEP assessment of writing.
This year, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) has released a breakthrough report on writing called “Writing in the 21st Century,” which informs us, among other things, that:
Threatening School Reform Which D.C. Council members want to go back to the bad old days?
IN UNDERTAKING reform of D.C. schools, officials two years ago wisely prescribed a limited role for the school board. Sentimentality about the city’s first elected body protected it from elimination, but officials recognized its absolute failure in serving the interests of children. Yet already the D.C. Council seems to want to give the board more prominence.
The council, returning from summer break next week, will try to override Mayor Adrian M. Fenty’s Aug. 26 veto of budget language appropriating nearly $1 million to the State Board of Education. It was the second time the mayor vetoed the measure because of fears that increased autonomy could lead to the board meddling in school operations. Five votes are needed to sustain the mayor’s veto, and unfortunately, it appears that some council members are buying the notion that this is a minor matter that won’t threaten Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee’s reforms. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray (D), proponent of the change who is also mulling a challenge to Mr. Fenty next year, argues that the board’s role in setting citywide educational standards and policy is not being enlarged.
21st Century Skills – Critical thinking? You need knowledge
THE LATEST fad to sweep K-12 education is called “21st-Century Skills.” States – including Massachusetts – are adding them to their learning standards, with the expectation that students will master skills such as cooperative learning and critical thinking and therefore be better able to compete for jobs in the global economy. Inevitably, putting a priority on skills pushes other subjects, including history, literature, and the arts, to the margins. But skill-centered, knowledge-free education has never worked.
The same ideas proposed today by the 21st-Century Skills movement were iterated and reiterated by pedagogues across the 20th century. In 1911, the dean of the education school at Stanford called on his fellow educators to abandon their antiquated academic ideals and adapt education to the real life and real needs of students.
In 1916, a federal government report scoffed at academic education as lacking relevance. The report’s author said black children should “learn to do by doing,” which he considered to be the modern, scientific approach to education.
THE IMPENDING DEMISE OF THE UNIVERSITY
In the industrial model of student mass production, the teacher is the broadcaster. A broadcast is by definition the transmission of information from transmitter to receiver in a one-way, linear fashion. The teacher is the transmitter and student is a receptor in the learning process. The formula goes like this: “I’m a professor and I have knowledge. You’re a student, you’re an empty vessel and you don’t. Get ready, here it comes. Your goal is to take this data into your short-term memory and through practice and repetition build deeper cognitive structures so you can recall it to me when I test you.”… The definition of a lecture has become the process in which the notes of the teacher go to the notes of the student without going through the brains of either.
In his Edge feature “Gin, Television, and Cognitive Surplus“, Clay Shirky noted that after WWII we were faced with something new: “free time. Lots and lots of free time. The amount of unstructured time among the educated population ballooned, accounting for billions of hours a year. And what did we do with that time? Mostly, we watched TV.”
In “The End of Universal Rationality“, Yochai Benkler explored the social implications of the Internet and network societies since the early 90s. Benkler has been looking at the social implications of the Internet and network societies since the early 90s. He saw the end of an era:
‘Bonus culture’ entering schools
BBC:
An unwelcome bonus culture is creeping into head teachers’ pay, diverting funds from the classroom, a teachers’ leader is warning.
Head of the ATL union Dr. Mary Bousted is critical of what she says are highly paid school leadership roles which have little to do with children’s education.
Every pound of bonus paid above school leadership pay scale was a pound less for books and equipment, she says.
The government said the level of pay should reflect heads’ responsibilities.
‘Super duper heads’
Some school governing bodies have advertised six figure salaries to attract good candidates to run schools and others are reported to have offered golden hellos.
Speaking at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers fringe at the TUC Congress in Liverpool, Dr Bousted said her union did not object to heads being paid a fair wage for a demanding and increasingly insecure job.
75 Percent of Oklahoma High School Students Can’t Name the First President of the U.S.
Only one in four Oklahoma public high school students can name the first President of the United States, according to a survey released today.
The survey was commissioned by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs in observance of Constitution Day on Thursday.
Brandon Dutcher is with the conservative think tank and said the group wanted to find out how much civic knowledge Oklahoma high school students know.
The Oklahoma City-based think tank enlisted national research firm, Strategic Vision, to access students’ basic civic knowledge.
“They’re questions taken from the actual exam that you have to take to become a U.S. citizen,” Dutcher said.
Blocking the schoolhouse door
Minority kids try to enter a school. Angry adults scream at them and try to block their path.
Little Rock, 1957?
Try New York City, 2009.
That was the shocking scene last week at a Harlem building shared by a traditional public school, PS 123, and a charter school, Harlem Success Academy 2.
Charter schools are public schools — but they’re mostly free of burdensome union rules. And they regularly outperform traditional schools, which is why parents are desperate to get their kids into charters.
And why it was ironic to see protesters (mostly teachers-union members) handing out flyers decrying the supposedly “separate and unequal” system that charters create.
Seattle schools may lower grade-point requirement for graduation
Seattle Public Schools may do away with a nearly decade-old requirement that all students earn a C average to graduate, and an even-older policy that athletes maintain a C average to play on school teams.
If the School Board approves recommendations endorsed by Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson, as well as most district high-school principals and counselors, a D average will be good enough to earn a high-school diploma. Student athletes would need to pass five of six classes with D grades or better.
District officials understand there are concerns about relaxing standards at a time when everyone from President Obama on down is pushing for higher expectations for U.S. students.
And when surveyed by the district last year, a majority of Seattle parents and students preferred to keep the C-average requirement.
But district officials, who plan to talk about the proposal at a School Board meeting tonight, insist they’re not watering down expectations, and the change would mirror what most other districts require.
Overseas Study Is Down, and the Economy Takes the Blame
For the first time in more than a decade, American colleges are reporting a drop in the number of students traveling overseas to study, and the economy is to blame.
Nearly 60 percent of colleges and independent study-abroad providers surveyed by the Forum on Education Abroad said enrollments had fallen from the previous year. Public colleges and outside providers were more likely to experience enrollment dips and reported the biggest declines, the survey found.
In another sign of stress for the programs, sixty percent of respondents said their budgets had been cut in the past year.
Does homework work?
School’s back, and so is Big Homework. Here’s what my 7th grade daughter has to do tonight:
1 Math review sheet
1 Science essay
French vocab for possible quiz
History reading and questionairre
English reading and note-taking
About two hours, give or take. This is considered a pretty light load, so as to ramp up gently. Over the next few weeks, it will get up to three hours or more.
Most of us give very little thought to this long-lived combination. School and homework seem as interconnected as cars and gasoline. Kids need homework to get smarter — right? It’s supposed to be how they pick up a good work ethic.
Teacher Contract Agreement with the Kent, Washington School District
Kent (Washington) School District:
September 13, 2009
At about 7:00 p.m. tonight, the KEA and KSD bargaining teams reached a tentative agreement. As part of our agreement, both sides agreed that neither side would discuss specific details of the Tentative Agreements until the KEA Leadership has the opportunity to present the Tentative Agreements to their members for ratification. The KEA leadership will present the contract terms to its members at 7:30 a.m., Monday, September 14, at Kentlake High School.
Superintendent Vargas commented, “On behalf the KSD Board of Directors, I want to congratulate and thank the two bargaining teams for their tremendous effort and success during this most challenging time. We are excited about moving forward together with our Kent Education Association partners and our entire school community. Our focus is students and their success–they are the reason we are here.”
September 12, 2009
The KSD and KEA bargaining teams have been negotiating throughout today and this evening. The teams have exchanged proposals as they work to achieve resolution.
The proposals are displayed in the menu to the right. The process is ongoing. Please continue to monitor this website for updates.
The page includes links to numerous school district proposals along with a Judge’s order.
Wages tie up Colorado school deals
Nearly a month into the school year and teachers in several Front Range districts are still working without a contract.
“We have more locals that have not been able to settle than is typical for this time of year,” said Deborah Fallin, spokeswoman for the Colorado Education Association. “Usually, most of the contracts are settled before school starts.”
Colorado teachers have not waged a strike for 15 years — since Denver teachers struck for five days in 1994.
No one expects a strike this year, but teachers unions from Pueblo to Greeley are battling their districts over contract offers they say are unfair.
Districts say they have less money this year, citing plummeting state revenues and an overall financial crisis.
Green teen reaps rewards of eco-friendliness
Marin County teenager Erin Schrode is a bit like Elle Woods, the gorgeous and bubbly character in “Legally Blonde.” Like Woods, Schrode is beautiful and vivacious – and not to be underestimated.
Where Woods, played by Reese Witherspoon, campaigned in the “Legally Blonde” sequel to outlaw animal testing in cosmetics, Schrode is on a crusade to get harmful chemicals out of beauty products.
The 18-year-old – who moonlights as a model and was recently featured in Seventeen magazine – has testified before the California Legislature, helped found a national coalition called Teens Turning Green, and started an eco-friendly body care line now sold in Whole Foods stores nationwide.
At the end of August, the “ultimate green girl,” as she calls herself, was one of five teenagers from California honored for her activism and impact. She received $36,000, to be applied to college or to her activist work.
ESL Students to Use iPods for Reading
At most Beaufort County public schools, iPods and other portable music players are banned from classrooms and hallways.
But at Hilton Head Island Middle School and others with high numbers of students with limited English skills, teachers use the devices to help students learn to read.
Five county schools will use iPods in their English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) classes this year to tailor instruction to students with different levels of English proficiency.
Hilton Head Island Middle School bought a set of 30 iPods last year, and Bluffton High, H.E. McCracken Middle in Bluffton, Red Cedar Elementary in Bluffton and Hilton Head Island School for the Creative Arts elementary school will receive sets this year.
The school district paid about $200 for each iPod Touch using federal money earmarked for ESOL students, said Sarah Owen, the district’s ESOL coordinator. The district’s contract with Apple Computer Inc., iPod manufacturer, includes training for teachers and a device that can charge and sync about 20 iPods to one computer at the same time.
USDA Urges Schools, Hospitals, Others To ‘Buy Local’
NPR:
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is launching a campaign to encourage schools, hospitals, jails and other institutions to buy food from local producers. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has been trying to get Americans to eat more fruit and vegetables as a way to combat obesity. The campaign also aims to provide income for small farms and boost the economies in rural areas.
NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children
Parents often rely on two things when they go about the complex business of raising children: instinct and conventional wisdom. When instinct and the culture’s knowledge about caring for babies don’t magically kick in, new parents suffer a panic commonly referred to as “nurture shock.”
San Francisco writer Po Bronson and Los Angeles journalist Ashley Merryman play off this term for the title of their fascinating new book, “NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children.” The jolt they’re delivering is that much of the conventional wisdom about children and child rearing is based on outdated theories and studies often influenced by incorrect assumptions and wishful thinking.
The good news is that scientific research over the past 10 years has illuminated our understanding of how children develop and behave. But because these significant findings have been overlooked, unenlightened practices in parenting, education and public policy persist. The authors, who have collaborated on articles about the science of parenting for New York and Time magazines, throw open the doors on this research to create a book that is not only groundbreaking but compelling as well. Even if you don’t have children, or your kids are grown, you should find the revelations about how the brain works and the rigors and frustrations of the scientific process captivating.
Parents fight use of new psych meds for kids
As newly approved drugs harm and even kill children, more parents are fighting back.
The most dramatic moment for the 70 doctors and 200 spectators attending June FDA hearings about approving new psychiatric drugs for children came when two bereaved mothers approached the open mike.
Liza Ortiz of Austin, Texas, told the advisory panel her 13-year-old son died of Seroquel toxicity in an ICU days after being put on the antipsychotic. “His hands twisted in ways I never thought possible,” she said.
Next was Mary Kitchens of Bandera, Texas, who described Seroquel’s lasting effects on her 13-year-old son Evan after being given the antipsychotic without her knowledge or permission by a residential treatment center.
But for Kitchens the most dramatic moment came after the hearings when she approached Dr. Robert Temple, the FDA’s director of the Office of Drug Evaluation, who had officiated on the panel.
U.S. sweetens tax credits for higher education expenses
Parents: Save those education receipts.
For the first time — and for a limited time — upper-middle-income parents will be able to take advantage of huge tax breaks for paying college bills.
This is thanks to a law that temporarily supplants the Hope Tax Credit with the far more lucrative and inclusive American Opportunity Tax Credit.
What’s this law and how can you take advantage of it?
The American Opportunity Tax Credit is one of several generous tax breaks that were passed into law in February as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, aimed at stimulating the U.S. economy.
It provides a federal income tax credit equal to 100% of the first $2,000 in qualified education expenses and 25% of the next $2,000 in expenses per student for qualified families.
Obama, Education, DC Vouchers & Senator’s School Choices
Give Mr. Obama credit for much of what he said, and continues to say, about educational reform. In rhetorical defiance of that major Democratic Party constituency, America’s unionized schoolteachers, Mr. Obama deserves credit for talking a good game on merit pay, charter schools, and breaking down the “tenure” barrier that bars removal of ineffective educators.
Unfortunately, in a now familiar pattern, Mr. Obama does not fare as well when one examines his actual actions, in contrast to his rhetoric.
If Mr. Obama favors innovation designed to increase competition and the range of educational options, particularly for underprivileged kids, why on earth did he stand silent on the sidelines last winter as senators from his own party took the fledgling, highly celebrated Washington, D.C., voucher program out behind the barn and shot it?
Should Isaac Use Savings or Debt for College?
Stephen Kreider Yoder and Isaac Yoder:
STEVE: I was checking our family bank-account balance online one night this summer, when my eyes slid down to another account, lower on the bank Web page.
“Interest Checking,” it said, and beside the account number was an astounding dollar figure — much bigger than I expected. It was Isaac’s bank account.
“You should think about adding some more of this money to your Roth IRA,” I told him as he worked at the desk next to me, preparing for college by organizing his most precious asset — the music files on the family computer.
“Hmm,” came the noncommittal reply. I knew how the debate would go next.
As we wrote earlier, The Wall Street Journal pays Isaac for his half of this column. Last year, he agreed to invest part of that in a retirement fund so he has a head start later in life.
Students burn midnight oil at Boston college
Community college professor Kathleen O’Neill was setting the ground rules for her psychology students when she came to an issue she didn’t normally have to address.
“What do we do if you fall asleep?” she asked. “What’s a nice way to gently wake you up? Tap you on the head? Would you want your neighbor to just nudge you?”
Fair question, considering O’Neill’s class begins just before midnight and runs until 2:30 a.m.
This semester, Bunker Hill Community College is offering two classes on the graveyard shift in a move to accommodate an unprecedented boost in enrollment attributed to the struggling economy as people look to augment their job skills without having to pay the tuition costs of more expensive schools.
Math illiteracy
This site continues to mention math curricula challenges from time to time, and as long as I am around, and have community math experiences, it will continue to do so.
I try to visit Madison’s wonderful Farmer’s Market weekly. This past weekend, I purchased some fabulous raspberries from an older Hmong couple. Their raspberries are the best. Unfortunately, while I made my purchase, they asked how much change I was due, something I saw repeated with other buyers. They periodically have a younger person around to handle the transactions, or a calculator.
Purchasing tickets at high school sporting events presents yet another opportunity to evaluate high schooler’s basic, but ESSENTIAL math skills. A Dane County teenager could not make change from $10 for three $2 tickets recently. I have experienced this at local retail establishments as well.
Unfortunately, the “Discovery” approach to math does not appear work….
A Virtual Revolution Is Brewing for Colleges
Students starting school this year may be part of the last generation for which “going to college” means packing up, getting a dorm room and listening to tenured professors. Undergraduate education is on the verge of a radical reordering. Colleges, like newspapers, will be torn apart by new ways of sharing information enabled by the Internet. The business model that sustained private U.S. colleges cannot survive.
The real force for change is the market: Online classes are just cheaper to produce. Community colleges and for-profit education entrepreneurs are already experimenting with dorm-free, commute-free options. Distance-learning technology will keep improving. Innovators have yet to tap the potential of the aggregator to change the way students earn a degree, making the education business today look like the news biz circa 1999. And as major universities offer some core courses online, we’ll see a cultural shift toward acceptance of what is still, in some circles, a “University of Phoenix” joke.
This doesn’t just mean a different way of learning: The funding of academic research, the culture of the academy and the institution of tenure are all threatened.
K-12 spending will not continue to increase at the rate it has over the past twenty years (5.25% annually in the case of the Madison School District). Online education provides many useful learning opportunities for our students. While it is certainly not the “be all and end all”, virtual learning can be used to supplement and provide more opportunities for all students. Staff can be redeployed where most effective (The budget pinch, flat enrollment despite a growing metropolitan area along with emerging learning opportunities are two major reasons that the Madison School District must review current programs for their academic and financial efficiency. Reading recovery and reform math are two useful examples).
Related: K-12 Tax & Spending Climate, the coming reset in state government spending and the Madison School District’s planned property tax increase. TJ Mertz on the local budget and communications.
Jeff Jarvis has more.
Foreign Languages Fall as Schools Look for Cuts
IN Edgemont, a high-performing Westchester school district, children as young as 7 could recite colors and days of the week in Spanish, but few if any learned to really converse, read or write. So this fall, the district canceled the Spanish lessons offered twice weekly at its two elementary schools since 2003, deciding the time and resources — an estimated $175,000 a year — could be better spent on other subjects.
The software replaced three teachers.
Class consolidation in Yonkers resulted in the loss of four foreign-language teaching positions, and budget cuts have cost Arlington, N.Y., its seventh-grade German program, and Danbury, Conn., several sections of middle school French and Spanish.
And in New Jersey, the Ridgewood district is replacing its three elementary school Spanish teachers with Rosetta Stone, an interactive computer program that cost $70,000, less than half their combined salaries.
“There’s never a replacement for a teacher in the classroom,” said Debra Anderson, a Ridgewood spokeswoman. “But this was a good solution in view of the financial constraints.”
Trying to Save for the Kids’ College? It’s a Bear
If the bear market has kept you from setting money aside for your child’s college education, you’re not alone.
Because of the economic crisis, 47% of parents are saving less or aren’t saving at all for their kids’ education, according to a Gallup survey released in May by student-loan provider Sallie Mae.
While not saving for that degree may have felt like a smart move while the stock market was crashing, the need to fund your kid’s college account has only grown. For the 2008-2009 school year, the average cost of attending a four-year public school for in-state residents — including tuition and room and board — rose 5.7% to $14,333, according to the College Board. The cost was up 5.6% to $34,132 for a private university. (These numbers aren’t adjusted for inflation.)
Meanwhile, the value of 529 college-savings accounts sank 21% last year, according to Boston consulting firm Financial Research, leaving families with far less tuition money than they had counted on. A 529 plan is a tax-advantaged investment plan offered by individual states.
Dead Letters Everyone has terrible handwriting these days. My daughter and I set out to fix ours.
f you have school-age children, you may have noticed their handwriting is terrible. They may communicate incessantly via written word–they can text with their heads in a paper bag–but put a pen in their hands and they can barely write a sentence in decent cursive. It’s not going to be easy to decipher one either, if they think cursive might as well be cuneiform.
My daughter is in the eighth grade, and I realized several years ago that her rudimentary block-letter printing was actually never going to improve because handwriting had been chopped from the school curriculum. Children today learn basic printing in first and second grade, then get cursory instruction in cursive in the third grade–my daughter was given a cursive workbook and told to figure it out herself. She dutifully filled in every page, but she never understood how these looping letters were supposed to become her handwriting, so they never did.
Is the best school the right school?
Antique dealer Antonia White is sitting exhausted on a sofa. She’s just returned from yet another three-hour stint looking at secondary schools for her 10-year-old daughter Clare. “I’m shattered,” she says. “It’s stressful and boring. All the chemistry labs look the same and all the parents look like people we wouldn’t want to know.”
Her comments will strike a chord with thousands of other parents this autumn, as September and October are peak season for secondary-school open days (parents need to be on the ball as the dates are often only listed on the school’s website, sometimes at the last moment). For the next few weeks, those with children approaching the next stage of their school career (both in the state and private sector) will be making their way along packed corridors, trying to spot the “best” school for their child. It can be an uncomfortable process – at some popular London secondaries the queues stretch down the street. (The public school system still has its main entrance point at 13, after prep school.)
Ideally, anyone looking for a school from age 11 should begin the search when their child has just started Year 5. This helps whittle down the choices before the final year at primary school (Year 6). Drawing up a shortlist when a child is 9 or 10 also allows for a year of coaching for 11-plus exams for selective state and private schools.
Kaplan Virtual Education Expands Online Learning Options for Florida Students
aplan Virtual Education (KVE) today announced partnerships with three school
districts to launch part- and full-time online learning options for students
throughout Glades, Polk and Miami-Dade counties this fall. Last year, the
Florida Legislature required school districts to offer full-time virtual
programs starting during the 2009-10 school year. The virtual public school
options will provide middle and high school students with a variety of online
courses that feature individualized instruction and an engaging curriculum.
The partnerships will provide online learning alternatives for:
* Sixth through 12th grade students in the Glades County School District
* Sixth through 12th grade students in the Miami-Dade County Public School
District
* High school students in the Polk County Public School District
“Kaplan Virtual Education is excited to offer Florida students an education
solution that provides rigorous, high-quality courses that can be tailored to
meet their unique needs and prepare them for success in the 21st century,” said
Charles Thornburgh, president of Kaplan Virtual Education. “Through these
partnerships, students can get one-on-one attention from teachers, take
advantage of engaging learning tools and study virtually anywhere at any time
via the Internet.”
Shorewood parents fear impact of suspensions on students’ college admissions
The Shorewood High School students who are fighting suspensions for toilet papering the school grounds can expect that some colleges would consider the suspensions in weighing the students’ applications.
But it’s unclear whether a one-day suspension would be an important factor weighed by an admissions office, and many colleges don’t ask about suspensions, according to admissions officials.
Five seniors were suspended for the first day of school last week for engaging in the decades-long tradition of hanging toilet paper on the campus just before the start of classes. They also were issued $177 disorderly conduct tickets by police.
Parents of four of the five seniors, each 17, have said they plan to ask that the suspensions be expunged from their sons’ school records, partly because they fear the suspensions could affect the boys’ college admission and scholarship applications. The parents also are angry that no wide-scale announcement was made to let families know that toilet papering would lead to disciplinary action this year, even though such an announcement had been made before the previous school year.
Dropouts Seek a Boost From Equivalency Exams
A growing number of Americans are taking high school equivalency tests in their hunt for any leg up in a bleak labor market.
Adult-education centers across the country report backlogs and waiting lists for prep courses cramming dozens of topics and years of lessons into weeks or months. But the potential for a better job and pay that drives many to seek a General Educational Development diploma comes with a caveat: The certificate generally is of limited value unless students use it as a stepping-stone to further education.
In 2008, the number of people taking the test for their GED diploma grew 6.6% to 777,000 from a year earlier, according to the American Council on Education, which administers the test. Between the first quarters of 2008 and 2009, three states — Louisiana, New Hampshire and North Carolina — and the District of Columbia saw at least a 20% rise in the number of test-takers.
The growth has come as the job market has worsened, especially for those with limited education. The unemployment rate in August for people lacking a high-school diploma was 15.6%, compared with 9.7% for high-school graduates without any college, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
High School Research Paper Lightens Up
“The more students are able to do in research and writing in high school, the more they’ve got a nice leg up.”
At the mere mention of research papers, Kelly Cronin’s usually highly motivated Summit Country Day Upper School students turn listless. Some groan. The Hyde Park Catholic school requires all high school students to write lengthy research papers each year on history, religion or literature.
Cronin’s sophomores write history papers. They pick a topic in late September and by May they’ll have visited libraries, pawed through card catalogs, and plumbed non-fiction books and scholarly articles.
They’ll turn in 200 or so index cards of notes. They’ll write and revise about 15 pages.
Cronin gladly grades 35 or more papers with such titles as “The Role of the Catholic Church in European Witchcraft Trials” and “Star Trek Reflected in President Johnson’s Great Society.”
“It’s time-consuming,” she says. “It takes over your life. But I’m not married, and I don’t have any kids.”
But most high school teachers aren’t like Cronin and most schools aren’t like Summit. At many high schools across the country, the in-depth research paper is dying or dead, education experts say, victims of testing and time constraints.
Juniors and seniors still get English papers, says Anne Flick, a specialist in gifted education in Springfield Township. “But in my day, that was 15 or 20 pages. Nowadays, it’s five.”
High school teachers, averaging 150 to 180 students, can’t take an hour to grade each long paper, Cronin said.
The assignment may not be necessary, says Tiffany Coy, an assistant principal at Oak Hills High in Bridgetown. “Research tells you it’s not necessarily the length; it’s the skills you develop,” she said.
But some educators disagree.
“Students come to college with no experience in writing papers, to the continual frustration of their professors,” said William Fitzhugh, a former high school teacher who publishes The Concord Review, a quarterly in Massachusetts that selects and publishes some of the nation’s best high school papers. [from 36 countries so far]
“If we want students to be able to read and understand college books and to write research papers there, then we must give students a chance to learn how to do that in a rigorous college preparatory program. That is not happening,” he said.
Teachers see the problem. Fitzhugh’s organization commissioned a national study of 400 randomly selected high school teachers in 2002 that showed:
-95% believe research papers, especially history papers, are important.
-62% said they no longer assign even 12-page papers.
-81% never assign 5,000-word or more papers.
2 new L.A. arts high schools are a study in contrasts
The schools opened for business this week, one on a $232-million shiny new campus, the other in rented space in a small church. Both have high hopes.
One occupies $232 million worth of serious architecture on a promontory overlooking downtown Los Angeles. The other rents cramped space in a South L.A. church.
One has an address that shouts prestige, with neighbors that include the city’s Roman Catholic cathedral and the Music Center. The other is across the street from an apartment building for the recently homeless.
Two new high schools for the arts debuted this week — a rare enough feat in a down economy. Despite the vast differences in their circumstances, it may be too early to say which of the two has the most potential to nurture the next generation of artists and performers.
The Los Angeles Unified school at 450 N. Grand Ave., perched across the 101 Freeway from the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, was years in the making and is housed on one of the most expensive and widely praised campuses in the nation. Yet it is only now shaking off more than a year of controversy and false starts in its launch to become the flagship of the district. The Fernando Pullum Performing Arts High School at 51st Street and Broadway may have the feel of something hastily thrown together out of spare parts, but it is led by one of the city’s most respected music educators and has the support of such big-name artists as Kenny Burrell, Jackson Browne, Bill Cosby and Don Cheadle.
O.C. school district, ACLU settle suit over ‘Rent’
Newport-Mesa Unified School District agrees to provide harassment and discrimination prevention training after students threatened a girl who appeared in the play and used slurs to describe another.
An Orange County school district where varsity athletes threatened to rape and kill the lead actress in a student production of the musical “Rent” has agreed to provide harassment and discrimination prevention training to Corona del Mar High School students, teachers and administrators and other district officials, according to a legal settlement announced Wednesday. The Newport-Mesa Unified School District will also apologize to the former student.
Because of the settlement, “no one else will have to go through what I went through,” said Hail Ketchum, 17, the victim who, along with family members, identified herself for the first time on Wednesday. She is a freshman studying theater at Loyola Marymount University. “I hope the students at Corona del Mar High School will learn from my experience that it’s possible to stand up for what is right and prevail.”
The campus made headlines across the nation earlier this year when its principal canceled “Rent: School Edition” because of concerns about its content. It was later reinstated. Officials with the American Civil Liberties Union, who sued the district in March, said the controversy over the tale of struggling artists that includes gay characters and some with AIDS was just one example of official tolerance of misogyny and homophobia on campus.
Growing ‘Authentic’ College Applicants
As America’s newest graduates were packing for college, high school juniors spent their final summer vacation in anything but a relaxed state. Many juniors and their families look on these months as a last chance to pad a growing list of extracurricular activities and experiences that will be meticulously outlined when they fill out college applications in the fall.
Unfortunately, many of these decisions remain driven by perceived “brand value” based on myth, cohort pressures, and word of mouth. As a high-school-based counselor who has many conversations each year with college-bound students, I would like to suggest an antidote to the many unhealthy pressures and groundless expectations: growing “authentic applicants.”
Authentic applicants take the long view of an educational journey, as they look at what the college years will actually contribute in the form of skills, knowledge, and values to their goal of living a meaningful life. They avoid getting locked into the quest for a “dream school,” a path that would restrict their options. They consider their families’ finances, and they research all the options available, including some little-known ones available at the least-expensive schools. At the same time, they don’t shy away from a selective school that’s right for them simply because it doesn’t fit their budgets.
Reeducating unions
Even with signs that the U.S. economy might be stirring, this is a strained Labor Day for the many Americans who are going without raises, and whose hours are being cut at the same time that they are asked to take heavier workloads — and especially for those who are without employment.
Teachers find themselves in all these categories, across the nation and right here, where the dire financial condition of the Los Angeles Unified School District has led to layoffs or demotions from regular teaching to substitute, and where class sizes will be larger and other cutbacks will reduce salaries. On a bigger scale, the unions that brought teachers better pay, benefits and job security find themselves at a tipping point, their power under threat in ways that seemed barely possible a few years ago.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose 2005 proposal to modify teacher tenure was brought down by the full-on might of the California Teachers Assn., is now calling for a change in state law that would allow teachers’ performance reviews to be linked to test scores. And there is barely a political peep to be heard about it; the Obama administration has demanded such changes if California is to receive a share of new education funding. Obama and his Education secretary, Arne Duncan, openly admire high-performing charter schools and reform-minded superintendents such as Michelle Rhee of Washington, who is working to revamp tenure rules there.
Therapy in Preschools: Can It Have Lasting Benefits?
Like all children, Perry Cunningham, age 4, wants friends. But until recently, he lacked the social skills to reach out to other kids.
When Perry tried to make a friend at his New Haven, Conn., preschool this year, he mimicked a move he had seen his 15-year-old brother make with his buddies–he gave another, much bigger child a playful shove. The big guy’s response: A punch in the face, leaving Perry with a bloody nose.
Courtney Morse Costello is a mental-health consultant at Beary Cherry preschool.
In many classrooms, Perry might simply have been regarded as a troublemaker. But Barbara Giangreco, a mental-health therapist who works in child-care centers and preschools, understood that he was just trying to be friendly, and worked with his mother and teacher on helping him use words to reach out to other kids. All the adults involved agree that Perry’s social skills have improved significantly. He is making friends, and while he still has conflicts with other kids sometimes, he knows how to apologize and make peace.
The idea of assigning mental-health workers to child-care centers and preschools is jarring; I was skeptical when I first heard the idea. Children so small shouldn’t need mental-health help, it seems, and having therapists or counselors working in classrooms seems to risk stigmatizing them with labels, or simply interfering with the innocence of childhood.
Colleges Are Failing in Graduation Rates
If you were going to come up with a list of organizations whose failures had done the most damage to the American economy in recent years, you’d probably have to start with the Wall Street firms and regulatory agencies that brought us the financial crisis. From there, you might move on to Wall Street’s fellow bailout recipients in Detroit, the once-Big Three.
But I would suggest that the list should also include a less obvious nominee: public universities.
At its top levels, the American system of higher education may be the best in the world. Yet in terms of its core mission — turning teenagers into educated college graduates — much of the system is simply failing.
Only 33 percent of the freshmen who enter the University of Massachusetts, Boston, graduate within six years. Less than 41 percent graduate from the University of Montana, and 44 percent from the University of New Mexico. The economist Mark Schneider refers to colleges with such dropout rates as “failure factories,” and they are the norm.
The United States does a good job enrolling teenagers in college, but only half of students who enroll end up with a bachelor’s degree. Among rich countries, only Italy is worse. That’s a big reason inequality has soared, and productivity growth has slowed. Economic growth in this decade was on pace to be slower than in any decade since World War II — even before the financial crisis started.
So identifying the causes of the college dropout crisis matters enormously, and a new book tries to do precisely that.
Employers Needed for First Annual Job and Career Fair at West High School
via email:
Does your business employ high school students or individuals with a high school diploma?
On Thursday, October 8, from 9:00 AM until 2:30 PM, West High School will host a job and career fair with a focus on employment opportunities during and after high school. West High is looking for employers who provide job and career opportunities for students in high school and individuals with a high school diploma.
This job fair is intended to provide both students and staff information about job and career opportunities for individuals with a high school diploma. Additionally, as a result of attending this job fair, students may obtain employment, arrange internships, set up job shadowing experiences, or network with potential employers.
For a $35.00 entry fee per business, West High will provide tables and chairs, a steady stream of 50 to 75 high school students per hour, a break room, volunteers to provide breaks and to assist with set up and take down, and a sit down meal and snacks provided by their culinary arts students.
For more information and a registration form, contact Jonathan Davis, transition teacher, at (608) 516-9512 or by e-mail at jidavis@madison.k12.wi.us
This is a good idea.
Will Universal Preschool Help Poor Kids? Education Next Issue Cover
Chester E. Finn, Jr. talks with Education Next about the contradictions behind the push for for universal preschool.
For more on this topic by Chester E. Finn, Jr., please see The Preschool Picture in the Fall 2009 issue of Education Next.
What the Public Thinks of Public Schools
Yesterday President Barack Obama delivered a pep talk to America’s schoolchildren. The president owes a separate speech to America’s parents. They deserve some straight talk on the state of our public schools.
According to the just released Education Next poll put out by the Hoover Institution, public assessment of schools has fallen to the lowest level recorded since Americans were first asked to grade schools in 1981. Just 18% of those surveyed gave schools a grade of an A or a B, down from 30% reported by a Gallup poll as recently as 2005.
No less than 25% of those polled by Education Next gave the schools either an F or a D. (In 2005, only 20% gave schools such low marks.)
Beginning in 2002, the grades awarded to schools by the public spurted upward from the doldrums into which they had fallen during the 1990s. Apparently the enactment of No Child Left Behind gave people a sense that schools were improving. But those days are gone. That federal law has lost its luster and nothing else has taken its place.
National Standards
The Concord Review & The National Writing Board
8 September 2009
Specific, detailed, universally-accepted national standards in education are so vital that we have now had them for many decades–in high school sports. Athletics are so important in our systems of secondary education that it is no surprise that we have never settled for the kind of vague general-ability standards that have prevailed for so long in high school academic aptitude tests. If athletic standards were evaluated in the way the SAT measures general academic ability, for example, there would be tests of “general physical fitness” rather than the impressive suite of detailed measures we now use in high school sports.
The tests that we require in football, basketball, track and other sports are not called assessments, but rather games and meets, but they test the participants’ ability to “do” sports in great detail–detail which can be duly communicated to college coaches interested in whether the athletes can perform in a particular sport.
These two different worlds of standards and assessment–athletics and academics–live comfortably side-by-side in our schools, usually without anyone questioning their very different sets of expectations, measures, and rewards.
The things our students have to know when they participate in various athletic activities are universally known and accepted. The things they have to do to be successful in various sports are also universally known and accepted across the country.
The fact that this is not the case for our academic expectations, standards, and rewards for students is the reason there has been so much attention drawn to the problem, at least since the Nation at Risk Report of 1983.
At the moment there are large efforts and expenditures being brought to bear, by the Department of Education, the Education Commission of the States, the Council of Chief State School Officers, many state governments, and others, for the development of academic National Standards for the United States.
There has been, and will continue to be, a lot of controversy over what novels students of English should read, what names, dates and issues history students should be familiar with, what languages, if any, our students should know, and what levels of math and science we can expect of our high school graduates.
The Diploma to Nowhere Report, released by the Strong American Schools Project in the summer of 2008, pointed out that more than one million of our high school graduates are enrolled in remedial courses each year when they get to the colleges which have accepted them. It seems reasonable to assume that the colleges that accepted them had some way of assessing whether those students were ready for the academic work at college, but perhaps the tools for such assessment were not up to the universal standards available for measuring athletic competence.
One area in which academic assessment is especially weak, in my view, is in determining high school students’ readiness for college research papers. The Concord Review did a national study of the assignment of research papers in U.S. public high schools which found that, while 95% of teachers surveyed said research papers were important, or very important, 81% did not assign the kind that would help students get ready for college work. Most of the teachers said they just didn’t have the time to spend on that with students.
Imagine the shock if we discovered that our student football players were not able to block or tackle, in spite of general agreement on their importance, or that our basketball players could not dribble, pass, or shoot baskets with any degree of competence, and, if, when surveyed, our high school coaches said that they were sorry that they just didn’t have time to work on that with their athletes.
Whatever is decided about National Standards for the particular knowledge which all our students should have when they leave school, I hope that there is some realization that learning to do one research paper, of the kind required for every International Baccalaureate Diploma now, should be an essential part of the new standards.
If so, then we come to the problem of assessing, not just the ability of students to write a 500-word “personal essay” for college admissions officers, or to perform the 25-minute display of “writing-on-demand” featured in the SAT writing test and the NAEP assessment of writing, but their work on an actual term paper.
As with our serious assessments in sports, there are no easy shortcuts to an independent assessment of the research papers of our secondary students. Since 1998, the National Writing Board, on a small scale, has produced three-page reports on research papers by high school students from 31 states and two Canadian provinces. Each report has two Readers, and each Reader spends, on average, one hour to read and write their evaluation of each paper. Contrast this with the 30 papers-an-hour assessments of the SAT writing test. The National Writing Board process is time-consuming, but it is, in my biased view, one serious way to assess performance on this basic task that every student will encounter in college.
US university dividend ‘highest in world’
The value of a university education for male students in the US in terms of future earning power is double the rich country average, research by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development suggests.
A male graduate in the US can expect to earn $367,000 extra over his lifetime compared with someone who has merely completed high school.
The income boost for men is higher than for any other country in the world and double the rich-country average of $186,000, suggesting that in the US going to college is particularly key to high earnings.
The Helicopter Parents Are Hovering on Facebook
David Rivera recently had someone “unfriend” him on Facebook: His own child.
For months, Dr. Rivera, an obstetrician in Lombard, Ill., had been exasperated that his 25-year-old son, Nate, often complained he was broke and asked for money, yet posted photos of himself on Facebook taken at bars, restaurants, movies and concerts.
Dr. Rivera says he tried to talk to his son, a senior in college, about his spending habits, but his son refused to listen. Frustrated, he finally wrote on his son’s Facebook wall: “I can see what you are blowing your money on, so don’t come whining to me about money.”
“I think they figure that their friends are watching but we’re not, because they think we are old and decrepit and we barely know how to turn the computer on,” says Dr. Rivera, 54-years-old, of being a parent.
In the new era of helicopter parenting, more and more parents and kids are meeting up, and clashing, on Facebook, MySpace and other social-networking sites.
Christian Girls, Interrupted
Two Christian girls. Two sets of distraught parents. And two state courts smack in the middle of it.
One of these courts is in New Hampshire, where a judge recently ordered that home-schooled Amanda Kurowski be sent to public school. The order signed by Family Court Justice Lucinda V. Sandler says the 10-year-old’s Christian faith could use some shaking up–and that the local public school is just the place to do it. So while the child’s lawyers at the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal outfit, filed a motion asking the judge to reconsider, last week Amanda started fifth grade at a local public school.
At about the same time Miss Kurowski was starting school in New Hampshire, a state court in Florida was considering what to do with 17-year-old Rifqa Bary. Miss Bary fled to Florida from Ohio a few weeks back, where she sought refuge with a Christian couple whose church she had learned about on Facebook. She says she ran away from home because her father discovered she’d become a Christian–and then threatened to kill her. On Thursday, Circuit Judge Daniel Dawson ordered the girl and her family to try mediation and set a pretrial hearing for the end of the month.
Reluctant students of the classics, lend me your earbuds!
Kids, remember this name: Jenny Sawyer.
She may soon be American education’s next “It” girl. Actually, make that its first and only “It” girl.
Only 24 and barely out of college, Sawyer has undertaken an audacious task: writing and shooting, with the help of a small band of filmmakers, more than 1,000 free, one-minute videos that help students understand and enjoy commonly assigned classic works of literature.
It’ll take two years, thousands of hours on a Boston soundstage and countless outfit changes for Sawyer, the only person appearing on camera.
Her website, 60secondrecap.com, is scheduled to go live Tuesday with the first of 100 or so videos covering 10 universally loved (read: hated) works that teenagers have struggled to appreciate since English teachers first walked the Earth. Titles include: The Scarlet Letter, Of Mice and Men, Great Expectations, Hamlet and To Kill a Mockingbird.
Are Dictionaries Becoming Obsolete?
Do we still need dictionaries in the age of Google?
Dictionaries are, after all, giant databases of words compiled by lexicographers who investigate word usages and meanings.
These days, however, Google is our database of meaning. Want to know how to spell assiduous? Type it incorrectly and Google will reply, in its kind-hearted way: “Did you mean: assiduous”? Why yes, Google, I did.
Google then spits out a bunch of links to Web definitions for assiduous. Without clicking on any of them, the two-sentence summaries below each link give me enough to get a sense of the word: “hard working,” and “diligent.”
Still not satisfied? Fine, click on the Google “News” tab – and you will be directed to a page of links where the word assiduous appears in news stories. Presto, sample sentences and usage examples.
Certification Of Teachers as Painful Farce
Iwas flooded with e-mails after my Aug. 24 column on high school teacher Jonathan Keiler. Prince George’s County officials said he was going to lose his certification because he had not taken enough education school courses, even though he had a law degree and was the only person at his school with the highly regarded National Board Certification. Shortly after I told county and state officials that I was going to write about Keiler’s situation, he was told that he had enough courses after all.
That change of tune was maddening to the teachers who wrote me. So were what they considered the uselessness of many education courses they were required to take and the faulty information they often received about the advanced training they did or didn’t need. I learned much from them. Here is a sampling:
“I’m a 17-year science teacher in Montgomery County. I was actually fired two years ago for not having the ‘right’ Advanced Professional Certificate (APC) credits. The online credits I was told would be accepted were denied. I later managed to complete the required credits online from the University of Phoenix — which was extremely lame but easy to do and is recognized by Montgomery County — in less than three weeks. By then the deadline had run out and I was fired from my job but rehired as a long-term substitute. Demoralizing to say the least. Financially I took a very big hit.”
The Hunt for a Good Teacher
I would give entering freshmen two pieces of advice. First, find out who the good teachers are. Ask your adviser; poll older students; search the Internet; and consult the teacher-evaluation guides available at most colleges. (As a professor, I am against those guides; too often they are the vehicles of petty grievances put forward by people who have no long-term stake in the enterprise. But if I were a student, I would take advantage of them.)
To some extent your options will be limited by distribution requirements (in colleges that still have them) and scheduling. But within these limits you should do everything you can to get a seat in the class of a professor known for both his or her knowledge of the material and the ability to make it a window on the larger universe. Years later you may not be able to recall the details of lectures and discussions, but the benefits of being in the company of a challenging mind will be yours forever.
Second, I would advise students to take a composition course even if they have tested out of it. I have taught many students whose SAT scores exempted them from the writing requirement, but a disheartening number of them couldn’t write and an equal number had never been asked to. They managed to get through high-school without learning how to write a clean English sentence, and if you can’t do that you can’t do anything.
Who Controls the Reading List?
Letters to the New York Times:
To the Editor:
As a university literature instructor, I found the idea of allowing middle-school students to choose their own reading lists disturbing.
Would we be so eager to embrace a “choose your own math” or “choose your own history” class?
The answer is no. We expect that students learn the curriculum in those courses whether or not they are “into it.” Literature is no different, and literature courses shouldn’t be treated as glorified book clubs.
By allowing students to bypass difficult texts or texts that don’t seem to relate to their contemporary lives in favor of “Captain Underpants,” teachers miss a valuable opportunity to teach them that real scholastic and intellectual growth often comes when we are most challenged and least comfortable.
Lisa Dunick
Champaign, Ill., Aug. 30, 2009
Don’t Alienate Your Professor
Having survived the teenage years of two children, I know how foolhardy it is to offer advice to 18-year-olds. But, after more than three decades of teaching, I do have a few tips for college freshmen everywhere:
Make sure you are in the class you signed up to take. A week spent trying to figure out why the person you thought was your math teacher keeps talking about Renaissance art is a wasted week — for both of you.
During class, do not: a) beat out a cadence on your desk while the teacher is lecturing; b) sigh audibly more than three or four times during a class period; c) check your watch more than twice during the hour. Do: a) practice a look of genuine interest in the lecture or discussion; b) nod in agreement frequently; c) laugh at all (or at least most) of the professor’s jokes.
Do ask questions if you don’t understand the professor’s point. Do not, however, ask any of the following: “Will this be on the test?” “Does grammar count?” “Do we have to read the whole chapter?” “Can I turn in my paper late?”
Grading education isn’t easy
About a decade ago, this newspaper ran a series of articles about the problems facing public education. In those stories, three reporters, myself included, each spent a day following typical fourth-grade students in three different school districts.
In one classroom, the teacher asked students about a spinnaker, and a young man answered by explaining he had seen the sailing ship on a trip to Turkey. In another classroom, when a teacher asked what was the first thing they smelled when they went to the movies, the students fell silent. When the teacher exclaimed, ”popcorn,” we learned many of the students had yet to step into a theater.
Students arrive at the doorsteps of schools each day burdened with backpacks and often varied experiences and economic backgrounds. They are at different learning levels, and for this reason, it is difficult to fairly assess just how much teaching is going on in individual classrooms and buildings and across districts.
During the same period these articles were appearing, the charter-school movement was starting in Ohio. The early advocates for these quasi-public schools pointed to the poor results in urban districts like Akron and especially Cleveland and proudly proclaimed they could teach these failing children better and cheaper.
Choice alone for parents and students was not the early driving force to start charter schools, and don’t let anyone tell you differently. Choice would come later, when the promises to teach cheaper and better were less than fulfilled
New England Prep School Builds Library Without Books
A New England prep school is getting rid of its traditional library full of books and going digital.
Cushing Academy in Ashburnham, Mass., will give away or toss the 20,000 books in its collection and spend $500,000 on a virtual “learning center,” The Boston Globe reported.
The new space will have flat-screen TVs that show information from the Internet, a $50,000 coffee shop with a $12,000 cappuccino machine and study cubicles that can accommodate laptops, according to the paper
School officials have also spent $10,000 on 18 Amazon.com and Sony electronic readers to replace the old library’s stacks of books.
GeoQUEST teaches history and geology to kids and parents
As young girls, Kristi Gelsomino and Tia Srachta toured the Cave of the Mounds with their Girl Scout troops from Illinois.
Now, years later, they journeyed back to the site with another mom, Jennifer Carroll, and their daughters who visited the cave with Girl Scout Troop 376 out of St Charles, Ill.
This time, the scouts were participating in a program called the GeoQUEST Walk and Talk for Families, which was started this year
The free program, run by the cave, explores the history of the area and geological features outside the cave itself.
“The GeoQUEST is designed to give back a bit of the history and story of this place without charging them a fee,” said Kim Anderson, education coordinator at Cave of the Mounds.
Deja vu: Report of the 1965 Madison School District Math 9 Textbook Committee
The mathematics committee of the junior high schools of Madison has been meeting regularly for four rears with one intention in mind — to improve the mathematics program of the junior high school. After experimenting with three programs in the 7th grade, the Seeing Through Mathematics series, Books 1 and 2, were recommended for adoption and approved in May of 1963.
The committee continued its leadership role in implementing the new program and began evaluation of the 9th grade textbooks available. The committee recommended the adoption of Seeing Through Mathematics, Book 3, published by Scott, Foresman and Company, and Algebra: Its Element and Structure, Book 1, published by Webster Division, McGraw-Hill Book Company, and the Board of Education adopted them on May 3, 1965.
A number of objections to the Seeing Through Mathematics textbooks were made by various University of Wisconsin professors. Dr. R. C. Buck, chairman of the University of Wisconsin Mathematics Department strongly criticized the series. A public objection to the adoption was made at the Board of Education meeting by Dr. Richard Askey of the University Mathematics Department. Later, a formal petition of protest against the adoption of Seeing Through Mathematics, Book 3, was sent to committee members. [related: 2006 Open Letter from 35 UW-Madison Math Professors about the Madison School District’s Math Coordinator position]
The sincerity of the eminently qualified professional mathematicians under Dr. Buck’s chairmanship was recognized by both the administration and the committee as calling for reconsideration of the committee’s decisions over the past three years relative to the choice of Seeing Through Mathematics 1, 2 and 3.
Conversely, the support of the Scott, Foresman and. Company mathematics program and its instruction philosophy, as evidenced by numerous adoptions throughout the country and the pilot studies carried out in the Madison Public Schoolsvindicated that equitable treatment of those holding diametric viewpoints should be given. It was decided that the interests of the students to be taught would be best served through a hearing of both sides before reconsideration.
A special meeting of the Junior High School. Mathematics committee was held on June 10, 1965.
Meeting 1. Presentations were made by Dr. R. C. Buck, Dr. Richard Askey, and Dr. Walter Rudin of the University of Wisconsin Mathematics Department, and Dr. J. B. Rosen, chairman-elect of the University of Wisconsin Computer Sciences Department.
The presentations emphasized the speakers’ major criticism of the Seeing Through Mathematics series — “that these books completely distort the ideas and spirit of modern mathematics, and do not give students a good preparation for future mathematics courses. Examples were used to show that from the speakers’ points of view the emphasis in Seeing Through Mathematics is wrong. They indicated they felt the language overly pedantic, and the mathematics of the textbooks was described as pseudo-mathematics. However, it was pointed out that the choice of topics was good the content was acceptable (except for individual instances), and the treatment was consistent. A question and answer session tollowed the presentations.
……….
After careful consideration of all points of view, the committee unanimously recommended:
- that the University of Wisconsin Mathematics and Education Departments be invited to participate with our Curriculum Department in developing end carrying out a program to evaluate the effectiveness of the Seeing Through Mathematics series and, if possible, other “modern” mathematics series in Madison and other school districts in Wisconsin;
- that the committee reaffirm its decision to recommend the use of Seeing Through Mathematics, Book 3, and Algebra: Its Elements and structure, Book 1, in grade nine with Seeing Through Mathematics, Book 1 and 2 in grades seven and eight, and that the Department of Curriculum Developnent of the Madison Public Schools continue its study, its evaluation, and its revision of the mathematics curriculum; and
- that en in-service program be requested for all junior high school mathematics teachers. (Details to follow in a later bulletin).
Related: The recent Madison School District Math Task Force.
Britannica on deja vu.
How Facebook Ruins Friendships
Notice to my friends: I love you all dearly.
But I don’t give a hoot that you are “having a busy Monday,” your child “took 30 minutes to brush his teeth,” your dog “just ate an ant trap” or you want to “save the piglets.” And I really, really don’t care which Addams Family member you most resemble. (I could have told you the answer before you took the quiz on Facebook.)
Here’s where you and I went wrong: We took our friendship online. First we began communicating more by email than by phone. Then we switched to “instant messaging” or “texting.” We “friended” each other on Facebook, and began communicating by “tweeting” our thoughts–in 140 characters or less–via Twitter.
All this online social networking was supposed to make us closer. And in some ways it has. Thanks to the Internet, many of us have gotten back in touch with friends from high school and college, shared old and new photos, and become better acquainted with some people we might never have grown close to offline.
Last year, when a friend of mine was hit by a car and went into a coma, his friends and family were able to easily and instantly share news of his medical progress–and send well wishes and support–thanks to a Web page his mom created for him.
But there’s a danger here, too. If we’re not careful, our online interactions can hurt our real-life relationships.
Why College Costs Rise, Even in a Recession
If you have paid a college tuition bill recently, perhaps the sticker shock has abated and your children have been good enough to friend you on Facebook so you can see what they are doing on your dime.
What probably still lingers, however, is the desire to ask some pointed questions of the people who are doing the educating. Where does all that money go? And why can’t the price tag fall for a change?
Earlier this year, the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities announced with some pride that the average increase in tuition and fees at private institutions this school year would be the smallest in 37 years — 4.3 percent, just a little higher than inflation.
Is this where we are supposed to stand up and cheer?
To get some perspective, I set out to find a college president with an M.B.A. and some experience outside the academy. I found one at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa. Its president, Daniel H. Weiss, is an expert in medieval art, but he also worked as a management consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton. So he knows his way around a corporate restructuring.
Cringely ponders education in a “alternate economice universe”.
Change is in the air. Simply throwing more money at the current system is unlikely to drive material improvements.
Incompetent teachers
I’VE finally got round to reading Steven Brill’s piece in last week’s New Yorker about incompetent teachers in New York. It’s a brilliant but infuriating description of how hard it is to improve schools because the unions make it so hard to get rid of bad teachers and replace them with good ones.
Brill visits the “Rubber Room”, where teachers whose principals want to sack them sit around doing nothing for years, still drawing their salaries, until arbitrators hear their cases. One interviewee, who is earning more than $100,000 a year for twiddling her thumbs, offers one of the most amusingly outlandish theories I have heard in a while:
Before Bloomberg and Klein [the mayor and schools chancellor, who are trying to introduce a hint of meritocracy to New York’s schools], “there was no such thing as incompetence,” says Brandi Scheiner. She adds:
Wikipedia: It’s a Man’s World
A recent study, reported on the Wall Street Journal’s blog, reveals that only 13 percent of Wikipedia’s contributors are female. This information manages, somehow, to be both unsurprising — Wikipedia feels like a guy thing, somehow — and fascinating, for raising questions about how gender informs the largely anonymous realm of Internet discussion.
One-quarter of respondents who did not contribute said that they hadn’t done so because they were “afraid of getting ‘in trouble'”
Wikipedia aims for democratic participation: Anyone can contribute, and everyone’s contributions are subject to correction by other users. Its subject matter isn’t implicitly gendered: It covers almost any topic that’s relevant enough to warrant an entry. But, in practice, Wikipedia — like any other established subculture, offline or on — rewards some contributors more than others. The site, by its nature, favors people with an intense interest in detail and a high tolerance for debate. (Choosing a discussion page at random, one learns that the entry on frogs once drew critical attention for including a picture of toads. It got slightly heated.)
Loudon residents, school board comfortable with camera at meetings
A Tennessee School Board Association recommendation that would allow school boards to restrict the use of cameras and video recorders from board meetings found little support from the members of the Loudon County School Board on Thursday night.
During a review of TSBA’s proposed policy changes, board members and residents expressed their concerns about the policy. Some were concerned that the Nashville-based TSBA’s suggested policy was unconstitutional.
“I can’t believe you’re getting such bad legal advice,” said Loudon resident Shirley Harrison.
Pat Hunter, a Loudon County activist who has recently posted video clips of school board members and other county officials on her Web site, said she was concerned about taxpayer money being used to fund TSBA.
Power to the people, as it were!
Will California Use Student Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers?
In decades past, education in California was a top priority for government, and the state’s schools were “the cutting edge of the American Dream.” Today, spending per pupil in the state has fallen to 47th in the country. Due to deep budget cuts, California school districts have been laying off teachers, expanding class sizes, closing some schools, and canceling bus service and summer school programs.
As for future funding of public education–the state of California is caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. The current dilemma stems from a provision in California’s Education Code that can be interpreted as ruling out the use by state officials of test scores to evaluate teacher performance and compensation. On the one hand, the Obama administration has informed state officials that this provision represents an unacceptable “firewall between students and teacher data” and must be removed if California is to be eligible to receive an educational grant from the administration’s $4.35 billion Race to the Top stimulus fund. On the other hand, California teachers are making it clear through their unions that the use by state government of student test scores to evaluate teachers would be detrimental to education and is an idea that must be rejected.
Taking up this issue has been the Senate Committee on Education, which held a hearing on Aug. 26 chaired by Senator Gloria Romero. The Committee is considering amending California law to ensure that the state qualifies for federal funding. “It is my goal,” Romero says, “to do everything possible to ensure that the Golden State has access to precious federal dollars that can help provide our students the best possible education.”
26-School D.C. Cheating Probe ‘Inconclusive’
District officials revealed Thursday that they commissioned an investigation last summer into possible cheating at 26 public and public charter schools where reading and math proficiency on 2008 standardized tests increased markedly.
The probe, an analysis of incorrect student answers that were erased and changed to correct answers, found “anomalies” at some of the schools that administered the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System (DC-CAS) test. But officials called the investigation, conducted by the test’s publisher, CTB McGraw-Hill, “ultimately inconclusive.”
District officials did not name the schools that were investigated, and they did not release a copy of the CTB McGraw-Hill report, which was requested by The Washington Post on May 29 under the Freedom of Information Act. Officials also offered no explanation for the interval between the conclusion of the investigation in March and their decision to disclose it at a news conference called by Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) on Thursday.
Same-sex classes worth a shot
Wisconsin State Journal Editorial:
Anyone who has ever walked the halls of a middle school knows the hormones are hopping and the social drama is intense.
Growing evidence also suggests boys and girls learn best in different ways.
That’s why experimenting with same-sex schools and classes is a welcome trend in Wisconsin. If pilot programs in Beaver Dam and a handful of other districts can boost the attention and achievement of both sexes, more schools should consider separating the girls from the boys in targeted grades and subjects.
Beaver Dam educators are separating sixth-graders into two single-gender classrooms for math, science and English this fall. Other classes such as physical education will still be coed.
Educators in Beaver Dam and elsewhere plan to analyze and compare test scores as well as attendance, discipline and behavioral referrals. Results will be vital in determining whether to continue or expand the effort.
Boy hit by car near Madison Sennett Middle School still in hospital with skull fracture
A boy hit by a car near from Sennett Middle School on Thursday sustained a skull fracture, bruises and cuts and is still in the hospital, Sennett principal Colleen Ludholz said today.
The 11-year-old Sennett student was crossing the street before the start of school when he was hit by the side mirror of a vehicle.
Education works as a placebo effect
KAI RYSSDAL: College students, and their parents, who have yet to write this fall’s tuition checks may want to bear the following statistic in mind. According to the Department of Education, more students are going deeper into debt to pay for school. Last year, total federal student loan payments increased 25 percent. Are students getting what they borrowed for? Commentator Tyler Cowen says yeah they are, sort of.
TYLER COWEN: There’s lots of evidence that placebos work in medicine; people get well simply because they think they’re supposed to.
But we’re learning that placebos apply to a lot of other areas and that includes higher education. Schooling works in large part because it makes people feel they’ve been transformed. Think about it: college graduates earn a lot more than non-graduates, but studying Walt Whitman rarely gets people a job. In reality, the students are jumping through lots of hoops and acquiring a new self-identity.
The educators and the administrators stage a kind of “theater” to convince students that they now belong to an elite group of higher earners. If students believe this story, many of them will then live it.
Lavish public spending on the well-being of children does not always hit the mark
WHEN the poet William Wordsworth declared that “the Child is father of the Man“, he meant that the gifts of childhood endow adults with some of their finest qualities. And many governments, these days, feel that the path to happiness for society as a whole lies through spending on the welfare of its youngest members: their health, education and general well-being. A report* from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a rich-country think-tank, scrutinises these efforts and asks if the aim is being achieved.
With its stress on quantifiable facts, the spirit of the OECD report differs from one by UNICEF, the UN children’s agency, in 2007 which made waves by saying children in Britain did badly. UNICEF relied too much on asking youngsters how they felt (did they have “kind and helpful” schoolmates?); the new study stresses meatier things like vaccination and test scores.
With equal rigour, the OECD avoids a single index of child welfare in its 30 member states. Instead, after sifting hundreds of variables, the researchers settled on 21 that coalesce into six categories: material well-being; housing and environment; educational well-being; health and safety; risky behaviour; and quality of school life. Then they ranked countries six times.
The Politics of President Obama’s “Back to School Speech” Beamed to Classrooms
Here’s the latest exhibit on how polarized the country is and how much distrust exists of President Obama.
He plans what seems like a simple speech to students around the country on Tuesday to encourage them to do well in school.
But some Republicans are objecting to the back-to-school message, asserting that Obama wants to indoctrinate students.
Florida GOP Chairman Jim Greer said in a statement that he is “absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama’s socialist ideology” and “liberal propaganda.”
Wednesday, after the White House announced the speech, the Department of Education followed up with a letter to school principals and a lesson plan.
Critics pointed to the part of the lesson plan that originally recommended having students “write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president.”
The Department of Education has now changed their supplementary materials on President Obama’s upcoming address to schoolchildren on the importance of education — eliminating a phrase that some conservatives, such as the Florida GOP, happened to have been bashing as evidence of socialist indoctrination in our schools.
In a set of bullet points listed under a heading, “Extension of the Speech,” one of the points used to say: “Write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president. These would be collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable to their goals.”
However, that bullet point now reads as follows: “Write letters to themselves about how they can achieve their short‐term and long‐term education goals. These would be collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable to their goals.”
om Horne, Arizona’s superintendent of public instruction, put out his own statement, with an education-oriented critique of the speech and its lesson plans.
Here’s a snippet from his statement:The White House materials call for a worshipful, rather than critical approach to this speech. For example, the White House communication calls for the students to have ‘notable quotes excerpted (and posted in large print on the board),’ and for the students to discuss ‘how will he inspire us,’ among other things. …In general, in keeping with good education practice, students should be taught to read and think critically about statements coming from politicians and historical figures.
Just as it quickly became impossible to have a rationale discussion about health care as August wore on, we could be heading that way on education. If you haven’t heard (don’t get cable news?), President Obama plans to give a speech to the nation’s schoolchildren next week. To accompany it the Department of Education prepared a – gasp – study guide with some ideas for how teachers can use the speech as a, dare I say it, teachable moment.
Conservatives are screaming that this is unprecedented and amounts to indoctrination and a violation of the federal prohibition on involvement in local curricular decisions. Even the usually level-headed Rick Hess has run to the ramparts. We’re getting lectured on indoctrination by the same people who paid national commentators to covertly promote their agenda.
Please. Enough. The only thing this episode shows is how thoroughly broken our politics are. Let’s take the two “issues” in turn.
Michael Alison Chandler & Michael Shear:
The speech, which will be broadcast live from Wakefield High School in Arlington County, was planned as an inspirational message “entirely about encouraging kids to work hard and stay in school,” said White House spokesman Tommy Vietor. Education Secretary Arne Duncan sent a letter to principals nationwide encouraging them to show it.
But the announcement of the speech prompted a frenzied response from some conservatives, who called it an attempt to indoctrinate students, not motivate them.
I think Max Blumenthal provides the right perspective on this political matter:
Although Eisenhower is commonly remembered for a farewell address that raised concerns about the “military-industrial complex,” his letter offers an equally important — and relevant — warning: to beware the danger posed by those seeking freedom from the “mental stress and burden” of democracy.
The story began in 1958, when Eisenhower received a letter from Robert Biggs, a terminally ill World War II veteran. Biggs told the president that he “felt from your recent speeches the feeling of hedging and a little uncertainty.” He added, “We wait for someone to speak for us and back him completely if the statement is made in truth.”
Eisenhower could have discarded Biggs’s note or sent a canned response. But he didn’t. He composed a thoughtful reply. After enduring Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, who had smeared his old colleague Gen. George C. Marshall as a Communist sympathizer, and having guarded the Republican Party against the newly emergent radical right John Birch Society, which labeled him and much of his cabinet Soviet agents, the president perhaps welcomed the opportunity to expound on his vision of the open society.
“I doubt that citizens like yourself could ever, under our democratic system, be provided with the universal degree of certainty, the confidence in their understanding of our problems, and the clear guidance from higher authority that you believe needed,” Eisenhower wrote on Feb. 10, 1959. “Such unity is not only logical but indeed indispensable in a successful military organization, but in a democracy debate is the breath of life.”
Critical thinking is good for kids and good for society.
I attended a recent Russ Feingold lunch [mp3 audio]. He spoke on a wide range of issues and commendably, took many open forum questions (unlike many elected officials), including mine “How will history view our exploding federalism?”. A fellow luncheon guest asked about Obama’s use of “Czar’s” (operating outside of Senate review and confirmation). Feingold rightly criticized this strategy, which undermines the Constitution.
I would generally not pay much attention to this, but for a friends recent comment that his daughter’s elementary school (Madison School District) teacher assigned six Obama coloring projects last spring.
Wall Street Journal Editorial:
President Obama’s plan to speak to America’s schoolchildren next Tuesday has some Republicans in an uproar. “As the father of four children, I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama’s socialist ideology,” thunders Jim Greer, chairman of Florida’s Republican Party, in a press release. “President Obama has turned to American’s children to spread his liberal lies, indoctrinating American’s [sic] youngest children before they have a chance to decide for themselves.” Columnists who spy a conspiracy behind every Democrat are also spreading alarm.
This is overwrought, to say the least. According to the Education Department’s Web site, Mr. Obama “will challenge students to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning”–hardly the stuff of the Communist Manifesto or even the Democratic Party platform. America’s children are not so vulnerable that we need to slap an NC-17 rating on Presidential speeches. Given how many minority children struggle in school, a pep talk from the first African-American President could even do some good.
On the other hand, the Department of Education goes a little too far in its lesson plans for teachers to use in conjunction with the speech–especially the one for grades 7 through 12. Before the speech, teachers are urged to use “notable quotes excerpted (and posted in large print on board) from President Obama’s speeches about education” and to “brainstorm” with students about the question “How will he inspire us?” Suggested topics for postspeech discussion include “What resonated with you from President Obama’s speech?” and “What is President Obama inspiring you to do?”
Nearly 1 in 10 in California’s class of 2009 did not pass high school exit exam
Nearly one in 10 students in the class of 2009 did not pass the state’s high school exit exam, which is required to receive a diploma. The results, released Wednesday, were nearly stagnant compared with the previous year.
By the end of their senior year, 90.6% of students in the graduating class had passed the two-part exam, compared with 90.4% in the class of 2008.
“These gains are incremental, but they are in fact significant and they are a true testimony to the tremendous work being done by our professional educators . . . as well as our students,” said state Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell, whose office released the data.
Beginning in their sophomore year, students have several chances to take the exit exam. A score of at least 55% on the math portion, which is geared to an eighth-grade level, and 60% on the English portion, which is ninth- or 10th-grade level, is required.
The achievement gap between white and Asian students and their Latino and black classmates persisted. More than 95% of Asian students and nearly 96% of white students passed the exam by the end of their senior year, compared with nearly 87% of Latino students and more than 81% of black students. But the data did show the size of the gap narrowing. English-language learners and lower-income students also lagged but have made notable gains since the exam was first required.
Students Borrow More Than Ever For College
Students are borrowing dramatically more to pay for college, accelerating a trend that has wide-ranging implications for a generation of young people.
New numbers from the U.S. Education Department show that federal student-loan disbursements–the total amount borrowed by students and received by schools–in the 2008-09 academic year grew about 25% over the previous year, to $75.1 billion. The amount of money students borrow has long been on the rise. But last year far surpassed past increases, which ranged from as low as 1.7% in the 1998-99 school year to almost 17% in 1994-95, according to figures used in President Barack Obama’s proposed 2010 budget.
The sharp growth is “definitely above expectations,” says Robert Shireman, deputy undersecretary of the Education Department. “But we’re also in an economic situation that nobody predicted.” The eye-opening increase in borrowing is largely due to the dire economic environment, which is causing more people to seek federal loans, he says.
The new numbers highlight how debt has become commonplace in paying for higher education. Today, two-thirds of college students borrow to pay for college, and their average debt load is $23,186 by the time they graduate, according to an analysis of the government’s National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, conducted by financial-aid expert Mark Kantrowitz. Only a dozen years earlier, according to the study, 58% of students borrowed to pay for college, and the average amount borrowed was $13,172.
Content Knowledge: “Um, My College Didn’t Offer History”
Washington Monthly’s College Guide
I’d like to welcome you all to the Washington Monthly’s College Guide website and blog. Our aim is for this site to be your one-stop-shop for information about higher education reform. Since 2005, the Washington Monthly has sought to steer the national conversation about higher education away from a maniacal focus on elite schools that is the abiding obsession of the mainstream press and towards the less selective (but often wonderful) rank-and-file colleges and universities where most Americans actually get their educations. This site is the latest step in that effort.
We’re looking to do a few different things here:
· Highlight the Monthly’s annual college rankings, which rate schools not based on crude and easily-manipulated measures of money and prestige, like certain other magazines do, but rather on their contributions to society. Are they producing cutting-edge scientific research and PhDs? Do they steer their graduates into public-service jobs? Do they recruit economically disadvantaged students and help them graduate, or merely cater to the affluent? On these measures, the elite schools don’t do so well. For instance, only one of U.S. News & World Report’s top ten universities–Stanford–makes the Washington Monthly’s top ten, while some institutions that rank high on our list, like South Carolina State (#6) and Jackson State (#22), are buried in the bottom tier of the U.S. News list. We hope you’ll take the time to look at some of the surprising results our methodology led to.
An Interesting Presentation (Race, Income) on Madison’s Public Schools to the City’s Housing Diversity Committee
Former Madison Alder Brenda Konkel summarized the meeting:
The Madison School District shared their data with the group and they decided when their next two meetings would be. Compton made some interesting/borderline comments and they have an interesting discussion about race and how housing patterns affect the schools. There was a powerpoint presentation with lots of information, without a handout, so I tried to capture it the best I could.
GETTING STARTED
The meeting was moved from the Mayor’s office to Room 260 across the street. The meeting started 5 minutes late with Brian Munson, Marj Passman, Mark Clear, Judy Compton, Dave Porterfield, Brian Solomon and Marsha Rummel were the quorum. Judy Olson absent, but joined them later. City staff of Bill Clingan, Mark Olinger, Ray Harmon and Helen Dietzler. Kurt Keifer from the School District was here to present. (Bill Clingan is a former Madison School Board member. He was defeated a few years ago by Lawrie Kobza.
A few interesting notes:
Clear asks if this reflects white flight, or if this just reflects the communities changing demographics. He wants to know how much is in and out migration. Kiefer says they look more at private and parochial school attendance as portion of Dane County and MMSD. Our enrollment hasn’t changed as a percentage. There has been an increased activity in open enrollment – and those numbers have gone up from 200 to 400 kids in the last 8 – 10 years. He says the bigger factor is that they manage their enrollment to their capacities in the private and parochial schools. Even with virtual schools, not much changes. The bigger factor is the housing transition in Metropolitan area. Prime development is happening in other districts
……
Kiefer says smaller learning communities is what they are striving for in high schools. Kiefer says the smaller learning initiative – there is a correlation in decrease in drop out rate with the program. Compton asks about minority and Caucasian level in free lunch. She would like to see that.
…….
Kiefer says that Midvale population is not going up despite the fact that they have the highest proportion of single detached units in Midvale – they are small houses and affordable, but also highest proportion of kids going to private and parochial schools. He says it was because of access because to parochial schools are located there. Kiefer says they think the area is changing, that the Hilldale area has been an attractor for families as well as Sequoya Commons. Family and school friendly areas and he tells the city to “Keep doing that”. He is hopeful that Hill Farms changes will be good as well.
Fascinating. I wonder how all of this, particularly the high school “small learning community initiatives” fit with the District’s strategic plan and recently passed Talented and Gifted initiative?
GMAT kicks GRE into touch
Although top-tier business schools such as Harvard, Wharton, Stanford and MIT Sloan have decided to adopt the GRE test as well as the GMAT, there is little appetite for the test in the majority of the US’s top business schools, according to a report by Kaplan, the test preparation company.
Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions conducted a survey of admissions officers at 260 of the top MBA programmes in the US. Some 24 per cent already accept GRE (Graduate Record Exam) test scores in addition to GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test) scores. Of the remaining schools, however, only 4.3 per cent said they were considering adopting GRE.
The GRE test is the entry test to a range of post-graduate degrees, whereas the GMAT is designed specifically for business students and so gives more accurate predictions of MBA success, says Dave Wilson, president of GMAC, which administers the GMAT test..
L.A. charter schools get a chance to grow, but how big?
A groundbreaking plan to open 51 new Los Angeles schools and 200 existing ones to possible outside control has Randy Palisoc feeling as if salvation is just steps away. A new $54-million campus he covets is rising a block from where his award-winning charter school operates in a rented church.
Palisoc is among many with big dreams since the Los Angeles Board of Education approved its landmark school control resolution last week. The management of about a fourth of all district schools could be up for grabs.
As a result, leading charter school operators anticipate accelerated growth for their organizations and better facilities for some current schools. An 11-school nonprofit group controlled by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is eyeing a new high school south of downtown and may bid for more existing campuses. Momentum is building for internal district proposals.
And even the powerful teachers union, which vigorously opposed the plan, is preparing to take part.
University of Texas Drops Merit Program for Need-Based Aid
An increase in the number of students seeking financial aid has prompted the University of Texas at Austin to phase out its multimillion-dollar National Merit Scholarship program starting next year so it can use the money for need-based scholarships.
The university enrolled 281 National Merit Scholars last year — second only to Harvard University — and says it will honor all current scholarships but not offer them to freshmen next year.
Coming amid the recession and climbing college costs, the move by the state’s largest university could signal a renewed emphasis on need-based aid by the country’s colleges, experts said. Many schools have spent the past decade using scholarship money to attract high-performing students.
“This gets back to equity in college — which should be the primary goal of student aid,” said Justin Draeger, vice president of public policy at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.
The National Merit Scholarships are awards that go to about 8,200 students a year, based in part on their scores on the College Board’s PSAT exam, a standardized test typically taken during the junior year of high school. The program gives winners $2,500 apiece, but corporations and some colleges also finance merit scholarships through the program. The University of Texas at Austin was one of about 200 universities that paid for merit awards, promising $13,000 over four years.
Is A College Education Worth The Debt?
NPR:
A college degree has long been considered a golden ticket to success in this country. But with the current economic recession, some question whether obtaining a college degree is worth going into debt. Boyce Watkins, a professor of finance at Syracuse University; author Richard Vedder, a professor of economics at Ohio University, discuss how many are rethinking their high hopes of a college education. The men are joined by Hunter Walker, a recently-enrolled graduate student at Columbia School of Journalism, who recently wrote about his educational debt worries on the tabloid Web site Gawker.com.
Girls and Dieting, Then and Now
One day in January 1986, fourth-grade girls at Marie Murphy School in Wilmette, Ill., were called down to the principal’s office.
A stranger was waiting there to ask each girl a question: “Are you on a diet?”
Most of the girls said they were.
“I just want to be skinny so no one will tease me,” explained Sara Totonchi.
“Boys expect girls to be perfect and beautiful,” said Rozi Bhimani. “And skinny.”
I was the questioner that day. As a young Wall Street Journal reporter, I had gone to a handful of Chicago-area schools to ask 100 fourth-grade girls about their dieting habits. Researchers at the University of California at San Francisco were about to release a study showing 80% of fourth-grade girls were dieting, and I wanted to determine: Was this a California oddity, or had America’s obsession with slimness reached the 60-pound weight class?
My reporting ended up mirroring the study’s results. More than half of the 9-year-old girls I surveyed said they were dieting, and 75%–even the skinniest ones–said they weighed too much. I also spoke to fourth-grade boys and learned what the girls were up against. “Fat girls aren’t like regular girls,” one boy told me. “They aren’t attractive.”
Stop Sending Sick Kids to School
Let’s have a show of hands: How many of you have sent a child to school when you have suspected (I’m being polite here) that he/she was not well and might be contagious?
Maybe it will help if I tell you that my hand is up.
I know that you had your excuses: Your son didn’t have fever when you dropped him off at school at 8 a.m.–even if the nurse says he has 102 degrees Fahrenheit an hour later… You thought your daughter was sneezing and coughing because of her allergies… It is sometimes hard to tell when your kid’s physical complaint is an excuse to get out of a test.
I believe all of that. And I also believe that some people will keep sending their kids to school sick even if the secretary of Health and Human Services personally comes to their door and begs them not to.
But for those of us who are capable of changing our behavior, this is the time. Here’s why:
Bad Student Writing? Not So Fast!
It would be good for the blood pressure of everyone involved in criticizing education–state legislators, education policy professionals, professors, school administrators, parents–to take a deep breath. Put aside the statistics, the studies, the anecdotes, and take a look at the big picture.
Here’s what Edith Hamilton had to say about education, in The Echo of Greece (1957), one of her many trenchant books on the subject of the ancient Greeks:
“If people feel that things are going from bad to worse and look at the new generation to see if they can be trusted to take charge among such dangers, they invariably conclude that they cannot and that these irresponsible young people have not been trained properly. Then the cry goes up, ‘What is wrong with our education?’ and many answers are always forthcoming.”
Note the droll and ironic, “and many answers are always forthcoming.” Perhaps studying people who lived so long ago–people who invented the very idea of education as a route to genuine freedom, and understood freedom to be worthwhile only when coupled with self-control–gave Hamilton one of those calm, stoical uber-minds that comprehends competing pronouncements about education never to be more than opinion.
Midland Public Schools International Baccalaureate FAQ
Midland, Michigan Public Schools:
The Midland Public Schools has created a Q & A sheet for parents and students curious about the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme.
Q: What is the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme?
A: The IB Diploma Programme is a comprehensive and challenging pre-university curriculum for juniors and seniors recognized worldwide.
Q: What exactly does the Diploma Programme involve?
A: The IB Diploma Programme requires students to take six IB classes, three for one year (SL – standard level), and three for two (HL – higher level). Students will also take the Theory of Knowledge (TOK) class, and log 150 hours of Creativity/Action/ Service (CAS), which essentially is service to community, involvement in activities and participation in various school-based extracurricular programs. In addition, they will conduct an individual research project culminating in a paper of not more than 4,000 words.
Q: What options are available for my student?
A: Students must take part in all aspects of the IB Diploma Programme in order to earn an IB Diploma. Students may also select individual IB courses and earn IB certificates in those classes. Or, students may sign-up for an IB class, partake in all of the curricular requirements, and earn no IB certificate or diploma since their assessments will not be sent out for external scoring. The IB diploma is separate from the MPS diploma.
Q: What classes will be offered?
A: MPS will offer courses in each curricular area: English – World Literature 1 & 2, Second Language – French, German or Spanish, Science – Physics 1 & 2, Math – Math Studies 1 & 2 (Advanced Algebra & Pre-Calculus) and Math HL 1 & 2 (Advanced Algebra-Trigonometry & AP Calculus BC), Social Studies – History of the Americas & World Topics, and The Arts – Studio Art and Musical Perspectives. In addition, Psychology may count under either Social Studies or The Arts, as will the Business courses of Marketing Management and Entrepreneurship. TOK will be at the core.
Why Gen-Y Johnny Can’t Read Nonverbal Cues
In September 2008, when Nielsen Mobile announced that teenagers with cellphones each sent and received, on average, 1,742 text messages a month, the number sounded high, but just a few months later Nielsen raised the tally to 2,272. A year earlier, the National School Boards Association estimated that middle- and high-school students devoted an average of nine hours to social networking each week. Add email, blogging, IM, tweets and other digital customs and you realize what kind of hurried, 24/7 communications system young people experience today.
Unfortunately, nearly all of their communication tools involve the exchange of written words alone. At least phones, cellular and otherwise, allow the transmission of tone of voice, pauses and the like. But even these clues are absent in the text-dependent world. Users insert smiley-faces into emails, but they don’t see each others’ actual faces. They read comments on Facebook, but they don’t “read” each others’ posture, hand gestures, eye movements, shifts in personal space and other nonverbal–and expressive–behaviors.
Back in 1959, anthropologist Edward T. Hall labeled these expressive human attributes “the Silent Language.” Hall passed away last month in Santa Fe at age 95, but his writings on nonverbal communication deserve continued attention. He argued that body language, facial expressions and stock mannerisms function “in juxtaposition to words,” imparting feelings, attitudes, reactions and judgments in a different register.
Significant Gender Gap on the PSAT Math Test
The table above (click to enlarge) is based on PSAT scores in 2008 for college-bound juniors for males and females taking the mathematics exam, showing the results for the five geographical regions of the U.S. For both males and females, the highest scores were in the Midwest states, similar to the findings for the SAT test results, reported yesterday on the NY Times Economix blog, “Why The Midwest Rules on the SAT.”
The results also show a significant gender gap in favor of males for the mean math test scores in all five regions, with mean male test scores ranging from 3.2 points higher in the Midwest (52.2 for males vs. 49 for females)to a low of 2.5 points higher in the South (50 points for males vs. 47.5 for females). In all five regions, the standard deviation of male test scores was higher than the standard deviation of female test scores, confirming previous findings of greater variability in male intelligence/scores on standardized tests.
21st Century Skills: The Challenges Ahead
Andrew Rotherham & Daniel Willingham:
To work, the 21st century skills movement will require keen attention to curriculum, teacher quality, and assessment.
A growing number of business leaders, politicians, and educators are united around the idea that students need “21st century skills” to be successful today. It’s exciting to believe that we live in times that are so revolutionary that they demand new and different abilities. But in fact, the skills students need in the 21st century are not new.
Critical thinking and problem solving, for example, have been components of human progress throughout history, from the development of early tools, to agricultural advancements, to the invention of vaccines, to land and sea exploration. Such skills as information literacy and global awareness are not new, at least not among the elites in different societies. The need for mastery of different kinds of knowledge, ranging from facts to complex analysis? Not new either. In The Republic, Plato wrote about four distinct levels of intellect. Perhaps at the time, these were considered “3rd century BCE skills”?
What’s actually new is the extent to which changes in our economy and the world mean that collective and individual success depends on having such skills. Many U.S. students are taught these skills–those who are fortunate enough to attend highly effective schools or at least encounter great teachers–but it’s a matter of chance rather than the deliberate design of our school system. Today we cannot afford a system in which receiving a high-quality education is akin to a game of bingo. If we are to have a more equitable and effective public education system, skills that have been the province of the few must become universal.
Learning Isn’t For Nine Months; It’s Forever
Maybe our whole back-to-school tradition is the problem.
We think of education as a year-to-year thing. Start school in late summer. Finish in late spring. Then repeat. Learning doesn’t work like that. Our fixation on the calendar is getting in the way.
When I was young, I didn’t understand that. I accepted the rhythms set by my parents and teachers. So it was a shock to leave school and discover that when working and raising a family, it no longer mattered so much what time of year it was. I had to get that kid potty-trained, and soon! I had to write that story. I had to convince the foreign editor I could succeed overseas. I had to find a publisher for that book idea. I had to master new skills and absorb new information quickly and competently, or my plans for myself and my family were in jeopardy.
The Post tried giving standard job evaluations, sort of grown-up June report cards, but they didn’t last. My job was to produce stories that interested readers, a real-world test not tied to the calendar.
NEA Internal Survey on Health Care Reveals “Huge Divide Between NEA Executives and Presidents and Rank and File
The National Education Association has appeared front and center in the debate over reform of the health care and insurance system, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on lobbying and media buys. But a 2008 internal survey of NEA members and officers on health care issues indicates varying levels of enthusiasm for proposed reforms.
Though the survey itself was not made available to EIA, the union’s collective bargaining and member advocacy department has been briefing union activists on its findings throughout 2009. I have posted a link to the relevant information on EIA’s Declassified page. The report included statistics such as the average health insurance premium paid in 2007 by NEA members was $603 for employee-only coverage – about 12.6% of the total cost. Eight affiliates reported members paid nothing.
NEA commissioned the polling firm of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner to learn member and officer attitudes about health care reform. Most of those surveyed were concerned about the system, but satisfied with their own health care. NEA members were also more favorably disposed towards government health care programs than the average American.
Still, the survey found that NEA members were “split on whether government or employers should provide health care” and that a “Massachusetts-style proposal [is] susceptible to arguments against it.”
New college majors for changing needs
Some cities up near the fire have canceled the first day of school, it was supposed to have been today.
A lot of college students around the country have either started classes already, or are about to. And as they choose their course loads for the semester amid rising tuition costs, there’s less and less enthusiasm for the old stand-by majors like history or political science or biology. Marketplace’s Steve Henn reports that today’s students want something that sells.
STEVE HENN: Mark Taylor is a tenured religion professor at Columbia University. But he compares higher education to the Detroit Big Three.
MARK TAYLOR: They are producing a product for which there’s no market.
Which wouldn’t be so bad if these students also had skills valued outside academia but…
Student’s visit to Vietnam is lesson in college culture
The third time proved to be a charm for Adam Croglia of Amherst, a senior political science major at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva.
After visiting Vietnam as a tourist twice before with his family–for a month in 2006 and again in 2007 — Croglia went again for 11 weeks this summer as an intern with the Institute of International Education, an organization in Ho Chi Minh City promoting cultural exchange. Croglia, who returned home earlier this month, said his latest trip was very rewarding and culturally enriching.
“Vietnam is a rapidly developing country with a remarkable desire to globalize,” said Croglia, who traveled through a grant funded by his college. “Living there opened my eyes in a way I couldn’t get from visiting.”
In Ho Chi Minh City, Croglia advised and educated Vietnamese students interested in pursuing an education at American colleges and universities.
“I had the opportunity to reach many Vietnamese students,” he said. “Through my presentations both in Ho Chi Minh City and around the country, I think I presented to a total of about 1,500 people.”
Croglia, 20, gave presentations throughout the country on resumes, personal statements and relationship building. The 2006 St. Joseph’s Collegiate Institute graduate said the students were very receptive and intrigued by American culture and education.
Can Poor Spelling Derail a Career?
I’m mentoring a young, ambitious engineer in our company. He’s competent and demonstrates his energetic drive every day. However, he constantly makes spelling and grammatical errors in his writings. I’ve asked him to utilize spell-checking and re-read his emails. But mistakes such as confusing “our” with “are” and “there” and “their” aren’t picked up with the computer tools. It’s been over a year and he’s still making these mistakes. What would you suggest as an appropriate next course of action? I am not sure if there are any additional classes he can take to improve his grammar/spell-checking skills.
A: While it is clear you have casually mentioned to your mentee about his spelling and grammatical errors, it sounds like it is time you have a more formal, direct discussion with him about his mistakes. It may be that he doesn’t fully understand the gravity of the problem and the impact it can have on his career. “He needs to know that these mistakes are getting in the way of his success and that his lack of professionalism and inaccuracy is unacceptable,” says Brad Karsh, president of JobBound, a career consulting firm.
Educating America
Bold action required to change schools so they can prepare students to compete
Since being confirmed by the Senate this year, Education Secretary Arne Duncan has been rolling out an aggressive plan to overhaul the nation’s lagging public school systems. It is time, in his words, for “fundamental reform.”
Congress, at President Barack Obama’s urging, is putting billions of stimulus dollars into education. It is a stunning amount of money, and this is a time like none other for American schools.
The nation has a high-school dropout rate of 30 percent, Duncan said, and those who graduate are behind students in other nations. With American students competing for jobs in a world economy, it is important they have the best education possible.
“As the president has said many times, we have to educate our way to a better economy,” Duncan said Wednesday in a meeting with the Las Vegas Sun’s editorial board.
As the former chief executive of the public school system in Chicago, Duncan understands the variety of issues facing education, including public safety concerns and money woes. He understands the need for change and wants to upend the status quo. Duncan has put together a broad array of plans that, if implemented, could significantly improve schools. To wit:
A well-rounded education. The emphasis under the No Child Left Behind Act, the Bush administration’s hallmark education policy, was standardized testing that covered a few subjects. Principals and teachers across the country, consequently, “teach to the test.” The result often has been a limited curriculum. Duncan wants to see children receive a well-rounded education including physical education, art and music. He said he wants public school students “to have the opportunities private school students have always had.”
Accountability in Public Schools
The Obama administration laid down an appropriately tough line in late July when it released preliminary rules for the $4.3 billion pot of money known as the Race to the Top Fund. The administration rightly sees it as a way to spur reform by rewarding states that embrace high standards and bypassing those that do not.
Federal regulations are often modified in line with criticisms that arise during the legally mandated comment period. But Education Secretary Arne Duncan will need to hold firm against the likes of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, and others who are predictably clinging to the status quo.
The administration plan would award grants based on how well state applications cover several topic areas. States must, for example, submit plausible plans for improving teacher effectiveness, equalizing teacher quality across rich and poor schools. They must also show how they would turn around failing schools.
Pledge Allegiance to Core Knowledge
THE MAKING OF AMERICANS
Democracy and Our Schools
By E.D. Hirsch, Jr.
Yale Univ. 261 pp. $25
It’s not easy being E. D. Hirsch, Jr. If the inventive 81-year-old had been a business leader or politician or even a school superintendent, his fight to give U.S. children rich lessons in their shared history and culture would have made him a hero among his peers. Instead, he chose to be an English professor, at the unlucky moment when academic fashion declared the American common heritage to be bunk and made people like Hirsch into pariahs.
In this intriguing, irresistible book, Hirsch tells of life as the odd man out at the University of Virginia. Twelve years ago, for instance, he decided to give a course at the university’s education school. As a bestselling author and leader of a national movement to improve elementary school teaching, he thought students would flock to hear him. Instead, he rarely got more than 10 a year. Be grateful for that many, one student told him. They had all been warned by the education faculty not to have anything to do with someone demanding that all students take prescribed courses in world and American history.
